Early Renaissance Painting
A few words before we begin
• Fresco: mural painting on wet plaster
• Trompe l’oeil: “trickery of the eye,” illusion.
Painters covered
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Masaccio – short career >decade
Fra Angelico – Dominican monk meets painter
Andrea del Castagno: from Venice to Florence
Andrea Mantegna: influenced by Donatello
Perugino: from Umbria to Florence
Botticelli: commissioned by Medici family
Masaccio
• Painter’s guild in 1422
• Rome in 1427
• Understood Brunelleschi’s theory of ______?
Trinity by Masaccio
Painted fresco in Church of
Santa Maria Novella
Donors red garb suggests
member of Florentine
council.
Trompe l’oeil with barrel
vault in linear perspective
Demonstrates Masaccio’s
knowledge of Brunelleschi’s
perspective
What different columns do
you recognize?
Interior of Brancacci
Chapel, fresco
Differs from Flemish
Painters, how?
Created a new realism
with focus on mass of
bodies.
Cast Shadows
Expulsion from Paradise
Fresco from Brancacci Chapel
Instead of focusing on anatomy,
focused energy to depicting the
sheer mourning and emotion.
Tribute Money - Masaccio
ArtAcademy
Continuous Narrative
Jesus and Peter in
middle, Peter on left
with coin and fish
(shown here), and
Peter paying on right.
• Tribute Money is known for it’s integration of
figures, landscape, and architecture
• Linear perspective + intuitive perspective
• Look again at Tribute Money, and can you tell
what parts show linear perspective and what
parts show intuitive?
Tribute Money
Fra Angelico
• Annunciation, 1438-45
• Fresco in Monastery of San Marco
• Building style used by Brunelleschi during that
exact time of painting.
• Inspire meditation for monks
• Located at top of stairs in Monastery, where
monks pause before heading to their
individual cells.
Linear perspective opens
the room
Slender figures assume
modest poses
Natural light
Fra Angelico finished last
few painting years
painting the Pope’s
private chapel in Vatican.
Andrea del Castagno
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Last Supper
Fresco, 1445-50, refectory of Convent of Sant’ Apollonia
The convent for Benedictine nuns
Refectory is dining hall
Andrea Mantegna
Mantegna, Frescoes in the
Camera Picta
Ducal Palace, Mantua
Entered painters’ guild at 15,
highly influenced by Donatello
Painted mostly entire like for
Ludovico Gonzaga, ruler of
Mantua
Excelled in perspective,
integrating the figures into the
setting, and naturalistic detail.
Putti, or winged
baby angels,
play around the
balustrade.
This is a dome in
the chapel.
Tromp l’oeil
For-shortened
perspective
Perugino
• Resolution of Great Schism 1417
• Rome was chosen for Papal residency
• Perugino came to Rome to paint in Sistine
Chapel
• Painted Delivery of the Keys to St. Peter
• Teacher of Raphael
Delivery of the Keys to Saint Peter
Fresco right wall of Sistine Chapel, Vatican
Grid-like composition: vertical and horizontal
Primary color usage
Perspectival recession
Atmospheric perspective
Botticelli
• Studied in studio of Verrochio (Equestrian
Statue of Bartolommeo Colleoni)
• Painted for Sistine Chapel
• Also painted for Medici family (bankers)
• Used tempera, not oil
Cupid
Mercury
Three Graces
Flora
Zephyr
Aura
Botticelli, La Primavera (Spring), 1478
Medici Wedding
Aphrodite of Knidos, Praxiteles, Late Classical
SANDRO BOTTICELLI, Birth of Venus, ca. 1482. Tempera on canvas, approx. 5' 8" x 9' 1". Galleria
degli Uffizi, Florence
Take 2 minutes to review over your notes
You have 15 minutes to write, in your opinion, who
was the most talented fresco painter or tempera
painter we have covered so far. Convince me with
facts from your notes and your opinion.
Work is individual, write in complete sentences, and
I will be collecting these at the end of the period.