THE PRINCELY COURTS
Besides in Florence, the princely courts of Naples,
Urbino, Milan, Ferrara, and Mantua, rulers nurtured the arts.
Mantua
Marquis Ludovico Gonzaga was determined to transform Mantua into a
spectacular city. An Expansive Mantuan Church: The architect Leon
Battista Alberti designed a façade for the church of Sant'Andrea that linked
together a Roman temple front and a triumphal arch. The façade's
vertical and horizontal dimensions are proportionally related.
The vaults in the interior may have been inspired by the
Basilica Nova of Constantine in Rome.
Facade.
Leon Battista Alberti(1404-72) turned
his attention to the traditional
Latin cross plan and applied a
combination of a temple front and a
triumphal arch to the facade. Alberti
not only produced a new facad
design but abandoned the nave-andaisles type of basilica church
which Brunelleschi had used, turning
instead to a Latin cross form
with a barrel-vaulted nave and a
series of alternating
21-44 Plan of Sant'Andrea, Mantua, Italy, designed ca. 1470.
A Palatial Room of Painted Splendor: In the Camera degli Sposi in
the Ducal Palace in Mantua, Andrea Mantegna produced the first
consistent illusionistic decoration applied to an entire room. In the
illusionistic oculus in the centre of the ceiling, Mantegna employed
perspective and foreshortening to produce images seen
di sotto in sù (from below upwards).
21-47 ANDREA MANTEGNA, interior of the Camera
degli Sposi, Palazzo Ducale, Mantua, Italy, 1474. Fresco.
21-48 ANDREA
MANTEGNA, ceiling of the
Camera degli Sposi,
Palazzo Ducale, Mantua,
Italy, 1474. Fresco, 8' 9" in
diameter.
Examining Christ's Wounds:
Mantegna's harrowing image of
the Dead Christ is a strikingly
realistic study in foreshortening
but one which has been also
modified artistically.
21-50 ANDREA MANTEGNA, Dead Christ,
ca. 1501.
Tempera on canvas, 26 3/4" x 31 7/8".
Pinacoteca di Brera, Milan.
Urbino
The princely court of Urbino under the patronage of Federico da
Montefeltro was a center of Renaissance art and culture. The painter and
geometrician Piero della Francesca produced lucid images of almost
geometrical clarity and purity.
A Legendary Fresco Style: Piero's fresco cycle in the apse of the
church of San Francesco in Arezzo includes the Finding of the True
Cross and Proving of the True Cross, in which the carefully delineated
forms and shapes of the architecture in the background organize and
control the grouping of the solemn figures in the foreground.
21-51 PIERO DELLA
FRANCESCA,
Finding of the True
Cross and Proving of
the True Cross,
San Francesco,
Arezzo, Italy, ca.
1455. Fresco, 11' 8
3/8" x 6' 4".
Resurrecting
Masaccio's
Composition: In
his fresco of the
Resurrection in the
chapel of the town
hall of Borgo San
Sepolcro, Piero
used a triangle of
figures to organize
and stabilize the
composition.
21-52 PIERO DELLA
FRANCESCA,
Resurrection, Palazzo
Comunale, Borgo San
Sepolcro, Italy, ca.
1463. Fresco, 7' 5" x 6'
6 1/2".
TURMOIL AT THE END OF THE CENTURY
The puritanical Dominican preacher Girolamo Savonarola assumed
absolute control of Florence after the Medici fled the city following the
death of Lorenzo de' Medici in 1492. Savonarola denounced humanism
and encouraged "bonfires of the vanities," in which citizens were
exhorted to burn classical texts, scientific treatises, and philosophical
writings.
A Horrifying Vision of
the Damned: Luca
Signorelli's frescoes in the
San Brizio Chapel in
Orvieto Cathedral includes
the Damned Cast into
Hell, where a dense
writhing mass of humans
are tortured by ferocious
demons. Skillfully
foreshortened nude,
muscular bodies twist and
turn in anguish and pain.
21-54 LUCA
SIGNORELLI, Damned
Cast into Hell, San
Brizio Chapel,
Cathedral, Orvieto, Italy,
1499–1504. Fresco,
approx. 23' wide.