Early Byzantine
Tile Icon of St. Nicholas
Constantinople
10th-11th century
Characteristics:
No background
Flat faced
Icon of Christ
Russian, Moscow
Tempera on wood and
gilded silver
Middle Ages
•saints in paintings wore
halos around their heads
•hieratic scale: representing
the sizes of things according
to their importance, rather
than how they would appear
in the real world
•saints or members of the
family of God larger in scale
than ordinary or less
important figures
The Art of the
Italian Renaissance
The act of painting would no longer be to glorify God, as it
had been in Medieval Europe. Painting in the Renaissance
related instead, to those people looking at the painting.
What was different in the Renaissance?
Realism
Perspective
Classical (pagan) themes
Geometrical arrangement of figures
Light and shadowing (chiaroscuro)
Softening of edges (sfumato)
Backgrounds
Artist able to live from commissions
Art and Patronage
Italians were willing to spend a lot of money on art.
Art communicated social, political, and spiritual
values.
Italian banking & international trade interests had
the money.
Public art in Florence was organized and supported by
guilds.
Therefore, the consumption of art was used as a form
of competition for social & political status!
Characteristics of
Renaissance Art
1. Realism &
Expression
Expulsion from the Garden
Masaccio
1427
First nudes since classical times.
2. Perspective
The Trinity
Perspective!
Perspective!
Perspective!
Perspective!
Perspective!
Masaccio
1427
Perspective!
Perspective!
First use
of linear
perspective!
What you are, I
once was; what I
am, you will
become.
Discovery of Perspective:
About 1420
Attributed to Brunelleschi
Perspective produced a
greater sense of realism
All made possible through
mathematics.
3. Classicism
Greco-Roman influence.
Secularism.
Humanism.
Individualism 
free standing figures.
Symmetry/Balance
The “Classical Pose”
Medici “Venus” 1st C
Birth of Venus
Botticelli
1482–1486
4. Emphasis on Individualism
Batista Sforza & Federico de Montefeltre:
The Duke & Dutchess of Urbino
Piero della Francesca, 1465-1466.
5. Geometrical Arrangement of Figures
Leonardo da Vinci
1469
The figure as
architecture!
The Dreyfus Madonna
with the
Pomegranate
6. Light & Shadowing/Softening Edges
Sfumato:
Chiaroscuro:
use of light
and shade
Ginevra de' Benci, a
young Florentine
noblewoman who, at
the age of sixteen,
married Luigi
Niccolini in 1474.
gradual
blending of
one area of
color into
another
without a sharp
outline
7. Artists as Personalities/Celebrities
Giorgio Vasari
1550
Lives of the Most
Excellent Painters,
Sculptors, and
Architects
Biographies of Italian
artists
Giotto di Bondone
Considered
the first in a
line of great
artists
who
contributed
to the
Italian
Renaissance
1267-1337
Giotto di Bondone
Figures seem to exist in
real space with
recognizable human
emotions.
The camels: have blue
eyes, ears like a donkey
and feet like a cow.
Had Giotto ever seen a
camel in real life?
Is the star Halley’s
Comet which appeared
in 1301?
The Adoration Of The Magi
1304-06
A Contest to Decorate the Baptistry in 1401
Sacrifice of Isaac Panels
Ghiberti
Brunelleschi
Ghiberti – Gates of Paradise
Ghiberti wins.
Made: 1425-1452
Michelangelo coins them
the Gates of Paradise
Piero della Francesca
The Ideal City -1470
Sculpture
David by Donatello
1430
First free-standing bronze
since Roman times
The statue originally belonged
to Cosimo de' Medici, and
was placed in the courtyard
of the Palazzo Medici
 15c
What
a
difference
a
century
makes!
16c 
The Renaissance Man
Broad knowledge about many things in different fields.
Deep knowledge/skill in one area.
Able to link information from different areas/disciplines and
create new knowledge.
The Greek ideal of the “well-rounded man” was at the heart of
Renaissance education.
Self-Portrait da Vinci, 1512
Artist
Sculptor
Architect
Scientist
Engineer
Inventor
1452 - 1519
Vitruvian Man
Leonardo da Vinci
1492
The Last Supper - da Vinci, 1498
Geometry
Refractory
Convent of Santa
Maria delle Grazie
Milan
15 feet × 29 ft
vertical
The Last Supper - da Vinci, 1498
horizontal
Perspective!
Deterioration
Detail of Jesus
New technique
that resulted in
rapid
deterioration
Apostles
First time Judas was painted as one of the twelve
Mona Lisa
Da Vinci
1503
Oil
Poplar panel
da Vinci carries it
with him and the
painting is next to
him when he dies
in France in 1519
Botticelli
The Birth of Venus
It depicts the goddess Venus, having emerged from the sea as a
full grown woman, arriving at the sea-shore 1482–1486
Michelangelo Buonorrati
1475 – 1564
Born near Florence
Adopted by Medici family
He represented the body
in three dimensions of
sculpture.
David
1504
Marble
Heroic
Intense
High Renaissance
1500-1525
Associated with these three artists:
da Vinci - Milan
Raphael - Rome
Michelangelo - Rome
Renaissance Rome
The High Renaissance
The Sistine
Chapel
Michelangelo
1508-1512
About a year after creating
David, Pope Julius II
summoned Michelangelo
to Rome to work on his
most famous project, the
ceiling of the Sistine
Chapel.
The Sistine Chapel’s Ceiling
Michelangelo Buonarroti
1508 - 1512
Perspective
Raphael
Subjects are mainly
secular, but can be
religious
Figures look idealized,
but can also look like
everyday ordinary people
Bodies are active
Clothed or unclothed
Faces are expressive
Detail
The School of Athens
1510 Fresco
Vatican City
Plato:
looks to the
heavens
-or the IDEAL
realm.
Painted as da
Vinci
Aristotle:
looks to this
earth-the
here and
now
Marriage in the Renaissance
Marriage vows were often
treated like business
contracts-carefully
arranged marriage to
strengthen business or
family ties
A dowry-a bride’s family's
gift to the bridegroom
A woman was expected to
become a part of her new
husband’s family
Raphael Marriage of the Virgin-1529
Lorenzo
the Magnificent
Cosimo de Medici
1478 - 1521
1517 - 1574
Florence Under the Medici
Medici Chapel
The Medici Palace
Other Famous Domes
Il Duomo
Florence
St. Peter’s
Rome
St. Paul’s
London
US capital
Washington