21
H UMANISM ANDI THE
AL LURE OF ANTIQUITY
15TH-CENTURY ITALIAN ART
T
he 15th century in Italy witnessed the flourishing of a significantly new and expanded arLisLic culture-the Renaissance-whose early developmenl was chronicled in Chapter 19. The continued maturation of this culture was due to several factors, among them the sp read of humanism, political and economic f1uctuations
throughout Italy, and a fortunate abundance of artistic talent.
L~~.~:~Nzo GHtB':,t~TI., east doors ("Gates of Paradise"), baptistery of Florence Cathedral, Florence, Italy, 1425-1452. Gilded bronze
re tet, approx. l; h1gh. Modern copy, ea. 1980. Original pan els in Museo dell'Opera del Duomo, rlorencc.
THE SPREAD OF HUMANISM The hum anism disseminated by Petrarch and Boccaccio during the 14th century had greater impact as the 15th century p rogressed.
Increasingly, Italians in elite circles embraced the tenets underlying humanisman emphasis on education and on expanding knowledge (especially of classical antiquity), the exploration of individual potential and a desire to excel, and a commitment
to civic responsibility and moral duLy.
For humanists, the quest for knowledge began \•v ith the legacy of the Greeks and
Romans - the writings of Plato, Socrates, Aristotle, Ovid, and others. The development of a literature based on a vernacular (commonly spoken) Tuscan dialect expanded the audience for humanjst wri6ngs. Further, the invention of movable metal
type by the German johann Gutenberg around 1445 facilitated the printing and wide
distribution of books. Italians enthusiastically embraced this new printing process; by
1464 Subiaco (near Rome ) boasted a press, and by 1469 Venice had established one as
well. Amo ng the first books printed in Italy using this new press was Dante's vernacular epic, Divine Comedy. The production of editions in Foligno ( 1472), Mantua
(1472), Venice (1472), Naples (1477 and 1478-1479), and j\llilan (1478 ) testifies to the
widespread popularity during the 15th century of Dante's epic poem about Heaven,
Purgatory, and Hell.
The humanists did not restrict their learning to antique writings. They avidly acquired information in a wide rang ,f fields, including science (such as botany, geol ogy, geography, and optics), medicine, and engineering. Leonardo da Vinci's phenom enal expertise in many fields- from art and architecture to geology, aerodynamics,
hydraulics, botany, and military science, among many others-serves to define the
modern notion of a "Ren aissance man."
ART AND SOCIETY
Extent of Renaissan ce Florence
Cultivating Culture
The Princely Courts and Artistic Patronage
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he absence of a si ngle authoritative sove~·eign rul ing al~ of
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o
.
. .
,
·::led
a
fertil
e
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ground for the ambitiOns ot the
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states pro'
ry Jn the 15th century, Italian sooety witnessed the
Jower- h tu1g •
.
.
1,·
of princely courts throughout the penmsula. A pnnce
expansiOn
.
.
.
.
.
· ~, ·ence the lord ot a terntory, and, despite this genenc
was 111 t:ss
.
.
.
he could have been a duke, marquis, cardmal, pope, tyrant,
tit 1e,
.
.
d· x ·
·I \, · ,. ., - At th is t ime, maJOr prmce1v courts emerge 1111v11or papa 1"" 1·
·
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'
. Naples, Ferrara, Savoy, Mantua, and papal Rome. Rather than
1an,
h .
.
denoting a specific organizational structure ~r p y~Ka 1entity, t 11e
term princely court referred to a power relat10n~hip b~tween the
prince and the territo_ry's inhabita~1ts based on 1mpenalmodels.
Each prince ,vorked tirelessly not JUSt to preserve but also to extend his c ntrol an d authority, seeking to esta blish a societal
fram ework of peop le who looked to him for jobs, favors, protection, prestige, and leadersh ip. T he importance of these princely
courts derived from their role as centers of power and culture.
The efficient functioning of a princely court required a sophisticated administ rative st ructure. Each prince employed an
exte nsive household staff, ranging from counts, nobles, cooks,
waiters, st wards, footm en, stable han ds, and ladies-in-waiting to
dog hand lers, leopard keepers, pages, a nd runners (who did menial fe tch ing chores). The d uke of Mi lan had more t han 40 chamberlai ns to attend to his personal needs alone. Each prince also
needed an elaborate bureaucracy to oversee political, economic,
and m ilitary operations and to ensure his continued control.
These officials inclu ded secretaries, lavvyers, captains, ambassadors, and condottieri. Burgeoning international diplomacy an d
trade made each pri nce the cen ter of an active and privileged
sphere. Their domains extended to the realm of culture, for they
saw tl1emselves as mo re than political, military, and economic
leaders. The princes f, It responsible for the vitality of cultural li fe
in their territories, and art was a major component for developing
a cultur d populace. Visual imagery also appealed to them as effect ive propaganda fo r reinforcing their control. As undoubted ly
the wealthiest individ uals in their regions, princes possessed the
means to commission numerous artworks and buildings. Thus,
art function ed in everal capacities-as evidence of princely so~histication and culture, as a form of prestige or commemoration, as public e ucatio n and propaganda, as a demonstration of
weal th, and as a ource of visual pleasure.
, Princes often re earched in advance the reputations and styles
of the arti ts and architects they commissioned. Such assurances
of exceU nee were necessary, because the quality of the work reflec ted not ju t on the artist hut on the patron as well. Yet despite
the importance of ind ividual style, princes sought artists who also
L
Mcdici
l'alazzo
)Vlc.dici-Ri cca rdi
Chapel
Sanra Maria
Novella
San Lorenzo
Florence
CJrhedral
}Jitl:z:::.d drltT
Ruccllai
R(·pubbiitil
Or San Michele
Sanra
1rinira
Sama Maria
del Carmine
Santa
1/
f;i~~r~
Crocc
I'av.i
Chapd
Sa n ta
Felicir~
Pia;:.:z{f
dl·i Piui
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MAP 21-1 Renaissance Florence.
RECOGNIZING ACHIEVEMENT Humanism also fostered a
belief in individual potential and encouraged individual achievement, along with civic responsibility. Whereas people in medieval
society accorded great power to divine will in determining the
events that affected lives, those in Renaissance Italy adopted a more
secular stance. Humanists not only encouraged individual improvement but also rewarded excellence with fame and honor. Achieving
and excelling through hard work became moral imperatives.
OF WEALTH AND POWER Fifteenth-century Italy witnessed
constant tluctuations in its political and economic spheres, including shifting power relations among the numerous city-states and the
rise of princely courts. Condottieri (military leaders) with large
numbers of mercenary troops at their disposal played a major role
in the ongoing struggle for power. Princely courts, such as those in
Urbino and Mantua, emerged as cultural and artistic centers (see
"Cultivating Culture: The Princelv Courts and Artistic Patronaae"
b)
page 575). The association of humanism with education and culture
appealed to accomplished individuals of high status, and humanism
had its greatest impact among the elite and powerful, such as those
associated with these courts. It was these individuals who were in the
best position to commission art. As a result, much of Italian Renaissance art was infused with humanist ideas. The intersection of art
with humanist doctrines during the Renaissance can be seen in the
popularity of subjects selected from classical history or mythology,
in the increased concern with developing perspectival systems and
depicting anatomy accurately, in the revival of portraiture and other
self-aggrandizing f(:m11S of patronage, and in citizens' extensive participation in civic and religious art commissions.
I
574
Chapter 21
-
I)TJI- CFW! UR Y I TA LI AN
-
An.·r
•
•
L
Campanile
Palazzo
•
Because high-level patronage required significant acc un Lr
lated wealth, the individuals and families who had managed to
prosper economically came to the fore in artistic circles. Among
the best known was the tvfedici family, vvhich acquired its vast fortune from banking. Although they were not a court fa mily, the
Medici used their tremendous wealth to wield great power and to
commission art and architecture on a scale rarely seen, then or
since. The Medici were such lavish patrons of art and learning
that, to this day, the term Medici is widely used to refer to a generous patron of the fine arts.
The historical context that gave rise to the Renaissance and
the importance of patronage account for the character of 15thcentury Italian art. In addition, the sheer serendipity of the ab undance of exceedingly talented artists also must be considered. Renaissance Italy experienced major shifts in artistic models, such as
increased interest in perspective and illusionism. In part, these
shifts were due to a unique artistic environment in which killed
artists, through industriousness and dialogue with others, for vcr
changed the direction and perception of art.
were willing, at times, to subordinate their personal styles to work
collaboratively on large-scale projects.
Princes bestowed on selected individuals the title of "court
artist." Serving as a court artist had its benefits, among them a
guaranteed salary (not always forthcoming), living quarters in the
palace, liberation from guild restrictions, and, on occasion, status
as a member of the prince's inner circle, perhaps even a knighthood. For artists struggling to elevate their profession from the
ranks of craftspeople, working for a prince presented a marvelous
opportunity. Until the 16th century, artists had limited status and
were in the same class as small shopkeepers and petty merchants.
Indeed, at court dinners, artists most often were seated with other
members of the salaried household: tailors, cobblers, barbers, and
upholsterers. T hus, the possibility of advancement was a powerful
and constant incentive.
Princes demanded a great deal from court artists. Artists not
only created the frescoes, portraits, and sculptures that have become
their legacies but also designed tapestries, seat covers, costumes,
masks, and decorations tor various court festivities. Because princes
constantly entertained, received ambassadors and dignitaries, and
needed t~ maintain a high profile to reinforce their authority, lavish
social functio ns were the norm. Artists often created gifts for visiting
nobles and potentates. Recipients judged such gifts on the quality of
both the work and the materials. By using expensive materialsgold leaf, silver leaf, lapis lazuli, silk, and velvet brocade- princes
could impress others with their wealth and good taste.
The experiences of court artists varied widely; some princes
treated them as mere servants, others as trusted colleagues. At one
end of the spectrum was Perino del Vaga, whose life at the papal
court was described by biographer Giorgio Vasari: "[He had] to
draw day and night and to meet the demands of the Palace, and,
among other things, to make the designs of embroideries, of engravings for banner-makers, and of innumerable ornaments required
by the caprice of Farnese and other Cardinals and noblemen. In
short, ... being always surrounded by sculptors, masters in stucco,
wood-carvers, seamsters, embroiderers, painters, gilders, and other
suchlike craftsmen, he had never an hour of repose." 1 In contrast was
Leonardo da Vinci's treatment at the hands of his last patron, King
Francis I of France, in whose arms the great artist is said to have died.
For princes who harbored dreams of expanding their control
and wh o wanted to craft suitable legacies, art was indispensable.
Hence, the history of Renaissance art cannot be fully understood
without serious consideration of courtly culture.
Giorgio Vasari, Lives c~f the Painters, Sculptors and Architects, translated by
Gaston du C. de Vere (New York: Knopf, 1996), 2: 184.
1
FLORENCE
Sculpture and Civic Pride
in the Early Renaissance
\1\fe begin our discussion of 15th-century Italian art with a competition in 140 l for a design for the east doors of the Ior nee
baptistery (see FIG. 17 -1 8). Artists and pubjjc alike considered this
comm is i
·,
.
I·
on part1c larly prestigious because ot the mtended
p a t'mem of the d oors on t h e b aptlstery
.
,s east SJ.d e, tacmg
, .
h
t e
cat hedral
entrance.
Even
at
this
early
date,
manv
of
the
traits
that
hara t ·
'
'
\' 1
enz.ed Renaissa nce art were evident. These include the dee
opm
nt
of
a
n
.
.
I
"11
.
.
civ · . .
ew p ictona I uswnism, patronage as t1ot h a
tc lnl perative
d t'
, .
.
.
er .
an a or m ot self-promo tiOn, and th e esteem measlngly a _ d d
~.:cor e to artists.
And rea Pisano (ea. 1270-1348), unrelated to the 13thcentur y Italian sculptors Nicola (sec FI GS. 19-2 and 19- 3) and
Giovanni (see FIG. 19-4 ), had designed the south doors of the
sam e structure between 1330 and 1335. In 1401, the Arte di Calimala (wool merchants' guild) sponsored the competition fo r th e
second set of doors, requiring each entrant to submit a rel i 1
panel depicting the sacrifice of lsaac. This biblical event centers
fLO RENCE
575
n God's order to Abraham that he sacrifice his son Isaac as a
demonstration of Abraham's devotion to God. Just as Abraham is
about to comply, an angel intervenes and stops him from plunging the knife into his son's throat. Because of the parallel between
Abraham's willingness to sacrifice Isaac and God's sacrifice of his
Son, Jesus Christ, to redeem mankind, the sacrifice of Jsaac \vas
often linked to the Crucifixion. Both refer to covenants, and given
that the sacrament of baptism initiates the neonate, or convert,
into the possibilities of these covenants, lsaac's sacrifice was certainly appropriate for representation on a baptistery.
The selection of this theme may also have been influenced by
historical developments. In the late 1390s, Giangaleazzo Visconti of
Milan began a military campaign to take over the Italian peninsula.
By 1401, when the directors of the cathedral's artworks initiated this
competition, Visconti's troops had virtually surrounded Florence
(MAP 21-1), and its independence was in serious jeopardy. Despite
dwmdling water and food supplies, Florentine officials exhorted the
public to defend the city's freedom. For example, the humanist
chancellor, C:oluccio Salutati, whose Latin style of writing was
widely int-luential, urged his fellow citizens to adopt the republican
ideal of civil and political liberty associated with ancient Rome and
to identify themselves with its spirit. To be Florentine was to be Roman; freedom was the distinguishing virtue of both. (Fiorentine
faith and sacrifice were rewarded in 1402, when Visconti died suddenly, endint:, the invasion threat.) The story of Abraham and Isaac,
with its theme of sacriilct>. paralleled the message city officials had
conveyed to inhabitants. It is certainly plausible that the Arte di Calimala, asserting both its preeminence among Florentine guilds and
its civic duty, selected the subject with this in mind.
Those supervising this project selected as semitlnalists seven
ar tists from among the many who entered the widely advertised
competition for the commission. Only the panels of the two finalists, LORENZO GHIBERTI ( 1378- 1455) and fiLIPPO I3RUNELLESCHI
(1377-1446), have survived. In 1402, the selection committee
awarded the commission to Ghiberti. I3oth artists used the same
French Gothic quatrcj(Jil frames Andrea Pisano had used forth
baptistery's south doors and depicted the same moment of the
narrative-the angel's halting of the action. Examinincrt> these
t Woe
•
panels provides insight into some sty! istic indications of the direction Early Renaissance art was to take during the 15th cent ury.
.
L
ABRAHAM'S SACRIFICE Brunelleschi's panel (FI G. 21- 1)
shmvs a sturdy and vigorous interpretation of the theme, with
something of the emotional agitation favored by Giovan ni Pi ano
(see FIG. 19-4). Abraham seems suddenly to have summoned the
dreadful courage needed to kill his son at God's command -he
lunges fonNard, draperies t1ying, exposing lsaac's th roat to the
knife. Matching Abraham's energy, the saving angel darts in from
the Left, grabbing Abraham's arm to stop the killing. Bm nelleschi's figures demonstrate his abi lity to observe carefully an d represent faithfully all the elements in the biblical narrative.
EMULATING ANTIQUE MODELS \!\There Brunei! schi imbued his image with dramatic emotion, Ghiberti em phasized
grace and smoothness. In Ghiberti's panel (FIG. 21-2), Abraham
appears in the f~m1iliar Gothic S-curve pose and seems to contemplate the act he is about to perform, even a.s he draws h is arm
back to strike. The figure of Isaac, beautifully posed and rendered,
recalls Green- Roman statuary and could be regarded as the first
truly classicizing nude since antiquity. (Compare, for example,
the torsion of Isaac's body and the dramatic turn of his head with
those of the Hellenistic statue of a Gaul thrusting a sword into his
own chest, FIC. 5-80). Unlike his medieval predecessors, Gh ibcrti
revealed a genuine appreciation of the nude male form and a
deep interest in how the muscular system and skeletal str ucture
move the human body. Even the altar on which lsaac k neels displays Ghiberti's emulation of antique models. It is decorated with
acanthus scrolls of a type that commonly adorned Roman te mple
friezes ]ri Italy and throughout the former Roman Empire (see,
for example, FIG. 10-30). These classical references ret1ect the i ,_
creasing influence of humanism.
.
., _ t ., · · a included both painting and goldsmithery.
-· l rtl s r.,. 101 11 tJ
(' 111 . l · . tmen t of the gilded bronze surL1ces, with their
u· . Cclreiu trea
. .
.
. , , ,·
,
rt 15
d . -curately 111 osed detaiL proves his skill as a gold· I 1"]] uswn
· . 'TI
sha' rplY· an al.. ·nter he was intereste cl ·m spatia
. 1e
·th As a pal
'
_
1111
S
·
d . e see ms to emerge 1rom the blank panel toward
-kv [1n scap
roL '. ·
. does the strongly foreshortened angel. Brunelle11e viewer, J.
.
·
·
t ., . . .
· contrast, emphasizes the planar onentat1on o 1
schi s Jtn age. ' 11
the surface.
.
.
.berti cas t his panel m only two pieces (thereby reThat Gh l
.
.
,. mount of b ronze needed) no doubt Impressed the seduCing t11t a
.
.
~
ittee Gh iberti's construction method dtffered from
.
.
. .
Jectton Lo m n1
-B. nelleschi who built his from several cast p1eces. Thus,
th at o t 1 u
'
.
.
uld Ghi berti's doors, as proposed, be lighter and more
noton Iy wO
. ..
_·
to the elements, but they also represented a sigmfi101pei V!OUS
ant cost savings.
.
Ghiberti' sub m ission dearly had much to recommend It,
h stvlistically and technically. Although Ghiberti's image was
bot
'
vertl v emotional than Brune 11 esc h"'
1s, ·It was more
per I1aps les O
'
. ..
. .
.
~ .
· and presented a more convmcmg spat1al IllusiOn. GhJ co l1eSIVe <
berti furth r developed these pictorial effects, sometimes thought
•
L
alien to sc ulpture, in his later work.
Ghiberti's pride in winning the commission is evident in his
description of the award, which also reveals the f<u~e and glory
increasingly accorded to individual achievement dunng the Early
for east doors, baptistery or Florence Cathedral, Florence, ltalv,
1401-1402. Gilded bronze relief, I' 9" xI' 5". Museo Nazion;le
dd Bargcllo, Florence.
21-2 LORE:-.JZO GHIBERTI, Sacrifice of Isaac, competition panel for east
doors, baptistery of Florence Cathedral, Florence, Italy, 140 I -1 402 .
Gilded bronze relief, l' 9" x l' 5". Museo Nazionale del Ba rcrello,
Florence.
approx. l' ll" x l' ll".
Renaissance:
To me was conceded the palm of the victory by all the experts and
by all .. . who had competed with me. To me the honor was conceded univer ally and vvith no exception. To all it seemed that I had
at that time surpassed the others without exception, as was recognized by a great council and an investigation of learned men ... .
The testimonial of the victory was given in my favnr by all . . . .
It was granted to me and determined that I should make the bronze
door for this church.
1
Ghiberti completed the 28 door panels depicting scenes from
the New Testament in 1424. Church officials eventually decided
to move th e doors to the baptistery's north side.
A FEAST IN PERSPECTIVE Like Gh iberti, DoNATELLO
(ea. 1386- 1466 ) was another sculptor who carried forward most
dramati ally the search for innovative forms capab le of expressing the new ideas o f the Early Renaissance. Donatello shared the
humanist enthusiasm for Roman virtue and form. His greatness
lies in an extraordinary versa tility and a depth that led him
through a spectrum of themes fundamental to human experience
and thro ugh stylistic variations that express these themes with
unprecedented pro fundity and force. Donatello understood
the diffe rent aesthetic conventions artists routinely invoked at the
time to distingui h their depictions of the real from those of
the ideal and thee rth ly from the spiritual. His expansive knowledge an d skill allow d him to portray this sweeping range with
great facility. Fur ther, as an astute observer of human life, Donatello ould, with ease, depict figures of diverse ages, ranks, and
human conditions. Few artists could match this range. That
~onat llo advanced both naturalistic illusion and classical idealIs m in culpture remains a rema rkable achiev ment.
_ This illu ionism, like that Ghiberti pursued in his Sacrifice of
hncu· pan
el , I· ev1"d en
· t 111
· Donatello 's 1)ronze re 1·Jet,- Feast
~
- t
·
of-H etO(,
i F!G. 2 1 -~), on the baptismal font in the Siena baptistery.. Salome
21-1 FILIPPO BRUNELLESCHI, Sacrifice oflsaac, competition panel
21-3 DoNATELLO, Feast of Hero d, from the baptismal font of
Siena Cathedral, Siena, It~ly, ea. 1425. Gilded bronze relief,
to the nght) till da nces even thounh she alreadv has delivered
t he
t>
•
t" se ered head of John the Baptist, which the kneeling cxecu Io ner offe rs. t o K.mg. Herod. The other hgures
,
recoil. .m horror
into two groups. At the right, one man covers his face with his
hand; at the left, Herod and two terrified children shrink back in
dismay. The psychic explosion drives the human elements apart,
leaving a gap across which the emotional electricity crackles. This
masterful stagecraft obscures another drama Donatello was playing out on the stage itself. The Feast marked the advent of rationalized perspective space, long prepared for in 14th-century Italian art and recognized by Donatello and his generation as a way
to intensify the optical reality of the action and the characterization of the actors. Donatello, using pictorial perspective, opened
the space of the action well into the distance, showing two arched
courtyards and groups of attendants in the background. This
penetration of the panel surface by spatial illusion replaced the
flat nrounds and backdrop areas of the medieval past. Ancient
R01~:n illusionism (compare FIG. l 0-16) had returned.
KEEPING PERSPECTIVE Fourteenth-century Italian art ists,
such as Duccio and the Lorenzetti brothers, had used several devices to indicate distance, but with the invention of "true" linear
perspective (a discovery generally attributed to BruneUeschi),
Earlv Renaissance artists acquired a way to make the illusion of
dist~nce mathematical and certain (see "Depicting Objects in
Space: Perspectival Systems in the Early Renaissance," page 578).
In effect, they thought of the picture plane as a transparent winwhich the observer looks to see the constructed picdow throunh
t>
torial world. This discovery was enormously important, for it
made possible what has been called the "rationalization of sight."
It brouaht all our random and infinitely various visual sensations
0
under a simple rule that could be expressed mathematically.
Indeed, the Renaissance artists' interest in perspective (based
on principles already knovvn to the ancient Greeks and Romans)
reflects the emergence of science itself, which is, put simply, the
mathematical ordering of our observations of the physical worl
The observer's position of looking "through" a picture into th_e
painted "world" is precisely that of scientific observ~rs fixing tb ' 11.
gaze on the carefully placed or located datum of their rese<Hch. U f
577
Chapter 21
l)TIJ-C:E w n·IZY
ITr\LL\N A1n
MATERIALS AND TECHNIQUES
Depicting Objects in Space
Pcrspectival Syste111s in the Early Renaissance
cholars long have noted the Renaissance fascination with perspective. In essence, portraying perspective involves constructing a convincing illusion of space in two-dimensional imagcry while unifying all objects within a single spatial system.
Renaissance artists were not the first to focus on depicting illu sionistic space; both the Greeks and the Romans were well versed
in perspectival rendering. However, the perspectival systems devdoped duri ng the Renaissance contrasted sharply with the portrayal of space during the preceding medieval period, when spiritual concerns superseded interest in the illusionistic presentation
of objects.
Renaissance perspectival systems included both linear perspective and atmospheric perspective. Developed by Brunelleschi, !inear perspective allows artists to determine mathematically the relaLive size of rendered objects to correlate them with the visual
recession in to space, and can be either one-point or two-point (see
diagrams below). In one-point linear perspective, the artist first
must identify a horizontal line that marks, in the image, the horizon in the distance (hence the term horizon line). The artist then selects a vanishing point on that horizon line (often located at the
Vanishing
point
Hori zon line
I
Vanishing point
Horizon line
exact center of the line) . By dJawing orthogonals (diagonal lines)
from the edges of the picture to the vanishing point, the ar tLt creates a structural grid that organizes the image and determines the
size of objects within the image's illusionistic space. Under t is system of linear perspective, artists often foreshorten a fig ure as the
body recedes back into an illusionistic space, as seen in Andrea
Mantegna's Dead Christ (FIG. 21-48). Among the works that provide clear examples of one-point linear perspective are Ma, accio's
Holy Trinity (FIG. 21-12) , Leona rdo da Vinci's Last Supper (see FIG.
22-3), and Raphael's School of Athens (see FIG. 22-17). Two-point
linear perspective also involves the establishment of a horiz n line.
Rather than utilizing a single vanishing point along this ho rizon
line, the artist identifies two of them. The orthogonals that result
from drawing lines from an object to each of the vanishi ng points
creates, as in one-point perspective, a grid that indicates the relative
size of objects receding into space. An example of two -point perspective is Titian's Madonna of the Pesaro Family (see FI . 22-36).
Rather than rely on a structured mathematical system (as
does linear perspective), atmospheric perspective involves op tical
phenomena. Artists using atmospheric (sometimes called aerial)
perspective exploit the principle that the farther back the object is
in space, the blurrier, less detailed, and bluer it appears. Further,
color saturation and value contrast diminish as the image recedes
into the distance. Leonardo da Vinci used atmospheric per, pective to great effect, as seen in works such as Virgin of the Rocks (see
riG. 22-1) and Mona Lisa (see FIC. 22-4).
These two methods of creating the illusion of space in pictures are not exclusive, and Renaissance arti sts often used both to
heighten the sensation of three-dimensional space, as visible iJ
Raphael's lvfarriage of the Virgin (see FIG. 22-18).
Vanishing point
:~: : _ ="~~ ~~-~ ~ I
I
_ _ ___ ;"..:;;: -=-
course, Ea rly Renaissance artists were not primarily scientists;
they simply found perspective an effective vvay to order and clarify thei r compositions.
No netheless, the art viewer cannot doubt that perspective,
with its new mathematical certitude, conferred a kind of aesthetic
legitimacy on painting by making the picture measurable and exact. According to Plato, measure is the basis of beauty. The art of
G reece certainly was based on this belief. In the Rena issance, ·w he n
humanists rediscovered Plato and eagerly read his works, artists
o n ce again exalted the principle of meas ure as the foundation of
the beautiful in th e fine arts. T he projection of measurable objects
on flat surfaces influenced the character of Renaissance paintings
a nd m ade possibl sc, le d ra\,V"ing , m ap s, charts graph , a nd d ia grams - m e<U1S of exact representation that laid th e foundati o n
for modern science and technology. Mathematical truth and formal beauty conjoined in the minds of Renaissance artists.
THE "GATES OF PARADISE" Ghiberti was among the Italian
artists in th e 15th century who embraced a unified syste m for
representing space; his enth usias m for perspectival ill usio n is
particularly evident in the famous east doors (FIG. 21 -4) co mmi ssio ned from him by church officials in 1425 for th e ba ptist ry
of Florence Cathedral. Michelangelo later declared these as "so
2
beautiful that they would do w~ll for the gates of Pa radi e.''
Th ree sets of doors provide access to the baptistery (see FIG.
17-18) . Andrea Pisano created th first set, on the so uth side, betwee n 1330 a nd 1335 . G hiberti's first pair o f doors ( 1403- 1424 ),
the result of the competition, was moved to th e north doorway
21-5 LoRENZO GHIBERTI, Isaac and His Sons (detail of FIG. 21-4) , east
doors, baptistery of Florence Cathedral, Florence, Italy, 1425-1452.
Gilded bronze relief, approx. 2' 7¥' x 2' 7; ". Museo dell'Opera del
Duomo, Florence.
21-4 LoRENZO GHlHERTI , east doors ("Gates of Paradise"), baptiste:·y_
of Florence athedral, Florence, Italy, 1425 - 1452. Gilded bronze reltet,
approx. 17' high . Modern copy, ea. !980. riginal panels in Museo
dell'Opera del Duomo, Florence.
so that his econd pair of doors (1425-1452) could be placed in
the east d oorway. In th ese "Gates of Paradise," Ghiberti abandoned th e quatret il pattern that frames the reliefs on the south
and north door · and redu ced the number of panels from 28 to
I 0, possibly at the behest of his patrons. Each of the panels contains a relief et in plain moldings and depicts a scene from the
Old Testam ent. The com p lete gilding of the reliefs creates an
effect of reat p lendor and elegance.
The indi vidua l pan els f Ghiberti's east doors, such as Isaac
n11d His Sons (FIG. 21 -5 ), clearly recall painting techniques in their
depiction of space as well as in their treatment of the narrative.
So rne exe mpl[fy mo re fully than painting many of the principles
for mulat ed by the arch itect and theorist Leon Battista Alberti in
his 1435 treatis , 0 11 Painting. In his relief, Ghiberti created the illusion of space partly thro ugh the use of pictorial perspective and
partly by sculptural mean s. H e represented buildings according to
a paint r '. o ne-po int per pect ive construction, but the figures (in
the bottom section of the relief, which actuaJly projects slightly
toward th e \ iewer) app a r almost in the full round, some of their
he~ds standing com plet ly free. As the eye progr sses upward, the
rehefi 11 reasmg
· 1y fl atten s, concluding with the arc h'itecture m
· th e
backgroun d, which Gh iberti depicted in barely raised lines. In this
m~nn r, the arti t created a sort of sculptor's aerial perspectiv ,
Wllh f, rm appeanng
.
less di tinct the de eper t h ey are .tn space.
Gh iberti de cribed the ea t doors as follows:
1 lr veto imitat nature as closely as I co uld, an d with all the perpective I could produc fto have !excellent com positions rich with
many figure s. In some scenes I placed about a hundred figures, in
some less, and in some more .... There were ten stories, all [sunk]
in fram es because the eye from a distance measures and interprets
the sce nes in such a way that they appear round. The scenes are in
the lowest relief and the figures are seen in the planes; those that are
near appear large, those in the distance small, as they do in reality:'
ln these panels, Ghiberti achieved a greater sense of depth
than had seemed possible in a relief. His principal figures do not
occupy the architectural space he created for them; rather: the
artist arranged them along a parallel plane in front _o~ th_e
o-randiosc architecture. (According to Leon Battista AJberti, m hrs
~)e re aedificatoria - On the Art of Building - the grai:deur of the
architecture reflects the dignity of the events shown m the fore-_
ground.) Ghibe rti's figure style mixes a Gothic pattern~ng
rhythmic line; classical poses and motifs; and ~ new reahs1:1 m
characterization, movement, and surface detatl. The medreval
narrative method of presenting several episodes within a single
frame p ersisted. Jn [sacK and His Sons (FIG. 21-5), the group of
women iu the left foreground attends the birth of Esa u and Jacob
in the left background; in the central foreground, Isaac sends Esau
and his dogs to hunt game; and, in the right foreground, lsaac
blesses the kneeling Jacob as Rebecca looks on (Gen. 25-27). Yet
viewers experience little confusion because of Gh~berti's _ca reful
and subtle placement of each scene. The figures , m varymg degrees of projection, gracefully twist and turn, appeari~1g to o~cup~
and move through a convincing stage space, which Ght_b~rtl
deepened bv showino- some figures from behind. The cla sro m
b
:1 '
derives from the artist's close study of ancient art. Accorl mg
to his biography, he admired and collected classical sculpture,
bronzes, and co ins. Their influen ce is seen throughout the panel,
articularlv in the fiuure of Rebecca, which Ghibcrti based on a
P
b
•
_
f
popular Greco-Roman statuary type. The emerging practice .
collecting classical art in the 15th ce ntury had mu~h _to do WJ th
the appearance of class icism in Renaissance humamstLC art.
?t
I
I
F LOR ' NCE
Chapter 21
15TH - · £ . T
RY [ TA L L -\
· RT
579
RELIGION AND
MYTHOLOGY
Exemplary Lives
The Path to Sainthood
aints are a ubiquitous element in modern societ)', surfacing in
the names of geographic locations and churches, as well as
appearing in artworks. \Vhy is this, and what purpose do saints
serve? What is the history of saints, and how does one achieve
sainthood?
The word sai11t derives from the Latin word sanctus, meaning
"made holy to God," or sacred. Thus, saints are people who have
demonstrated a dedication to God's service. The first saints were
martyrs-individuals who suffered and died for Christianityselected by public acclaim. The faithful called on these martyrs to
intercede on their behalf. By the end of the fourth century CE, the
group of saints expanded to include confessors, individuals who
merited honor for the Christian devotion they demonstrated
while alive.
A more formal process of canonization emerged in the 12th century (although the procedures in use today were es tablished in
1634). The Roman Catholic Church derived the term cmzonizatiu11
from the idea of a canon, or list, of approved saints. Canonization is
a lengthy and involved process. Normally several years must pass before the Chu~ch will consider a deceased Catholic for sainthood. After a panel of theologians and cardinals of the Congregation for the
Causes of Saints thoroughly evaluates the candidate's life, the pope
proclaims an approved candidate "venerable" (worthy of reverence).
Evidence of the performance of a miracle earns the candidate beatification (from the word beatus, meaning "blessed"). After proof of
another miracle, the pope canonizes the candidate as a saint.
Despite the concept of a canon, no such thing as an authoritative register of all saints exists. Different groups have compiled various lists. For example, the Roman Martyrology, which
is not comprehensive, contains more than 4,500 names. Indeed,
during John Paul II's papacy alone ( 1978-), over 500 people
have been canonized .
Saints provided inspiration to the faithful and were gr atly respected for their teaching ability. For these reasons, rep resentations of saints were popular in art, especially in eras wh n religion
dominated the lives of the populace. This '"'as not id l· try, because viewers did not worship the images. The images im ply encouraged and facilitated personal devotion. The pious called on
saints to intercede on behalf of sinners (themselves or oth ers).
The faithful admired each saint for certain traits or qualities
often having to do with the particulars of the saint's life o r death:
For example, the devout remembered Saint Teresa (see IG . 24-9)
for her transverberation (the piercing of her heart by th a rrow of
Divine Love); they associated Saint Rartholomew (see FIGS. 22-25
and 24-28) with the manner of his martyrdom (he v a flayed
alive). Art viewers recognized saints by their attributes. For example, artists usually depicted Saint Sebastian-a Roma n guard
the emperor Diocletian ordered shot by archers for refusing to
deny Christ-bound to a post or tree, his body pierced by numerous arrows. Other saints and their attributes follow:
the Roman emperor Diocletian to make
.
. ,d an or d er f I o111
h
·Jd
ddte
'
d
·
h,
. . agan ei1y. 1· 11 1-esnonse
• r , ' the emperor ordered t em
.1 ·ta tllt' o l a P
thev pl'lL·ed their faith above all else, these
'
1 Becau e
, <
•
nu t to de· t 1 ' c
• le models for the 15th-century Florentmes
r .
. , e penect TO .
·
•
.
.
.
s<unts \\ er
d
xhorted to stand tast m the tace of the mva·it ' lea ers e
who t11 '.
,
.
. at by Lad1sla ns.
.
,
stall th•
I
. 1 ar·oup Four Crowned Saznts (f·IG. 21-6),
,111 1·•:; cu ptura 1:'
'
•
Na· •
J
. rl)' attempt to solve the Renaissance prob- ·
. , r nte anea
...
aLo 1_ei
.
figur ~s .111 d space on a monum ental scale. The
f 111
· tegratmg
e '
.
.
· ·
lc111 o
. .
.
f the figures, which stand m a mche that IS m
· '.5 posttlOmng 0
j h
nrtist _
pa ration +ram the architecture, furthereL t e
. nters ome se
J'
.
.
.
.
bu t LO
o f sc ulnture trom Its arcl11tectural settmg.
d al emergence
r
f
'th such works as the 13th-century statues o
gra u
.b ,
.
,
. rocess egan W I
h
T IS P _
f R · - Clthedral (see fiG. 18-22). The mche s
et ms '
.
. ..
west tronl o
the ·
·n d a new and dramatic poss1biiit)' for the
spatial rec ss permt
interrelationship of the figure s. By placing them in a semicircle
within their deep nich e and re lating them to one a.nother by their
postures and gestures, as well as by the arrangement of draperies,
Nanni arrived at a unified spatial composition. Further, a remarkable psychological unity cormects thes~ unyi~ld.ing figures, whose
bearing expresses . the disciplin e and mtegnty nece~sa~y to fa~e
adversity. While the figure on the r ight speaks, pomtn~g to his
right, the two men opposite listen and the ?ne next to htm looks
out into space, pondering the meaning ot th~ word.s. Later. Renaissance artists, pa rticularly Leonardo, exploited th1s techmque
of reinforcing the formal unity of a figural group with psychological cross-references.
In Four Crowned Saints, Nan.ni also displayed a deep respect
for and dose study of Roman portrait statues. The emotional
intensity of the faces of the two inner saints owes much to the
extraordinarily moving portrayals in stone of Roman emperors_
of the third ce,ntury CE (see FIG. 10-69), and the bearded heads ot
the outer saints reveal a familiarity with second--century CE
imper ial portrait ure (see FIG. 10-60). Early Renaissance ar.tist~,
such as Donatello and Nanni di Banco, sought to portray mdi vidual personalities and characteristics. Roma~ models served as
inspiration, but Renaissance artists did not Simply copy then?.
Rather, they strove to interpret or offer commentary ~n th~u
classical models in the manner of humanist scholars dealmg wlth
classical tex ts.
SAINT
Francis of Assisi
DEPICTED
SUGGESTING MOTION IN STONE Donatello's inc~rp01:a­
tion of Class ica l Greek and Roman principles surfaced t.n Sa~nt
Mark (FIG. 21-7), commissioned for Or San Michele by the glllld
of linen drapers and completed in 1413. In this sculpt.ure, .Donatello took a fundamental step toward depicting rnoti.on m t.h e
human figure by recognizing the pririCiple of_wei~ht .sht~t ~arh er
chapters have established the importance of \Vetght. sh1ft. m .the
ancient world; Greek sculptors grasped the essenttal pnnc1ple
that the human body is not rigid, as they demonstrated in works
such as the Kritios Boy (see FIG. 5-33) and the Doryphoros (se~ ,F_I G.
5-38). It is a t1exible structure that moves by conti1:uousl_Y shlftmg
its weioht from one supporting leg to the other, tts mam masses
rnovin: in consonance. Donatello reintroduced this concept
In a long robe tied at waist
(see FIG. 19-1)
with rope; with stigmata
Peter (see FIG. 23-5)
\1\fith keys signifying the
power to "bind and l o ·e"
(Matt. 16: 19)
Jerome (see FIG. 23-21)
As either a scholar at hi , desk
Stephen (see FIGS. 20-19
With a stone, referring to
or a hermit in the wilderness
and 23-26)
Augustine (see FIG. 23-26)
his death by stoning
In a mitre (tall pointed hat)
and bishop's vestments
(know~ as contrapposto; see Chapter 5, page 129).
. .
As the saint's body "moves," its drapery "moves'' wtth It, ~ang­
STATUE-FILLED NICHES Ghiberti was just one of numerous
artists who acknowledged Donatello's prodigious talent. Donatello's enviable skill at creati11g visually credible and engaging relief sculptures extend ed to sculpture in the round. His artistry impressed those in a position to commission art , as demonstrated by
h is participation , along with other esteemed sculptors, such as
Ghiberti, in another major civic art program of the early 1400sthe decoration of Or San Michele.
Or San Michele was an early- 14th-century building that at various times housed a granary, the headquarters of the guilds, a church,
a nd Orcagna's tabernacle (see F!G. 19-20). After construction of Or
San Michele, city officials assigned each of the niches on the building's e>.1:erior to a specific guild for decoration vvith a sculpture of its
patron saint (see "Exemplary Lives: The Path to Sainthood," above).
Most of the niches langu ished empty. By 1406, guilds had placed
statues in only 5 o f the 14 niches. Between 1406 and 1423, however,
guilds filled th 9 vacant niches vvith statues by Donatello, Ghil erti,
and Nanni di Banco. How might historians account for this flurr y of
activity? First, city officials issued a dictum in 1406 requiring the
gu ilds to com pl ' with the original pla n and fill the1r assigned niches.
Second, Florence was once again under siege, this time by King
ing and folding naturally from and around bodily points ot sup,_
·
fi
d
d
d not
port so that the viewer senses the. · gu~e. as a. r.ap: nu ~' . ,
simply as an integrated column w1th ar~1tranly mos:d d rapet }·
This separates Donatello's Saint Mark trom all med.teval ~ortal
Ladislaus (r. 1399-1414) of Naples. Ladislaus had march d north,
had occupied Rome and the Papal States by 1409, and the n had
threatened to overrun Florence. As they had previously, Floren tine
officials urged citizens to stand firm and defend their city-state from
tyranny. As had Visconti a few years earlier, Ladislaus, on the ve rge of
military success in 1414, fortuitously died, and Florence found itself
spared yet again. The guilds may well have viewed this threat as an
opportunity to perform their civic duty by ra.llying their fellow Florentines while also promoting their own importance an position
in rlorentine society. The early-15th-century niche sculptures
thus served various purposes, and their public placement provide.d
an ideal vehicle for presenting political, artistic, and econ mJC
m essages to a wid e audien ce. Examining a few of th ese Or San
Michele sculptures wi.ll reveal the stylistic and historical significance
of aU these works.
FOUR MARTYRED SCULPTORS Among the ni ches filled in_
the early 15th century ·was that ass igne d to the Flo rentine guild ot
sc ulptors, architects, a nd masons, who chose A l I DI BA NC O
ea. l.JS0-1421 ) to create fo ur ii fe-size marble sta tues of the
guild's martyred patron saints. These four Christi a n sc ul ptors
statuary. lt was the first Renaissance figure wh~s~ volummous
drape ry (the prid e of the Florcntine guild that pa1~ tor the statue)
did not conceal but accentuated the movement ot the arms, legs,
shoulders, a nd hips. This development further contributed to. the
scul pted figure's independen~e .from _its architectu~al settin~;
Saint Mark's stirring limbs, shtftmg weight, and mob de drape1)
suggest impending movement out of the niche.
ELEVATED fiGURES Between 1416 and 1435, the offic~als
in charge of cathedra l projects umm issioned from Donatel1o twe
statues "fo r niches on the cnmptJitil& (bell to,·ver) ad,ia~t nt ~oF!~)­
rence Cathedral ~ a project that, like the figlires tor Or !;itlfl
Michde., had originated i11 th ~ preced ing tentur y. Unlike the l....;~l"
~! -6
Four Crownrd Saints, Or Sa11 IVlichele,
Florence, ltalr, ea. 1408- 14!4. Marble, fl~ures approx.lift:-sizc.
' lodern rotw
. r 11 1. h.. . 0,ngma
. . I sc ulptur ! .m mu:,eu m a n
- ,. , I. n ex·t eno
~cond t1oor of Or an 1ich le. "
AN NI DI BANc ,
c.
-
'
•
-, ·.-, 1·n s' f'all e·d "()fd )', •sltahd
San Mlchele ligmes,
h .nvevcr, 'vv h'-h
.lL were
r.
"
ct · s · ~ ·~ d for niches some
'lb(n'e eye level, these sc: ulptltleS were e 1gne · ·
. .
c .
.
~·
-
-;1 -· !i -- p ~["'ST 'P I
;,0 fe t above the gr·ound. At that CtiSHrnc:e, ~ e
ul t . ~
'"~
-·-") L
~, nn Ot be re ·ogp tZt: u rec,...
dcn1.ih (hair, gannents, ~111ol t"eatures
,1
·~ F LOR ENC '
s8 o
Chapter 2 1
l) T H -CE
T
R Y IT A LI A N
\trr
•... diJ
l
.
581.
The campanile t-lgures thus required massive garment folds that
could be read from afar and a much broader, summary treatment
of facial and anatomical features, all of which DonateUo used to
great effect. fn addition, he took into account the elevated position
of his figures and, with subtly calculated distortions, created images that are at once realistic and dramatic when seen from below.
The most striking of the five figures is a prophet who is probably Habbakuk but is generally known by the nickname Zuccone,
or "pumpkin-head" (F IG. 21-8 ). his figure shows Donatello's
power of characterization at its most original. The artist represented all his prophets with a harsh, direct realism reminiscent of
21-7 DoNATELLO, Snint Mark, Or San Michele, Florence, Italy,
1411-1413. Marble, approx. 7' 9" high. Modern copy in 'Xt rior niche.
Original sculpture in museum on second floor of Or San Michele.
Chapter 21
I 5T II - C E NT U I< Y f T c\ l.l A N
\ WI"
some ancient Roman portraits (compare FIGS. 10-7, 10-3 , and
10-69). Their faces are bony, lined, and taut; Donatello carefull
individualized each of them. The Zuccone is also bald, a depar~
ture from the conventional representation of the prophets but in
keeping with many Roman portrait heads. Donatello's prophet
wears an awkwardly draped and crumpled mantle with deeply
Lmdercut folds- a far cry from the majestic prophets of medieval
portals. The head discloses a fierce personality; the deep -set eyes
glare under furrowed brows, the nostrils flare, and the broad
mouth is agape, as if the prophet were in the very presence of disasters that would prompt dire warnings.
21-8 DoNATELLO, prophet figure, Habbakuk (Z uccone), from the
campanile fFlorence Cathedral , Florence, Italy, 1423-1425. 1:1rbl '
approx. 6' 5" high. Museo dell'Opera del Duomo, Florence.
. t'c-~g Perspective, and Patronage
Pal 11
tH '
y THE GOTHIC The International Style (see_FIG.
t -tyle in naintino around 1400 that persisted
1) th e domlllan s
'
tJ
.
•
.
. ,
19-1-. ' the 1Sth Len
~ tury developed s1de by s1d e w1th th e new
,
"·ell mto
F B RlANO (ea. 1370-1427) produced a work
. ( F'-ITILL DA A
.
. l M
.
styles. 1 • .
f h, In ternational Style - Adoratwn of t1e ag1
. - nWtJ\e o t c
.
1 f S
rep1ese
·
I·n the sacnst)' of the_ churc
_ _9 ), JT1 a1tarp1ece
. 1 o ~ anta
.
2
(f ll•· ~
_ Ge ntile's patron was Palla Strozzt, the wealth!. "t-' Ill loren~..e.
· ·
·
"ld d
TnnJ a
.
fl · da and the altarpiece, w1th Its elaborate gt e
Fl rentme o 11
y,
. 1
e t ~ . . · testimo ny to Strozzi's lavish tastes. So too IS t 1e
G th!C fram e, 1.
I
rO
.
lf "th its ooroeous surface and sumptuous Y cos.. Iting Jtse , WJ
tJ
o
.
. d b
pail
.
rtiers captains and retamers accompame
Ya
tumed kmgs, cou
' ·
'
~
·1
d ll
.· ... f exotic and ornamental animals. Gent1 e portraye a
menager Je 0 . · a rainbow of color w1th
·
·
extensive
use o f go Id . Th e
these elem nts m
. l .
.
. .
.
ts all the pomp and ceremony of chiva ne etiquette
.
f h
Pall1 tmg pI esen nctifies the aristocracy 111
the presence o t e
-11 a scene tI1at sa
,
I
. . d Child. Althouah the styk is fundamentally Late
tJ
tadonna an
INSPIRED B .
Gothic, Gentile inserted striking bits of radical naturalism. The
art ist depicted animals from a variety of angles, and he foreshortened their forms c01wincingly. He did the same with human figures, such as the man removing the spurs from the standing magus
in the center foreground. On the right side of the predella (the
ledge at the base of an altarpiece), Gentile placed the ~re~enta~ion
scene in a "modern" architectural setting. And on the lett stde ot the
predella, he painted what may have been the ~ery firs~ nigh~time
Nativity with the central light source-the rad1ant ~hnst Childintroduced into the picture itself. Although predommantly conservative, Gentile demonstrated that he \Vas not oblivious to contemporary experimental trends and that he c~uld blend_ t~atura1istic
and inventive elements skillfuUy and subtly mto a traditiOnal composition without sacrificing Late Gothic coloristic splendor.
REVOLUTIONIZING REPRESENTATION A leading innovator in early-15th-century painting was Tommaso Guidi (or Tummaso di ser Giovanni), known as MASAC CIO (1401 -1428).
· · ,
. ,
7 ') Tem )era on wood, approx. 9' ll" x 9 ' .3''.
F.,'Tll I [lA rABR l •o,Arlomt ion of the Mngi, altarpiece trom Santa Trtmta, Florence, Ital), 14 __ .
l·
.
Ga ll~ria< cteg 1·1 Uffizi, Flo rence.
21-9
Although his presumed teacher, Masolino da Panicale, had
worked in the International Style, Masaccio moved suddenly,
within the short span of six years, into wide-open and unexplored
territory (see "Imitation and Emulation: Artistic Values in the Renaissance," page 585). Most art historians recognize no other
painter in history to have cont ributed so much to the develop ment of a new style in so short a time as Masaccio, \·vhose creative
career was cut short by his death at age 27. Masaccio was the artistic descendant of Giotto, whose calm, monumental style he revolutionized with a whole new repertoire of representational devices that generations of Renaissance painters Later studied and
developed. Masaccio also knew and understood the innovations
of his great contemporaries, Donatello and Brunelleschi, and he
introduced new possibilities for both form and content.
The frescoes Masaccio painted in the Brancacci Chapel of
Santa Maria del Carmine in Florence provide excellent examples
of his i:movations.ln Tribute Money (FIG. 21-10), painted shortly
before his death, Masaccio depicted a seldom-represented narrative from the Gospel of Matthew (17:24-27). As the tax collector confronts Christ at the entrance to the Roman town of Capernaum, Christ directs Saint Peter to the shore of Lake Galilee.
There, as foreseen by Christ, Peter finds the half-drachma tribute
in the mouth of a fish and returns to pay the tax. Art historians
have debated the reason for the selection of this particular biblical story. Most scholars believe that Felice Brancacci, owner of
the farr1ily chapel in the early l 5th century, commissioned the
fresco. Why such an obscure narrative appealed to Brancacci or
Masaccio is unclear. Some scholars have suggested that Tribute
Money, in which Christ condones taxation, served as a commentary on the catasto (state income tax ) whose implementation
Florentines were considering at the time. However, Brancacci's
considerable wealth makes it unli kely he would have sup orted
the catasto. Moreover, this fresco's placement in a private family
chapel meant that the public had only limited access. Th retor~
because this fresco lacked the general audience enjoyed by, for ex:~
ample, the Or San Michele niche sculptures, it seems ill- ui ted for
public statements.
Masaccio presented this narrative in three episodes within the
fresco. !11 the center, Christ, surrounded by his disciples, tell Saint
Peter to retrieve the coin from the fish, while the tax c llector
stands in the foreground, his back to spectators and ha nd extended, awaiting payment. At the left, in the middle distance,
Saint Peter extracts the coin from the fish's mouth, and, at the
right, he thrusts the coin into the tax collector's hand. Masaccio's
figures recall Giotto's in their simple grandeur, but they c nvey a
greater psychological and physical credibility. Masaccio realized
the bulk of the figures through modeling not with a flat, neutral
light lacking an identifiable source but with a light coming from a
specific source outside the picture. The light strikes the fig ures at
an angle, illuminating the parts of the solids that obstruct its path
and leaving the rest in deep shadow. This chiaroscuro gives the illusion of deep sculptural relief. Between the extremes of light and
dark, the light appears as a constantly active but fluctuat ing force
highlighting the scene in varying degrees, almost a tangible substance independent of the figures. In Giotto's frescoes, light is revealed only by the modeling of masses. In Masaccio's, light has its
own nature, and the masses are visible only because of its direction and intensity. The viewer can imagine the light as playing
over forms-revealing some and concealing others, as the artist
directs it.
WRITTEN SOURCES
Imitation and Emulation
Artistic Values in the Renoissonce
. ·1·· premium that current
Western society seems to
he tam • t.H
.
,
·
tt"stic
oriainality
ts
actually
a fmrly
recent phe,Jac , on Jr
o
.
.
F
\
g
the
concepts
Renatssance
artists
most
valued
enon. t mon
.
.
110111
. .
.
. d emulation . Although many Renaissance art1 ts
e nmtatiOfl an
...
.
.
wer
'que r cognizable styles, convention, both m
did deve 1op um
,
.
.- , .
.
. b"e t matter and representational practtces, piedomi.
·
· 1
terms o t su J
,iew of [talian Renaissance art, certam t 1emes, con·
1 ·
d h
nated. ln a r "
.
d . ·ti tic for mats surface wtth great regu anty, an t e
cettS, an c11
,
f. . . .
. . . 1 t aining practices reveal the Importance o Imttatton
tradttlona
r
.
.
to aspirin oa Renaissance
artists.
an d emu I.at'on
I
.
.
. ,
, .
· · wa th startinao pomt m a young artist
hmtation
. s trammg
(see "M·as ter 1·ng a Craft '" Chapter 19, page 535). Renaissance ltal-.
.Lans b e1·Jeve d tl1 at the best way to learn was. to, copy
. .the works
. ot
.
Accordingly
much
of
an
apprentiCes
trammg
consisted
m~~
,
.
of copying exemplary art works. Leonardo fill ed his sketchbooks
with drawi ng of well-known sculptures and frescoes, and
Michelangelo spent hours visiting churches around Florence and
Rome and sketching t he artworks he fo und there.
The next step wa emulation, which involved modeling one's
art after th t f another artist. Although imitation still provided
the founda ti n for thi practice, an artist used fea tures of another's art only as a sp ringboard for improvements o r innovations. Thus, developing artists wen t beyond previous artists and
attempted to prove th ir own competence and skill by improving
on establish ed and recognized masters. Comparison and a degree
of competi tion were integral to emulation. To evalua te th e "improved" artwork, viewers had to know the original "model."
Renaissance artists believed that developing artists would ultimately arri e at their own unique style through this process of
imitation and emulation. Cennino Ccnnini (ea. 1370-1440) explained the value of this training p rocedure in a book he published in 1400, Il Libro dell'Arte (The Craftsman's Handbook),
which served as a practical guide to making art:
The individual figures in Tribute Money are solemn and
weighty, b ut they also express bodily structure and movement, as
do Donat llo's statues. Masaccio's representations adeptly suggest bones, muscles, and the pressures and tensions of joints.
Each figure conveys a maxim um of contained energy. The figure of
Christ and the two appearances of the tax collector make the viewer
understand what the Renaissance biographer Giorgio Vasari*
meant wh n he said, "the works made before h is [Masaccio's ] day
an be said to be painted, while his are living, rea l, and natural.'"!
Masaccio's arrangement of the figures is equally inventive. They
do not appear as a tiff screen in the front planes.lnstead, the artist
grouped them in circular depth around Christ, and he placed the
whole group in a spacious landscape, rather than in the contlned
stage space of earlier frescoes. The group itself generates the foreground space that the architecture on the right amplifies. Masaccio
depicted this architecture in one-point perspective, locating the
vanishing point, where all the orthogonals converge, to coincide
with Christ's head. Aerial perspective, the diminishing of light and
the blurring of outlines as the distance increases, unites the foreground with the background. Although ancient Roman painters
used aerial perspective, medieval artists had abandoned it. Thus it
virtually disappeared from art until Masaccio and his contemporaTies rediscovered it, apparently independently. They came to realize that the lioht and air interposed between viewers and vvhat they
see are two p~rts of the visual experience called "distance."
--
·h~inrgi
Vasari(l5I .1 -J 574)e"tabl i h
lten d -
d himsdfasbothapninter and :1r;
unng
the
16th
cenrur}
'·
H o weve t', peonle todav usuallv a.: oCJ:1tt:
n1m · ; h h.
r·
'
' .t
IS landmark bo k, Livr-s of th e Most Emi11ent Pnin ter_.; , , culptors
umt Architect fi
hi'
. .
.- .
.
b k
_ s, rst pu tshed m 1)5 , , cholars long have cons1d red th1s
oo. a ma·or
f- ·
.
.
.
,
J
\OUrce o Jn~onnauon about Jtaltan art and art1 sts, alth ough
.11any of the d "I h
.
., .
cta1 s ave proven ma ccurate. Regarclle&s, Vasan s Ln•cs re111 .
at n fl tour
rCI.OJ•(.i'
I d~: force-an ambitious,
. compr~::h -n . ive bel k ledi • t ·d to
tn" Lle biographi of artists.
L·
21-10
MASACCIO,
Tribute Mon ey, Brancacci Chapel, Santa Maria del Carmine, Florence, Italy, ea. 1427. Fresco, 8' I" X 19' 7".
Chapter 21
!5 T 1-1- CE NT u R Y ITA LI A N A wr
Having first practiced drawing for a while as I have taught you
above, that is, on a little panel, take pains and pleasure in constantly
co pying the best things which you can find done by the hand of
great masters. And if you are in a place where many good masters
have been, so much the better for yo u. But I give you th is advice:
take ca re to select the best one every time, and the one who has the
greatest reputation. And, as you go on from day to day, it will be
aga inst nature if you do not get some grasp of his style and of his
spirit. For if you undertake to copy after one master today and after
another one to morrow, you will not acquire the style of either one
or the other, and you will inevitably, through enthusiasm, become
ca pricious, because each style will be distracting your mind. You
will try to work in this man's vvay today, and in the other's tomorrow, and so you \·vill not get either of them right. If you fo llow the
co urse of one man through constant practice, your intelligence
would have to be crude indeed for you not to get some nourishmen t from it. Then yo u will fi nd, if nature has granted you any
imaginatio n at all, that you will eventually acquire a st yle individual to yourself, and it cannot help being good; because your hand
and your mind, being always accustomed to gather flowers, would
ill know how to pl uck thorns.'
Cennino Cennini, The Craftsman's Han dbook (!I Libra dell'Arte), t ranslated by Dan iel V. Thompson Jr. (New York: Dover Publications, 1960),
1
14-15.
SINNERS' ANGUISH In an awk\,..,ardJy narrow space at the entrance to the Brancacci Chap I, Masaccio painted the Expulsion
ofArfrtm onrl Eve from den (F I ~ . 21-ll ) , another fresco displaying the representational innovations of 1hbut{' Mo ney. For exan1plt, the sharply slanted light from an outside source Lreates
deep reliet~ '"ith lights placed alongside dnrks, and acts a~ a
st rona unii'.rit1f'! agent. Mas~1c io also pre ented the figures WJ th
V
1)
b
"
.
.
l
. I
convin cino stru ctural accura \'; th ereby suggesting su )Stantm
bodily wcight. Furth er, the "hazy, ntml spheric background
. ay have collabo rated with Ma accio. Mas accio
,l] esc h I lll
<
Brunt::
·shing point at the foot of the cross. With this point
d the van1
. .
P1a e
l . ectators look up at the Tnmty and down at the
. eVE' teve , sp
. .
.
,tl '
l t five feet above the t1oor level, the va111shmg pomt
tom b t\ ) OU
.
.
.
•
1
·
views too-ether, creatmg the Illusion nt an actua
ntlls the nvo
b
,
r
.
f
h· t transects the walls vertical. plane. V\ hereas the
·tr uctu re t a
.
.
I
1
.
r to proj et forward mto the church, t 1e chape retomb cl ppea
.
.
· . llv beh ind the wall and appears as an extension ot the
edes VISU<l 1
.
.
c
, pace This adjustment ot the pictured space to the pospectator s
·
.
..
f the viewer was a first step in the development of tllusJ tJ011 o
.
.
. .
f h
.
. . · ainting which tascmated many artists o t e Renais510msttc p
'
.
.
.
.
e later Baroque penod . MasacciO was so exact 111 hi s
ance an d th
. .
.
.
· 1 ' roportions that It IS actually possible to calculate the dimetnca ~'
.
.
· s of the ch apel (for example,
the span ot the patntcd
menswn.
.
.
_
·
seven
feet·
the
depth
ot
the
chapel,
mne teet). Thus, he
lt
vau IS
'
.
.
.
. d ot only a successful tlluston but also a ratiOnal meaac h Ieve 11
.
sured coherence that is responsible for the unity and harmony ot
this monu mental com position.
Masaccio's com m itment to pictorial illusionism resulted in a
owerful fresco that instructs the faithful through its images. The
p
.
.
h d
. f
ascending pyramid of figures leads viewers trom t e espair o
death to the hope of resurrection and eternal life.
L
•
Early-15th-Century Architecture
21-12 MASACCIO, Holy Trinity, Santa Maria Novella, Florence Italy,
ca.l428. fresco, 2l' x 10' 5".
21-11 MASACCIO, Expulsion of Adnm and Eve from Eden, Brancacci
Chapel, Santa ~·Iaria del Carmine, Florence, Italy, ea. 1425. Fresco,
7' X 2' ll ".
specifies no locale but sugg sts a space around and beyond the
figures. Adam's feet, clearly in contact with the ground, mark the
human presence on earth, and the cry issuing from Eve's mouth
voices her anguish. The angel does not force them physically
from Eden. Rather, they stumble on blindly, driven by the angel's
\Vill and their own despair. The composition is starkly sim ple, it
message incomparably eloquent.
sS6
Chapter 21
l)'J'H- CE NT
RY f T
LI N ART
FATHER, SON, AND HOLY SPIRIT Masaccio's Holy Trinity
fresco (FIG. 21-12) in Santa Maria Novella, whose dating is still disputed, embodies two principal Renaissance interests. One is realism
based on observation, and the other is the application of mathematics to pictorial organization in the new science of perspective.
The artist painted the composition on two levels of unequ al height.
Above, in a coffered barrel-vaulted chapel reminiscent of a Roman
triumphal arch, the Virgin Mary and Saint John appear on either
side of the crucified Christ. God the Father emerges fro m behind
Christ, supporting the arms of the cross. The dove of the Holy
Spirit hovers between God's head and Christ's head. Masaccio also
included portraits of the donors of the painting, Lorenzo Lenzi and
his wife, who kneel just in front of the pilasters that enfra me the
chapel. Below the altar-a masonry jnsert in the depi cted composition-the artist painted a tomb containing a skeleto n. An inscription in ltalian painted above the skeleton reminds the sp etator that "I was once what you are, and what I am you will become."
Although the subject matter of Holy Tri11ity may nor be dramatically innovative, the illusionism of Masaccio's dcpicti n is
breathtaking. He brilliantly demonstrated the principles of Brunelleschi 's perspective. Indeed, this work is so mu r h in the
Brunelleschian manner that some historians have sugge ted that
ROMAN ARCHITECTURAL APPEAL Filippo Brunelleschi's
ability to odify a system of linear perspective derived in part
from his skill as an ar hitect. Although his bjographer, Manetti,
reported th at Brun lleschi turned to architecture out of disappointment over the loss of the baptistery con1mission, he continued tow rk as a sculpto r for several years and received commissions for sculpture as late as 1416. It is true, however, that as the
15th century progressed, Brunelleschi's interest turned increasingly towa rd archi tecture. Several trips to Rome (the first in 1402,
probably with his fr iend Donatello ), where he was captivated by
the Roman ruin , h ightened his fascination with architecture. It
may well b in onnection with his close study of Roman monuments and his effort to make an accurate record of what he saw
that Brun lleschi developed his revolutionary system of geometric linear perspective that 15th-century artists so eagerly adopted.
It made him the firs t acknowledged Renaissance architect.
A CROW NING ACHIEVEMENT Brunelleschi's broad knowl~dge of Roman construction principles, combined with an analytIcal and inventive mind, permitted him to solve an engineering
problem that no o tl er 15th-century architect could solve. The
challenge wa the des ign and construction of a dome for the huge
crossing of the unfinished Florence Cathedral ( tlGS. 21-13 and
19 -17). The problem was staggering; the space to be spanned
( 1_40 feet) was much too \·vide to permit construction with the aid
of traditional woode n centering. Nor was it possible (because of
the ·
·
,
~
.
cro u1g plan; t support the dome with_ bnttressed walls.
Brunelle ~ h"
~ I seems to have begun work on the problem about
1417In 14?0 ffi ·
.~
.
· · - • CJals versecmg cathedral p roJeCts awarded Brunelleschi and Gh'b
.
.
.
...
.
.
I ert1 a 10mt commiSSion. The latter, however,
so n retired from the proj ect and left the field to his associate.
· ~Brun 11· ~ s h1· not only d1scard
·
..~, . \ Vi·tl,· except·Iona1·mgcnUity,
ed trllUJttonal build'
h
.
.
rnu
mg met. od_. and devised new ones but also mvcnted
.
1
L.
c 1 f Lhe rnachin rv necessary for the ,·ob Although he might
11ave
£
'
·
· ·
,. . . p~· erred the hem ispheric shape of Roman domes, Hrunell 1
~ 11 r r ed th
.
.
.
.
.
.
e center of hts dome and des1uned 1t around an oowal
(Poll1t~"d
ar h )
.
b
e>
c e t10n ( HC . 21-14 ), which is inherently more stable
21-13 FILIPPO BRUNELLESCHI, dome of Florence Cathedral (view
from the south), Florence, Italy, 1420-1436.
1\ibs
21-14 Cutaway view of dom e of Florence Ca th edral (after
P. Sanpaol si).
because it reduces the outward thrust around the dome's base.
To minimize the structure's weight, he d esigned a relatively thin
double shell (the first in histor y) around a skeleton of 24 ribs. The 8
most important are visible on the exterior. Finally, in almost paradoxical fashion, Brunelleschi anchored the structure at the top with
a heavy lantern, built after his death but from his design.
Despite Brunelleschi's knowledge of and admiration for Roman
building techniques and even though the Florence Cathedral dome
was his most outstanding engineering achievement, he arrived at
the solution to this most critical structural problem through what
were essentially Gothic building principles. Thus, the dome, which
also had to harmonize in formal terms with the century-old building, does not really express Brunelleschi's architectural style. T hat is
more apparent in subsequent designs when his ideas had matured.
A MODULAR DESIGN San Lorenzo and Santo Spirito, the two
basilican churches Brunelleschi built in Florence, echo the clarity
and classically inspired rationality that characterized much of his
architecture. Of the tvvo, the later Santo Spirito (FlGS. 21-15 and
21-16), begun around 1436 and completed, with some changes, after Brunelleschi's death, shows the architect's mature style. Brunelleschi laid out this cruciform building in either multiples or segments
of the dome-covered crossing square. The aisles, subdivided into
small squares covered by shallow, saucer-shaped vaults, run all the
way around the flat-roofed central space. They have the visual effect
o f compressing the longitudinal design into a centralized one, because the va::-ious aspects vf t he interior resemble one another, no
matter where observers stand. Originally, this centralization effect
wo uld have been even stronger; Brunelleschi had planned to extend
the aisles across the front of the nave as well, as shown on the plan
(FIG. 21-16, left) . Because of the design's modular basis, adherence to
such a design would have demanded four entrances in the facade,
instead of the traditional and symbolic three, a feature hotly debated
durin g Brunelleschi's lifetime and changed after his death. T he a _
pearance of the exterior walls also was modified later (compare t~
two plans in FI . 21-16), when th e recesses between the proJ.ect 1• e
. .
.
.
ng
se mtctrcular chapels were fill ed 111 to convert the origi nal highly
sculpted wall surface into a fl at o ne.
The major features of the interior (FIG. 21-15), howe er, are
much as BrunelJeschi designed them. He iden tified a mathematical
unit that served to determine the dimensions of every a pect of
San to Spirito. This unit, repeated throughout the interior, creates a
rhythmic harmony. For example, the nave is twice as high as it is
wide; the arcade and clerestory are of equal height, whi b means
that the height of the arcade equals the nave's width; and so on.
Crisp joinings highlight these basic characteristics of the bu ilding
for observers so that th ey can read them like mathematical equations. The austerity of the decor enhances the restful an tranquil
atmosphere. Brunelleschi left no space for expansive wall frescoes
that only would interrupt the clarity of his architectural scheme.
The calculated logic of the design echoes that of classical buildings,
such as Roman basilicas. Further, the rationality of Santo pirito
contrasts sharply with the soa ring drama and spirituality of the
vaults and nave a rcades of Gothic churches. It even deviates from
those in Italy, such as the Florence Cathedral nave (see FI . 19-18),
whose verticality is restrained in compariso n to their northern
counterparts. Santo Spirito fully expressed the new Renaissance
spirit that placed its faith in reason rather than in the emotions.
ART AND SOCIETY
Honoring God and Family
Family Chapel Endowments
. 1 1-Hl1 through 16th centuries in Italy, wealthy families
unng ne
h -1
,
1 , dowed chapels 111 or adpcent to ma.JOr c urc 1es.
regular ) en
.
.
- h -1 ..
. ~ .1 -h· els us uallv were located on etther stde ot t e c lOll
,
.
I h c .1.
Tl1es-e tanll \'' L. laptlle ch urch's
east end. Particularly wea t y 1am1 1es
. the altar a
_
. .
near
_ . l ·n the form ot separate blllldmgs constructed addowed L 1l Jf e s t
. .
Id . - .· )
en
·I . he' For example, the Medtc! chapel ( 0 Sautsty
. nt to L 1Lt tC s.
.
..
. zo in Florence. Powertul bankmg fatmhes, such as
Jace
.
·
buts San 1 men
a
11· Bardi and Peruzzt, each sponsored chapels 111 the
the Baronce 1,
'
.
. .
1
. . 1 h of Santa Croce. The Pazzt commtsstoned a chape
Florentme c w rc
J l - 18 and 21-19) adjacent to Santa Croce, and the
(FIGS. 21- 17 , '
.
( .·
0
· c
ily spo nsored the decorattve program FIGS. 21-1
Brancacct !al11
. ,
.
.
and 21 _11 ) of their chapel m Santa M ana del Cannme:
.
These fa milies sp nsored such chapels as e.xpr~sstO~s of ptety
·
The chanels also served as bunal sttes tor nnporand d evotton.
r
.
.
.
c
·1
embe1·s ·md as spaces for hturgtcal celebrat1ons and
tant tamt y m
'
.ve erv ices Chapel owners spo nsored Masses fo r
commemor,atl
· ·
.
.
.
d
praying
to t he Virgin Mary and th e samts for mtercest he d ea ,
.
. . .
sion on behal f of their deceased loved o n~s. Chang.es 111 Chn:tta~1
doctrine p rompted th ese concerted eftorts to 1mprove mdtviduals' chance for eternal salvation. Until the 13th cent ury,
L
•
•
•
A CENTRAL-PLAN C HAPEL Brunelleschi's apparent effort to
impart a centralized effect to the interior of San to Spirito suggests
that he was intrigued by t he compact and self-contained qualities
of earlier central-plan buildings, such as the Roman Pantheon
(see FIG. 10-50). The Pazzi chapel presented Brunellesch i with the
opportunity to explore this interest, in a str ucture much better
suited to such a design than a basilican church. The chap el (FIGS.
21-17 to 21-19) was the Pazzi family's gift to the church of Santa
Croce in Florence (see "Honoring God a nd Famil y: Family
Chapel Endowm ents," page 589) and se rved as Santa C ro ce's
chapter house . Brunelleschi bega n to design the Pa zzi Ch apel
around 1440. It was not completed until the 1460s, long afte r his
o
-o
Christians believed that after death, souls went either to Heaven
or Hell. After th at time, the concept of Purgatory-a way station
between Heaven and Hell where souls could atone for sins before
Judgment Day-increasingly won favor. Pope Innocent IU recognized the existence of such a place in 1215 at th~ Fourth L.at eran Council (a major church council that dealt wtth redefinmg
church doctrine ).l3ecause Purgatory represented a chance for the
faithful to improve their chances of eventually gaining admittance to Heaven, they eagerly embraced this opportunity. They
extended this idea to improving their chances while alive, so charitable work, good deeds, and devotional practices proliferated.
Family chapels provided the space necessary for the performance
of devotional rituals. Most chapels included altars, as well as chalices, vestments, candlesticks, and other objects used in the Mass.
Most patrons also commissioned decorations, such as painted al.
tarpieces, frescoe s on the walls, and sculptural objects.
Thus, families endowed these chapels to ensure the well-bemg
of the souls of individual family members and ancestors. The gifts
also honored the families themselves and burnished their images
in the larger community.
d eath. The exterior (FIG. 21-17) probably does not reflect Brunelleschi's original design . The loggia, admirable as it is, see ms to
have been added as an afterthought , perhaps by the sc ulptorarchitect Giuliano da Maiano ( 1432-1490). Historians have
suaaested that the local chapter of Franciscan monks who held
m~:tings in the chapel needed the expansion. Behind the loggia sta~ds one of the first independent Renaissance buildings
10
'' - - - - - - - ' - - - - '' t Fl T
21-15 Fll. I PPO BRuNELLESCHT, interior of Santo
northeast), Florence, Ital y, begun ea. 1436.
sss
Chapter 21
!) TH- ~E NT
pirito
(vi ew t~Kin g
KY I TA !.IAN A HT
21-16 f ll.IPPO BRUNELLESCHI ea rly plan of ~ a nto Spirito (lefi) and
plan as constructed (r ight ), Florence, Italy.
~1 -1 7
~r
Fu lPPo BRL: ELLEs H I, facade of the Pazz i Ch;l pel, Sa nta
enLe, ltaly, begun ea . 1440.
ce . Flor
21 -18
t LIPPO B RVN LL
Florcn e, Italy.
<
Fll
pL:mofthetaL.t.iChapc!, SantaC ruce,
. ·l b· -· -- 1ly as a central-plan structure.
Although the plan
- -eiVel <lSlLt1 .
.
.
L 011~ 11 _ 18 ) i rectang ular, rather than square or round, the archi(J-J ( ,. - . _ d all emphasis on the central dome-covered space. The
..J
·d
t · ·t pl,1l e
t:l
. . ]-vault
ctions that brace t 11e uome on two SI es ap hort
b.m
e
·
·
·
·
2
9 ·
5
b. 1· 0 cidental appendages. The m tenor tnm ( FI G. 1-1l 11 IS
·
")
e·1
r
to
I
· I1
P' .
. stone so-called pietra serena ("serene stone , w 11c
j ( ne Ill gr,ly
'
.
~
l '
· t a ainst the white stuccoed walls and cnsply dehnes the
stands .o. lationships
g
·
·
h d "d · h. d
ot plan and elevation. As e 1 m 1s em du I,u re
·
·
· h
11
d
·i 11 for anto Spirito, Brunellesch1 us~d a basrc umt t at a ovve
s~
struct a balanced, harmomous, and regularly proporlu lll to con
,
.
. .
f
.
d _ e Medallions in the domes pendcnttves consrst o
tiOne spac .
.
.
lazed tell. ·acotta reJiefs . representrng
.
._ the Four Evangelrsts. fhese
gmed a11·wns, togethe r w1th the 1mages of..the Twelve Apostles on
add stnkmg color accents to the
r
the P'·1as tel - fr. amed wall nanels,
L
L
tranquil interior.
The Medici as Patrons
21-19
590
FILTPPO BR UNEL LESC III ,
Chapter 21
interio r of th e Pa zzi Chapel (vi ew facing no rtheast ), Santa Croce, Florence, Ital y, begun ea. 1440.
15'1'1-1 -C t N T U RV IT A LI :\ N
ART
A PALACE FIT FO A MEDICI lt seems curious that Brunelleschi, the most renowned arch itect of his time, did not participate
in the upsurge of palace building that Florence experienced in th e
1430s and 1440s. This proliferation of palazzi testified to the stability of the Florentine economy and to the affluence and confidence of the city's leading citizens. Brunelleschi, however, confined his efforts in this field to vvork on the Palazzo di Parte Guclfa
(headquarters of Flor nee's th en ruling ''party") and to a rejected
model for a new palace that Cosimo de' Medici inten ded to bu iJd.
Early in the 15th century, Giovanni de' Medici (ea. 13601429) had established the family fortune. Cosimo (1 389-1464)
expanded his family's fi nancial control, which led to considerable
political power a well. This consolidation of power in a city that
prided itself on its rep ublicanism did not go unchallenged. In the
early 1430s, a power struggle with other wealthy families led to the
Medici's expulsion fro m Florence. In 1434, the Medici returned,
but Cosimo, aware of the importance of public perception, attempted to maintain a lower profile and to wield his power from
behind the scenes. Tn all probability, this attitude accounted for his
rejection f Brunelleschi 's design for the Medici residence, which
he evidently found too imposing and ostentatious to be politically
wise. Cosimo eventuallv awarded the commission to MICHELOZZO
DI BARTOLOMMEO (1396 - 1472), a young architect who had been
Donatello's collaborator in several sculptural enterprises. Although C simo chos . Michelozzo instead of Brunelleschi, Brunelleschi's architectural style in fact deeply intluenced the young architect. To a limited extent, the Palazzo Medici-Riccardi (FIG.
21-20) reflect Brunelleschian principles.
Later bought by the Riccardi family (hence the narne Palazzo
Medici-Riccardi), who almost doubled the facade's length in the
18
. th century, the palace, both in its original and extended form, is a
Simple, massive structure. Heavy rustication on the ground floor accent_uate its strength. Michelozzo divided the building block into
~~on~s of decreasing height by using long, unbroken stringcourses
onzon ta! bands), which give it coherence. Dressed stone on the
upoer level
d
.
·
·
pro uce a smoother surface wrth each success1ve story
and mo ~· ifie th e seven·ty t-the ground floor. The bwldmg
· · thus appears pr g · , -.
hea· . _ ~e I\e1~ lighter as the eye moves upward. The extremely
the b ~orn ,c 'wh1ch Michelozzo related not to the top story but to
. Ullding as a whole, dramatically reverses this effect. Like the anCient Ro lan
.
.
'
.tOr f'X
I cornices that s rved as M1chelono s models (compare,
R.,· -· mp e, riGS . 10- 0, 10-_17, and 10-45), the Palazzo Mediciccardi eo · · .
- . . .
.
. _
nll e 1s a very effecl!ve hd tor the ttucture, clearly and
21-20
Mrc H ELO ZZO 01 BARTOLO IVI ME O,
facade of the Palazzo Medici-
Riccardi, Florence, Italy, begun 1445.
emphatically defining its proportions. Michelozzo also may have
been inspired by the many extant examples of Roman rusticated
masonry, and Roman precedents even exist for the juxtaposition of
rusticated and dressed stone masonry on the same facade (see FIG.
10-32). HO\vever, nothing in the ancient world precisely compares
to Michelozzo's design. The Palazzo Medici-Riccardi is an excellent
example of the simultaneous respect for and independence from the
antique that characterize the Early Renaissance in Italy.
The Palazzo Medici-Riccardi is built around an open colonnaded court (FIG . 21-21) that clearly shO\vs !V1ichelozzo's debt to
Brunelleschi. The round-arched colonnade, although more massive in iis proportions, closely resembles other buildings by Brunelleschi. This internal court surrounded by an arcade was the first of
its kind and inlluenced a long line of descendants in Renaissance
domestic architecture.
THE MEDICI: CULTIVATED HUMANISTS Th e references to
classical architecture in the Palazzo Medici -Riccardi's design were
entirely appropriate for its patrons. The Medici were avid human ists. Cosimo began the first public library since the ancient
world; and historians estimate that in some 30 years he and his
descendants expended the equivalent of almost $20 rnillion for
manuscripts and books. Beyond their enthusiastic collecting of
classical and Renaissa nce literature . the tvledici eventu ally became
voracious art collectors. Scarcely a great architect, paiiHer, sculptor, philosopher, or humanist schol;u scaped the i\'fedici's notict:.
Cosimo was the very 111odel of th ~ cultivated hum~U1i sr. Hi·
grandson Lorenzo (1 449 - J492) , called "the rv!agnifi cent," was H
591
. . ted space recedes to a landscape that resembles
1
. JT <7entl CJea
Thts 1 1" .
d h'llsi des between Florence and Lucca. T 1e renv
L·ulu
vate
t
.
.
.
c
.
th 1 ' .
d. ens·10 nal torm, used by other pamters 101 rep. 0 t th ree- till
.
..
,
denng .
~-nres sivc purposes, became tor Uccello a preoc1ore ·r
··
h. hI
I · d
re en tanona
.
. him, it had a magic ot tts own, \ ·V tc 1c exp otte
- pau on. ot
. . I.
. .
~.u
. - . · ventive and ongma tmagmatton.
21 -2 1 M!CHELO Z ZO Dl BAR O L01vli'vlEO,
interior court of the Palazzo MediciRiccardi, Florence, ltaly, begun 1445.
aosty 1l t
to
tn
, . ALLY INSPIRED DAVID The Medici acquired art
A CLASSI . teemed artists, and they 1·dentt·11 ed Donate11 o as
. .
.
. .
I
tr.0 m the most es thy of rece1vmg
thc1r coveted commtss1ons. T 1e
ng those wor
D ,·d (FIG.21-23), created somet1me between the late
b lnze statue m I
.
d. -.
rL
d h 1 te 1450s bv Donatello tor the Palazzo Me 1u comt1420s an t e a
'.
. .
. _.
.
h
- t freestandmg nude statue smce dnuent t1mes. T e
ard, was t Ile tirs
.
.
• . .
.
, , . b h.
Y
-h ro cn bed 1n the Chnstian Middle Agt:s as ot mnude, as SUL , P
·d 1 trous had been shown only rarely - and then on 1y
de ent an d I o a
,
. . 1 . n ralizm· u contexts such as the story ofAdam and Eve
in btb 1IGl 01 I
. o
'
.
.
· ·
f sinners in Hell. Donatello rem vented the classiCal
or descnpt1ons
. .
, though his subJect 1s not a pagan god, hero, or athlete but
nu de, evtn
.
.bl"
- 1 aVl· d , the vounu
sla)rer of Goliath and the symbol of the
the b1 tea
,
o
. d
d t Florentine republic. David possesses both the relaxed
Ll1 epen en
.
, .
,
· 1 -0 11 trapposto stance and the proporttons and sensuous
cIasstCa
c
L
•
aJ11
talented poet himself and gathered about him a gala:x_y of artists
and gifted mer. in all fields, extending the library Cosimo had begun and revitalizing his academy for instructing artists. He also
participated in what some have called the Platonic Academy of
Philosophy (most likely an informal reading group), and lavished
funds (often the city's own) on splendid buildings, festivals, and
pageants. A review here of some of the hundreds of artworks the
Medici commissioned reveals the family's interest in humanist
ideas and its concern about its public image.
BOTH CHAOTIC AND ORDERED PAoLO UccELLO ( 13971475), a Florentine painter trained in the International Style, received a commission from the Medici to produce a series of panel
paintings. Uccello painted Battle of San Romano (FJG . 21-22), one
of three wood panels (all with the same title), to decorate Lorenzo
the Magnificent's bedchamber. The scenes commemorate the Horentine victory over the Sienese in 1432. In the panel illustrated,
Niccolo da Tolentino, a friend and supporter of Cosimo, leads the
charge against the Sicnese. This particular image may have been
selected to commemorate Tolentino, whose subsequent death
beauty of Greek Praxitelean gods (see FI ·. 5-62) , qualities absent
from medieval figures. The invoking of classical poses and formats
appealed to the humanist Medici.
The Medici were aware of Donatello's earlier David, a sculpture located in the Palazzo deUa Sign.oria, the center of political
activity in Florence. The artist had produced it during the threat
of invasion by King Ladislaus, and it had become a symbol ofBorentine strength and independence. Their selection of the same
subJ. ect suuoests
that the Medici identified themselves with Flot>t>
rence or, at the very least, saw themselves as responsible for
Florence's prosperity and freedom.
CELEBRATING FAMILY AND CITY Another David sculpture
produced by one of the most important sculptors during the second half of the century, ANDREA DEL VERROCCHIO (1 435-1488) ,
reaffirms this identiJication of the Medici with Florence. A painter
as well as a sculptor, Verrocchio directed a flourishing bottega
(studio-shop) in Florence that attracted many students, among
them Leonardo da Vinci. Verrocchio, like Donatello, also had a
broad repertoire. His David (FJG. 21-24 ) contrasts strongly in its
narrative realism with the quiet, aesthetic classicism of Donatello's
perhaps vvas due to his friendship with the Mcdici . Although the
painting focuses on Tolentino's milit;:~ry exploits, it also acknowledges the Medici. The reference appears in symbolic form. The
bright orange fruit (appropriately placed) behind the unbroken
and sturdy lances on the left were known as rnela medica (medicinal apples). Given that the name Medici means "doctor," thi fruit
was a fitting symbol (one of many) of the family.
Uccello's obsession with perspective undoubtedly appealed to
the Medici. The development of perspectival systems intrigued
the humanists, because perspective represented the rationalization of vision. As staunch humanists, the Medici pur ued aJl
facets of expanding knowledge. In Battle of San Romano, Uccello
created a composition that recalls the processional splendor of
Gentile's Adoration of the Magi (FIG. 21-9). But in contrast with
Gentile's International Style, characterized by surface decoration,
Uccello's vmrld is constructed from immobilized solid forms. He
foreshortened broken spears, lances, and a fallen soldier an d carefully placed them along the converging orthogonals of the perspectival system to create a base plane like a checkerboard, on
which he then placed the larger volumes in measured intervals.
21-22 PAOLO U cc ELLO, Battle of San
Ronumu, ea. 1455. Tempera on wood,
approx. 6' x 10' 5". National Gallery,
London.
21 -23 0
,\ t "
-ATEIL
.
o,
D
"rf.
ai' L , late
592
Chapter 21
l)TH- CE NT
1-tY I T i\ LIM-1 AR T
-
l420s-late 1450s. Bronze,
u, . . ) Nazionale del Bargello, Floren ce.
~ ·" ,, . . .h
':l L ~ l"llg ' ·
21-24 AN DRJ!A DEL VERRO CCHlO, Dnvid, ea. 1465 -1470. Bronze,
approx. 4' 11" high. Museo Nazionale del Bnrgello, Florence.
David. Verrocchio's Dnvid is a sturdy, wiry young apprentice dad
in a leathern doublet >vho stands with a jaunty pride. As in Donatello's version, Goliath's head lies at David's feet. He poses like a
hunter with his kilL The easy balance of the weight and the lithe,
still thinly adolescent musculature, with prominent veins, shovv
how closely Vcrrocchio read the biblical text and how clearly he
knew the psychology of brash and confident young men.
Lorenzo and C~iuliano de' Medici eventually sold Verrocchio's
bronze David to the Florentine signoria (a governing body) for
placement in the Palazzo della Signoria. After the Medici were
expelled from Florence, city officials appropriated Donatello's
David for civic use and moved it to the Palazzo as well.
A MYTHIC WRESTLING MATCH Closely related in stylistic
intent to Verrocchio's work is that of ANTONIO PoLLAIUOLO (ea.
1431-1498). Pollaiuolo, who is also important as a painter and engraver, r~ceived a Medici commission in the 1470s to produce a
small-scale sculpture, Hercules and Antaeus (FIG. 21-25). In contrast to the placid presentation of Donatello's David, Herwles and
Antaeus exhibits the stress and strain of the human figure in
violent action . This sculpture departs dramatically from the convention of frontality that had dominated statuary art during the
21-25 ANTONIO PoLLAIUOLO, Her ules mzd lwtaeus, ea. 1475. Bronze,
approx. I' 6" high with base. Museo Nazionale del Bargello, Florence.
594
Chapter 21
2l-26 ANTONro PoLLAtuoLo,
Battle of tlze Ten Nudes, ea. 1465.
Engraving, approx. 1' 3" x l' 11".
Middle Ages and the Early Renaissance. Not quite 18 inches high
Hercules and Antaeus embodies the ferocity and vitality of eletnen~
tal physical conflict. The group illustrates the Greek myth of a
Metropolitan Museum of Art,
New York (bequest of Joseph
Pulitzer, 1917).
wrestling match between Antaeus (Antaios), a giant an d son of
Earth, and Hercules (Herakles). As seen earlier, Euphronio represented this story on an ancient Greek vase (see FIG. 5-21 ). Each time
Hercules threw him down, Antaeus sprang up again, his strength
renewed by contact with the earth. Finally, Hercules held him aloft
so that he could not touch the earth, and strangled him around th~
waist. Pollaiuolo strove to convey the final excruciating mom ents of
the struggle-the straining and cracking of sinews, the clenched
teeth of Hercules, and the kicking and screaming of Antaeus. The
figures intertwine and interlock as they fight, and the flic k ring reflections of light on the dark gouged bronze surface contribute to a
fluid play of planes and the etfect of agitated movement. The subject matter, derived from Greek mythology, and the emphasis on
human anatomy reflect the Medici preference for humanist irnagery. Even more specifically, Hercules had been represented on
Florence's state sea,] since the end of the 13th century. As was
demonstrated by commissions such as the two David sc ulptures,
the Medici clearly embraced every opportunity to associate themselves with the glory of the Florentine republ ic, surely claiming
much of the credit for it.
BATTLING NUDES Although not commissioned by the
Medici, Pollaiuolo's engraving Battle of the Ten Nudes (FIG. 21-26)
further demonstrates t he artist's sustained interest in the realistic
presentation of human figures in action. Earlier artists, such as
Donatello and Masaccio, had dealt effectively with the problem of
rendering human anatomy, but they usually depicted their figures
at rest or in restrained motion. As is evident in his Hercules and
Antaeus, PoHaiuolo took delight in showing violent action and
found his opportunity in subjects dealing with combat. He conceived the body as a powerful machine and liked to disp lay t£5
mechanisms, such as knotted muscles and taut sinews that activate
the skeleton as ropes pull levers. To show this to best effect, Pollaiuolo developed a figure so lean and muscular that it ap pears
ecorche (as if without skin), with strongly accentuated deli neations
at the wrists, elbows, shoulders, and knees. His Battle of the Ten
Nudes shows this figure type in a variety of poses and from numerous vie\vpoints, allowing Pollaiuolo to demonstra te his
prowess in rendering the nude male figure. In this, he was a kindred spirit of late-sixth-century Greek vase painters, such as Futhymides (see FIG. 5-22), who had experimented with foreshortening for th e first time in history. If Pollaiuolo's figures, even th ough
they hack and slash at each other without mercy, seem s mewhat
stiff and frozen, it is because Pollaiuolo shows all the muscle
groups at maximum tension. Not until several decades later did an
even greater anatomist, Leonardo, observe that only part of the
body's muscle groups are involved in any one action, while the
others are relaxed.
The medium that Pollaiuolo used for Battle of the Ten Nudesengraving-was probably developed by northern Eur pean
artists around the middle of the 15th century. But wherea · German graphic artists, such as Martin Schongauer (see Fl . 20-25),
described their forms with hatching that follows the for ms, Italian
engravers, such as Pollaiuolo, preferred parallel hatching. The former method was in keeping with the general northern approach t.o
art, which tended to describe surfaces of forms rather than their
underlying structures, whereas the latter was better suit d tor the
anatomical studies that preoccupied Pollaiuolo and his ltalian
contemporaries.
VISUAL POETRY SANDRO BoTTtCELLI (1444-1510) remains
among the best known of the artists who produced works for the
Medici. One of the wo rks he painted in tempera on canvas for the
Medici wa his famo us Birth of Venus (FIG. 21-27). A poem on
that them e by Angelo Poliziano, one of the leading humanists of
the day, inspired Botticelli to create this lyrical image. Zephyrus
21 - 27
A 'D
(the west wind) blows Venus, born of the sea foam and carried on
a cockle shell, to her sacred island, Cyprus. There, the nymph
Pomona runs to meet her with a brocaded mantle. The lightness
and bodilessness of the winds move all the figures without effort.
Draperies undulate easily in the gentle gusts, perfumed by rose
petals that fall on the whitecaps. Botticelli's nude presentation of
Ro BonlcFL u, Birth ofVenus, a. 1482. Tempera on canvas, approx. 5' 8" x 9' 1". Galleria degli Uffizi, FI01·ence.
595
l
tht' Venus figure was in itself an innovation. As mentioned earlier,
the nude, especially the female nude, had been proscribed during
the Middle Ages. The artist's use (especially on such a large scale)
of an ancient Venus statue of the Venus pudica (modest Venus)
type-a Hellenistic variant of Praxiteles' famous Aphrodite of
K11idos (see FIG. 5-60) - as a mod I could have drawn the charge
of paganism and infidelity. But in the more accommodating
Renaissance culture and under the protection of the po\·v erful
Medici, the depiction went unchallenged.
Botticelli's style is clearly distinct from the earnest search
many other artists pursued to comprehend humanity and the
natural world through a rational and empirical order. Indeed,
Botti elli's elegant and beautiful style seems to have ignored all of
the scientific knowledge experimental art had gained (for example, in the areas of perspective and anatomy). His style paralleled
the allegorical pageants that were staged in Florence as chivalric
tournaments but were structured around allusions to classical
mythology; the same trend is evident in the poetry of the 1470s
and 1480s. Artists and poets at this time did not directly imitate
classical antiquity but used the myths, with delicate perception of
their charm, in a way still tinged with medieval romance. Ultimately, Botticelli created a style of visual poetry, parallel to the Petrarchan love poetry written by Lorenzo de' Medici. His paintings
possess a lyricism and courtliness that appealed to cultured patrons such as tne Medici.
As evide11ced by these Medici commissions, the Florentine
family did not restrict their collect ing to any specific style or
artist. Their acquisitions, as already noted, often incorporated
elements associated with humanism , from mythological subject
matter to concerns with anatomy and p erspective. Collectively,
the art of the Medici also makes a statement about t he patrons
themselves. Careful businessmen that they were, the Medici were
not sentimental about their endowment of art and scholarship.
Cosimo acknmvledged that his good works were not only for the
honor of God but also to construct his own legacy. This is not to
suggest that the Medici were solely self-serving-throughout the
century, Medici family members demonstrated a sustained and
sincere love of learning.
THE RisE OF PoRTRAITURE
Given the increased emphasis on individual achievement a nd
recognition that humanism fostered, it is not surprising that portraiture enjoyed a revival in the 15th century. Commemorative
portraits of the deceased were common, and patrons also com missioned portraits of themselves. The profile pose was customary in Florence until about 1470, when three-quarter and full-face
portraits began to replace it. Bust-length portraits based on Roman precedents also became prominent.
A PSYCHOLOGICAL PROFILE In about the last decade of the
15th century, Sandro Botticelli painted the nearly full-t~1ee Portrait of a Youth ( F! '· 21-28). Painters of northern Europe (see
FIGS. 20-16 and 20-17 ) popularized three-quarter and full-face
views earlier in the century. Such poses increased the inform ation
available to viewers about the subject's appeara nce. Further, these
poses permitted greater exploration of the subject's character, although Italian artists and patrons continued to fa vor an impersonal formality that concealed the private psychological person.
An apparent exception, Botticelli's young man is highly expressive
psychologically. The delicacy of the pose, the head 's graceful tilt,
Chapter 21
15TH- . ENTU){Y lTA LJA
Awr
21-28 SANDRO BoTTlCELLI , Portrait of a Youth, early 1480s. '] m pera
on panel, 1' 4" x l' . National Gallery of Art, Washington (And rew W.
Mcllon Collection ).
21-29 DoNATELLO, Gatta melata (equestrian statue of Erasmo
da Narni), Piazza del anto, Padua, ltaly, ea. I445 - l450. Bronze,
approx. Il ' x I3'.
21-30 ANDREA on VERROCCHIO, Bartolomnzeo Col/coni
(equestrian statue), Campo dei Santi Giovanni e Paolo, Venice,
Italy, ea. 1483 -1488. Bronze, approx. I3 ' high.
the sidelong glance, and the elegant hand gesture compose an
equivocal expression half musing and half insinuating.
Botticelli was the pupil of Fra Filippo Lippi (FIG. 21-38 ), who
must have taught him the method of"drawing" firm, pure o utline
with light shading within the contours. The effect is apparent in
the portrait's explicit and sharply elegant form. Bottic lli infinitely refined this method, and art historians recognize hi m as
one of the great masters of line.
than life-size. The officer dominates his mighty steed by force of
cha racter rather than sh eer size. Together, man and horse convey an
overwhelmi ng image of irresistible strength and unlimited
power-an impression Donatello reinforced visually by placing
the left forehoof of the horse on an orb, reviving a venerable ancientsymbol for hegemony over the earth. The Italian rider, his face
·et in a mask of dauntless resolution and unshakable will, is the
very portrait of the m ale Renaissance individualist. Such a man i~telligent, courageou , ambitious, and frequently of humble origm -could, by his own resourcefuln ess and on his ovvn merits, rise
to a commanding po ition in the world.
stirrups and rise from the saddle with a violent twist of his body.
The artist depicted the figures with an exaggerated tautness-the
animal's b ulging muscles and the man's fiercely erect and rigid
body together convey brute strength. 1n Gattamelata, Donatello
created a portrait of grim sagacity; Verrocchio's Bartolommeo
Colleoni is a portrait of merciless might. Machiavelli wrote in his
famous political treatise of 1513, The Prince, that the successful
ruler must combine the traits of the lion and the fox. It seems that
Donatello's Gattamelata is a little like the latter and that Verrocchio's Bartolormneo Co lleoni is much like the former.
A CAf ON A HORSE In 1443, Do natello left Florence for
northern Italy to accept a rewarding commission from the Republic ofVenice to create a commemorative monument i n honor
of the recently deceased Venetian condottiere Erasmo da N arni,
nicknamed Gattamelata (''honeyed cat," a wordplay on his
mother's name, Melania Gattelli). City officials asked Do natello
to portray Gattamelata on horseback in a statue (FIG. 21-29) to be
erected in the square of Sant'Antonio in Padua . Although eq uestrian statues occasionally had been set up in Italy in the late 11iddle Ages, Donatello's Gattamelata is the first to rival the grandeur
of the mounted portraits of antiquity, such as that of M arcus Aurclius (see FIG. 10-59), which the artist must have seen in Rome.
Donatello's contemporaries, one of whom described Ga ttamelata
as sitting "there with great magnificence like a triumphant Caesa r," 5 recognized this reference to antiquity. The figu re c;ta nds
high on a lofty elliptical base, set apart from its surround ings, and
almost celebrates sculpture's liberation from architectu re. Massive and majestic, the great horse bears the armored general easily, for, unlike the sculptor of Mm·cus Aurelius, Donatello did not
represent the Venetian commander as superhuman an d m ore
A. DOMINATING M ILITARY LEADER Verrocchio's equestnan statue of another condottiere of Venice, Bartolommeo
Colleoni (FIG. 21-30) , provides a counterpoint to Gllttmnelata.
Eager to garner the fam e of Gatta111elata by emulating Donatello's
culpture, olleoni provided for the statue in his \"'ill. Both artists
exe uted the statues after the death of their subjects, so neither
Do natello no r V<erro cI·uo
. k new personaHy the md1v1dual
. . .
he portrayed. Th ~
l .
. .
.
.
.
.
th· l
l resu t I a fa scmatmg difference of mterpretat10n (hke
at )etw n tl1
D .
e two avzds, FIGS. 21-23 and 2l -24) as to the derneanor f
c .
a
pro1essiO
al captain of armies. Verrocchio placed the
St atue of h b I
tha h
e 0 d equest rian general on a pedestal even higher
, Gattamelata so that v1ewers
·
e, ntl t at Donat ell o us d tor
co uld
~ 1 dom·
·
.
matmg, aggr 1ve figure from all major approaches
to the .
With t~lazza (the Cam po dei Santi Giovanni e Paolo). In contrast
a pr ~ near repose of Gattamelata, th e Colleo11i horse moves in
anCJng tr 1·d
h.
the
e, arc 111g and curvincr its powerful neck, while
command
o
er eem suddenly to shift his whole weight to the
A WOMAN OF CULTURE Women were also portrait subjects.
DoMENICO GH!RLANDAIO (1449-1494) produced a portrait of
an aristocratic young woman (FIG. 21-31) , probably Giovanna
Tornabuoni, a member of the powerful Albizzi family and wife of
Lorenzo Tornabuoni. Although artists did not often employ the
profile pose to convey a character reading, this portrait reveals the
proud bearing of a sensitive and beautiful young woman. It tells
viewers much about the advanced state of culture in Florence, the
value and careful cultivation of beauty in life and art, the breeding of courtly manners, and the great wealth behind it aJI. The
painting also shows the powerful attraction classical literature
held for Italian humanists; in the background, an epitaph (G io,
vanna Tornabuoni died in childbirth in 1488) quotes the ancient
Roman poet Martial.
SUMMARIZING FLORENTINE ART Domenico Ghirla ndaio's art summarizes the state of Florentine art toward the en d
of the 15th century. Giovanni Tornabuoni, one of the wealthiest
TH E
RI SE
Of PORTRAIT
RE
597
Florentines of his day, commissioned Ghirlandaio' mo t re
.
.
. .
d . .
Presentative pictures, a eye1e ot trescoes epictmg scenes from h
lives of the Virgin and Saint John the Baptist for the eh . t e
0 Jr of
.
'
Santa Mana Novella. In the illustrated painting, Birth of the Vir .
(FIG. 21-32), Mary's mother, Saint Anne, reclines in a paJace ro guz
embellished with fine intarsia (wood inlay) and sculpture, w~·llJ.l
'd .
h . c ' b h
I e
1111 Wives prepare t e mtant s at . From the left co mes a gr
.
.
ave
processiOn ot women led by a young Tornabuoni family m embe
probably Ludovica, Giovanni's daughter. Ludov ica holds r,
prominent a place in the composition (close to the central ax· ·)as
IS as
she must have held in Florentine society. Her appearance in th
painting (a different female member of the house appear in eac~
fresco) is conspicuous evidence of the secula rization of sacred
themes - commonplace in art by this time. Artists d epicted Jiving persons of high rank not only as present at biblical dramas
but also, as here, often stealing the show from the sain ts. T he display of patrician elegance tempers the biblical narrative an d subordinates the tableau's devotional nature.
architecture in depth. Alberti's most important and influential
theoretical work, De re aedificatoria (written about 1450, published 1486) , although inspired by Vitruvius, contains much original material. Alberti advocated a system of ideal proportions and
argued that the central plan was the ideal form for a Christian
church. He also cqnsidered incongruous the combination of column and arch, which had persisted since Roman times (see FIG.
10-51). By arguing that the arch is a wall opening that should he
supported only by a section of wall (a pier), not by an independent sculptural element (a column), Alberti (with a few exceptions) disposed of the medieval arcade used for centuries.
Ghirlandaio's composition epitomizes the achievements of
Early Renaissance painting: clear spatial representatio n; statuesque, firmly constructed figures; and rational order and logical
relations among these figures and objects. If anythin g o f earlier
traits remains here, it is the arrangement of the figures , wh ich still
cling somewhat rigidly to layers parallel to the picture pla ne.
FURTHER DEVELOPMENTS
IN ARCHITECTURE
21-31 DOMENJCO GHIRLANDAJO, Giovannn Tornabuoni(?), 1488.
Oil and tempera on wood, approx. 2' 6" x 1' 8". Thyssen-Bornemisza
Collection, Madrid, Spain.
LEON BATTISTA ALB E RTI (1404-1472) entered the p rofession of
architecture rather late in life, but nevertheless made a remarkable
contribution to architectural design. He was the first to study seriously the treatise of Vitrnvius (De architecturo), and his knowledge of it, combined with his own archaeological investigation .,
made him the first Renaissance architect to understand Roman
21-33 LEON BATTISTA A LR ERTI , Pal azzo Rucellai, Florence, Italy,
ea. 1452-1470.
BUILDING ON CLASSICISM Alberti's own architectural style
represents a scholarly application of classical elements to contemporary buildings. His Palazzo Rucellai in Florence (FIG. 21-33)
probably dates from the mid-1450s. Alberti organized the facade,
built over a number of medieval houses, in a much more severe
fashion than the Palazzo Medici-Riccardi facade (FIG. 21-20), another classically inspired building. Flat pilasters, which support
full entablatures, define each story of the Palazzo Rucellai. A classical cornice crowns the palace. The rustication of the wall surfaces
b etween the smooth pilasters is subdued and uniform. Alberti created the sense that the structure becomes lighter in weight toward
its top by adapting the ancient Roman manner of using different
capitals for each story. He chose Tuscan (the Etruscan variant of
the Greek Doric order) for the ground floor, Composite (the Roman combination of lonic volutes with the acanthus leaves of the
Corinthjan) for the second story, and Corinthian for the third
f1oor. Al berti modeled his facade on the most imposing Roman
rujn of all, the Colosseum (see FIG. 10-34), but he was no slavish
copyist. On the Colosseum's faca d e the capitals employed are,
from the bottom up, Tuscan, Ionic, and Corinthian. Moreover, Alberti adapted the Colosseum's varied surface to a flat facade, which
does not allow the deep p enetration of the building's mass that is
so effective in the Roman structure. By converting his ancient
model's engaged columns (half-round columns attached to a wall)
into shallow pilasters that barely project from the wall, Alberti created a large -meshed linear net. Stretched tightly across the front of
his building, it not only unifies the three levels b ut also emphasizes
the wall's f1at, two-dimensional qualities.
OF RATIOS AND RATIONALITY The Rucellai family also
commissioned from Alberti the design for the facade of the 13thcentury Gothic church of Santa Maria Novella in Florence (fiG S.
2) -34 and 21-35). Here, Alberti took his cue (just as Brunelleschi
did occasionally) from a pre-Gothic medieval design-that of
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DoMENICO GHIRLANDAIO ,
Chapter 21
Birth uf the Virgin, Cappella Maggiorc, Santa Maria Novella, Florence, Italy, 1485-1490. Fresco.
l)TI I · CE NTU RY
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e. t facade of Santa J\Jfari a .ovella,
2 1-35 Lao , B TTISTA A LHERTI , di agrams o f west fac ade, Sant a M, ria
N vdl a, Fl 1rence, Italy.
F l [(1' \J ER D£VF I. O P M . N TS I N A I~ C:H. !'T' ECTUIH:
599
San Miniato al Monte. Following this Romanesque model, he designed a small, pseudoclassical, pediment-capped temple front
for the facade's upper part and supported it with a broad base of
pilaster-enframed arcades that incorporate the six tombs and
three doorways of the extant Gothic building. But in the organization of these elements, Alberti took a long step beyond the Romanesque planners. T he height of Santa Iv1aria Novella (to the
pediment tip) equals its width so that the entire facade can be inscribed in a square (FIG. 21-35, leji ). Throughout the facade,
Alberti defined areas and related them to one another in terms of
proportions that can be expressed in simple numerical ratios
( 1: I, 1 :2, l: 3, 2:3, and so on). For example, the upper structure
can be encased in a square one-fourth the size of the main square
(for other squares, see the right diagram). The cornice of the entablature that separates the two levels halves the major square so that
the lower portion of the building is a rectangle twice as wide as it is
high. Further, the areas outlined by the columns on the lower level
are squares with sides about one-third the width of the main unit.
In his treatise, Alberli wrote at lenglh lo promole the necessity of
such harmonic relationships for designing beautiful buildings.
Alberti shared this conviction with Brunelleschi, and this fundamental dependence on classically derived mathematics distinguished their architectural work from that of their medieval predecessors. They believed in the eternal and universal validity of
numerical ratius as Lhe source of beauty. In this respect, Alberti
and Brunelle~chi revived th '~ true spirit of the High Classical age
of ancient Greece, as epitomized by the sculptor Polykleitos and
the architect Iktinos, who produced canons of proportions for
the perfect statue and the perfect temple. But it was not only a desire to emulate Vitruvius and the Classical masters that motivated
Alberti lo turn to mathematics in his quest for beauty. His contemporary, Lhe Florentine humanisl Giannozzo Manetti, had argued that Christianity itself possessed the order and logic of
mathematics; in his 1452 treatise, On the Dignity and Excellence of
Man. Manetti stated that Christian religious truths were as selfevident as mathematical axioms.
21-36 FRA ANGEL! CO, Annunciation, San
Marco, Florence, Italy, ea. 1440-1445.
Fresco, 7' l" x 10' 6".
The Santa Maria Novella facade was an ingenious solution to .
difficult design problem. On one hand, it adequately r pressed th:
organization of the structure attached to it. On the other hand , lt.
subjected preexisting and quintessentially medieval features, such
JS the large round window on the second level, to a rigid geometrical order that instilled a quality of classical calm and reason. Thi
facade also introduced a feature of great historical conseq u neethe scrolls that simultaneously unite the broad lower and narrow
upper level and screen the sloping roofs over the aisles. With variations, such spirals appeared in literally hundreds of church facades throughout the Renaissance and Baroque periods.
IMAGES OF PIETY AND DEVOT IO N
A VISUAL CALL TO PRAYER As is evident from th e plethora
of religious imagery produced during the 15th century, humanism
and religion were not mutually exclusive. For many artists, humanist concerns were not a primary consideration. FRA ANG ELICo
(ea. 1400-1455) was among those; his art focused on serving the
Roman Catholic Church. In the late 1430s, the abbot o f t he Dominican monastery of San Marco in Florence asked Fra , 1gelico
to produce a series of frescoes for the monastery. The Dominicans
of San Marco had dedicated themselves to lives of p rayer and
work, and the religious compound was mostly spare and austere to
encourage the monks to immerse themselves in their devotional
lives. Fra Angelica's frescoes illustrated a 13th -century text, De
modo orandi (The VVi1y of Prayer), which describes the nine vays of
prayer used by Saint Dominic, the order's founder.
Among the works he completed was Annunciation (Fl . 21-36),
which appears at the top of Lhe slairs leading to the friars' cells. Appropriately, Fra Angelica presented tbe scene of the Virgin Mary
and the Archangel Gabriel with simplicity and serenity. The two
figures appear in a plain loggia, and the artist painted all the fresco
elements vvith a pristine clarity. As an admonition to heed the
devotional function of the images, Fra Angclico included a small
STAG NO,
Last Supper, the refectory, monastery of Sant'Apollonia, Florence, Italy, 1447. Fresco, approx. 15'
inscription at the base of the image that reads, "As you venerate,
while passi ng before it, this figure of the intact Virgin, beware lest
you omit to ay a Hail Mary." Like most of Fra Angelica's paintings,
Am11mciation's simplicity and directness still has an almost universal appeal and fully reflects the artist's simple and humble character.
THE LAST SUP PER IN PERSPECTIVE ANDREA DEL
CASTAGNO (ea. 142 1-1457), like Fra Angelica, accepted a com mission to produce a series of frescoes for a religious establishm.. nt. His Last Supper (FIG. 21-37), painted in the refectory (dining hall) of Sant' Apolionia in Florence, a convent for Benedicline
nuns, man ifests both a commitment to the biblical narrative and
an interest in per pective. The lavishly painted space that Christ
and his 12 disciples occupy suggests Castagno's absorption with
creating th illu ion of three ~ dimensional space. However, closer
scrutiny reveal inconsistencies, such as the fact that Renaissance
per pectival system make it impossible to see both the ceiling
and the roof1 as Ca tagno depicted. Further, Lhe two side walls do
not appear parallel.
The artist chose a conventional compositional format, with the
fig ures seated at a horizontally placed table. Castagno derived the
apparent elf-absorption of most of the disciples and the malevolent
fea tures of Judas (who sits alone on the outside of the table) from
the Gospel of aint Joh n, rather than the more familiar version of
the. Last upper recounted in the Gospel of Saint Luke. The explo~atiOn of perspective so prevalent in 15th-century Italian art clearly
mfl uen d Ca tagno's depiction of the Last Supper, which no doubt
\ as a P0 erful presence for the nuns during their daily meals.
A FACI U TY WITH LI NE A vounoer contemporary of Fra Ant't
.
' '
v\),
RA hLIPPO LrPP l (ea. 1406 - 1469), was also a tnar - but
.
.
th ere ·dll
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em 11ance ends. According to reports, Fra F1!Jppo seems
to hav.. b e
. .
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d
...
n an amw L1 le man unsuited for mon astiC 1Lte . . e m1
u ged in mi demeanors ranging from forgery and embezzlement
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1)1' 11-C E NT U RY IT
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32' ·
to the abduction of a pretty nun, Lucretia, who became his mistress and the mother of his son, the painter Filippino Lippi
( 1457 -1504). Only the Medici's intervention on his behalf at the
papal court preserv d Fra Filip po ti-om severe punishment and total disgrace. An orphan, Fra Filippo spent his youth in a monastery
adjacent to the church of Santa Maria del Carmine, and, when
about 18, he must have met Masaccio there and witnessed Lhe decoration of Brancacci Chapel. Fra Filippo's early work survives only
in fragments, but these show that he tried to work with Masaccio's
massi~e forms. Later, p robably under the influence of Ghiberti's
and Donatello's relief sculptures, he developed a linear style that
emphasized the contours of his 1~gures and permitted him to sug. .
gest movement through flying and swirling dra~ eries.
A painting from Fra Filippo's later years, Madonna and Chzld
with Angels (FIG. 21-38), shows his skill in manipulating line. A
,vonderfully t1uid line unifies the composition and contributes to
the precise and smooth delineation of forms. Few artists ~ave s.urpassed Fra Pilippo's skill in using line. He interpreted hts sub].ect
here in a surprisingly worldly manner. The Madonna, a beauttful
young mother, is not at all spiritual or fragile, and neither is the
Christ Chil.d, whom two angels hold up. One of the angels turns
with Lhe mischievous ) puckish grin of a boy refusing to behave for
the pious occasion. Significantly, all figures reflect the use. of live
models (that for the Madonna even may have been Lucretta). Fra
Filippo plainly relished the charm of youth and beauty as he
found it in this world. He preferred the real in landscape also; the
background, seen through the window, inco rporates recogniza~le
features of the Arno River Valley. Compared with the earl:er
Madonnas by Giotto (see FIG. 19-7) and Duccio (see FI ' · 19~10 ) ,
this \·VOtk ~h~wS how far artisL b.d Catried the humanization of
the th eme. Whatever the ideals of spiritual perfection n1ay ha e
mea lit to artists in past centuries, Renaissance artists realized su h
ideals in tenns of the sensuous beauty of thi, world .
lMA G FS
Chapter 21
X
or
PI ETY A ND
D ~v
YTIUN
601
RELIEF SCULPTURE fOR THE MASSES During t e I·
ha lt. o t' t he 1Jth century, mcreasmg demand tor devotional i atter
mages
tor pnvate ch<~pels and shnn~s (rather. th~n for large public
churches) contnbuted to a growmg seculanzatron of tradition 1
. ·
b.
a reI rgrous su Ject matter. LucA DEJ.LA RoRBIA ( 1400-1 482) dr'
scovered a way to produce Madonna images so that persons of mode
mea~s c?uld bu!' t_h,em. His discovery (arou,nd 1430), involving t~:
appl_rcattOn of_vttn_tied (he~t-fused) potters glazes to sculpture, led
to hts pr?ductwn, 111 quantity, of glazed terracotta reliefs. He is be t
known tor these works. Inexpensive, durable, and decorative ' th ey
became extremely popular and provided the basis for a flourishin
family business. Luca's nephew Andrea della Robbia ( 1 435 -1525~
and Andrea's sons, Giovanni della Robbia (1469-1529) and Girolama della Robbia ( 1488-1566), carried on this tradition well into
the 16th century; people still refer to it as "della Robbia ware."
An example of Luca's specialty is the Madonna arzd Clzild (FIG.
21-39), commissioned by a guild and set into a waU of Or San
Michele. The figures appear within a tondo (a circular pain ting or
relief sculpture), a format that became popular with both sculptors
and painters in the later part of the century. For example, Brunelleschi incorporated it into his design of the Pazzi Chapel's interior
(FIG. 21- 19), where most of the roundels are the work of Luca della
Robbia himself. Il1 his tondo for Or San Michele, Luca's in troduction of high-key color into sculpture added a certain worldly gaiety
to the Madonna and Child theme, and his customary light blue
ground (and here the green and white of lilies and the white architecture) suggests in this work the festive Easter season and the freshness of May, the Virgin's month. The somber majesty of the old
Byzantine style had long since disappeared. The young mothers who
prayed before images in this new form could easily identifY with the
Madonna and doubtless did. The distance between the observed
and observers had vanished.
r
•
21-38 FRA FrLIPPO LrPPI, Madonna and Child with Angels, ea. 1455.
Tempera on wood, approx. 3' x 2' 1". Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence.
21-39
LucA DELLA RoBBIA,
Madonna and Child,
Or San Michele, Florence, Italy, ea. 1455-1460.
Terracotta with polychrome glaze, diameter
approx. 6' .
•
.
.
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21-40
11'
st
PERU G INO,
X
18'
Christ Delivering til e Keys of the Kingdom to Saint Peter, Sistine Chapel, Vatican, Rome, Italy, 1481- 1483. Fresco,
sr,Vatican Museums.
THE ESTABLISHMENT OF PAPAL AUTHORITY Of course,
the production of religio us art extended beyond Florence. The
pope's presence in Rome ensured an active artistic scene there as
well. Between 1481 and 1483 Pope Si,xtus IV summoned a group
of artists, including Botticelli, Ghirlandaio, and Luca Signorelli, to
Rome to decorate with frescoes the walls of the newly completed
Sistine Chapel. Pietro Vannucci, knmvn as PERUGINO (ea. 14501523 ), was among this group and painted Christ Delivering the
Keys of the Ki11gdom to Saint Peter (FI G. 21-40). The papacy had,
fro m the beginning, based its claim to infallible and total authority over the Roman Catholic Church on this biblical event. ln
Perugino's version, Christ hands the keys to Saint Peter, who
stands amidst an imagin ary gathering of the Twelve Apostles and
Renaissance contemporaries. These figures occupy the apron of a
great stage space that ext nds into the distance to a point of convergence in the doorway of a central-plan temple. (Perugino used
para llel and converging lines in the pavement to mark off the in tervening space. ) Figures in the middle distance oomplement the
n ar group, emphasizing its density and order by their scattered
arrangemen t. At the corners of the great piazza, duplicate triu s~phal arche erve as the base angles of a distant compos.itionaJ
tnangle who e ap x is in the central building. PerugiJ1o modeled
~he arches very clo ely on the Arch of constantine (see FIG. 10-76)
m
. 111
. a ptHntmg
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.
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' ~ nust ltfe, the arches remind viewers ot the close m;~ be:tw en
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~onstanlme and Satn t Peter and of the great basilrca the
ur:-.t
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.
.
.
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an emperor built over Samt Peters tOfnb 111
n t and P ter flank the trianole' central axis, ·which runs
tllrou h th
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Th
e temp e doo n va>, th ... per- pecnve s vtmtshm g po111t.
u ' the compo ·itio n interlocks both two -dimensional and
three-dimensionai space, and the placement of central actors emphasizes the axial center. This spatial science allowed the artist to
organize the action systematically. Perugino, in this single picture,
incorporated the learning of generations.
THE PRINCELY 'C OURTS
Although virtually all the artworks discussed thus far in this
chapter are Florentine, art production flourished throughout
Italy in the 15th century. In particular, the princely courts that
rulers established in such cities as Naples, Urbino, Milan, Ferrara,
and M<mtua deserve much credit for nurturing the arts. These
princely courts consisted of the prince (lord of a territory), his
consort and children, courtiers, household staff, and administrators (see "Cultivating Culture," page 575). The considerable
wealth these princes possessed, coupled with their desire for
recognition, fame, and power, resnlted in majo r art commissions.
Mantua
f.,;larquis Ludovico Go nzaga (1412 -1478) ruled one of these
princely coutu;, the l'fHnqu.isate of Mantua in nonh €rn Ita!r· A
fn med '-'ondollicn:~, Gonznga established his reputtrtii)f1 as a fi.erl-~
rnHitary \ender while gemnal of the Milan e:.~e arrnies. A visit n.)
MuflttHl by Pope Pi us n in 1f! S9 stimulated the lVlafqt.IiS'~ dtt~ r­
rnination to tnm~fc)rm llantua ,jnro a spectacular tity. After tne
pope's departur~, GonzJ ga set about building f1 dry that
\'\lo ulcl
he
the envy of all ofitaly.
603
602
Chapter 2 1
1-·n -t- CE
ruRY I TALIAN ART
21-41 LEON BATTISTA ALBERTI, west facade of Sant'Andrea, Mantua,
Italy, designed ea. 1470.
21-43 LEoN BATTISTA ALBERTI, interior of Sant'Andrea, Man tua,
Italy, designed ea. 1470.
21-45 ANDREA
The tremendous vaults in the interior of Sant'Andrea (FIG.
t that Al berti may have been inspired by the ruined
Bas•l
f
·tea 1 ova o Con tantine in Rome (see FIG. 10-79)-erroneo usly thought in the Middle A(>es and Renaissance to be a
:ornan t ~pie. He abandoned th; medieval columned arcade
r~nellescht used in Santo Spirito (F IG. 21-15). Thick walls alternatmg wi th vaulted chap Is and interrupted by a massive dome
over the ro .
..
barrel vault. Because Ftlippo
IU\.ara added thmg upport the huge
·
·
b
e present dome m the 18th century, the effect may
·aJlsomew_hat different than Alberti planned. Regardless, the vault
f to l11tnd the vast in terior spaces and dense enclosing masses
0
· Alb ertt· cnttctze
· · · d t he tra d'I t' Roman arch1'te t ure. In h.IS treatiSe,
1 n·l ba il'
1
.
tcan
Pan
(w1th
continuous
aisles
flanking
the central
11
·
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practical b cause tJ1e colonnades conceal the cere111
11
- from the faithful in the aisles. For this reason, he designed
21
Chapter 21
IST H-CcNTU RY ITALIAN ART
interior of the Camera degli Sposi (Room of the Newlyweds), Palazzo Ducale, Mantua, Italy, 1474. Fresco.
dimensions, which left it considerably lower than the church behind it. Because of the primary importaJ1ce of visual appeal,
many Renai sance architects made this concession not only to the
demands of a pur ly visual proportionality in the facade but also
to the facade's relation to the small square in front of it, even at
the expens of contin uity with the body of the building. Yet structural correspondences to the building do exist in the Sant' And rea
facade. The facade pilasters are the same height as those on the
nave's interior walls, a d the central barrel vault over the main exterior entrance, with smaller barrel vaults branching off at right
angles, introduces (in proportional arrangement but on a smaller
scale) the interior ystem. The facade pilasters, as part of the wall,
run uninterrupted th rouah three stories in an early application of
the "colossal" or "giant"border that became a favorite motif of
Michelan elo.
21-42 LEON BATTISTA ALBERTI, plan of Sant'Andrea, Mantua, Italy,
designed ea. 1470.
AN EXPANSIVE MANTUAN CHURCH One of the major
projects Gonzaga instituted was the redes.igning of the church of
Sant' And rea in Mantua (FIGS. 21-41 to 21-43) to replace an 11thcentury church. Gonzaga turned to Alberti for this important
commission. In the ingeniously planned facade, which illustra tes
the culmination of Alberti's experiments, the architect locked together two complete Roman <~rchitectural motifs-th e temple
front ;:md the triumphal arch. The combination was already a feature of classical architecture. Many Roman triumphal arches incorporated a pediment over the arcuated passageway and engaged columns, including the Augustan arch at Rimini ( FIG.
21-44), illustrated here for compa rison. Alberti 's concern for proportion led him to equa lize the facade's vertical and horizontal
~IANTEG NA,
21-44 Arch of Augustus, Rimini, Italy, 27 BCE .
-~~) sugge
a single huge hall (FIG. 21-42) with independent chapels branching off at right angles. This break with a Christian building tradition that had endured for a thousand years was extremely in fluential in later Renaissance and Baroque church planning.
PAINTING AWAY THE WALLS Like other princes, Ludovico
Gonzaga believed that an impressive palace was an important
visual expression of his authority. One of the most spectacular
rooms in Palazzo Ducale was the so-called Camera degli Sposi
(Room of the Newlyweds; FIG. 21-45), originally the Camera
Picta (Painted Room), decorated by ANDREA MANTEGNA (ea .
1431-1506) of Padua, near Venice. Taking almost nine years to
complete the extensive fresco program, Mantegna produced a series of images that aggrandize Ludovico Gonzaga and his family,
and reveal the activities and rhythm of courtly life. The scenes
depict vignettes that include Ludovico, his wife, his children,
courtiers, and attendants, among others; the particulars of each
scene are still a matter of scholarly debate. Standing in the Camera degli Sposi, surrounded by the spectacle and majesty of these
scenes, the viewer cannot help but be thoroughly impressed by
both the commanding presence and elevated tatus of the patron
and the dazzling artistic skills of Mantegna.
Mantegna performed a triumphant feat of pictorial illusionism, producing the first completely consistent illusionistic decOI·ation of an entire room. Using actual architectural elements, Mantegna painted away the room's walls in a manner that foretold later
Baroque decoration. It recalls the efforts of ltalian painters more
than 15 centuries earlier at Pornpeii and elsev,rhere to integrate
mural painting and actual architecture in frescoes of the so -called
Second Style of Roman painting (see FIGS. 10-15 and 10-16).
T1-1
_ PRIN C ELY
C _U RTS
605
ornamen tal vocabu1ary. Antique attire served as the model for the
soldiers' costumes.
Perspective also occupied Mantegna's attention. Indeed, he
seemed to set up for himself difficult problems in perspective for
the joy of solving them. Here, the observer views the scene from a
very low point, almost as if looking up out of a basement window
at the vast arch looming above. The lines of the building to the
right plunge down dramatically. Several significant de~iations
from true perspective are apparent, however, and estab!tsh that
Mantegna did not view the scientific organization of pictorial
space as an end in itself. Us ing artistic license, he ignored the third
vanishing point (seen from below, the buildings should ~onverge
toward the top). Disregarding perspectival facts, he preterred to
work toward a unified, cohesive composition whose pictorial elements relate to the picture frame. Mantegna partly compensated
for the lack of perspectival logic by inserting strong diagonals in
the right foreground (the banJ)er staff, for example).
21-47 ANDR E MANTEG A, Saint farnes Led to Martyrdom, Ovetari
Chapel, Church of the Er rnitani (largely destroyed, 1944 ), Padua,
Italy, ea. 1455. Fresco, 1 ' 9" wide.
EXAMINING CHRIST'S WOUNDS One of Mantegna's later
pai_ntings, Dead Christ (FIG. 21-48), is a work of o.v~rwhelmi~1g
power. At first glance, thi s painting seems to be a stnkmgly realist ic study in foreshortening. Careful scrutiny, however, reveals that
the artist reduced the size of the figure's feet, which, as he must
have known, would cover much of the body if properly represented. Thus, tempering naturalism w~ith artistic license, Mantegna presented both a harrowing study of a strongly fore~h~rt­
ened cadaver and an intensely poignant depiction of a btbhcal
tragedy. The painter's harsh, sharp line seems to cut the sur~ace as
if it were metal and conveys, by its grinding edge, the themes corrosive emotion. Remarkably, all the science of the 15th century
here serves the purpose of devotion.
21-48 ANDREA MANTEGNA,
Dead Christ, ea. 1501. Tempera
on canvas, 2' 2%" X 2' 7~".
Pinacoteca di Brera, Milan.
21-46 AND REA MANTEGNA, ceiling of the Camera degli Sposi (Room of the Newlyweds), Palazzo Ducale, Mantua, Italy, 1474. Fresco, 8' 9"
in diameter.
Mantegna's trompe l'oeil (French, "deceives the eye") design,
however, went far beyond anything preserved from ancient Italy.
The Renaissance painter's daring experimentalism led him to
complete the room's decoration with the first di sotto in s11 (from
below upwards) perspective of a ceiling (FIG . 21-46). Baroque
ceiling deco rators later broadly developed this technique. Inside
the Room of the Newlyweds, the viewer becomes the viewed as
figures look down into the room. The oculus is itself an "eve"
looking down. Cupids (the sons of Venus) , strongly foresh~rt­
ened, set the amorous mood as the painted spectators (who are
not identified) smile down on the scene. The peacock is an attribute of Juno, Jupiter's bride, who oversees la\·Vful marriages.
This tour de force of illusionism climaxes almost a century of experimel1tation with perspective.
6o6
Chapter 21
l) 'lH-(EN T
RY lTALIAN
f\
,T
A SAINT VIEWED FROM BELOW vVhereas the Go nzaga frescoes showcase Mantegna's mature style, his earlier frescoes in the
Ovetari Chapel in the Church of the Eremitani (largely de troyed
in \t\Torld War II) in Padua reveal Mantegna's early interest in illusionism and highlight the breadth of his Literary, archaeological,
and pictorial learning. Snint lames Led to Martyrdom (FI . 21-4~)
depicts the condemned saint stopping, even on the way to lus
own death, to bless a man who has rushed fro m the rowd and
kneels before him (while a Roman soldier restrains other from
coming forward). Yet narrative does not seem to have been Mantegna's primar y concern in this fresco. The painter strove fo r historical authenticity, much like the antiquarian schol ar of the
University of Padua. He excerpted the motifs (such as tho~ that
. -jl
appear on the barrel-vaulted triumphal arch) from th e c1asStL
Artists in northern Italy, not nly in Mantua but in Ferrara
and Venice as well, attempted to follow in Mantegna's footsteps.
His influence went even further, however, for he was also a great
engraver (the line in the Dead Christ certainly suggests engraving). His prints found their \·vay across the Alps to Germany,
where they influenced Albrecht Di.lrer (see FIGS. 23-4 to 23-8 and
lntro-8), a leading figure in 16th-century art.
Urbino
Urbino, southeast of Florence across the Appenines, was another
princely court; the patronage of Federico da Montefeltro
(1422 - 1482) accounted for its status as a center of Renaissance
art and culture. 1n fact, the humanist writer Paolo Cortese described Federico as one of the two greatest artistic patrons of the
15th century (the other was Cosimo de' Medici). Federico, like
Ludovico Gonzaga, was a well-known condottiere. So renowned
was Federico for his military skills that he was in demand by
popes and kings across Europe, and soldiers came from across the
continent to study with this military expert. One of the artists
who received several commissjons from Federico was PlERO
DELLA FRANCESCA (ea. 1420-1492). His art projected a mind cultivated by mathematics. Piero believed that the highest beauty
resides in forms that have the clarity and purity of geometric figures. Toward the end of his long career, Piero, a skilled geometrician, wrote the first theoretical treatise on systematic perspective,
after having practiced the art with supreme mastery for almost a
lifetime. His association with the architect Alberti at Ferrara and
at Rimini around 1450-1451 probably turned his attention fully
to perspective (a science in which Alberti was an int1uential pioneer) and helped determjne his later, characteristically architectonic, compositions. This approach appealed to Federico, a patron fascinated by architectural space and its depiction. Observers
can say fairly that Piero established his compositions almost entirely by his sense of the exact and lucid structures defined by
mathematics.
21-49 PI ERO DELLA
6' 4"x ll' 8~ ".
6o8
FRAN C ES CA,
Chapter 21
RY ITAL.IA N
r\wr
Oil on panel, 8' 2" x 5 ' 7". Pinacoteca di Brera,
Milan.
A PIOUS PATRON Piero deployed all his skills for the paintings
commissioned by Fcdcrico da Montefeltro. One of thos works i
Enthroned Madonna and Saints Adored by Federico da M01zte[eltro,
also called the Brera Altarpiece (FIG. 21-50 ). The clarity of Piero's
Fi11di11g of the True Cross and Proving of the Tme Cross, San Francesco, Arezzo, Italy, ea. 1455. Fresco,
l'jTH - CEN T
Pt E RO DEL LA FRA CES C A, Enthroned
Madonna nncl Soints Adored by Federico da
Montefeltro (Brera Altarpiece), ea. 1472 - 1474.
21-50
A LEGENDARY FRESCO STYLE Piero produ ced many 11
.
1emorable works before he came to the attention of Federico da Mo
feltro. One of these earlier works is the fresco cycle in the ap nte.
se of
the church of San Francesco m Arezzo, southeast of Fl ren.ce on
th~ Arno. _Painted bet.,veen 1~52 and 1456, the cycle represents
10
ep1s?des. from th~ legend of the True Cross (the cross on which
Chnst d1ed) and 1s based on a 13th-century popularization of th
Scriptures, the Golden Legend, by Jacobus de Voragine. In the cli~
mactic scene of Piero's Arezzo cycle, the Finding of
· th e True cross
and Proving of the True Cross (FIG. 21-49) , Saint Helena, mother of
C?nstantine, accompanied by her retinue, oversees the unearthing
of the buried crosses (at left), and vvitnesses (at right) how the True
Cross miraculously restores a dead man (the nude figu re) to li~e.
The architectural background organizes and controls the grouping of the figures; its medallions, arches, and rectangular panels are
the two-dimensional counterparts of the ovoid, cyl indrical, and
cubic forms placed in front of it. The careful delineation of architecture suggests an architect's vision, certainly that of a man entirely familiar with compass and straightedge. As the architectonic
nature of the abstract shapes controls the grouping, so too does it
impart a mood of solemn stillness to the figures.
Piero's work shows, in addition, an unt1agging int rest in the
properties of light and calor. In his effort to make the clearest
possible distinction between forms , he flooded his pictures with
light, imparting a silver-blue tonality. To avoid heavy shadows, he
illuminated the dark sides of his forms with reflect d light. By
moving the darkest tones of his modeling toward the centers of
his volumes, he separated them from their backgrounds. Because
of this technique, Piero's paintings lack some of Masaccio's relieflike qualities but gain in spatial clarity, as each shape forms an independent unit surrounded by an atmospheric envelope and
movable to any desired position, like a figure on a chess oard.
earl ier works is in full view here, as Federico, clad in armor, kneels
piously at the Virgin's feet. Directly behind him stands Saint John
the Evangelist, hi~ patron aint. Where the viewer would expect to
see his wife, Battista Sforza (on the lower left, as a mirror image to
Federico), no figure is present. Battista had died in 1472, shortly
before Federico comm issioned this painting. Thus, her absence
clearly announce his loss. Piero further called attention to it by
depicting Sain t John the Baptist, Battista's patron saint, at the far
left
· h egg th at hangs suspended trom
. · Th
. e o tnc
a shell over the
V•rgm's head \ as a common presence
.
over altars dedicated to
Mary. The figure appear in an illusionistically painted coffered
barret vault •h · 1
, \~ 1c 1 may have reflected the actual arc h.1tecture o f"
.
t h e pa mt' ' ·
mg mten ded location the church of San Bernadino
degli Zoc- 1 ·
'
c ant1 near Urbin . If such
wer the case, it would have
enhanced
th
"11
.
.
e
I US1on, and the viewer would be compelled to be.
Ileve m F
,
•
e enco pre ence before the Virgin, Christ Child, and
Sau1t Th· p·
.
_
· at 1ero depJCt d Federico in profile was undoubtedly a
mnce io
h
.
n. The right side of Federico's face had
be en bad!n, .to . t e patro
.
.
11lade h. ) InJured 1 a tournament, and the resulting detonmty
we k ~m reluctant to how that side of his face. The number of
)r ( m 1 r
refl
, LIL mg other portraits ) that Piero executed for Federico
ects h 1
.
.
.
,
.
ucce - 111 accommodatmg h1s patrons w1shes.
TURMOIL AT THE END
OF THE CENTURY
In the 1490s, Florence undenvent a political, cultural, and religious upheaval. Florentine artists and their fellow citizens responded then not only to humanist ideas but also to the incursion
of French armies and especiaay to the preaching of the Dominican monk Girolamo Savonarola, the reforming priest -dictator
who denounced the paganism of the Medici and their artists,
philosophers, and poets. Savonarola exhorted the people of Florence to repent their sins, and, when Lorenzo de' Medici died in
1492 and the Medici fled, he prophesied the downfall of the city
and of Italy and ass um ed absolute control of the state. Together
number of citizens, Savonarola beEeved that the
with a laroe
0
Medici's political, social, and religious power had corrupted Florence and had invited the scourge of foreign invasion. Savonarola
denounced humanism and encouraged "bonfires of the vanities''
for citizens to burn their classical texts, scienbfic treatises, and
philosophical publications. Modern scholars still debate the s ~ig­
nificance of Savonarola's brief span of power. Apologists for thl·
undoubtedly sincere monk deny that his actions played a rol e in
TU !UVLOII. AT TI-LE E N D OF "!"H E C EY I' Ul{ Y
609
CHRONOLOGICAL OVERVIEW
1420 to 1500
GIANGALEAZZO VtSCONTl DIES; MtUINESE ARMIES WITHDRAW
FROM TuscANY, 1402
KING l.ADISLAUS OF NAPLES DIES, 1414
END OF GREAT SCHISM IN CATHOLIC CHURCH, 1417
1425
1430
BATILE oF SAN RoMANO, 1432
MARSILIO FICINO, NEOPUITONIC PHILOSOPHER,
21-51
LucA SIGNORELLI,
Damned Cast into Hell, San Brizio Chapel, Orvieto Cathedral, Orvieto, Italy,
1433-1499
l4t,Jt,J - 1504. Fresco, approx. 23' wide.
1440
the decline of Florentinc culture at the end of the 15th century.
But he did condemn humanism as heretical nonsense, and his
banishing of the Medici, Tornabuoni, and other wealthy families
from Plorence deprived local artists of some of their major patrons. Certainly, the puritanical spirit that moved Savonarola
must have dampened considerably the neopagan enthusiasm of
the Florentine Early Renaissance.
A VISION OF THE DAMNED Outside Florence, the fiery passion of the sermons of Savonarola found its pictorial equal in the
work of the Umbrian painter LucA SIGNORELLT (ea. 1445-1523).
The artist further developed Antonio Pollaiuolo's interest in the
depiction of muscular bodies in violent action i11 a wide variety of
poses and foreshortenings. In the San Brizio Chapel in Orvieto
Cathedral, Signorelli's painted scenes depicting the end of the
world include Damned Cast into Hell (FIG. 21-51 ). Few figure
compositions of the 15th ce ntury have the same awesome psychic
impact. Saint Michael and the hosts of Heaven hurl the damned
into Hell, where, in a dense, writhing mass, they are vigorously
tortured by demons. The horrible consequences of a sinful life
had not been so graphically depicted since Gislebertus carved his
vision of th e Last Jud gmen t in the w·est tympanum of SaintLazare at Autun (see FIGS. 17-25 and Intro-6) aro und 11 30. The
figures-nude, lean , and muscular-assum e everv conceivable
posture of anguish. Signorelli's skill at fores hortenir;g the human
figure was one with his mastery of its action, and, although each
figure is clearly a study from a model, he fit his theme to the
610
Chapter 2 1
l)Tlt - CENT U RY ITALt ,\ N
Arn
figures in an entirely convincing manner. Terror and rage pass like
storms through the wrenched and twisted bodies. The fiends,
their hair flaming and their bodies the color of putrefyi ng flesh,
lunge at their victims in ferocious frenzy.
INVENTION OF MOVABLE METAL TYPE
BY joHANN GuTENBERG, CA.
LORENZO DE' MEDIC!,
1445
1449 - 1492
CoNQUEST oF CoNSTANTINOPLE BY TuRKS,
1453
CoNCLUSION
Expanding interest in humanism provided a fou ndation for
much of the art produced in 15th-century Italy. The pron ounced
fascination with perspectival systems, along with the pop ularit.y
of subjects derived from classical history and mythology, are evidence of the influence of humanism. Another factor in the development of 15th-century Italian art was the continu ing political
instability, which facilitated the consolidation of po wer b.y
princely courts (s uch as those in Urbino and JVlantua ) and dominant families (such as the Medici). Such powerful ind ividua ls and
familie saw the mselves not just as pal itical an d econ mic leader
but as cultural ones as well. For this reason, art patr nage was a_
priority for many of them, and their commissions- in ter ms ot
quantity, scale, choice of subject and art ist, and, oft n visi b ilit~·­
affectcd the direction that art took in Italv. The f1ourishin, ot art
durina the 15th cen turv continued the " r~b irth" of Italian culture
begun°in the previous ~entury, and the a rtworks prod uced served
as important m odels for Leonardo, Mi chelange\o, RaphaeL and
th e other masters of the 16th century.
Antonio Pollaiuolo, Herwles
and Antaeus,
ea. 1475
1475
q8o
MEDIC! EXPELLED FROM FLORENCE,
1494
GtROUIMO SAVONAROUI ASSUMES POWER ,
1496 ;
IS BURNED AT STAI<E, 1498
FRANCE CAPTURES MIUIN ,
1499
Sandro Botticelli, Bi,-th ofVenus,
ea. 1482
1)00