Art history
Summery/notes
two major traditions that emerged in its post-classical history: the ‘academic tradition’ with its
strongholds in Tuscany and Rome, and the alternative one, which flourished in Venice and in
the regions north of the Alps. Whereas the former tradition was wedded with the term disegno,
literally meaning ‘drawing’, but indicating an array of concepts, such as clarity of contour,
proportion, and perspective, the latter one was described through the Italian word colore,
meaning both ‘color’ and ‘paint’. It focused on convincing depiction of materials and developed
techniques employed to create illusionistic representations of objects and light, and allegedly
gave birth to paintings centered on lifelike images of everyday life.
To do:
Chapter 2: Art for eternity: Egypt
Pyramids, 2560 BC
- Geometry
- Cut stone accurate
- How to plan
- Method to construct
- Organize labor
Tomb
Hieroglyphics
Paints by pigments mixing with binders, carving standing out.
Portrait head, had to be preserved. ‘He-who keeps alive’. Art seen as magic, practical use.
Art not created to be seen, everything shown from most characteristic side.
Purpose to preserve as much information for the afterlife.
 Main rules:
Nebamun hunting, were manipulating colors, to produce as much information as possible. The
more important in society, the bigger you were drawn. Males drawn with more skin coloration.
Brief period of time: 1340: Rigid form of art, stiff became something more relaxed. Akhnaten
with sun god as sun disc with hands. Scandalized traditional rules of art, more visually correct.
Rules and queen are the same size, king Tutankhamun. After they died, back to traditional view.
Experiment with pottery and glazing,
Different civilizations had different purposes for the art, propaganda about victories. To tell a
story, preserve and.
What was its purpose?
What rules guided artwork?
How was good artwork distinguished?
What kinds of materials and how were they prepared?
How were the people who created it regarded?  trades people, not intellectual.
Chapter 3: the great awakening
One of earliest pieces: pottery, stiff people, similar to Egyptian art. Sculptures.
Not much later a different style, relaxer, seen as a person with their own eye. Not the same
religion, not the need to show all information.
‘Warrior’s leave taking’ important: foot shown end on, foreshortening
Greeks were using their eyes.
Parthenon: temple, eye pleasing, columns close together, stairs, frieze, triangular roof.
Started looking at human body, models, drapery. More convincing.
Bronze was melted down to make weapons etc. In darker times. Or destroyed by Christian. Eyes
were stones, bronze is hard to work with  mold and melted bronze.
Discobolos: muscles and ribs captured, a lot of discussion. Had to work with limitations of
stone, weighs a lot, still looked natural. Skills lost for almost two thousand scenes until
renaissance.
Emotions and energy is seen. Things were loosening up, curves echoing, symmetry,
composition.
Chapter 4: The realm of beuty
Doric temple: difference in capitol, top of columns.
Polychrome decoration with colors.
Gum Arabic, worn off.
Parts of temples:
Pediment; are for tympanum
Tympanum: decoration
Metopes
Triglyphs
Crepidoma: steps
Stylobate
Column:
Capital  abacus, echinus, necking
Shaft
Entablature: Cornice
Frieze  triglyph, metope
Architrave
Sima
Ionic column:
Instead of flat pad of capitol, in Doric, is scroll work  bit fancier.
Corinthian: very flourished capitol
Doric: flat capitol
Caryatid: columns as women statues
Telemon: columns as male statues
Goddess of victory: drapery, hint of shape of leg, great deal of artistry.
Head of Alexander the great: expression always withdrawn, to not distort.
Hellenistic period: art became dramatic  Laocoon.
Platonic solids, perfect solids, regular polygons, polyhedral
(Shapes like circles, triangles, hexagons etc. were explored. The gods created them to be
solved, to favor them, is to solve the riddles for them.
Perfect solids: Tetrahedron, cube, octahedron, dodecahedron, icosahedron
- Every face is identical
- All corner the same
- Every angle identical
Associate with the four elements that made up the world
- Fire
- Air
- Earth
- Water
- .. heavens)
Chapter 5: world conquerors
Same requirements as Egyptians had for pyramids.
The arch solved the tension problem, romans perfected it  colosseum
Gothic era made it pointed.
Pantheon: hole is oculus. Self-supporting.
Realistic bust, not very idealistic. Unlike the Greek.
Trojan’s column, to preserve the victories.
Religious art to tell the stories, a lot of illiterate people.
Christ with Peter and Paul: Jesus stands on atlas, one religion replacing another.
Jesus tends to be depicted as someone themselves, or a ruler. So, his image changed.
Byzantine, eastern roman empire, more Greece influence. People looking at you, control, god is
watching and people close to them know.
Rome was falling, artistry went with it.
Encaustic: portrait of deceased for mummy. Prepared for death. Dyes, shell exploited.
Purple is a royal color.
Chapter 6: A parting of ways
Rome:
Emperors are deities: worshipped
Christian persecution: 60-300 AD
Rome becomes Christian: 312 CE, churches are meeting halls (basilica)
Dark ages 500-1400 CE: learning and civilization was lost because of the disruptions and
invasions.
Rome: simple images are OK to tell a religious story.
Byzantium (Constantinople, Istanbul): images are holy, mystical reflections or a supernatural
world.  Greece influence, people prominent in the arts,
Iconoclasts (east): no images of a religious nature or tolerated. Worries that images would be
seen as deities themselves.
Artistry should not become something as itself; it was simply functional to describe a story.
Frowned upon.
Chapter 8: western art in the melting pot, Europe sixth to eleventh century
After fall of the Roman empire (invasion from all around) and early Christian era, is the Dark
age: got its name partly to convey that the people who lived during these centuries of
migrations, wars and upheavals were themselves plunged in darkness and had little to no
knowledge to guide them, but also to imply that we ourselves know rather little about these
confused and confusing centuries. 500-1000 AD. These years did not see one clear style
emerge, but rather the conflict of a great number of styles, that only by the end began to fuse.
Some tried to appreciate and keep the ancient art, but barbarians and war made this difficult.
Although they also had skilled craftsmen  magic, to scare spirits or keep them close
Humans were more strange patterns of human forms.
Clash between classical tradition and native artist, knowledge not lost. Original was not the
goal, but the decoration needed to be retelling.
Emergence of a medieval style, Egyptians drew what they knew, Greeks what they saw, Middle
Ages expressed in a picture how they felt. Religious art had a goal to portray the emotions of
the divine, not to perfect the proportions etc. Religious art was better kept, castles were
destroyed and personal art got out of fashion and was thrown away.
Lot of pattern work, variation was not appreciated. Still some development (background,
emotion). Plain background, gold begin central figure, shape/position was not accurate and that
didn’t matter.
Chapter 9: The church militant
Norman style in England/Romanesque style on Continent: no complete buildings survived the
Saxon period, but Normans who landed in England developed a style of building. Church was
often only stone building in a town.
Dark Ages did not forget the Roman building structures, ground-plan usually the same  some
additions (to look like a cross, transept). General impression is, however, very different.
Norman churches have arches on massive piers, impression of massive strength. Few
decorations, few windows. Idea of church militant: on earth is the task to fight the powers of
darkness till the hour of triumph dawns on doomsday.
One problem: stone roof, most Roman calculations were lost. 11th and 12th century:
experiments  simplest solution was to bridge the distance like a bridge. But that needed huge
masses of stone for these tunnel-vaults.
Different method: spanning arches/ribs crosswise and filling the squares with lighter material.
France began to ‘decorate’ churches, but still everything had a specific function.
Lion: St marc
Angel: St Matthew
Ox: St luke
Eagle; St John
Sculptures more powerful than the priests words.
Chapter 10: The church Triumphant, crusades and cathedrals
Gothic:
- pointed arc: can go higher than the Romanesque buildings. Stained glass could not
support the roof, used to picture what heaven might look like. Buttresses help support.
- curtain walls
Religious art gradually regains realism and artistry. Statuary again placed in and on churches.
Development of more realism, but still a lot of patterns. Makes it more appealing.
A lot of scenes in the same work of art.
Standard pattern book, people wanted something they have seen before.  standard altar
depiction of Mary and Christ. Background starts to change, atmospheric perspective to create a
more realistic painting. Sense of dept.
Typical cathedral layout:
- Transept: side parts (cross)
- Side chapels at the top, funded by families, structure support.
- Apse
Vaulting
Tracery
Clerestory
Triforium
Arcade  capital, pier
Chapter 11: courtiers and burghers
End of crusades, cathedral building. Statuary again used, ‘decorated’ late Gothic style. New
architecture in Florence. New techniques to create realism in visual objects: detail +
perspective.
Sketching, looking at real life, studies. No pattern, fine line drawings to recreate.
Chapter 12: the conquest of reality
End of era cathedral buildings
Perspective and architectural innovations by Brunelleschi, new techniques to create realism, oil
painting, pigments, dyeing and chemicals used in cloth processing.
Linear perspective
Combining roman and Greek art with new, gothic style.
Holy trinity, plague, death was close. Perspective to make it seem distant. Vanishing point.
Sculpture taking a new look, expression. Something related to work field of commissioner,
more drama.
Distinctive persons, more realistic.
Jan van Eyck, not just egg yolk but oil to bind  slow drying to have more time to work with it.
Oil paper for window, marble.
Not everything idealized.
Black for shade, green put over because oil was transparent.
Oil paint to show how detailed painting can be, what can be done by having more time to work
the material.
To make bible more real for people, relatable to feel closer.
Chapter 13: Tradition and innovation I: The later fifteenth century in Italy
Art not only used to tell sacred story, but to see fragment of the real world. Break with Middle
Ages: spirit of adventure.
Until 1400: Gothic style as international style, ideas of chivalry: noblemen loyalty to their king.
This changed towards the end of the middle ages, when cities became more important than the
castles  craftsmen organized into guilds. Watch over rights, safe market and made cities
beautiful. Downside: difficult for foreign artist to get employed.
Because of growth of cities, art broke up into a number of different schools. Where boys work
for the master from an early age, firstly doing small tasks, then helping in unimportant painting
and gradually doing more. To perfection of imitating the master: the schools of painting
developed an individuality of its own because of the handed down skills.
Artists try to be revolutionary but the commissions remained mostly unchanged. Compromise
between traditional house and classical forms (Alberti). Solution: He translated a Gothic design
into classical forms by smoothing out the barbaric pointed arch and using elements of the
classical order in a traditional context. Donatello’s work is always new, Ghiberti’s less startling
at first sight.
Van Eyck in the north added more detail from observation and copying the surfaces of things.
Uccello tried to construct a convincing stage with solid and real figures, but has not yet
discovered light and shade. Public probably liked balance between new and old.
Treatment of light, medieval artists had taken hardly any notice of light.
Artists in Florence became aware of the problems created by inventing perspective etc.
Medieval artist was unaware of draught Manship rules and could create/arrange a picture
however they liked to fit in the architecture or to be seen from afar (create perfect pattern).
Botticelli strove for a solution: took liberties with nature in order to achieve a graceful outline
to add to the beauty and harmony. They enhance the impression of an infinitely tender and
delicate being.
Official end of the middle age, turning points such as Giotto (1300) and Brunelleschi (1400). And
gradual change. Function of art as to add to the beauty and grace of life, has never been
forgotten and got more important during Italian renaissance.
Chapter 14: Tradition and innovation II: The fifteenth century in the North
Brunelleschi’s generation in Florence had separated Italian development from art in the rest of
Europe, difference most in architecture, Brunelleschi put an end to Gothic style which took a
century for other countries to follow.
But taste changed a lot, graceful lacework  Decorated style  simpler.
French Gothic = Flamboyant style, designers covered whole buildings with decorations.
Perpendicular: last phase of Gothic style, name to convey the character of later fourteenth and
fifteenth century buildings in England because decoration straight lines are more frequent than
the curves of earlier decorated tracery.
Development of paintings/sculptures developed to a certain extant parallel. Art continued to be
matter of custom and usage instead of science. Perspective and anatomy did not trouble the
artists (still medieval artists). Everyday life became more important to represent, like Egyptians
attempted. Not Ideal harmony.
The invention of printing: had a great amount of influence, leaflets with pictures of pilgrims.
Method: everything to not print curved out of the wood, cover with ink and press. = woodcut.
 block books. Disadvantage because crude, detail and true talent could not be showed. So
instead of wood, copper: negative of woodcut, lines you carve will hold ink. Carve what you
want seen, dip in ink, clean the shallow copper parts, lines remain inked and press onto paper.
More detail possible,
Problems of composition for the printed page and for altar picture are similar, space and
faithful imitation must not be allowed to destroy the balance of the composition.
Art of engraving and woodcut spread across Europe, artists learn from each other and it
ensured the triumph of the Italian renaissance in the rest of Europe. End to medieval art of the
North and only greatest masters could overcome this crisis.
Chapter 15: harmony attained
Genius cannot be explained, but there are reasons why the High Renaissance was full of it.
- Pride of cities, incentive for masters to outdo each other. North much less
independence.
- Period of great discoveries: math for perspectives and anatomy for bodies.
- Artists became masters in their own right, but still a lot of social snobbery against
craftsmen. Love of fame on the part of the patrons helped the artists to break this
down.
People were in need of honor and prestige  asked artists to paint beautiful and grand things
for earthly existence. Masters could dictate their terms, to grant a favor by commissioning.
Artist was free.
 architecture: in no other field was the conflict between requirements and ideals more
apparent. They did need to know knowledge of classical scholar.
They wanted to build for beauty, not for needed buildings.
Pope Julius II (1506) built St. Peter new by Bramante. The Tempietto, not finished because crisis
and reformation. Balance between admiration, ambition and overruling traditions.
Leonardo da Vinci, Verrocchio’s was his master, made monument to Bartolommeo.
He was a genius, with thousands of notebooks and excelling in almost every field. He explored
the visible world, not interested in the scholars. He investigated corpses, growth of children and
wombs, laws of currents and waves, analyzing flight of birds and insects etc.
Used in the army, during peace for entertainment, left handed and in mirror writing.
His ambition to show that painting was a Liberal Art as well.
The last supper not as a quiet scene, but as a dramatic and excited. Judas not isolated but looks
alone, christ remains calm. However, the painting itself does not look chaotic, order in the
variety,
Mona Lisa: she looks alive, mind of her own, painter must leave the beholder something to
guess.  sfumato: the blurred outline and mellowed colours that allow one form to merge with
another and always leave something to our imagination.
Features of expression in corners of the mouth and corners of the eyes. Leonardo has left these
indistinct by letting them merge into a soft shadow. Left and right not symmetrical, left looks
taller.
Michelangelo Buonarroti in workshop of Domenico Ghirlandaio, could retell stories in the time
and pleasant paintings. Michelangelo had a different view on art, he studied the great masters
of the past and mastered the anatomy of the body. City of Florence asked him and Leonardo to
both paint an episode of Florence history In the council chamber  never finished. Leonardo to
Milan and Michelangelo was asked to erect a tomb for Pope Julius II.
He spent six months looking for the right stones, but plan got canceled for a new St. Peters. So
Michelangelo left Rome for Florence in anger, Pope started to negotiate to get him back. 
commissioned to paint ceiling of the Sistine chapel but Michelangelo actually did not want to
and saw himself as a sculptor, not a painter. Eventually he locked himself up in the chapel and
started. Physically and mentally genius.
Sistine chapel: high on the wall we see the traditional stories of Moses and Christ.
5 vaults between windows show images of the Old testament prophets who spoke to the Jews
of the coming Messiah, with images of Sibyls. On the ceiling the creation of Adam and Noah.
Between this numerous figures, ancestors of Christ as they are enumerated in the Bible.
Creation of Adam to the dying slave  statues of prisoners. Figures laying hidden inside the
block, he just needed to get them out. But he could never finish it, fame became difficult and he
became bitter. He was proud of his independence, did not want payment for last great work:
the crowning cupola of St. Peter’s.
Raffaello Santi, born in Urbino, master was Perugino  harmonious painter, gave up a bit of
accuracy for it. Not intimidated by Leonardo and Michelangelo. Madonna del Granduca:
classical painting, artistic wisdom as if it could not have been different.
Commissioned to paint the Stanze (rooms) in the Vatican. Individual figures lose their most
important function: being part of the design.
The nymph Galatea: art of composition, every figure corresponds and counter acts another. All
movements reflected and harmonized in the figure of Galatea herself.
Ideal beauty used to grow out of schematic forms in nature, now it was reversed, artists tried to
modify nature to the idea of beauty they had formed. To idealize the models. Raphael got on
well with everyone and was made companion of the papal court.
Chapter 16: Light and colour
Venice accepted the changes of the Renaissance later, but their buildings came closest to the
great Hellenistic period  Library of San Marco. Brilliant light of Venice, reflected by lagoons,
taught artists to use color more.
Middle Ages: painters used color but not real.
Florence: more interested in drawing, did use color to unify patterns but perspective and
composition was preferred.
Venice: did not look at colors as ‘additional’. Light.
Cinquecento masters: Bellini, Verrocchip, Ghirlandaio, Pergugino, Giorgione and Titian
Giorgione: revolutionary results, 5 painting with certainty painted by him. Tempest: not sure
what scene, a lot of mystery. But the landscape, for the first time, is not just a background but a
subject of the painting. Thinking of nature, not just drawing.
Titian finished this and earned fame  portraits, light, composition
Correggio continued: discovery that color and light can be used to balance forms and to direct
our eyes along certain lines. Painted ceilings and cupolas of churches: ceiling opened into
heaven.
Vasari: Michelangelo, Raphael, Giorgione, titian
PowerPoints:
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Stone Age:
Paleolithic (750000 BC – 10000 BC)
Mesolithic
Neolithic
Bronze Age
Iron Age
The pigments and tools
• The ochres were burned to obtain cooler or darker shades
• Black was obtained from manganese or charcoal
• Red from haematite
• Pigments were afterwards mixed with water and/or urine
• Brushes were made of hair and bristle, and ‘sponges’ from fur
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Besides the body, if the likeness of the king was also preserved, it was doubly sure that
he would continue to exist forever
King’s head would be chiseled out of hard and imperishable granite
This sculpture would be put into the tomb and help the soul of the deceased to keep
alive in and through the image
‘He-who-keeps-alive’
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What/Who else was let into the king’s tomb?
Why?
What can we say about the Egyptian art in general?
How did they represent Nature?
How did they represent the human figure? From most characteristic point of view.
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 Everything had to be represented from its most characteristic side:
• The head was drawn sideways
• A full-face eye was planted into the side view of the face
• The top half of the body was represented from the front, whereas the arms were
rendered sideways
• The feet are both seen from the inside
A Style/The Egyptian Style:
• A law, which all creations of people seem to obey
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The rules which governed all Egyptian art gave every individual work the effect of poise
and austere harmony
The Egyptian style comprised a set of very strict rules which every artist should master
from his earliest youth
No one wanted anything different, let alone “original”
It was elsewhere that Art began to change irreversibly:
• The “Great Awakening” started in Greece
• The main center was on the island of Crete, whose kings were sufficiently rich and
powerful to send their embassies to Egypt
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5/09
The great revolution of Greek art, the discovery of natural forms and of foreshortening,
happened at the time when science an philosophy first awoke among human beings
The artists, however, were not seen as intellectuals back in the days
Why not?
From the sixth century before Christ date three processes of great importance in the
development of sculpture:
1. The art of casting in bronze
2. The chiseling of marble
3. The inlaying of gold and ivory on wood (chryselephantine work)
Kouroi and Korai
• Made to be dedicated in sanctuaries
• Markers over graves
Polykleitos, Doryphoros, 5th c. BC
• Some time in the second century AD, Galen wrote about the Doryphoros as the perfect
visual expression of the Greeks' search for harmony and beauty, which is rendered in
the perfectly proportioned sculpted male nude:
• Beauty consists in the proportions, not of the elements, but of the parts, that is to say, of
finger to finger, and of all the fingers to the palm and the wrists, and of these to the
forearm, and of the forearm to the upper arm, and of all the other parts to each other,
as they are set forth in the Canon of Polykleitos.
Polykleitos, Diadumenos, 5th c. BC
• Polykleitos was much praised by the Romans Quintilian and Cicero, who nevertheless,
held that though he surpassed the beauty of man in nature, yet he did not approach the
beauty of the gods.
• It was reserved for Pheidias to portray the highest conceptions of divinity of which the
Greek mind was capable in his statues of Athene in the Parthenon at Athens, and the
Zeus of Olympus.
The Realm of Beauty
 The golden age of Greek art
 Center: Athens
Pericles (495 – 429 BC)
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"His physical features were almost perfect, the only exception being his head, which was
rather long and out of proportion. For this reason almost all his portraits show him
wearing a helmet, since the artists apparently did not wish to taunt him with this
deformity." Plutarch, Pericles (III.2)
The Parthenon
• When work began on the Parthenon in 447 BC, the Athenian Empire was at the height
of its power. Work on the temple continued until 432
• the Parthenon represents the tangible and visible efflorescence of Athenian imperial
power, unencumbered by the depradations of the Peloponnesian War
• Likewise, it symbolizes the power and influence of the Athenian politician, Pericles, who
championed its construction.
• The Parthenon is a Doric peripteral temple
• It consists of a rectangular floor plan with a series of low steps on every side, and a
colonnade (8 x 17) of Doric columns extending around the periphery of the entire
structure
• Each entrance has an additional six columns in front of it
• The larger of the two interior rooms, the naos, housed the cult statue
• The smaller room – the opisthodomos – was used as a treasury
The orders
• this means that temples of the Doric order not only have this type of column, but also
have a certain structure at the upper levels
• the Doric order is characterized by the series of triglyphs and metopes on the
entablature
• each metope was occupied by a panel of relief sculpture
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The Parthenon combines elements of the Doric and Ionic orders
It is a Doric peripteral temple, but it features a continuous sculpted frieze borrowed
from the Ionic order
It also has four Ionic columns supporting the roof of the opisthodomos
The metopes of the Parthenon all represented various instances of the struggle between the
forces of order and justice against those of chaos:
• On the west side, the mythical battle against the Amazons (amazonomachia)
• On the south, the battle between the Lapiths and the Centaurs (centauromachia)
• On the east, the battle between the gods and the giants (gigantomachia)
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on the north, the Greeks versus the Trojans
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These relief sculptures, larger than those of the metopes, occupied the triangular space
above the triglyphs and metopes
Those at the west end of the temple depicted the contest between Poseidon and
Athena for the right to be the patron deity of Athens
The eastern pedimental group showed the birth of Athena from Zeus' head. The
pedimental sculpture suffered badly when the Parthenon was hit by a Venetian shell in
1687 and the powder magazine inside exploded
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Pediment sculpture
Athena
Myron, Diskobolos, 5th c. BC
Pliny writes
• Myron's works were numerosior than those of Polycleitus and "more diligent“
• This means that they were considered more harmonious in proportions (numeri) and at
the same time more convincing in their realism: diligentia connoted "attentive care to
fine points", a quality that, in moderation, was characteristic of the best works of art,
according to critics in Antiquity
Hellenistic Period/ Alexander the Great
When Egypt conquered Kush, they identified the chief deity of the Kushites as Amun.
This Kush deity was depicted as ram-headed, more specifically a woolly ram with
curved horns —so Amun became associated with the ram: indeed, due to the aged appearance
of the Kush ram deity.
Three most important 4th c. BC sculptors
 Scopas
 Praxiteles
 Lyssipos
Scopas, Ares Ludovisi, 4th c. BC
Praxiteles, Hermes, 4th c. BC
Pausanias informs us, that Hermes is depicted carrying the infant Dionysos…
Lyssipos, Apoxiomenos, 4th c. BC
Pliny informs us that Lyssipos made 1500 statues in bronze….
Lyssipos, Hermes of Atalante, 4th c. BC
The Altar of Pergamon, 2nd c. BC
• Gigantomachia / Outside
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The life of Telephus, legendary founder of Pergamon born to Hercules and Auge, a
daughter of Tegaean king Aleus / inner court walls frieze
Laocoön and his sons, 2th c. BC
12/09
History:
• The Republican Period: 509 BC – 44 BC
• The First Empire: 44 BC – 14 AD
• Julio-Claudian Emperors: 14 AD – 68 AD
• Flavians: 69 – 96 AD
• Trajan and Hadrian 98 - 138
• Antonines
• The 3rd century crisis
• Late Empire and the Tetrarchies
The republican period
• Begins in 509 BC after the expulsion of the last of the Etruscan kings
• The Republic was controlled by the Senate, which was an assembly of 300-900 elders
dominated by the upper-class families
• Rome's military power strengthened throughout the 5th and 4th centuries BC and by
270 BC they commanded the entire peninsula
• 264 BC brought the beginning of the three Punic Wars fought against Carthage over
control of the western Mediterranean. These resulted in victories for Rome which
granted them access to the wealth of Greece, Egypt, and Asia Minor
• Greek art, especially, began to influence the tastes of the Romans because it was
brought back in such large quantities. The Generals brandished their plunder during
triumphal processions through the city and senators and wealthy Romans displayed
works of art to show their status and to promote themselves
• Artistic concepts traveled from Greece to Rome
• Do you know of any Greek monument in Italy? Temple of Neptun/Poseidon
The first empire: 44 BC – 14 AD
• the growing struggles between the classes began to weaken the Senate. This loss of
power brought about a series of civil wars
• Julius Caesar eventually prevailed when in 49 BC he rode into Italy with his army against
the orders of the Senate.
• In 44 BC he declared himself dictator for life, but was murdered by a crew of strict
republicans on the Ides of March 44 BC
• Caesar's heir, his grand-nephew Octavian, and Marc Antony initially joined sides to
avenge his death, soon to turn against each other
• Octavian eventually triumphed, was given the honorific title 'Augustus' in 27 BC and
ruled Rome for the next 40 years
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While he claimed to have restored the Republic, Augustus held many important
administrative and religious positions simultaneously and so, in fact, became the first
emperor
He united the Empire through his use of the arts as a form of self-promotion and to
promote the themes of his administration, such as peace, allegiance to Rome, and
respect for tradition
After his death, he was declared a god
Julius Ceasar
Octavian Augustus
Ara Pacis/The altar of peace
• This 'altar of peace' was erected in the Campus Martius, a floodplain of the Tiber river
and the site of the altar of Mars
• It was founded by the Senate in 13 BC in honor of Augustus' safe return from his
campaigns in Spain and Gaul and dedicated in 9 BC
• Both the foundation and the dedication of the Ara Pacis were celebrated annually in a
procession to the altar and a sacrifice
• The Ara Pacis consisted of a raised sacrificial altar surrounded by walls with two
doorways along an east-to-west axis.
• The main entrance was on the west side from the Campus Martius.
Reliefs
• Both the interior and exterior walls are decorated with reliefs
• The long friezes on the exterior north and south walls depict the sacrificial procession,
complete with individual portraits of Augustus and his dignitaries
• The reliefs show a historical event – the actual founding of the altar after Augustus'
return to Rome – that nevertheless recurs every year
• The relief program gives mythic qualities to the historical event through the placement
of the 4 reliefs on the east and west exterior walls
Aeneas sacrificing to Penates, West wall
• In this relief a fatherly Aeneas makes an offering at a rustic altar. Behind, the incomplete
figure is probably his son Ascanius while before him are two attendants to the ritual,
one with a bowl and jug, the other leading a sacrificial sow
• The temple in the upper left represents the Penates, the household gods of the Trojans,
saved from the fires of Troy
Tellus, East wall
Pax Romana / Pax Augusta
• These four reliefs, like the one scholars believe to portray Tellus, the earth, are
analogies which provide a context for the commemorated event
• The Tellus panel describes the peace that the Julian line was able to establish for the
people of Rome through the images of fertility and balance seen through the mother
figure as well as the two children in her lap and the two maidens that flank her
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These two women could be seen as personifications of the sea wind and the land
wind. The sea wind, on the right, shows Rome's, and thus Augustus', power over the
Mediterranean, while the land wind, on the left, shows the fertility and prosperity of
Rome itself
Emperor Vespasian
• Last words: Damn, I’m already becoming a god
Amphitheatrum Flavium
• Capable of seating 50,000 spectators, the Colosseum was used for gladiatorial contests
and public spectacles: mock sea battles, animal hunts, executions, re-enactments of
famous battles, and dramas based on Classical mythology.
• The building ceased to be used for entertainment in the early medieval era. It was later
reused for such purposes as housing, workshops, quarters for a religious order, a
fortress, a quarry, and a Christian shrine
Emperor Titus
• Titus enjoyed a successful military career and in 67 AD went with his father to suppress
the Jewish Revolt
• In 69 AD, Vespasian returned to Rome to assert his claim for the imperial throne, leaving
Titus to continue the campaign
• In 70 AD, Jerusalem was sacked, the Jewish temple was destroyed and much of the
population killed or dispersed
Arch of Titus
The Sack of Jerusalem
Domitian
Emperor Trajan
Trajan’s column
Trajan’s forum
• The forum that surrounds the column was based on a ground plan of a military camp
and the sculpture on the column illustrated the successes of Trajan and his troops so
that the whole complex can be seen as a victory monument
• This was an important idea that Trajan needed to convey because the Empire had fallen
on financial difficulties and Trajan sought to remedy the problem through the
acquisition of more land
• Trajan erected the forum in order to show that all the plunder he had gained from his
military campaigns was sufficient to create a new urban center for the people and to
illustrate Rome's superiority
Emperor Hadrian
Marcus Aurelius
Emperor Constatine
Arch of constantine
• His reign was a turning point for the Christian Church
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In 313 Constantine announced toleration of Christianity in the Edict of Milan, which
removed penalties for professing Christianity
It was only in 392 that emperor Theodosius proclaimed Christianity the official state
religion
Churches in Rome
• St John in Lateran
• St Peter
Constantineople
 Founded by Constantine in 325 – 330 AD
• Strategically situated between the Golden Horn and the Sea of Marmara
• The capital of a Christian empire, the successor to ancient Greece and Rome
Most important churches:
• Church of Holy Apostles
• Hagia Sophia/ holy wisdom
• Hagia Eirene/ holy peace
• Hagia Dynamis/ holy power
19/09
Gothic art:
- 12th c. – 14th. Century
- Anachronistic term – coined by Giorgio Vasari
- Originally calles opus fnancigenum by its inventor Abbot Suger
The catherdral of Saint-Denis
The Apse
The Royal Portal, Catherdral of Chartres:
Inherited from the Romanesque Art:
The decorative schemes usually incorporated Biblical stories, emphasizing visual typological
allegories between Old Testament prophecy and the New Testament
Europe 1260 – 1454/1510
• It saw and described itself as Christendom, i.e. the kingdom of Christ
• The Christian Church was divided along the lines of the late Roman Empire between the
East – Orthodox Church – and the West – the Roman Catholic Church
• The Roman Empire in the East survived until the mid 15th century
• Kingdoms: England, Scotland, France and Naples
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Powerful duchies: The duchy of Burgundy
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City states: Florence and Venice
The great Western European rulers all regarded their authority as sanctioned by, if not
derived from Christ
A few of them were officially accepted as saints – Saint Louis (King of France), Saint
Elizabeth (Queen of Hungary)
The greatest of all (in theory!) was the Holy Roman Emperor
The Holy Roman Emperor regarded himself as vice-regent of God and co-regent with the
Pope
His authority was traced back through Charlemagne to Constantine – the first Christian
ruler
Constantine was also the predecessor of the Eastern Emperor, ruling from
Constantinople – conceived as the new Rome
The Monastic Orders
• Self-supporting communities in seclusion from the world often in locations far remote
from the towns
• Some of them acquired a prosperity which modified the original arduous ideals
• Benedictines – the oldest one founded in the 6th century by Saint Benedict of Nursia at
Monte Cassino in Italy
• Carthusians in France and Camaldolese in Italy were founded at the end of the 10th and
the beginning of the 11th century
The orders of Friars
• The Franciscans, founded by the Italian Saint Francis of Assisi (died on 3 October 1226)
and the Dominicans, founded by the Spanish Saint Dominic of Castile (died on 6 August
1221)
• Saint Francis was associated with moral reform and a novel spiritual ideal, and Saint
Dominic with theology and doctrine and combating heresy
The uses of Painting
The Beffi Triptych
The most popular religious images:
• The Virgin Mary with the Infant Christ
• The Crucified Christ
• Narrative representations of Christ’s incarnation
• Narrative representations of the Virgin Mary’s life whose cult flourished in the 13th and
the 14th centuries
• Episodes from the lives of Joachim and Anna
• Episodes from the Virgin Mary’s life
 Episodes recounting Christ’s life and death
Giotto (1267 – jan 8, 1337)
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Giotto's contemporary Giovanni Villani wrote: “Giotto was the most sovereign master of
painting in his time, who drew all his figures and their postures according to nature. And
he was given a salary by the Comune of Florence in virtue of his talent and excellence."
Vasari: “He made a decisive break with the crude traditional Byzantine style, and
brought to life the great art of painting as we know it today, introducing the technique
of drawing accurately from life, which had been neglected for more than two hundred
years."
Cimabue
Byzantine Icon, presumably from Constantinople
Cimabue, Crucifixion
The point of no return:
• Giotto's masterwork is the decoration of the Scrovegni Chapel in Padua, commonly
called the Arena Chapel, completed around 1305. This fresco cycle depicts the life of the
Virgin and the life of Christ
• It is regarded as one of the supreme masterpieces of the Early Renaissance
Scrovegni Chapel:
• The church was dedicated to Santa Maria della Carità at the Feast of the Annunciation,
1305.
• Giotto's fresco cycle focuses on the life of the Virgin and celebrates her role in human
salvation
• The chapel is also known as the Arena Chapel because it was built on land purchased by
Enrico Scrovegni that abutted on the site of a Roman arena
The Patron:
• The wealthy moneylender Enrico Scrovegni had the private chapel built directly next to
the family palazzo on his large estate
• He commissioned its decoration by Giotto, Italy's preeminent painter of the time. It is
often suggested that Enrico built the chapel in penitence for his father's sins.
• Enrico's father Reginaldo degli Scrovegni is the usurer encountered by Dante in the
Seventh Circle of Hell
• A recent study suggests that Enrico himself was involved in usurious practices and that
the chapel was intended as restitution for his own sins.
Expulsion of Joachim from the temple
Joachim among the Shepards
Annunciation to St. Anne
Joachim Sacrificial offering
Joachim’s dream
Meeting at the Golden Gate
Painting and the sister arts
• The prestige which great painters enjoyed – e.g. Giotto – affected the status of the art of
painting generally
• In Italy especially the art of painting started to be claimed as one of the liberal arts
Liberal arts, septem artes liberales
• Trivium
Grammar, Rhetoric, Logic
• Quadrivium
Arithmetic, Geometry, Music and Astronomy
Alberti and de Pictura
The idea is found in the most important work of art theory to have survived from this period
De Pictura was originally written in Latin in 1435, a year afterwards to be translated into Italian
by the author
According to Alberti:
Ancient Greeks were taught the art of painting ‘together with letters, geometry and music’
Ancient Romans, princes and the common populace alike, delighted in the public exhibition of
paintings carried to the city in triumph
It was an understanding of optics and geometry which ensured the painter’s rank among the
liberal arts and proved that he was more than a craftsman
It was his command of narrative – istoria – which enabled him to be considered akin to orator
or poet
Contemporary perception of Painting:
• Throughout the 13th and 14th centuries paintings were among the small portable works
of devotional art owned by the rich and powerful
• They were seldom as highly prized or as avidly sought after as enamels, ivories and
illuminated manuscripts
Why?
• The painter’s materials were not inherently as valuable as those employed in metal
work and textiles
• This made paintings as religious offerings less precious
Current Speculations:
• Painting was often thought as an art which in addition to imitating the visible world and
representing the invisible, higher world, imitated work in precious metal and textiles
• Imitation could mean providing a substitute which deceived on a slight acquaintance, or
which served as a cheaper equivalent
Giotto’s achievements
• The representation of volume, light and space in the work of Giotto, together with the
cogency of his narratives, provided a model by which artists were inspired for more than
a century
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Ornamental conception of art limited the degree to which painters at first imitated life
It is in the representations of space that this is most obvious
22/09:
Coronation of the Virgin:
- Perspective, about to fall of painting, lines to steep, no vanishing point
- An effect of depth could be created by converging parallel lines:
tiled floor
paved piazza
- Excessive gold tempers with concept of colors and third dimension
Saint Sabinus before the governors:
- Ceiling doesn’t match the floor
- People stuck to the wall
- Spatial effects were devised in such a way that they did not disturb the twodimensional pattern of the painting
- Some paintings from the second half of the 15th century share similar values even
though they were by artists who devised effects of foreshortenings and aggressive
angularities of form
- Attitudes towards gold are often the most valuable index of the changing conception
of the art of painting!!!
Alberti on gold
- Use colors to create of gold instead of using it. For real craftmenship,
- Can still be used in frames, but very few paintings are still in its original frame.
Mostly decided by museums (directors)
- Only place where gold could still reside were frames:
solid gold and silver frames in the form of the tabernacle all’ antica with bases,
columns and pediment
Flagellation of Christ:
- Too big of a difference between foreground and background,
- Religious genre but partially portrays personalized people.
Flight into Egypt
Primavera
San Luca Altarpiece
Annunciation
Exhumation of Saint Hubert
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Gold leaf always tends to draw attention to the flat picture surface
Much of Alberti’s treatise concerns optics and the science of perspective whereby three
dimensions could be effectively and consistently depicted in two
It was in Florence that painters took most interest in these subjects
Alberti’s treatise was dedicated to the Florentine architect Filippo Brunelleschi
The dedicatory epistle mentions his friends Donatello, Ghiberti and Masaccio
Trained to become a goldsmith, between 1402 and 1404 Brunelleschi and his friend Donatello
visited Rome to study the ancient Roman ruins.
They gained inspiration too from ancient Roman authors, especially Vitruvius whose De
Architectura provided an intellectual framework for the standing structures still visible.
Ospedale degli Innocenti
Brunelleschi's first architectural commission was the Ospedale degli Innocenti (1419-c.1445)
The first building in Florence with a clear reference to classical antiquity
Its long loggia would have been a rare sight in the tight and curving streets of Florence, not to
mention its impressive arches, each about 8 m high
Dome for the Duomo of Florence
According to Vasari:
"...giving one end a blow on the flat piece of marble, made it stand upright. The architects
protested that they could have done the same; but Filippo answered, laughing, that they could
have made the dome, if they had seen his design."
Besides accomplishments in architecture, Brunelleschi is also credited with inventing one-point
linear perspective which revolutionized painting and allowed for naturalistic styles to develop.
These are the same principles that architects employ today in architecture school.
Although the principle of the vanishing point was known to the Greeks and Romans, as was
much other technology, that knowledge had been lost over the years.
The first known paintings in geometric optical linear perspective were made by Brunelleschi in
about 1425. To demonstrate the effect of drawing in perspective, Filippo painted the Baptistery
of San Giovanni from about six feet inside the center door of Santa Maria del Fiore. The
painting included everything that could be seen from his positioned location. Instead of
painting the sky, he affixed a plate of polished silver. He carved a peephole in the painted panel
at the perspective vanishing point.
His biographer, Antonio Manetti, described this famous experiment in which Brunelleschi
painted two panels:
The first of the Florentine Baptistery as viewed frontally from the western portal of the
unfinished cathedral, and second the Palazzo Vecchio as seen obliquely from its northwest
corner.
Standing at the same location where he painted the view, he demonstrated the accuracy of
perspective drawing by holding the painted panel facing away, with the panel held up to his eye
to peer through the hole
With his other hand he held a mirror at arms length in front of and facing the painting so that
he was looking directly into the mirror at the reflection of the painting.
The view through the hole into the mirror revealed the painting, drawn in perfect perspective,
in the place where the subject of the painting would be viewed. The polished silver plate
reflected the actual sky complete with drifting clouds. The view was so realistic that the viewer
could not tell the difference between the painted scene and the actual image of the building’s
shape and proportion.
Gates of Paradise
The story of Isaac, Esau and Jacob
David, Donatello
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Just as Alberti wished to find rules for representation of space so he also sought rules
for the proportions of the human figure and its movement
• He recommended that the human figure should be thought of as a skeleton and then as
a naked body even when it was to be represented fully dressed
Holy trinity
• Alberti was said to have perfected a device, some sort of camera obscura, into which
people peered and were amazed to find, in miniature, a city square or a distant
landscape
• In the North of Europe the Van Eyck brothers were busy developing oil painting the
invention of which allowed representing minutest details
The making of Painting:
• The usual members of a workshop: apprentices, journeymen, and sometimes fellow
masters
• Regulations varied: in Florence the apprentice had to be over fourteen but not older
than twenty-five
• The relationship between master and apprentice was controlled by the guild statutes – a
contract would be signed
• In Florence the master’s obligation was to feed and clothe the apprentice, who in return
promised to serve the master faithfully and not steal or run away
• In the north of Europe the apprentice often seems to have paid fees to the master
during the early years of his apprenticeship
• Apprentices often began their careers as servants
• Priority was placed on learning how to draw
• In 15th century Tournai an apprentice who wished to study drawing had to serve only
one or two years, whereas if he wanted to paint as well he had to serve for four years
• Cennino Cennini in his famous treatise, The Craftsman’s Handbook, recommends that a
trainee painter should first spend a year drawing, followed by six years learning to grind
colors, prepare panels and to apply gold leaf
• To master the techniques of fresco and tempera painting would take another six years
• Cennini claims to have spent twelve years with his master Agnolo Gaddi
Saint Luke Painting the Virgin, Niklaus Manuel Deutsch
Saint Luke Painting the Virgin, follower of Quinten Massys
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Workshops were often opened to the street
This was useful for selling things and gave a good light and facilitated access for large
paintings
Inventories show that painters often lived in the premises above the shop
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At any one time a painter is likely to have had several projects under way and at various
stages of completion
The imaginary Netherlandish workshop described by Jean Lemaire de Belges in his
allegorical poem of 1504-05 is full of finished and unfinished paintings
The inventory made of the contents of Filippino Lippi’s workshop on his death in 1504
records work in every state: from bare wooden panels, panels prepared with gesso
alone, a gessoed panel with a drawing of Virgin
Filippino’s workshop was furnished with stools and benches and with trestle tables so
that panels could be laid flat for the application of gesso and gilding
Painter’s Studio
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As containers for the prepared paint, painters were using either mussel shells, or
earthenware pots
• Oil paint was stored in jars covered by membranes made from pig’s bladder
• Paint brushes were made of hairs from the tips of tails of the minever or ermine
• These would be bunched together and inserted into cut sections of quills
• Larger, stiffer brushes would be made of hog’s bristle
• They were used in wall painting and for the application of gesso
• Drawings were also an important part of a workshop’s equipment
• Not many of them have come down to us
Studies for tobias and the Angel
Tobias and the Angel
Panels:
• Most surviving paintings from the 13th to the 16th centuries are on wooden panels
• In Italy the wood most commonly used was white poplar and occasionally walnut tree
• North of the Alps painters used oak panels
• To make panels, planks of wood were glued together, sometimes with wooden dowels
or other devices to reinforce the joins
Frames:
• The frame was frequently treated as an integral part of the construction of the panel
• For a portrait or for a small diptych of triptych the whole frame might be attached to the
panel before painting
• Sometimes panel and frame consisted of a single piece of wood
Portrait of a man
» In Northern Italy a taste for flamboyant and highly ornamented architecture led to more
elaborate polyptych designs that demanded separate construction of frames which
would be filled with panels after they had been completed
Canvas Painting
» Although documentary sources demonstrate that canvas paintings were common, the
small number of surviving exemplars indicate that many of them may have not been
intended to have any permanence
» Descriptions of festivals and theatrical events in both Northern Europe and Italy show
that the scenery and other ephemeral decorations supplied by painters were often on
canvas
» Canvas was also a suitable support for painted banners used in religious processions
» Paintings on canvas were exported in large quantities from the Netherlands in the 15 th c.
» In Italy, it was first in Venice that canvas began to be used extensively for large-scale
works
» The damp environment was not ideal for the preservation of wall-painting nor of
wooden panels
Grounds
• Cennino gives detailed instructions on the application of grounds to panels:
Having filled or cut out and plugged any knots or flaws on the front face of the panel, the
surface was to be sized with an animal-skin glue and then covered with fine linen canvas. This
would further disguise the faults in the panel and reinforce any joins
Gesso – powdered gypsum mixed with animal-skin glue
• The ground would be applied in two layers:
gesso grosso - a coarse form of calcium sulphate made by roasting the raw gypsum in a kiln
gesso sottile – calcium sulphate is slaked by prolonged soaking in water until it is ‘soft as silk’
• Linen canvases were grounded by gesso sotile only
Saint George and the Dragon
Underdrawing
• With a material which contains carbon, such a charcoal, carbon-based paint or drawing
ink
• Contours
• Perspective lines
• Cennino: ‘… shade your drawing so carefully that you come out with such a handsome
drawing that you will make everyone fall in love with your production’
Pigments
• The range of pigments used by medieval and Renaissance painter was limited when
compared with that available today
• The painter was responsible for binding pigments together with a medium to make a
paint
• Cennino describes the digging up and washing of earth pigments and the preparation of
black pigments from charred vine twigs, almond shells and peach stones
• Most were obtained from apothecaries or specialists
Glue-size Painting
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The most straight forward practice in the 14th and 15th century easel-painting
Uses a medium of glue size or distemper on canvas
The pigments, previously ground in water, were combined with the same animal-skin
glue used for sizing canvases or panels and to bind gesso
This technique did not use ground
This lead to the appearance of an image on the reverse of the canvas
The retention of moisture by the canvas enabled the painter to achieve smooth
transitions in the modelling
Any subsequent application of paint would have to be applied with a lighter touch so as
not to redissolve the first, by then, dry layer
Egg Tempera Painting
• According to Cennino only the yolk of the egg was used
• Whole egg was reserved for wall painting on dry plaster (al secco)
• The egg should be combined with an approximately equal volume of the wet paste of
ground pigment
• This produces a workable paint which dries to the correct velvety sheen
• It cannot be blended and worked when wet because the partially set paint will
constantly redissolve and peel away from the surface
• It cannot be thickly painted with textured and brushmarked impasto
• The paint film has to be built up gradually, with repeated thin applications of color
• Hence the hatched or stippled brushwork which is a necessary convention of tempera
painting
Outer shutters of the altarpiece for the charterhouse at Champmol
Ghent Altar piece
Oil painting in the Netherlands:
• The difference in appearance enticed writers on art to explain this change as a result of
a sudden technical innovation
• Thus the legend of the Van Eycks as the inventors of oil painting began
• Treatises show that drying oils were familiar painters’ materials as far back as the 8 th
century
• Building up the relief in glazes, from the thinnest smear of paint in the highlights to the
many layers of color in the intense deep-toned shadows
• The forms are modeled from light to dark, as opposed to the tempera technique
• As a consequence, a greater degree of naturalism was possible
A man in a Turban
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The transparency of oil paint medium made it possible to paint convincing cast shadows
This was difficult in tempera owing to its relative opacity
The virgin of Chancellor
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Oil paint remains soft and workable for long enough to be manipulated with a brush so
that transitions in the modeling can be softened and blended
• To obscure further any traces of brushwork the paint can be blotted with a rag or with a
fingertip without lifting off the lower paint layers as would happen in tempera
• Fingerprints in the glazes of the green robe in the Arnolfini Portrait show that Van Eyck
has done just that
The Arnolfini Portrait
The aftermath:
» The sequel to the traditional story of the invention of oil painting by Jan van Eyck is that
Antonello da Messina, on seeing a panel by Van Eyck in Naples, went to Bruges to study
with Van Eyck and on his return to Italy was responsible for the transmission of the
technique to Venice and thence to the rest of Italy ….