ARTH-212 – History of World Art 2
Instructor: Ann Porter
Office: 304A
Phone: 642-6275
E-mail: AnnPorter@bhsu.edu
Notes for Early Renaissance Italy (Painting) Pages 640-657
Piero della Francesca (c. 1415-92), pages 642-644
www.abcgallery.com:
Though little is known about Piero della Francesca and many of his works are lost forever, he was an important artist of the
Italian Renaissance – he clearly formulated the geometrical rules for building perspective and made wonderful empirical
discoveries in the use of color and light.
The artist was born between 1410 and 1420 in Borgo San Sepolcro near Arezzo. In 1452 Piero began the wonderful cycle
of frescos dealing with stories of the True Cross for the choir of the Basilica of San Francesco (Church of St. Francis) in
Arezzo. The frescoes were inspired by stories from the thirteenth-century Golden Legend. The painter ignored the
chronological sequence of the scenes in favor of "a structured rhythm and clear symmetry between the walls". This work
demonstrates Piero’s advanced knowledge of perspective and color, his geometric orderliness and skill in pictorial
construction.
During the 1460s the artist worked for the Duke of Urbino, for whom he executed the Flagellation of Christ and the
Senigallia Madonna, the wonderful twin portrait of the Duke and his wife Battista Sforza (Florence, Uffizi), the Nativity,
and above all the incomparable Pala Montefeltro, which by some critics is considered to be his best work, which
epitomizes the noblest aspirations of Early Renaissance.
According to Vasari, Piero lost his sight in old age and being unable to paint wrote treatises on painting and mathematics.
Andrea Mantegna, page 646
Domenico Ghirlandaio, pages 648-49
Botticelli, (Alessandro di Mariano Filipepi) c. 1445-1510, pages 650-653
in 1481-82 he was commissioned to join Perugino, Ghirlandaio and Rosselli (the most celebrated painters of the day) to
paint frescoes for the Sistine Chapel. Botticelli's two most famous paintings were painted around this time, possibly for
Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco de' Medici. They are the Primavera (c1478) and the Birth of Venus (c1483), both in the Uffizi.
These are mythologies, not of the capricious Ovidian sort, but, it has been suggested, ones that embody the moral and
metaphysical Neoplatonic ideas that were then fashionable in the Medici circles. Pure visual poetry, they are stylistically
the quintessence of Botticelli: there is a deliberate denial of rational spatial construction and no attempt to model solidlooking figures; instead the figures float on the forward plane of the picture against a decorative landscape backdrop, and
form, defined by outline, is willfully modified to imbue that outline with expressive power. -http://www.artchive.com/artchive/B/botticelli.html
Primavera, 19-37, page 650
(right to left): Zephyr running after the nymph Clori, who transforms herself into Flora, goddess of Fecundity; in the center
is Venus, goddess of Love and here represented as queen of her realm, with Cupid straining a dart to the three Graces,
while Mercury raises the caduceo to the clouds. Many flowers in the grass symbolize wedding: the picture could be indeed
commissioned by Lorenzo the Magnificent as the wedding present offered to his cousin Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco dei
Medici, who married in 1482 Semiramide Appiani.
Birth of Venus, 19-38, page 651
Mystic Nativity, 19-39, page 653
http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://www.ibiblio.org/wm/paint/auth/botticelli/cestello.jpg&imgrefurl=http://w
ww.ibiblio.org/wm/paint/auth/botticelli/&h=840&w=865&sz=178&tbnid=bKsfZJlmfsUJ:&tbnh=139&tbnw=143&start=1
8&prev=/images%3Fq%3DBotticelli%26hl%3Den%26lr%3D%26sa%3DN
Bellini, (1430?-1516) , pages 654-56
The founder of the Venetian school of painting, Giovanni Bellini raised Venice to a center of Renaissance art that rivaled
Florence and Rome. He brought to painting a new degree of realism, a new wealth of subject matter, and a new
sensuousness in form and color. http://www.ibiblio.org/wm/paint/auth/bellini/
Procession, 17-75 page 642
Virgin & Child, 17-76 page 643
St. Francis, 17-77 page 643
Art to remember for Exam:
Battista Sforza and Frederico da Montelfeltro, 19-28
Primavera, 19-37
Bellini, Virgin and Child Enthroned, 19-42
Vocabulary to remember for Exam:
Fresco, Trompe l’Oeil, Coffer, Putti, Stigmata, Sinopia
Bibliography: Text
Essay Question for EXAM #1 on Thursday Febrary 12:
Describe in detail the iconography of the School of Athens and then discuss how the each element relates to
different Renaissance belief systems that were prevalent in Europe at that time.