ARTH-212 – History of World Art 2
Instructor: Ann Porter Office: 304A Phone: 642-6275
E-mail: AnnPorter@bhsu.edu
Pages 618-640: Early Renaissance Italy Architecture and Sculpture
Dome of Florence Cathedral, Santa Maria del Fiore, pages 622-623
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1296 Cathedral started, Drawings by Giovanni Battista Nelli
1377 Birth of Brunelleschi
1394 Brunelleschi and Donatello move to Rome
1418 Competition to finish Dome
1436 Dome finished
By all accounts, Filippo Brunelleschi, goldsmith and clockmaker, was an unkempt, cantankerous, and
suspicious man — even by the generous standards according to which artists were judged in fifteenth-century
Florence. He also designed and erected a dome over the cathedral of Santa Maria del Fiore — a feat of
architectural daring that we continue to marvel at today — thus securing himself a place among the most
formidable geniuses of the Renaissance. At first denounced as a madman, Brunelleschi literally reinvented
the field of architecture amid plagues, wars, and political feuds to raise seventy million pounds of metal,
wood, and marble hundreds of feet in the air. Penguin Books, Publisher Commentary
1446 Death of Brunelleschi
http://www.obscure.org/~perky/uofr/fall2002/ISYS203U/Duomo_Site/
The "Cupolone" or great cupola (as the Florentines have called it ever since) was completed in 1434. Two
years later the lantern was placed in position (taking it from 91 to 114,5 metres in total height), while the four
tribunes occupying the spaces created by the projections in the octagon of the apse were carried out in 1438.
The decorations in the lantern were finished by 1446, when the great architect was on his deathbed. The
finishing touches included the application of the decorations in the lantern (1461) and the positioning of the
great copper sphere on the top (1474). Cast in Verrocchio's workshop and raised up thanks to a machine that
was built with the help of Leonardo da Vinci.-- http://www.mega.it/eng/egui/monu/bdd.htm
Della Robbia http://www.vam.ac.uk/vastatic/microsites/terracottas/images/virgin_child.jpg
http://www.jayneshatzpottery.com/8.LUCA-DELLA-ROBBIA-MADONNA.jpg
Nanni di Banco, 19-9 page 628
Ghiberti, page 639
Donatello (Donato di Niccolò di Betto Bardi)
Saint George, 19-10, page 629
David, 19-13, page 631
Equestrian Monument of Erasmo di Narni, 19-14 page 631
Mary Magdalene, 19-15 page 633
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1386 Birth of Donatello
A good deal is known about Donatello's life and career, but little is known about his character and
personality, and what is known is not wholly reliable. He never married and he seems to have been a man of
simple tastes. Patrons often found him hard to deal with in a day when artists' working conditions were
regulated by guild rules. Donatello seemingly demanded a measure of artistic freedom. Although he knew a
number of Humanists well, the artist was not a cultured intellectual. His Humanist friends attest that he was a
connoisseur of ancient art. The inscriptions and signatures on his works are among the earliest examples of
the revival of classical Roman lettering. He had a more detailed and wide-ranging knowledge of ancient
sculpture than any other artist of his day. His work was inspired by ancient visual examples, which he often
daringly transformed. Though he was traditionally viewed as essentially a realist, later research indicates he
was much more.
c.1420-1460 David, “the first large-scale, free-standing nude statue of the Renaissance”
http://faculty.cua.edu/pennington/ChurchHistory220/Lecture12/DonatelloDavidSide.htm
http://faculty.cua.edu/pennington/ChurchHistory220/Lecture12/DonatelloDavidBack.htm
1455 Mary Magdalene
1466 Donatello dies
http://www.kfki.hu/~arthp/html/d/donatell/index.html
Masaccio, pages 636 to 639
Art to remember for Exam:
Dome of Florence Cathedral, 19-2
David, 19-13
Trinity with Virgin, St. John the Evangelist and Donors, 19-19
Vocabulary to remember for Exam:
Grisaille, Crossing, Pointed Arch, Centering, Lantern, Polychrome
Bibliography: Text, King, Brunelleschi’s Dome; Penguin, 2001