The High Renaissance in Italy
Italy during the Renaissance
Chapter 13: The High Renaissance in Italy
OUTLINE
Popes and Patronage
Raphael
Michelangelo
The New Saint Peter's
The High Renaissance in Venice
Giorgione
Titian
Tintoretto
Mannerism
Sofonisba Anguissola
Music in the Sixteenth Century
Music at the Papal Court
Venetian Music
Contrasting Renaissance Voices
Castiglione
Cellini
Outline Chapter 13
Timeline Chapter 13
Timeline Chapter 13: The High Renaissance in Italy
1492
Columbus reaches America
1494
Manutius establishes Aldine Press in Venice
1506
Bramante commisioned by Pope Julius II to rebuild St. Peter's Basilica
1508-1511
Michelangelo, Sistine Chapel ceiling
1509-1511
Raphael, School of Athens
1513
Pope Leo X (reigns until 1521)
1528
Castiglione, The Courtier
c. 1528 Pontormo, Deposition
1534-1541
Michelangelo, Last Judgment
1538
Titian, Venus of Urbino
1543
Vesalius, Seven Books on the Structure of the Human Body
1545-1544
Cellini, Perseus
1610
Sofanisba Anguissola, Self Portrait
Patronage and the High Renaissance
Art follows patronage, as we have noted. The "high"
Renaissance is summed up in the lives and works of three artists:
Michelangelo, Raphael, and Leonardo da Vinci.
The first two did their most famous work in the Vatican in the
sixteenth century while Leonardo, true to his restless spirit,
sojourned there only for a time before he began his wanderings
through the courts of Europe.
It is their work that gives full meaning to the summation of
Renaissance ideals
Pope Julius II
The warrior pope who commissioned Michelangelo to paint the Sistine
Chapel ceiling, Raphael to paint the Stanze di Raffaello in the Vatican,
and Bramante to begin the new St. Peter's Basilica.
Papal Patronage vis-a-vis the Reformation
When we look at the work of Raphael and Michelangelo under the
patronage of the popes, we should not forget that this explosion of
art and culture was taking place while a new and formidable revolution
was in the making: the Protestant Reformation. While it would be overly
simplistic to think that the Renaissance caused the Reformation,
it certainly must be seen as a factor-as we will see in the next chapter.
Even so, there is a marked shift in the atmosphere in which
Michelangelo worked in Rome before 1521 and afterward,
when the full force of the Protestant revolt in the North was
making itself felt in Rome.
The Venetian Renaissance
The artistic work in Rome can be profitably contrasted with that which
took place in Venice during roughly the same period. The Roman
Renaissance was under the patronage of the church. Venetian art and
music enjoyed the same patronage source as did Florence in the
preceding century: commerce and trade. Venice made its fortune from
the sea: The shipping of its busy port looked to both Europe and the
Middle East. It was fiercely protective of its independence (including its
independence from papal Rome) and proud of its ancient traditions.
Even the religious art of Venice had a certain freedom from the kind of
art being produced in Rome in the same century because Venice had
less contact with the seething ideas current in the century.
• Giorgione
• Titian
• Tintoretto
Socio-cultural and Historic Limitations of Renaissance Humanism
Renaissance ideas had also penetrated other areas of Italy.
Florence still had its artistic life (although somewhat diminished
from its great days in the fifteenth century) but provincial cities
like Parma and Mantua were not without their notables.
Much of this artistic activity rested in the courts of the nobility
who supplied the kind of life and leisure that made possible the
courtier and the court lifestyle immortalized in the book by Castiglione.
The insufficiencies of this court culture would become clear when
the religious wars of the sixteenth century broke out and
humanism had to confront the new realities coming from the
increasingly Protestant North
Crucifixion
1502-03
Oil on
wood
Raphael
The
Three
Graces
1504-05
Oil on
panel
The Annunciation
1502-03
Oil on canvas,
RAFFAELLO Sanzio, The School of Athens,
1509, Fresco, 770 cm, Vatican
Michelangelo (later work)
Interior of
the Sistine
Chapel
1475-83,
1508-12,
1535-41
Moses
1515
Marble, 235 cm
Tomb of Pope Julius II
Sistine Chapel
The ceiling
1508-12
Fresco, Vatican
Giorgione
Pastoral Concert
1508-09
Oil on canvas
Venetian
Self-Portrait
Paper on wood
Titian
Sacred and Profane Love
1514
Oil on canvas
Assumption of the Virgin
1516-18
Oil on canvas
Venice
(detail of Assumption)
The Venus of Urbino, 1538
Oil on canvas
Tintoretto
Judith and
Holofernes
1550s
Oil on canvas
Christ
and the Woman Taken in Adultery
1546-48
Oil on canvas
The Discovery
of St Mark's
Body
1562-66
Oil on canvas
Crucifixion (detail)
1565
Oil on canvas, 536 x 1224 cm
Scuola di San Rocco, Venice
Mannerism
Pontormo
Supper at Emmaus
1525
Oil on canvas, 230 x 173 cm
Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence
PARMIGIANINO
Madonna with Long Neck
1534-40
Oil on panel, 216 x 132 cm
Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence
Sofonisba Anguissola
Sofonisba Anguissola
Self Portrait
1554
oil on canvas
Music in the 16th Century
(See Text, page 330 – 332 and Musical Selections – in class)