The Renaissance
Major Artists
And
Their Works
The Top Four Breakthroughs
of Renaissance Art
• Oil on Stretched Canvas
• Perspective – illusion of depth on a flat surface
• Use of Light and Shadow
• Pyramid configuration – the focal point is at the
center of the picture.
Masaccio
• First since Giotto to paint
human form not as a linear
column but as a real human
being.
• “Masaccio made his figures
stand upon their feet.” –
Vasari
• Mastery of perspective and
the use of a single constant
source of light casting
accurate shadows.
Adam and Eve Expulsion from the Garden
of Eden
Jesus and the 12 Apostles
Donatello
• His work recaptured the
central discovery of
Classical sculpture:
contrapposto, or weight
concentrated on one leg
with the rest of the body
relaxed, often turned.
• Focused on skeletal
structure.
David
• First life size, freestanding
nude sculpture since
classical period.
• Heroic nudity
• Bronze sculpture
Mary Magdalene
• Carved as gaunt, shriveled
hag, with stringy hair and
hollowed eyes.
• So life like Donatello was
said to have shouted at
it,”Speak, speak, or the
plague take you!”
St. John
Botticelli
• Linear style
• Tiptoed golden-haired
maidens, throw back to
Byzantine art.
• Nudes epitomized the
Renaissance
Birth Of Venus
• Marks Rebirth
of Classical
Mythology
• Undulating lines
and figures with
long necks,
sloping
shoulders, and
pale soft bodies.
The Annunciation
Dante’s Hell
Mystical Nativity
Leonardo Da Vinci
• True Renaissance Man
• Mathematician, scientist, artist
• Stressed the Intellectual aspect
of art and creativity
• Transformed artist’s public
status into, “Lord and God.”
• On his deathbed he confessed, “I
have offended God and mankind
by not working at my art as I
should have.”
“I wish to work miracles.”
The Last Supper
Fresco pre-repair
Notebooks
Evidence of Leonardo’s fertile
imagination lies in the thousands
of pages of sketches and ideas in his
notebooks. Although his notes
were unknown to later scientists,
he anticipated many of the
discoveries and inventions of
succeeding centuries. His sketches
of the growth of the fetus in the
womb were so accurate they could
teach embyrology to medical
students today.
Leda and the Swan Sketch
Mona Lisa
• The portrait set the standard for
High Renaissance paintings.
• The use of the pyramid
perspective.
• Triangular composition.
• Displays subject as relaxed and
natural, three quarters pose.
• Use of smile.
• Most reproduced image in art.
Michelangelo
• Grew up absorbed with carving
and drawing.
• At age 15, taken by Medici
family to live in Florence and
live like a son.
• Alone in solitude, effected
attitude. Emotional, rough, and
uncouth, would not let anyone
watch him work.
• Architect, sculptor, painter,
poet, and engineer.
• “I regret that I am dying just as
I am beginning to learn the
alphabet of my profession.
La Pieta
• First Masterpiece
• Groups Mary and Jesus in Traditional
Triangle/Pyramid composition.
• Classic composure of the Virgin’s face
reflects the calm idealized expression of
Greek sculpture.
• When first unveiled, a viewer
attributed the work to a more
experienced sculptor, unable to believe
a young 22 year old unknown could
accomplish such a triumph. When he
heard, he went into the Vatican and
carved his name on a ribbon across
Mary’s breast, the only work he ever
signed.
The Sistine Chapel Ceiling
• 340 human figures
• Represents the origin and
fall of man.
• Took less than four years.
• 10,000 square feet
• Figure painting from
imagination, torsos more
expressive than the faces.
Sistine Chapel Alter Piece
The Last Judgment
• Finished 29 years after
ceiling.
• Depicts Christ not as
merciful redeemer but as
avenging judge.
• 400 hundred contorted
figures struggle, fight, and
tumble to hell.
David
• Heroic Nudity.
• Over proportioned hands,
head, and feat.
• Relaxed pose in movement.
• Compare to Donatello’s
David.
Moses
• Designed for tomb in
Vatican
• Has horns.
• Massive scale.
Tombs of the Medici
The Designer
• Designed the Swiss Guard
Uniform
Raphael
•
•
•
•
•
Outgoing
Learned painting from father.
Master at age 17.
Used Pyramidal composition.
Modeled faces with light and
shadow.
• Adapted full bodied dynamic
figures and the contrapposto
pose.
School of Athens
• Balance
• Sculptural quality
• Architectural
perspective
• Fusion of Pagan
and Christian elements.
The Three Graces
Cherubs
The Last Judgment
• Compare to
Michelangelo’s
the Last
Judgment.
Titian
• Father of modern painting.
• Dominated art in Venice for 60 years
• Use of strong colors as main device of expression
• Established oil on canvas as typical medium
Venus of Urbino
John the Baptist
Mary Magdalene
St. Jerome
Cain and Abel
Adam and Eve
• Multiple revisions
• Notice the serpent
Jan Van Eyck
• Credited with inventing oil painting
• After his death, right arm preserved as a holy relic
• Focused on extreme details
Arnolfini
Wedding
• Captures surface
appearance and
textures precisely and
renders effects both
direct and diffused
light.
Up-Close
• A master of realism, Van
Eyck recreates the marriage
in miniature in the mirror.
• Virtually every object
symbolizes the painting’s
themes – the sanctity of
marriage – with the dog
representing fidelity and
the cast off shoes holy
ground.
Adam and Eve
St. Christopher
The Virgin with Child
Hieronymous Bosch
• Moralistic paintings suggested inventive torments
meted out as punishments for sinners.
• Grotesque fantasy images – inhabited his weird,
unsettling landscapes.
• He believed that corrupt mankind, seduced by evil,
should suffer calamitous consequences.
The Garden of Earthly Delights
• An allegory, warning against the dangers of eroticism. Forerunner of surrealism
Up-close
Ship of Fools
Untitled
Hans Holbein
• German born – left for England during Reformation
• Portrait painter
• Linear patterning
• Accurate textures
• Symbolic knickknacks
• Neutral faces
St. Thomas More
Erasmus
The Ambassadors
Albrecht Durer
• Believed art should be based on scientific observation.
• Called “Leonardo of the North.”
• Gentleman scholar – raised artist stature from
craftsman to near prince.
• Worked in woodcuts and graphic techniques
The Madonna and Child
The Fallen
Angels
The Four
Horseman
of the
Apocalypse
Melencolia
Knight
Death
and the
Devil
St. Jerome
El Greco
• Use of inner light of in forms.
• Harsh colors
• Distorted figures
• Elongated figures
• Cared little for accurately representing the visual
world.
• Preferred to create an emotion laden vision of celestial
ecstasty.
Agony in the Garden
Loacoon
Candle Light
Mary Magdalene
Caravaggio
• Most original painter of 17th Century
• Painted bodies in “down and dirty” style
• Secularized religious art making saints and miracles
seem like ordinary people and everyday events.
Calling of St. Matthew
• Apostle to be sits in the pub surrounded by dandies counting money when
ordered to “Follow” Christ. A strong diagonal beam of light illuminates
the thunderstruck tax-collector’s expression and gesture of astonishment.
Conversion of St.
Paul
• Shows Paul flat on his
back, fallen from his horse,
which is portrayed in an
explicit rear end view.
• The hard focus and blinding
spotlight reveal details like
veins on the attendant’s
legs and rivets on Saul’s
armor, while inessential
elements disappear in the
dark background.
St. John the Baptist
St. Peter’s Crucifixion
Salome
David and Goliath
St. Thomas
The Annotated Mona Lisa: A Crash Course
in Art History From Prehistoric to PostModern
• Carol Strickland, PhD.
• 1992, Adrews and McMeel, Universal Press.
• Kansas City, Missouri.
• Most ideas about art in this slideshow are a product
of this text and the author’s real life experience of the
art objects.