UNIT 2
Painting, sculpture, architecture, and allied arts were produced in Europe in the historical period called the Renaissance. Broadly considered, the period covers the 200 years between 1400 and 1600, although specialists disagree on exact dates. The word renaissance literally means “rebirth” and is the French translation of the Italian rinascita. The two principal components of Renaissance style are the following: a revival of the classical forms originally developed by the ancient Greeks and Romans, and an intensified concern with secular life—interest in humanism and assertion of the importance of the individual. The Renaissance period in art history corresponds to the beginning of the great Western age of discovery and exploration, when a general desire developed to examine all aspects of nature and the world.
The Renaissance started in Italy, and the Italian Renaissance may be divided into three major phases: Early, High, and Late Renaissance. The Early Renaissance was lead by sculptor Donatello, architect Filippo Brunelleschi, and painter Masaccio. They began the movement on the foundations that development and progress was integral to the evolution and survival of the arts. They found their inspiration from antiquity, creating realistic figures that portrayed personality and behaviour. They focused on the laws of proportion for architecture, the human body, and space.
The term Early Renaissance encompasses most 15th century art. The High Renaissance sought to create a generalized style of art that focused on drama, physical presence, and balance. The major artists of this period were Leonardo Da Vinci, Donato Bramante, Michelangelo, Raphael, Albrecht Durer and Titian. The period lasted only a short time from 1495 to 1520. The Late Renaissance was put into motion by the sack of Rome in 1527, forcing artists to relocate to other artistic centres in Italy, France, and Spain. One of the prominent exponents of Late Renaissance was EI Greco. During this time, anti-classical sentiments began to emerge, eventually developing into the Mannerist movement.
During the Renaissance, artists were no longer regarded as mere artisans, as they had been in the medieval past, but for the first time emerged as independent personalities, comparable to poets and writers. They sought new solutions to formal and visual problems, and many of them were also devoted to scientific experimentation. In this context, mathematical or linear perspective was developed, a system in which all objects in a painting or in low-relief sculpture are related both proportionally and rationally. As a result, the painted surface was regarded as a window on the natural world, and it became the task of painters to portray this world in their art. Consequently, painters began to devote themselves more rigorously to the rendition of landscape—the careful depiction of trees, flowers, plants, distant mountains, and cloud-filled skies. Throughout the Renaissance period, artists first began to experiment with oil-based paints, mixing powdered pigments with linseed oil. The slow-drying nature of the medium allowed the painter to edit his work for several months.
Perspective and attention to light became important to artists, as well as architectural accuracy in backgrounds. Artists studied the effect of light out-of-doors and how the eye perceives all the diverse elements in nature. They developed aerial perspective, in which objects become increasingly less distinct and less sharply coloured as they recede from the eye of the viewer. Northern painters, especially those from Flanders and the Netherlands, were as advanced as the Italians in landscape painting and contributed to the innovations of their southern contemporaries by introducing oil paint as a new medium.
Popular subject matter included Biblical characters and subjects from Greek and Roman mythology. Renaissance art placed a large emphasis on the importance of the Madonna in art. Although the portrait also developed as a specific genre in the mid-15th century, Renaissance painters achieved the greatest latitude with the history, or narrative, picture, in which figures located within a landscape or an architectural environment act out a specific story, taken either from classical mythology or Judeo-Christian tradition. Within such a context, the painter was able to show men, women, and children in a full range of postures and poses, as well as the subjects' diverse emotional reactions and states.
Taking inspiration from classical Roman and Greek art, Renaissance artists were also interested in the human body, particularly the nude. They attempted to idealize the human form which was shown in physical perfection and purity with expression and unique personality. During this period, the gap dividing other creative thinkers such as poets, essayists, philosophers and scientists from artists began to decrease. All of these people were seen as visionaries and began to share ideas and learn from each other.