Humanism, Renaissance Art and Architecture

HUMANISM AND ART IN THE RENAISSANCE
Jack Garrity

• Humanism presented a new way of thinking, emphasizing
the ability of individuals to improve society, based on
classical studies.
• Artists depicted idealized individuals and balance,
Donatello, Leonardo, and Michelangelo creating
masterpieces in painting, sculpture, and architecture.

ITALIAN RENAISSANCE HUMANISM
• People began focus more on humans rather than divine or supernatural matters of medieval
scholasticism.

• They started to focus on this life rather than the afterlife.

• We call this new outlook or system of thought humanism.

A revived interest in ancient Greek and Roman thought accompanied humanism.

• Humanist beliefs stress the potential value and goodness of human beings, emphasize common
human needs, and seek solely rational ways of solving human problems.

• Humanists studied grammar, rhetoric, poetry, moral philosophy, and history like the ancient Greeks
and Romans. Today these subjects are called the humanities.

PETRARCH 1304-1374
• The father of humanism, Francesco Petrarch started and developed humanism.

PETRARCH 1304-1374
• He built the biggest Latin and Greek library, searching for manuscripts throughout Europe.

PETRARCH 1304-1374
• He revived the use of Roman Latin, studying classical writings like Cicero, Livy, Suetonius.

PETRARCH 1304-1374
• Petrarch wrote many books himself in Latin, advocating an intellectual life of solitude, the
preverbal ivory tower.

15TH CENTURY FLORENCE
• The Florentine humanists disagreed and felt it was humanists duty to be involved in civil life.

15TH CENTURY FLORENCE
• An intellectual’s duty was to the state. A study of the humanities should be put to the service of the
state.

VERNACULAR LITERATURE
• While humanists revived Roman Latin, but many also wrote in the vernacular.

• Vernacular: the language spoken in their own regions, such as English, Italian, French, or German.

• Dante’s masterpiece in the Italian vernacular (The Divine Comedy) became an international hit.

• The Divine Comedy is considered the preeminent work of Italian literature and one of the greatest
works of world literature.

• The Divine Comedy chronicles Dante’s adventure to salvation. His soul travels to the 9 levels of
Hell, through Purgatory, and finally arrives in Paradise or Heaven.

• In England, Chaucer helped standardize English vernacular in his famous work The Canterbury
Tales.

• The Canterbury Tales is a collection of 24 stories that runs to over 17,000 lines.

• The stories are told from the point o view of 29 different pilgrims on their way to Canterbury
Cathedral, giving hilarious insights into various classes.

• In France, Christine de Pizan wrote in the vernacular defending women.

• A proto feminist, de Pizan ‘s The Book of the City of Ladies rallies against male writers arguing
that women, by their very nature, cannot learn and are “ easily swayed by emotions”.

• “Should I also tell you whether a woman’s nature is clever and quick enough to learn speculative sciences
as well as to discover them, and likewise the manual arts. I assure you that women are equally well-
suited and skilled to carry them out and to put them to sophisticated use once they have learned them.”

EDUCATION IN THE RENAISSANCE
• As humanists believed education could improve society, they wrote books on education and opened
schools.

• These schools emphasized the Liberal Arts and physical fitness, as Classical Greece had.

• Students studied history, moral philosophy, eloquence (or rhetoric), letters (grammar and logic),
poetry, mathematics, astronomy, and music.

• Students studied the classical histories, poetry, in Latin and later Greek.

• Students were taught the skills of javelin throwing, archery, and dancing, and they were
encouraged to run, wrestle, hunt, and swim.

• The humanist model dominated European education until the 20th Century, it’s main purpose to
create well rounded citizens.

• Women and most non elite men were not included in the schools.

The rare women students studied mostly religion and morals , to become “Christian ladies”, good
mothers and wives.

THE IMPACT OF PRINTING
• With the invention of printing press Europeans could share and learn ideas on a large scale for the
first time.

• Johannes Gutenberg of Germany’s movable type press is often considered the number one invention
of all time.

• Gutenberg’s Bible, printed about 1455, was the first European book produced from movable type.

• By 1500, there were over a thousand printers in Europe, producing more than forty thousand titles.

• Printing allowed European civilization to compete for the first time with the civilization of China,
who had been printing books for a thousand years.

THE ARTISTIC RENAISSANCE IN ITALY
• Renaissance artists emphasized human being “the center of all things” and wanted to imitate the
natural world in their art.

• The Renaissance began in the Republic of Florence, then spread to Italy, Milan, Venice, then across
Europe.

• In the 14th Century, Giotto di Bondone is considered the first in a line of great artists who
contributed to the Renaissance.

• Giotto (Florence) was the first artist to draw from human models. According to Vasari "the great art of
painting as we know it today, introducing the technique of drawing accurately from life, which had been
neglected for more than two hundred years”.

• Giotto’s Last Judgment.

NEW TECHNIQUES IN PAINTING
• Masaccio (Florence1401-1428) created masterpieces not only in Alfresco, a painting done on fresh,
wet plaster with water-based paints, but by using perspective.

• Compared to the flat figures of medieval and byzantine paintings , Masaccio’s have depth and
seemed to come alive.

• The Medici family became the primary patrons of artists and architects.

• Florentine painters used and developed the new style in two major ways.

• Firstly, they used geometry to use better perspective and outdoor space and light.

• Secondly, artists studied human motion and anatomy.

• These skills came together to portray idealized individual people.

• While Giotto painted traditional Christian themes, Botticelli wove themes from Classical Greece
and Rome into his painting, which the humanists so admired.

• Botticelli 1445 – May 17, 1510

• Botticelli 1445 – May 17, 1510
Lorenzo di Medici BotticelliCosimo di Medici

SCULPTURE AND ARCHITECTURE
• Florentine sculptures revolutionized the art as well.

Florentine sculptures revolutionized the art as well.

• The sculptor Donatello and his life partner Bertoldo studied the classical Roman statues
throughout Italy.

• Donatello’s David was the first free standing bronze cast since the days of the Roman Empire.

• Donatello 1386-1466
• As was his equestrian statue of the Duke of Milan.

• Donatello 1386-1466

• The architect Filippo Brunelleschi was inspired by the buildings of classical Rome to create a new
architecture in Florence.

• Filippo Brunelleschi studied the Classical buildings of the Roman Empire.

• Filippo Brunelleschi (1377-1446) his dome in Florence, the first since the days of the Roman
Empire.

• Filippo Brunelleschi (1377-1446) stressed classical balance in design.

• Filippo Brunelleschi (1377-1446)

• The Church of San Lorenzo, commissioned by the Medic, among his masterpieces.

ARTIST SHOPS FLOURISH
• Verrocchio and his partner Lorenzo de Credi produced hundreds of paintings, sculptures, and finely
crafted items.

ARTIST SHOPS FLOURISH
• Verrocchio’s studio produced paintings, sculpture, and all kinds of crafts, they even would decorate
a weddings.

MASTERS OF THE HIGH RENAISSANCE
• Three great students of Bertoldo and Verrocchio stand as giants in art history; Leonard,
Michelangelo, and Raphael.

• Leonardo grew up in Verrocchio and De Credi’s collaborative shop, both who soon saw him as a
genius.

• Leonardo’s father had kicked him out of the family, most likely for being gay.

• Leonardo mastered the art of realistic painting, dissecting human bodies to better see how nature
worked.

• He created ideal forms using perspective, light and shadow.

• Leonardo’s career was cut short in Florence when Fra Bernadido began preaching against the
renaissance and sodomites (gays).

• Leonardo and his boyfriend Salai traveled throughout Italy…..
Portrait of Salai (Gian Giacomo Caprotti) as Saint Sebastian

• Leonardo and his boyfriend Salai traveled throughout Italy.
Salai as Bacchus

• Eventually settling in Milan.

• In Milan, he produced his famous Last Supper and began a great equestrian statue of Ludovico il
Moro Duke of Milan.

• Leonardo briefly returned to Florence as a challenge to settle rivalry with another young artist
Michelangelo. Both were to paint opposite walls of the same room….yet politics intervened and
neither finished the frescos.

• Leonardo and Sali joined King Francis II of France’s entourage as a military engineer inventor.

• After the Italian War, Leonardo lived in Paris where he continued making advances in science,
mathematics, poetry, and the arts.

Upon his death, his Mono Lisa (most likely himself in drag) the one painting he would never be parted
with, ended up becoming the seminal piece of the French Kings art collection housed in the Louve.

• Michelangelo grew up in the Medici garden, where the aged Bertoldo soon recognized his genius.

• Michelangelo sculpted his David for the Republic of Florence, brining him world renown.

• Michelangelo brought the high renaissance to Rome, where he completed his Pieta.

• In Rome, a number of his works in painting, sculpture, and architecture rank among the most
famous in existence.

• In Rome, the warrior Pope Julius II coerced Michelangelo into painting Pope Sixus’ Chapel's ceiling.

• Many years later, Michelangelo returned to the Sistine Chapel to paint the Last Judgment on the
alter wall.

• Michelangelo included himself in the painting, a slain sodomite soul, as his obsession with young
muscular men caused the artists deep depression and repression.

• In Rome, his crowning achievement in architecture was the Dome of Saint Peters and the
Colonnade.

• He spent the remainder of his life composing love poetry to his numerous male crushes.

• By 25, the sensual “Don Juan” Raphael had became famous throughout Italy for his paintings.

• Raphael’s Madonnas (paintings of the Virgin Mary) achieve an ideal of beauty far surpassing
human standards.

• Raphael 1483 -1520
• He moved to Rome, where he was the favorite painter to the Popes, and antagonized the
venerable Michelangelo.

• Raphael 1483 -1520
• The young social Raphael found Michelangelo so depressing, Raphael nicknamed
Michelangelo “the hangman”.

• Raphael 1483 -1520
• His School of Athens reveals a world of balance, harmony, and order—the underlying principles of the
art of the classical world of Greece and Rome.

• Artemisia Gentileschi (1593 – c. 1656) painted many pictures of strong and suffering
women from myth and the Bible – victims, suicides, warriors

THE NORTHERN ARTISTIC RENAISSANCE
• The renaissance quickly spread to the Netherlands along the trade routes from Milan.

• With no space for frescos, northern artists painted illustrations for books and wooden panels for
altarpieces in Gothic Cathedrals.

• In Flanders, the painter Jan van Eyck used oil paint, which use a wide variety of colors and create
fine details.

• Jan van Eyck 1390 – 1441

• Oil paint has a wider variety of colors and creates finer details.

• Van Eyck imitated nature not by using perspective, but by simply observing reality and portraying
details as best he could.

• Albrecht Dürer studied in Florence and combined both schools.

• Albrecht Dürer (1471 –1528)
• He used Italian perspective and balance, while painting minuet details.

• Dürer tried to achieve a standard of ideal beauty that was based on a careful examination of the
human form.

• Dürer brought detail to famous wood print carvings, producing hundreds of masterpieces.

NEXT TIME
THE REFORMATION AND WARS OF RELIGION

Humanism, Renaissance Art and Architecture

Recommended

Recommended

More Related Content

What's hot

What's hot (20)

Viewers also liked

Viewers also liked (20)

Similar to Humanism, Renaissance Art and Architecture

Similar to Humanism, Renaissance Art and Architecture (20)

More from Pinecrest Academy Nevada

More from Pinecrest Academy Nevada (20)

Recently uploaded

Recently uploaded (20)

Humanism, Renaissance Art and Architecture