The Burgundian court at Dijon was also producing work in reaction to the old Gothic trend. Not as radical as Masaccio, Jan van Eyck’s style in the 1430s was of the lineage of his local forebears, but when introduced to perspective, van Eyck broke new boundaries. His celebrated portrait of “The Betrothal of the Arnolfini” with its mirror reflecting not only Arnolfini and his bride but also van Eyck himself, shows the painter as witness and person. In essence, van Eyck acknowledges that he is painting what he saw, to the extent of even leaving in his own impression. The subject, a betrothal, is also great naturalism.
Despite the efforts of the van Eyck brothers, the medieval spirit reigned throughout Northern Europe at this time. Perspective, realism and classical influence did not trouble the northern masters. The preoccupation with the skill of the artist as an expense incurred by the patron, so evident from the sums paid to Italian masters, is not clear from the works in the north where ultramarine and gold were still the greatest expenses troubling northern patrons and impressed contemporaries. Although Lochner uses perspective timidly in the Fra Angelico style, contemporary northern work at this time tended to compare more easily with such work as the Wilton Diptych.
Depite the guilds’ inadvertent prevention of dissemination of ideas, it did occur, as on Fouquet’s trip to Italy, where he painted the Pope and picked up Italian Renaissance ideas. Whilst still painting on the same theme as the Wilton Diptych, Fouquet’s image looks less like a collage but more like a real representation of the event. Light and shade, perspective and distance – all new elements to the north, and all imported there from Italy. Yet the synthesis was not all Italian. Whilst Piero was a great Master and had a great interest in light and shade, the van Eycks’ influence is clear from the attention to detail of the textures – probably a by-product of the gothic fascination with delicate detail.
A contemporary of Masaccio, Donatello was another leader of the Renaissance. His celebrated statue of St. George differs concertedly from the Gothic art that it was displayed alongside. Instead of heightening the building by accentuation of the height of the alcoves and using dainty lacework, Donatello aims to restore the art of sculpture to a representative art form based on the Greek ideals. Instead of telling the story of St. George by reference to dragon motifs under his feet, or other such devices that might have occurred earlier, Donatello’s statue is concerned with portraying the saint as a man gazing at his enemy and ready for battle. As opposed to the serene and vague expressions of the gothic statues of the decorative style, Donatello’s George is determined, unyielding and brimming with vim, vigour and vitality. Just as Brunelleschi set the tone for architecture for centuries to come, Donatello and Masaccio set the tone for the coming centuries with their use of a new and vigorous observation of nature. Burckhardt claimed that this period’s natural interest was indicative of man’s new autonomy and command of the natural world, but this seems a little oversimplified and is probably just a reflection of 19th century liberal romanticism and pastoralism.
This observation of the world was encouraged by collectors such as Aldorandi who saw himself as clarifying and classifying the universe by collecting. Imperato of Naples won status by showing off his collection, and saw himself as a Noah figure, rescuing the forms of nature. Patrons were also happy to push for natural observation as a skill. Maximillian II made a great show a Byzantine medical text and his menageries, whilst gathering a court of scholars, philosophers and artists. Rudolph II’s Prague garden is also worthy of note, as is his extensive patronage. Appearing to be sage and wise by being ‘scientific’ through support of the arts was a big incentive for the patrons of the day, quite aside from the usual reasons for patronage, such as Richard II’s obvious motives for the Wilton Diptych.
Just as the form of Masaccio’s painting is brutally real, Donatello’s figure of St. George is real, although is a lighter, fresher way. By contrast, Donatello shows the capability to produce the viciously realistic with his relief of “Herod’s Feast” at Siena Cathedral. Whilst the Middle Ages produced dainty and delicate artwork that showed order and sterilised such gruesome passages, Donatello’s realism is almost sadistic by comparison. Showing the executioner kneeling before a horrified Herod, his evil wife is shown rationalising the horror of what was going on, whilst Salome is shown shocked and pausing in her dance. Meanwhile, the other diners recoil in horror at the sight of St. John the Baptist’s head.
This idea of reflecting the real world was an innovation localised to a small group of painters in certain areas, and this in itself was a major development. Although minor local variations on themes existed, Europe existed at this time as an integral continent. Art, architecture, learning and politics were universals, common to the continent. The emergence of burghers and merchants willing to protect their local interests changed this before our period opens, and guilds began to regulate cities and towns for the benefits of their members, thus excluding ‘foreign’ employees from taking work from guild members. This encouraged the ending of the “International Style” and the formation of regional “schools”. The guilds forced young boys whose parents saw art as their calling to train imitating the art of the local masters, so that the young artist would eventually be able to paint on the master’s behalf. This formed and institutionalised very distinct and separate regional styles. Brunelleschi’s successors followed in his footsteps, with Alberti developing the Brunelleschian style. Ghiberti’s bronze of the Baptism in the Jordan is similarly a study on Donatello’s style. Using Donatello’s ‘Dance of Salome’ as a guide on the piece’s character and aesthetics and a twelfth century brass at Liege for content, tone and the required depth.
The printing of pictures preceded the printing of books by some decades and the most important innovation of the era was to impact on art also. The advent of the woodcut as a cheap means of printing meant that cheap pamphlets were easily producible. However, copper prints were more important for art. Copper prints could show variegation of shading by different depths of cut and the plates lasted much longer. Skilful use of the burin allowed the etcher to etch in the style of Botticelli and Mategna – two popularly copied artists in Italy – and thus allowed ideas to spread far and wide about new artistic trends.
The sixteenth century brought Italy its most celebrated artistic period as the position of the artist had begun to change. As cities competed for artists to beautify their buildings, so the power of the artists grew. During the Quatrocento Renaissance, it is important to remember that artists were not the isolated visionaries as romanticised about today, but were businessmen in possession of demanding clients. Painters did not paint a picture in the hope of acquiring a buyer, except in extremely lean periods, when less demanded painters might produce a run of icons of the Madonna or of some similarly saleable subject. In the fifteenth century, pictures were made to order by the client and no painting was the artist’s genius acting in isolation: on the contrary, “painting was still too important to be left to the painters.
Art became to be viewed not as a craft, but as a skilled profession. Physicians, such as Vesalius, began to dissect bodies themselves in this period, instead of observing dissections. This was a fusion of liberal artist into craftsman, and indicative of an ongoing general trend that took the craft of painting into the bounds, despite Aristotle’s snobbery into the realms of liberal art. The resulting liberation of the artist and the unleashing of creativity upon the world was vital for the obvious freedom of the period’s art and served to increase the culthood that Masters had attracted since Giotto, the first Master. Indeed, Giotto’s reputation was potent two hundred years on, and Masaccio still easily impressed the world.
For all the praise of Burckhardt, Da Vinci makes surprisingly few innovations. His magnificent “Last Supper” is important in that it is the culmination of the solution to the new problem of three-dimensional composition. Whilst Pollaiuolo’s “Martyrdom of St Sebastian” is obviously forced and unnatural in its setting, Leonardo’s piece is natural yet compelling, chaotic in theme yet neat in order. He uses optical illusions in the “Mona Lisa” to compel the viewer so that sfomato hides the true expression of the model, and so that the mismatching background means that the angle of observation of the picture alters one’s perception of it. These were more gimmicks than developments, but worth noting for they show the degree of sophistication of art as a science. Viewing art as a science, Michelangelo’s great contribution to art was his mastery of anatomy. In the same way that Turner would become known for his clouds, Michelangelo became known as a Master to rival his contemporary, Leonardo, by the age of thirty for his ability to depict the human form.
Younger still, Raphael was in Florence at a similar time, but made a vital innovation. Whereas the Quattrocento artists, Michelangelo and Leonardo were obsessed with the depiction of nature through their art, Raphael was happier to use an imaginary ideal for his models. Galatea is recognised for her beauty, as she symbolises the classical world as it should have been, and was recognised as a representation of pure beauty, but famously, she had no model.
Florence, it must be remembered, was not the sole cradle of art in Europe – it was not even the sole cradle of reform in Italy. The great reformers of Florence were less taken by colour than form, whereas in the hazy, ambient lagoon light of Venice, colour was more important and developments occurred paralleling the achievements of Florence. Venice’s preoccupation with colour is a result of the heritage of the Venetian school’s direct descendance from the medieval tradition, where “real” colour was almost irrelevant – the gold and ultramarine miniatures of the era never claimed any air of realism. Giorgione’s “The Tempest” is an excellent example of the local school’s importance, as he forgets classical lessons about the importance of composition, the importance of careful representation and merely uses the colours of the painting to bind it together. Titian, who rose to the same heights in his own time as Michelangelo (possibly because of his exceptional longevity) masterminded the deliberate drawing of attention from location to location by using light and darkness and using straight converging lines.
The Italian learning spread across the continent, fusing with native Gothic styles as a result of the plundering and the occupations of the Italian Wars, but Italy continued to drive forwards. In the 1520s, the plethora of talent led many to claim that perfection had been attained, and so, Mannerism developed. The inability to outdo their forebears in skill led many to try to outdo them in their invention and originality of form. Michelangelo’s own disregard for norms, especially in architecture, had briefed the European public for such an occurrence and taught the European public to admire an artist’s originality. The result was the growth of the appeal of virtuosos such as Cellini and this led to bizarre and extravagant semi-reactionary works. Contravening the most basic of the classical texts on paintings, the Mannerists tried to drive themselves from what they saw as a rut.
The Mannerist Jacob Robusti (Tintoretto) felt that the beauty of Titian’s work was not compelling enough for story telling. Using fragmented light instead of Titianesque swathes of colour and using imbalanced arrangements of figures, Tintoretto portrayed the legend of St. George and the discovery of St. Mark’s remains with great power and excitement. A further extension of this school was El Greco’s work. Raised in Crete, El Greco was used to the Byzantine style that was devoid of natural appearance or realism. Encouraged by Tintoretto’s work, El Greco’s art disregarded natural form and colours producing stirring visions, notably in his “Opening of the Fifth Seal”, a very shocking piece. His residence in Spain where there was a religious fervour suited to his style is a happy coincidence for the art world..
The idolatry of Spain that sustained El Greco and kept his reputation and finances afloat was lacking at this time in much of northern Europe. Protestantism prevented the production of religious images. Portrait painting and illustration alone sustained the northern painters. Hals’ use of ‘undignified’ poses, unlike Holbein’s contrived dignity, was designed to convey a characteristic mood, but like Holbein, it followed strict rules of balance.
The area of most interest to art historians in the Netherlands is the fate of the old altarpiece painters, many of whom began to paint landscapes. By becoming genre painters, the Dutch artists were able to continue to thrive. This era saw the birth of the landscape - a result of a financial necessity to find new subject matter. The landscape was a pure show of artistic talent; something that could not have happened prior to the cult of the artist.
The seventeenth century saw the greatest advances since Michelangelo’s death. The Roman Baroque style, with its abandonment of some of the simplicity of classical architecture whilst retaining its motifs, rose at this time. A reaction to the polarisation of wealth, extravagance unseen since the Gothic era was possible. The triumphalism of the Counter-Reformation, the renewed power of the Papacy and the rise of absolutism as a doctrine all led firstly the church, and then royalty, to turn to the Baroque as a show of might. Breaking new rules by sheer expense and extravagance, this was a Roman extension of Mannerist independent thinking. Bernini’s David is not Michelangelo’s David.
Carracci, under Rafaelite influences, moved to an era of classically influenced anatomy, sentimentality, simple and harmonious painting. Meanwhile, Caravaggio moved to unravel the truth at the cost of beauty. To him, beauty was not of any importance, and the world as it existed was all that mattered. His irreverent “Doubting Thomas” was criticised for its depiction of the apostles as common labourers. The contrast between Carravaggio’s Aristotlean brutal realism (disparagingly called “naturalism”) and Carracci’s Platonic world of ideals we see reflected elsewhere. Rubens’ idyllic landscapes contrast with Velazquez’s early works.
The Renaissance changes were multifaceted. The artist was brought onto a skewed plain in relation to his art, and this era’s love of ‘Masters’ gives us our modern preoccupation with the works of famous artists. The printing press allowed dissemination of copies of Botticellis or other popular works, so popularising art and allowing widespread art appreciation. Despite this, the era saw the “schools” come to the fore, as each supported its champion against one another. Stylistically, perspective was the single most important innovation, as Giotto’s understanding of foreshortening had already allowed some realism to exist in art, paradoxiscally as a result of his study of the unnatural Byzantine school. The movement for the real world as art grew until Raphael’s ability to conjure natural beauty showed an alternative. The movement from the realism of Michelangelo to the blurred impressions of Velazquez and Rembrandt indicate a middle ground. Finally surpassing the Ancients, the Renaissance was truly a rebirth for Italian art, as masters like Donatello, irritated by the staleness of the vogues of their fields, spearheaded reform, and genii such as Masaccio, Michelangelo and Leonardo applied the lessons of science to art.
P. 144, “The Story of Art” – E.H. Gombrich
P. 3 – Michael Baxendall – Painting and Experience in Fifteenth Century Italy
