RENAISSANCE ART

THE BIRTH OF VENUS, FLORENCE

         Renaissance art is the painting, sculpture and decorative arts of that period of European history known as the Renaissance, emerging as a distinct style in Italy in about 1400, in parallel with developments which occurred in philosophy, literature, music, and science. Renaissance art, perceived as the noblest of ancient traditions, took as its foundation the art of Classical antiquity, but transformed that tradition by absorbing recent developments in the art of Northern Europe and by applying contemporary scientific knowledge. Renaissance art, with Renaissance Humanist philosophy, spread throughout Europe, affecting both artists and their patrons with the development of new techniques and new artistic sensibilities. Renaissance art marks the transition of Europe from the medieval period to the Early Modern age.

THE LAST SUPPER 

                    

ARTIST:

 Leonardo da Vincci  , 1494

  

        The work is presumed to have been commenced around 1495–1496 and was commissioned as part of a plan of renovations to the church and its convent buildings by Leonardo's patron Ludovico Sforza, Duke of Milan. The painting represents the scene of The Last Supper of Jesus with his apostles, as it is told in the Gospel of John. Leonardo has depicted the consternation that occurred among the Twelve Disciples when Jesus announced that one of them would betray him.

PAINTING

      The Last Supper measures 460 cm × 880 cm (180 in × 350 in) and covers an end wall of the dining hall at the monastery of Santa Maria delle Grazie in Milan, Italy. The theme was a traditional one for refectories, although the room was not a refectory at the time that Leonardo painted it. The main church building had only recently been completed (in 1498), but was remodeled by Bramante, hired by Ludovico Sforza to build a Sforza family mausoleum.The painting was commissioned by Sforza to be the centerpiece of the mausoleum.The lunettes above the main painting, formed by the triple arched ceiling of the refectory, are painted with Sforza coats of arms. The opposite wall of the refectory is covered by the Crucifixion fresco by Giovanni Donato da Montorfano, to which Leonardo added figures of the Sforza family in tempera. These figures have deteriorated in much the same way as has The Last Supper. Leonardo began work on The Last Supper in 1495 and completed it in 1498 he did not work on the painting continuously. 

DAVID

                                                                           ARTIS :
    
                                                                      Michelangelo ,1490

                                                           

                                               

                 David is one of Michelangelo’s most-recognizable works, and has become one of the most recognizable statues in the entire world of art.  Standing 13’5″ tall, the double life-sized David is depicted patiently waiting for battle, prepped with slingshot in one hand and stone in the other.  The twentysomething-Michelangelo carved the David after he had already carved the Pieta in Rome in the late 1490s and returned to Florence in 1501.  Knowledge of his talent as a sculptor, therefore, was growing, and his career was accelerating when he was commissioned to carve the biblical David for the outside of the Florence Cathedral.  Because the statue was intended to be placed in a high location on the church, it had to be large enough to be seen from below. Today, it resides not outside the cathedral, but inside the comfortable confines of the Accademia Museum in Florence.

                              

               

            

                                                                LAST JUDGEMENT 

        ARTIST: 

           Michelangelo, 1536 - 1541

     

                                                      

       The Last Judgment  is a fresco by the Italian Renaissance painter Michelangelo covering the whole altar wall of the Sistine Chapel in Vatican City. It is a depiction of the Second Coming of Christ and the final and eternal judgment by God of all humanity. The souls of humans rise and descend to their fates, as judged by Christ who is surrounded by prominent saints.
  

      Altogether there are over 300 figures, with nearly all the males and angels originally shown as nudes many were later partly covered up by painted draperies, of which some remain after recent cleaning and restoration.The reception of the painting was mixed from the start, with much praise but also criticism on both religious and artistic grounds. Both the amount of nudity and the muscular style of the bodies has been one area of contention, and the overall composition another.

            In the lower part of the fresco, Michelangelo followed tradition in showing the saved ascending at the left and the damned descending at the right. In the upper part, the inhabitants of Heaven are joined by the newly saved. The fresco is more monochromatic than the ceiling frescoes and is dominated by the tones of flesh and sky. The cleaning and restoration of the fresco, however, revealed a greater chromatic range than previously apparent. Orange, green, yellow, and blue are scattered throughout, animating and unifying the complex scene.

MONA LISA 

      ARTIST:
  
            Leonardo da Vincci ,   1503-06, until 1517

                                                         

                                           

                                           
                                                    

      The Mona Lisa , Monna Lisa or La Gioconda , La Joconde is a half-length portrait painting by the Italian Renaissance artist Leonardo da Vinci that has been described as "the best known, the most visited, the most written about, the most sung about, the most parodied work of art in the world". The Mona Lisa is also one of the most valuable paintings in the world. It holds the Guinness World Record for the highest known insurance valuation in history at one hundred million dollars in 1962, which is worth nearly eight hundred million dollars in 2017.

     The painting is thought to be a portrait of Lisa Gherardini, the wife of Francesco del Giocondo, and is in oil on a white Lombardy poplar panel. It had been believed to have been painted between 1503 and 1506; however, Leonardo may have continued working on it as late as 1517. Recent academic work suggests that it would not have been started before 1513.It was acquired by King Francis I of France and is now the property of the French Republic, on permanent display at the Louvre Museum in Paris since 1797.

     The subject's expression, which is frequently described as enigmatic, the monumentality of the composition, the subtle modelling of forms, and the atmospheric illusionism were novel qualities that have contributed to the continuing fascination and study of the work.

THE MIDDLE AGES

Carolingian Art

Lorsch Gospels 778–820. Charlemagne's Court School.

     Carolingian art comes from the Frankish Empire in the period of roughly 120 years from about 780 to 900  during the reign of Charlemagne and his immediate heirs popularly known as the Carolingian Renaissance.The art was produced by and for the court circle and a group of important monasteries under Imperial patronage; survivals from outside this charmed circle show a considerable drop in quality of workmanship and sophistication of design. The art was produced in several centres in what are now France, Germany, Austria, northern Italy and the Low Countries, and received considerable influence, via continental mission centres, from the Insular art of the British Isles, as well as a number of Byzantine artists who appear to have been resident in Carolingian centres.

      There was for the first time a thoroughgoing attempt in Northern Europe to revive and emulate classical Mediterranean art forms and styles, that resulted in a blending of classical and Northern elements in a sumptuous and dignified style, in particular introducing to the North confidence in representing the human figure, and setting the stage for the rise of Romanesque art and eventually Gothic art in the West. The Carolingian era is part of the period in Medieval art sometimes called the "Pre-Romanesque". After a rather chaotic interval following the Carolingian period, the new Ottonian dynasty revived Imperial art from about 950, building on and further developing Carolingian style in Ottonian art.

BYZANTINE ART

     


       Byzantine art is the name for the artistic products of the Eastern Roman (Byzantine) Empire, as well as the nations and states that inherited culturally from the empire. Though the empire itself emerged from Rome's decline and lasted until the Fall of Constantinople in 1453, many Eastern Orthodox states in Eastern Europe, as well as to some degree the Muslim states of the eastern Mediterranean, preserved many aspects of the empire's culture and art for centuries afterward.

        Just as the Byzantine Empire represented the political continuation of the Roman Empire, the term "Byzantine" being a creation of later historians, the Byzantines considering themselves to be Romans), Byzantine art developed out of the art of the Roman Empire, which was itself profoundly influenced by ancient Greek art. Byzantine art never lost sight of this classical heritage. The Byzantine capital, Constantinople, was adorned with a large number of classical sculptures,although they eventually became an object of some puzzlement for its inhabitants.And indeed, the art produced during the Byzantine Empire, although marked by periodic revivals of a classical aesthetic, was above all marked by the development of a new aesthetic.

Hagia Sophia In Constantinople

ROMAN ART

              Roman art refers to the visual arts made in Ancient Rome and in the territories of the Roman Empire. Roman art includes architecture, painting, sculpture and mosaic work. Luxury objects in metal work, gem engraving, ivory carvings, and glass are sometimes considered in modern terms to be minor forms of Roman art, although this would not necessarily have been the case for contemporaries.

      Ancient Roman pottery was not a luxury product, but a vast production of "fine wares" in terra sigillata were decorated with reliefs that reflected the latest taste, and provided a large group in society with stylish objects at what was evidently an affordable price. Roman coins were an important means of propaganda, and have survived in enormous numbers.

        While the traditional view of the ancient Roman artists is that they often borrowed from, and copied Greek precedents (much of the Greek sculptures known today are in the form of Roman marble copies), more recent analysis has indicated that Roman art is a highly creative pastiche relying heavily on Greek models but also encompassing Etruscan, native Italic, and even Egyptian visual culture. Stylistic eclecticism and practical application are the hallmarks of much Roman art.

SCULPTURES

Trajan Column

      Early Roman art was influenced by the art of Greece and that of the neighbouring Etruscans, themselves greatly influenced by their Greek trading partners. An Etruscan speciality was near life size tomb effigies in terracotta, usually lying on top of a sarcophagus lid propped up on one elbow in the pose of a diner in that period. As the expanding Roman Republic began to conquer Greek territory, at first in Southern Italy and then the entire Hellenistic world except for the Parthian far east, official and patrician sculpture became largely an extension of the Hellenistic style, from which specifically Roman elements are hard to disentangle, especially as so much Greek sculpture survives only in copies of the Roman period. By the 2nd century BC, "most of the sculptors working in Rome" were Greek, often enslaved in conquests such as that of Corinth (146 BC), and sculptors continued to be mostly Greeks, often slaves, whose names are very rarely recorded. Vast numbers of Greek statues were imported to Rome, whether as booty or the result of extortion or commerce, and temples were often decorated with re-used Greek works.

GREEK ART

       Greek art began in the Cycladic and Minoan civilization, and gave birth to Western classical art in the subsequent Geometric, Archaic and Classical periods (with further developments during the Hellenistic Period). It absorbed influences of Eastern civilizations, of Roman art and its patrons, and the new religion of Orthodox Christianity in the Byzantine era and absorbed Italian and European ideas during the period of Romanticism with the invigoration of the Greek Revolution, until the Modernist and Postmodernist. Greek art is mainly five forms: architecture, sculpture, painting, pottery and jewelry making.

Mosaic of Daphni Monastery

           Byzantine art is the term created for the Eastern Roman Empire from about the 5th century until the fall of Constantinople in 1453. (The Roman Empire during this period is conventionally known as the Byzantine Empire.The term can also be used for the art of states which were contemporary with the Persian Empire and shared a common culture with it, without actually being part of it, such as Bulgaria, or Russia, and also Venice, which had close ties to the Byzantine Empire despite being in other respects part of western European culture. It can also be used for the art of people of the former Byzantine Empire under the rule of Ottoman Empire after 1453. In some respects the Byzantine artistic tradition has continued in Russia and other Eastern Orthodox countries to the present day.

Chinese Art And Buddist Art

            Chinese art is visual art that, whether ancient or modern, originated in or is practiced in China or by Chinese artists. The Chinese art in the Republic of China (Taiwan) and that of overseas Chinese can also be considered part of Chinese art where it is based in or draws on Chinese heritage and Chinese culture. Early "stone age art" dates back to 10,000 BC, mostly consisting of simple pottery and sculptures. After this early period Chinese art, like Chinese history, is typically classified by the succession of ruling dynasties of Chinese emperors, most of which lasted several hundred years.

PAINTING 

                                                                    Early Autumn

Early Autumn, 13th century, by Song loyalist painter Qian Xuan The decaying lotus leaves and dragonflies hovering over stagnant water are probably a veiled criticism of Mongol rule.

Ink wash painting, practiced mainly by scholar officials and court painters especially of landscapes, flowers, and birds, developed aesthetic values depending on the individual imagination of and objective observation by the artist that are similar to those of the West, but long pre-dated their development there.

Art Of Ancient Egypt

    Ancient Egyptian art is the painting, sculpture, architecture and other arts produced by the civilization of ancient egypt in the lower Nile Valley from about 3000 BC to 30 AD. Ancient Egyptian art reached a high level in painting and sculpture, and was both highly stylized and symbolic. It was famously conservative, and Egyptian styles changed remarkably little over more than three thousand years. Much of the surviving art comes from tombs and monuments and thus there is an emphasis on life after death and the preservation of knowledge of the past.

        Ancient Egyptian art included paintings, sculpture in wood (now rarely surviving), stone and ceramics, drawings on papyrus, faience, jewelry, ivories, and other art media. It displays an extraordinarily vivid representation of the ancient Egyptian's socioeconomic status and belief systems.

PAINTING 

The Egyptian figure convention

• Not all Egyptian reliefs were painted, and less prestigious works in tombs, temples and palaces were merely painted on a flat surface. 
• Stone surfaces were prepared by whitewash, or if rough, a layer of coarse mud plaster, with a smoother gesso layer above some finer limestones could take paint directly. 
• The binding medium used in painting remains unclear such as egg tempera and various gums and resins have been suggested. It is clear that true fresco, painted into a thin layer of wet plaster, was not used. Instead the paint was applied to dried plaster, in what is called "fresco a secco" in Italian. 
• Many ancient Egyptian paintings have survived in tombs, and sometimes temples, due to Egypt's extremely dry climate.
• For example, the painting to the right shows the head from a profile view and the body from a frontal view. Their main colors were red, blue, green, gold, black and yellow.