Early Renaissance Painting Part 2

We're going to start our second half of early Renaissance painting by looking at the work of Piero della Francesca. Piero is an artist who's greatly admired today. One need only say Piero, such is his fame. He was a disciple of Domenico Veneziano and he worked with Alberti for a while. Piero's work fuses elements from many styles and innovations to brilliantly sum up the art of the quattrocento in his magnificent paintings. His reputation today is somewhat unusual in that in the centuries after his death, he was remembered less as a painter than as a mathematician, who is now ranked on a par with Toscanelli. And Toscanelli is the man who may have made Columbus's journey possible. Piero's reputation as a painter rebounded as a result of Cezanne's interest in his work in the late 19th century. In many respects, Piero was and is a modern. Here you see how Piero's townscape on the left compares most favorably to a landscape painted by Cezanne some four plus centuries later that we see on the right. We're going to start our serious look at Piero with what is in one way an uncharacteristic work by the painter. This is the Madonna of Mercy from the Miser Cordia altarpiece that was commissioned in 1445. This was painted slowly over a number of years and was perhaps completed much later by his assistants. This is Piero's earliest known work and it was part of a large multi-paneled altarpiece. What was uncharacteristic about this work? When compared to typical Piero paintings, two things become immediately apparent. Based on the overall view that we see here, Piero was not given to working with the constraints of tiny compartments. They preferred to use architectural settings to divide the action or the narrative. And Piero never willingly used the gold background. In the case of the Madonna of Mercy, the patrons no doubt exercised a great deal of control over how they wanted this image presented. The altarpiece was commissioned by the Miser Cordia Brotherhood whose members tended the sick and buried the dead, particularly during the plague in 1348. Expected to do good deeds anonymously, the members performed their tasks wearing a hood as seen in the altarpiece. Back to our earlier point as to this being atypical of Piero's work, a contract was found which bound Piero to paint this altarpiece in the manner of a pre-existing painting. Now this was not an unusual request at the time as many painted images were thought to be miracle working. Works then were copied closely in the hope that they too would work miracles. However, this piece is far more than a copy. Piero greatly simplified this image to focus our attention on the Madonna, whose modeling has nothing of the harshness of Masaccio. Indeed, the suffused treatment of shadows by Fra Angelico is anticipated here. While formal in presentation, the image is far from static. Notice that many key elements are just off center. The hands of the Madonna are on a different level, her belt tie is just off center, and the poses and gestures of the supplicants are varied. Variation within a carefully balanced whole is a trademark of Piero's work. Now while forced to work with gold here, Piero makes it largely successful as the gold background is treated as just another color area, almost echoed in the hair and faces of the figures, and certainly reflected in the warmth of the Madonna's red robe. Piero's magnificent color sense is a strong base to which he will add his understanding of perspective. The illustrations in the text miss something of the cool elegance which Piero was able to imbue his figures with, as seen here in the Madonna of Senegalia. The absolute stillness and unwavering light are again hallmarks of his works. An unknown Flemish artist may have come into contact with Piero and influenced his work. Piero's nearly perfect single achievement and the realization of the ideals of the early Renaissance is seen in the Flagellation of Christ. Again, we see a precise use of perspective in which an imagined space becomes quite real. The orthogonal lines converge at a point below the whip, drawing our attention to the action about to take place. A horrible act contrasted with the relative calm pose and expression of Christ. Piero's work is immediately striking in that the main action takes place in the middle ground area to which we are drawn by the perspective. A unique aspect of this work is the fact that the eyeline is located below the hips of the figures as opposed to the prescribed eye level, and this has the effect of making the three figures in the foreground loom even larger. Who are those guys? Their presence and meaning have been subject to great speculation, with recent discoveries establishing them as members of the Sanhedrin, the governing body of the Jews. And the Sanhedrin were the ones that condemned Jesus, who went not into judgment hall lest they be defiled. That's from John 18, 28. A Jewish tradition of the trial of Jesus specifies three prosecutors, a chief priest to the left, an elder to the right, and a gardener, who's seen here barefoot. The following two passages were previously inscribed on the bottom of the panel. From Acts 4, 26, they are by the apostles detailing the specific context of the trial of Jesus. One passage reads, Why did the heathen rage, and the people imagine vain things? And the other passage reads, The kings of the earth stood up, and the rulers were gathered together against the Lord and against his Christ. This seems to make quite clear the subject of the three men. The flagellation is Piero's masterwork in terms of form, space, light, and color. That which Giotto started and Masaccio made logical is brilliantly refined by Piero. Apparently, he was mindful of his triumph in that he signed this in a most conspicuous manner, rather odd, and perhaps telling, that he signed the work on the lowest step of Pilate's throne. One peculiar aspect of this painting concerns the light. In the foreground, the light comes from the left, while in the background, the light comes from the right. The design of the Annunciation from the Legend of the True Cross Fresco series is symbolic of the very subject Piero was dealing with. By what stylistic device, or means, does Piero divide the action? He divides the image by way of a cross, which anticipates the implication of God the Father sending his son. In case you think the suggested shape of the cross in the Annunciation was just a happy accident, take a look at Piero's Baptism of Christ to see just how seriously and smoothly Piero blended art and science. The beauty of works such as these is that the science end of the painting does not get in the way of the art. Look at how in this particular painting, everything lines up perfectly geometrically. Look at the dove, look at the water pouring, look at his hands, the way all those things line up. It's really a tremendous achievement on Piero's part. Let's take a look now at one of the larger frescoes from the Legend of the True Cross series. High level in this work again is at the height of a kneeling figure, for the iconographic reason of reverence before the cross. On the right, Piero's vision is all the more remarkable for his rendering of one of the most beautiful building facades in Renaissance architecture. Remarkable because none like this had been built at the time he painted the picture. You see in the top left here the detail of the townscape that we compared to Cézanne's work earlier in the presentation. Piero's resurrection is full of symbolism as well, with green and withered trees in the background. The soldier to the left of Christ is thought to be a self-portrait. Most important, however, is the figure triangle that Piero introduces, and this figure triangle or pyramid will enjoy much favor with Renaissance masters to come, especially Leonardo and Raphael. This three-sided compositional device that we basically see as a formal solution to a painting problem might have seemed essential to the religious theme in Piero's day. One further aspect of Piero's work not really touched on in some textbooks is his portrait work. The portrait of Federico de Montefeltro was part of a diptych which would face a portrait of his wife Battista Sforza, and we see both of them here. And Battista's portrait was done posthumously from a death mask. Now these works are terrific in the idealized landscapes which animate the background with a luminous glow. The horizon line in these works is slightly curved, showing that not only was Piero concerned with effects of atmospheric perspective, but also with proving the then wild idea of Toscanelli that the world was round. Piero's sensitive vision sought to confirm this idea by visual investigation. The reverse of these portraits were home to triumphal scenes of Federico, as we see here, and Battista, as we see in this particular painting. One other portrait by Piero I'd like to show you is this painting of Sigismundo Malatesta. You may remember Malatesta for whom the Malatesta temple was named. That very naughty man. Now oddly enough, Piero abandoned painting for the last 20 years of his life, extinguishing the flame of one of the most brilliant painters of all time. Speculated to have gone blind, he is known to have continued to write about his beloved mathematics and perspective. We now turn our attention to Fra Angelico. Fra Angelico was born Guido di Pietro and was known during his lifetime as Fra Giovanni d'Affeziole. Only later was he referred to as the angelic painter label by which he is now known. This is the most famous of his many versions of the Annunciation. Below it read an inscription warning passers-by to beware if they fail to say a Hail Mary. I wonder if that carries over to reproductions and slideshows. While there is an interest in realism in this contemporary of Masaccio, he rejected the heavy modeling in favor of a bright palette to emphasize the religious content of the work. His familiarity with the international style is seen in a number of areas. Fra Angelico uses the architecture to suit his purposes, that of containing the action, but he's not concerned with a real space. The work of the architect Michelozzo influenced Fra Angelico, yet there's an oddity here. Three Ionic and three Corinthian capitals in one portico. Here we see the work of Fra Filippo Lippi, one of the great names in all of art history, and he was quite a character for a monk. He was a forger, an embezzler, an abductor, and the father of a child by a pretty nun. Only his skill in painting kept him from being a total disgrace. Interestingly enough, his son became a painter of note as well. Now Lippi was an important teacher, with Botticelli being one of his students. Now Fra Filippo Lippi's magnificence lies in his mastery of line, that you see certainly in the drawing on the left, but that carries over into the painting on the right as well. The subtlety of and variation in the line suggests that the forms would model a form, make it seem three-dimensional, even without the line. This is a wonderfully tight knit composition, as the figures tie together gracefully and lead into the interior and landscape as well. Now this is thought to be a portrait of his pretty nun and mistress, and seems worked strongly from life when compared to the more idealized heads of Fra Angelico. Filippo's enthusiasm for human beauty takes precedence over the spiritual nature of the image, yet it in no way detracts from the holiness of the Madonna. Look out! There's ten naked men with swords! We're going to go now into the second half of the century and continue to look at painting. D'Antonio del Pollaiuolo was a painter and engraver as well as a sculptor. The engraving here shows Pollaiuolo's interest in anatomy, and while the shading is not very effective, the contours of the figures imply a deep knowledge of anatomy. There was possibly gleaned through dissection of the human body. Essentially, Pollaiuolo is showing off in this piece. The engravings were vitally important, as they were easily circulated among artists over a great distance. The benefit of this is that people all over could become familiar with your work, and you could exert some influence in that respect. The downside is that art starts to become somewhat homogenized. Rather than there being a distinct look to the work of each country, things start to look a little more similar from country to country, and we'll see that as we go on through this semester. We look now at the work of Domenico Ghirlandaio, and while best known for his fresco series depicting the birth of the Virgin, Ghirlandaio's greatest skill may have been as a portraitist, with his use of brilliant color and graceful light that he typically used to portray smooth surfaces. The color used in his frescoes, combined with an unflinching eye for detail, makes even a brutally honest painting such as this appealing. The old man is a most telling image for both his ugliness and the basic difference between it and other portraits done in profile. The influence of Fra Filippo Lippi is unquestioned in the art of Sandro Botticelli. The manner in which the hands are drawn is gently modeled a la Lippi, as opposed to the harsher and perhaps more solid modeling that we saw earlier with Masaccio. Compared with his friend Polaiolo, Botticelli's style is far more linear, and perhaps his emphasis on line is more successful than heavy modeling in suggesting movements in works such as his birth of Venus. And here then is that birth of Venus. Botticelli painted religious scenes as well as classical myths, and additionally he was a pupil of Verrocchio. This is Luca Signorelli's work, and this fresco by Signorelli shows the acknowledgement of a number of masters. The articulation of the figures in the nude recalls Polaiolo, yet the line and color are more in keeping with Botticelli. It's a peculiar fusion of the two styles. I almost wish he'd take a stand for one approach or the other. This is the work of Pietro Perugino, and by contrast he sums up with brilliant colors and perspective the art of the preceding century without falling prey to the movement in art of his time. And Perugino was the teacher of Raphael. We'll look a little bit more at this painting when we begin our study of Raphael's work. One more dead painter we have to study is Andrea Mantegna, and this is his famous painting entitled The Dead Christ. And Mantegna was one of the greatest artists of the Renaissance. Too often his trademark obscures his ability as a painter. Oftentimes Mantegna is depicted as a singular genius preoccupied with perspective and foreshortening, but that's not altogether true. The real accomplishment of The Dead Christ here is the overpowering communication of the tragedy of the image, not just the unusual view. Mantegna was a great painter whether he used perspective or not. This painting of Saint Sebastian shows you that, again, Mantegna could pull off some pretty strong themes without relying on the use of foreshortening or perspective. We have yet another Madonna and Child, again by Mantegna. And again, not particularly concerned with perspective. This is a little like the Pierros that we looked at earlier and that the eyeline seems to be somewhat low. As you look at the painting, it almost gives you the feeling that you are kneeling before the Madonna and Child. I guess we can't finish this lecture and our summation of Mantegna's work without looking at something rather than unusual. A great ceiling fresco where you look up and the angels appear to be looking down at you. This concludes our look at early Renaissance painting.