Renaissance
Art History
The Beginning
• Renaissance means “rebirth”
• A time of individual freedom
• Began in Italy
• Took place between 1400 and 1600
Rebirth
• Revival of classical art that was originally developed by ancient Greeks and Romans
• Renewed Spirit, celebrating diversity in people
Artists
• Artists were no longer all seen as 1, doing all the same thing
• Time for personalities to show through
New Styles
• Linear Perspective – all objects in a painting are proportionate.
• Landscapes – pictures of the land, flowers, mountains, trees, etc.
• Aerial Perspective – object become less detailed and distinct the farther away they are in the picture
• Introduced Oil paint
• Narrative Picture – people are located in a landscape and they are acting out a story, taken from mythology or Christian stories
Why Did It Start in Italy?
• The Renaissance began in Italy because …– Roman Architecture was found in almost every
town
– Italian language came from the Latin language of the Romans
Renaissance Sculpture• Famous Renaissance Sculptors:
• Michelangelo • Donatello• Verrocchio
• Inspired by the ancient Greeks and Romans• Created realistic figures that showed
personality and behavior• Focused on the laws of proportion
Renaissance Painting• Golden Age of painting
• New use of perspective
• Study of Human Anatomy and proportion
• Genre Painting – painting scenes or events from everyday life
• Use of oil paints
Painting Con.• Renaissance painting reflects the revolution of
ideas and science astronomy, geography
• Invention of the printing press
• Development of Easel painting
• No longer pictures of religion, instead they painted the world around them, and things from their own imagination
Famous Renaissance Art Pieces• The Arnolfini
Portrait (1434) by Jan van Eyck
• One of the first to use oil paints
• Created pictures with a lot of detail
• Painted powerful religious pictures
Masaccio
• Tommaso di Ser Giovanni di Mone Cassai– Uses space well
– Shows shadows
– Gives his figures believable emotional response to the story
– Used one point perspective
Brancacci Chapel in Florence,
Italy
Frescoe
Donatello
Donatello di Niccolo di Betto Bardi
Greatest sculpture of Renaissance time
• Created in Bronze, Stone, Clay, and Wood
• Sculptures represented real, believable, living people, caught in an emotional moment
Donatello’s David
Sandro Botticelli• Painted scenes from
Roman myth
• One of the most famous Renaissance painters
MichelangeloMichelangelo
Buonarroti– Sculptor– Painter– Architect– Poet
The David - marble, took 2 years, 18 feet tall
Frescos on the Sistine Chapel - 4 years, painted 300 figures
RaphaelRaffaelo Sanzio
Worked in the Vatican library, painting, while Michelangelo worked in the Vatican Chapel
Leonardo da Vinci• Painter, Sculptor, Engineer, Scientist, Inventor, Musician
• Oil Painting• Sfumato - painting technique which overlays translucent
layers of colour to create perceptions of depth, volume and form. In particular, it refers to the blending of colours or tones so subtly that there is no perceptible transition