1.
Diana and Actaeon (Titian)
–
Diana and Actaeon is a painting by the Italian Renaissance master Titian, finished in 1556–1559, and is considered amongst Titians greatest works. It portrays the moment in which the goddess Diana meets Actaeon, Diana is the woman on the right side of the painting. She is wearing a crown with a crescent moon on it and is being covered by the dark skinned woman who may be her servant or slave. In 2008–2009, the National Gallery, London and National Gallery of Scotland successfully campaigned to acquire the painting from the Bridgewater Collection for £50 million. As a result, Diana and Actaeon will remain on display in the UK, Diana and Actaeon is part of a series of seven famous canvases, the poesies, depicting mythological scenes from Ovids Metamorphoses painted for Philip II of Spain. The work remained in the Spanish royal collection until 1704, when King Philip V gave it to the French ambassador. It was soon acquired by Philippe II, Duke of Orléans, nephew of Louis XIV, after the French Revolution, the Orleans collection was sold to a Brussels dealer by Louis Philippe II, Duke of Orléans in 1791, two years before he was guillotined. This dealer then exhibited many pictures from the collection in London, the third Duke of Bridgewater was probably inspired to buy the paintings by his nephew, Earl Gower, the ancestor of the Dukes of Sutherland. On first seeing the collection there, William Hazlitt wrote I was staggered when I saw the works, a new sense came upon me, a new heaven and a new Earth stood before me. On the outbreak of the Second World War in September 1939, between 1945–2009, the Diana and Actaeon and Diana and Callisto were on long-term display at the National Gallery of Scotland, in Edinburgh. As well as Hazlitt, during their time on display they have inspired artists such as JMW Turner. On 14 October 2008 the appeal received £1 million from the Art Fund, there was also controversy over attempts to dilute the guarantee that the duke would sell no other of the paintings from the Sutherland Loan should the two Titians be bought. Diana and Actaeon will thus be displayed in Scotland for five years, then in London alongside The Death of Actaeon for five years, on an alternating basis
2.
Titian
–
Tiziano Vecelli or Tiziano Vecellio, known in English as Titian /ˈtɪʃən/, was an Italian painter, the most important member of the 16th-century Venetian school. He was born in Pieve di Cadore, near Belluno, during his lifetime he was often called da Cadore, taken from the place of his birth. His painting methods, particularly in the application and use of color, would exercise a profound influence not only on painters of the Italian Renaissance, during the course of his long life, Titians artistic manner changed drastically, but he retained a lifelong interest in color. Although his mature works may not contain the vivid, luminous tints of his pieces, their loose brushwork. The exact date of Titians birth is uncertain, when he was an old man he claimed in a letter to Philip II, King of Spain, to have been born in 1474, but this seems most unlikely. Other writers contemporary to his old age give figures that would equate to birthdates between 1473 and after 1482 and he was the son of Gregorio Vecelli and his wife Lucia. His father was superintendent of the castle of Pieve di Cadore, Gregorio was also a distinguished councilor and soldier. Many relatives, including Titians grandfather, were notaries, and the family of four were well-established in the area, at the age of about ten to twelve he and his brother Francesco were sent to an uncle in Venice to find an apprenticeship with a painter. At that time the Bellinis, especially Giovanni, were the artists in the city. There Titian found a group of men about his own age, among them Giovanni Palma da Serinalta, Lorenzo Lotto, Sebastiano Luciani. Francesco Vecellio, his brother, later became a painter of some note in Venice. A fresco of Hercules on the Morosini Palace is said to have one of Titians earliest works. Others were the Bellini-esque so-called Gypsy Madonna in Vienna, and the Visitation of Mary and Elizabeth, now in the Accademia, a Man with a Quilted Sleeve is an early portrait, painted around 1509 and described by Giorgio Vasari in 1568. Scholars long believed it depicted Ludovico Ariosto, but now think it is of Gerolamo Barbarigo, Rembrandt borrowed the composition for his self-portraits. Titian joined Giorgione as an assistant, but many contemporary critics found his work more impressive—for example in exterior frescoes that they did for the Fondaco dei Tedeschi. Their relationship evidently contained a significant element of rivalry, distinguishing between their work at this period remains a subject of scholarly controversy. A substantial number of attributions have moved from Giorgione to Titian in the 20th century, one of the earliest known Titian works, Christ Carrying the Cross in the Scuola Grande di San Rocco, depicting the Ecce Homo scene, was long regarded as by Giorgione. In 1507–1508 Giorgione was commissioned by the state to create frescoes on the re-erected Fondaco dei Tedeschi, Titian and Morto da Feltre worked along with him, and some fragments of paintings remain, probably by Giorgione
3.
Landscape painting
–
In other works, landscape backgrounds for figures can still form an important part of the work. Sky is almost always included in the view, and weather is often an element of the composition, detailed landscapes as a distinct subject are not found in all artistic traditions, and develop when there is already a sophisticated tradition of representing other subjects. The two main traditions spring from Western painting and Chinese art, going well over a thousand years in both cases. Landscape views in art may be imaginary, or copied from reality with varying degrees of accuracy. If the primary purpose of a picture is to depict an actual, specific place, especially including buildings prominently, within a few decades it was used to describe vistas in poetry, and eventually as a term for real views. However the cognate term landscaef or landskipe for a patch of land had existed in Old English. The earliest pure landscapes with no figures are frescos from Minoan Greece of around 1500 BCE. The frescos from the Tomb of Nebamun, now in the British Museum, are a famous example. These were frequently used, as in the illustrated, to bridge the gap between a foreground scene with figures and a distant panoramic vista, a persistent problem for landscape artists. The Chinese style generally showed only a distant view, or used dead ground or mist to avoid that difficulty, aesthetic theories in both regions gave the highest status to the works seen to require the most imagination from the artist. They were often also poets whose lines and images illustrated each other, a revival in interest in nature initially mainly manifested itself in depictions of small gardens such as the Hortus Conclusus or those in millefleur tapestries. The frescos of figures at work or play in front of a background of trees in the Palace of the Popes. Several frescos of gardens have survived from Roman houses like the Villa of Livia, a particular advance is shown in the less well-known Turin-Milan Hours, now largely destroyed by fire, whose developments were reflected in Early Netherlandish painting for the rest of the century. Landscape backgrounds for various types of painting became prominent and skilful during the 15th century. The Italian development of a system of graphical perspective was now known all over Europe. Indeed, certain styles were so popular that they became formulas that could be copied again and again, after the publication of the Small Landscapes, landscape artists in the Low Countries either continued with the world landscape or followed the new mode presented by the Small Landscapes. The popularity of landscape scenes can be seen in the success of the painter Frans Post. Salvator Rosa gave picturesque excitement to his landscapes by showing wilder Southern Italian country, there are different styles and periods, and subgenres of marine and animal painting, as well as a distinct style of Italianate landscape
4.
Rembrandt
–
Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn was a Dutch draughtsman, painter, and printmaker. A prolific and versatile master across three media, he is considered one of the greatest visual artists in the history of art. Having achieved youthful success as a painter, Rembrandts later years were marked by personal tragedy. Yet his etchings and paintings were popular throughout his lifetime, his reputation as an artist remained high, Rembrandts portraits of his contemporaries, self-portraits and illustrations of scenes from the Bible are regarded as his greatest creative triumphs. His self-portraits form a unique and intimate biography, in which the artist surveyed himself without vanity and his reputation as the greatest etcher in the history of the medium was established in his lifetime, and never questioned since. Few of his paintings left the Dutch Republic whilst he lived, but his prints were circulated throughout Europe, because of his empathy for the human condition, he has been called one of the great prophets of civilization. Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn was born on 15 July 1606 in Leiden, in the Dutch Republic and he was the ninth child born to Harmen Gerritszoon van Rijn and Neeltgen Willemsdochter van Zuijtbrouck. His family was quite well-to-do, his father was a miller, religion is a central theme in Rembrandts paintings and the religiously fraught period in which he lived makes his faith a matter of interest. His mother was Roman Catholic, and his father belonged to the Dutch Reformed Church, unlike many of his contemporaries who traveled to Italy as part of their artistic training, Rembrandt never left the Dutch Republic during his lifetime. He opened a studio in Leiden in 1624 or 1625, which he shared with friend, in 1627, Rembrandt began to accept students, among them Gerrit Dou in 1628. In 1629, Rembrandt was discovered by the statesman Constantijn Huygens, as a result of this connection, Prince Frederik Hendrik continued to purchase paintings from Rembrandt until 1646. He initially stayed with an art dealer, Hendrick van Uylenburgh, Saskia came from a good family, her father had been a lawyer and the burgemeester of Leeuwarden. When Saskia, as the youngest daughter, became an orphan, Rembrandt and Saskia were married in the local church of St. Annaparochie without the presence of Rembrandts relatives. In the same year, Rembrandt became a burgess of Amsterdam and he also acquired a number of students, among them Ferdinand Bol and Govert Flinck. In 1635 Rembrandt and Saskia moved into their own house, renting in fashionable Nieuwe Doelenstraat, in 1639 they moved to a prominent newly built house in the upscale Breestraat, today known as Jodenbreestraat in what was becoming the Jewish quarter, then a young upcoming neighborhood. The mortgage to finance the 13,000 guilder purchase would be a cause for later financial difficulties. Rembrandt should easily have been able to pay the house off with his income, but it appears his spending always kept pace with his income. It was there that Rembrandt frequently sought his Jewish neighbors to model for his Old Testament scenes, in 1640, they had a second daughter, also named Cornelia, who died after living barely over a month
5.
History
–
History is the study of the past as it is described in written documents. Events occurring before written record are considered prehistory and it is an umbrella term that relates to past events as well as the memory, discovery, collection, organization, presentation, and interpretation of information about these events. Scholars who write about history are called historians and their works continue to be read today, and the gap between the culture-focused Herodotus and the military-focused Thucydides remains a point of contention or approach in modern historical writing. In Asia, a chronicle, the Spring and Autumn Annals was known to be compiled from as early as 722 BC although only 2nd-century BC texts survived. Ancient influences have helped spawn variant interpretations of the nature of history which have evolved over the centuries, the modern study of history is wide-ranging, and includes the study of specific regions and the study of certain topical or thematical elements of historical investigation. Often history is taught as part of primary and secondary education, the word history comes ultimately from Ancient Greek ἱστορία, meaning inquiry, knowledge from inquiry, or judge. It was in that sense that Aristotle used the word in his Περὶ Τὰ Ζῷα Ἱστορίαι, the ancestor word ἵστωρ is attested early on in Homeric Hymns, Heraclitus, the Athenian ephebes oath, and in Boiotic inscriptions. History was borrowed from Latin into Old English as stær, and it was from Anglo-Norman that history was borrowed into Middle English, and this time the loan stuck. In Middle English, the meaning of history was story in general, the restriction to the meaning the branch of knowledge that deals with past events, the formal record or study of past events, esp. human affairs arose in the mid-fifteenth century. With the Renaissance, older senses of the word were revived, and it was in the Greek sense that Francis Bacon used the term in the sixteenth century. For him, historia was the knowledge of objects determined by space and time, in an expression of the linguistic synthetic vs. analytic/isolating dichotomy, English like Chinese now designates separate words for human history and storytelling in general. In modern German, French, and most Germanic and Romance languages, which are synthetic and highly inflected. The adjective historical is attested from 1661, and historic from 1669, Historian in the sense of a researcher of history is attested from 1531. Historians write in the context of their own time, and with due regard to the current dominant ideas of how to interpret the past, in the words of Benedetto Croce, All history is contemporary history. History is facilitated by the formation of a discourse of past through the production of narrative. The modern discipline of history is dedicated to the production of this discourse. All events that are remembered and preserved in some authentic form constitute the historical record, the task of historical discourse is to identify the sources which can most usefully contribute to the production of accurate accounts of past. Therefore, the constitution of the archive is a result of circumscribing a more general archive by invalidating the usage of certain texts and documents
6.
Life of Christ in art
–
Most of the subjects forming the narrative cycles have also been the subjects of individual works, though with greatly varying frequency. The most common subjects were grouped around the birth and childhood of Jesus, many cycles covered only one of these groups, and others combined the Life of the Virgin with that of Jesus. Subjects showing the life of Jesus during his life as a teacher, before the days of the Passion, were relatively few in medieval art. Later sometimes the Rest on the Flight into Egypt, finding in the Temple, the last episode of Jesuss childhood in the Canonical Gospels. Baptism of Jesus Miraculous catch of fish, more often found in Lives of apostles, temptation of Christ, often divided into its three parts. Wedding at Cana, the first miracle recorded in the Gospels, instead the Three Marys or Myrrhbearers finding an empty tomb was shown, or the next three scenes. Of these, the Vita Christi by Ludolph of Saxony and the Meditations on the Life of Christ were two of the most popular from the 14th century onwards. Another influence, especially in churches, was liturgical drama. Devotional practices such as the Stations of the Cross also influenced selection, the miracles of Christ did not score well on any of these counts. It was around this time that miracle scenes, which had often been prominent in Early Christian art, paintings in hospitals were more likely to show scenes of the miraculous cures. An exception is St Marks Basilica in Venice where a 12th-century cycle of mosaics originally had 29 scenes of the miracles, by the Gothic period the selection of scenes was at its most standardized. Early Christian art contains a number of narrative scenes collected on sarcophagi, miracles are very often shown, but the Crucifixion is absent until the 5th century, when it originated in Palestine, soon followed by the Nativity in much the form still seen in Orthodox icons today. The Adoration of the Magi and the Baptism are both often found earlier, but the choice of scenes is very variable, santAppollinare Nuovo in Ravenna has cycles on opposite walls of the Works and Passion of Christ from the early 6th century. The Passion is notable for not containing, among its thirteen scenes, a Crucifixion. The period of Christs Works still seems relatively prominent compared to the High Middle Ages, scenes with miracles were more often found in cycles of the life of Saint Peter and other apostles, from late antique sarcophagi to the Raphael Cartoons. Such schemes were later called the Poor Mans Bible by art historians, after stained-glass became important in Gothic art, this medium was also used, usually with a small medallion for each scene, requiring a very compressed composition. The frescos on the walls of the Sistine Chapel showing the Lives of Christ, from the 15th century prints had first scenes, then whole cycles, which were also one of the most common subjects for blockbooks. Albrecht Dürer produced a total of three print cycles of the Passion of Christ, large and small cycles in woodcut, and these were distributed all over Europe, and often used as patterns by less ambitious painters
7.
Mythology
–
Mythology refers variously to the collected myths of a group of people or to the study of such myths. Myths are the people tell to explain nature, history. Myth is a feature of every culture, mythologizing continues, as shown in contemporary mythopoeia such as urban legends and the expansive fictional mythoi created by fantasy novels and comics. A cultures collective mythology helps convey belonging, shared and religious experiences, behavioral models, the study of myth began in ancient history. Rival classes of the Greek myths by Euhemerus, Plato and Sallustius were developed by the Neoplatonists, the nineteenth-century comparative mythology reinterpreted myth as a primitive and failed counterpart of science, a disease of language, or a misinterpretation of magical ritual. Recent approaches often view myths as manifestations of psychological, cultural, or societal truths, the term mythology predates the word myth by centuries. It first appeared in the fifteenth-century, borrowed from the Middle French term mythologie, the word mythology, comes from Middle French mythologie, from Late Latin mythologia, from Greek μυθολογία mythología from μῦθος mythos and -λογία -logia. The word mythología appears in Plato, but was used as a term for fiction or story-telling of any kind, combining mỹthos. From Lydgate until the seventeenth or eighteenth-century, mythology was similarly used to mean a moral, fable, from its earliest use in reference to a collection of traditional stories or beliefs, mythology implied the falsehood of the stories being described. It came to be applied by analogy with similar bodies of traditional stories among other cultures around the world. The Greek loanword mythos and Latinate mythus both appeared in English before the first example of myth in 1830, in present use, mythology usually refers to the collected myths of a group of people, but may also mean the study of such myths. For example, Greek mythology, Roman mythology and Hittite mythology all describe the body of myths retold among those cultures, dundes defined myth as a sacred narrative that explains how the world and humanity evolved into their present form. Lincoln defined myth as ideology in narrative form, scholars in other fields use the term myth in varied ways. In a broad sense, the word can refer to any traditional story, due to this pejorative sense, some scholars opted for the term mythos. Its use was similarly pejorative and now commonly refers to its Aristotelian sense as a plot point or to a collective mythology. The term is distinguished from didactic literature such as fables. Main characters in myths are usually gods, demigods or supernatural humans, however, many exceptions or combinations exist, as in the Iliad, Odyssey and Aeneid. Myths are often endorsed by rulers and priests and are linked to religion or spirituality
8.
Allegorical
–
As a literary device, an allegory is a metaphor whose vehicle may be a character, place or event, representing real-world issues and occurrences. Many ancient religions are based on astrological allegories, that is, allegories of the movement of the sun, in classical literature two of the best-known allegories are the Cave in Platos Republic and the story of the stomach and its members in the speech of Menenius Agrippa. One of the examples of allegory, Platos Allegory of the Cave. In this allegory, Plato describes a group of people who have lived chained in an all of their lives. The people watch shadows projected on the wall by things passing in front of a fire behind them and begin to ascribe forms to these shadows, using language to identify their world. He tries to tell the people in the cave of his discovery, also allegorical is Ezekiel 16 and 17, wherein the capture of that same vine by the mighty Eagle represents Israels exile to Rome. Allegory has an ability to freeze the temporality of a story, Mediaeval thinking accepted allegory as having a reality underlying any rhetorical or fictional uses. The allegory was as true as the facts of surface appearances, if, then, the Greeks or others say that they were not committed to the care of Peter and his successors, they necessarily confess that they are not of the sheep of Christ. This text also demonstrates the frequent use of allegory in religious texts during the Mediaeval Period, following the tradition, since meaningful stories are nearly always applicable to larger issues, allegories may be read into many stories which the author may not have recognised. This is allegoresis, or the act of reading a story as an allegory. S, lewis and A Kingdom Far and Clear, The Complete Swan Lake Trilogy by Mark Helprin. The story of the apple falling onto Isaac Newtons head is another famous allegory and it simplified the idea of gravity by depicting a simple way it was supposedly discovered. It also made the scientific revelation well known by condensing the theory into a short tale. According to Henry Littlefields 1964 article, L. Yet, George MacDonald emphasised in 1893 that, A fairy tale is not an allegory, I much prefer history – true or feigned– with its varied applicability to the thought and experience of readers. I think that many confuse applicability with allegory, but the one resides in the freedom of the reader, and this further reinforces the idea of forced allegoresis, as allegory is often a matter of interpretation and only sometimes of original artistic intention. Like allegorical stories, allegorical poetry has two meanings – a literal meaning and a symbolic meaning, some unique specimens of allegory can be found in the following works, Edmund Spenser – The Faerie Queene, The several knights in the poem actually stand for several virtues. Nathaniel Hawthorne – Young Goodman Brown, The Devils Staff symbolises defiance of God, the characters names, such as Goodman and Faith, ironically serve as paradox in the conclusion of the story. Nathaniel Hawthorne – The Scarlet Letter, The scarlet letter symbolises many things, the characters, while developed with interiority, are allegorical in that they represent ways of seeing the world. George Orwell – Animal Farm, The pigs stand for political figures of the Russian Revolution, lászló Krasznahorkai - The Melancholy of Resistance and the film Werckmeister Harmonies, It uses a circus to describe an occupying dysfunctional government
9.
Michelangelo
–
Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni was an Italian sculptor, painter, architect, and poet of the High Renaissance who exerted an unparalleled influence on the development of Western art. Considered to be the greatest living artist during his lifetime, he has since described as one of the greatest artists of all time. A number of Michelangelos works of painting, sculpture, and architecture rank among the most famous in existence and he sculpted two of his best-known works, the Pietà and David, before the age of thirty. As an architect, Michelangelo pioneered the Mannerist style at the Laurentian Library, at the age of 74, he succeeded Antonio da Sangallo the Younger as the architect of St. Peters Basilica. Michelangelo transformed the plan so that the end was finished to his design, as was the dome, with some modification. Michelangelo was unique as the first Western artist whose biography was published while he was alive, in his lifetime he was often called Il Divino. One of the qualities most admired by his contemporaries was his terribilità, the attempts by subsequent artists to imitate Michelangelos impassioned and highly personal style resulted in Mannerism, the next major movement in Western art after the High Renaissance. Michelangelo was born on 6 March 1475 in Caprese near Arezzo, at the time of Michelangelos birth, his father was the Judicial administrator of the small town of Caprese and local administrator of Chiusi. Michelangelos mother was Francesca di Neri del Miniato di Siena, the Buonarrotis claimed to descend from the Countess Mathilde of Canossa, this claim remains unproven, but Michelangelo himself believed it. Several months after Michelangelos birth, the returned to Florence. There Michelangelo gained his love for marble, as Giorgio Vasari quotes him, If there is good in me. Along with the milk of my nurse I received the knack of handling chisel and hammer, as a young boy, Michelangelo was sent to Florence to study grammar under the Humanist Francesco da Urbino. The young artist, however, showed no interest in his schooling, preferring to copy paintings from churches, the city of Florence was at that time the greatest centre of the arts and learning in Italy. Art was sponsored by the Signoria, by the merchant guilds and by patrons such as the Medici. The Renaissance, a renewal of Classical scholarship and the arts, had its first flowering in Florence, the sculptor Lorenzo Ghiberti had laboured for fifty years to create the bronze doors of the Baptistry, which Michelangelo was to describe as The Gates of Paradise. The exterior niches of the Church of Orsanmichele contained a gallery of works by the most acclaimed sculptors of Florence – Donatello, Ghiberti, Andrea del Verrocchio, and Nanni di Banco. The interiors of the churches were covered with frescos, begun by Giotto. During Michelangelos childhood, a team of painters had been called from Florence to the Vatican, among them was Domenico Ghirlandaio, a master in fresco painting, perspective, figure drawing, and portraiture who had the largest workshop in Florence at that period
10.
Sistine Chapel ceiling
–
The Sistine Chapel ceiling, painted by Michelangelo between 1508 and 1512, is a cornerstone work of High Renaissance art. The ceiling is that of the Sistine Chapel, the papal chapel built within the Vatican between 1477 and 1480 by Pope Sixtus IV, for whom the chapel is named. It was painted at the commission of Pope Julius II, the chapel is the location for papal conclaves and many important services. Pope Julius II was a pope who in his papacy undertook an aggressive campaign for political control, to unite. He invested in symbolism to display his power, such as his procession, in the Classical manner. It was Julius who began the rebuilding of St. Peters Basilica in 1506, in the same year 1506, Pope Julius conceived a program to paint the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. The walls of the chapel had been decorated twenty years earlier, the lowest of three levels is painted to resemble draped hangings and was hung on special occasions with the set of tapestries designed by Raphael. The middle level contains a scheme of frescoes illustrating the Life of Christ on the right side. It was carried out by some of the most renowned Renaissance painters, Botticelli, Ghirlandaio, Perugino, Pinturicchio, Signorelli, the upper level of the walls contains the windows, between which are painted pairs of illusionistic niches with representations of the first thirty-two popes. A draft by Matteo dAmelia indicates that the ceiling was painted blue like that of the Arena Chapel and decorated with gold stars, Michelangelo, who was not primarily a painter but a sculptor, was reluctant to take on the work. Also, he was occupied with a large sculptural commission for the popes own tomb. The pope was adamant, leaving Michelangelo no choice but to accept, but a war with the French broke out, diverting the attention of the pope, and Michelangelo fled from Rome to continue sculpting. The tomb sculptures, however, were never to be finished because in 1508 the pope returned to Rome victorious, the contract was signed on 10 May 1508. The scheme proposed by the pope was for large figures of the Apostles to occupy the pendentives. However, Michelangelo negotiated for a grander, much more complex scheme and was permitted, in his own words. It is unknown and is the subject of speculation among art historians whether Michelangelo was really able to do as he liked. It has been suggested that the Augustinian friar and cardinal, Giles of Viterbo, was a consultant for the aspect of the work. Many writers consider that Michelangelo had the intellect, the Biblical knowledge, a total of 343 figures were painted on the ceiling
11.
Fresco
–
Fresco is a technique of mural painting executed upon freshly-laid, or wet lime plaster. Water is used as the vehicle for the pigment to merge with the plaster, and with the setting of the plaster, the fresco technique has been employed since antiquity and is closely associated with Italian Renaissance painting. Buon fresco pigment mixed with water of temperature on a thin layer of wet, fresh plaster, for which the Italian word for plaster. Because of the makeup of the plaster, a binder is not required, as the pigment mixed solely with the water will sink into the intonaco. The pigment is absorbed by the wet plaster, after a number of hours, many artists sketched their compositions on this underlayer, which would never be seen, in a red pigment called sinopia, a name also used to refer to these under-paintings. Later, new techniques for transferring paper drawings to the wall were developed. The main lines of a drawing made on paper were pricked over with a point, the paper held against the wall, if the painting was to be done over an existing fresco, the surface would be roughened to provide better adhesion. This area is called the giornata, and the different day stages can usually be seen in a large fresco, buon frescoes are difficult to create because of the deadline associated with the drying plaster. Once a giornata is dried, no more buon fresco can be done, if mistakes have been made, it may also be necessary to remove the whole intonaco for that area—or to change them later, a secco. An indispensable component of this process is the carbonatation of the lime, the eyes of the people of the School of Athens are sunken-in using this technique which causes the eyes to seem deeper and more pensive. Michelangelo used this technique as part of his trademark outlining of his central figures within his frescoes, in a wall-sized fresco, there may be ten to twenty or even more giornate, or separate areas of plaster. After five centuries, the giornate, which were nearly invisible, have sometimes become visible, and in many large-scale frescoes. Additionally, the border between giornate was often covered by an a secco painting, which has fallen off. One of the first painters in the period to use this technique was the Isaac Master in the Upper Basilica of Saint Francis in Assisi. A person who creates fresco is called a frescoist, a secco or fresco-secco painting is done on dry plaster. The pigments thus require a medium, such as egg. Blue was a problem, and skies and blue robes were often added a secco, because neither azurite blue nor lapis lazuli. By the end of the century this had largely displaced buon fresco
12.
Hierarchy of genres
–
A hierarchy of genres is any formalization which ranks different genres in an art form in terms of their prestige and cultural value. Below that came lyric poetry, and comic poetry, with a ranking for drama. The novel took a time to establish a firm place in the hierarchy. In music, settings of words were accorded a higher status than merely instrumental works, at least until the Baroque period, any element of comedy reduced the status of a work, though, as in other art forms, often increasing its popularity. The hierarchies in figurative art are those initially formulated for painting in 16th century Italy, idealism was privileged over realism in line with Renaissance Neo-Platonist philosophy. The term is used within the field of painting, and from the High Renaissance onwards. This had not been the case in Medieval art and the sectors of society took a considerable period to fully accept this view. The Raphael Cartoons are an example of the continuing status of tapestry. Until the 19th century the most extravagant objéts dart remained more expensive and these matters were considered of great importance by artist-theorists such as Leon Battista Alberti, Leonardo da Vinci, and Giorgio Vasari. He placed emphasis on the ability to depict the interactions between the figures by gesture and expression, theorists of the Early and High Renaissance accepted the importance of representing nature closely, at least until the later writings of Michelangelo, who was strongly influenced by neoplatonism. By the time of Mannerist theorists such as Gian Paolo Lomazzo, ideas of decorum also fed into the hierarchy, comic, sordid or merely frivolous subjects or treatment ranked lower than elevated and moral ones. On the other hand, numbers of courtly sitters and their parents, the question of decorum in religious art became the focus of intense effort by the Catholic Church after the decrees on art of the Council of Trent of 1563. Paintings depicting biblical events as if they were occurring in the households of wealthy contemporary Italians were attacked, until the challenge of Caravaggio at the end of the century, religious art became thoroughly ideal. Although similar developments occurred in all advanced European countries, they were most evident in the enormously productive schools of Dutch Golden Age painting and Flemish Baroque painting. The unhappy history of Rembrandts last history commission, The Conspiracy of Claudius Civilis illustrates both his commitment to the form and the difficulties he had in finding an audience. In Flanders, as well as quantities of pure genre works, there was a trend towards history paintings with a major genre element, whether animals. Often the different elements were painted by different artists, Rubens and Frans Snyders often co-operated in this way, the size of paintings, and very often the prices they realized, increasingly tended to reflect their position in the hierarchy in this period. Until the Romantic period the price and saleability of what were essentially landscapes could be increased by adding small mythological or religious figures, a practice that went back to the beginnings of landscape painting in the Flemish world landscapes of Joachim Patinir in the early 16th century
13.
De pictura
–
De pictura is a treatise written by the Italian architect and art theorist Leon Battista Alberti. The first version, written in vernacular Italian in 1435 under the title Della pittura, was for a general audience, the Latin version, the De pictura of 1439–41, was more technical and intended for scholars. The work is the first in a trilogy of treatises on the Major arts which had a circulation during the Renaissance. Alberti was a member of Florentine family exiled in the 14th century, here he knew contemporary art innovators such as Filippo Brunelleschi, Donatello and Masaccio, with whom he shared an interest for Renaissance humanism and classical art. The treatise contained an analysis of all the techniques and painting theories known at the time, De pictura also includes the first description of linear geometric perspective around 1416, Alberti credited the discovery to Brunelleschi, and dedicated the 1435 edition to him. He placed emphasis on the ability to depict the interactions between the figures by gesture and expression. De pictura relied heavily on references to art in classical literature, De pictura influenced the work of artists including Donatello, Ghiberti, Botticelli, and Ghirlandaio. His treatment of perspective was the most influential of his recommendations, having an effect on Leonardo da Vinci. Alberti made at least 29 uses of Pliny the Elders Natural History, deriving his key themes of simplicity, for example, Alberti advised artists to use colour with restraint, and to paint in the effect of gold rather than using actual gold in their paintings. Gold did indeed vanish from Italian paintings of the part of the 15th century. Artists however found their own ways to paint with restraint, rather than following Albertis actual instructions directly, similarly, he encouraged artists to add black when modelling shapes, rather than only adding white as Cennino Cennini had advised in his c.1390 Il Libro dellArte. This advice had the effect of making Italian renaissance paintings more sombre, Alberti was here perhaps following Plinys description of the dark varnish used by Apelles. 1435/6, Della Pittura 1439–41, De pictura Spencer, J On Painting, grayson, Cecil On Painting and On Sculpture, The Latin texts of De Pictura and De Statua. A New Translation and Critical Edition
14.
Leon Battista Alberti
–
Leon Battista Alberti was an Italian humanist author, artist, architect, poet, priest, linguist, philosopher and cryptographer, he epitomised the Renaissance Man. Although Alberti is known mostly for being an artist, he was also a mathematician of many sorts, Albertis life was described in Giorgio Vasaris Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects. Leon Battista Alberti was born in 1404 in Genoa and his mother is unknown, and his father was a wealthy Florentine who had been exiled from his own city, allowed to return in 1428. Alberti was sent to boarding school in Padua, then studied Law at Bologna and he lived for a time in Florence, then travelled to Rome in 1431 where he took holy orders and entered the service of the papal court. During this time he studied the ancient ruins, which excited his interest in architecture, Alberti was gifted in many ways. He was tall, strong and an athlete who could ride the wildest horse. He distinguished himself as a writer while he was still a child at school, in 1435, he began his first major written work, Della pittura, which was inspired by the burgeoning pictorial art in Florence in the early 15th century. In this work he analyses the nature of painting and explores the elements of perspective, composition, in 1447 he became the architectural advisor to Pope Nicholas V and was involved with several projects at the Vatican. His first major commission was in 1446 for the facade of the Rucellai Palace in Florence. This was followed in 1450 by a commission from Sigismondo Malatesta to transform the Gothic church of San Francesco in Rimini into a memorial chapel, the Tempio Malatestiano. In 1452, he completed De re aedificatoria, a treatise on architecture, using as its basis the work of Vitruvius, the work was not published until 1485. It was followed in 1464 by his less influential work, De statua, Albertis only known sculpture is a self-portrait medallion, sometimes attributed to Pisanello. Alberti was employed to design two churches in Mantua, San Sebastiano, which was never completed, and for which Albertis intention can only be speculated, and the Basilica of SantAndrea. The design for the church was completed in 1471, a year before Albertis death. As an artist, Alberti distinguished himself from the ordinary craftsman and he was a humanist, and part of the rapidly expanding entourage of intellectuals and artisans supported by the courts of the princes and lords of the time. Alberti, as a member of family and as part of the Roman curia, had special status. He was a welcomed guest at the Este court in Ferrara, the Duke of Urbino was a shrewd military commander, who generously spent money on the patronage of art. Alberti planned to dedicate his treatise on architecture to his friend, among Albertis smaller studies, pioneering in their field, were a treatise in cryptography, De componendis cifris, and the first Italian grammar
15.
Academic art
–
Academic art, or Academicism, is a style of painting and sculpture produced under the influence of European academies of art. In this context it is often called academism, academicism, Lart pompier, and eclecticism, in this medicean institution students learned the arti del disegno and heard lectures on anatomy and geometry. Another academy, the Accademia di San Luca, was founded about a later in Rome. The Accademia di San Luca served a function and was more concerned with art theory than the Florentine one. Accademia di San Luca later served as the model for the Académie royale de peinture et de sculpture founded in France in 1648, and which later became the Académie des beaux-arts. The Académie royale de peinture et de sculpture was founded in an effort to distinguish artists who were practicing a liberal art from craftsmen. This emphasis on the component of artmaking had a considerable impact on the subjects. This battle of styles was a conflict over whether Peter Paul Rubens or Nicolas Poussin was a model to follow. Debates also occurred over whether it was better to learn art by looking at nature, academies using the French model formed throughout Europe, and imitated the teachings and styles of the French Académie. In England, this was the Royal Academy, one effect of the move to academies was to make training more difficult for women artists, who were excluded from most academies until the last half of the 19th century. This was partly because of concerns over the propriety of life classes with nude models, special arrangements were often made for female students until the 20th century. Since the onset of the debate, many artists worked between the two styles. In the 19th century, in the form of the debate, the attention. One artist after another was claimed by critics to have achieved the synthesis, among them Théodore Chassériau, Ary Scheffer, Francesco Hayez, Alexandre-Gabriel Decamps, and Thomas Couture. William-Adolphe Bouguereau, an academic artist, commented that the trick to being a good painter is seeing color. Another development during this period included adopting historical styles in order to show the era in history that the painting depicted, called historicism and this is best seen in the work of Baron Jan August Hendrik Leys, a later influence on James Tissot. Its also seen in the development of the Neo-Grec style, historicism is also meant to refer to the belief and practice associated with academic art that one should incorporate and conciliate the innovations of different traditions of art from the past. The art world also grew to give increasing focus on allegory in art, as artists attempted to synthesize these theories in practice, the attention on the artwork as an allegorical or figurative vehicle was emphasized
16.
Military art
–
The genre of military art is characterized by its subject matter rather than by any specific style or material used. The battle scene is one of the oldest types of art in developed civilizations, as rulers have always been keen to celebrate their victories, the depiction of other aspects of warfare, especially the suffering of casualties and civilians, has taken much longer to develop. The term war art is used, mostly in relation to 20th century military art made during wartime. Art depicting military themes has existed throughout history, the Battlefield Palette, a cosmetic palette from the Protodynastic Period of Egypt is incomplete, but shows prisoners being led away, and wild animals feasting on the dead. The Stele of the Vultures, about 2,500 BC, is one of a number of Mesopotamian victory stelae. Also around 2,500 BC, the earliest known depiction of a city being besieged is found in the tomb of Inti, an official from the 21st nome of Upper Egypt, the scene shows Egyptian soldiers scaling the walls of a near eastern fortress on ladders. Although the Battle of Kadesh in 1274 BC appears to have been inconclusive, surviving Assyrian art mainly consists of large stone reliefs showing detailed scenes of either military campaigns or hunting. The ancient Greek Parthenon Marbles show lengthy parades of the volunteer cavalry force. In Han dynasty China, a stone relief of c. 150-170 AD from the Wu family shrines shows a battle between forces in the Campaign against Dong Zhuo. The Alexander Mosaic is a large and dramatic battle scene showing Alexander the Great defeating Darius III of Persia, it is a floor mosaic excavated from Pompeii, such scenes had a great influence on Renaissance battle scenes. By the Late Roman Empire the reverse of coins often showed soldiers and carried an inscription praising our boys. Soldier saints, shown in military dress, were extremely popular, some illuminated manuscripts illustrated the many battles in the Old Testament. The Siege of the Castle of Love, often found on Gothic ivory mirror-cases, showed knights attacking a castle defended by ladies, all of these depicted frankly minor actions where Florence had defeated neighbouring cities, but important battles from distant history were equally popular. The Battle of the Milvian Bridge by Giulio Romano brought a huge and it was the most detailed and panoramic battle picture of its day, and its aerial viewpoint was to be very widely followed over the next centuries, though rarely to such dramatic effect. Vroom had also worked for English patrons, designing a set of tapestries of the defeat of the Spanish Armada which was destroyed when the Houses of Parliament burnt down in 1834. The paintings of Salvator Rosa, essentially landscapes, often showed groups variously described as bandits or soldiers lurking in the countryside of Southern Italy. The Surrender of Breda by Velázquez shows a scene as the two sides meet peacefully to surrender the town, a theme more often copied in naval painting than land-based military art
17.
Renaissance
–
The Renaissance was a period in European history, from the 14th to the 17th century, regarded as the cultural bridge between the Middle Ages and modern history. It started as a movement in Italy in the Late Medieval period and later spread to the rest of Europe. This new thinking became manifest in art, architecture, politics, science, Early examples were the development of perspective in oil painting and the recycled knowledge of how to make concrete. Although the invention of movable type sped the dissemination of ideas from the later 15th century. In politics, the Renaissance contributed to the development of the customs and conventions of diplomacy, the Renaissance began in Florence, in the 14th century. Other major centres were northern Italian city-states such as Venice, Genoa, Milan, Bologna, the word Renaissance, literally meaning Rebirth in French, first appeared in English in the 1830s. The word also occurs in Jules Michelets 1855 work, Histoire de France, the word Renaissance has also been extended to other historical and cultural movements, such as the Carolingian Renaissance and the Renaissance of the 12th century. The Renaissance was a movement that profoundly affected European intellectual life in the early modern period. Renaissance scholars employed the humanist method in study, and searched for realism, however, a subtle shift took place in the way that intellectuals approached religion that was reflected in many other areas of cultural life. In addition, many Greek Christian works, including the Greek New Testament, were back from Byzantium to Western Europe. Political philosophers, most famously Niccolò Machiavelli, sought to describe life as it really was. Others see more competition between artists and polymaths such as Brunelleschi, Ghiberti, Donatello, and Masaccio for artistic commissions as sparking the creativity of the Renaissance. Yet it remains much debated why the Renaissance began in Italy, accordingly, several theories have been put forward to explain its origins. During the Renaissance, money and art went hand in hand, Artists depended entirely on patrons while the patrons needed money to foster artistic talent. Wealth was brought to Italy in the 14th, 15th, and 16th centuries by expanding trade into Asia, silver mining in Tyrol increased the flow of money. Luxuries from the Eastern world, brought home during the Crusades, increased the prosperity of Genoa, unlike with Latin texts, which had been preserved and studied in Western Europe since late antiquity, the study of ancient Greek texts was very limited in medieval Western Europe. One of the greatest achievements of Renaissance scholars was to bring this entire class of Greek cultural works back into Western Europe for the first time since late antiquity, Arab logicians had inherited Greek ideas after they had invaded and conquered Egypt and the Levant. Their translations and commentaries on these ideas worked their way through the Arab West into Spain and Sicily and this work of translation from Islamic culture, though largely unplanned and disorganized, constituted one of the greatest transmissions of ideas in history
18.
Baroque
–
The style began around 1600 in Rome and Italy, and spread to most of Europe. The aristocracy viewed the dramatic style of Baroque art and architecture as a means of impressing visitors by projecting triumph, power, Baroque palaces are built around an entrance of courts, grand staircases, and reception rooms of sequentially increasing opulence. However, baroque has a resonance and application that extend beyond a reduction to either a style or period. It is also yields the Italian barocco and modern Spanish barroco, German Barock, Dutch Barok, others derive it from the mnemonic term Baroco, a supposedly laboured form of syllogism in logical Scholastica. The Latin root can be found in bis-roca, in informal usage, the word baroque can simply mean that something is elaborate, with many details, without reference to the Baroque styles of the 17th and 18th centuries. The word Baroque, like most periodic or stylistic designations, was invented by later critics rather than practitioners of the arts in the 17th, the term Baroque was initially used in a derogatory sense, to underline the excesses of its emphasis. In particular, the term was used to describe its eccentric redundancy and noisy abundance of details, although it was long thought that the word as a critical term was first applied to architecture, in fact it appears earlier in reference to music. Another hypothesis says that the word comes from precursors of the style, Giacomo Barozzi da Vignola and he did not make the distinctions between Mannerism and Baroque that modern writers do, and he ignored the later phase, the academic Baroque that lasted into the 18th century. Long despised, Baroque art and architecture became fashionable between the two World Wars, and has remained in critical favour. In painting the gradual rise in popular esteem of Caravaggio has been the best barometer of modern taste, William Watson describes a late phase of Shang-dynasty Chinese ritual bronzes of the 11th century BC as baroque. The term Baroque may still be used, usually pejoratively, describing works of art, craft, the appeal of Baroque style turned consciously from the witty, intellectual qualities of 16th-century Mannerist art to a visceral appeal aimed at the senses. It employed an iconography that was direct, simple, obvious, germinal ideas of the Baroque can also be found in the work of Michelangelo. Even more generalised parallels perceived by some experts in philosophy, prose style, see the Neapolitan palace of Caserta, a Baroque palace whose construction began in 1752. In paintings Baroque gestures are broader than Mannerist gestures, less ambiguous, less arcane and mysterious, more like the stage gestures of opera, Baroque poses depend on contrapposto, the tension within the figures that move the planes of shoulders and hips in counterdirections. Baroque is a style of unity imposed upon rich, heavy detail, Baroque style featured exaggerated lighting, intense emotions, release from restraint, and even a kind of artistic sensationalism. There were highly diverse strands of Italian baroque painting, from Caravaggio to Cortona, the most prominent Spanish painter of the Baroque was Diego Velázquez. The later Baroque style gradually gave way to a more decorative Rococo, while the Baroque nature of Rembrandts art is clear, the label is less often used for Vermeer and many other Dutch artists. Flemish Baroque painting shared a part in this trend, while continuing to produce the traditional categories
19.
Rococo
–
Rococo artists and architects used a more jocular, florid, and graceful approach to the Baroque. Their style was ornate and used light colours, asymmetrical designs, curves, unlike the political Baroque, the Rococo had playful and witty themes. By the end of the 18th century, Rococo was largely replaced by the Neoclassic style. In 1835 the Dictionary of the French Academy stated that the word Rococo usually covers the kind of ornament, style and design associated with Louis XVs reign and it includes therefore, all types of art from around the middle of the 18th century in France. The word is seen as a combination of the French rocaille and coquilles, the term may also be a combination of the Italian word barocco and the French rocaille and may describe the refined and fanciful style that became fashionable in parts of Europe in the 18th century. The Rococo love of shell-like curves and focus on decorative arts led some critics to say that the style was frivolous or merely modish, when the term was first used in English in about 1836, it was a colloquialism meaning old-fashioned. While there is some debate about the historical significance of the style to art in general. Italian architects of the late Baroque/early Rococo were wooed to Catholic Germany, Bohemia and Austria by local princes, an exotic but in some ways more formal type of Rococo appeared in France where Louis XIVs succession brought a change in the court artists and general artistic fashion. By the end of the long reign, rich Baroque designs were giving way to lighter elements with more curves. These elements are obvious in the designs of Nicolas Pineau. During the Régence, court life moved away from Versailles and this change became well established, first in the royal palace. The delicacy and playfulness of Rococo designs is seen as perfectly in tune with the excesses of Louis XVs reign. The 1730s represented the height of Rococo development in France, the style had spread beyond architecture and furniture to painting and sculpture, exemplified by the works of Antoine Watteau and François Boucher. The Rococo style was spread by French artists and engraved publications, william Hogarth helped develop a theoretical foundation for Rococo beauty. Though not intentionally referencing the movement, he argued in his Analysis of Beauty that the lines and S-curves prominent in Rococo were the basis for grace. The development of Rococo in Great Britain is considered to have connected with the revival of interest in Gothic architecture early in the 18th century. The beginning of the end for Rococo came in the early 1760s as figures like Voltaire and Jacques-François Blondel began to voice their criticism of the superficiality, Blondel decried the ridiculous jumble of shells, dragons, reeds, palm-trees and plants in contemporary interiors. By 1785, Rococo had passed out of fashion in France, replaced by the order, in Germany, late 18th century Rococo was ridiculed as Zopf und Perücke, and this phase is sometimes referred to as Zopfstil
20.
Neoclassicism
–
The main Neoclassical movement coincided with the 18th-century Age of Enlightenment, and continued into the early 19th century, laterally competing with Romanticism. In architecture, the style continued throughout the 19th, 20th, European Neoclassicism in the visual arts began c.1760 in opposition to the then-dominant Baroque and Rococo styles. Each neo-classicism selects some models among the range of classics that are available to it. They ignored both Archaic Greek art and the works of Late Antiquity, the Rococo art of ancient Palmyra came as a revelation, through engravings in Woods The Ruins of Palmyra. While the movement is described as the opposed counterpart of Romanticism. The case of the main champion of late Neoclassicism, Ingres, demonstrates this especially well. The revival can be traced to the establishment of formal archaeology, the writings of Johann Joachim Winckelmann were important in shaping this movement in both architecture and the visual arts. With the advent of the Grand Tour, a fad of collecting antiquities began that laid the foundations of many great collections spreading a Neoclassical revival throughout Europe, Neoclassicism in each art implies a particular canon of a classical model. In English, the term Neoclassicism is used primarily of the arts, the similar movement in English literature. This, which had been dominant for decades, was beginning to decline by the time Neoclassicism in the visual arts became fashionable. Though terms differ, the situation in French literature was similar, in music, the period saw the rise of classical music, and Neoclassicism is used of 20th-century developments. Ingress coronation portrait of Napoleon even borrowed from Late Antique consular diptychs and their Carolingian revival, much Neoclassical painting is more classicizing in subject matter than in anything else. A fierce, but often very badly informed, dispute raged for decades over the merits of Greek and Roman art, with Winckelmann. The work of artists, who could not easily be described as insipid, combined aspects of Romanticism with a generally Neoclassical style. Unlike Carstens unrealized schemes, the etchings of Giovanni Battista Piranesi were numerous and profitable and his main subject matter was the buildings and ruins of Rome, and he was more stimulated by the ancient than the modern. Neoclassicism in painting gained a new sense of direction with the success of Jacques-Louis Davids Oath of the Horatii at the Paris Salon of 1785. Despite its evocation of republican virtues, this was a commission by the royal government, David managed to combine an idealist style with drama and forcefulness. David rapidly became the leader of French art, and after the French Revolution became a politician with control of government patronage in art
21.
Jacques-Louis David
–
Jacques-Louis David was a French painter in the Neoclassical style, considered to be the preeminent painter of the era. David later became a supporter of the French Revolution and friend of Maximilien Robespierre. Imprisoned after Robespierres fall from power, he aligned himself with yet another political regime upon his release, at this time he developed his Empire style, notable for its use of warm Venetian colours. After Napoleons fall from Imperial power and the Bourbon revival, David exiled himself to Brussels, then in the United Kingdom of the Netherlands, where he remained until his death. David had a number of pupils, making him the strongest influence in French art of the early 19th century. Jacques-Louis David was born into a family in Paris on 30 August 1748. When he was nine his father was killed in a duel. He covered his notebooks with drawings, and he said, I was always hiding behind the instructors chair. Soon, he desired to be a painter, but his uncles and he overcame the opposition, and went to learn from François Boucher, the leading painter of the time, who was also a distant relative. Boucher was a Rococo painter, but tastes were changing, Boucher decided that instead of taking over Davids tutelage, he would send David to his friend, Joseph-Marie Vien, a painter who embraced the classical reaction to Rococo. There David attended the Royal Academy, based in what is now the Louvre, each year the Academy awarded an outstanding student the prestigious Prix de Rome, which funded a three- to five-year stay in the Eternal City. Each pensionnaire was lodged in the French Academys Roman outpost, which from the years 1737 to 1793 was the Palazzo Mancini in the Via del Corso. David competed for, and failed to win, the prize for three years, each failure contributing to his lifelong grudge against the institution. After his second loss in 1772, David went on a hunger strike, confident he now had the support and backing needed to win the prize, he resumed his studies with great zeal—only to fail to win the Prix de Rome again the following year. Finally, in 1774, David was awarded the Prix de Rome on the strength of his painting of Erasistratus Discovering the Cause of Antiochus Disease, a subject set by the judges. In October 1775 he made the journey to Italy with his mentor, Joseph-Marie Vien, while in Italy, David especially studied the works of 17th-century masters such as Poussin, Caravaggio, and the Carracci. Mengs principled, historicizing approach to the representation of classical subjects profoundly influenced Davids pre-revolutionary painting, such as The Vestal Virgin, mengs also introduced David to the theoretical writings on ancient sculpture by Johann Joachim Winckelmann, the German scholar held to be the founder of modern art history. In 1779, David toured the newly excavated ruins of Pompeii, while in Rome, David also assiduously studied the High Renaissance painters, Raphael making a profound and lasting impression on the young French artist
22.
Oath of the Horatii
–
Oath of the Horatii, is a large painting by the French artist Jacques-Louis David painted in 1784 and now on display in the Louvre in Paris. The painting immediately became a success with critics and the public. It depicts a scene from a Roman legend about a dispute between two warring cities, Rome and Alba Longa, and stresses the importance of patriotism and masculine self-sacrifice for ones country. Instead of the two cities sending their armies to war, they agree to choose three men from each city, the victor in that fight will be the victorious city. From Rome, three brothers from a Roman family, the Horatii, agree to end the war by fighting three brothers from a family of Alba Longa, the Curiatii. The three brothers, all of whom appear willing to sacrifice their lives for the good of Rome, are shown saluting their father who holds their swords out for them, of the three Horatii brothers, only one shall survive the confrontation. Aside from the three brothers depicted, David also represents, in the right corner, a woman crying whilst sitting down. She is Camilla, a sister of the Horatii brothers, who is betrothed to one of the Curiatii fighters. The principal sources for the story behind Davids Oath are the first book of Livy which was elaborated by Dionysius in book 3 of his Roman Antiquities, however, the moment depicted in Davids painting is his own invention. It grew to be considered a paragon of neoclassical art, the painting increased Davids fame, allowing him to take on his own students. In 1774, David won the Prix de Rome with his work Érasistrate découvrant la cause de la maladie d’Antiochius and this allowed him to stay five years in Rome as a student from the French government. There he met Pecoul, contractor for the buildings, and Pecouls daughter. The kings assistant, Charles-Claude Flahaut de la Billaderie, commissioned Oath of the Horatii with the intention that it be an allegory about loyalty to the state, nevertheless, David departed from the agreed-upon scene, painting this scene instead. The painting was not completed in Paris, but rather in Rome, ultimately, Davids picture manifests a progressive outlook, deeply influenced by Enlightenment ideas, that eventually contributed to the overthrow of the monarchy. As the French Revolution approached, paintings increasingly referred to the loyalty to the rather than the family or the church. Painted five years before the Revolution, the Oath of the Horatii reflects the tensions of the period. In 1789, David painted The Lictors Bring to Brutus the Bodies of His Sons, as revolution in France loomed, paintings urging loyalty to the state rather than to clan or clergy abounded. Although it was painted nearly four years before the revolution in France, in the painting, the three brothers express their loyalty and solidarity with Rome before battle, wholly supported by their father
23.
Altarpiece
–
An altarpiece is an artwork such as a painting, sculpture or relief representing a religious subject made for placing behind the altar of a Christian church. Altarpieces were one of the most important products of Christian art especially from the late Middle Ages to the era of the Counter-Reformation. Large number of altarpieces are now removed from their settings, and often their elaborate sculpted frameworks. Altarpieces seem to have begun to be used during the 11th century, the reasons and forces that led to the development of altarpieces are not generally agreed upon. The habit of placing decorated reliquaries of saints on or behind the altar, as well as the tradition of decorating the front of the altar with sculptures or textiles, an elaborate example of such an early altarpiece is the Pala dOro in Venice. The appearance and development of these first altarpieces marked an important turning point both in the history of Christian art and Christian religious practice, the autonomous image now assumed a legitimate position at the centre of Christian worship. Painted panel altars emerged in Italy during the 13th century, in the 13th century, it is not uncommon to find frescoed or mural altarpieces in Italy, mural paintings behind the altar function as visual complements for the liturgy. These altarpieces were influenced by Byzantine art, notably icons, which reached Western Europe in greater numbers following the conquest of Constantinople in 1204. During this time, altarpieces began to be decorated with an outer. Vigoroso da Sienas altarpiece from 1291 display such an altarpiece and this treatment of the altarpiece would eventually pave the way for the emergence, in the 14th century, of the polyptych. The sculpted elements in the emerging polyptychs often took inspiration from contemporary Gothic architecture, in Italy, they were still typically executed in wood and painted, while in northern Europe altarpieces were often made of stone. The early 14th century saw the emergence, in Germany, the Netherlands, Scandinavia, the Baltic region, by hinging the outer panels to the central panel and painting them on both sides, the motif could be regulated by opening or closing the wings. The pictures could thus be changed depending on liturgical demands, the earliest often displayed sculptures on the inner panels, i. e. displayed when open, and paintings on the back of the wings, displayed when closed. With the advent of winged altarpieces, a shift in imagery also occurred, instead of being centred on a single holy figure, altarpieces began to portray more complex narratives linked to the Christian concept of salvation. As the Middle Ages progressed, altarpieces began to be commissioned more frequently, in Northern Europe, initially Lübeck and later Antwerp would develop into veritable export centres for the production of altarpieces, exporting to Scandinavia, Spain and northern France. By the 15th century, altarpieces were often commissioned not only by churches but also by individuals, families, guilds, the 15th century saw the birth of Early Netherlandish painting in the Low Countries, henceforth panel painting would dominate altarpiece production in the area. In Germany, sculpted wooden altarpieces were instead generally preferred, while in England alabaster was used to a large extent, in England, as well as in France, stone retables enjoyed general popularity. In Italy both stone retables and wooden polyptychs were common, with painted panels and often with complex framing in the form of architectural compositions
24.
Miniature (illuminated manuscript)
–
These include Persian miniatures, and their Mughal, Ottoman and other Indian offshoots. This article gives an art historical account of the miniature form, for the techniques involved in production, see illuminated manuscript. The earliest extant miniatures are a series of colored drawings or miniatures cut from the Ambrosian Iliad and they are similar in style and treatment with the pictorial art of the later Roman classical period. Of even greater value from a point of view are the miniatures of the Vatican manuscript of Virgil, known as the Vergilius Vaticanus. They are in a perfect condition and on a larger scale than the Ambrosian fragments. The drawing is quite classical in style, and the idea is conveyed that the miniatures are copies from an older series. The colors are opaque, indeed, in all the miniatures of early manuscripts the employment of body color was universal. The method followed in placing the different scenes on the page is highly instructive of the practice followed, as we may presume, by the artists of the early centuries. Again, for the purpose of securing something like perspective, an arrangement of zones was adopted. It was reserved for the Byzantine school to break away more decidedly from the natural presentment of things, but on comparing the miniatures of the Byzantine school generally with their classical predecessors, one has a sense of having passed from the open air into the cloister. Under the restraint of ecclesiastical domination Byzantine art became more and more stereotyped, the tendency grows to paint the flesh-tints in swarthy hues, to elongate and emaciate the limbs, and to stiffen the gait. Browns, blue-greys and neutral tints are in favor, in the miniatures of Byzantine manuscripts are first seen those backgrounds of bright gold which afterwards appear in such profusion in the productions of every western school of painting. The influence of Byzantine art on that of medieval Italy is obvious, the early mosaics in the churches of Italy, such as those at Ravenna and Venice, also afford examples of the dominating Byzantine influence. In the native schools of illumination of Western Europe, decoration only was the leading motive, the highest qualities of the miniatures of the 10th and 11th century of this school lie in fine outline drawing, which had a lasting influence on the English miniature of the later centuries. But the southern Anglo-Saxon school rather stands apart from the line of development of the western medieval miniature. Under the Carolingian monarchs there developed a school of painting derived from classical models, in this school, which owed its origin to the encouragement of Charlemagne, it is seen that the miniature appears in two forms. Accompanied as it was with profuse decoration in border and initial, on the other hand, there is also the miniature in which there is an attempt at illustration, as, for example, the depicting of scenes from the Bible. Here there is freedom, and we trace the classical style which copies Roman, as distinguished from Byzantine
25.
Illuminated manuscript
–
An illuminated manuscript is a manuscript in which the text is supplemented with such decoration as initials, borders and miniature illustrations. Comparable Far Eastern and Mesoamerican works are described as painted, islamic manuscripts may be referred to as illuminated, illustrated or painted, though using essentially the same techniques as Western works. This article covers the technical, social and economic history of the subject, for an art-historical account, the earliest surviving substantive illuminated manuscripts are from the period 400 to 600, produced in the Kingdom of the Ostrogoths and the Eastern Roman Empire. The significance of these works lies not only in their inherent artistic and historical value, had it not been for the monastic scribes of Late Antiquity, most literature of Greece and Rome would have perished in Europe. As it was, the patterns of textual survivals were shaped by their usefulness to the severely constricted literate group of Christians, the majority of surviving manuscripts are from the Middle Ages, although many survive from the Renaissance, along with a very limited number from Late Antiquity. The majority of manuscripts are of a religious nature. However, especially from the 13th century onward, a number of secular texts were illuminated. Most illuminated manuscripts were created as codices, which had superseded scrolls, a very few illuminated manuscript fragments survive on papyrus, which does not last nearly as long as vellum or parchment. Most medieval manuscripts, illuminated or not, were written on parchment, beginning in the late Middle Ages manuscripts began to be produced on paper. Illuminated manuscripts continued to be produced in the early 16th century, Manuscripts are among the most common items to survive from the Middle Ages, many thousands survive. They are also the best surviving specimens of medieval painting, indeed, for many areas and time periods, they are the only surviving examples of painting. There are a few examples from later periods, the type of book that was most often heavily and richly illuminated, sometimes known as a display book, varied between periods. In the first millennium, these were most likely to be Gospel Books, such as the Lindisfarne Gospels, the Romanesque period saw the creation of many huge illuminated complete Bibles – one in Sweden requires three librarians to lift it. Many Psalters were also illuminated in both this and the Gothic period. Finally, the Book of Hours, very commonly the personal book of a wealthy layperson, was often richly illuminated in the Gothic period. Other books, both liturgical and not, continued to be illuminated at all periods, the Byzantine world also continued to produce manuscripts in its own style, versions of which spread to other Orthodox and Eastern Christian areas. See Medieval art for other regions, periods and types, reusing parchments by scraping the surface and reusing them was a common practice, the traces often left behind of the original text are known as palimpsests. The Gothic period, which saw an increase in the production of these beautiful artifacts, also saw more secular works such as chronicles
26.
Italian Renaissance painting
–
The city of Florence in Tuscany is renowned as the birthplace of the Renaissance, and in particular of Renaissance painting. A detailed background is given in the companion articles Renaissance and Renaissance architecture, Italian Renaissance painting can be divided into four periods, the Proto-Renaissance, the Early Renaissance, the High Renaissance, and Mannerism. These dates are approximations rather than specific points because the lives of individual artists, the Proto-Renaissance begins with the professional life of the painter Giotto and includes Taddeo Gaddi, Orcagna and Altichiero. The Early Renaissance was marked by the work of Masaccio, Fra Angelico, Paolo Uccello, Piero della Francesca, the High Renaissance period was that of Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, Raphael and Titian. The Mannerist period included Andrea del Sarto, Pontormo and Tintoretto, Mannerism is dealt with in a separate article. The influences upon the development of Renaissance painting in Italy are those also affected Philosophy, Literature, Architecture, Theology, Science, Government. The following is a summary of points dealt with more fully in the articles that are cited above. A number of Classical texts, that had been lost to Western European scholars for centuries and these included Philosophy, Poetry, Drama, Science, a thesis on the Arts and Early Christian Theology. The resulting interest in Humanist philosophy meant that mans relationship with humanity, a revived interest in the Classics brought about the first archaeological study of Roman remains by the architect Brunelleschi and sculptor Donatello. Simultaneous with gaining access to the Classical texts, Europe gained access to advanced mathematics which had its provenance in the works of Byzantine and Islamic scholars. The advent of movable type printing in the 15th century meant that ideas could be disseminated easily, the development of oil paint and its introduction to Italy had lasting effects on the art of painting. The establishment of the Medici Bank and the subsequent trade it generated brought unprecedented wealth to a single Italian city, Cosimo de Medici set a new standard for patronage of the arts, not associated with the church or monarchy. A similar heritage of artistic achievement occurred in Venice through the talented Bellini family, their influential inlaw Mantegna, Giorgione, Titian, much painting of the Renaissance period was commissioned by or for the Catholic Church. These works were often of large scale and were frequently painted in fresco of the Life of Christ. There were also many paintings on the theme of Salvation. Churches also commissioned altarpieces, which were painted in tempera on panel, apart from large altarpieces, small devotional pictures were produced in very large numbers, both for churches and for private individuals, the most common theme being the Madonna and Child. Throughout the period, civic commissions were also important, during the 15th century portraiture became common, initially often formalised profile portraits but increasingly three-quarter face, bust-length portraits. Portraiture was to become a subject for High Renaissance painters such as Raphael and Titian
27.
The Battle of San Romano
–
The Battle of San Romano is a set of three paintings by the Florentine painter Paolo Uccello depicting events that took place at the Battle of San Romano between Florentine and Sienese forces in 1432. They are significant as revealing the development of perspective in early Italian Renaissance painting. The paintings are in egg tempera on wooden panels, each over 3 metres long, according to the National Gallery, London, the panels were commissioned by a member of the Bartolini Salimbeni family in Florence sometime between 1435 and 1460. The paintings were admired in the 15th century, Lorenzo de Medici so coveted them that he purchased one and had the remaining two forcibly removed to the Palazzo Medici. They are now divided between three collections, the National Gallery, the Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence, and the Musée du Louvre, Paris. The three paintings are, The Uffizi panel was designed to be the central painting of the triptych and is the only one signed by the artist. The sequence most widely agreed among art historians is, London, Uffizi, Louvre and they may represent different times of day, dawn, mid-day and dusk – the battle lasted eight hours. In the London painting, Niccolò da Tolentino, with his large gold and red patterned hat, is seen leading the Florentine cavalry. He had a reputation for recklessness, and doesnt even wear a helmet, in the foreground, broken lances and a dead soldier are carefully aligned into orthogonals, so as to create an impression of perspective. Similar to that of a tapestry, the landscape rises up in a plane as opposed to receding deeply into space. This illusion of a backdrop and a theme resembling a stage. Many areas of the paintings were covered with gold and silver leaf, the original impression of the burnished silver would have been dazzling. All of the paintings, especially that in the Louvre, have suffered from time and early restoration, the panels were a subject in the BBC series The Private Life of a Masterpiece,2005. The dark horse in the Louvre panel, mounted by Micheletto Attendolo, can be painted in a tapestry. In the 4th Episode of the 2011 TV Series The Borgias, starn, Randolph and Loren Partridge, Representing war in the Renaissance, The shield of Paolo Uccello, Representations, No
28.
Paolo Uccello
–
Paolo Uccello, born Paolo di Dono, was an Italian painter and mathematician who was notable for his pioneering work on visual perspective in art. In his book, Lives of the Artists, Giorgio Vasari wrote that Uccello was obsessed by his interest in perspective, while his contemporaries used perspective to narrate different or succeeding stories, Uccello used perspective to create a feeling of depth in his paintings. His best known works are the three representing the battle of San Romano, which were wrongly entitled the Battle of Sant Egidio of 1416 for a long period of time. Paolo worked in the Late Gothic tradition, emphasizing colour and pageantry rather than the classical realism that other artists were pioneering and his style is best described as idiosyncratic, and he left no school of followers. He has had influence on twentieth-century art and literary criticism. The sources for Paolo Uccello’s life are few, Giorgio Vasari’s biography, written 75 years after Paolo’s death, due to the lack of sources, even his date of birth is questionable. It is believed that Uccello was born in Pratovecchio in 1397, and his tax declarations for some years indicate that he was born in 1397 and his father, Dono di Paolo, was a barber-surgeon from Pratovecchio near Arezzo, his mother, Antonia, was a high-born Florentine. His nickname Uccello came from his fondness for painting birds, from 1412 until 1416 he was apprenticed to the famous sculptor Lorenzo Ghiberti. Ghiberti was the designer of the doors of the Florence Baptistery, ghibertis late-Gothic, narrative style and sculptural composition greatly influenced Paolo. It was also around this time that Paolo began his friendship with Donatello. In 1414, Uccello was admitted to the guild, Compagnia di San Luca. These featured a scene that might well have impressed itself in the mind of the young Uccello. According to Vasari, Uccello’s first painting was a Saint Anthony between the saints Cosmas and Damianus, a commission for the hospital of Lelmo, next, he painted two figures in the convent of Annalena. Shortly afterwards, he painted three frescoes with scenes from the life of Saint Francis above the door of the Santa Trinita church. For the Santa Maria Maggiore church, he painted a fresco of the Annunciation, in this fresco, he painted a large building with columns in perspective. According to Vasari, people found this to be a great and beautiful achievement because this was the first example of how lines could be used to demonstrate perspective. As a result, this became a model for artists who wished to craft illusions of space in order to enhance the realness of their paintings. Paolo painted the Lives of the Church Fathers in the cloisters of the church of San Miniato, Uccello was asked to paint a number of scenes of distempered animals for the house of the Medici
29.
Battle of Cascina (Michelangelo)
–
The Battle of Cascina is an influential lost artwork by Michelangelo. The painting was commissioned from Michelangelo by Piero Soderini, statesman of the Democratic of Florence and it was intended to wall of the Salone dei Cinquecento in Palazzo Vecchio. The opposite wall was to be decorated by Leonardo da Vinci, the two battles were notable medieval Florentine victories. The Battle of Cascina was fought on 28 July 1364 between the troops of Florence and Pisa, resulting in victory of the former, a thousand Pisans were killed and two hundred more were captured. Michelangelo never completed the painting, but did produce a cartoon of the composition. The cartoon was copied by artists, the most notable extant copy being by Michelangelos pupil Sangallo. Some of Michelangelos preparatory drawings survive, along with prints of part of the scene by Marcantonio Raimondi. According to Michelangelos biographer Giorgio Vasari the original cartoon was deliberately destroyed by Michelangelos rival Bartolommeo Bandinelli because of his jealousy of its fame, Michelangelo depicted a scene at the beginning of the battle when the Florentine army was initially taken by surprise when the Pisans attacked. He depicts Florentine soldiers bathing naked in the river Arno responding to a trumpet which warns them of the sudden Pisan attack, as the soldiers emerge from the river and buckle on their armour, they are threatened by shots from the Pisans. Several soldiers look or point towards the Pisan position to the left, one soldier has apparently been hit and fallen back into the river, while others leap energetically into action. The chosen episode allowed Michelangelo to depict his favoured topic, the male figure in varieties of contrapposto. The Battle of Anghiari by Leonardo da Vinci, the pendant to this painting Studies to the Battle of Cascina
30.
The Battle of Anghiari (painting)
–
Its central scene depicted four men riding raging war horses engaged in a battle for possession of a standard, at the Battle of Anghiari in 1440. Many preparatory studies by Leonardo still exist, the composition of the central section is best known through a drawing by Peter Paul Rubens in the Louvre, Paris. Rubens succeeded in portraying the fury, the emotions and the sense of power that were presumably present in the original painting. Similarities have been noted between this Battle of Anghiari and the Hippopotamus Hunt painted by Rubens in 1616, the search was discontinued in September 2012, without any further progress having been made, due to conflict among the involved parties. In 1504 Leonardo da Vinci was given the commission by gonfaloniere Piero Soderini, at the same time his rival Michelangelo, who had just finished his David, was designated the opposite wall. This was the time that Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo worked together on the same project. The painting of Michelangelo depicted an episode from the Battle of Cascina, however Michelangelo did not stay in Florence long enough to complete the project. He was able to finish his cartoon, but only began the painting and he was invited back to Rome in 1505 by the newly appointed Pope Julius II and was commissioned to build the Popes tomb. He drew a scene of a violent clash of horses and a battle of men fighting for the flag in the Battle of Anghiari. This painting was to be his largest and most substantial work, since he had a bad experience with fresco painting, he wanted to apply oil colours on the wall. He began also to experiment with such a thick undercoat, that after he applied the colours, trying to dry the painting in a hurry and save whatever he could, he hung large charcoal braziers close to the painting. Only the lower part could be saved in a state, the upper part couldnt dry fast enough. Michelangelos and Leonardos unfinished paintings adorned the room together for almost a decade. The cartoon of Michelangelos painting was cut in pieces by Bartolommeo Bandinelli out of jealousy in 1512, the centerpiece of The Battle of Anghiari was greatly admired and numerous copies were made for decades. Vasari himself painted new frescoes on the now-extended walls, in the upper part of Vasaris fresco,12 meters above the ground, a Florentine soldier waves a green flag with the words Cerca trova. These enigmatic words are suggested to be a hint from Vasari, Seracini believes it is unlikely that Vasari would have willingly destroyed da Vincis work. Vasaris concealment and preservation of another painting, Masaccios Holy Trinity, using non-invasive techniques, such as a high-frequency, surface-penetrating radar and a thermographic camera, Seracini made a survey of the hall. Among other findings, he discovered that Vasari had built a wall in front of the original east wall
31.
Leonardo da Vinci
–
He has been variously called the father of palaeontology, ichnology, and architecture, and is widely considered one of the greatest painters of all time. Sometimes credited with the inventions of the parachute, helicopter and tank, many historians and scholars regard Leonardo as the prime exemplar of the Universal Genius or Renaissance Man, an individual of unquenchable curiosity and feverishly inventive imagination. Much of his working life was spent in the service of Ludovico il Moro in Milan. He later worked in Rome, Bologna and Venice, and he spent his last years in France at the home awarded to him by Francis I of France, Leonardo was, and is, renowned primarily as a painter. Among his works, the Mona Lisa is the most famous and most parodied portrait, Leonardos drawing of the Vitruvian Man is also regarded as a cultural icon, being reproduced on items as varied as the euro coin, textbooks, and T-shirts. Perhaps fifteen of his paintings have survived, Leonardo is revered for his technological ingenuity. He conceptualised flying machines, a type of armoured fighting vehicle, concentrated power, an adding machine. Some of his inventions, however, such as an automated bobbin winder. A number of Leonardos most practical inventions are nowadays displayed as working models at the Museum of Vinci. He made substantial discoveries in anatomy, civil engineering, geology, optics, and hydrodynamics, today, Leonardo is widely considered one of the most diversely talented individuals ever to have lived. Leonardo was born on 15 April 1452 at the hour of the night in the Tuscan hill town of Vinci. He was the son of the wealthy Messer Piero Fruosino di Antonio da Vinci, a Florentine legal notary, and Caterina. Leonardo had no surname in the modern sense – da Vinci simply meaning of Vinci, his birth name was Lionardo di ser Piero da Vinci, meaning Leonardo. The inclusion of the title ser indicated that Leonardos father was a gentleman, little is known about Leonardos early life. He spent his first five years in the hamlet of Anchiano in the home of his mother and his father had married a sixteen-year-old girl named Albiera Amadori, who loved Leonardo but died young in 1465 without children. When Leonardo was sixteen, his father married again to twenty-year-old Francesca Lanfredini, pieros legitimate heirs were born from his third wife Margherita di Guglielmo and his fourth and final wife, Lucrezia Cortigiani. Leonardo received an education in Latin, geometry and mathematics. In later life, Leonardo recorded only two childhood incidents, one, which he regarded as an omen, was when a kite dropped from the sky and hovered over his cradle, its tail feathers brushing his face
32.
Giorgio Vasari
–
Vasari was born in Arezzo, Tuscany. Recommended at an age by his cousin Luca Signorelli, he became a pupil of Guglielmo da Marsiglia. He was befriended by Michelangelo whose painting style would influence his own, in 1529, he visited Rome where he studied the works of Raphael and other artists of the Roman High Renaissance. Vasaris own Mannerist paintings were admired in his lifetime than afterwards. In 1547 he completed the hall of the chancery in Palazzo della Cancelleria in Rome with frescoes that received the name Sala dei Cento Giorni and he was consistently employed by members of the Medici family in Florence and Rome, and worked in Naples, Arezzo and other places. He also helped to organize the decoration of the Studiolo, now reassembled in the Palazzo Vecchio, aside from his career as a painter, Vasari was also successful as an architect. In Florence, Vasari also built the long passage, now called Vasari Corridor, the enclosed corridor passes alongside the River Arno on an arcade, crosses the Ponte Vecchio and winds around the exterior of several buildings. He also renovated the medieval churches of Santa Maria Novella and Santa Croce, at both he removed the original rood screen and loft, and remodelled the retro-choirs in the Mannerist taste of his time. In Santa Croce, he was responsible for the painting of The Adoration of the Magi which was commissioned by Pope Pius V in 1566 and it was recently restored, before being put on exhibition in 2011 in Rome and in Naples. Eventually it is planned to return it to the church of Santa Croce in Bosco Marengo, in 1562 Vasari built the octagonal dome on the Basilica of Our Lady of Humility in Pistoia, an important example of high Renaissance architecture. In Rome, Vasari worked with Giacomo Barozzi da Vignola and Bartolomeo Ammanati at Pope Julius IIIs Villa Giulia, the Lives also included a novel treatise on the technical methods employed in the arts. The book was rewritten and enlarged in 1568, with the addition of woodcut portraits of artists. The work has a consistent and notorious bias in favour of Florentines, and tends to attribute to them all the developments in Renaissance art – for example, Venetian art in particular, is systematically ignored in the first edition. Between the first and second editions, Vasari visited Venice and while the edition gave more attention to Venetian art. Vasaris biographies are interspersed with amusing gossip, with a few exceptions, however, Vasaris aesthetic judgement was acute and unbiased. He did not research archives for exact dates, as art historians do, and naturally his biographies are most dependable for the painters of his own generation. Modern criticism – with new materials opened up by research – has corrected many of his traditional dates and attributions. Vasari includes a sketch of his own biography at the end of the Lives, according to the historian Richard Goldthwaite, Vasari was one of the earliest authors to use the term competition in its economic sense
33.
Giotto
–
Giotto di Bondone, known mononymously as Giotto and Latinized as Giottus, was an Italian painter and architect from Florence in the late Middle Ages. He is generally considered the first in a line of artists who contributed to the Renaissance. Giottos masterwork is the decoration of the Scrovegni Chapel in Padua, also known as the Arena Chapel and this fresco cycle depicts the Life of the Virgin and the Life of Christ. It is regarded as one of the masterpieces of the Early Renaissance. That Giotto painted the Arena Chapel and that he was chosen by the Commune of Florence in 1334 to design the new campanile of Florences Cathedral are among the few certainties of his biography. Tradition holds that Giotto was born in a farmhouse, perhaps at Colle di Romagnano or Romignano, since 1850, a tower house in nearby Colle Vespignano has borne a plaque claiming the honor of his birthplace, an assertion commercially publicized. However, recent research has suggested that he was born in Florence. His fathers name was Bondone, and he is described in surviving records as a person of good standing. Most authors accept that Giotto was his name, but it is likely to have been an abbreviation of Ambrogio or Angelo. The year of his birth is calculated from the fact that Antonio Pucci, however, the word seventy fits into the rhyme of the poem better than would have a longer and more complex age, so it is possible that Pucci used artistic license. In his Lives, Giorgio Vasari states that Giotto was a shepherd boy, the great Florentine painter Cimabue discovered Giotto drawing pictures of his sheep on a rock. They were so lifelike that Cimabue approached Giotto and asked if he could take him on as an apprentice, Cimabue was one of the two most highly renowned painters of Tuscany, the other being Duccio, who worked mainly in Siena. Vasari recounts a number of stories about Giottos skill as a young artist. He tells of one occasion when Cimabue was absent from the workshop, later when Cimabue returned, he tried in vain several times to brush the fly off. The messenger departed ill pleased, not doubting that he had made a fool of. The messenger brought other artists drawings back to the Pope in addition to Giottos, many scholars today are uncertain about Giottos training, and consider Vasaris account that he was Cimabues pupil as legend, citing earlier sources which suggest that Giotto was not Cimabues pupil. About 1290, Giotto married Ciuta, the daughter of Lapo del Pela of Florence, the marriage produced four daughters and four sons, one of whom became a painter. By 1301, Giotto owned a house in Florence, and when he was not traveling he would return there and live in comfort with his family
34.
Navicella (mosaic)
–
It depicted the version from the Gospel of Matthew of Christ walking on the water, the only one of the three gospel accounts where Saint Peter is summoned to join him. The mosaic, designed to be seen from a distance, was extremely large. A full-scale copy in oil, commissioned by the Vatican from Francesco Berretta in 1628, the full mosaic was probably about 9.4 by 13 metres, with an inscription in Latin verse running below the image. The mosaic probably replaced a Late Antique one in the same location, according to Stefaneschis obituary of 1347, the work cost 2,200 florins. It was rectangular, and positioned so that leaving the basilica saw it across the courtyard outside the church. A figure of a man fishing on the shore to the left was thought to be a self-portrait of Giotto, as Vasaris Life records. The composition was dominated by the boat with its large sail. Of the eleven still in the boat, it has been suggested that the one holding the tiller is Saint Paul. In the sky, two almost naked classical style wind god figures blow through horns or funnels, one each side. Giotto would have produced drawings for specialist mosaic workers to recreate on the wall and it was also used on Papal coins and medals, though usually with Peter in the boat, often as the only figure. It was the modern work described in Albertis De Pictura. Such a large depiction of a scene was unprecedented in marine art. The former is considerably restored, and was discovered underneath later work in 1911, despite none of the copies of the original including these figures it is thought they were part of the original, probably in a border. There are thought to be patches of original work remaining in the mosaic still in St Peters. Areas where original work seems to survive are in the edge of the ship. The style of the work can now only be judged from the two fragments, restored as they are. But, as Svetlana Alpers has shown, these were the terms in which Vasari tended to describe large history paintings he admired, according to John White, The relatively schematic, linear quality of much late-thirteenth- and early-fourteenth-century work is wholly absent. The impressionistic technique and range of colour both derive from the fifth century and it is impossible to say how much this technique reflects the ideas of Giotto himself and how much those of the skilled mosaicists working under him
35.
Raphael
–
Raffaello Sanzio da Urbino, known as Raphael, was an Italian painter and architect of the High Renaissance. His work is admired for its clarity of form, ease of composition, together with Michelangelo and Leonardo da Vinci, he forms the traditional trinity of great masters of that period. Raphael was enormously productive, running a large workshop and, despite his death at 37. Many of his works are found in the Vatican Palace, where the frescoed Raphael Rooms were the central, the best known work is The School of Athens in the Vatican Stanza della Segnatura. After his early years in Rome much of his work was executed by his workshop from his drawings and he was extremely influential in his lifetime, though outside Rome his work was mostly known from his collaborative printmaking. Raphael was born in the small but artistically significant central Italian city of Urbino in the Marche region and his poem to Federico shows him as keen to show awareness of the most advanced North Italian painters, and Early Netherlandish artists as well. In the very court of Urbino he was probably more integrated into the central circle of the ruling family than most court painters. Under them, the court continued as a centre for literary culture, growing up in the circle of this small court gave Raphael the excellent manners and social skills stressed by Vasari. Castiglione moved to Urbino in 1504, when Raphael was no longer based there but frequently visited, Raphael mixed easily in the highest circles throughout his life, one of the factors that tended to give a misleading impression of effortlessness to his career. He did not receive a humanistic education however, it is unclear how easily he read Latin. His mother Màgia died in 1491 when Raphael was eight, followed on August 1,1494 by his father, Raphael was thus orphaned at eleven, his formal guardian became his only paternal uncle Bartolomeo, a priest, who subsequently engaged in litigation with his stepmother. He probably continued to live with his stepmother when not staying as an apprentice with a master and he had already shown talent, according to Vasari, who says that Raphael had been a great help to his father. A self-portrait drawing from his teenage years shows his precocity and his fathers workshop continued and, probably together with his stepmother, Raphael evidently played a part in managing it from a very early age. In Urbino, he came into contact with the works of Paolo Uccello, previously the court painter, and Luca Signorelli, according to Vasari, his father placed him in the workshop of the Umbrian master Pietro Perugino as an apprentice despite the tears of his mother. The evidence of an apprenticeship comes only from Vasari and another source, an alternative theory is that he received at least some training from Timoteo Viti, who acted as court painter in Urbino from 1495. An excess of resin in the varnish often causes cracking of areas of paint in the works of both masters, the Perugino workshop was active in both Perugia and Florence, perhaps maintaining two permanent branches. Raphael is described as a master, that is to say fully trained and his first documented work was the Baronci altarpiece for the church of Saint Nicholas of Tolentino in Città di Castello, a town halfway between Perugia and Urbino. Evangelista da Pian di Meleto, who had worked for his father, was named in the commission
36.
Venus, Cupid, Folly and Time
–
Venus, Cupid, Folly, and Time is an allegorical painting by the Florentine artist Agnolo Bronzino. It is now in the National Gallery, London, about 1546, Bronzino was commissioned to create a painting that has come to be known as Venus, Cupid, Folly, and Time. It displays the ambivalence, eroticism, and obscure imagery that are characteristic of the Mannerist period, and of Bronzinos master Pontormo. The painting may have been commissioned by Cosimo I de Medici, Grand Duke of Tuscany or by Francesco Salviati, vasari wrote that it was sent to King Francis, though he does not specify by whom. The erotic imagery would have appealed to the tastes prevalent in both the Medici and French courts at this time, the attention to texture and wealth is also consistent with Bronzinos aristocratic patronage. The painting was brought by Napoleon from Paris to Vienna, where in 1813, Johann Keglević gained possession of the painting from Franz Wenzel, since 1860 it has been in London. The figure of Venus can be likened to an object in a luxurious setting. In this large, unusually cold composition, which is constructed on a counterpoint of opposing movements. Bronzino, known above all as a painter, painted several carefully drawn portraits of the Medici family. Crowded into the foreground of the painting are several figures whose identities have been the subject of extensive scholarly debate. At times it has also been called A Triumph of Venus, Cupid, along with his mother and the nude putto, to the right, are all posed in a typical Mannerist figura serpentinata form. The two central figures are identified by their attributes as Venus and Cupid. For example, she holds the golden apple she won in the Judgement of Paris, while he sports the characteristic wings, both figures are nude, illuminated in a radiant white light. Cupid fondles his mothers bare breast and kisses her lips, the bearded, bald figure to the upper right of the scene is believed to be Time, in view of the hourglass behind him. He sweeps his arm out to his right. Many scholars believe that his gesture seems to say Time is fleeting, the figure opposite Time, and also grasping at the drapery, is usually called Oblivion because of the lack of substance to his form—eyeless sockets and mask-like head. The mask-like face of this figure is echoed by the image of two masks in the lower right-hand corner. There is also Folly, to the right of Venus and Cupid, the identity of the remaining figures is even more ambiguous
37.
Bronzino
–
Agnolo di Cosimo, usually known as Bronzino, or Agnolo Bronzino, was a Florentine Mannerist painter. His sobriquet, Bronzino, in all probability refers to his dark skin. He lived all his life in Florence, and from his late 30s was kept busy as the painter of Cosimo I de Medici. He was mainly a portraitist but also painted religious subjects, and a few allegorical subjects. Many portraits of the Medicis exist in several versions with varying degrees of participation by Bronzino himself and they have often been found cold and artificial, and his reputation suffered from the general critical disfavour attached to Mannerism in the 19th and early 20th centuries. Recent decades have been appreciative of his art. Bronzino was born in Florence, the son of a butcher, according to his contemporary Vasari, Bronzino was a pupil first of Raffaellino del Garbo, and then of Pontormo, to whom he was apprenticed at 14. Pontormo is thought to have introduced a portrait of Bronzino as a child one of his series on Joseph in Egypt now in the National Gallery. Pontormo exercised a dominant influence on Bronzinos developing style, and the two were to remain collaborators for most of the formers life, an early example of Bronzinos hand has often been detected in the Capponi Chapel in the church of Santa Felicita by the Ponte Vecchio in Florence. Pontormo designed the interior and executed the altarpiece, the masterly Deposition from the Cross, Bronzino apparently was assigned the frescoes on the dome, which have not survived. Of the four empanelled tondi or roundels depicting each of the evangelists and his style is so similar to his masters that scholars still debate the specific attributions. Towards the end of his life, Bronzino took a prominent part in the activities of the Florentine Accademia delle Arti del Disegno, of which he was a founding member in 1563. The painter Alessandro Allori was his pupil, and Bronzino was living in the Allori family house at the time of his death in Florence in 1572. Bronzino spent the majority of his career in Florence and it was not long before he became, and remained for most of his career, the official court painter of the Duke and his court. His portrait figures—often read as static, elegant, and stylish exemplars of unemotional haughtiness and these well known paintings exist in many workshop versions and copies. In addition to images of the Florentine elite, Bronzino also painted idealized portraits of the poets Dante, Bronzinos best known works comprise the aforementioned series of the duke and duchess, Cosimo and Eleonora, and figures of their court such as Bartolomeo Panciatichi and his wife Lucrezia. These paintings, especially those of the duchess, are known for their attention to the detail of her costume. Indeed, the dress itself has been the object of scholarly debate
38.
Raphael Rooms
–
The four Raphael Rooms form a suite of reception rooms in the palace, the public part of the papal apartments in the Palace of the Vatican. They are famous for their frescoes, painted by Raphael and his workshop, together with Michelangelos ceiling frescoes in the Sistine Chapel, they are the grand fresco sequences that mark the High Renaissance in Rome. The Stanze, as they are called, were originally intended as a suite of apartments for Pope Julius II. He commissioned Raphael, then a young artist from Urbino. It was possibly Julius intent to outshine the apartments of his predecessor Pope Alexander VI and they are on the third floor, overlooking the south side of the Belvedere Courtyard. After the death of Julius in 1513, with two rooms frescoed, Pope Leo X continued the program, following Raphaels death in 1520, his assistants Gianfrancesco Penni, Giulio Romano and Raffaellino del Colle finished the project with the frescoes in the Sala di Costantino. The scheme of the works is as follows, The largest of the rooms is the Sala di Costantino. Its paintings were not begun until Pope Julius and, indeed Raphael himself, had died, the room is dedicated to the victory of Christianity over paganism. Its frescoes represent this struggle from the life of the Roman Emperor Constantine, because they are not by the master himself, the frescos are less famous than works in the neighboring rooms. Continuing a long tradition of flattery, Raphaels assistants gave the features of the current pontiff, Clement VII, the fresco of The Vision of the Cross depicts the legendary story of a great cross appearing to Constantine as he marched to confront his rival Maxentius. The vision in the sky is painted with the words in Greek Εν τούτω νίκα written next to it, the Battle of Milvian Bridge shows the battle that took place on October 28,312, following Constantines vision. The next room, going from East to West, is the Stanza di Eliodoro, painted between 1511 and 1514, it takes its name from one of the paintings. The theme of this private chamber – probably an audience room – was the protection granted by Christ to the Church. The four paintings are, The Expulsion of Heliodorus from the Temple, The Mass at Bolsena, The Meeting of Pope Leo I and Attila, Raphaels style changed here from the Stanza della Segnatura. Instead of the images of the Popes library, he had dramatic narratives to portray. The composition is more dramatic than Raphaels earlier frescoes in the Stanza della Segnatura. Although the focal point is the figure of the priest at prayer, Heliodorus. At the left Julius II, carried by the Swiss Guard in a chair and his inclusion here refers to his battles to prevent secular leaders from usurping papal territories
39.
Apostolic Palace
–
The Apostolic Palace is the official residence of the Pope, which is located in Vatican City. It is also known as the Papal Palace, Palace of the Vatican and Vatican Palace, the Vatican itself refers to the building as the Palace of Sixtus V in honor of Pope Sixtus V. The modern tourist can see these last and other parts of the palace, the Scala Regia can be seen into from one end but not entered. In the fifth century, Pope Symmachus built a palace close to the Old St. Peters Basilica which served an alternative residence to the Lateran Palace. The construction of a fortified palace was sponsored by Pope Eugene III. The Vatican Palace had fallen into disrepair from lack of upkeep, in 1447, Pope Nicholas V razed the ancient fortified palace of Eugene III to erect a new building, the current Apostolic Palace. In the 15th century, the Palace was placed under the authority of a prefect and this position of Apostolic Prefect lasted from the 15th century till the 1800s, when the Papal States fell into economic difficulties. In 1884, when this post was reviewed in light of saving money, the major additions and decorations of the palace are the work of the following popes for 150 years. In the 20th century, Pope Pius XI built an art gallery. Construction of the Papal Palace at the Vatican in Vatican City, covering 162, 000m squared, it contains the Papal Apartments, offices of the Roman Catholic Church and Holy See, chapels, Vatican Library, museums and art galleries. The Apostolic Palace is run by the Prefecture of the Pontifical Household, the palace is more accurately a series of self-contained buildings within the well-recognized outer structure which is arranged around the Courtyard of Sixtus V. It is located northeast of St Peters Basilica and adjacent to the Bastion of Nicholas V, the Apostolic Palace houses both residential and support offices of various functions as well as administrative offices not focused on the life and functions of the Pope himself. Perhaps the best known of the Palace chapels is the Sistine Chapel named in honor of Sixtus IV and it is famous for its decoration that was frescoed throughout by Renaissance artists including Michelangelo, Sandro Botticelli, Pietro Perugino, Pinturicchio, Domenico Ghirlandaio, and others. One of the functions of the chapel is as a venue for the election of each successive Pope in a conclave of the College of Cardinals. In this closed-door election, the cardinals choose a successor to the first pope, St. Peter and this suite of rooms is famous for its frescos by a large team of artists working under Raphael. They were originally intended as a suite of apartments for Pope Julius II and he commissioned Raphael, then a relatively young artist from Urbino, and his studio in 1508 or 1509 to redecorate the existing interiors of the rooms entirely. It was possibly Julius intent to outshine the apartments of his predecessor Pope Alexander VI and they are on the third floor, overlooking the south side of the Belvedere Courtyard. After the death of Julius in 1513, with two rooms frescoed, Pope Leo X continued the program, following Raphaels death in 1520, his assistants Gianfrancesco Penni, Giulio Romano and Raffaellino del Colle finished the project with the frescoes in the Sala di Costantino
40.
Raphael Cartoons
–
Reproduced in the form of prints, they rivalled Michelangelos ceiling as the most famous and influential designs of the Renaissance, and were well known to all artists of the Renaissance and Baroque. Admiration of them reached its highest pitch in the 18th and 19th centuries, originally the set was intended to include 16 tapestries. Raphael was paid twice by Leo, in June 1515 and December 1516, tapestries retained their Late Gothic prestige during the Renaissance. Most of the expense was in the manufacture, although the creation of the tapestries in Brussels cost 15,000 ducats, the cartoons are painted in a glue distemper medium on many sheets of paper glued together, they are now mounted on a canvas backing. They are all slightly over 3 m tall, and from 3 to 5 m wide, although some colours have faded, they are in general in very good condition. The tapestries are mirror-images of the cartoons, as they were worked from behind, there would have been other drawings for all the subjects, which have been lost, it was from these that the first prints were made. The seven cartoons were probably completed in 1516 and were sent to Brussels. Various other sets were later, including one acquired by Henry VIII of England in 1542. Cartoons were sometimes returned with tapestries to the commissioner, but this clearly did not happen here, the tapestries had very wide and elaborate borders, also designed by Raphael, which these cartoons omit, presumably they had their own cartoons. The borders included ornamentation in an imitation of Ancient Roman relief sculpture, the tapestries were made with both gold and silver thread, some were later burnt by soldiers in the Sack of Rome in 1527 to extract the precious metals. The first delivery was in 1517, and seven were displayed in the Chapel for Christmas Day in 1519 and it was partly this that made the designs so effective in reduced print versions. The Raphael Cartoons represent scenes from the lives of Saints Peter, there were relatively few precedents for these subjects, so Raphael was less constrained by traditional iconographic expectations than he would have been with a series on the life of Christ or Mary. He no doubt received some advice or instructions in choosing the scenes to depict, an intervening small frieze showed subjects from the life of Leo, also designed to complement the other series. Each sequence begins at the wall, with the Life of Peter on the right side of the Chapel. The Healing of the Lame Man The Death of Ananias, Life of Paul The Stoning of St Stephen at which Paul was present before his conversion. The Conversion of Saint Paul The Conversion of the Proconsul or The Blinding of Elymas, after Paul miraculously cures a cripple, the people of Lystra see him and his companion Barnabas as gods, and want to make a sacrifice to them. Paul tears his garments in disgust, whilst Barnabas speaks to the crowd, St Paul in prison, smaller than the others. St Paul Preaching in Athens, the standing at the left in a red cap is a portrait of Leo, next to him is Janus Lascaris
41.
Grand manner
–
Grand Manner refers to an idealized aesthetic style derived from classical art, and the modern classic art of the High Renaissance. In the eighteenth century, British artists and connoisseurs used the term to describe paintings that incorporated visual metaphors in order to suggest noble qualities, paul in particular, we are told by himself, that his bodily presence was mean. Alexander is said to have been of a low stature, a painter ought not so to represent him, agesilaus was low, lame, and of a mean appearance. None of these defects ought to appear in a piece of which he is the hero, in conformity to custom, I call this part of the art history painting, it ought to be called poetical, as in reality it is. In the late nineteenth century the rhetoric of the Grand Manner was adopted not only by the nouveaux riches, when especially ostentatious in presentation, typically in full-length works, this has also been referred to as the swagger portrait. Grand style, a concept in rhetoric National Gallery of Art Tate glossary
42.
High Renaissance
–
In art history, High Renaissance is the period denoting the apogee of the visual arts in the Italian Renaissance. This term was first used in German in the nineteenth century. High Renaissance style in architecture conventionally begins with Donato Bramante, whose Tempietto at S. Pietro in Montorio at Rome was begun in 1510, the Tempietto, signifies a full-scale revival of ancient Roman commemorative architecture. David Watkin writes that the Tempietto, like Raphaels works in the Vatican, is an attempt at reconciling Christian, the High Renaissance was traditionally viewed as a great explosion of creative genius, following a model of art history first proposed by the Florentine Giorgio Vasari. Even relatively minor painters of the period, such as Fra Bartolomeo and Mariotto Albertinelli, produced works that are still lauded for the harmony of their design, the serene mood and luminous colours of paintings by Giorgione and early Titian exemplify High Renaissance style as practiced in Venice. Other recognizable pieces of this period include Leonardo da Vincis Mona Lisa, Raphaels fresco, set beneath an arch, is a virtuoso work of perspective, composition and disegno. High Renaissance sculpture, as exemplified by Michelangelos Pietà and the iconic David, is characterized by a balance between stillness and movement. High Renaissance sculpture was commissioned by the public and the state. Sculpture was often used to decorate or embellish architecture, normally within courtyards where others were able to study, wealthy individuals like cardinals, rulers and bankers were the more likely private patrons along with very wealthy families, Pope Julius II also patronized many artists. During the High Renaissance there was the development of small scale statuettes for private patrons, the subject matter related to sculpture was mostly religious but also with a significant strand of classical individuals in the form of tomb sculpture and paintings as well as ceilings of cathedrals. Toward The High Renaissance at Smarthistory
43.
The Surrender of Breda
–
La rendición de Breda is a painting by the Spanish Golden Age painter Diego Velázquez. It was completed during the years 1634–35, inspired by Velázquezs visit to Italy with Ambrogio Spinola and it is considered one of Velázquezs best works. Jan Morris has called it one of the most Spanish of all pictures, the capture of Breda in 1625 was one of the few major successes of Spanish arms in the latter stages of the Eighty Years War. The Spanish general, Genoese aristocrat Ambrogio Spinola, conquered Breda against the instructions of his superiors, the bulk of Spanish forces were diverted to the unfolding Thirty Years War. Breda, a city near the frontier of Holland proper had been occupied in 1567 by the Duke of Alba, ten years afterwards recovered by Holach, the town was the seat of the Orange family, who had a castle there. In 1624, the suspension of hostilities in Germany enabled the Spanish to concentrate their forces towards Breda, Spinola had made a military reputation for himself in 1604 and been rewarded with the Golden Fleece for conquering Ostend in Flanders. Defending the Dutch, Maurice of Nassau led hostilities against Spinola and his successor, Frederick Henry, unsuccessfully attempted to revive Dutch momentum, but ultimately surrendered in May. The terms of defeat at Breda were some of the most honorable, Spinola died in the autumn of 1630, only a year after Velazquez had sailed with him on the voyage to Italy. In 1637 Breda was recaptured by Frederick Henry after a four-month siege, and in 1648 it was finally ceded to the Dutch Republic by the Treaty of Westphalia. Velázquez painted The Surrender of Breda as an emblem of Spanish nationalism and as a tribute to Ambrogio Spinola. ”Velázquez felt discouraged after Ambrogio Spinola’s death and sought to legitimize Spinola, whose success and bravery in the battle inspired Velázquez to paint The Surrender of Breda. The Surrender of Breda was one of twelve life-size battle scenes intended to perpetuate victories won by Philip IV’s armies that hung in the Salón de Reinos in Buen Retiro. It illustrates the exchange of keys that occurred three days after the capitulation between Spain and the Netherlands was signed on June 5,1625, hence, the focus of the painting is not on the battle itself, but rather the reconciliation. At the center of the painting, literally and figuratively, is the key given to Spinola by Justin of Nassau. ”This battle painting is notable for its static and sentimental qualities. According to the statement made by eye-witnesses both had dismounted and Spinola awaited the arrival of Justin surrounded by a “crown” of princes and officers of high birth. The governor then presented himself with his family, kinsfolk and distinguished students of the military academy, Spinola greeted and embraced his vanquished opponent with a kindly expression and still more kindly words, in which praised the courage and endurance of the protracted defense. The extraordinary respect and dignity Spinola demonstrated towards the Dutch army is praised through The Surrender of Breda. Spinola “had forbidden his troops to jeer at, or otherwise abuse, the vanquished Dutch, and, according to a report, he himself saluted Justin. ”The painting demonstrates the glimpses of humanity that can be exposed as a result of war, and commends Spinola’s consideration for Nassau. Velázquez’s relationship with Spinola makes The Surrender of Breda especially historically accurate, the depiction of Spinola is undoubtedly accurate, and Spinola’s memory of the battle contributed to the perspective with which Velázquez composed the painting
.jpg)
_01.jpg)
.JPG)
_-_Google_Art_Project.jpg)
