Italian Renaissance
The Italian renaissance was as the name
implies the rebirth of painting. This
does not imply that all the advances of
painting came from this period but that
the masters learned to combine new
and old. The list of artist who contributed
to the advancement in painting
during the renaissance is as diverse as the
paintings. The Black Death
(bubonic and pneumonic plague) caused an actual
decline in art from the
prosperity of the high Middle Ages. The plague killed
almost a third of the
people in Europe and the renaissance was the first
advancement in the arts
after this terrible devastation. The capital of the
Tuscany region of
Italy was Florence and this is where many of the new
renaissance artist were
trained. The renaissance, broadly considered covered the
years between 1400
and 1600, although specialist do disagree on these dates.
During this
period artist were no longer regarded as mere artisans, as they had
been in
the past but were now considered independent personalities. Masaccio
made
notable advances in the styles of paintings such as perspective, space,
and
surrounding his subjects in light and air. The next great step was in
the
mellowness and richness of colors used by Bellini. The complex strokes of
color
make the surrounding light and air almost inseparable from the figures.
Bellini
was a great artist and teacher who brought Venetian art onto the
scene to the
point that it was at the forefront of the Renaissance. The
Painter Sandro
Botticelli comes along as the next great painter after
Masaccio. When you look
at the painting Primavera 1482, you see the new,
sharply contoured, slender form
and rippling sinuous line that is synonymous
with Botticelli. In the painting
Botticelli catches the freshness of an
early spring morning, with the pale light
shining through the tall, straight
trees, already laden with their golden fruit.
The two paintings that are
said to epitomize the renaissance are the Mona Lisa
(1503-06) and the Last
Supper (1495-97) by the master Leonardo da Vinci who was
the elder of the
Florentine masters. The observation of nature, firsthand
investigations, and
experimentation is what set him apart from his peers early
on. Like
Shakespeare he came from an insignificant background and fittingly
described
as a genius. The art of perspective was used extensively by Florentine
artist
Paolo Ucello (Paolo di Dono, 1397-1475), and this was shown very well in
his
painting The Hunt in the Forest, 1460’s. The painting shows how well he
used
perspective the way everything in it is organized upon a distant and
almost
unseen stag, a vanishing stag: the vanishing point. The art of
perspective is
the representation of solid objects and three-dimensional
space in accordance
with our optical perception of these things. We actually
see the world in
perspective the way things get smaller as they are farther
away. During the
Renaissance northern Italy was one of the wealthiest
regions in Europe. Genoa
and Venice both had populations of around 100,000 by
1400 and were the main
centers of trade. Florence, with a population of
55,000 was the center for
manufacture and distribution. The renaissance
continued with many great painters
improving the different styles and colors
in the fantastic world of painting and
art.