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Summary History of Art 1A (Lecture notes)
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Lecture notes from History of Art 1A. University of Glasgow.
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History of Art 1ALate Antiquity and Byzantium
The fall of the Roman Empire is usually overdramatized; it was not a
sudden fall of the empire, but rather the retirement of the last
Emperor.
330: Constantine legalizes Christianity in the Roman Empire.
Christianity prohibits the making of images of living things, but Roman
culture is a largely visual culture, so soon images start appearing.
Many scenes were depicted in art, such as the Resurrection and the
Crucifixion, but that was very problematic. Crucifixion was meant to be
a form of punishment for the lower classes, to degrade them even
more, to shame them. So Roman images of the Crucifixion usually
downplayed the horror and focused on the triumph of JC on the cross.
Vasari believes that Christianity ruined classical art.
Constantine moved to Greece, to the city of Byzantium, and founded
Constantinople. Essentially, power in the Empire shifts to the East.
From 527, the emperor of the Byzantine Empire was Justinian.
Constantine was also a great art patron; art in the Hagia Sophia shows
Justinian giving the church to Virgin Mary, and Constantine giving her
the city. (C10 or C11th mosaic in Hagia Sophia, by Isidore of Miletus
and Anthemius of Tralles).
Theodora, a woman of extraordinary authority, convinced Justinian to
not leave Constantinople.
The Hagia Sophia was built by Justinian after many of Constantine’s
churches collapsed. The building is dedicated to Sophia as in the
Wisdom of God, so to that abstract concept instead of an actual St.
Sophia.
Roman Christianity had two basic building formats: The Basilica,
adapted for many Christian churches, and the Centralized Structure, a
building with a focal point on a central spot. The Hagia Sophia is a
, compound of these two building formats, as it is both
centralized and long. It is both at the same time.
Obvious comparison: The Roman Pantheon, built by Hadrian in 126.
Unlike the Pantheon, though, the Hagia Sophia has relatively thin and
fragile walls. It also has other spaces that visitors can go to, while the
Pantheon can be grasped at one go, by looking at the main space. The
Hagia Sophia is also, by definition, dedicated to something beyond
human understanding, while the Pantheon is simply dedicated to
Rome, meaning that the Hagia Sophia simply cannot be grasped in the
same way.
Justinian’s architects cleverly achieved their goal of building something
that cannot be known or grasped, but that hints at something, and that
manages to bring out sensations and overwhelm its visitors. This
Church is therefore the single most important object in the Byzantine
world.
Mid 6th century, Italy was being reconquered. In Ravenna, we find the
San Vitale church, which is the nearest thing we get to buildings of the
Centralized Structure style, built around 540-8. The Byzantine idea was
that light is the nearest thing to the divine that we can see, and that
shows in the way the light enters the San Vitale. The Byzantine style
also mostly drifted away from naturalism, compared to the Roman one.
Their aim was to show icons, not real representations.
The Italian Renaissance
“The 19th century regarded the renaissance as a movement of
liberation from the Monkish dogmatism of the middle ages expressing
its newfound enjoyment of sensuous pleasure and the artistic
celebration of physical beauty.” –Gombrich
Not a period- too long, not a style.
Material drawn from the classical past combined with some interest in
the classical style.
, By the end of the 15th century, it’s inconceivable for anything classical
to be portrayed in a non-roman/classical style.
Even in the 13th century: figures based on classical antique prototypes.
E.g.: Nicola Pisano’s Fortitude, 1260: obviously inspired by Farnese’s
classical Hercules (filtered through the Bible’s Daniel in the lion den),
still has some differences in the proportions etc.; the head, for
example, looks too big bc it’s supposed to be looked at from the
bottom.
The Renaissance’s use of classical antiquity is more like a job of
translation, to meet something more relevant to it. Sources are
transformed to meet new goals, instead of being mechanical copies.
By Rossellino’s time in Florence, so around the 1440s, artists are at
that point expected to use classical and roman sources, unlike Pisano’s
1260 sculpture, where that was his own choice, no expectations
involved.
Lorenzo Ghiberti’s self-portrait from the “Gates of Paradise” is inspired
by the roman art of the same style that was made to honor famous
people. In his case, he’s depicting himself, which is remarkable; it adds
value to the artist as an entity, an individual. Its allusion of Roman
prototypes also shows that Florence really strived to become the “new
Rome”.
In Renaissance art, the patron believed he “owned” the art.
Giotto is one of the most important founding fathers of Renaissance art
historiography. His figures have weight, they are composed
intelligently, the narrative is intelligently staged. Example: Mocking of
Christ, 1305-13. There’s psychological depth in the drama, in the story
told.
Agnolo Gaddi was taught by his father, who spent 24 years in Giotto’s
workshop; however, we see that Giotto’s lively element is inexistent in
Agnolo’s religious paintings, e.g.: Madonna and Child. Masaccio,
however, does take on an element of depth and space that makes him
a classic, like Giotto; they become permanently relevant, unlike many
Florentine artists of the time.
, The humanist background of the Renaissance also brings on a sense of
style, which was new for visual arts. First half of the 15 th in century:
shift in style. & Awareness of style. Ghiberti’s St. John the Baptist
(1412-16) is in the gothic style. Donatello’s St. Mark (1411-13) didn’t
look any classical, and it had very naturalistic elements such as the
shagging of the top-body drapery that made it seen as ugly at first; it
wasn’t gothic, but anti-gothic. It was based on classical sources, but so
was Ghiberti’s. The key thing was the awareness of style, the
supplanting of gothic by something else; we take that for granted now,
but the concept of style wasn’t obvious at the time.
Then, linear perspective shows another intellectual side of art that was
ignored before.
Pierro della Francesco’s Brera Altarpiece shows again the same
classical inspiration in the figures and the building, but there’s a
remarkable element: the egg above the Virgin’s head. We’re forced to
perceive it as egg-sized bc it’s over her egg-shaped head, therefore
creating some type of illusion since we can’t resolve the question of
where exactly that egg is.
Leonardo brought the scribble into art (e.g.: Studies for Madonna and
Child with a Cat). He’s looking for the composition, searching.
Tempera on wood: emergence of markets bc the art could be bought
and sold.
Michelangelo, Leonardo, Raphael: High Renaissance
The Northern Renaissance
North of the Alps, 15th, 16th and early 17th century
Northern tradition: darker, more gothic than the Italian renaissance
tradition. E.g.: Grünewald’s Crucifixion of the Isenheim Altarpiece VS
Raphael’s The Crucified Christ.
Northern: more concerned about the emotive effect // Italian: more
concerned about “clear beauty”
Ref: Northern Renaissance Art by Craig Harbison, 1995.
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