Art And Architecture In Early Renaissance Italy Notes

Art and Architecture in Early Renaissance Italy

George Holmes, Florence, Rome and the Origins of the Renaissance (Oxford, 1986).

Chapter 9: Realistic Visual Narrative

• No papal court after 1305 in Italy.

  • Creates a new, different world of artistic patronage that led to the work of Giotto at the Arena Chapel and Duccio’s Maesta in Siena.

    • They incorporated a new system of pictorial narrative that developed in Rome, Pisa, Siena and Assisi from the 1290s.

    • Introduction of classical inspiration into sculpture and painting took place with the help of commercial finance.

• Duccio and the Maesta

• In Siena, unlike Florence, the Commune commissions the art [Florentine art is decentralised to the guild level].

• Building of the Palazzo Pubblico started in the 1290s.

• Duccio’s Maesta

  • Largest panel piece painting of its age

  • Intended to glorify the Virgin Mary who protected Siena during the Battle of Montaperti in 1260.

    • Part of a wider reverence for Mary

      • Lorenzetti, Birth of Mary

      • Martini, Annuncation

      • Ambrogio Lorenzett’s Presentation at the Temple

  • Brought from workshop to cathedral in 1311.

    • A chronicler notes how when it was put up the people ‘remained in prayer with much giving of alms…praying God and his Mother who is our advocate to defend us with her great mercy from all adversity and all evil and safeguard us from traitors and enemies of Siena.’

      • Emphatic that the Maesta was an expression of the central importance the city oligarchy placed on the Virgin as defender of the Commune.

• Duccio the artist

• Worked in Siena as early as 1278.

• Painted the Rucella Madonna for the Santa Maria Novella, Florence.

• Duccio’s paintings are different.

  • They are different from the work of Guido da Siena and the generation of Sienese artists before 1280.

  • Duccio has "smoothly modelled, soft features on the faces, given a stronger appearance of real physical outline

    • the robustly realistic children, by the delicacy of the handling of transparent, or semi-transparent clothing, by the detailed fineness of the Virgin’s clothes, sometimes making effective use of gold striation.

  • Duccio has developed a novel and more realistic style in the representation of the flesh and clothing.

• Duccio’s influences

  • French art: Duccio had gone north of the Alps and may have been influenced by the French art from French imported ivories and metal reliquaries

  • Byzantium: Was Duccio affected by Byzantine art that had recently introduced a new classical realism that greatly affected the painting of faces.

    • Just look at his Crevole and Rucellai Madonnas.

  • Italians at Assisi:

  • Was Duccio working at the Assisi chapel in the 1280s?

    • The Rucellai Madonna looks in competition with another Assisi man, Cimabue, whose Santa Trinita Madonna must have been from the same time.

  • Nicola and Giovanni Pisano:

    • From 1260s, the Pisan sculptors had a great influence on Sienese artists

    • Duccio specifically worked with Giovanni Pisano in 1295, on the construction of the Fonte D’Ovile in Siena.

    • Duccio’s best work is drapery which may have been influenced by Giovanni’s upright cathedral-façade statues such as in the Adoration of the Magi from the Nativity Relief from the Pisa Baptistery Pulpit (?)

• The Maesta specifically

• A large, complex work with more than fifty panels

• Shows the enthroned Virgin with a throng saints and angels on either side and apostles above.

• Above panels show a narrative of the lives of the Virgin and Christ.

  • This is significant because the Maesta (coinciding with Giotto’s Paduan frescoes of 1304-5 and perhaps the Assisi cycle of around 1290-1307) have a similar narrative framework

  • Indeed, they established a new style of narrative painting that ha d great influence over European pictorial assumptions for the next two centuries.

• What are the characteristics of this new style?

1. The intention of giving buildings and figures a fairly shallow space within which they could be placed to front or rear realistically.

2. A capacity to give figures roundness and weight, especially when they were heavily clothed with folded draperies.

3. A surface design which gave paintings patterns emphasising the main features of the action which the painting was portraying. E.g. emphasis of direction of movement of the figures by the patterns of lines in the partially realistic landscape.

4. An awareness of the allegorical, symbolical, or figural significance of the subjects of the paintings.

• Giotto:

• Giotto as at Assisi at some point before 1309 and his Santa Maria Novella Crucifix was painted by 1312, when he was already a famous painter.

• The Crucifix is atypical of the Tuscan tradition of the 13^th C.

  • It marks a new seriousness in the treatment of the male nude

    • The rib-cage is more realistic, the ace hangs in suffering: it is a real face, not a series of twisted lines.

• The Assisi Problem: can the frescoes of the Legend of St Francis in the upper basilica of Assisi and in the Arena both be Giotto’s?

  • There are strong differences.

    • The painting of the faces.

      • They are smoother and paler at Padua and not have the patches deep shadow made by leaving dark underpainting bare.

      • The structure of drapery and limbs is in general ruder and less finished in the St Francis series.

    • The contrast between the structure of the individual scenes.

      • The Paduan scenes are more tightly organised.

      • At Assisi the figures are often more clearly distinguished from the space behind, individuals are sometimes less clearly related to the action or idea which it is the main purpose of the panel to represent

      • Architecture is less idealised.

      • Landscape can be present in great stretches of hillside which have little relation to the main action.

  • Yet there are some explanations for this:

From John White, Art and Architecture in Italy 1250-1400 (Yale, 1996)

Chapter 9: (and introduction) to Cavallini

• Cimabue, Isaac Master, Cavallini, Coppo di Marcavolo

  • Anticipate the great men who succeed them

• New money-rich commercial class

  • Want to expiate sin

• ...

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