Early Florentine Renaissance
The Renaissance was officially born in Florence, a city that is often referred to as its cradle. This new figurative language, also linked to a different way of thinking about man and the world, began with local culture and humanism, which had already been brought to the fore by people like Francesco Petrarca or Coluccio Salutati. The news, proposed in the early fifteenth century by masters such as Filippo Brunelleschi, Donatello and Masaccio, were not immediately accepted by the client, indeed remained at least for twenty years a minority and largely misunderstood artistic fact, in the face of the now dominant international Gothic.
Later the Renaissance became the most appreciated figurative language and began to be transmitted to other Italian courts (first of all the papal one of Rome) and then European, thanks to the movements of the artists.
The cycle of the Florentine Renaissance, after the beginnings of the first twenty years of the fifteenth century, spread with enthusiasm until the middle of the century, with experiments based on a technical-practical approach; the second phase took place at the time of Lorenzo the Magnificent, from about 1450 until his death in 1492, and was characterized by a more intellectualistic arrangement of conquests. A third phase is dominated by the personality of Girolamo Savonarola, which deeply marks many artists convincing them to rethink their choices. The last phase, datable between 1490 and 1520, is called “mature” Renaissance, and sees the presence in Florence of three absolute genes of art, which influenced the generations to come:Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo Buonarroti and Raffaello Sanzio.
Features
At least three were the essential elements of the new style:
Formulation of the rules of the linear centric perspective, which organized the space together;
Attention to man as an individual, both in physiognomy and anatomy and in the representation of emotions
Repudiation of decorative elements and return to essentiality.
Among these the most characteristic was certainly that of linear centric perspective, built according to a mathematical-geometric and measurable method, developed at the beginning of the century by Filippo Brunelleschi. The ease of application, which did not require geometric knowledge of particular refinement, was one of the key factors in the success of the method, which was adopted by the shops with a certain elasticity and with not always orthodox ways.
The linear centric perspective is only one way of representing reality, but its character was particularly consonant with the mentality of Renaissance man, since it gave rise to a rational order of space, according to criteria established by the artists themselves. If on the one hand the presence of mathematical rules made the perspective an objective matter, on the other the choices that determined these rules were of a perfectly subjective nature, such as the position of the vanishing point, the distance from the viewer, the height of the horizon. Ultimately, the Renaissance perspective is nothing more than a representative convention, which today is so deeply rooted as to appear natural, even if some nineteenth-century movements such as cubism, have shown how it is just an illusion.
The pioneers (1401)
Already the Romanesque in Florence was characterized by a serene geometric harmony that recalled the ancient works, as in the baptistery of San Giovanni (perhaps X century-XIII century) or in San Miniato al Monte (from 1013 to the XIII century). At the end of the fourteenth century, in the Gothic era, buildings with a round arch were built, such as the Loggia della Signoria or the Loggia del Bigallo. Even in painting, the city had remained substantially free from the Gothic influences, well developed instead in nearby Siena, for example. Giottohe had set a synthetic and monumental style at the beginning of the XIV century, which was maintained with few evolutions by his numerous followers until the end of the century.
At the dawn of the fifteenth century, while Europe and part of Italy were dominated by the international Gothic style, in Florence there was an artistic debate that focused on two possible opposing currents: one linked to acceptance, never until then full, of the sinuous and linear elegances of the gothic, though filtered by the local tradition, and another time to a more rigorous recovery of the manner of the ancients, reinforcing the never forgotten connection with the Roman origins of Florentia.
These two tendencies can already be seen in the yard of the Porta della Mandorla (from 1391), where, next to the gothic spirals and ornaments, on the jambs you can see grafts of figures modeled solidly according to the ancient; but it was above all with the competition held in 1401 by the Art of Calimala, to choose the artist to whom to entrust the realization of the North Gate of the Baptistery, which the two tendencies became clearer. The essay involved the construction of a panel with the Sacrifice of Isaac: in the competition took part among others Lorenzo Ghiberti and Filippo Brunelleschi, of which we received the two finalist tiles. In the Ghiberti tile the figures are modeled according to an elegant and composed Hellenistic style, but they are empty in expression, devoid of involvement; instead Brunelleschi, referring not only to the old but also to the lesson of Giovanni Pisano, built his scene in a pyramidal form focusing attention on the focal point of the drama, represented by the interweaving of perpendicular lines of the hands of Abraham, the Angel and of Isaac’s body, according to a less elegant but much more disruptive expressiveness. The competition ended with a narrow victory by Ghiberti, testifying how the.
Birth and development (1410-1440)
The first phase of the Renaissance, which came about until the thirties / forties of the fifteenth century, was an era of great experimentation often enthusiastic, characterized by a technical and practical approach where the innovations and new goals did not remain isolated, but were always taken up and developed by young artists, in an extraordinary crescendo that had no equal in any other European country.
The first discipline that developed a new language was sculpture, facilitated in part by the greater presence of ancient works to be inspired: within the first two decades of the fifteenth century Donatello had already developed an original language compared to the past. The architecture dominated by the figure of Filippo Brunelleschi followed (in 1419 the first works of the Spedale degli Innocenti and the Old Sacristy of San Lorenzo date back) and finally the painting, dominated by Masaccio’s brilliant career, active from 1422 to 1428.
Some of the best artistic achievements came from the direct confrontation between artists called to work face to face (or almost) on a similar theme: the Crucifixes by Brunelleschi and Donatello, the cantatas of the Donatello Cathedral and Luca della Robbia, the stories of the Brancacci Chapel of Masaccio and Masolino.
Sculpture
Two Crucifixes
Brunelleschi and Donatello were the two artists who first posed the problem of the relationship between the ideals of humanism and a new form of expression, closely comparing and developing a different style, sometimes opposite. Brunelleschi was older than about ten years and served as a guide and stimulus for the younger colleague, with whom he went to Rome in 1409, where they saw and studied the surviving ancient works, trying to reconstruct above all the techniques to obtain such creations.
Their commonality of intent did not however stifle differences in temperament and artistic outcomes. Exemplary in this sense is the comparison between the two wooden crucifixes at the center of an animated anecdote told by Vasari, who sees the criticism of Brunelleschi against the “peasant” Christ of Donatello and his response in the Crucifix of Santa Maria Novella, which left the shocked colleague. In reality it seems that the two works have been carved in a broader time frame, about ten years, but the anecdote is still eloquent.
The Cross of Donatello focuses on the human drama of suffering, which argues with the Hellenistic elegance of Ghiberti, avoiding any concession to aesthetics: the contracted features emphasize the moment of agony and the body is heavy and ungraceful, but of vibrant energy.
The Christ of Brunelleschi, a little more idealized and measured, where the mathematical perfection of forms is echo of the divine perfection of the subject.
The proportions are carefully studied (the open arms measure the height of the figure, the nose line points to the center of gravity of the navel, etc.), reworking the type of Giotto Crucifix but adding a slight twist to the left that creates more privileged points of view and “generates space” around him, that is, leads the observer to a semicircular path around the figure.
Orsanmichele
In 1406 it was established that the Arts of Florence decorated each of the external niches of the church of Orsanmichele with statues of their protectors. The new sculptural worksite was added to the other large workshop, that of Santa Maria del Fiore, which at the time was dominated by the style close to Lorenzo Ghiberti, which mediated some Gothic elements with quotes from the ancient and a loose naturalness in the gestures, with a moderate openness to experimentation. In this environment Donatello was formed and with him also Nanni di Banco, slightly younger than him, with whom he established a collaboration and friendship.
Between 1411 and 1417 they both worked at Orsanmichele and also in this case a comparison between their most successful works can help to highlight mutual differences and affinities. Both refused the styles of the late Gothic, rather inspired by ancient art. Both also placed the figures in space with freedom, avoiding the traditional ways, and amplifying the plastic strength of the figures and the rendering of the physiognomy.
But if Nanni di Banco in the Four Crowned Saints (1411 – 1414) cites the solemn immobility of the imperial Roman portraits, Donatello in San Giorgio (1415 – 1417) sets a restrained figure, but visibly energetic and vital, as if about to snap from one moment to the next. This effect is obtained through the composition of the figure through geometric and compact shapes (the triangle of the legs open to the compass, the ovals of the shield and the armor), where the slight lateral click of the head in the direction affixed to that of the body maximum evidence, thanks also to the underlines of the tendons of the neck, frowning eyebrows and the chiaroscuro of the deep eyes.
In the relief of the San Giorgio free the princess, at the base of the tabernacle, Donatello carved one of the first examples of stiacciato and created one of the oldest representations of central linear perspective. Unlike Brunelleschi’s theory, however, that he wanted the perspective as a way to subsequently and spatially fix the spatiality, Donatello placed the vanishing point behind the protagonist, in order to highlight the knot of the action, creating an opposite effect, as if the space was unraveled by the protagonists themselves.
The cantons of the Duomo
In the thirties of the fifteenth century a point of arrival and turning point in the sculpture is represented by the realization of the two cantorias for the Duomo of Florence. In 1431 one was commissioned to Luca della Robbia and in 1433 a second of equal size to Donatello.
Luca, who was about thirty years old at the time, carved a balcony from the classic plant where six tiles were inserted and four more were placed between the shelves. The reliefs represented step by step the psalm 150, whose text runs in capital letters on the lower bands, above and below the shelves, with groups of young people who sing, dance and play, composed of classical beauty, animated by an effective naturalness, which expresses feelings in a calm and serene way.
Donatello, returning from a second trip to Rome (1430 – 1432) fused numerous suggestions (from imperial ruins to early Christian and Romanesque works) creating a continuous frieze interspersed with columns where a series of putti dance frantically against the mosaic background (a quote from the façade of Arnolfo di Cambioof the Duomo itself). The construction with the rounded columns creates a sort of stage set back for the frieze, which runs seamlessly based on diagonal lines, which contrast with the straight and perpendicular lines of the architecture of the choir. The sense of movement is accentuated by the vibrant twinkling of the glassy, colored and gold-colored tesserae, which encrust the background and all the architectural elements. This exaltation of the movement was the language in the path of Donatello that the artist then brought to Padua, where he stayed since 1443.
Architecture
The architectural season of the early Renaissance is dominated by the figure of Filippo Brunelleschi who, after his beginnings as a sculptor, dedicated himself during the first decade of the century to meditations on architectural problems, putting to good use the observations made on his trips to Rome. At first it was consulted by the Florentine Republic for military engineering works, such as the fortifications of Staggia and Vicopisano, and then focused on the problem of the dome of Santa Maria del Fiore, exemplary work of his entire life, which also contains the germs for future works.
The distinctive feature of his architectural work is crystal clearness, where technical-structural questions are inextricably linked to the formal characteristics of style. Typical in this sense is the use of gray pietra serena for architectural elements, which stand out against the light plaster of the walls. He used the classical elements taken from the architectural orders, concentrating on a few modules, however, associated in various ways, to avoid repetitiveness, and opposing himself to the thousand facets of the Gothic. The clarity of its architecture also depends on the precise harmonic proportion of the various parts of the building, but not linked to geometric relationships, but to a simpler and more intuitive repetition of some basic measures (usually the ten Florentine arms), which multiples and submultiples generate all the dimensions. For example, the Spedale degli Innocenti (1419 – 1428) has a famous portico with round arches supported by columns that form nine square spans; the basic module is the length of the column, which determines the distance between one and the other (“light” of the arc) and the depth. The space appears so clear and measurable to the naked eye, according to a harmonious rhythm that is highlighted by a few and refined decorative elements.
But the work that involved all his genius, containing the germs for many of the following projects, was the construction of the grandiose dome of Santa Maria del Fiore, described by Brunelleschi’s biographers as a sort of modern myth that has the great architect as the sole protagonist, with his genius, his tenacity, his confidence in reasoning. Brunelleschi had to overcome the perplexities, the criticisms and the uncertainties of the Duomo Workers and he lavished on explanations, models and reports on his project, which involved the construction of a double dome dome with walkways in the interspace and building without scaffolding but with scaffolding self-supporting. Brunelleschi used a pointed shape for the dome, “more magnificent and swelling”, obliged by practical and aesthetic needs: in fact the dimensions did not allow to use a hemispherical shape, and a double cap, that is two domes, one internal and one external, each one divided vertically by eight sails. Moreover, the greater height development of the sixth acute compensated in height the exceptional horizontal development of the nave, unifying all the spaces in the dome. A similar effect can be perceived from the inside, where the gigantic dome compartment concentrates the spaces of the radial chapels, leading the eye towards the ideal vanishing point in the eye of the lantern.
Brunelleschi placed the outer one, which is parallel to the first, on twenty-four supports placed above the segments of the inner one and crossed with a system of horizontal spurs that reminded the whole of a grid of meridians and parallels. The outer dome, bricked with red brick interspersed with eight white ribs, also protected the construction from the damp and made the dome seem wider than it is. The inner dome, smaller and sturdy, holds the weight of the external one and, through the intermediate supports, allows it to develop more in height. Finally, in the interspace there is the stairs system that allows you to climb to the top. The dome, especially after the conclusion with the lantern that with its weight further consolidated ribs and sails, was therefore an organic structure, where the individual elements give each other strength, also converting potentially negative weights into forces that increase cohesion, therefore positive. The members are devoid of decorative tinsel and, unlike the Gothic architecture, the complex static game on the building is hidden in the air space, rather than openly shown.
With Brunelleschi, always present on the construction site, the figure of the modern architect was born, who is always involved in technical-operational processes, like the medieval foremen, but who also has a substantial and conscious role in the design phase: he no longer exercises an art merely “mechanical”, but it is an intellectual who practices a ” liberal art “, based on mathematics, geometry, historical knowledge.
Painting
Masaccio
The third father of the Renaissance revolution was Masaccio for painting. his activity is concentrated in a very few years: from the first work reached in 1422 to his death in Rome in 1428. In 1417 he was present in Florence, where he had become friends with Brunelleschi and Donatello and on the basis of their achievements (clear spatial and plastic strength) he began a re-reading of Giotto’s work, as can be seen from his first known work, the Triptych of San Giovenale (1422). He set up shop with Masolino da Panicale, but surely it was not his pupil, as evidenced by the completely different starting points of their painting. Later the two influenced each other, as we can already see in the first known work of the association, the Sant’Anna Metterza of the Uffizi. Here Masolino appears already devoid of those linear late Gothic suggestions of earlier works such as the Madonna of Humility, while Masaccio has already developed a way of painting that creates solid figures, with a shading that makes them look like sculptures coherently placed in the pictorial space.
This strength in the construction of the characters and their spatiality, which enhances their human individuality and emotional intensity, was further developed in subsequent works, such as the Polyptych of Pisa, begun in 1426 and today dismembered among several museums, and the frescoes of Brancacci Chapel. This last enterprise, started in 1424 with the collaboration of Masolino and continued alone by Masaccio from 1426 to 1427, was the capital work of the renovation in painting and was appreciated studied by successive generations of painters, among whom there was the same Michelangelo Buonarroti.
Already the spatial composition is revolutionary: all the decoration is framed in a unitary architectural caging, with painted pilasters and a jagged cornice that separate the scenes, often with the landscape that continues between one and the other; the point of view is unique and designed for a hypothetical spectator standing in the center of the chapel, particularly evident in the scenes that are faced or in the scenes on the sides of the mullioned window on the back wall; generally unified light, as if it came naturally from the window of the chapel, and use of a single color range, clear and bright. Of course between the two hands (not to mention the completion made by Filippino Lippi by 1481), there were also substantial differences. Masolino, despite the efforts to create anatomically correct and well-calibrated figures in space, set relationships between figures based on rhythm, with generic faces and empty expressions. Masaccio instead used a more violent illumination (Expulsion of the progenitors), which molds the bodies and makes them loads of expressiveness, through essential but very eloquent gestures. His figures emanate a dynamism and a human depth that is unknown to Masolino. The quotations are educated (like the pose of Eve that recalls a modest Venus) are transfigured by a severe screening of the natural, which makes them alive and fleshy, not academically archaeological: already the contemporaries praised in his art “the excellent imitator of nature”, rather than the resuscitator of ancient art.
In more complex scenes (such as the Cure of the Cripple and resurrection of Tabita di Masolino and the payment of the tribute of Masaccio) Masolino shatters his own language in more dispersive episodes as in medieval art, despite the classical inserts, the perspective correctness and the very high pictorial quality, with a minute attention to detail that recalls the art of international Gothic; Masaccio instead unifies the episodes making them rotate around the figure of Christ among the apostles, behind whose head is the vanishing point of the whole representation. The correspondences between the gestures between one and the other group of figures powerfully link the different actions.
Even the painting technique between the two is very different: Masolino carefully finished the shapes and details, then modeling the volumes with soft lights and thin brushstrokes; Masaccio, on the other hand, works in a more concise manner, renouncing the contour line and constructing through the direct affixing of lights and colors, obtaining the extraordinary plastic jump of the figures.
In the lower episodes of the San Pietro heals the sick with his shadow and the distribution of goods, both of Masaccio, the scenes have fallen in urban settings that closely resemble the streets of contemporary Florence, avoiding any anecdotal digression: each element has a precise function, such as the snow-capped mountains in the distribution testify to the urgent needs the intervention of the Holy. People are also characterized in their individuality, avoiding generic types. In this we also read the new meaning of human dignity, which makes even infirmities, ugliness, poverty worthy of consideration (St. Peter heals the sick with his shadow), without any complacency towards thegrotesque.
The students of Masaccio
The first heirs of Masaccio were some of his students and those who immediately studied and put to good use the innovations of the Brancacci chapel. These included Filippo Lippi and Beato Angelico, who used some of the Masaccio features to develop their own style.
The Angelico, already a student of Lorenzo Monaco, had soon undertaken a search for ways other than international Gothic. Already in his early works as a miniaturist he created figures of geometric purity, elongated and with simple clothes with heavy folds, with bright and bright colors and placed in a measured space. These elements are also found in the first tests on the table, such as the Triptych of St. Peter Martyr (c. 1427-1428). The Angelico was an artist who was able to mediate between the wealth of the ornament of Gentile da Fabriano and the physical and spatial solidity of Masaccio. In the Annunciation of the Prado, a little later (1430approx.), he created an elegant main scene, attentive to minute detail, but fell in an architectural setting organized with perspective; in the tables of the predella he worked with even greater boldness, creating small episodes with a casual use of perspective, sometimes virtuosic, and with a use of light that became his distinctive feature: clear, crystalline, which modulates diaphanous colors, enhances the volumes and collaborates to unify the scenes.
Receiving news
The three innovators of Florentine art received great esteem and admiration, and they influenced the artistic production in the long run, even if none of them was received in full by other contemporary artists. The client also played a role in this, generally in favor of less radical solutions. The typical example is that of the rich merchant and humanist Palla Strozzi, who entrusted the construction of the altarpiece of his chapel in Santa Trinita to Gentile da Fabriano, who in 1423 concluded the dazzling Adoration of the Magi, a masterpiece of international Gothic in Italy. The work is a vibrant combination of several episodes where the eye is lost in a myriad of minute details and anecdotal scenes, according to a setting derived from the Byzantine literary model of the ecfrasis, or the descriptions / interpretations of works of art, which they had been circulating in Florence at least since 1415.
The theoretical arrangement of Alberti
From the mid-thirties of the fifteenth century pioneering fervor gradually diminished, while trying to give a theoretical arrangement to what had previously been experienced. The protagonist of this trial was Leon Battista Alberti, who settled in the city only in 1434. Being the son of a family of exiles arrived in the city when the figurative revolution had already taken place and, imbued with humanism mainly Roman matrix, began to evaluate the results obtained, mitigating the differences between the individual personality in favor of a vision of ‘ together that the “rebirth” had as its common denominator. In the treatise De pictura united in the dedication Brunelleschi, Donatello,Ghiberti, Luca della Robbia and Masaccio.
Alberti sought the objective foundations and the philological path that had allowed rebirth, tackling both technical and aesthetic issues. He devoted himself to the three major arts (De pictura of 1436, De re aedificatoria of 1454 and De statua of 1462) and his texts were the fundamental instrument for the formation of new generations in the following decades, for the dissemination of Renaissance ideas and above all, to allow the transformation of the artist from a medieval craftsman to a modern intellectual.
Mediation figures
The next phase, in the central years of the century, was under the banner of a more intellectualistic arrangement of previous conquests. Around the forties of the fifteenth century the Italian political framework was stabilizing with the Peace of Lodi (1454), which divided the peninsula into five major states. While the political classes in the cities were centralizing power in their hands, favoring the rise of individual dominant figures, on the other the bourgeoisie becomes less active, favoring agricultural investments and assuming models of behavior of the old aristocracy, far from the traditional ideals of sobriety and refusal of ostentation. The figurative language of those years can be defined cultured, ornate and flexible.
Lorenzo Ghiberti
Ghiberti was one of the first artists who, together with Masolino and Michelozzo, maintained a positive evaluation of the previous tradition, correcting it and rearranging it according to the novelties of humanistic culture and perspective rigor, in order to update it without subverting it. After the long processing of the North Gate of the Baptistery, still linked to the setting of the 14th century South Gate by Andrea Pisano, in 1425 he received the commission for a new door (today in the East), which Michelangelo later called ” Porta del Paradiso””The work is emblematic of Ghiberti’s” mediation “position, as it blends an incredible number of didactical-religious, civil, political and cultural themes with an apparently clear and simple style, of great formal elegance, which decreed its lasting fortune..
Masolino
Masolino mediated in painting between the sweetness and the episodicity of the international Gothic and the solid spatiality of the Renaissance. In his works created after the end of the association with Masaccio he developed a style easy to assimilate in places where the gothic culture was still predominant, like Siena (the Vecchietta was his student and collaborator) or northern Italy (with the important frescoes of Castiglione Olona).
Michelozzo
Michelozzo was a sculptor and then an architect, inextricably linked to the commission of Cosimo il Vecchio, who was the architect of the most important public and private commissions. He commissioned the convent of Bosco ai Frati, near Florence, and from 1444 he built the Palazzo Medici in Via Larga. His was also the project for the innovative convent of San Marco, since 1438. Michelozzo was a profound connoisseur of both the work of Brunelleschithat of the gothic tradition of the great Florentine basilicas, and used the Renaissance means to purify and enrich the past tradition. In the Palazzo Medici, a model of much of the Florentine civil construction later, and not only, it exploited the external rustication, taken from medieval public buildings, and created a more or less cubical residence, built around a central courtyard, on which it opens access to the garden. The decoration is refined and composed with fantasy drawing from the classical repertoire, with a taste open to contamination and attentive to perspective games (the courtyard, for example, seems symmetrical without being it and has the most subtle corner columns).
Paolo Uccello
According to Vasari in his Lives, Paolo Uccello “had no other pleasure than to investigate some difficult and impossible things of perspective”, underlining his most immediately distinctive trait, that is the almost obsessive interest in the perspective construction. This characteristic, combined with the adherence to the fairytale climate of international Gothic, makes Paolo Uccello a figure on the border between the two figurative worlds, according to an artistic journey among the most autonomous of the fifteenth century. The bold perspective construction of his works, however, unlike Masaccio, does not serve to give logical order to the composition, but rather to create fantastic and visionary scenographies, in indefinite spaces.
In the works of maturity, the figures are considered volumes, placed as a function of mathematical and rational responses, where the natural horizon and the horizon of feelings are excluded. The effect, well perceivable in works such as the Battle of San Romano is that of a series of mannequins that impersonate a scene with frozen and suspended actions, but the emblematic and dreamlike character of his painting is born from this inscrutable fixity.
Filarete
Filarete was one of Lorenzo Ghiberti’s students during the fusion of the North Door of the Baptistery, for this he was entrusted with the important commission of the fusion of St. Peter ‘s door by Eugene IV. The Filarete made above all the study and re-enactment of the ancient. He was one of the first artists to develop a knowledge of the ancient world as an end in itself, dictated by an “antiquarian” taste, which aimed to recreate works in a probably classic style. But his rediscovery was not philological, but rather animated by fantasy and taste for rarity, coming to produce a fantastic evocation of the past. With his stays in Rome and Milanhe was a fundamental diffuser of Renaissance culture in Italy.
Source from Wikipedia