Painting in the Renaissance Read online

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  Painting

  in the

  Renaissance

  Una D’Elia

  Crabtree Publishing Company

  www.crabtreebooks.com

  For Lucy and Zoe

  Author: Una D’Elia

  Photographs and reproductions:

  Editor-in-Chief: Lionel Bender

  The Art Archive: Scrovegni Chapel, Padua/Gianni

  Editors: Lynn Peppas, Simon Adams

  Dagli Orti: pages 6; Musée du Louvre, Paris/Alfredo

  Proofreader: Crystal Sikkens

  Dagli Orti: page 8; Palazzo Ducale, Urbino/Alfredo

  Project coordinator: Robert Walker

  Dagli Orti: page 12; National Gallery/Eileen Tweedy:

  Photo research: Susannah Jayes

  pages 13, 24; Vatican Museum, Rome: page 16;

  Design concept: Robert MacGregor

  Museo Civico, Sansepolcro/Alfredo Dagli Orti:

  Designer: Malcolm Smythe

  page 18; Galleria degli Uffizi Florence/Alfredo

  Production coordinator: Margaret Amy Salter

  Dagli Orti: page 19; Accademia, Venice/Alfredo

  Production: Kim Richardson

  Dagli Orti: page 21

  Prepress technician: Margaret Amy Salter

  Self portrait, 1556 by Sofonisba Anguissola

  (c.1532-1625), Muzeum Zamek, Lancut, Poland/

  With thanks to First Folio.

  The Bridgeman Art Library: cover

  Corbis: Ali Meyer: page 11; Francis G Mayer: page 14; Cover photo: Renaissance painter Sofonisba Anguissola’s Arte & Immagini srl: page 15; © The Gallery

  self-portrait from 1556.

  Collection: page 20; Alinari Archives: page 22;

  Dennis Marsico: page 31

  Photo on page 1: The Mona Lisa, painted by Leonardo

  da Vinci around 1503–05.

  Istockphoto.com: pages 4, 10

  Topfoto: pages 17, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30; Alinari: pages 5, 7; This book was produced for Crabtree Publishing Company OM: page 9; Luisa Ricciarini: pages 1, 23; © Print

  by Bender Richardson White.

  Collector/HIP: page 25

  Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data D'Elia, Una Roman, 1973-D'Elia, Una Roman, 1973-

  Painting in the Renaissance / Una D'Elia.

  Painting in the Renaissance / Una D'Elia.

  p. cm. -- (Renaissance world)

  Includes index.

  (Renaissance world)

  ISBN 978-0-7787-4612-6 (pbk. : alk. paper) -- ISBN 978-0-7787-4592-1

  Includes index.

  (reinforced library binding : alk. paper)

  ISBN 978-0-7787-4592-1 (bound).--ISBN 978-0-7787-4612-6 (pbk.) 1. Painting, Renaissance--Juvenile literature. I. Title. II. Series.

  ND170.D45 2009

  1. Painting, Renaissance--Juvenile literature. I. Title. II. Series: 759.03--dc22

  Renaissance world (St. Catharines, Ont.)

  ND170.D45 2009 j759.03 C2008-907900-0

  2008052600

  Crabtree Publishing Company

  www.crabtreebooks.com

  1-800-387-7650

  Copyright © 2009 CRABTREE PUBLISHING COMPANY. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or be transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of Crabtree Publishing Company. In Canada: We acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund for our publishing activities.

  Published in Canada

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  Contents

  The Renaissance

  4

  Patronage

  6

  The Riches of Italy

  8

  Becoming a Painter

  10

  Perspective and Light

  12

  Religious Art

  14

  Walls and Ceilings

  16

  Altarpieces

  18

  Oil Paint

  20

  Portraits

  22

  The Human Body

  24

  Everyday Life

  26

  The Imaginary World

  28

  The Rise of Art

  30

  Further Reading, Websites, Glossary, Index

  32

  3

  The Renaissance

  Renaissance artists painted realistic

  printing press, which made many copies

  people, animals, landscapes, and

  of books, rather than have scribes copy the

  buildings in order to create the illusion

  books slowly and carefully by hand. With

  that their paintings were real worlds.

  the printing press, the ideas of Renaissance

  These paintings show real Renaissance

  scholars spread quickly, so that by the 1500s,

  people and things that happened to them,

  the Renaissance had reached other parts of

  as well as Christian stories and myths.

  Europe, including Germany, France, England,

  Belgium, and the Netherlands.

  Time of Rebirth

  The Renaissance, which lasted from about

  Ancient Ruins

  1300 to 1600, was a time of great change

  The Renaissance began in Italy, where

  in Europe. The term “Renaissance” means

  ancient Roman sculptures lay half-buried in

  “rebirth” in French. During the Renaissance,

  the ground and where the ruins of ancient

  artists and scholars looked back more than

  Roman temples still stand. People in the

  1,000 years to the ideas and discoveries of

  Middle Ages, the period of time before the

  ancient Rome and Greece, when the arts and

  Renaissance, ignored the crumbling ruins of

  sciences flourished. They wanted to recreate

  the Roman empire. They grazed cows in the

  the greatness of these ancient civilizations

  grass that grew around them and ransacked

  and outdo them in painting, sculpture,

  the remains, looking for stone and other

  architecture, music, theater, biology,

  materials to reuse in new buildings.

  physics, and astronomy.

  Explorers circled the globe

  searching for new lands

  and inventors built new

  machines, such as the

  The ancient ruins that

  inspired many Renaissance

  thinkers to study ancient

  Greek and Roman ideas, such

  as the ruins of the Forum in

  Rome, Italy, still stand today.

  4

  Renaissance artists and />
  scholars considered the

  ruined buildings and

  sculptures to be precious

  treasures from the past.

  They studied ancient works

  of art, and searched out old

  manuscripts in which they

  read about the lives of the

  Romans and Greeks.

  Art and Life

  Art during the Renaissance

  was both beautiful and

  practical. Renaissance artists

  Artists in the Renaissance began to show scenes from everyday painted on the walls and

  life, such as this detail from a larger painting showing a game ceilings of churches, palaces,

  using tarot cards. They produced everything from expensive and the homes of wealthy

  paintings to cheap playing cards.

  people, as well as on

  wooden panels, canvases, and furniture.

  owned works of art, such as printed playing

  The rich bought silk tapestries, statues for

  cards, painted pots, and small religious

  their gardens, silver and gold jewelry and

  statues. They came into daily contact with

  tableware, carved and painted furniture,

  art as they washed their clothes in fountains

  painted portraits of themselves and their

  designed by famous sculptors and walked

  families, and elegantly handpainted books.

  past newly built and architectually beautiful

  Even people who were not very wealthy

  palaces, public buildings, and churches.

  T I M E L I N E

  1290s: Giotto begins to change art

  1485: Sandro Botticelli paints the

  1511: Raphael paints the School of

  by painting realistic people

  Birth of Venus

  Athens, linking Italian culture

  1410: Filippo Brunelleschi, Italian

  1495–98: Leonardo da Vinci paints

  with that of ancient Greece

  architect, uses mathematical

  The Last Supper

  1543: Andreas Vesalius publishes

  formulas to create perspective

  1503: Leonardo da Vinci paints the

  his book on human anatomy

  1427: Masaccio creates depth

  Mona Lisa

  including accurate printed

  using perspective in his frescoes

  1508–12: Michelangelo paints the

  images by highly trained artists

  1436: Jan van Eyck, Flemish

  frescoes on the ceiling of the

  1550: Giorgio Vasari publishes

  painter, is one of the first to

  Sistine Chapel, a chapel in

  Lives of the Most Eminent Italian

  use oil paints and glazes

  the Vatican, Rome

  Architects, Painters, and Sculptors

  5

  Patronage

  During the Renaissance, art was big

  Contracts

  business. Patrons, who included the

  A patron and artist usually signed a contract,

  church, rulers, bankers, merchants,

  which stated how much the artist would be

  and other wealthy people, hired artists

  paid, what the subject of the painting would

  to create paintings, sculptures, furniture,

  be, what materials would be used, how long

  and other works of art for them to display

  it would take to complete the painting, and

  in their grand houses, churches, or other

  what size the finished work would be.

  public buildings.

  A contract often included a sketch of the

  Why Buy Art?

  painting as well as other details, giving

  Patrons commissioned paintings

  the patron a good idea of what the finished

  to show their wealth and power,

  work would look like.

  display their education

  and taste, remember their

  families and other loved

  ones, and to inspire prayer.

  Patrons also supported

  the arts by establishing

  academies, or schools, where

  artists attended lectures on

  subjects such as anatomy,

  geometry, and optics.

  On the left of his painting,

  The Last Judgment , Giotto

  showed orderly rows of saved

  people floating in the air,

  while on the right, he painted

  naked, twisted sinners being

  tormented by rivers of

  burning fire and many

  monstrous demons.

  6

  but Pope Julius II forced him to come back

  Plague!

  and paint the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel,

  Giotto di Bondone, who died in 1337, is

  a chapel in the official residence of the pope.

  regarded as the most important painter

  This became Michelangelo’s most famous

  of the late 1200s and early 1300s. He,

  work. It took him four years to finish. In

  like many artists, worked in Florence,

  the end the entire ceiling was covered

  Italy, which was considered the center

  in 40 scenes from the Bible.

  of early Renaissance painting. In 1348,

  the plague, also known as the Black

  Death, swept across southern Europe

  Saved by Painting

  and Italy and killed many people in the

  In 1305, Enrico Scrovegni commissioned

  city, including artists and craftspeople.

  the artist Giotto to paint a scene of the Last

  So many died that interest in the arts

  Judgment, the moment when, according

  also died down for a time.

  to Christians, God decides who has been a

  good person and goes to Heaven and who

  has been a sinner and goes to Hell. Enrico

  Disagreements

  hoped the painting would teach Christians

  Even with contracts, artists and patrons

  to be good, but he also hoped it would keep

  sometimes disagreed. One of the sharpest

  him and his father from going to Hell. Like

  arguments was between two fierce and

  other bankers, they lent money for interest,

  difficult men: the famous painter, sculptor,

  which the church considered a sin. Enrico is

  and architect Michelangelo Buonarotti and

  in the painting, kneeling among the saved.

  Pope Julius II, head of the Roman Catholic

  Church from 1503 to 1513 and a great patron

  of the arts. Michelangelo dared to disagree

  many times with the powerful pope about

  which artworks he would make and how

  they should be done. The artist stormed

  away from Rome and did not want to return,

  The patron of this work, a wealthy

  businessman named Leonardo Buonafede,

  ran screaming from the painting because he

  thought that Rosso had painted the saints to

  look like scary devils. He paid for the work

  anyway, but put it in a tiny church in a small

  town, where he did not have to look at it.

  7

  The Riches of Italy

  Some Renaissance painters lived and

  sets, table decorations, carriages, floats for

  worked in the courts of kings, queens,

  parades, and lavish displays of fireworks.

  dukes, and duchesses. It was the job of

  court artists to paint flattering portraits

  Po
et and Patron

  of the rulers, heroic battle scenes, ancient

  Lorenzo de’ Medici, a banker and ruler of

  myths, and religious works so that their

  Florence, Italy, was a well-known patron

  noble patrons looked beautiful, rich,

  of the arts. He was called “The Magnificent”

  sophisticated, powerful, and pious.

  and was well educated, wrote poetry, and

  surrounded himself with other artists. He

  How the Rich Lived

  established libraries in Florence and had

  Life in the court was very comfortable.

  famous painters Botticelli and Michelangelo

  Court artists were paid a salary, a specific

  in his court.

  amount of money given at

  regular time periods such as

  weekly or monthly, rather

  than a separate fee for each

  piece of work they did. They

  were often given splendid

  houses, wore expensive

  clothes, and feasted at

  banquets with musicians,

  writers, and other important

  members of the court. Court

  artists did not just paint.

  They also designed theater

  Portrait of Isabella d’Este,

  a great patron of the arts,

  by Italian painter Giovanni-

  Francesco Caroto. Since

  Isabella had little money

  of her own, she sold her

  jewelry to pay for art.

  8

  The Sculpture Garden

  Lorenzo de’ Medici kept a garden of ancient

  sculptures that Michelangelo, in his spare

  time, together with other young artists,

  would study and copy. One day, when

  Lorenzo was visiting the garden, he saw

  Michelangelo sculpting the head of a

  mythical creature out of marble. Lorenzo was

  so impressed that he invited the 15-year-old

  boy to move into the Medici family palace

  and be raised with his children. There,

  Michelangelo studied philosophy and

  literature. This education led him to become

  a great poet as well as a painter, sculptor,

  and architect. Lorenzo, however, was more

  successful as a patron than a ruler. After his

  Lorenzo de’ Medici was not officially the king

  death in 1492 his family fortunes quickly

  of Florence, which was a republic with elected

  declined and they lost control of Florence.

  officials, but he had as much power as any king

  and would even on special occasions dress up

  Noble Female Patrons

  as a king and ride a richly decorated horse

  Patrons were usually men, because men held