Masterpieces of Renaissance Art: A Detailed Analysis

Masterpiece

a. A 'masterpiece' is painted by a master who is capable of materializing his own vision as well as expanding the vision of those viewers

b. The artist through his piece can transform a personal experience into a universal one.

c. Stays with you for the rest of your life. Impactful.

d. Feelings should be evoked.

e. Style, Technique, Balance and harmony. Motive.

f. Window to the past.

g. Examples

• The Pieta
  1. Michelangelo’s sculpture of Virgin Mary holding her dying son.
  2. Masterpiece that is simply perfect
  3. Nothing can be done to improve the piece
  4. The figure of Jesus is out of proportion compared to Mary
  5. The statue flows, and the clothes/tunics flow in an extremely realistic manner.
  6. Great attention to detail.
  7. Renaissance ideals of classical beauty with naturalism.
• Las Meninas
  1. Velazquez’s most famous work. Best sums up the characteristics of his art.
  2. Numerous figures. Even Velazquez, dwarfs and a mirror in which the king & queen are reflected.
  3. Depth that seems to open up and widen the picture.
  4. His treatment of light, and the sources of it produces a genuine sensation of space and air.
  5. Linear and Aerial perspective
  6. The centrality of the infant Margarita and the reflection of the king and queen in the mirror appear to point to a political and dynastic significance.
  7. Many nuances and complexities

Renaissance Painting

1. dominant style of painting during the 15th and 16th centuries

2. began in Italy at the end of the 14th century.be

3. Though Renaissance Painting, painters seek to stress individuality and naturalism. That is why painters begin to observe and love the real world.

4. Perspectives start to appear in the paintings; Linear perspective was composed of real, diagonal or suggested lines converging on a vanishing point or points on the horizon determining proportion in depth.

5. Also, Leonardo Da Vinci invented the atmospheric perspective or aerial perspective with the intention of representing distance and recession in painting based on the way the atmosphere affects the human eye. This takes the painting to have less precise outlines, loss of details and colors become paler as the distance is longer and longer.

6. Inside the Renaissance painting, beauty and harmony are studied as the new research seeking to reveal the nature’s secrets. Paintings aim to look beautiful and intellectual through proportion, symmetry, balance, equilibrium, moderation, serenity and closed compositions. Painters look to achieve a greater command of anatomy and perfect volume in their paintings by portraying human figures and chiaroscuros.

7. Idealism is present in their paintings as the “ideal” aims to be more perfect than anything which can actually be observed, but necessarily proceeds from the artist’s own idea of perfection.

8. Renaissance painters also look back into classicism based on Greek and Roman arts. They copied many ancient sculptures, because they believed they embodied the perfection of art and wished to equalize or surpass the artists of Antiquity. Nevertheless, the main subject Renaissance painters use in their paintings are religious in order to try and conciliate Ancient paganism with Christian faith.

9. They also introduced mythological themes and classical legends as well as portraits and historical subjects.

10. The technique used by Renaissance painters was drawing in order to achieve perfection in their paintings. Development of Geometry and Arithmetic’s, Proportion and Perspective, Linear Perspective: diagonal lines converging on a vanishing point or points on the horizon, Atmospheric Perspective: Means of representing distance on the effect on the human eye.

11. Also, the use of bright colors and light characterize Renaissance paintings as they looked to achieve beauty and elegance in their paintings. EX GIOVANNA TORNABUONI

Greco:

a. Started as a painter in Rome. Yet, he was successful in Spain. He was originally from Crete

b. His paintings were mostly religious. Financed by patrons. Hispanic values.

c. Painter of the counter-reformation.

• Dramatic and expressionistic style. Work was opposed to Baroque painting; popular around his time.
• Adopted Mannerism and Venetian Renaissance
• Elongated bodies.
• White pigmentation – like ghosts
• Very acidic and impactful colours
• Highly expressive and visionary works
• Importance of imagination and intuition subjective characterization
• Tendency to dramatize rather tan describe. Bold choices of colour, juxtapositions of tones of colour.
• Paintings:
  1. El Caballero con la mano en el pecho
  2. The Miracle of Christ healing the Blind

Las Meninas

1. Velazquez’s most famous work. Best sums up the characteristics of his art.

2. Numerous figures. Even Velazquez, dwarfs and a mirror in which the king & queen are reflected.

3. Figures are arranged in a balanced composition which gives the painting a depth that seems to open up and widen the picture.

5. His treatment of light, and the sources of it produces a genuine sensation of space and air.

6. Linear and Aerial perspective

7. The centrality of the infant Margarita and the reflection of the king and queen in the mirror appear to point to a political and dynastic significance.

8. Velazquez portraits himself at the painting to give himself a status of nobility.

9. Many nuances and complexities

10. This painting has a perfect composition and it is considered as an exploration of naturalism

11. Characteristics

• Voted as the best painting in the history of art in 1985, Velázquez's Las Meninas is almost impossible to define.
• At the same time, it is also a painting about art, illusion, reality, and the creative act itself, as well as a claim for the nobility of artists and the fine arts in general.
• Las Meninas is set in the Grand Room (the Pieza Principal) of the late crown prince Baltasar Carlos's living in quarters. King Philip IV gave the room to Velázquez in the 1650s to use as his personal studio, a very high honor indeed.
• The participants in this piece include: In the center: the Infanta Margarita (1), flanked to the right by lady in waiting Dona Isabel de Velasco (2), and on the left María Agustina Sarmiento de Sotomayor (3). To the right of the picture plane are the two dwarves: the German woman Maribarbola (4), and the Italian man Nicolas Pertusato (5), who is caught in the act of kicking the poor, aggravated royal hound. Behind this group are the royal chaperone, dona Marcela de Olloa (6), and an anonymous bodyguard (7). In the deepest level of the painting, framed in the brightly lit doorway is the Queen's Chamberlain and head of the royal tapestry works, Don José Nieto Velázquez (8), a possible relative of the artist. Finally, the King and Queen (9, 10) are present in their reflection in the mirror on the rear wall of the room. Velázquez (11) himself appears to the far left of the composition, painting an enormous canvas with its back turned towards the viewer.
• Las Meninas was yet another commission from the King. By the time Velázquez set to work on this, the peak of his work, he had been the official court painter for thirty-three years.

The Composition:

If Las Meninas was voted as the greatest painting of all time, it is largely due to the extraordinary and innovative complexity of the composition. Velázquez's painting may appear relatively simple and straightforward at first glance, but a closer inspection reveals that Las Meninas is a composition of striking intricacy

• Layers of depth:

the picture plan of Las Meninas is divided into a grid system, of quarters horizontally, and sevenths vertically. Furthermore, the canvas is divided into seven layers of depth, as well. Las Meninas has the deepest, most carefully defined space of any Velázquez painting, and is the only painting where the ceiling of the room is visible.

• Patterns and connections:

For such a large, multi-figure composition, excellent organization is of the essence. Velázquez managed to instill order in Las Meninas by utilizing a system of curved and diagonal lines. He ordered the figures in the foreground along an X shape with the infant Margarita in the center, thus emphasizing her importance and making the five-year-old child the focal point of the composition.

Velázquez masterfully uses light and dark to further order the composition. With light and shadow, he creates a system of double arcs that further centralizes the Infanta, one above that starts with Velázquez, descends to the Infanta, and rises to Nieto in the background, and one below, created by the arc of light in the foreground.

• Frames:

Velázquez's Las Meninas is a picture about frames and framing. All the figures are framed by the very room in which they are situated, while literal frames exist in the form of the canvas on the left, the frames of the paintings on the rear wall, the doorway that frames Nieto, and finally the mirror that frames the royal couple.

Style:

Stylistically, Las Meninas is like the sum of the best parts of all of Velázquez's earlier paintings. Just like his early bodegones, the paintings is marked for its intense, Caravaggesque chiaroscuro, a limited and somber palette, a photo-like realism, and remarkably loose, free, unrestrained brushstrokes.