F.Lippe Madonna
At the beginning of the 15th century, there were huge changes in life and culture in Italy. Since the 12th century, the townspeople, merchants and artisans of Italy have waged a heroic struggle against feudal dependence. Developing trade and production, the townspeople gradually got richer, threw off the power of the feudal lords and organized free city-states. These free Italian cities became very powerful. Their citizens were proud of their conquests. The enormous wealth of the independent Italian cities caused them to flourish. The Italian bourgeoisie looked at the world with different eyes, they firmly believed in themselves, in their own strength. They were alien to the desire for suffering, humility, the rejection of all earthly joys that have been preached to them so far. The respect for the earthly person who enjoys the joys of life grew. People began to take an active attitude to life, eagerly explore the world, admire its beauty. During this period, various sciences are born, art develops.
In Italy, many monuments of art have been preserved ancient rome, therefore, the ancient era was again revered as a model, ancient art became an object of admiration. The imitation of antiquity gave reason to call this period in art - the Renaissance, which in French means "Renaissance". Of course, this was not a blind, exact repetition of ancient art, it was already new art, but based on ancient models. The Italian Renaissance is divided into 3 stages: VIII - XIV centuries - Pre-Renaissance (Proto-Renaissance or Trecento - with it.); XV century - early Renaissance (Quattrocento); late XV - early XVI century - High Renaissance.
Archaeological excavations were carried out throughout Italy, looking for ancient monuments. The newly discovered statues, coins, utensils, weapons were carefully preserved and collected in museums specially created for this purpose. Artists studied on these samples of antiquity, drew them from life.
Flight into Egypt (Giotto)
Trecento (Pre-Renaissance)
The true beginning of the Renaissance is associated with the name Giotto di Bondone(1266? - 1337). He is considered the founder of Renaissance painting. The Florentine Giotto has made great contributions to the history of art. He was a renewer, the ancestor of all European painting after the Middle Ages. Giotto breathed life into the gospel scenes, created images of real people, spiritualized, but earthly.
Return of Joachim to the Shepherds (Giotto)
Giotto for the first time creates volumes with the help of chiaroscuro. He likes clean, light colors in cold shades: pinks, pearl grays, pale purples and light lilacs. The people in the frescoes of Giotto are stocky, with a heavy tread. They have large facial features, wide cheekbones, narrow eyes. His man is kind, considerate, serious.
Fresco by Giotto in the temple of Padua
Of the works of Giotto, the frescoes in the temples of Padua are best preserved. He presented the gospel stories here as existing, earthly, real. In these works, he tells about the problems that concern people at all times: about kindness and mutual understanding, deceit and betrayal, about depth, sorrow, meekness, humility and eternal all-consuming maternal love.
Fresco by Giotto
Instead of disparate individual figures, as in medieval painting, Giotto managed to create a coherent story, a whole narrative about the complex inner life of the characters. Instead of a conventional golden background Byzantine mosaics, Giotto introduces a landscape background. And if in Byzantine painting the figures, as it were, hovered, hung in space, then the heroes of Giotto's frescoes found solid ground under their feet. Giotto's search for the transfer of space, the plasticity of figures, the expressiveness of movement made his art a whole stage in the Renaissance.
Fresco by S.Martini
One of the famous masters of the Pre-Renaissance is Simone Martini (1284 - 1344).
In his painting, the features of northern Gothic were preserved: Martini's figures are elongated, and, as a rule, on a golden background. But Martini creates images with the help of chiaroscuro, gives them a natural movement, tries to convey a certain psychological state.
Fresco fragment. Domenico Ghirlandaio (1449 - 1494)
Quattrocento (early Renaissance)
Antiquity played a huge role in the formation of the secular culture of the early Renaissance. The Platonic Academy opens in Florence, the Laurentian library contains the richest collection of ancient manuscripts. The first art museums filled with statues, fragments of ancient architecture, marbles, coins, ceramics.
In the Renaissance, the main centers of the artistic life of Italy stood out - Florence, Rome, Venice. One of the largest centers, the birthplace of a new, realistic art was Florence. In the 15th century, many famous masters of the Renaissance lived, studied and worked there.
Cathedral of Santa Maria del Fiore (Florence Cathedral)
Early Renaissance architecture
The inhabitants of Florence had a high artistic culture, they actively participated in the creation of city monuments, and discussed options for the construction of beautiful buildings. Architects abandoned everything that resembled Gothic. Under the influence of antiquity, buildings crowned with a dome began to be considered the most perfect. The model here was the Roman Pantheon.
Florence is one of the most beautiful cities in the world, a city-museum. It has preserved its architecture from antiquity almost intact, its most beautiful buildings were mostly built during the Renaissance. Above the red brick roofs of the ancient buildings of Florence rises the huge building of the city's Cathedral of Santa Maria del Fiore, which is often called simply the Cathedral of Florence. Its height reaches 107 meters. A magnificent dome, the harmony of which is emphasized by white stone ribs, crowns the cathedral. The dome is striking in size (its diameter is 43 m), it crowns the entire panorama of the city. The cathedral is visible from almost every street in Florence, clearly looming against the sky. This magnificent structure was built by the architect Filippo Brunelleschi (1377 - 1446).
St. Peter's Cathedral (arch. Brunelleschi and Bramante)
The most magnificent and famous domed building of the Renaissance was St. Peter's Basilica in Rome. It was built over 100 years. The creators of the original project were architects Bramante and Michelangelo.
Renaissance buildings are decorated with columns, pilasters, lion heads and "putti" (naked babies), plaster wreaths of flowers and fruits, leaves and many details, samples of which were found in the ruins of ancient Roman buildings. The semicircular arch came into fashion again. Wealthy people began to build more beautiful and more comfortable houses. Instead of houses closely pressed to each other, luxurious palaces appeared - palazzos.
David (sc.Donatello)
Sculpture of the early Renaissance
In the 15th century in Florence they created two famous sculptors - Donatello and Verrocchio. Donatello (1386? - 1466)- one of the first sculptors in Italy, who used the experience of ancient art. He created one of the finest works of the early Renaissance - the statue of David.
According to the biblical legend, a simple shepherd, the young man David defeated the giant Goliath, and thereby saved the inhabitants of Judea from enslavement and later became king. David was one of the favorite images of the Renaissance. He is depicted by the sculptor not as a humble saint from the Bible, but as a young hero, winner, defender of his native city. In his sculpture, Donatello sings of man as the ideal of a beautiful heroic personality that arose in the Renaissance. David is crowned with the laurel wreath of the winner. Donatello was not afraid to introduce such a detail as a shepherd's hat - a sign of his simple origin. In the Middle Ages, the church forbade depicting a naked body, considering it a vessel of evil. Donatello was the first master who bravely violated this prohibition. He asserts by this that the human body is beautiful. The statue of David is the first round sculpture in that era.
Statue of the commander Gattamelata (sc. Donatello)
Another beautiful sculpture by Donatello is also known - a statue of a warrior, commander Gattamelata. It was the first equestrian monument of the Renaissance. Created 500 years ago, this monument still stands on a high pedestal, decorating the square in the city of Padua. For the first time, not a god, not a saint, not a noble and rich man was immortalized in sculpture, but a noble, brave and formidable warrior with a great soul, who deserved fame for great deeds. Dressed in antique armor, Gattemelata (this is his nickname, meaning "spotted cat") sits on a mighty horse in a calm, majestic pose. The features of the warrior's face emphasize a decisive, firm character.
Equestrian monument to the condottiere Colleoni (Verocchio)
Andrea Verrocchio (1436 -1488)
The most famous student of Donatello, who created the famous equestrian monument to the condottiere Colleoni, which was placed in Venice on the square near the church of San Giovanni. The main thing that strikes in the monument is the joint energetic movement of the horse and rider. The horse, as it were, rushes beyond the marble pedestal on which the monument is erected.
Colleoni, standing up in the stirrups, stretched out, raising his head high, peers into the distance. A grimace of anger and tension froze on his face. In his posture, one feels a huge will, his face resembles a bird of prey. The image is filled with indestructible strength, energy, harsh authority.
Fresco by Masaccio
Early Renaissance painting
The Renaissance also updated the art of painting. Painters have learned to correctly convey space, light and shadow, natural poses, various human feelings. It was the early Renaissance that was the time of accumulation of this knowledge and skills. The paintings of that time are imbued with light and high spirits. The background is often painted in light colors, while buildings and natural motifs are outlined with sharp lines, pure colors predominate. With naive diligence, all the details of the event are depicted, the characters are most often lined up and separated from the background by clear contours.
The painting of the early Renaissance only strived for perfection, however, thanks to its sincerity, it touches the soul of the viewer.
Tommaso di Giovanni di Simone Cassai Guidi, Known as Masaccio (1401 - 1428)
He is considered a follower of Giotto and the first master of painting of the early Renaissance. Masaccio lived only 28 years, but in such a short life he left a mark in art that is difficult to overestimate. He managed to complete the revolutionary transformations in painting begun by Giotto. His painting is distinguished by a dark and deep color. The people in the frescoes of Masaccio are much denser and more powerful than in the paintings of the Gothic era.
Fresco by Masaccio
Masaccio was the first to correctly arrange objects in space, taking into account perspective; he began to depict people according to the laws of anatomy.
He knew how to link figures and landscape into a single action, to convey the life of nature and people in a dramatic and at the same time quite natural way - and this is the great merit of the painter.
Adoration of the Magi (Masaccio)
Madonna and Child with Four Angels (Masaccio)
This is one of the few easel easel works commissioned by Masaccio in 1426 for the chapel in the church of Santa Maria del Carmine in Pisa.
The Madonna sits on a throne built strictly according to the laws of Giotto's perspective. Her figure is written with confident and clear strokes, which creates the impression of a sculptural volume. Her face is calm and sad, her detached gaze is directed nowhere. Wrapped in a dark blue cloak, the Virgin Mary holds the Infant in her arms, whose golden figure stands out sharply against a dark background. The deep folds of the cloak allow the artist to play with chiaroscuro, which also creates a special visual effect. The baby eats black grapes - a symbol of communion. Impeccably drawn angels (the artist knew the human anatomy perfectly) surrounding the Madonna give the picture an additional emotional sound.
Masaccio. Fresco from the library of the Cathedral in Siena, dedicated to the biography of the humanist and poet Enea Silvio Piccolomini (1405-1464)
Here is presented the solemn departure of Cardinal Kapranik to the Basel Cathedral, which lasted almost 18 years, from 1431 to 1449, first in Basel, and then in Lausanne. The young Piccolomini was also in the retinue of the cardinal.
In an elegant frame of a semicircular arch, a group of horsemen is presented, accompanied by pages and servants. The event is not so real and reliable, but chivalrously refined, almost fantastic.
In the foreground, a beautiful rider on a white horse, in a luxurious dress and hat, turning his head, looks at the viewer - this is Aeneas Silvio. With pleasure the artist writes rich clothes, beautiful horses in velvet blankets. The elongated proportions of the figures, slightly mannered movements, slight tilts of the head are close to the court ideal.
The life of Pope Pius II was full of bright events, and Pinturicchio spoke about the meetings of the Pope with the King of Scotland, with Emperor Frederick III.
Saints Jerome and John the Baptist (Masaccio)
The only sash painted by Masaccio for a double-sided triptych. After the early death of the painter, the rest of the work, commissioned by Pope Martin V for the church of Santa Maria in Rome, was completed by the artist Masolino.
It depicts two strict, monumentally executed figures of saints dressed in all red. Jerome holds an open book and a model of the basilica, a lion lies at his feet. John the Baptist is depicted in his usual form: he is barefoot and holds a cross in his hand. Both figures impress with anatomical precision and an almost sculptural sense of volume.
Portrait of a Boy (1480) (Pinturicchio)
Interest in man, admiration for his beauty were so great in the Renaissance that this led to the emergence a new genre in painting - the portrait genre.
Pinturicchio (variant of Pinturicchio) (1454 - 1513) (Bernardino di Betto di Biagio)
A native of Perugia in Italy. For some time he painted miniatures, helped Pietro Perugino decorate the Sistine Chapel in Rome with frescoes. Gained experience in the most complex form of decorative and monumental wall painting. A few years later, Pinturicchio became an independent muralist. He worked on frescoes in the Borgia apartments in the Vatican. He made wall paintings in the library of the cathedral in Siena.
The artist not only conveys a portrait resemblance, but seeks to reveal the inner state of a person. Before us is a teenage boy, dressed in a strict pink town dress, with a small blue cap on his head. Brown hair falls to the shoulders, framing a delicate face, the attentive look of brown eyes is thoughtful, a little anxious.
Behind the boy is an Umbrian landscape with thin trees, a silvery river, a sky turning pink on the horizon. The spring tenderness of nature, as an echo of the character of the hero, is in harmony with the poetry and charm of the hero.
The image of the boy is given in the foreground, large and occupies almost the entire plane of the picture, and the landscape is painted in the background and very small.
This creates the impression of the significance of a person, his dominance over surrounding nature, claims that man is the most beautiful creation on earth.
Madonna and Child with Two Angels (F. Lippi)
Filippo Lippi (1406 - 1469)
There were legends about Lippi's life. He himself was a monk, but he left the monastery, became a wandering artist, kidnapped a nun from the monastery and died poisoned by the relatives of a young woman with whom he fell in love at an advanced age. He painted images of the Madonna and Child, filled with living human feelings and experiences. In his paintings, he depicted many details: household items, the environment, so his religious subjects were similar to secular paintings.
Annunciation (1443) (F. Lippi)
Coronation of Mary (1441-1447) (F. Lippi)
Portrait of Giovanna Tornabuoni (1488) (Ghirlandaio)
He painted not only religious subjects, but also scenes from the life of the Florentine nobility, their wealth and luxury, portraits of noble people.
Before us is the wife of a wealthy Florentine, a friend of the artist. In this not very beautiful, luxuriously dressed young woman, the artist expressed calmness, a moment of stillness and silence. The expression on the woman's face is cold, indifferent to everything, it seems that she foresees her imminent death: soon after painting the portrait, she will die. The woman is depicted in profile, which is typical for many portraits of that time.
Baptism (1458-1460) (P. della Francesca)
Piero della Francesca (1415/1416 - 1492)
One of the most important names in Italian painting 15th century. He completed numerous transformations in the methods of constructing the perspective of a picturesque space.
The picture was painted on a poplar board with egg tempera - obviously, by this time the artist had not yet mastered the secrets of oil painting, in the technique of which his later works would be written.
The artist captured the manifestation of the mystery of the Holy Trinity at the time of the Baptism of Christ. The white dove, spreading its wings over the head of Christ, symbolizes the descent of the Holy Spirit on the Savior. The figures of Christ, John the Baptist and the angels standing next to them are painted in restrained colors.
Fresco by della Francesca
His frescoes are solemn, sublime and majestic. Francesca believed in the high destiny of man and in his works people always do wonderful things. He used subtle, gentle transitions of colors. Francesca was the first to paint en plein air (in the air).
Dead Christ (Mantegna)
Andrea Mantegna (1431 - 1506)
Major artist from Padua. He admired the harsh grandeur of the works of ancient artists. His images are reminiscent of Greek sculptures - strict and beautiful. In his frescoes, Mantegna sang the heroic personality. Nature in his paintings is deserted and inhospitable.
Mantegna. Madonna and Child with John the Baptist and Mary Magdalene (1500)
The Madonna sits on a scarlet chair under a canopy and holds the naked Christ Child in her arms. There is nothing regal in the guise of the Virgin Mary, rather, this is the image of a young peasant woman. The naked body of the Infant seems surprisingly alive. On the sides of the Madonna are John the Baptist and Mary Magdalene. In the hands of the Magdalene is a vessel with incense for anointing, the cross in the hands of John is wrapped around a ribbon with a text about the lamb, atoning for the sins of the world. The figures are drawn in the usual manner for an artist and seem to be carved from stone, every fold is sharply defined in their clothes. The background is an image of a garden with dark foliage. In its tone, this greenery contrasts with the pale green, light sky. The work evokes a feeling of deep sadness and a certain doom.
Parnassus (Mantegna)
Prayer for the Cup (Mantegna)
This small picture depicts the moment when, after the Last Supper, Jesus retires with St. Peter and the two sons of Zebedee to the Garden of Gethsemane, where, leaving the apostles accompanying him, he leaves to pray, turning to God the Father: "My Father! If possible, let the cup pass from me this."
The kneeling figure of Christ in a prayerful pose is the compositional center of the picture. His eyes are turned to the sky, where a group of angels is visible on a cloud. At the foot of the mountain, the apostles accompanying Christ sleep.
On the road leading to the garden, accurately illustrating the words of the Gospel: "Behold, the betrayer of Me has come near," a group of guards, led by Judas, is visible.
There is a lot of symbolism in the picture: a dry tree with a vulture portends death, and a branch with a green shoot indicates an imminent resurrection; humble rabbits sitting on the road along which a detachment of Roman soldiers will pass to take Christ into custody speak of the meekness of a person in the face of imminent death. Three stumps left from freshly cut down trees remind of the impending crucifixion.
Sacred Conversation (Bellini)
Giovanni Bellini (1427/1430 - 1516)
The Bellini brothers brightly showed themselves in the early Renaissance. Especially famous is Giovanni Bellini, who was often called Gianbellino. He grew up in the family of a major Venetian painter. Together with his brother from his youth, he helped his father to carry out artistic orders. He worked on decorating the Doge's Palace in Venice.
His painting is distinguished by soft picturesqueness, rich golden color. The Madonnas of Gianbellino seem to dissolve in the landscape, always organic with it.
Madonna in the meadow (1500-1505) Bellini.
In the center of the picture is the image of a young Mary sitting in a meadow, on whose knees a sleeping naked baby. Her thoughtful face is charming, her hands folded in a prayerful gesture are beautiful. The figurine of the divine baby seems to be a sculpture, this indicates a close acquaintance with the work of Mantegna. However, the softness of the chiaroscuro and the overall saturation of the colors suggest that Bellini found his way into painting.
In the background is a beautiful landscape. The picture was painted in mixed media, which allowed the artist to make the contours softer and the colors more saturated.
Portrait of Doge Leonardo Loredan. Bellini
This portrait was commissioned by Bellini as an artist of the Republic of Venice. The doge is depicted here almost frontally - contrary to the then existing tradition of depicting faces in profile, including on medals and coins.
Clear chiaroscuro perfectly draw high cheekbones, nose and stubborn chin of an intelligent and strong-willed face of an elderly person. On a bright blue-green background, a white with gold and silver brocade mantle stands out in contrast. The doge wore it on the feast of the Candlemas - the day when he became engaged to the sea, taking power over Venice for a year. Oil work helped the artist fill the space of the picture with air and thereby make the image of the Doge surprisingly alive.
Introduction
The Renaissance is a revolution, first of all, in the system of values, in the assessment of everything that exists and in relation to it. There is a conviction that a person is the highest value. Such a view of a person determined the most important feature of the culture of the Renaissance - the development of individualism in the sphere of worldview, a comprehensive manifestation of individuality in public life. The ancient cultural heritage played a huge role in the formation of Renaissance thinking. The result of the increased interest in classical culture was the study of ancient texts and the use of pagan prototypes to embody Christian images. The revival of antiquity, in fact, gave the name to the whole era (after all, the Renaissance is translated as rebirth).
During the Renaissance in European states, during the formation of bourgeois nations, national languages and cultures, there are noticeable changes in the activities of libraries. New university and public libraries. Many monastic libraries are transferred to the ownership of cities. Library collections are dominated by books in national languages, new rules for compiling catalogs, arranging funds, and serving readers are being formed.
Cities, creating libraries, open them not only for bishops, monks, scientists, students, but also for lawyers, merchants, sailors, craftsmen. During this period, the activities of many talented scientists were associated with library practice.
The works of B.F. Volodina, L.I. Vladimirov, O.I. Talalakina. Their monographs tell about the libraries of the Renaissance, their formation, as well as the construction and description of the interior. The works of E. Gombrich and E. Chamberlain describe the Renaissance itself, the culture of Italy. I would also like to note the works of N.V. Revunenkova, V.G. Kuznetsova and N.V. Revyakina, which tells about the emergence of humanism and its role in the formation and development of the Renaissance.
The purpose of this work is to review and study the Italian libraries of the Renaissance.
In the course of the study, the following tasks are solved: identifying the main features of the culture of Italy in the Renaissance, the development of literature, the emergence of humanistic thought, the study of private and public libraries, as well as their construction and description of the interior.
The work consists of an introduction; two chapters: Renaissance as a cultural flowering of Italy in the XIV-XVI centuries, types and purpose of Italian libraries; conclusion and list of references used in this course.
Renaissance as a cultural flourishing of Italy in the 14th-16th centuries.
Italian culture during the Renaissance
The era of the Renaissance or the European Renaissance is a process of parting with the feudal past and a time of active dialogue with ancient predecessors. The birthplace of the Renaissance is Italy, where humanistic tendencies in urban life began to manifest themselves clearly in the second half of the 13th century.
The culture of the Renaissance is usually divided into two periods:
The period of the so-called "Early Renaissance" in Italy covers the time from 1420 to 1500. During these eighty years, art has not yet completely renounced the traditions of the recent past, but is trying to mix into them elements borrowed from classical antiquity. Only later, and only little by little, under the influence of more and more changing conditions of life and culture, do artists completely abandon medieval foundations and boldly use examples of ancient art, both in the general concept of their works and in their details.
The second period of the Renaissance - the time of the most magnificent development of his style - is usually called the "High Renaissance". It extends in Italy from approximately 1500 to 1580. At this time, the center of gravity of Italian art moved from Florence to Rome, thanks to the accession to the papal throne of Julius II. Under him, Rome becomes, as it were, the new Athens of the time of Pericles: many monumental buildings are created in it, magnificent sculptural works are performed, frescoes and paintings are painted, which are still considered the pearls of painting.
The main thing that characterizes this era is the return in architecture to the principles and forms of ancient, mainly Roman art. Of particular importance in this direction is given to symmetry, proportion, geometry and the order of the components, as evidenced by the surviving examples of Roman architecture. The complex proportion of medieval buildings is replaced by an orderly arrangement of columns, pilasters and lintels, asymmetrical outlines are replaced by a semicircle of an arch, a hemisphere of a dome, niches, and aedicules.
Renaissance architecture experienced its greatest flourishing in Italy, leaving behind two monument cities: Florence and Venice. Great architects worked on the creation of buildings there - Filippo Brunelleschi, Leon Battista Alberti, Donato Bramante, Giorgio Vasari and many others.
Renaissance artists, painting pictures of traditional religious themes, began to use new artistic techniques: building a three-dimensional composition, using a landscape in the background. This allowed them to make the images more realistic, lively, which showed a sharp difference between their work and the previous iconographic tradition, replete with conventions in the image.
In the Renaissance, professional music loses the character of a purely church art and is influenced by folk music, imbued with a new humanistic worldview. The art of vocal and vocal-instrumental polyphony reaches a high level in the work of representatives of the "New Art" in Italy.
Various genres of secular musical art appear. New genres of instrumental music are taking shape, and national schools of performance on the lute, organ, and virginal are emerging. In Italy, the art of making bowed instruments with rich expressive possibilities is flourishing. The Renaissance ends with the emergence of new musical genres - solo song, cantata, oratorio and opera, which contributed to the gradual establishment of the homophonic style.
The development of knowledge in the XIV-XVI centuries. significantly influenced people's ideas about the world and man's place in it. The great geographical discoveries, the heliocentric system of the world of Nicolaus Copernicus changed ideas about the size of the Earth and its place in the Universe, and the works of Paracelsus and Vesalius, in which for the first time after antiquity attempts were made to study the structure of man and the processes occurring in him, laid the foundation for scientific medicine and anatomy .
Major changes have also taken place in the social sciences. In the works of Jean Bodin and Niccolo Machiavelli, historical and political processes were first considered as the result of the interaction of various groups of people and their interests. At the same time, attempts were made to develop an "ideal" social structure: "Utopia" by Thomas More, "City of the Sun" by Tommaso Campanella. Thanks to the interest in antiquity, many ancient texts were restored, many humanists studied classical Latin and ancient Greek.
The connection between art and science is one of the characteristic features of the culture of the Renaissance. The true image of the world and man had to be based on their knowledge, therefore, the cognitive principle played a particularly important role in the art of this time. Naturally, artists sought support in the sciences, often stimulating their development.
What is Revival. We associate the revival with achievements in the field of culture, primarily in the field of fine arts. Before the mind's eye of anyone who is at least a little familiar with the history of art, there are harmoniously beautiful and majestic images created by artists: gentle Madonnas and wise saints, brave warriors and citizens full of importance. Their figures rise solemnly against the backdrop of marble arches and columns, behind which transparent light landscapes spread.
Art always tells about its time, about the people who lived then. What kind of people created these images, full of dignity, inner peace, confidence in their own significance?
The term "Renaissance" was first used by Giorgio Vasari in the middle of the 16th century. in his book about the famous Italian painters, sculptors and architects of the XIII-XVI centuries. The name appeared at the moment when the era itself was ending. Vasari invested in this concept a very definite meaning: the heyday, rise, revival of the arts. Later, the desire for the revival of ancient traditions in culture, inherent in this period, began to be considered no less important.
The Renaissance phenomenon was generated by the conditions and needs of society on the eve of the New Age (i.e., the time on the outskirts of the formation of an industrial society), and the appeal to antiquity made it possible to find suitable forms for expressing new ideas and moods. The historical significance of this period lies in the formation of a new type of personality and in the creation of the foundations of a new culture.
New trends in the life of Italian society. In order to more easily understand the essence of the changes that have begun in the social and spiritual spheres, it is necessary to imagine how the relationship between the individual and society was built in the Middle Ages. Then the human personality was dissolved in that small collective (a peasant community, a knightly order, a monastic brotherhood, a craft workshop, a merchant guild), to which a person was attached by the circumstances of his origin and birth. He himself and all those around him perceived him primarily as, for example, a fra (brother) - a member of the monastic brotherhood, and not as a certain person with a specific name.
Relationships between people, norms of behavior and their perception have been elaborated and clearly defined. If we focus only on the theoretical side of the matter, then we can say this: the clergy were obliged to pray for all the laity, the nobility to protect everyone from a possible external threat, and the peasants to support and feed the first and second estates. In practice, all this was, of course, far from a theoretical idyll, but the distribution of role functions was just that. Social inequality was firmly entrenched in the public consciousness, each estate had its own strictly defined rights and obligations, played a social role that strictly corresponded to its social position. Birth secured the individual to a certain place in the structure of society, he could change his position almost exclusively within the framework of the step of the social ladder to which he belonged by origin.
Fixation to a certain social niche interfered with the free development of the human individual, but provided him with certain social guarantees. Thus, medieval society was focused on immutability, stability as an ideal state. It belonged to the type of traditional societies, the main condition for the existence of which is conservatism, obedience to traditions and customs.
The old worldview was focused on the fact that earthly life is only a short period of time when a person prepares himself for the main, eternal, other world life. Eternity subjugated the fleeting reality. Hopes for good changes were associated exclusively with this true life, with Eternity. The earthly world, this “vale of sorrow”, was of interest only insofar as it was a weak reflection of another, main world. The attitude towards man was ambivalent - he strictly shared his earthly, mortal and sinful beginning, which should have been despised and hated, and the sublime, spiritual, which was the only one worthy of existing. An ascetic monk who renounced the joys and anxieties of earthly life was considered an ideal.
A person was a part of a small social community, and therefore all his activities, including creative ones, were perceived as the result of collective efforts. In fact, creativity was anonymous, and our knowledge of the work of a particular sculptor or painter of the Middle Ages is random and fragmentary. The city, the community built the cathedral, and all its details were part of a single whole, designed for integral perception. Master architects, master masons, master carvers, master painters erected walls, created sculptures and stained glass windows, painted walls and icons, but almost none of them sought to perpetuate their name for posterity. Ideally, they should have repeated in the best possible way, reproduced what was consecrated by the authority of antiquity and was considered as an “original” that should be imitated.
The first step towards the emergence of new trends in the life of society was the growth and development of cities. The Apennine peninsula, wedged like an outstretched boot into the expanses of the Mediterranean Sea, occupied an extremely advantageous position in the medieval world. The benefits of this location became especially obvious when economic life began to revive in the West, and the need for trade contacts with the rich countries of the Middle East grew. From the 12th century Italian cities began to flourish. The crusades became the impetus for the rapid development of the urban economy: the knights who set off to conquer the Holy Sepulcher needed ships to cross the sea; weapons to fight; products and various household items. All this was offered by Italian artisans, merchants, sailors.
In Italy, there was no strong central government, so each city, together with the surrounding countryside, became city-state, whose prosperity depended on the skill of its artisans, the briskness of its merchants, i.e. from the enterprise and energy of all the inhabitants.
The basis of the economic life of the society that existed in Italy in the 14th-15th centuries was industry and trade, concentrated in cities. The guild system was preserved, and only members of the guilds had civil rights; not all residents of the city. Yes, and different workshops differed significantly in the degree of influence: for example, in Florence, out of 21 workshops, the “senior workshops”, which united people of the most prestigious professions, enjoyed the greatest influence. The members of the senior workshops, the “fat men,” were, in fact, entrepreneurs, and new features in economic life were manifested in the emergence of elements (so far, only elements!) of a new economic structure.
Renaissance City. The culture of the Renaissance is an urban culture, but the city that gave birth to it was noticeably different from the medieval city. Outwardly, this was not too striking: the same high walls, the same random layout, the same cathedral on the main square, the same narrow streets. “The city grew like a tree: keeping its shape, but increasing in size, and the city walls, like rings on a cut, marked the milestones of its growth.” So in Florence in the XIII century. it took twice a century to expand the ring of walls. By the middle of the XIV century. the space allocated for urban development was increased 8 times. The government took care of the construction and preservation of the walls.
The city gates served as a point of contact with outside world. The guards who stood at the gate collected a fee from merchants and peasants arriving in the city, they also protected the city from a possible enemy attack. Before the beginning of the era of artillery, walls with strong gates were quite reliable protection against external intrusions, only food and water would be enough. This limitation made it crowded, to increase the number of storeys of buildings. Italy is characterized by the erection of high towers by rival wealthy families, the verticals of which, together with the bell towers of churches, gave the city silhouette the appearance of a stone forest. The appearance of Siena, for example, is described in the lines of A. Blok as follows: “You stuck the points of churches and towers into the sky.”
The city is an artificially organized space. Streets and squares of Italian cities from the 13th century. paved with stones or pebbles. The daily life of people took place mostly on the street. Merchants, money changers, and artisans carried out money transactions on the street; artisans often worked on the street under a canopy; they met on the street or in the square to discuss various issues; births, bankruptcies, deaths, marriages, executions. The life of every city dweller proceeded in front of the neighbors.
The central square was decorated not only with a majestic cathedral, but with sculptures. An example of such decoration is in Florence the square in front of the Palazzo Vecchio (city hall). In the front part of the city, the neighborhood of old buildings of the Romanesque (to a lesser extent Gothic) style and new Renaissance buildings was especially noticeable. Residents of neighboring cities competed with each other in decorating squares, churches and public buildings.
In the XIV-XV centuries. in Italian cities there was rapid construction, old buildings were demolished and replaced with new ones. The dilapidation of buildings was far from always the reason for this - tastes changed, prosperity grew, and at the same time the desire to demonstrate new opportunities. An example of this kind is the one started in the XIV century. the construction of a new Florentine cathedral (Duomo, better known as Santa Maria del Fiori), the dome of which was the largest for its time in the West.
Sometimes wealthy families united several old dwellings behind the renovated facade. So, the architect L. B. Alberti, commissioned by the Ruchelai family, built a palazzo in a new style, hiding eight houses behind a rusticated facade. The lane between the houses was turned into a courtyard. Such a technique made it possible to include living quarters, warehouses and shops, loggias and a garden into a single complex. The main architectural form of a secular city building -palazzo - palaces wealthy citizens, which had a rectangular shape with a courtyard. The facades of the palazzo, facing the street, corresponded to the living conditions that were characteristic of the Italian city-republics. Emphasized rough processing of stone (rustovka), which was lined with the wall of the lower floor, thick walls, small windows - all this reminded that such a palace could serve as a reliable shelter during numerous intra-city political conflicts.
The interiors consisted of a suite of rooms decorated with wall paintings and covered with wooden, carved, and less often stucco ceilings. In solemn occasions, the walls were decorated with wall carpets (trellises), which also contributed to the preservation of heat in the premises. Spacious Yu
rooms (stanzas), marble staircases created the impression of solemn splendor. The windows were closed with wooden shutters, sometimes they were covered with oiled linen, later (but this was already almost a sinful luxury!) They were filled with small pieces of glass inserted into a lead cover. The main heating device remained the hearth in the kitchen, as well as fireplaces in the large front rooms, which rather decorated than heated. Therefore, they tried to provide beds with a canopy and fence off heavy curtains from the surrounding space. It was impossible to heat the whole room with a hot stone or a bottle of hot water. As a rule, only the head of the family had “his own” room, a study-studio, “a place of work on the correspondence of manuscripts, reflections, solitary knowledge of the world and oneself”, and the rest of the household lived together. The daily life of a wealthy family most often proceeded in the courtyard and the galleries surrounding it.
Relatively few, but massive and richly decorated with carvings and paintings, pieces of furniture testified to the desire for comfort. The most common examples of furniture were a wedding chest (cassone), a chest-bench with a back, massive wardrobes decorated with architectural details, tables, armchairs, and stools. The interior was decorated not only with wall paintings, but also bronze lamps, painted ceramics (majolica), mirrors in carved frames, silver and glassware, and lace tablecloths.
Many architects dreamed of changing the appearance of cities according to new tastes, but this was impossible: large-scale construction required huge funds and no less authority to implement the mass demolition of houses. After all, for this it was necessary to break so many houses, so many people to relocate, but there were no funds for this. Therefore, they had to be content with the construction of individual buildings, most often cathedrals or palazzos of wealthy families. Cities were rebuilt gradually, as needed and possible, without any plan, and their external appearance remained largely medieval.
The ideal Renaissance cities appeared almost exclusively in blueprints and as backgrounds for pictorial compositions. “The model of the Renaissance city is an open model. The core is... the free space of the square, which opens outward with observation openings of the streets, with views into the distance, beyond the city walls... this is how the artists depicted the city, this is how the authors of architectural treatises see it. The Renaissance city, ideally, does not protect itself from the open space of the non-city, on the contrary, controls it, subjugates it to itself ... The architectural thought of the Renaissance ... decisively opposes the city as an artificial and skillfully created work, to the natural environment. The city should not obey the locality, but subordinate it... The city of the Middle Ages was vertical. The city of the 15th century is ideally conceived as horizontal ... ”The architects who designed the new cities took into account the changing conditions and instead of the usual fortifications, they proposed to build defensive forts around the city.
The appearance of people. The appearance of people changed, the world of things with which they surrounded themselves changed. Of course, the dwellings of the poor (a small wooden building or a room behind a windowless shop) remained the same as hundreds of years ago. The changes affected the prosperous, wealthy part of the population.
Clothing changed according to the moods and tastes of the era. Tastes were now determined by the needs and capabilities of civilians, wealthy citizens, and not by the military class of knights. Outerwear was sewn from multicolored, often patterned fabrics such as brocade, velvet, cloth, and heavy silk. Linen began to be used exclusively as an underdress, which looked through the lacing and slits of the top dress. “The outer clothing of an elderly citizen, even if he did not hold any elective office, was necessarily long, wide and gave his appearance an imprint of gravity and importance.” The clothes of young people were short. It consisted of a shirt, a vest with a standing collar, and tight stockings tied to the vest, often of different colors. If in the fifteenth century preference was given to bright and contrasting colors, then from the beginning of the XYI century. monochrome clothes, decorated with fur and a chain of precious metal, become more fashionable.
Women's clothing in the 15th century It was distinguished by its softness of form and multi-colour. Over shirts and dresses with long narrow sleeves, a high waist and a large square neckline, they wore a cloak (sikora), which consisted of three panels. The back panel fell down the back in free folds, and two shelves were draped to the taste of the owner. The overall silhouette was reminiscent of antiquity. With the beginning of the XVI century. in women's outfits, horizontal division is emphasized. A large role in decorating the dress begins to play lace, framing the neckline and the edges of the sleeves. The waist falls to a natural place, the neckline is made larger, the sleeves are more voluminous, the skirt is more magnificent. Clothing was supposed to emphasize the beauty of a strong, healthy woman.
Discovery of the human "I". In the life of Italian Renaissance society, the old and the new coexist and intertwine. A typical family of that era is a large family, uniting several generations and several branches of relatives, subordinate to the head-patriarch, but next to this familiar hierarchy, another trend arises related to the awakening of personal self-consciousness.
After all, with the emergence in Italy of conditions for the emergence of a new economic structure and a new society, the requirements for people, their behavior, attitude to earthly affairs and concerns have also changed. The basis of the economic life of the new society was trade and handicraft production, concentrated in cities. But before most of the population concentrated in cities, before manufactories, factories, laboratories arose, there were people who could create them, people who were energetic, striving for constant change, fighting to assert their place in life. There was a liberation of human consciousness from the hypnosis of Eternity, after which the value of the moment, the significance of a fleeting life, the desire to more fully experience the fullness of being began to be felt more sharply.
A new type of personality arose, distinguished by courage, energy, a thirst for activity, free from obedience to traditions and rules, capable of acting in an unusual way. These people were interested in a variety of problems of life. So, in the account books of Florentine merchants, among the numbers and listings of various goods, one can find discussions about the fate of people, about God, about the most important events in political and artistic life. Behind all this, we feel an increased interest in Man, in himself.
A person began to consider his own individuality as something unique and valuable, all the more significant because it has the ability to constantly improve. The hypertrophied sense of one's own personality in all its originality absorbs the whole man of the Renaissance. He discovers his own individuality, plunges with delight into his own peace of mind, shocked by the novelty and complexity of this world.
Poets are especially sensitive to capture and convey the mood of the era. In the lyrical sonnets of Francesco Petrarch, dedicated to the beautiful Laura, it is obvious that their main character is the author himself, and not the object of his worship. The reader will learn almost nothing about Laura, in fact, except that she is perfection itself, possessing golden curls and a golden character. Their rapture, their experiences, their Suffering was described by Petrarch in sonnets. Upon learning of Laura's death, my orphanhood he mourned:
I sang about her golden curls,
I sang of her eyes and hands,
Honoring torment with heavenly bliss,
And now she is cold dust.
And I, without a lighthouse, in an orphan shell Through the storm, which is not new to me,
I float through life, ruling at random.
It should be borne in mind that the discovery of the personal "I" concerned only one half of the human race - men. Women were perceived in this world as beings with no value of their own. They had to take care of the household, give birth and raise small children, please men with their pleasant appearance and manners.
In the realization of the human "I" the presence of results was considered important, and not the field of activity where they were achieved - whether it be an established trading business, a magnificent sculpture, a battle won, or an admirable poem or painting. Know a lot, read a lot, study a lot foreign languages, to get acquainted with the works of ancient authors, to be interested in art, to understand a lot about painting and poetry - this was the ideal of a person in the Renaissance. The high standard of requirements for the individual is shown in Baldasar Castiglione's essay “On the Courtier” (1528): “I want our courtier to be more than mediocrely familiar with literature ... so that he knows not only Latin, but also Greek ... so that he knows poets well, as well as orators and historians, and ... knows how to write in verse and prose ... I will not be pleased with our courtier if he is not yet a musician ... There is one more thing that I attach great importance: it is precisely the ability to draw and the knowledge of painting.
It is enough to list a few names of famous people of that time to understand how diverse were the interests of those who were considered a typical representative of their era. Leon Batista Alberti - architect, sculptor, antiquity expert, engineer. Lorenzo Medici is a statesman, brilliant diplomat, poet, connoisseur and patron of the arts. Verrocchio is a sculptor, painter, jeweler, and mathematician. Michelangelo Buonarroti - sculptor, painter, architect, poet. Raphael Santi - painter, architect. All of them can be called heroic personalities, titans. At the same time, one should not forget that greatness characterizes the scale, but does not give an assessment of their activities. The titans of the Renaissance were not only creators, but also good geniuses of their country.
The usual notions of what is “permissible” and what is “illegal” lost their meaning. At the same time, the old rules of relationships between people lost their meaning, which, perhaps, did not give absolute creative freedom, but are so important for life in society. The desire to assert oneself took a variety of forms - such an attitude could and did give rise not only to brilliant artists, poets, thinkers, whose activities were aimed at creation, but also geniuses of destruction, geniuses of villainy. An example of this kind is a comparative description of two illustrious contemporaries, whose peak of activity occurred at the turn of the 15th-16th centuries.
Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519)) - a person about whom it is easier to say what he did not know than to list what he could do. The famous painter, sculptor, architect, engineer, poet, musician, naturalist, mathematician, chemist, philosopher - all this rightfully refers to Leonardo. He developed a project for an aircraft, a tank, the most complex irrigation facilities, and much more. He worked where it was more convenient to find patrons from among the ruling elite, easily changing them, and died in France, where it is written on his tombstone that he was "a great french artist". His personality became the personification of the creative spirit of the Renaissance.
A contemporary of Leonardo was the famous condottiere Cesare Borgia (1474-1507). Broad education was combined in him with natural talents and unbridled egoism. His ambition manifested itself in an attempt to create a strong state in the center of Italy. He dreamed of uniting the whole country in case of success, he was a skillful and successful commander and efficient ruler. To achieve his goal, this refined connoisseur and connoisseur of beauty resorted to bribery, deceit, and murder. Such methods seemed to him quite acceptable in order to achieve the great goal - the creation of a strong state in the center of Italy. Circumstances prevented C. Borgia from carrying out his plans.
Leonardo da Vinci and Cesare Borgia are contemporaries, equally typical of their critical era, when the old rules and norms of human life were losing their significance, and the new ones had not yet been accepted by society. The human personality strove for self-affirmation, using any means and opportunities. For her, the old ideas about “good” and “bad”, about “permissible” and “illegal” also lost their meaning. “People committed the wildest crimes and did not repent of them in any way, and they did so because the last criterion for human behavior was then considered to be the individual who felt himself isolated” . Often in one person selfless devotion to his art and unbridled cruelty were combined. Such was, for example, the sculptor and jeweler B. Cellini, about whom they said: "a bandit with fairy hands."
The desire of the individual to express himself by any means is called titanism. The titans of the Renaissance became the personification of the era that discovered the value of human "I", but stopped before the problem of establishing certain rules in relations between carriers of many different "I".
Attitude to the creative person and the position of the artist in society. There has been a turn towards the type of civilization that involves the active intervention of man in environment, - not only self-improvement, but also the transformation of the environment - nature, society - through the development of knowledge and their application in the practical sphere. Thus, the most important thing in a person was his ability for self-realization and creativity (in the broadest sense of the word). This, in turn, implied the rejection of comprehensive regulation in favor of the recognition of private initiative. The medieval ideal of a contemplative life was supplanted by a new ideal of an active, active life, which made it possible to leave visible evidence of a person's stay on Earth. Activity becomes the main purpose of existence: to build a beautiful building, to conquer a lot of lands, to carve a sculpture or paint a picture that will glorify its creator, to get rich and leave behind a prosperous trading company, to found a new state, to compose a poem or to leave numerous offspring - all this was in a certain meaning equivalent, allowed a person to leave his mark. Art made it possible for the creative principle to manifest itself in a person, while the results of creativity preserved the memory of him for a long time, brought him closer to immortality. The people of that era were convinced:
Creation can outlive the creator:
The Creator will leave, defeated by nature,
However, the image he captured
Will warm hearts for centuries.
These lines of Michelangelo Buonarroti can be attributed not only to artistic creativity. The desire for self-expression, the pathos of self-affirmation became the meaning of the spiritual life of Italian society during this period. The creative person was valued very highly and was associated, first of all, with the creative artist.
This is how the artists perceived themselves, and this did not contradict public opinion. The words that the Florentine jeweler and sculptor Benvenuto Cellini allegedly said to one courtier are known: “Perhaps there is only one like me in the whole world, but there are ten like you at every door.” The legend claims that the ruler, to whom the courtier complained about the audacity of the artist, supported Cellini, and not the courtier.
An artist could get rich like Perugino, get a title of nobility like Mantegna or Titian, join the inner circle of rulers like Leonardo or Raphael, but most of the artists had the status of artisans and considered themselves as such. Sculptors were in the same workshop with masons, painters with pharmacists. According to the ideas of their time, the artists belonged to the middle stratum of the townspeople, more precisely, to the bottom of this stratum. Most of them were considered middle-class people who had to constantly work, look for orders. D. Vasari, talking about his creative path, constantly notes that in order to fulfill one order he had to go to Naples, the other to Venice, the third to Rome. In between these trips, he returned to his native Arezzo, where he had a house, which he constantly equipped, decorated, expanded. Some artists had their own houses (in the 15th century in Florence a house cost 100-200 florins), others rented it. The painter spent about two years on painting a medium-sized fresco, receiving 15-30 florins for this, and this amount included the cost of the material used. The sculptor spent about a year making the sculpture and received about 120 florins for his work. In the latter case, more expensive consumables must be taken into account.
In addition to monetary payments, sometimes the masters were given the right to eat in the monastery. The omniscient Vasari described the case of the painter Paolo Uccello, whom the abbot fed cheese for a long time and diligently, until the master stopped coming to work. After the artist complained to the monks that he was tired of cheese, and they informed the abbot about this, the latter changed the menu.
It is interesting to compare information about the financial situation of two sculptors Donatello and Ghiberti equally (and highly) valued by their contemporaries. The first of them, by his nature and way of life, was a careless person in money matters. The legend testifies that he put all his (considerable) income in a purse hanging by the door, and all members of his workshop could take from this money. So, in 1427, the glorious master Donatello rented a house for 15 florins a year and had a net income (the difference between what he owed and what he was owed) - 7 florins. The economic Lorenzo Ghiberti in the same 1427 had a house, a plot of land, a bank account (714 florins) and a net income of -185 florins.
Masters willingly undertook to fulfill a variety of orders to decorate churches, rich palazzos, and decorate citywide holidays. “There was no current hierarchy of genres: art objects were necessarily functional in nature... Altar images, painted chests, portraits, and painted banners came out of one workshop... Such was the artistic self-consciousness, and one can only guess about the degree of magic the unity of the master with his work, for which he himself rubbed the paints, he himself glued the brush, he himself knocked together the frame - that's why he did not see the fundamental difference between the painting of the altar and the chest.
Competitions between artists for the right to receive a profitable government order were common practice. The most famous of these competitions is the competition for the right to make doors for the Florentine baptistery (baptistery), organized in the first years of the 15th century. San Giovanni was dear to all the inhabitants of the city, because they were baptized there, endowed with the name of each of them, from there everyone began their life journey. All famous masters participated in the competition, and it was won by Lorenzo Ghiberti, who later proudly wrote about it in his Notes.
Another famous competition took place a century later. It's about about the order for the decoration of the council chamber, granted by the Florentine Senoria to two of the most famous rivals, Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo Buonarroti. The exhibition of cardboards (life-size drawings) made by masters became an event in the public life of the republic.
Humanism. The thinkers of the Middle Ages glorified the sublime, spiritual principle in man and cursed the base, bodily. People of the new era sang in man both the soul and the body, considering them equally beautiful and equally significant. Hence the name of this ideology - humanism (homo- human).
The humanism of the Renaissance included two components: humanism, high spirituality of culture; and a complex of humanitarian disciplines aimed at studying the earthly life of a person, such as grammar, rhetoric, philology, history, ethics, and pedagogy. Humanists sought to turn the entire system of knowledge to solve the problems of human earthly life. The semantic core of humanism was the assertion of a new understanding of the individual, capable of free self-development. Thus, it manifested the main trend of the historical perspective of modernization development - change, renewal, improvement.
The humanists constituted not a numerous, but an influential social stratum of society, the forerunner of the future intelligentsia. The humanistic intelligentsia included representatives of the townspeople, the nobility, and the clergy. They used their knowledge and interests in a variety of activities. Among the humanists, one can name outstanding politicians, lawyers, employees of magistracy, artists.
The man in the representation of the people of that time was likened to a mortal god. The essence of the Renaissance lies in the fact that man was recognized as the “crown of creation”, and the visible earthly world acquired an independent value and significance. The entire worldview of the era was focused on the glorification of the merits and capabilities of man; it was not by chance that it was called humanism.
Medieval theocentrism was replaced by anthropocentrism. Man as the most perfect creation of God was in the center of attention of philosophers and artists. The anthropocentrism of the Renaissance manifested itself in different ways. Thus, the comparison of architectural structures with the human body, made in antiquity, was supplemented in the Christian spirit. “Leon Batista Alberti, who singled out biblical anthropomorphism from the pagan Vitruvius, comparing the proportions of the columns with the ratios of the height and thickness of a person ... he, following Augustine the Blessed, correlated human proportions with the parameters of Noah's ark and Solomon's temple. The maxim "man is the measure of all things" had an arithmetical meaning for the Renaissance.
The Italian humanist, who lived in the second half of the 15th century, was able to most convincingly express the essence of anthropocentrism. Giovanni Pico della Mirandola (1463-1494 ). He owns an essay called "Speech on the Dignity of Man." The name itself is eloquent, in which the evaluative moment is emphasized - “human dignity”. In this treatise, God, addressing a person, says: “I have placed you in the middle of the world, so that it would be easier for you to penetrate your surroundings with your eyes. I created you as a being not heavenly, but not only earthly, not mortal, but not immortal either, so that you, free from constraint, yourself become a creator and forge your own image completely.
Man turns out to be the most perfect creation, more perfect than even celestial beings, since they are endowed with their own virtues from the very beginning, and a man can develop them himself, and his valor, his nobility will depend solely on his personal qualities. (virtu). Here is what the architect and writer Leon Batista Alberti wrote about human capabilities: “So I realized that it is in our power to achieve all kinds of praise, in whatever valor, with the help of our own zeal and skill, and not only by the grace of nature and times. ..” Humanist scientists sought confirmation of their attitude to man from philosophers of other eras and found similar views among thinkers of antiquity.
Ancient heritage. The habit of relying on some kind of authority forced the humanists to look for confirmation of their views where they found ideas that were close in spirit - in the works of ancient authors. "Love for the ancients" has become a characteristic feature that distinguishes representatives of this ideological direction. Mastering the spiritual experience of antiquity was supposed to contribute to the formation of a morally perfect person, and hence the spiritual purification of society.
The Middle Ages never completely broke with the ancient past. Italian humanists viewed antiquity as an ideal. Thinkers of the previous millennium singled out Aristotle among the ancient authors, humanists were more attracted by famous orators (Cicero) or historians (Titus Livius), poets. In the writings of the ancients, the most important thoughts seemed to them about spiritual greatness, creative possibilities, and heroic deeds of people. F. Petrarch was one of the first who began to specifically look for ancient manuscripts, study ancient texts and refer to ancient authors as the highest authority. Humanists abandoned medieval Latin and tried to write their compositions in classical "Ciceronian" Latin, which forced them to subordinate the realities of contemporary life to the requirements of grammar. Classical Latin united its scholars throughout Europe, but separated their "republic of scholars" from those who were not versed in the subtleties of Latin.
Renaissance and Christian traditions. The new conditions of life demanded a rejection of the old Christian ideals of humility and indifference to earthly life. This pathos of denial was very noticeable in the culture of the Renaissance. At the same time, there was no rejection of Christian teaching. Renaissance people continued to consider themselves good Catholics. Criticism of the church and its leaders (especially monasticism) was very common, but it was a criticism of the people of the church, and not of Christian doctrine. Moreover, not only the immorality of the behavior of some part of the churchmen was criticized by the humanists, for them the medieval ideal of withdrawal, rejection of the world was unacceptable. Here is what the humanist Caluccio Salutati wrote to his friend who decided to become a monk: “Do not believe, O Pellegrino, that running away from the world, avoiding the sight of beautiful things, locking yourself up in a monastery or retiring to a skete is the path to perfection.”
Christian ideas coexisted quite peacefully in the minds of people with new norms of behavior. Among the defenders of new ideas there were many figures of the Catholic Church, including the highest ranks, up to and including cardinals and popes. In art, especially in painting, religious themes remained predominant. Most importantly, the Renaissance ideals included Christian spirituality, completely alien to antiquity.
Contemporaries valued the activities of the humanists as the highest achievement of the culture of their time, and their descendants know their highly learned studies more by hearsay. For subsequent generations, their work, in contrast to the works of artists, architects and sculptors, is of interest as a historical phenomenon. Meanwhile, it is precisely these pedantic connoisseurs of Latin, these lovers of reasoning
0 virtues of the ancients developed the foundations of a new view of the world, man, nature, instilled in society new ethical and aesthetic ideals. All this made it possible to break away from the traditions of the Middle Ages and give the emerging culture a renewed look. Therefore, for posterity, the Italian history of the Renaissance period is, first of all, the history of the heyday of Italian art.
The problem of transferring space. The Renaissance is characterized by a respectful, almost reverent attitude towards knowledge, towards learning. It was in the meaning of knowledge in the broadest sense of the word that the word "science" was used at that time. There was only one way of obtaining knowledge - observation, contemplation. The most progressive branch of knowledge at that time turned out to be knowledge related to the visual study of the external world.
“The long process of maturation of the sciences of nature and life begins already in the thirteenth century. And its beginning was a revolution in the development of vision, associated with the progress of optics and the invention of glasses ... Construction linear perspective expanded the field of view horizontally and thus limited the dominance of the vertical directed to the sky in it. The source of information was the human eye. Only an artist could convey information, create a visible image of any object, a person who not only has a keen eye, but also the ability to capture and convey to the viewer the appearance of an object or phenomenon that the viewer does not see, but would like to know. Hence the enthusiasm and pride in the words of D. Vasari, who wrote: “The eye, called the window of the soul, is the main way in which the general feeling can, in the greatest richness and splendor, consider the endless creations of nature ...”
It is not surprising, therefore, that the people of the Renaissance revered painting as a science, and the most important of the sciences: “Oh, amazing science, you keep alive the mortal beauties of mortals, make them more durable than the creations of nature, continuously changed by time, which brings them to inevitable old age ... ” Leonardo da Vinci repeated in different ways in his notes.
In this case, the transfer of the illusion of the three-dimensionality of an object, its location in space, i.e. the ability to create a reliable drawing. Color played a subordinate role, served as an additional decoration. "Perspective was the main intellectual game of the time..."
Vasari in his "Biographies" specifically noted the enthusiasm of a number of artists of the 15th century. the study of linear perspective. Thus, the painter Paolo Uccello literally “fixated” on the problems of perspective, devoted all his efforts to building the space correctly, learning to convey the illusion of reduction and distortion of architectural details. The artist’s wife “often said that Paolo spent whole nights sitting in his studio in search of the laws of perspective, and that when she called him to sleep, he answered her: “Oh, what a pleasant thing this perspective is!”
Stages of the Italian Renaissance. The culture of the Italian Renaissance went through several stages. The names of periods are traditionally determined by centuries:
- - the turn of the XIII-XIV centuries. - Ducento, Proto-Renaissance (Pre-Renaissance). Center - Florence;
- - XIV century. -trecento (Early Renaissance);
- - XV century. - quattrocento (the celebration of the culture of the Renaissance). Along with Florence, new cultural centers appear in Milan, Ferrara, Mantua, Urbino, Rimini;
- - XVI century. -cinquecento, includes: High Renaissance (first half of the 16th century), leadership in cultural life passes to Rome, and Late Renaissance (50-80s of the 16th century), when Venice becomes the last center of Renaissance culture.
Proto-Renaissance. In the early stages of the Renaissance, Florence was the main center of the new culture. Iconic figure-poet Dante Alighieri (1265-1321 ) and the painter Giotto di Bondone (1276-1337 ), both leaving Florence, both personalities are typical of a new historical era - active, active, energetic. Only one of them, Dante, having taken an active part in the political struggle, ended his life as a political exile, and the other, Giotto, being not only a famous artist, but also an architect, lived as a respectable and prosperous citizen. (in half). Each in his field of creativity was an innovator and the completion of traditions at the same time.
The latter quality is more characteristic of Dante. His name was made immortal by the poem "The Divine Comedy", which tells about the author's wanderings in other world. All the main ideas of the medieval worldview are concentrated in this work. The old and the new side by side in it. The plot is quite medieval, but retold in a new way. First of all, it is important to note that Dante abandoned Latin. The poem is written in the Tuscan dialect. The image of a medieval vertical picture of the universe is given: the circles of Hell, the mountain of Purgatory, the spaces of Paradise, but the main character is Dante himself, who is accompanied by the Roman poet Virgil in his wanderings through Hell and Purgatory, and in Paradise he meets the “divine Beatrice”, a woman whom the poet loved all own life. The role assigned to the mortal woman in the poem indicates that the author is turned rather to the future than to the past.
The poem is inhabited by many characters, active, indomitable, energetic, their interests are turned to earthly life, they are concerned about earthly passions and deeds. Different fates, characters, situations pass before the reader, but these are people of the coming era, whose spirit is turned not to eternity, but to momentary interest "here and now." Villains and martyrs, heroes and victims, causing compassion and hatred - they all amaze with their vitality and love of life. The giant picture of the universe was created by Dante.
The artist Giotto set himself the goal of imitating nature, which would become the cornerstone for painters of the next era. This was manifested in the desire to convey the volume of objects, resorting to light-and-shadow modeling of figures, introducing landscape and interior into the image, trying to organize the image as a stage platform. In addition, Giotto abandoned the medieval tradition of filling the entire space of walls and ceilings with paintings that combine various subjects. The walls of the chapels are covered with frescoes, which are located in belts, and each belt is divided into several isolated paintings dedicated to a particular episode and framed with an ornamental pattern-frame. The viewer, passing along the walls of the chapel, examines various episodes, as if turning over the pages of a book.
The most celebrated works of Giotto are the wall paintings (frescoes) in churches in Assisi and Padua. In Assisi, the painting is dedicated to life
Francis of Assisi, shortly before canonized as a saint. The Padua cycle is associated with New Testament stories that tell the story of the life of the Virgin Mary and Jesus Christ.
Giotto's innovation consisted not only in the use of new techniques, not only in "copying" nature (which was taken too literally by his immediate followers - jottesco), but in recreating a new worldview with pictorial techniques. The images created by him are full of fortitude and calm grandeur. Such are equally Mary, solemnly accepting the news of her chosen one (“Annunciation”), and the good-natured St. Francis, glorifying the unity and harmony of the universe ("St. Francis preaching to the birds"), and Christ calmly meeting the treacherous kiss of Judas ("Kiss of Judas"). Dante and Giotto are considered the masters who began to develop the theme of the heroic man in the Italian Renaissance.
Trecento. Glory to this period was brought by the masters who developed the lyrical theme in art. The sonorous stanzas of Petrarch's sonnets about the beautiful Laura echo the refined linearity of the works of Sienese artists. These painters were influenced by Gothic traditions: the pointed spiers of churches, lancet arches, the 5-shaped curve of the figures, the flatness of the image and the decorativeness of the line distinguish their art. The most famous representative of the Sienese school is considered Simone Martini (1284-1344). The altar composition depicting the scene of the Annunciation, framed by exquisite gilded carvings, forming elongated Gothic arches, is typical for him. The golden background turns the whole scene into a fantastic vision, and the figures are full of decorative finesse and whimsical grace. The ethereal figure of Mary whimsically bent on a golden throne, her delicate face makes us remember Blok's lines: "insidious Madonnas squint their long eyes." The artists of this circle developed the lyrical line in the art of the Renaissance.
In the XIV century. the formation of the Italian literary language. The writers of that time willingly composed funny stories about earthly affairs, domestic troubles and adventures of people. They were occupied with questions: how a person will behave in certain circumstances; How do the words and deeds of people correspond to each other? Such short stories (short stories) were combined into collections that constituted a kind of "human comedy" of that era. The most famous of them, the Decameron » Giovanni Boccaccio (1313-1375 ), is an encyclopedia of everyday life and customs of the life of its time.
For posterity Francesco Petrarca (1304-1374) - the first lyric poet of modern times. For his contemporaries, he was the greatest political thinker, philosopher, master of the thoughts of several generations. He is called the first humanist. In his treatises, the main techniques and themes inherent in humanism were developed. It was Petrarch who turned to the study of ancient authors, he constantly referred to their authority, began to write in the correct (“Ciceronian”) Latin, perceived the problems of his time through the prism of ancient wisdom.
In music, new trends appeared in the works of such masters as F. Landini. This direction was called "new art". At that time, new musical forms of secular music were born, such as the ballad and the madrigal. Through the efforts of the composers of the "new art", melody, harmony and rhythm were combined into a single system.
Quattrocento. This period opens the activity of three masters: the architect Filippo Brunelleschi (1377-1446 ), sculptor Donatello(1386-1466 ), painter Masaccio (1401-1428 ). Their hometown of Florence becomes the recognized center of a new culture, the ideological core of which was the glorification of man.
In the architectural designs of Brunelleschi, everything is subordinated to the exaltation of man. This was manifested in the fact that buildings (even huge churches) were built in such a way that a person would not seem lost and insignificant there, as in a Gothic cathedral. Light arcades (elements that had no analogue in antiquity) adorn the outer galleries of the Orphanage, light and austere interiors set in a serious mood, a majestic and light octagonal dome crowns the space of the Cathedral of Santa Maria della Fiore. The facades of city palaces-palazzos, in which the rough masonry of the first floor (rustication) are set off by elegant portal windows, are full of severe restraint. This impression was achieved by the architect Filippo Brunelleschi.
The sculptor Donato, who entered the history of art under his nickname Donatello, revived a type of free-standing sculpture forgotten in the Middle Ages. He managed to combine the ancient ideal of a harmoniously developed human body with Christian spirituality and intense intellectuality. The images he created, be it the excitedly tense prophet Avvakum (“Zukkone”), the pensive conqueror David, the calmly concentrated Maria Anunziata, the fearsome Gattamelata in his dispassionate perseverance, glorify the heroic principle in man.
Tomaso Masaccio continued Giotto's reforms in painting. His figures are voluminous and emphatically material (“Madonna and Child with St. Anne”), they stand on the ground, and do not “hover” in the air (“Adam and Eve, expelled from paradise”), they are placed in a space that the artist managed to convey using the techniques of the central perspective ("Trinity").
The frescoes by Masaccio in the Brancacci Chapel depict the apostles who accompanied Christ on his earthly wanderings. These are ordinary people, fishermen and artisans. The artist, however, does not seek to dress them in rags to emphasize their simplicity, but also avoids lush robes that would show their chosenness, exclusivity. It is important for him to show the timeless significance of what is happening.
Renaissance masters of middle Italy tried to avoid this kind of detail. It was considered more important to convey the typical, generalized, rather than individual, random, to convey the greatness of a person. For this, for example, Piero della Francesca resorted to such techniques as the use of a “low horizon” and the likening of human figures draped in wide cloaks to architectural forms (“The Queen of Sheba before Solomon”).
Along with this heroic tradition, another lyrical one developed. It was dominated by decorativeness, multicolor (the surface of many paintings of that era resembles elegant carpets), and patterning. The characters depicted by the masters of this direction are melancholy thoughtful, filled with tender sadness. Little things in everyday life, whimsical details make up a significant part of their attractiveness. The artists of this circle included both Florentine masters and artists of other schools. The most famous of them are Fra Beato Angelico, Fra Filippo Lippi, Domenico Ghirlandaio, Benozzo Gozzoli, Pietro Perugino, Carlo Crivelli.
The most brilliant master of this direction was the Florentine Sandro Botticelli (1445-1510 ). The touching, poignant beauty of his Madonnas and Venuses is for many associated with the art of the Quattrocento in general. Exquisitely faded colors, whimsical, now flowing, now wriggling lines, light figures gliding above the ground and not noticing each other. Botticelli is one of the most charming artists of the Renaissance, whose work combines the influence of medieval aesthetics, fluency in new artistic techniques and a premonition of a crisis in humanistic culture. In his painting there are mythological, allegorical and biblical subjects. These plots are conveyed by the brush of a simple-hearted and sincere person who has joined the philosophical ideas neoplatonism.
Botticelli's art flourished at the court of the unofficial ruler of Florence, banker Lorenzo Medici, who was a typical socio-political figure of his time: a cunning and dodgy politician, a tough ruler, an enthusiastic art lover, a good poet. He did not commit such atrocities as S. Malatesta or C. Borgia, but on the whole adhered to the same principles in his actions. He was characterized (again in the spirit of the times) by a craving for demonstrating external luxury, splendor, festivity. Under him, Florence was famous for its brilliant carnivals, an obligatory component of which were costumed processions, during which small theatrical performances were played on mythological and allegorical themes, accompanied by dancing, singing, and recitation. These festivities anticipated the formation of theatrical art, the rise of which began in the next, 16th century.
Crisis of ideas of humanism. Humanism focused on the glorification of man and pinned hopes that a free human personality could endlessly improve, and at the same time, people's lives would improve, relations between them would be kind and harmonious. Two centuries have passed since the beginning of the humanist movement. The spontaneous energy and activity of people have created a lot - magnificent works of art, rich trading companies, scientific treatises and witty short stories, but life has not become better. Moreover, the thought of the posthumous fate of daring creators was increasingly disturbing. What can justify man's earthly activity from the point of view of the afterlife? Humanism and the whole culture of the Renaissance did not give an answer to this question. The freedom of the individual, inscribed on the banner of humanism, gave rise to the problem of personal choice between good and evil. The choice was not always made in favor of the good. The struggle for power, influence, wealth led to constant bloody skirmishes. Blood flooded the streets, houses, and even churches of Florence, Milan, Rome, Padua, and all the great and small city-states of Italy. The meaning of life was reduced to obtaining specific and tangible successes and achievements, but at the same time it did not have any higher justification. In addition, the “game without rules”, which became the rule of life, could not continue for too long. This situation gave rise to a growing desire to introduce an element of organization and certainty into the life of society. It was necessary to find a higher justification, a higher stimulus for the frenzied boiling of human energy.
Neither the humanistic ideology, oriented toward solving the problems of earthly life, nor the old Catholicism, whose ethical ideal was turned to a purely contemplative life, could provide a correspondence between the changing needs of life and their ideological explanation. Religious dogma had to adapt to the needs of a society of active, enterprising, independent individualists. However, attempts church reforms in the conditions of Italy, the former ideological and organizational center of the Catholic world, were doomed to failure.
The most striking example of this is the attempt of the Dominican monk Girolamo Savonarola to carry out such a reform in the conditions of Florence. After the death of the brilliant Lorenzo de' Medici, Florence experienced a political and economic crisis. After all, the splendor of the Medici court was accompanied by a deterioration in the economy of Florence, a weakening of its position among neighboring states. The stern Dominican monk Savonarola gained enormous influence in the city, calling for the rejection of luxury, the pursuit of vain arts and the establishment of justice. Most of the townspeople (including artists such as Sandro Botticelli, Lorenzo di Credi) enthusiastically began to fight evil, destroying luxury items, burning works of art. Through the efforts of the curia of Rome, Savonarola was overthrown and executed, the power of the oligarchy was restored. But the former, serene and joyful confidence in the ideals, addressed to the glorification of the perfect man, was gone.
High Renaissance. The core of the humanistic ideology was the subversive pathos of emancipation, liberation. When its possibilities were exhausted, a crisis was bound to come. A short period, approximately three decades, is the moment of the last takeoff before the start of the destruction of the entire system of ideas and moods. The center of cultural development moved at this time from Florence, which was losing its republican prowess and order, to Rome, the center of the theocratic monarchy.
Three masters most fully expressed the High Renaissance in art. It can be said, although, of course, somewhat conditionally, that the eldest of them, Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519 ), sang the human intellect, the mind that elevates a person above the surrounding nature; the youngest, Rafael Santi (1483-1520 ), created perfectly beautiful images, embodying the harmony of spiritual and physical beauty; but Michelangelo Buonarroti (1475-1564) glorified the strength and energy of man. The world created by the artists is a reality, but cleansed of everything petty and random.
The main thing that Leonardo left to people is his painting, glorifying the beauty and mind of man. Already the first of Leonardo's independent works - the head of an angel, written for the Baptism by his teacher Verrocchio, struck the audience with its thoughtful and thoughtful look. The artist's characters, whether it's the young Mary playing with a child ("Madonna Benois"), the beautiful Cicilia ("Lady with an Ermine") or the apostles and Christ in the scene of "The Last Supper", are, first of all, thinking beings. Suffice it to recall the painting known as the portrait of Mona Lisa ("Gioconda"). The look of a calmly sitting woman is full of such insight and depth that it seems that she sees and understands everything: the feelings of people looking at her, the complexities of their lives, the infinity of the Cosmos. Behind her is a beautiful and mysterious landscape, but she rises above everything, she is the main thing in this world, she personifies the human intellect.
In the personality and work of Raphael Santi, the desire for harmony, inner balance, calm dignity characteristic of the Italian Renaissance was manifested with particular fullness. He left behind not only paintings and architectural works. His paintings are very diverse in subject matter, but when they talk about Raphael, images of his Madonnas first come to mind. They have a fair share of similarities, manifested in spiritual clarity, childish purity and clarity of the inner world. Among them there are thoughtful, dreamy, flirtatious, focused, each embodies one or another facet of one image - a woman with a child's soul.
The most famous of the Raphael Madonnas, the Sistine Madonna, falls out of this series. Here is how the impression of the Soviet soldiers who saw it in 1945 taken out of the mine, where it was hidden by the Nazis, is described: “Nothing in the picture at first holds your attention; your gaze glides, not stopping at anything, until that moment, until it meets another, moving towards the gaze. Dark, wide-set eyes calmly and attentively look at you, shrouded in a transparent shadow of eyelashes; and already something vague stirred in your soul, making you alert ... You are still trying to understand what the matter is, what exactly in the picture alerted you, alarmed you. And your eyes involuntarily again and again are drawn to her gaze ... The look of the Sistine Madonna, slightly clouded with sorrow, is full of confidence in the future, towards which she, with such grandeur and simplicity, carries her most precious son.
A similar perception of the picture is conveyed by such poetic lines: “Kingdoms perished, seas dried up, / Citadels burned to the ground, / Aona in maternal sorrow / From the past to the future went.”
In the work of Raphael, the desire to find the common, typical in the individual is especially vivid. He talked about how he had to see a lot of beautiful women in order to write Beauty.
When creating a portrait, the artists of the Italian Renaissance focused not on the details that help to show the individual in a person (the shape of the eyes, the length of the nose, the shape of the lips), but on the generalizing-typical, constituting the “species” features of the Man.
Michelangelo Buonarroti was both a wonderful poet and a brilliant sculptor, architect, and painter. The long creative life of Michelangelo included the time of the highest flowering of the Renaissance culture; he, who survived most of the titans of the Renaissance, had to observe the collapse of humanistic ideals.
The strength and energy with which his works are imbued seem sometimes excessive, overwhelming. In the work of this master, the pathos of creation, characteristic of the era, is combined with a tragic sense of the doom of this pathos. The contrast of physical power and impotence is present in a number of sculptural images, such as the figures of "Slaves", "Prisoners", famous sculpture"Night", as well as in the images of the sibyls and prophets on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel.
A particularly tragic impression is made by the painting depicting the scene of the Last Judgment on the western wall of the Sistine Chapel. According to the art critic, “the uplifted hand of Christ is the source of a vortex spherical movement that takes place around the central oval... The world is set in motion, it hangs over the abyss, the entire array of bodies hangs over the abyss in the Last Judgment... In an angry outburst Christ's hand went up. No, he did not appear as a savior to people ... and Michelangelo did not want to console people ... This God is quite unusual ... he is beardless and youthfully swift, he is powerful in his physical strength, and all his strength is given to anger. This Christ knows no mercy. Now it would only be condoning evil.
Renaissance in Venice: a celebration of color. A rich merchant republic became the center of the Late Renaissance. Among cultural centers Italy Venice occupied a special position. New trends penetrated there much later, which is explained by the strong conservative sentiments that existed in this oligarchic merchant republic, connected with close relations with Byzantium and heavily influenced by the “Byzantine manner”.
Therefore, the spirit of the Renaissance manifests itself in the art of the Venetians only from the second half of the 15th century. in the works of several generations of artists of the Bellini family.
Besides, Venetian painting has another notable difference. In the visual arts of other Italian schools, the main thing was drawing, the ability to convey the volume of bodies and objects using light and shade modeling (the famous sfumato Leonardo da Vinci), the Venetians, on the other hand, attached great importance to the play of colors. The damp atmosphere of Venice contributed to the fact that the artists treated the picturesqueness of their work with great attention. Not surprisingly, the Venetians were the first Italian artists to turn to the technique of oil painting, developed in the north of Europe, in the Netherlands.
The real flowering of the Venetian school is associated with creativity Giorgione de Castelfranco (1477-1510 ). This early deceased master left behind few paintings. Man and nature are the main theme of such works as "Country Concert", "Sleeping Venus", "Thunderstorm". “A happy harmony reigns between nature and man, which, strictly speaking, is the main theme of the image.” In painting by Giorgione important role belongs to the color.
The most famous representative of the Venetian school was Titian Vecelio, whose year of birth is unknown, but he died a very old man, in 1576 during a plague epidemic. He painted pictures on biblical, mythological, allegorical subjects. In his painting, there is a strong life-affirming beginning, the heroes and heroines are full of strength and physical health, majestic and beautiful. The altar image of the Ascension of Mary (Assunta) and the antique motif of the Bacchanalia are equally saturated with the energy of impulse and movement. The Denarius of Caesar (Christ and Judas) and Love on Earth and Heaven are also permeated with philosophical overtones. The artist sang feminine beauty("Venus of Urbino", "Danae", "Girl with Fruit") and the tragic moment of a person's departure from life ("Lamentation of Christ", "The Entombment"). Majestically beautiful images, harmonious details of architectural forms, beautiful things that fill the interiors, the soft and warm color of the paintings - all testify to the love of life inherent in Titian.
The same theme was constantly developed by another Venetian, Paolo Veronese (1528-1588 ). It is his large-scale "Feasts" and "Celebrations", his allegories to the glory of the prosperity of the Venetian Republic, that first of all come to mind with the words "Venetian painting". Veronese lacks the versatility and wisdom of Titian. His painting is more decorative. It was created, first of all, to decorate the palazzo of the Venetian oligarchy and design official buildings. Cheerful temperament and sincerity turned this panegyric painting into a jubilant celebration of life.
It should be noted that the Venetians more often than the representatives of other Italian schools, there are antique stories.
political ideas. It became obvious that the humanistic belief that a free and omnipotent person would become happy and make everyone around him happy was not justified, and the search for other options for achieving happiness began. As the hope for the ability of an individual to create conditions for a happy or at least peaceful life of people faded away, attention was shifted to the possibilities of an organized human community - the state. At the origins of the political thought of modern times is a Florentine Niccolo Machiavelli (1469-1527 ), who was a statesman, historian, playwright, military theorist, and philosopher. He tried to understand how society should be organized so that people could live more peacefully. The strong power of the ruler is what, in his opinion, could ensure order. May the ruler be cruel as a lion and cunning as foxes, may he, protecting his power, eliminate all rivals. According to Machiavelli, unlimited and uncontrolled power should contribute to the creation of a large and powerful state. In such a state, most people will live in peace, without fear for their lives and property.
The activities of Machiavelli testified that the time of “playing without rules” pretty tired society, that there was a need to create a force that could unite people, regulate relations between them, establish peace and justice, and the state began to be considered as such a force.
The place of art in society. As already noted, the most revered field of activity was then artistic creativity, because it was the language of art that expressed itself in the era as a whole. Religious consciousness was losing its pervasive influence on the life of society, and scientific knowledge was still in its infancy, so the world was perceived through art. Art played the role that in the Middle Ages belonged to religion, and in the society of modern and contemporary times, to science. The universe was perceived not as a mechanistic system, but as an integral organism. The main means of comprehending the environment was observation, contemplation, fixing what was seen, and this was best provided by painting. It is no coincidence that Leonardo da Vinci calls painting a science, moreover, the most important of the sciences.
Many facts testify to the importance of the appearance of an outstanding work of art in the eyes of contemporaries.
About competitions between artists for the right to receive a profitable government order was mentioned above. Equally controversial was the question of where Michelangelo's "David" should stand, and a few decades later the same problem arose over the installation of "Perseus" by B. Cellini. And these are just a few of the most famous examples of this kind. Such an attitude towards the emergence of new artistic creations designed to decorate and glorify the city was completely natural for the urban life of the Renaissance. The epoch spoke about itself in the language of works of art. Therefore, every event in artistic life became important for the whole society.
Themes and interpretation of plots in the art of the Italian Renaissance. For the first time in a thousand years of the existence of Christian culture, artists began to depict the earthly world, exalting, glorifying, deifying it. The themes of art remained almost exclusively religious, but within the framework of this traditional theme, interest shifted, relatively speaking, to life-affirming subjects.
The first thing that comes to mind at the mention of the Italian Renaissance is the image of Mary with a baby, which is represented by a young mistress (Madonna) with a touchingly beautiful child. “Madonna and Child”, “Madonna with Saints” (the so-called “Holy Interview”), “Holy Family”, “Adoration of the Magi”, “Nativity”, “Procession of the Magi” are the favorite themes of the art of the era. No, both "Crucifixions" and "Lamentations" were created, but this note was not the main one. Customers and artists, who embodied their desires in visible images, found in traditional religious subjects something that carried hope and faith in a bright beginning.
Among the characters of sacred legends, images of real people appeared, like donors(donors) located outside the frame of the altar composition or as protagonists of crowded processions. Suffice it to recall the "Adoration of the Magi" by S. Botticelli, where members of the Medici family are recognizable in the elegant crowd of worshipers and where the artist presumably placed a self-portrait. Along with this, independent portrait images of contemporaries, painted from life, from memory, according to descriptions, became widespread. In the last decades of the fifteenth century artists began to increasingly depict scenes of a mythological nature. Such images were supposed to decorate the premises of the palazzo. Scenes from modern life were included in religious or mythological compositions. By itself, modernity in its everyday manifestations did not interest artists too much; they clothed sublime, ideal themes in familiar visual images. Renaissance masters were not realists in modern meaning of this word, they recreated with the means available to them the world of Man, cleansed of everyday life.
Following the techniques of linear perspective, the artists created on the plane the illusion of a three-dimensional space filled with figures and objects that seemed to be three-dimensional. People in Renaissance paintings are represented as majestic and important. Their postures and gestures are full of seriousness and solemnity. A narrow street or a spacious square, a smartly furnished room or freely spreading hills - everything serves as a background for the figures of people.
In Italian Renaissance painting, the landscape or interior is primarily a frame for human figures; fine light and shade modeling creates the impression of materiality, but not coarse, but exquisitely airy (it is no coincidence that Leonardo considered the ideal time for work to be the middle of the day in cloudy weather, when the lighting is soft and diffused); the low horizon makes the figures monumental, as if touching the sky with their heads, and the restraint of their postures and gestures gives them solemnity and majesty. Characters are not always beautiful in facial features, but are always filled with inner significance and importance, feelings dignity and tranquility.
Artists in everything and always avoid extremes and accidents. Here is how the art critic described the museum impressions of Italian Renaissance painting: “The halls of Italian art of the XIV-XVI centuries are distinguished by one interesting feature - they are surprisingly quiet with an abundance of visitors and various excursions ... Silence floats from the walls, from the paintings - the majestic silence of the high sky, soft hills, big trees. And -big people... People are bigger than the sky. The world spreading behind them - with roads, ruins, river banks, cities and knights' castles - we see as if from a height of flight. It is extensive, detailed, and respectfully removed."
In the story about the exhibition of cardboards made by Leonardo and Michelangelo for the Council Hall (the paintings were never completed by either one or the other), it is worth paying attention to the fact that it seemed especially important for the Florentines to see the cardboards. They especially appreciated the drawing, which conveys the shape, volume of the depicted objects and bodies, as well as the ideological concept that the master tried to embody. Color in painting was for them, rather, an addition, emphasizing the form created by the drawing. And one more thing: judging by the surviving copies, both works (they were devoted to two battles important for the history of the city-state of Florence) should have become a typical manifestation of the Renaissance approach to art, where the main thing was man. For all the difference in the cardboards, Leonardo and Michelangelo - cavalry warriors clinging into a single ball during the fight for the banner at Leonardo (“Battle of Anghiari”) and soldiers rushing to arms, caught by the enemy while swimming in the river, at Michelangelo (“Battle of Cashine"), - the general approach to the presentation of the depicted is obvious, requiring the selection of a human figure, subordinating the surrounding space to it. After all, the actors are more important than the place of action.
It is interesting to trace how the mindset of the era was reflected in art by comparing several works devoted to depicting the same subject. One of the favorite stories of the time was the story of Saint Sebastian, who was executed by Roman soldiers for his commitment to Christianity. This theme made it possible to show the heroism of the human person, capable of sacrificing his life for his beliefs. In addition, the plot made it possible to turn to the image of a naked body, to realize the humanistic ideal - a harmonious combination of a beautiful appearance and a beautiful human soul.
In the middle of the XV century. Several papers have been written on this subject. The authors were rather dissimilar masters: Perugino, Antonello de Mesina and others. When looking at their paintings, one is struck by the calmness, the sense of inner dignity, which imbues the image of a beautiful naked young man standing near a pillar or tree and dreamily looking into the sky. Behind him is a peaceful rural landscape or a cozy town square. Only the presence of arrows in the body of a young man tells the viewer that we have a scene of execution before us. Pain, tragedy, death is not felt. These beautiful young men, united by the fate of the martyr Sebastian, are aware of their immortality, just as people who lived in Italy in the 15th century felt their invulnerability, omnipotence.
In the picture, painted by the artist Andrea Mantegna, we feel the tragedy of what is happening, his St. Sebastian feels like he's dying. And finally, in the middle of the XVI century. Titian Vecelio wrote his St. Sebastian. There is no detailed landscape on this canvas. The place of action is only indicated. There are no random figures in the background, no warrior-executioners aiming at their prey, nothing that can tell the viewer the meaning of the situation, and at the same time there is a sense of a tragic end. This is not just the death of a human being, it is the death of the whole world, burning in the crimson flashes of a universal catastrophe.
The value of the culture of the Italian Renaissance. The soil that gave rise to the culture of the Italian Renaissance was destroyed during the 16th century. Most of the country was subjected to foreign invasions, the new economic structure was undermined by the movement of the main trade routes in Europe from the Mediterranean to the Atlantic, the Polan republics fell under the rule of ambitious condottiere mercenaries, and the surge of individualistic energy lost its internal justification and gradually died out under the conditions of the revival. feudal orders (re-feudalization of society). The attempt to create a new society based on the emancipation of the human personality, on the initiative of entrepreneurship, was interrupted in Italy for a long time. The country was in decline.
On the other hand, the cultural tradition created by this society spread through the efforts of Italian masters throughout Europe, became the standard for European culture as a whole, received later life in its version, which was assigned the name of "high", "scientific" culture. Monuments of Renaissance culture remained - beautiful buildings, statues, wall paintings, paintings, poems, wise writings of humanists, traditions remained that became decisive for the culture of those peoples who were under its influence for the next three and a half centuries (until the end of the 19th century). , and this influence gradually spread very widely.
It should be especially noted and highlighted the importance of the fine arts of the Italian Renaissance with its desire to convey on the plane of a wall or board, a sheet of paper enclosed in a canvas frame the illusion of three-dimensional space filled with illusory three-dimensional images of people and objects - what can be called “window of Leonardo Danilov I.E. Italian city of the 15th century. Reality, myth, image. M., 2000.S. 22, 23. See: Golovin V.P. The world of the artist of the early Renaissance. M.: Publishing House of Moscow State University, 2002. P. 125. Boyadzhiev G. Italian notebooks. M., 1968. S. 104.
History of Italy.
Renaissance.
In the 14th and 15th centuries, Italy, despite its political fragmentation, underwent profound, albeit gradual, transformations. Political turmoil, the accumulation of wealth in this center of world trade and, finally, rich story Italy contributed to the Renaissance - the revival of the traditions of the ancient civilizations of Greece and Rome.
The growth of prosperity was accompanied by the formation of a society that was urban, secular and deeply individualistic. The cities, which had already arisen in the Roman era and never completely disappeared, were revived thanks to a huge upsurge in trade and industry. Moreover, the feuds between emperors and popes allowed the cities, by maneuvering between both sides, to free themselves from external control. Everywhere, with the exception of the south of the Apennine Peninsula, cities began to extend their power to the surrounding countryside. The feudal nobility had to abandon their habitual way of life and participate in intellectual and spiritual activities in the cities.
Politically, feudal anarchy gave way to complete chaos. With the exception of the Kingdom of Naples located in the south, the Apennine Peninsula was divided into many small city-states, almost completely independent of both the emperor and the pope. Of course, various kinds of captures and mergers took place, but many cities could successfully stand up for themselves, and no agreements or forces could force them to unite. At the same time, sharp social contradictions in the cities themselves and the need to form a united front against external enemies contributed to the fall of many republican regimes, which made it easier for despots to seize power. People, tired of instability, themselves sought or approved the emergence of such tyrants who ruled with the help of mercenaries (condottieri), but at the same time sought to gain respect and support from the townspeople. During this period, there was a significant expansion of larger states at the expense of small ones, and by 1494 only five large states and even fewer city-states remained.
The Duchy of Milan, the Florentine and Venetian Republics, the Papal States and the Kingdom of Naples were the most significant political formations of the Apennine Peninsula. Milan, under the control of the Sforza family, became one of the richest states and a center of arts and education.
Just as Milan dominated the Lombard plain and controlled the Alpine passes leading to Northern Europe, Venice, built on the islands of the lagoon, dominated the Adriatic Sea. Keeping aloof from the complex vicissitudes of Italian politics, Venice, due to its geographical position, played the role of an intermediary in trade between Western and Eastern Europe. Venice was ruled by wealthy families who elected from their midst the doge, the head of the city for life, who ruled with the help of the Senate and the Council of Ten. Under the treaty of 1454 concluded between Venice and Milan, the latter recognized Venice as a mainland state in eastern Lombardy and on the northern shores of the Adriatic Sea.
Florence retained the appearance of a republican form of government, but frequent coups, strife between parties and the domination of the oligarchy, which consisted of a narrow circle of wealthy families, led to the recognition by the inhabitants of the city in 1434 of the power of the Medici family. Formally, the republican form of government was preserved, but in reality, Cosimo Medici and his successors behaved like real despots. The heyday of the dynasty was achieved under Lorenzo the Magnificent (r. 1469–1492), a poet, patron of the arts and sciences, statesman and diplomat.
The Papal States occupied a significant part of central Italy, including the Romagna, and in the east almost reached the borders of Venice. Nominally, this territory was ruled by the pope, but in fact it was fragmented into numerous fiefs, where the rulers established their own rules. Many Renaissance popes were as secular as the Italian sovereigns, and kept luxurious courts. Popes Nicholas V (1447–1455), who founded the Vatican Library, and Pius II (1458–1464) did much to revive education in the spirit of antiquity. The heyday of the Renaissance fell on the reigns of Popes Julius II (1503-1513) and Leo X (1513-1521). The Kingdom of Naples included the territory of Italy south of the borders of the Papal States. True, until 1435 Sicily was a separate kingdom, which was ruled by the Angevin dynasty of France until the transfer of power to King Alfonso I of the Aragonese dynasty. Under the reign of Alfonso, Naples experienced a period of economic upsurge and flourishing of the arts, although this kingdom was politically different from the city-states of Northern Italy. In 1504 Naples was conquered by Spain and gradually lost its independence over the next two centuries.
During the Renaissance, Italy prospered due to the delicate balance of political and cultural factors that prevailed then in Europe and in the world as a whole. In the 14th - first half of the 15th century. The country was divided into many independent states. Dynastic, institutional and social factors prevented the transformation of the Italian cultural community into any real form of political unity. As Machiavelli and other Italian thinkers of this time argued, it is in the prevailing historical paradox that one should look for the roots of the brilliance and tragedy of the Italian Renaissance. The fall of the two universal power systems of the Middle Ages - the Holy Roman Empire and the papacy - repeatedly prompted attempts to unify Italy.
For more than a hundred years (1305-1414), energetic efforts were directed towards this, coming from the North, Center and South of Italy. Their goal was to achieve in one form or another the unity of the country, or at least to bring many states under a common political authority. The most significant of these efforts were successively supported by Roberto of Naples (1308–1343), Cola di Rienzo in Rome (1347–1354), Archbishop Giovanni Visconti of Milan (1349–1359), and Cardinal Egidio Albornoz of Rome (1352–1367). The last two serious attempts in the North and South, respectively, were made under the leadership of Gian Galeazzo Visconti of Milan (1385–1402) and the Neapolitan king Vladislav (1402–1414). In all these cases, coalitions of other forces in Italy gathered under the banner of "Italian freedom" and successfully resisted the desire to impose a single government on the country. After the defeat of Gian Galeazzo and Vladislav, a series of wars followed between the five largest Italian states.
In the middle of the 15th century Italy faced two new adverse factors in international life. In the West, beyond the Alps, the protracted struggle between the feudal dynasties of Europe, in particular the Anglo-French conflict, was coming to an end. Therefore, it was to be expected that large continental states - France, Spain and Austria - would soon intervene in Italian affairs. On the eastern - Mediterranean and Adriatic - flanks of Italy, there was a threat from the Ottomans.
Far-sighted statesmen in each of the five major Italian states soon realized that Italy's protracted "civil war" must be ended. Peace negotiations began. On the initiative of Cosimo de' Medici of Florence and Pope Nicholas V, Francesco Foscari, Doge of Venice, and Francesco Sforza, Duke of Milan, concluded the Peace of Lodia in April 1454. A federation was born, joined by the Neapolitan king Alfonso of Aragon and, eventually, the smaller Italian states under the rule of the pope. The Holy League of Italian States imposed a ban on conflicts within the Apennine Peninsula and created a new structure of peaceful coexistence.
For almost forty years, from 1454 to 1494, Italy enjoyed peace and the flowering of Renaissance culture, manifested in art, science and philosophy. Until 1492, Lorenzo Medici acted as an arbiter in politics and ruled Italy without involving it in alliances with foreign European powers. However, less than two years after the death of Lorenzo, fear, ambition and selfishness gave rise to an atmosphere of mutual distrust among the rulers of the Italian states.
The French King Charles VIII has taken it upon himself to rid Italy of the real and partly fictitious hardships provoked by the actions of selfish sovereigns. The Florentine religious leader Savonarola openly condemned these actions. In 1494 Charles VIII invaded Italy and on February 22, 1495 entered Rome; then other invasions followed. In 1527, Rome was sacked by the troops of Emperor Charles V of the Habsburg dynasty. Under the peace concluded at Cambrai in 1529, the French had to give up their claims in Italy, but later they made new, equally unsuccessful attempts to expel the Habsburgs from Italy. The Italian wars ended in 1559 with the Peace of Cato Cambresi, according to which most of Italy was included in the Habsburg Empire.
With the victory of Spain over France on the Apennine Peninsula, the independence of the Italian states was put to an end, many of which remained dependent on foreign powers for almost two centuries. The rapid development of Mediterranean trade, which nourished the cultural achievements of the Renaissance in Italy, slowed down in the 16th century, when, following the discovery of America, the main trade routes moved to the Atlantic. Genoa and Venice survived as independent republics, but their economies also declined. The most powerful of the Italian sovereigns was now the pope, not only as the secular head of the Papal States, but also as the leader of the Counter-Reformation. The reform of the Catholic doctrine, adopted at the Council of Trent (1545-1563), influenced the political, cultural and religious life of Italy, and already under Pope Paul IV (1555-1559), the Catholic Church began to eradicate heresies. The activity of the Inquisition became more severe. Its victims included free-thinking Dominican priest Giordano Bruno, who was burned at the stake as a heretic, and Galileo Galilei, who was forced to abandon his pioneering scientific theories.
Spanish dominance in the Apennine Peninsula continued into the 17th century, although it was repeatedly challenged by France, especially under Louis XIV. However, when France was defeated in the War of the Spanish Succession (1701–1714), by the Treaty of Utrecht in 1713 the Austrian Habsburgs became the main dominant force in Italy. The treaty concluded at Aix-la-Chapelle in 1748, which ended the War of the Austrian Succession, finally brought the long-awaited peace to the Italian states. Since then, their borders have hardly changed for more than 100 years until the beginning of the unification of the country. The most important event was the granting of real autonomy to Piedmont and Naples (in the first, the Savoy dynasty ruled, and in the second, the Spanish Bourbons). In the middle of the 18th century all of Italy experienced a period of economic and cultural revival, and Milan, Florence and Naples became major centers of European enlightenment. Composition by Cesare Beccaria (1738–1794) Crimes and punishments laid the foundations of modern criminology and criminal law and was soon translated into many European languages. This work helped in many ways to draw up a new code of laws introduced by Duke Leopold of Tuscany, one of the most progressive Italian rulers of the 18th century. In Naples, where the ruling Bourbons were also active reformers, Antonio Genovesi (1712-1769) was appointed head of Europe's first chair of political economy.
Thanks to the participation of so many Italians in the public life of the Enlightenment, Italy again became the leading force in European history, while the need for reform increased. Important social transformations were carried out by the Austrian government in Lombardy, as well as in the Kingdom of Sardinia, the Duchy of Tuscany and in the South, but met with local resistance in other parts of the Apennine Peninsula (especially in the Papal States, the Venetian and Genoese Republics), where the reforms did not have much success.
The French Revolution of 1789 had a decisive influence on the Italian states and their development. The revolution confirmed the need for a radical transformation of society, and when French troops led by Napoleon Bonaparte (1769–1821) invaded northern Italy in 1796, the supporters of the revolution were able to establish republican rule under the protection of French army. So, Genoa became the Ligurian Republic (June 1797), Milan became the center of the Cisalpine Republic (July 1797), the advance of the French army to the south led to the emergence of the Roman Republic (February 1798). Finally, the Parthenopian Republic was formed in Naples (January 1799).
This "republican" experiment, however, was short-lived. In April 1799, the combined Austro-Russian army under the command of General A.V. Suvorov defeated the French troops in northern Italy. When the French retreated, the Italian republics fell, and those who supported the French suffered severe repression. However, the coup d'état in France by Napoleon in 1799 and his impressive victory over the Austrians at the Battle of Marengo in 1800 set the stage for a longer French occupation and subsequent redrawing of the map of the Apennine Peninsula. Piedmont was transformed into a state dependent on France on the site of the former Cisalpine Republic. It was called the Italian Republic, and since 1804, when Napoleon proclaimed himself emperor and accepted the crown of the King of Italy in the Milan Cathedral, it was renamed the Italian Kingdom. The Kingdom of Italy included Lombardy, Venice (Napoleon abolished the republic that had existed for many centuries) and most of Emilia. General Eugene Beauharnais (son of Empress Josephine) became viceroy. In 1806 Napoleon invaded Naples. The king and his court fled to Sicily, where until 1814 they remained under the protection of the British fleet. Napoleon appointed his brother Joseph King of Naples. However, in 1808 he moved to Madrid and became king of Spain, and the throne of Naples was transferred to Napoleon's son-in-law, Joachim Murat. The Papal States remained independent until Napoleon's quarrel with Pope Pius VII (1800–1823) and the annexation of Rome to France in 1809.
Until 1814, the Italian states remained part of Napoleon's empire. French rule helped the Italians modernize the polity. The financial and administrative bodies were reorganized, and the codes of law were changed in the spirit of the French civil code. When the empire began to disintegrate after the defeat of Napoleon's army at the Battle of Leipzig (1813), opposition raised its head in Italy, demanding the creation of a constitutional government. At the end of the empire, Joachim Murat in 1814 from Rimini urged the Italians to unite in order to create an independent state. The works of the Italian writer Ugo Foscolo (1778–1827) testify to the growth of national self-consciousness. After the fall of the Napoleonic Empire, the Congress of Vienna (1814-1815), ignoring such appeals, restored the power of the former rulers of the Italian states. This suggested a return to the political situation that existed before the French Revolution, albeit with some changes. The Venetian Republic was not restored in its former form, and the lands once subject to Venice now formed part of the Lombard and Venetian Kingdom, which was ruled by an Austrian viceroy who settled in Milan. Although the Austrian domination and the aggressive policy of Metternich were the main target of the attacks of the Italian nationalists, at the beginning of the 19th century. it was Lombardy and Venice that favorably differed in the nature of government from other Italian lands. In some places, the former rulers regained their thrones, but almost everywhere Austria stood behind them. Members of the Habsburg family ruled in Tuscany and the small duchies of Parma and Modena. The Pope restored his possessions in the Papal States and appointed his emissaries to the cities of Bologna and Ferrara. In the south, Naples and Sicily were united in a monarchy led by the Bourbons who returned to power, under the name of the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies. Apart from Naples, only Piedmont (Kingdom of Sardinia) enjoyed some real autonomy, with the possessions of the Savoy dynasty expanding through the annexation of the former Republic of Genoa. However, the Piedmontese rulers were afraid of the revolution and considered Austria their main ally.