art history ch 21

Fig. 21-13 Shop of Pieter van Aelst, Brussels, after cartoons by Raphael and assistants CHRIST'S CHARGE TO PETER

Comparison of cartoon and tapestry also indicates that the weavers were not required to follow their models slavishly. They embellished the costume of Christ, perhaps in an attempt to ensure that the viewer's attention would be immediately drawn to this most important figure in the scene.

How does the Mona Lisa embody Renaissance Style?

One thing is clear. This portrait embodies many of the hallmarks of the High Renaissance style that will solidify in Rome during the first two decades of the sixteenth century—the blend of naturalistic description and classicizing idealism, and the clarity and balanced structure of the pyramidal composition that gives utter stability to the monumentally sculptural human form.

Mannerist sculpture

—often small in size and made from precious metals—stylizes body forms and emphasizes technical skill in ways that are reminiscent of Mannerist painting.

Fig. 21-31 Veronese FEAST IN THE HOUSE OF LEVI

-*Symmetrically disposed, balustraded stairways lead to an enormous loggia framed by colossal arches, beyond which sits an imaginary city of white marble. -Within this grand setting, lifelike figures in lavish costumes strike theatrical poses, surrounded by the sort of anecdotal details loved by the Venetians—such as parrots, monkeys, a man picking his teeth, and foreign soldiers— -but the painting's monastic patrons were shocked. They saw these as profane distractions, especially in a representation of the Last Supper. -Papal office that prosecuted heretics, to explain his painting. There he justified himself first by asserting that the picture actually depicted not the Last Supper, but rather the feast in the house of Simon, a small dinner held shortly before Jesus's final entry into Jerusalem. -He also said he was painting it in his own way, but he was ordered to change it anyway

Fig. 21-15 Michelangelo DAVID

- Michelangelo accepted a Florentine commission for a statue of the biblical hero david (fig. 21-15) to be placed high atop a buttress of the cathedral. But when it was finished the David was so admired that the city council instead placed it in the principal city square, next to the Palazzo della Signoria (see fig. 18-2), the seat of Florence's government. -There it stood as a reminder of Florence's republican status, which was briefly reinstated after the expulsion of the powerful Medici oligarchy in 1494. -Although in its muscular nudity Michelangelo's David embodies the antique ideal of the athletic male nude, the emotional power of its expression and its concentrated gaze are entirely new. -Unlike Donatello's bronze David (see fig. 20-14), this is not a triumphant hero with the trophy head of the giant Goliath already under his feet. Slingshot over his shoulder and a rock in his right hand, Michelangelo's David knits his brow and stares into space, seemingly preparing himself psychologically for the danger ahead, a mere youth confronting a gigantic experienced warrior. -This David stands for the supremacy of right over might—a perfect emblem for the Florentines, who had recently fought the forces of Milan, Siena, and Pisa and still faced political and military pressure.

Fig. 21-4 Leonardo da Vinci THE LAST SUPPER

- in dining hall, of the monastery of Santa Maria delle Grazie in Milan - In fictive space defined by a coffered ceiling and four pairs of tapestries that seem to extend the refectory into another room, Jesus and his disciples are seated at a long table placed parallel to the picture plane and to the monastic diners who would have been he seated in the hall below -stagelike space recedes from the table to three windows on the back wall, where the vanishing point of the one-point linear perspective lies behind Jesus's head. -**A stable, pyramidal Jesus at the center is flanked by his 12 disciples, grouped in four interlocking sets of three. -** Breaking with traditional representations of the subject (see fig. 20-25) to create compositional clarity, balance, and cohesion, Leonardo placed the traitor Judas—clutching his money bags in the shadows—within the first triad to Jesus's right, along with the young John the Evangelist and the elderly Peter, rather than isolating Judas on the opposite side of the table.** -Judas, Peter, and John were each to play an essential role in Jesus's mission: Judas set in motion the events leading to Jesus's sacrifice; Peter led the Church after Jesus's death; and John, the visionary, foretold the Second Coming and the Last Judgment in the book of Revelation. -**The painting's careful geometry, the convergence of its perspective lines, the stability of its pyramidal forms, and Jesus's calm demeanor at the mathematical center of all the commotion, work together to reinforce the sense of gravity, balance, and order. The clarity and stability of this painting epitomize High Renaissance style.**

the pastoral concert (fig. 21-27)

- it has been attributed to both Giorgione and Titan although scholarly opinion today favors Titian. -B/C in Giorgione's The Tempest, the idyllic landscape, here bathed in golden, hazy, late-afternoon sunlight, seems to be one of the main subjects of the painting. - In this mythic world, two men—an aristocratic musician in rich red silks and a barefoot, singing peasant in homespun cloth—turn toward each other, seemingly unaware of the two naked women in front of them. -One woman plays a pipe and the other pours water into a well; the white drapery sliding to the ground enhances rather than hides their nudity. Perhaps they are the musicians' muses. -Behind the figures, the sunlight illuminates another shepherd and his animals near lush woodland. -The painting evokes a golden age of love and innocence recalled in ancient Roman and Italian Renaissance pastoral poetry. In fact, the painting is now interpreted as an allegory on the invention of poetry. -Both artists were renowned for painting sensuous female nudes whose bodies seem to glow with an incandescent light, inspired by flesh and blood as much as any source from poetry or art.

Fig. 21-46 Michelangelo LAST JUDGMENT, SISTINE CHAPEL

-Abandoning the clearly organized medieval conception of the Last Judgment, in which the saved are neatly separated from the damned, Michelangelo painted a writhing swarm of resurrected humanity. - At left, the dead are dragged from their graves and pushed up into a vortex of figures around Christ, who wields his arm like a sword of justice. The shrinking Virgin under Christ's raised right arm represents a change from Gothic tradition, where she had sat enthroned beside, and equal in size to, her son. -To the right of Christ's feet is St. Bartholomew, who was martyred by being skinned alive. He holds his flayed skin, and Michelangelo seems to have painted his own distorted features on the skin's face. Despite the efforts of several saints to save them, the damned are plunged toward hell on the right, leaving the elect and still-unjudged in a dazed state. -On the lowest level of the mural, right above the altar, is the gaping, fiery entrance to hell, toward which Charon, the ferryman of the dead to the underworld, propels his craft. -The painting was long interpreted as a grim and constant reminder to celebrants of the Mass—the pope and his cardinals—that ultimately they too would face stern judgment at the end of time. Conservative clergy criticized it for its nudity, and after -Michelangelo's death they ordered bits of drapery to be added by artist Daniele da Volterra to conceal the offending areas, earning Daniele the unfortunate nickname "Il Braghettone" ("breeches painter").

Fig. 21-6 Raphael THE SMALL COWPER MADONNA

-Already a superb painter technically, the youthful Raphael shows his indebtedness to his teacher in the delicate tilt of the figures' heads, the brilliant tonalities, and the pervasive sense of serenity. -But Leonardo's impact is also evident here in the simple grandeur of the monumental shapes, the pyramidal composition activated by the spiraling movement of the child, and the draperies that cling to the Virgin's substantial form. -Experimenting with the multiple-figure interactions pioneered by Leonardo in The Virgin of the Rocks (see fig. 21-2), Raphael included the young John the Baptist in other Madonnas from this period (fig. 21-7).

Mona Lisa, Leonardi Da Vinci

-Although there is lingering uncertainty, most art historians agree with the sixteenth-century Italian biographer Giorgio Vasari, who claimed that the Mona Lisa portrays Lisa di Antonio Maria Gherardini, the wife of Florentine merchant Francesco del Giocondo. -After Leonardo's death in 1519, the king purchased the Mona Lisa for Fontainebleau. Louis XIV moved it to Versailles, and Napoleon hung it in his bedroom in the Tuileries Palace. It now hangs at the Louvre. It is one of the most popular destinations for tourists visiting Paris. -The solid pyramidal form of her halflength figure—another departure from traditional portraiture, which was limited to the upper torso—is silhouetted against distant hazy mountains, giving the painting a sense of mystery reminiscent of The Virgin of the Rocks (see fig. 21-2). -The expressive complexity of Mona Lisa's smile and the sense of psychological presence it gives the face—especially in the context of the masklike detachment that was more characteristic of Renaissance portraiture (compare fig. 20-39 or even fig. 21-8)—is what makes this innovative painting so arresting and haunting, even today.

Fig. 21-42 Sofonisba Anguissola SELF-PORTRAIT

-Anguissola was a gifted portrait painter who also created miniatures, an important aspect of portraiture in the sixteenth century, when people had few means of recording the features of a lover, friend, or family member. -She painted a miniature self-portrait holding a medallion, the border of which spells out her name and hometown, Cremona (fig. 21-42). -The interlaced letters at the center of the medallion pose a riddle; they seem to form a monogram with the first letters of her sisters' names: Minerva, Europa, Elena. Such names are further evidence of the Anguissola family's enthusiasm for the Classics.

cultural/historical background of the 16th century

-At the start of the sixteenth century, England, France, and Portugal were nation-states under strong monarchs. -Italy, which was divided into numerous small states, was a diplomatic and military battlefield where for much of the century the Italian city-states, Habsburg Spain, France, and the papacy fought each other in shifting alliances. - Popes behaved like secular princes, using diplomacy and military force to regain control over central Italy and in some cases to establish family members as hereditary rulers. -People started to question religious beliefs--> Because they protested, these northern European reformers came to be called Protestants; their demand for reform gave rise to a movement called the Reformation. -The political maneuvering of Pope Clement VII (pontificate 1523-1534) led to a direct clash with Holy Roman Emperor Charles V. In May 1527, Charles's troops attacked Rome, beginning a six-month orgy of killing, looting, and burning. -The Sack of Rome, as it is called, shook the sense of stability and humanistic confidence that until then had characterized the Renaissance, and it sent many artists fleeing from the ruined city. -Charles saw himself as the leader of the Catholic forces—and he was the sole Catholic ally Clement had at the time. In 1530, Clement VII crowned Charles emperor in Bologna. - patrons valued artists highly and rewarded them well, not only with generous commissions but sometimes even with high social status. Charles V, for example, knighted the painter Titian. -people started writing books about art techniques, period, and made criticisms -many women didn't have access to studios during this time

Fig. 21-19 Michelangelo TOMB OF GIULIANO DE' MEDICI WITH ALLEGORICAL FIGURES OF NIGHT AND DAY stylistic qualities

-Each of the two monuments consists of an idealized portrait of the deceased, who turns to face the family's unfinished ancestral tomb. -The men are dressed in a sixteenth-century interpretation of Classical armor and seated in wall niches above pseudo-Classical sarcophagi. - Balanced precariously atop the sarcophagi are male and female figures representing the times of day. -Their positions would not seem so unsettling had reclining figures of river gods been installed below them, as originally planned, but even so there is a conspicuous tension here between the substantiality of the figures and the limitations imposed on them by their architectural surrounds. -In the tomb illustrated here, Michelangelo represents Giuliano as the Active Life, and his sarcophagus figures are allegories of Night and Day.

Fig. 21-28 Titian PESARO MADONNA

-He created an asymmetrical setting of huge columns on high bases soaring right out of the frame - Into this architectural setting, he placed the Virgin and Child on a high throne at one side and arranged saints and the Pesaro family below on a diagonal axis, crossing at the central figure of St. Peter -uses primary colors in drapery -cowering Turkish captive reminds the viewer of the Christian victory. -Titian was famous for his mastery of light and color, but this altarpiece demonstrates that he also could draw and model as solidly as any Florentine. -** The perfectly balanced composition, built on color and diagonals instead of a vertical and horizontal grid, looks forward to the art of the seventeenth century.

Fig. 21-33 Palladio CHURCH OF SAN GIORGIO MAGGIORE, VENICE

-His variation on the traditional Renaissance façade for a basilica—a wide lower level fronting the nave and side aisles, surmounted by a narrower front for the nave clerestory—creates the illusion of two temple fronts of different heights and widths, one set inside the other. -At the center, colossal columns on high pedestals support an entablature and pediment; these columns correspond to the width of the nave within. -Behind the taller temple front, a second front consists of pilasters supporting another entablature and pediment; this wider front spans the entire width of the church, aisles as well as nave. Although the façade was not built until after the architect's death, his original design was followed. -is a fine example of Palladio's harmoniously balanced geometry, expressed here in strong verticals and powerfully opened arches. The tall engaged columns and shorter pilasters of the nave arcade piers echo the two levels of orders on the façade, helping to unify the building's exterior and interior.

Fig. 21-22 Giulio Romano COURTYARD FAÇADE, PALAZZO DEL TÈ, MANTUA

-In Mantua, Gonzaga continued the family tradition of patronage when he lured a Roman follower of Raphael, Giulio Romano to build him a pleasure palace. -devoted more space to gardens, pools, and stables than to rooms for residential living. Since Federigo and his well-educated friends would have known Classical orders and proportions, they could appreciate the playfulness with which they are used here. -The building is full of visual jokes, such as lintels masquerading as arches and triglyphs that slip sloppily out of place. -Like the similar, if more sober, subversions of Classical architectural decorum in Michelangelo's contemporary Laurentian Library (see fig. 21-20), it's sophisticated humor and exquisite craft have been seen as a precursor to Mannerism or as a manifestation of Mannerism itself.

TOMB OF GIULIANO DE' MEDICI WITH ALLEGORICAL FIGURES OF NIGHT AND DAY (symbolism)

-Night at left is accompanied by her symbols: a star and crescent moon on her tiara; poppies, which induce sleep; and an owl under the arch of her leg. -The huge mask at her back may allude to Death, since Sleep and Death were said to be the children of Night. -Some have seen in this mask that glares out at viewers in the chapel a self-portrait of the artist, serving both as signature and as a way of proclaiming his right to be here because of his long relationship with the family. -On the other tomb, Lorenzo, representing the Contemplative Life, is supported by Dawn and Evening.

Mannerism stylistic elements

-Painters working in the Mannerist style fearlessly manipulated and distorted accepted formal conventions, creating contrived compositions and irrational spatial environments. -Figures take on elongated proportions, enigmatic gestures, dreamy expressions, and complicated, artificial poses. -The pictures are full of quoted references to the works of illustrious predecessors.

Fig. 21-29 Titian ISABELLA D'ESTE

-Isabella was past 60 when Titian portrayed her in 1534-1536, but she asked to appear as she had in her twenties. Titian was able to satisfy her wish by referring to an early portrait by another artist, but he also conveyed the mature Isabella's strength, self-confidence, and energy. -No photograph can convey the vibrancy of Titian's paint surfaces, which he built up in layers of pure colors, chiefly red, white, yellow, and black, on his canvases. - A recent scientific study of Titian's paintings revealed that he ground his pigments much finer than had earlier, wood-panel painters. -The complicated process by which he produced many of his works began with a charcoal drawing on the prime coat of lead white that was used to seal the pores and smooth the surface of the rather coarse Venetian canvas. - The artist then built up the forms with fine glazes of different colors, sometimes in as many as 15 layers. -Titian had the advantage of working in Venice, the first place to have professional retail "color sellers." -These merchants produced a wide range of specially prepared pigments, even mixing their oil paints with ground glass to increase their glowing transparency. -Not until the second half of the sixteenth century did color sellers open their shops in other cities.

Fig. 21-21 Donato Bramante IL TEMPIETTO, CHURCH OF SAN PIETRO IN MONTORIO

-Julius II asked him to redesign St. Peter's and the Spanish rulers Queen Isabella and King Ferdinand commissioned a small shrine over the spot in Rome where the apostle Peter was believed to have been crucified -In this tiny building, known as Il Tempietto ("Little Temple"), Bramante combined his interpretation of the principles of Vitruvius and Alberti, from the stepped base to the Tuscan columns and Doric frieze (Vitruvius had advised that the Doric order be used for temples to gods of particularly forceful character) to the elegant balustrade. -The centralized plan and the tall drum supporting a hemispheric dome recall Early Christian shrines built over martyrs' relics, as well as ancient Roman circular temples. -Especially notable is the sculptural effect of the building's exterior, with its deep wall niches and sharp contrasts of light and shadow. -Bramante's design called for a circular cloister around the church, but the cloister was never built.

Fig. 21-39 Parmigianino MADONNA OF THE LONG NECK

-Left unfinished at the time of his early death -The unnaturally proportioned figure of Mary, whose massive legs and lower torso contrast with her narrow shoulders and long neck and fingers, is presumably seated on a throne, but there is no seat in sight. -The languid expanse of the sleeping child recalls the pose of the ashen Christ in a pietà; indeed, there is more than a passing resemblance here to Michelangelo's famous sculpture in the Vatican, even to the inclusion of a diagonal band across the Virgin's chest (see fig. 21-14). -The plunge into a deep background to the right reveals a startlingly small St. Jerome, who unrolls a scroll in front of huge, white columns from what was to be a temple in the unfinished background, whereas at the left a crowded mass of blushing boys blocks any view into the background. -Like Pontormo, Parmigianino presents a well-known image in a challenging manner calculated to intrigue viewers.

Sisten Chapel Ceiling Michaelangelo background

-Michelangelo considered himself a sculptor, but the strong-minded pope wanted paintings; work began in 1508. -Julius's initial order for the ceiling was simple: trompe l'oeil coffers to replace the original star-spangled blue decoration. - Later he wanted the 12 apostles seated on thrones on the triangular spandrels between the lunettes framing the windows. According to Michelangelo, when he objected to the limitations of Julius's plan, the pope told him to paint whatever he liked. - he was guided by a theological advisor

Fig. 21-47 Michelangelo ST. PETER'S BASILICA, VATICAN

-Michelangelo further shocked the deputies—but not the pope—by undoing parts of Sangallo's design, then simplifying and strengthening Bramante's central plan, long associated with shrines of Christian martyrs. -Although seventeenth-century additions and renovations dramatically changed the original plan of the church and the appearance of its interior, Michelangelo's st. peter's (fig. 21-47) still can be seen in the contrasting forms of the flat and angled exterior walls and the three surviving hemicycles (semicircular structures). -Colossal pilasters, blind windows (frames without openings), and niches surround the sanctuary of the church. The current dome, erected by Giacomo della Porta in 1588-1590, retains -Michelangelo's basic design: segmented with regularly spaced ribs, seated on a high drum with pedimented windows between paired columns, and topped with a tall lantern.

Fig. 21-20 Michelangelo VESTIBULE OF THE LAURENTIAN LIBRARY

-Michelangelo was commissioned to design and also supervise construction of the new vestibule (fig. 21-20) and reading room and to spare no expense in making them both grand and ambitious. -The pope paid keen attention to the library's progress—not, he said, to verify the quality of the design, but because the project had a special interest for him. -he plays with the Classical architectural etiquette that Brunelleschi had used to create such clarity, harmony, and balance in the nave. In his vestibule, chunky columns are recessed into rectangular wall niches that can barely contain them. -They are crowded and overlapped by the aggressive lateral extension of the pediment over the door. The door itself is broken into parts, sides jutting forward as fluted pilasters that are then partially obscured by the frame around the opening. -The three flights of stairs leading up to the reading room almost fill the vestibule, and the central stairs cascade forward forcefully toward visitors, who are hardly encouraged to go against the flow and step up. -Through their playfulness, these creative combinations of architectural forms draw attention to themselves and their design rather than the function of the building itself or the comfortable accommodation of its users, prime characteristics of the Mannerist architecture then coming into fashion.

Fig. 21-14 Michelangelo PIETÀ

-Michelangelo's major early work at the turn of the century was a marble sculpture of the pietà commissioned by a French cardinal and installed as a tomb monument in Old St. Peter's (fig. 21-14). -The theme of the pietà (in which the Virgin supports and mourns the dead Jesus in her lap), long popular in northern Europe (see fig. 18-24), was an unusual theme in Italy at the time. -Michelangelo's Virgin is a young woman of heroic stature holding the unnaturally smaller, lifeless body of her grown son. Inconsistencies of scale and age are forgotten, however, when contemplating the sweetness of expression, technical virtuosity of the carving, and smooth interplay of the forms. -Michelangelo's compelling vision of beauty was meant to be seen up close so that the viewer can look directly into Jesus's face. -The 25-year-old artist is said to have slipped into the church at night to sign the statue on a strap across the Virgin's breast after it was finished, answering directly questions that had come up about the identity of its creator.

Fig. 21-18 Michelangelo CREATION OF ADAM, SISTINE CHAPEL CEILING

-Perhaps the most familiar scene on the ceiling is the creation of adam (fig. 21-18), where Michelangelo captures the moment when God charges the languorous Adam—in a pose adapted from the Roman river-god type—with the spark of life. - As if to echo the biblical text, Adam's heroic body, outstretched arm, and profile almost mirror those of God, in whose image he has been created. -Emerging under God's other arm and looking across him in the direction of her future mate is the robust and energetic figure of Eve before her creation.

Fig. 21-12 Raphael and assistants CARTOON FOR TAPESTRY PORTRAYING CHRIST'S CHARGE TO PETER

-Raphael changes Christ's gesture so that he addresses the kneeling Peter specifically rather than the whole apostolic group; for the patron, this would be an important detail since papal power rested in the belief that Christ had transferred authority to Peter, who was considered the first pope, with subsequent popes inheriting this authority in unbroken succession. -Comparison of drawing and cartoon also reveals an important aspect of the design process. The cartoon reverses the figural arrangement of the drawing because in the production process the tapestry would be woven from the back—so the weavers would need to follow a reversed version of the original drawing in order to come out with the intended orientation for the resulting tapestry

Fig. 21-9 Raphael STANZA DELLA SEGNATURA

-Raphael left Florence about 1508 for Rome, where Pope Julius II put him to work almost immediately decorating rooms (stanze, singular stanza) in the papal apartments. -In the Stanza della Segnatura (fig. 21-9)—the pope's private library and study—Raphael painted the four branches of knowledge as conceived in the sixteenth century: - Religion (the Disputà, depicting discussions concerning the true presence of Christ in the Eucharistic Host), Philosophy (The School of Athens, to the right in fig. 21-9), Poetry (Parnassus, home of the Muses, to the left in fig. 21-9), and Law (the Cardinal Virtues under a figure of Justice).

Fig. 21-41 Bronzino ALLEGORY WITH VENUS AND CUPID

-Taken as individual images, the figures display the exaggerated poses, graceful forms, polished surfaces, and delicate colors that characterize Mannerist art. But a closer look into this composition uncovers disturbing erotic attachments and bizarre irregularities. -Cupid gently kisses his mother and pinches her erect nipple while she snatches an arrow from his quiver, leading some scholars to suggest that the painting's title should be Venus Disarming Cupid. -In the shadows to the left, a pale and screaming man tearing at his hair has recently been identified as a victim of syphilis, which raged as an epidemic during this period. -The painting could be a warning of the dangers of this disease, believed in the sixteenth century to be spread principally by coitus, kissing, and breast feeding, all of which are alluded to in the intertwined Cupid and Venus. -Perhaps the allegory tells of the impossibility of constant love and the folly of lovers, which becomes apparent across time. Or perhaps it is a warning of the dangers of illicit sexual liaisons, including the pain, hair loss, and disfiguration of venereal disease. It could be both, and even more.

Northern Italy Renaissance

-The architects and painters working for these sixteenth-century patrons created fanciful structures and developed a new colorful, illusionistic painting style. -The result was witty, elegant, and finely executed art designed to appeal to the jaded taste of the intellectual elite in cities such as Mantua, Parma, Bologna, and Venice.

Virgin of the Rocks, Leonardo Da Vinci 21-2

-The contract stipulated a painting of the Virgin and Child with angels, but Leonardo added a figure of the young John the Baptist, who balances the composition at the left, pulled into dialogue with his younger cousin Jesus by the long, protective arm of the Virgin. -She draws attention to her child by extending her other hand over his head, while the enigmatic figure of the angel—who looks out without actually making eye contact with the viewer—points to the center of interaction. - **The stable, balanced, pyramidal figural group—a compositional formula that will become a standard feature of High Renaissance Classicism—is set against an exquisitely detailed landscape that dissolves mysteriously into the misty distance. -To assure their dominance in the picture, Leonardo picks out the four figures with spotlights, creating a strong chiaroscuro that enhances their modeling as three-dimensional forms. -This painting is an excellent early example of a specific variant of this technique, called sfumato ("smoky"), in which there are subtle, almost imperceptible, transitions between light and dark in shading. -Sfumato became a hallmark of Leonardo's style, although the effect is artificially enhanced in this painting by the yellowing of its thick varnish, which masks the original vibrancy of its color.

Fig. 21-48A Vignola and Giacomo della Porta FAÇADE OF THE CHURCH OF IL GESÙ, ROME

-The design also allows the building to fit compactly into a city block—a requirement that now often overrode the desire to orient a church along an east-west axis. -The symmetrical façade, in Vignola's original design as well as della Porta's variation on it, emphasized the central portal with Classical pilasters, engaged columns and pediments, and volutes scrolling out laterally to hide the buttresses of the central vault and link the tall central section with the lower sides. -As finally built by Giacomo della Porta, the façade design had significant influence well into the next century. The early Renaissance grid of Classical pilasters and entablatures was abandoned for a two-story design that coordinates paired columns or pilasters, aligned vertically to tie together the two stories of the central block, which corresponds with the nave elevation. -The main entrance, with its central portal aligned with a tall upper-story window, became the focus of the composition. Centrally aligned pediments break into the level above, leading the eye upward to the cartouches with coats of arms—here of both Cardinal Farnese, the patron, and the Jesuits (whose arms display the initials IHS, the monogram of Christ).

Fig. 21-23 Giulio Romano FALL OF THE GIANTS

-The other room is a remarkable feat of trompe l'oeil painting in which the entire building seems to be collapsing around the viewer as the gods defeat the giants (fig. 21-23). -Here, Giulio Romano accepted the challenge Andrea Mantegna had laid down in the Camera Picta of the Gonzaga Palace (see fig. 20-40), painted for Federigo's grandfather: to dissolve architectural barriers and fantasize a world of playful delight beyond the walls and ceilings. But the Palazzo del Te was not just fun and games. -The unifying themes were love and politics, the former focused on the separate apartments built to house Federigo's mistress, Isabella Boschetti. -The palace was constructed in part as a place where they could meet beyond the watchful gaze of her husband, but the decoration also seems to reflect Federigo's dicey alliance with Charles V, who stayed in the palace in 1530 and again in 1532, when the scaffolding was removed from the Sala dei Giganti so the emperor could see the paintings in progress. -He must have been impressed with his host's lavish new residence, and doubtless he saw a connection between these reeling paintings and his own military successes.

Fig. 21-40 Bronzino PORTRAIT OF ELEONORA OF TOLEDO AND HER SON GIOVANNI DE' MEDICI

-Typical is an elegantly restrained state portrait of 1545 portraying Cosimo's wife, eleonora of toledo (1522-1562), and their second son, Giovanni de' Medici (fig. 21-40). - Bronzino characteristically portrays this mother and son as aloof and self-assured, their class and connection much more prominent than any sense of individual likeness or personality. -This double portrait is an iconic embodiment of dynastic power and an assurance of Medici succession. Giovanni, however, did not succeed his father as duke—that path was taken by his elder brother Francesco. - Instead he pursued a fast-tracked career in the Church. Already archbishop of Pisa as a teenager, he became a cardinal in 1560 at age 17, only two years before both he and his mother died of malaria.

Fig. 21-25 Properzia de' Rossi JOSEPH AND POTIPHAR'S WIFE

-Very few women had the opportunity to become sculptors. Properzia de' Rossi (c. 1490-1529/1530), who lived in Bologna, was an exception. She mastered many arts, including engraving, and was famous for her miniature sculptures, including an entire Last Supper carved on a peach pit. -She carved several pieces in marble—two sibyls, two angels, and this relief—for the Cathedral of San Petronio in Bologna (fig. 21-25). -According to Vasari, it was inspired by Properzia's own love for a young man, which she got over by carving this panel. Joseph escapes, running, as the partially clad seductress snatches at his cloak. -Properzia is the only woman Vasari included in the 1550 edition of Lives of the Artists; he wrote that a rival male sculptor prevented her from being paid fairly for this piece and from securing additional commissions.

Fig. 21-43 Lavinia Fontana NOLI ME TANGERE

-While still in her twenties we she painted this -depicts where Christ reveals himself for the first time to Mary Magdalen following his Resurrection, warning her not to touch him (John 20:17). -Christ's broad-brimmed hat and spade refer to the passage in John's Gospel claiming that Mary Magdalen at first thought Christ was the gardener. -In the middle distance Fontana portrays a second version of the Resurrection, where women followers of Christ discover an angel in his empty tomb. -This secondary scene's dizzying diagonal plunge into depth is a typical feature of late Mannerist painting in Italy, as are the affected pose of the foreground Christ and the elongated proportions of Mary Magdalen.

Fig. 21-24 Correggio ASSUMPTION OF THE VIRGIN

-a fresco painted between about 1526 and 1530 in the cathedral's dome, distantly recalls the illusionism of Mantegna's ceiling in the Gonzaga Palace, but Correggio has also assimilated Leonardo da Vinci's use of sfumato and Raphael's idealism into his own style. -Correggio's Assumption is a dazzling illusion—the architecture of the dome seems to dissolve and the forms seem to explode through the building, drawing viewers into the swirling vortex of saints and angels who rush upward amid billowing clouds to accompany the Virgin as she soars into heaven. -Correggio's sensual rendering of the figures' flesh and clinging draperies contrasts with the spirituality of the theme (the miraculous transporting of the Virgin to heaven at the moment of her death). -The viewer's strongest impression is of a powerful, upward-spiraling motion of alternating cool clouds and warm, alluring figures.

Fig. 21-44 Benvenuto Cellini SALTCELLAR OF KING FRANCIS I OF FRANCE

-a table accessory transformed into an elegant sculptural ornament by fanciful imagery and superb execution. -In gold and enamel, the Roman sea god Neptune, representing the source of salt, sits next to a tiny, boat-shaped container for the seasoning, while a personification of Earth guards the plant-derived pepper contained in the triumphal arch to her right. - Representations of the seasons and the times of day on the base refer to both daily meal schedules and festive seasonal celebrations. -The two main figures lean away from each other at impossible angles yet are connected and visually balanced by glance, gestures, and coordinated poses—mirroring each other with one bent and one straight leg. -Their supple, elongated bodies and small heads reflect the Mannerist conventions of artists like Parmigianino*

Fig. 21-26 Giorgione THE TEMPEST

-a woman is seated on the ground, nude except for the end of a long white cloth thrown over her shoulders. Her nudity seems maternal, her sensuality generative rather than erotic, as she nurses the baby protectively and lovingly embraced at her side. - Across the dark, rocky edge of her elevated perch stands a mysterious man, variously interpreted as a German mercenary soldier and as an urban dandy wandering in the country. -His shadowed head turns in the direction of the woman, but he only appears to have paused for a moment before turning back toward the viewer or resuming his journey along the path. X-rays of the painting show that Giorgione altered the composition while he was still working on the painting—the man replaced a second nude woman who was bathing. -Between the figures, a spring gushes to feed a lake surrounded by substantial houses, and in the far distance a bolt of lightning splits the darkening sky. Indeed, the artist's attention seems focused as much on the landscape and the unruly elements of nature as on the figures posed within it. -Some interpreters have seen references to the Classical elements of water, earth, air, and fire in the lake, the verdant ground, the billowing clouds, and the lightning bolt.

Sisten Chapel Ceiling stylistic elements

-an illusionistic marble architecture establishes a framework for the figures and narrative scenes on the vault of the chapel -Running completely around the ceiling is a painted cornice with projections supported by pilasters decorated with "sculptured" putti. Between the pilasters are figures of prophets and sibyls (female seers from the Classical world) who were believed to have foretold Jesus's birth. -Seated on the fictive cornice are heroic figures of nude young men called ignudi (singular, ignudo), holding sashes attached to large gold medallions. -Rising behind the ignudi, shallow bands of fictive stone span the center of the ceiling and divide it into nine compartments containing successive scenes from Genesis—recounting the Creation, the Fall, and the Flood—beginning over the altar and ending near the chapel entrance. - God's earliest acts of creation are therefore closest to the altar, the Creation of Eve at the center of the ceiling, followed by the imperfect actions of humanity: Temptation, Fall, Expulsion from Paradise, and God's eventual destruction of all people except Noah and his family by the Flood. -The eight triangular spandrels over the windows, as well as the lunettes crowning them, contain paintings of the ancestors of Jesus.

Fig. 21-30 Titian "VENUS" OF URBINO

-beautiful Venetian courtesan with deliberately provocative gestures, stretching languidly on her couch in a spacious palace, her glowing flesh and golden hair set off by white sheets and pillows. - But for its original audience, art historian Rona Goffen has argued, the painting was more about marriage than mythology or seductiveness. -The multiple matrimonial references in this work include the pair of cassoni (see fig. 20-30) where servants are removing or storing the woman's clothing in the background, the bridal symbolism of the myrtle and roses she holds in her hand, and even the spaniel snoozing at her feet—a traditional symbol of fidelity and domesticity, especially when sleeping so peacefully. -It seems to represent neither a Roman goddess nor a Venetian courtesan, but a bride welcoming her husband into their lavish bedroom.

Fig. 21-38 Pontormo DEPOSITION

-depicts the annunciation -Painters working in the Mannerist style fearlessly manipulated and distorted accepted formal conventions, creating contrived compositions and irrational spatial environments. -Figures take on elongated proportions, enigmatic gestures, dreamy expressions, and complicated, artificial poses. -The pictures are full of quoted references to the works of illustrious predecessors such as Micheangelo -Odd poses and drastic shifts in scale charge the scene emotionally, but perhaps most striking is the use of strange colors in unusual combinations—baby blue and pink with accents of olive green, yellow, and scarlet. -The overall tone of the picture is set by the unstable youth crouching in the foreground, whose skintight bright pink shirt is shaded in iridescent, pale gray-blue, and whose anxious expression projects out of the painting, directly at the viewer.

Mannerism

-developed into an anti-Classical movement in which artificiality, grace, and elegance took priority over the ordered balance and lifelike references that were hallmarks of High Renaissance art. -Patrons favored esoteric subjects, displays of extraordinary technical virtuosity, and the pursuit of beauty for its own sake. -Painters and sculptors quoted from ancient and modern works of art in the same self-conscious manner that contemporary poets and authors were quoting from ancient and modern literary classics. -Architects working in the Mannerist style designed buildings that defied uniformity and balance and used Classical orders in unconventional, even playful, ways.

Fig. 21-8 Raphael AGNELO DONI AND MADDALENA STROZZI

-flawlessly executed portraits of prosperous Florentine patrons like the 30-year-old cloth merchant Agnelo Doni, who commissioned pendant portraits (fig. 21-8) to commemorate his marriage in 1504 to Maddalena Strozzi, the 15-year-old daughter of a powerful banking family. -As Piero della Francesca had done in his portraits of Battista Sforza and Federico da Montefeltro (see fig. 20-39), Raphael silhouettes Maddalena and Agnelo against a meticulously described panoramic landscape. -But unlike his predecessors, Raphael turned his subjects to address the viewer. Agnelo is commanding but casual, leaning his arm on a balustrade to add three-dimensionality to his posture. -Maddalena's pose imitates Leonardo's innovative presentation of his subject in the Mona Lisa (see fig. 21-1), which Raphael had obviously seen in progress. -But with Maddalena there is no sense of mystery, indeed little psychological presence, and Raphael follows tradition in emphasizing the sumptuousness of her clothing and making ostentatious display of her jewelry.

High Renaissance Art

-is characterized by a sense of gravity and decorum, a complex but ordered relationship of individual parts to the whole, and an emulation of the principles artists saw in ancient Classical art. -Art historian Sydney Freedberg has stressed the way High Renaissance art fuses the real and the ideal, characterizing -Leonardo's Mona Lisa, for example, as "a rare perfection between art and reality; an image in which a breathing instant and a composure for all time are held in suspension" (Freedberg, p. 28).

Fig. 21-32 Tintoretto THE LAST SUPPER

-is quite different from Leonardo da Vinci's painting of the same subject almost a century earlier - Instead of Leonardo's frontal view of a closed and logical space with massive figures reacting in individual ways to Jesus's statement, Tintoretto views the scene from a corner, with the vanishing point on a high horizon line at far right. -The table, coffered ceiling, and inlaid floor all seem to plunge dramatically into the distance. The figures, although still large bodies modeled by flowing draperies, turn and move in a continuous serpentine line that unites apostles, servants, and angels. - Tintoretto used two internal light sources: one real, the other supernatural. Over the near end of the table, light streams from the oil lamp flaring exuberantly, with angels swirling out from the flame and smoke. - A second light emanates from Jesus himself and is repeated in the glow of the apostles' haloes. The intensely spiritual, otherworldly mood is enhanced by deep colors flashed with dazzling highlights on elongated figures, consistent with Mannerist tendencies. -Homey details like the still lifes on the tables and the cat in the foreground connect with viewers' own experiences. -And the narrative emphasis has shifted from Leonardo's more worldly study of personal betrayal to Tintoretto's reference to the institution of the Eucharist. -Jesus offers bread and wine to a disciple in the same way that a priest would administer the sacrament at the altar next to the painting.

art of the High Renaissance characteristics

-the young Michelangelo's sketches of the chapel frescos document the importance of Masaccio to his developing style. -In fact, Leonardo, Michelangelo, and Raphael—the three leading artists of the High Renaissance—all worked in Florence early in their careers, although they soon moved to other centers of patronage and their influence spread well beyond that city, even beyond Italy. -Two important practical developments at the turn of the sixteenth century affected the arts in Italy. Technically, the use of tempera had almost completely given way to the more flexible oil painting medium; and economically, with increasing commissions from private sources, artists no longer depended so heavily on the patronage of the Church, the court, or civic associations.

Raphael's tapestries

The tapestries themselves, although still in the Vatican, are displayed in the museum rather than on the walls of the chapel for which they were originally conceived, as one of the most prestigious artistic projects from the peak of the Roman High Renaissance.

What makes the Mona Lisa unique?

This was an unusual portrait for its time. Leonardo abandoned the long-standing Italian tradition of painting wealthy wives in profile view, wearing the sumptuous clothing and jewelry that signified their status and their husbands' wealth (see figs. 20-26, 20-39). Mona Lisa seems to be the likeness of a specific woman who turns with calm assurance to engage viewers, hands relaxed in her lap. Her expression has been called enigmatic. It hides rather than reveals her thoughts and personality, and it lacks the warmth one expects to see in her eyes, which have shifted to the side to look straight out at us. The psychological complexity Leonardo has given to this face may explain the spell it has cast over viewers.