16th Century Art in Italy and Northern Europe

Notes on Mannerism

Mannerism, Italian Manierismo, (from maniera, "manner," or "style"), artistic style that predominated in Italy from the end of the High Renaissance in the 1520s to the beginnings of the Baroque style around 1590. The Mannerist style originated in Florence and Rome and spread to northern Italy and, ultimately, to much of central and northern Europe. The term was first used around the end of the 18th century by the Italian archaeologist Luigi Lanzi to define 16th-century artists who were the followers of major Renaissance masters. Mannerism originated as a reaction to the harmonious classicism and the idealized naturalism of High Renaissance art as practiced by Leonardo, Michelangelo, and Raphael in the first two decades of the 16th century. In the portrayal of the human nude, the standards of formal complexity had been set by Michelangelo, and the norm of idealized beauty by Raphael. But in the work of these artists' Mannerist successors, an obsession with style and technique in figural composition often outweighed the importance and meaning of the subject matter. The highest value was instead placed upon the apparently effortless solution of intricate artistic problems, such as the portrayal of the nude in complex and artificial poses. Mannerist artists evolved a style that is characterized by artificiality and artiness, by a thoroughly self-conscious cultivation of elegance and technical facility, and by a sophisticated indulgence in the bizarre. The figures in Mannerist works frequently have graceful but queerly elongated limbs, small heads, and stylized facial features, while their poses seem difficult or contrived. The deep, linear perspectival space of High Renaissance painting is flattened and obscured so that the figures appear as a decorative arrangement of forms in front of a flat background of indeterminate dimensions. Mannerists sought a continuous refinement of form and concept, pushing exaggeration and contrast to great limits. The results included strange and constricting spatial relationships, jarring juxtapositions of intense and unnatural colours, an emphasis on abnormalities of scale, a sometimes totally irrational mix of classical motifs and other visual references to the antique, and inventive and grotesque pictorial fantasies.

Characteristics of Raphael

When Raphael arrived in Florence late in 1504, it must have been evident to him that his Peruginesque style was dated and provincial compared with the recent innovations of Michelangelo and Leonardo da Vinci. It was to the latter's work that he was temperamentally more attracted, and during the next 3 years he executed a series of Madonnas that adapted and elaborated compositions and ideas of Leonardo's, culminating in La Belle jardinie‧re (1507). Here Raphael's own artistic personality was somewhat submerged in his fervent examination of the principles of Leonardesque design, modeling, and expressive depth. Raphael adopted Leonardo's sfumato modeling and characteristic pyramidal composition, yet the essential sense of clarity deriving from his 15th-century classical background was not undermined. It was principally, however, Michelangelo's Battle of Cascina rather than Leonardo's companion piece, the Battle of Anghiari, that provided the dramatic ideas used by Raphael in his most ambitious Florentine work, the Entombment (1507). But perhaps unable yet to understand entirely the imaginative power of Michelangelo's works from which he borrowed, Raphael here failed to combine the figures, expressions, and emotions with the unforced balance and harmony of his later narrative works. In portraiture Raphael's development follows the same pattern. His earliest portraits closely resemble those of Perugino, whereas in Florence Leonardo's Mona Lisa was a basic influence, as can be seen in the portraits of Agnolo and Maddalena Doni (1505). Raphael adapted Leonardo's majestic design as late as 1517 in the portrait of Baldassare Castiglione, which, like most of his finest portraits, is of a close friend. Castiglione is portrayed with great psychological subtlety, a gentle, scholarly face perfectly suited to the man, who in The Courtier defined the qualities of the ideal gentleman. Descriptions of Raphael's urbane good humor and courteous behavior in fact recall the very qualities that Castiglione wished to find in his perfect courtier. So Bramantesque is the architecture of the School of Athens that it seems probable that Raphael was working with Donato Bramante as early as 1509, perhaps in preparation for his succession to the post of capomastro of the rebuilding of St. Peter's after Bramante's death in 1514. During the next 6 years, however, progress on St. Peter's was very slow, and his only contribution seems to have been the projected addition of a nave to Bramante's centrally planned design. As early as the Marriage of the Virgin (1504), Raphael's painted architecture shows the pure classical spirit epitomized in Bramante's Tempietto at St. Pietro in Montorio, Rome (1502). This same unadorned structural clarity characterizes Raphael's first architectural work, the chapellike St. Eligio degli Orefici, Rome, designed in collaboration with Bramante (1509). The Chigi Chapel in St. Maria del Popolo, Rome (ca. 1512-1513), however, shows a much more ornate decorative idiom, although structurally it is almost identical with S. Eligio. A similar development in richness of texture and detailing can be seen between Raphael's two Roman palaces. The Palazzo Vidoni-Caffarelli is directly dependent on Bramante's so-called House of Raphael, but the richly ornamented facade decoration of the Palazzo Branconio dell'Aquila (ca. 1520; destroyed) is essentially unstructural. As in Raphael's last paintings, the tendency in these late architectural projects is toward a form of mannerism and away from the serene classicism of Bramante. At the time of his death in Rome on Good Friday, 1520, at the age of 37, Raphael's art was developing in new directions, paralleled in his own very different way by Michelangelo in his Medici Chapel sculptures. The zenith of classical harmony and grandeur, reached about 1510, had passed, and it was left to Raphael's pupils to interpret and exploit the trends toward mannerism in the last works of their great master.

Characteristics of Venetian Renaissance vs. Roman/Florentine (pg 654-659)

Painterly. Soft edges and strong mark making approach with impasto paint and a flurry of brushwork. The softer fluffier brushwork became known as 'poesy' or visual poetry & grew more popular in the Baroque & Rococo periods that followed. Roman & Florentine Painting could be characterized by the use of...precise contours & separated delineated elements and techniques like Diseno, as employed by Michelangelo The themes and thinking behind Roman & Florentine Painting focused mainly on intellectual matters, mathematical and philosophical perspectives on Art Roman & Florentine Art was heavily influenced by Brunelleschi's invention of perspective & the writings of Vitruvius & Alberti on the correct classical proportions of buildings & figures Venetian art was more influenced by Northern Rennaissance's technical innovations They used oil paint more used & the camera obscura to observe the scene & project the light. The venetians, however invented canvas which better suited the damper climate than fresco. Venetian art had a greater pan-European influence on later developments in art e.g. Impressionism and the focus on capturing the effects of light & mark making Venetians painted on canvas which was portable & could be traded or looted e.g. Napoleon brought many masterpieces to France when he invaded Northern Italy. The many Northern Italian artworks displayed in The Louvre proved to be very influential on French 19th & 20th century painting

Characteristics of Michelangelo

The artist's dislike for painting is plainly illustrated in the fact that he found it to be opposed to his chosen art form. Even in his seventies, Michelangelo suggested to Benedetto Varchi, in response to Varchi's study of the relative merits of painting and sculpture, that "painting seems to me more to be held good the more it approaches sculpture, and sculpture to be held bad the more it approaches painting: and therefore I used to think that sculpture was the lantern to painting, and that between the one and the other was that difference which there is between the sun and the moon." In spite of his dismissive attitude toward painting, Michelangelo proved to be a gifted painter of sacred art. In fact, he surpassed his contemporaries in expressive intensity and skill to become the reluctant visionary of Italian Renaissance painting.

Characteristics of Leonardo DaVinci

Throughout his years (1452-1519), Leonardo da Vinci employed a variety of techniques from painting on a dry stone wall to using wet plaster depending on the work surface he was commissioned to paint. Leonardo da Vinci typically painted with oil paint that he made by hand from ground pigments; later in his career, he worked with tempera made from egg whites. His work surface typically would be a canvas or board, or sometimes stone when painting a mural. As da Vinci began a painting, he would start by covering the canvas with a pale gray or brown, using the neutral color for underpainting. Atop of the underpainting, da Vinci would layer transparent glazes within a small range of tones. Typically, the colors used were natural hues; da Vinci never used intense or bold colors or tints in contrasting colors. By using such a small range of colors, he was able to give his finished works a more cohesive appearance. Palette colors The Leonardo da Vinci painting technique used natural hues that were muted in intensity. Most often, his works used blues, browns and greens in accordance to the earth itself. He also incorporated neutral grays, typically for underpainting. Glazes Leonardo incorporated glazes using the da Vinci painting technique of sfumato. Meaning "like smoke," smufato consists of applying dark glazes in place of blunt colors to add a depth that could not be achieved otherwise. Leonardo da Vinci is quoted wiexplained how he created compound colors by painting a transparent colour over th saying that "when a transparent color lies over another color differing from it. This technique created what he described as a , a compound color that is composed of, but which differs from, each of the simple colors." Techniques Used to Create His Great Works of Art One of his most well-known paintings, the Mona Lisa, displays some of the techniques used by da Vinci in its grandeur. For instance, the use of sfumato gave the painting an illusion of somberness and mystery, while his choice of color palette reflects why her lips and eyes are so pale. In The Last Supper, da Vinci used tempera over an underpainting made from ground pigments called gesso, which caused the painting to become almost unrecognizable 100 years later. He also painted directly on the stone wall surface rather than painting on wet plaster, as was the norm, which means it is not a true fresco painting. About Leonardo da Vinci Leonardo da Vinci is easily recognized as one of the greatest painters the world has ever known. Some of his most famous paintings include the Mona Lisa, The Last Supper and the Vitruvian Man. Known as the true Renaissance Man, da Vinci was also an inventor as noted by his collections of sketches of mechanics that would take centuries to come to fruition. He was also known for being a chronic procrastinator. For those interested in learning from the Italian artist, it is imperative to study the da Vinci painting technique. An artist of the Old Style, very few of his paintings exist today, totaling a dozen or so, because of his revolutionary (albeit often destructive) techniques. However, from the surviving da Vinci paintings we are able to understand a little more about how to paint in his style.