Art 206

counter reformation Italy

Although in the 16th century the Roman Catholic Church launched the Counter-Reformation in response to—and as a challenge to—the Protestant Reformation, the considerable appeal of Protestantism continued to preoccupy the popes throughout the 17th century. The Treaty of Westphalia (see page 732) in 1648 formally recognized the principle of religious freedom, serving to validate Protestantism, predominantly in the German states. With the Catholic Church as the leading art patron in 17th-century Italy, the aim of much of Italian Baroque art was to restore Roman Catholicism's predominance and centrality. The Council of Trent, one 16th-century Counter-Reformation initiative, firmly resisted Protestant objections to using images in religious worship, insisting on their necessity for teaching the laity (see "The Council of Trent," page 642). Baroque art and architecture in Italy, especially in Rome, embodied the renewed energy of the Counter-Reformation and the papacy's zeal to communicate the Catholic message to the populace. MADERNO AND SAINT PETER'S The drama inherent in Santa Susanna's facade appealed to Pope Paul V (r. 1605-1621), who commissioned Maderno in 1606 to complete Saint Peter's in Rome. As the symbolic seat of the papacy, the church that Constantine originally built over the first pope's tomb (see page 243) was the very emblem of Western Christendom. In light of Counter-Reformation concerns, the Baroque popes wanted to conclude the already century-long rebuilding project and reap the prestige embodied in the mammoth new church.

Donatello, David

Another was the revival of the freestanding nude statue. The first Renaissance sculp- tor to portray the nude male figure in statuary was Donatello. He probably cast his bronze David (fig. 21-11) sometime between 1440 and 1460 for display in the courtyard (fig. 21-36) of the Medici palace in Florence. In the Middle Ages, the clergy regarded nude statues as both indecent and idolatrous, and, as noted in the opening discussion of Birth of Venus (page 581), nudity in general appeared only rarely in medieval art—and then only in biblical or moralizing contexts, such as the story of Adam and Eve or depictions of sinners in Hell. With David, Donatello reinvented the classical nude. His subject, however, was not a Greco-Roman god, hero, or athlete but the youthful biblical slayer of Goliath who had become the symbol of the Florentine Republic—and therefore an ideal choice of sub- ject for the residence of the most powerful family in Florence. The Medici were aware of Donatello's earlier David in Florence's town he invoking of classical poses and for- mats also appealed to the Medici as humanists. Donatello's David possesses both the relaxed classical contrapposto stance and the proportions and sensuous beauty of the gods that Praxiteles portrayed in his statues (fig. 5-63). These quali- ties were, not surprisingly, absent from medieval figures—and they are also lacking, for different reasons, in Donatello's depiction of the aged Mary Magdalene. The contrast between the sculptor's David and his Penitent Mary Magda- lene (fig. 21-11A) demonstrates the extraordinary versatility of this Florentine master.

Giotto di Bondone, Madonna Enthroned

MADONNA ENTHRONED On nearly the same great scale as Cima- bue's enthroned Madonna (fig. 14-6) is Giotto's panel (fig. 14-8) depicting the same subject, painted for the high altar of Florence's Church of the Ognissanti (All Saints). Although still portrayed against the traditional gold background, Giotto's Madonna sits on her Gothic throne with the unshakable stability of an ancient marble goddess (compare fig. 7-30). Giotto replaced Cimabue's slender Virgin, fragile beneath the thin ripplings of her drapery, with a weighty, queenly mother. In Giotto's painting, the Madonna's body is not lost—indeed, it is asserted. Giotto even showed Mary's breasts pressing through the thin fabric of her white undergarment. Gold highlights have disappeared from her heavy robe. Giotto aimed instead to construct a figure with substance, dimensionality, and bulk—qualities suppressed in favor of a spiritual immateriality in Byzantine and Italo-Byzantine art. The different approaches of teacher and pupil can also be seen in the angels flanking the Madon- na's throne. Cimabue stacked his angels to fill the full height of the panel. Giotto's angels stand on a common level, leaving a large blank area above the heads of the background figures. Works painted in the new style portray statuesque figures projecting into the light and creating the illusion that they could throw shadows. Giotto's Madonna Enthroned marks the end of medieval painting in Italy and the beginning of a new naturalistic approach to art.

Martin Schongauer, Saint Anthony Tormented by Demons

MARTIN SCHONGAUER The woodcut medium hardly had matured when printmakers introduced the technique of engraving (see "Engraving and Etching," page 578). Begun in the 1430s and well developed by 1450, engraving proved much more flexible than woodcut. Predictably, in the second half of the century, engraving began to replace the woodcut process for making both book illus- trations and widely popular single prints. Not surprisingly, many of the earliest engravers were professional gold- smiths, who easily applied their training to the new art form. Martin Schongauer (ca. 1430-1491) of Colmar, a painter and the son of a goldsmith, was the most skilled and subtle northern European master of metal engraving. His Saint Anthony Tormented by Demons (fig. 20-23) shows both the versatility of the medium and the artist's mastery of it. The stoic saint is caught in a revolving thornbush of spiky demons, who claw and tear at him furiously. With unsurpassed skill and subtlety, Schongauer incised lines of varying thickness and density into a metal plate and created marvelous distinc- tions of tonal values and textures—from smooth skin to rough cloth, from the furry and feathery to the hairy and scaly. The use of cross- hatching (sets of engraved lines at right angles) to describe forms, which Schongauer probably developed, became standard among German graphic artists. The Italians preferred parallel hatching (fig. 21-29) and rarely adopted cross-hatching, which, in keeping with the general Northern Renaissance approach to art, tends to describe the surfaces of things rather than their underlying structures. Schongauer probably engraved Saint Anthony around the year 1480. By then, the political geography of Europe had changed dra- matically. Charles the Bold, who had assumed the title of duke of Burgundy in 1467, died in 1477, bringing to an end the Burgundian dream of forming a strong middle kingdom between France and the Holy Roman Empire. After Charles's death at the battle of Nancy, the French monarchy reabsorbed the southern Burgundian lands, and the Netherlands passed to the Holy Roman Empire by virtue of the dynastic marriage of Charles's daughter, Mary of Bur- gundy (fig. 20-17), to Maximilian of Habsburg, inaugurating a new political and artistic era in northern Europe (see page 676). The next two chapters, however, explore Italian developments in painting, sculpture, and architecture during the 15th and 16th centuries.

Nanni di Banco, Four Crowned Saints

Nanni's sculptural group, Four Crowned Saints (fig. 21-4), is an early Renaissance attempt to solve the problem of integrating figures and architecture on a monumental scale. The artist's positioning of the figures, which stand in a niche that is in but confers some sepa- ration from the wall, furthered the gradual emergence of sculpture from its architectural setting. This process began with works such as the 13th-century statues (fig. 13-24) on the jambs of the west facade portals of Reims Cathedral. At Or San Michele, the niche's spatial recess presented Nanni di Banco with a dramatic new possibility for the interrelationship of the figures. By placing them in a semicircle within their deep niche and relating them to one another by their postures and gestures, the Quattrocento sculptor arrived at a unified spatial composition. A remarkable psychological unity also connects these unyielding figures, whose bearing expresses the discipline and integrity necessary to face adversity. As the figure on the right speaks, pointing to his right, the two men opposite listen, and the one next to him (carved from the same block of marble) looks out into space, pondering the meaning of the words and reinforcing the formal cohe- sion of the figural group with psychological cross-references. Four Crowned Saints, consistent with the renewed interest in ancient statues, also reveals Nanni's close study of Roman portraits. The emotional intensity of the faces of the two inner saints owes much to the extraordinarily moving portrayals in stone of third-century Roman emperors (figs. 7-66 and 7-66A), and the bearded heads of the outer saints make evident Nanni's familiarity with second-century imperial portraiture (figs. 7-57 and 7-57A). Renaissance artists seek- ing to portray individual personalities often turned to ancient Roman models for inspiration, but they did not simply copy them. Rather, they strove to interpret or offer commentary on their classical models in the manner of humanist scholars dealing with classical texts.

Bonaventure Berlinghieri, Saint Francis Altarpiece

Painted in 1235 using tempera on wood panel the altarpiece honors Saint Francis of Assisi, whose most important shrine (fig. 14-5A) was at Assisi itself. The Pescia altarpiece highlights the increasingly prominent role of religious orders in late medieval Italy (see "The Great Schism, Mendicant Orders, and Confraternities," above). Saint Francis's Franciscan order worked diligently to impress on the public the saint's valuable example and to demonstrate the order's commitment to teaching and to alleviating suffering. Berlinghieri's altarpiece, painted only nine years after Francis's death, is the earliest securely dated representation of the saint. Berlinghieri depicted Francis wearing the costume later adopted by all Franciscan monks: a coarse clerical robe tied at the waist with a rope. The saint displays the stigmata—marks resembling Christ's wounds—that miraculously appeared on his hands and feet. Flank- ing Francis are two angels, whose frontal poses, prominent halos, and lack of modeling reveal the Byzantine roots of Berlinghieri's style. So, too, does the use of gold leaf (gold beaten into tissue- paper-thin sheets, then applied to surfaces), which emphasizes the image's flatness and otherworldly, spiritual nature. Appropriately, Berlinghieri's panel focuses on the aspects of the saint's life that the Franciscans wanted to promote, thereby making visible (and thus more credible) the legendary life of this holy man. Saint Francis believed that he could get closer to God by rejecting worldly goods, and to achieve this he stripped himself bare in a public square and committed himself to a strict life of fasting, prayer, and meditation. His followers considered the appearance of stigmata on Francis's hands and feet (clearly visible in the saint's frontal image, which resembles a Byzantine icon; compare fig. 9-16) as God's blessing, and viewed Francis as a second Christ. Fittingly, four of the six narrative scenes along the sides of the panel depict miraculous healings, connecting Saint Francis even more emphatically to Christ. The narrative scenes provide an active contrast to the stiff formality of the large central image of Francis. At the upper left, taking pride of place at the saint's right, Francis receives the stigmata. Directly below, the saint preaches to the birds, a subject that also figures prominently in the fresco program (fig. 14-5c) of San Francesco at Assisi, the work of a painter, art historians calls the Saint Francis Master. These and the scenes depicting Francis's miracle cures strongly suggest that Berlinghieri's source was one or more Byzantine illuminated manuscripts with biblical narrative scenes

The sacrifice of Isaac-Lorenzo Ghiberti

The jurors of the 1401 competition for the second set of doors required each entrant to submit a similarly framed relief panel depicting the sacrifice of Isaac. This episode from the book of Genesis (22:2-13) centers on God's order to Abraham to sacrifice his son Isaac as a demonstration of Abraham's devotion (see "Jew- ish Subjects in Christian Art," page 238). As Abraham was about to comply, an angel intervened and stopped him from plunging the knife into his son's throat. Because of the parallel between Abra- ham's willingness to sacrifice Isaac and God's sacrifice of his son, Jesus, to redeem humankind, Christians viewed the sacrifice of Isaac as a prefiguration (prophetic forerunner) of Jesus's crucifixion. The figure of Isaac, beautifully posed and rendered, recalls Greco-Roman statuary, and many art historians cite it as the first classical nude since antiquity. (Compare, for example, the torsion of Isaac's body and the dramatic turn of his head with the posture of the ancient statue of a Gaul plunging a sword into his own chest, Abraham appears in a typically Gothic pose with outthrust hip (compare fig. 13-26) and seems to contem- plate the act he is about to perform, Decorating it are acanthus scrolls of a type that commonly adorned Roman temple friezes in Italy and throughout the former Roman Empire (for example, fig. 7-32). These classical references reflect the influence of humanism in Quattrocento Italy.

Verrocchio, David

Verrocchio's David contrasts strongly in its narrative realism with the quiet classicism of Donatello's David. Verrocchio's hero is a sturdy, wiry youth clad in a leather doublet who stands with a jaunty pride. As in Donatello's version, Goliath's head lies at David's feet. He poses like a hunter with his kill. The easy balance of the weight and the lithe, still thinly adolescent musculature, with prominent veins, show how closely Verrocchio read the biblical text and how clearly he knew the psychology of brash young men. The Medici eventually sold Verrocchio's bronze David to the Florentine Repub- lic for placement in the Palazzo della Signoria. After the expulsion of the Medici from Florence, civic officials appropriated Donatello's David for civic use and moved it to the city hall as well.

St. George, Donatello

he statue continues the Gothic tradition of depicting warrior saints on church facades, as seen in the statue of Saint Theodore (fig. 13-19) on the westernmost jamb of the south transept portal of Chartres Cathedral, but here it has a civic role to play. Saint George stands in a defiant manner—ready to spring from his niche to defend Florence against attack from another Visconti or Ladislaus, his sword jutting out threateningly at all passersby. The saint's body is taut, and Donatello gave him a face filled with nervous energy. Directly below the statue's base is Donatello's marble relief (fig. 21-7) representing Saint George slaying a dragon to rescue a princess (see "Early Christian Saints," page 237). The relief marks a turning point in Renaissance sculpture. Even the landscapes in the baptistery competition reliefs (figs. 21-2 and 21-3) are mod- eled forms seen against a blank background. In Saint George and the Dragon, Donatello created an atmospheric effect by using incised lines. It is impossible to talk about a background plane in this work. The landscape recedes into distant space, and the depth of that space cannot be measured. The sculptor conceived the relief as a window onto an infinite vista. To create that effect, Donatello used a picto- rial device already known to the ancients—atmospheric perspective. Artists (painters more frequently than sculptors) using atmospheric perspective (sometimes called aerial perspective) exploit the principle that the farther back an object is in space, the blurrier and less detailed it appears. In Donatello's Saint George and the Dragon, the foreground figures are much sharper than the land- scape elements in the background.

Donatello

incorporated Greco-Roman sculptural principles in his Saint Mark (fig. 21-5), executed for the guild of linen makers and tailors. In this sculp- ture, Donatello took a fundamental step toward depicting motion in the human figure by recog- nizing the principle of weight shift, or contrap- posto. Greek sculptors of the fifth century bce were the first to grasp that the act of standing requires balancing the position and weight of the different parts of the human body, as they demonstrated in works such as Kritios Boy (fig. 5-35) and Doryphoros (fig. 5-41). In contrast to earlier sculp- tors, Greek artists recognized that the human body is not a rigid mass but a flexible structure that moves by continuously shifting its weight from one supporting leg to the other. Donatello reintro- duced this concept into Renaissance statuary. As the saint's body "moves," his garment "moves" with it, hanging and folding natu- rally from and around different body parts so that the viewer senses the figure as a nude human wearing clothing, not as a stone statue with arbitrarily composed drapery folds. Donatello's Saint Mark is the first Renaissance statue whose voluminous robe (the pride of the Florentine guild that paid for the statue) does not conceal but accentuates the movement of the arms, legs, shoulders, and hips. This development further contributed to the sculpted figure's inde- pendence from its architectural setting. Saint Mark's stirring limbs, shifting weight, and mobile drapery suggest impending movement out of the niche.

Cimabue, Madonna Enthroned

He painted Madonna Enthroned with Angels and Prophets (fig. 14-6) for Santa Trinità (Holy Trinity) in Florence, the Benedictine church near the Arno River built between 1258 and 1280. The composition and the gold background reveal the painter's reliance on Byzantine models (compare fig. 9-19). Cimabue also used the gold embellishments common to Byzantine art for the folds of the Madonna's robe, but they are no longer merely decorative patterns. In his panel, they enhance the three-dimensionality of the drapery. Furthermore, Cimabue constructed a deeper space for the Madonna and the surrounding figures to inhabit than was common in Byzantine art. The Virgin's throne, for example, is a massive struc- ture that Cimabue convincingly depicted as receding into space. The overlapping bodies of the angels on each side of the throne and the half-length prophets who look outward or upward from beneath it reinforce the sense of depth.

Madonna enthroned In Angels, Seated Apostles

He produced mosaics depicting the life of the Virgin for Santa Maria in Trastevere, and painted a fresco cycle of Old and New Testament scenes in Santa Cecilia in Trastevere, of which only part of his Last Judgment (fig. 14-7) survives, but what remains con- firms his stature as an innovative artist of the highest order. Christ appears at the center with the Virgin Mary to his right, John the Baptist to his left, and six enthroned apostles to each side (see "Early Christian Saints," pages 236-237). Below the Savior is an altar with the instruments of his martyrdom (cross, nails, Longinus's spear, and so on). At each side of the altar, angels (at the left, the Savior's right side) present to Christ those about to be saved, while the agents of the Devil (on his left) claim the damned. The theme is familiar from Romanesque portal sculpture (fig. 12-15), but here it appears inside the church on the entrance (west) wall as the culmination of the biblical cycle painted on the nave walls. Cavallini's apostles sit on deep thrones seen in perspective (the illusionistic depiction on a two-dimensional surface of three-dimensional objects in space). Both the disciples and their thrones face inward toward Christ, uniting both sides of the composition with the central figure. The apostles' garments have deep folds that catch the light. Light also illuminates the figures' faces. Cavallini used light effectively to cre- ate volume and mass, a radical departure from the maniera greca, but the light does not come from a uniform source, and the apostles appear against a neutral dark background. Cavallini has not received the recognition he deserves because his extant works are few and poorly preserved and because of the enduring influence of Vasari's artist biographies, but he was a pio- neering figure in the creation of the Renaissance style in Italy.

Humanism (Renaissance)

-the heightened emphasis on education, knowledge, exploration of individual potential, dedication to getting back to the classical style -you cannot have renaissance without humanism because it is the force that gives the art its function to get to get back to classical way of life -pursuing art and knowledge betters a person and the people around them Fundamental to the development of the Italian Renaissance was humanism, which emerged during the 14th century and became a central component of Italian art and culture in the 15th and 16th centuries. Humanism was more a code of civil conduct, a theory of education, and a scholarly discipline than a philosophical system.

Nicola Pisano Annunciation and Nativity Panel

Annunciation (fig. 14-3, top left), Nativity (center and lower half), and Adoration of the Shepherds (top right). Mary appears twice, and her size varies. The focus of the composition is the reclining Virgin of the Nativity episode, whose posture and drapery are reminiscent of those of the lid figures on Etruscan (fig. 6-6) and Roman (fig. 7-59) sarcophagi. The face types, beards, and coiffures, as well as the bulk and weight of Nicola's figures, also reveal the influence of classical relief sculpture. Art historians have even been able to pinpoint the models of some of the pulpit figures, including the reclining Mary, in Roman sculptures in Pisa.

Arnolfo di Cambio, Florence Cathedral

Florentines translated their pride in their predomi- nance into such landmark buildings as Santa Maria del Fiore (Saint Mary of the Flower; figs. 14-19 and 14-19A), Florence's cathedral, the site of the most important religious observances in the city. Arnolfo di Cambio (ca. 1245-1302) began work on the cathedral (Duomo in Italian) in 1296, three years before he received the commission to build the city's town hall, the Palazzo della Signoria (fig. 14-19B). Intended as the "most beautiful and hon- orable church in Tuscany," the cathedral reveals the competitiveness Florentines felt with cities such as Siena (fig. 14-13A) and Pisa (fig. 12-29). Church authori- ties planned for the Duomo to hold the city's entire population, and although its capacity is only about 30,000 (Florence's population at the time was slightly less than 100,000), the building seemed so large that even the noted architect Leon Battista Alberti (see page 608) com- 1299-1310. mented that it seemed to cover "all of Tuscany with its shade." The builders ornamented the cathedral's surfaces, in the old Tuscan fash- ion, with marble geometric designs, matching the revetment to that of the facing 11th-century Romanesque baptistery of San Giovanni (figs. 12-30 and 14-19, left). The vast gulf separating Santa Maria del Fiore from its northern European counterparts becomes evident in a comparison between the Florentine church and the High Gothic cathedrals of Amiens (fig. 13-22), Reims (fig. 13-1), and Cologne (fig. 13-51A). Gothic architects' emphatic stress on the vertical produced an awe- inspiring upward rush of unmatched vigor and intensity. The French and German buildings express organic growth shooting heavenward, as the pierced, translucent stone tracery of the spires merges with the atmosphere. Florence Cathedral, in contrast, clings to the ground and has no aspirations to flight. All emphasis is on 14-19 Arnolfo di Cambio and others, aerial view of Santa Maria del Fiore (and the Baptistery of San Giovanni; looking northeast), Florence, Italy, begun 1296. Campanile designed by Giotto di Bondone, 1334. The Florentine duomo's marble revetment carries on the Tuscan Roman- esque architectural tradition, linking this basilican church more closely to Early Christian Italy than to Gothic France. the horizontal elements of the design, and the building rests firmly and massively on the ground. The clearly defined simple geomet- ric volumes of the cathedral show no tendency to merge either into each other or into the sky. Giotto di Bondone designed the Duomo's campanile in 1334. In keeping with Italian tradition (figs. 12-23A, 12-29, and 12-29A), it stands apart from the church. In fact, it is essentially self-sufficient and could stand anywhere else in the city without looking out of place. The same cannot be said of the bell towers of Amiens, Reims, and Cologne cathedrals. They are essential elements of the struc- tures behind them, and it would be unthinkable to detach one of them and place it somewhere else. No individual element of Gothic churches seems capable of an independent existence. One form merges into the next in a series of rising movements pulling the eye upward and never permitting it to rest until it reaches the sky. The Florentine campanile is entirely different. Neatly subdivided into cubic sections, Giotto's tower is the sum of its component parts. Not only could this tower be removed from the building without adverse effects, but also each of the parts—cleanly separated from each other by continuous moldings—seems capable of existing independently as an object of considerable aesthetic appeal. This compartmental- ization is reminiscent of the Romanesque style, but it also forecasts the ideals of Renaissance architecture. Artists hoped to express structure in the clear, logical relationships of the component parts and to produce self-sufficient works that could exist in complete independence. Compared with northern European towers, Giotto's campanile has a cool and rational quality more appealing to the intellect than to the emotions. The facade of Florence Cathedral was not completed until the 19th century, and then in a form much altered from its original design. In fact, until the 17th century, Italian builders exhibited little concern for the facades of their churches, and dozens remain unfinished to this day. One reason for this may be that Italian architects did not conceive the facades as integral parts of the structures but rather, as in the case of Orvieto Cathedral (fig. 14-13), as screens that could be added to the church exterior at any time.

Giovanni Pisano? Nicola Pisano Annuciation/Pulpit of San Andrea

In Annunciation the Virgin shrinks from the angel's sudden appearance in a posture of alarm touched with humility. The same spasm of apprehension contracts her supple body as she reclines in Nativity. The drama's principals share in a peculiar nervous agitation, as if spiritual passion suddenly moves all of them. Only the shepherds and the sheep do not yet share in the miraculous event. The swiftly turning, slender and sinuous figures and the general emotionalism of the scene are features not found in Nicola Pisano's interpretation. The father worked in the classical tradition, the son in a style derived from French Gothic. These styles were two of the three most important ingredients in the formation of the distinctive and original art of 14th-century Italy.

Giotto's Lamentation and Duccios Betrayal of Jesus

In contrast to the common practice of his day, Giotto set his goal as emulating the appearance of the natural world—the approach championed by the ancient Greeks and Romans, but largely abandoned in the Middle Ages in favor of representing spiritual rather than physical reality. Subtly scaled to the chapel's space, Giotto's stately and slow-moving half-life-size figures act out the religious dramas convincingly and with great restraint. The biblical actors are sculpturesque, simple, and weighty, often foreshortened (seen from an angle) and modeled with light and shading in the ancient manner. They convey individual emotions through their postures and gestures. Giotto's naturalism displaced the Byzantine style (see Chapter 9) in Italy, inaugurating an age some scholars call "early scientific." By stressing the preeminence of sight for gaining knowledge of the world, Giotto and his successors contributed to the foundation of empirical science. Praised in his own and later times for his fidelity to nature, Giotto was more than a mere imitator of it. He showed his generation a new way of seeing. With Giotto, European painters turned away from representing the spiritual world—the focus of medieval artists, both in the Latin West and Byzantium—and once again made recording the visible world a central, if not the sole, aim of their art. LAMENTATION The panel in the lowest zone of the north wall, Lamentation (fig. 14-9), illustrates particularly well the revolution- ary nature of Giotto's style. In the presence of boldly foreshortened angels, seen head-on with their bodies receding into the background and darting about in hysterical grief, a congregation mourns over the dead Savior just before his entombment. Mary cradles her son's body. Mary Magdalene looks solemnly at the wounds in Christ's feet. Saint John the Evangelist throws his arms back dramatically. Giotto arranged a shallow stage for the figures, bounded by a thick diagonal rock incline defining a horizontal ledge in the foreground. Though narrow, the ledge provides firm visual support for the figures. The rocky setting recalls the landscape of a 12th-century Byzantine mural (fig. 9-30) at Nerezi in Macedonia. Here, the steep slope leads the viewer's eye toward the picture's dramatic focal point at the lower left. The postures and gestures of Giotto's figures convey a broad spectrum of grief. They range from Mary's almost fierce despair to the passionate outbursts of Mary Magdalene and John to the philo- sophical resignation of the two disciples at the right and the mute sorrow of the two hooded mourners in the foreground. In Lamenta- tion, a single event provokes a host of individual responses in figures that are convincing presences both physically and psychologically. Painters before Giotto rarely attempted, let alone achieved, this combination of naturalistic representation, compositional complex- ity, and emotional resonance. The formal design of the Lamentation fresco—the way Giotto grouped the figures within the constructed space—is worth close study. Each group has its own definition, and each contributes to the rhythmic order of the composition. The strong diagonal of the rocky ledge, with its single dead tree (the tree of knowledge of good and evil, which withered after Adam and Eve's original sin), concentrates the viewer's attention on the heads of Christ and his mother, which Giotto positioned dynamically off center. The mas- sive bulk of the seated mourner in the painting's left corner arrests and contains all movement beyond Mary and her dead son. The seated mourner to the right establishes a relation with the center figures, who, by gazes and gestures, draw the viewer's attention back to Christ's head. Figures seen from the back, which are frequent in Giotto's compositions (compare fig. 14-9B), represent an innova- tion in the movement away from the Italo-Byzantine style. These figures emphasize the foreground, aiding the visual placement of the intermediate figures farther back in space. This device, the very contradiction of Byzantine frontality, in effect puts viewers behind the "observer figures," who, facing the action as spectators, rein- force the sense of stagecraft as a model for painting. Also markedly different from the maniera greca is Giotto's habit of painting incom- plete figures cut off by the composition's frame, a feature also of his Ognissanti Madonna (fig. 14-8).

Duccio, Betrayal of Jesus

In contrast to the main panel, the predella and the back (fig. 14-11) of the Maestà present an extensive series of narrative pan- els of different sizes and shapes, beginning with the annunciation of Jesus's birth to Mary and culminating with the Savior's resurrection and other episodes following his crucifixion (see "The Life of Jesus in Art," pages 240-241). The section reproduced here, consisting of 24 scenes in 14 panels, relates the events of Christ's passion. The largest scene, at top center, is the Crucifixion—highly appro- priate for an altarpiece where the Sienese bishop celebrated Mass, the ritual reenact- ment of the Savior's sacrifice. Duccio drew the details of his scenes from the accounts in all four Gospels. The viewer reads the picto- rial story in zigzag fashion, beginning with Entry into Jerusalem (fig. 14-11A) at the lower left. The narrative ends with Christ's appear- ance to Mary Magdalene (Noli me tangere) at the top right. Duccio consistently dressed Jesus in blue robes in most of the panels, but beginning with Transfiguration, the Savior's garment is gilded. On the front panel, Duccio showed himself as the great master of the traditional altarpiece. However, in the small accompanying panels, front and back, he allowed himself greater latitude for exper- imentation. (Worshipers could always view both sides of the Maestà because the high altar stood at the center of the sanctuary.) The New Testament scenes on the back of the altarpiece reveal Duccio's powers as a narrative painter. In Betrayal of Jesus (fig. 14-12; com- pare fig. 14-9B), for example, the artist represented several episodes of the event—the betrayal of Jesus by Judas's false kiss, the disciples fleeing in terror, and Peter cutting off the ear of the high priest's servant. Although the background, with its golden sky and rock formations, remains traditional, the style of the figures before it has changed radically. The bodies are not the flat frontal shapes of Italo-Byzantine art. Duccio imbued them with mass, modeled them with a range of tonalities from light to dark, and arranged their draperies around them convincingly. Even more novel and striking is the way the figures seem to react to the central event. Through posture, gesture, and even facial expression, they display a variety of emotions. Duccio carefully differentiated among the anger of Peter, the malice of Judas (echoed in the faces of the throng about Jesus), and the apprehension and timidity of the fleeing disciples. These figures are actors in a religious drama that the artist interpreted in terms of thoroughly human actions and reactions. In this and the other narrative panels—for example, Entry into Jerusalem (fig. 14-11A), a theme treated also by Giotto in the Arena Chapel (fig. 14-9A)—Duccio took a decisive step toward the humanization of religious subject matter.

Pietro Lorenzetti, Birth of the Virgin

PIETRO LORENZETTI Another of Duccio's students, Pietro Lorenzetti (ca. 1280-1348), contributed significantly to the general experiments in pictorial realism taking place in 14th-century Italy. Surpass- ing even his renowned master, Lorenzetti achieved a remarkable degree of spatial illusionism in his Birth of the Virgin (fig. 14-15), a large triptych (three-part panel painting) created for the altar of Saint Savinus in Siena Cathedral (fig. 14-13A). Lorenzetti painted the timber architectural members dividing the altarpiece into three sections as though they extended back into the painted space. Viewers seem to look through the frame (added later) into a boxlike stage, where the event takes place. That one of the vertical members cuts across a figure, blocking part of it from view, strengthens the illusion. In subsequent centuries, artists exploited this use of architectural elements to enhance the illusion of painted figures acting out a drama a mere few feet away. This kind of pictorial illu- sionism characterized ancient Roman mural painting (figs. 7-18 and 7-19, right), but had not been practiced in Italy for a thousand years. The setting for Birth of the Virgin also represented a marked step in the advance of worldly realism. Unlike in other altarpieces of this era, the figures in Lorenzetti's painting are not seen against an oth- erworldly gold background. Instead, the Sienese master painted a detailed interior of an upper-class Italian home of the period, complete with floor tiles and fabrics whose receding lines enhance the sense of depth. Lorenzetti removed the front walls of the house to enable the viewer to peer inside, where Saint Anne (see "Early Christian Saints," page 236) props herself up wearily as the midwives wash the newborn Virgin and the women bring gifts. Anne, like Nicola Pisano's Nativity Virgin (fig. 14-3), resembles a reclining figure on the lid of a Roman 426 Chapter 14 Late Medieval Italy sarcophagus (fig. 7-59). At the left, in a side chamber, Joachim eagerly awaits news of the delivery. Lorenzetti's altarpiece is as noteworthy for the painter's careful inspection and recording of details of the every- day world as for his innovations in spatial illusionism.

Simone Martini, The Annunciation

The Saint Ansanus altarpiece (fig. 14-14) Martini created for Siena Cathedral (fig. 14-13A) features radiant colors, fluttering lines, and weightless elongated figures in a spaceless setting—all hallmarks of the artist's style. The complex etiquette of the Euro- pean chivalric courts probably inspired Martini's presentation of the annunciation. The angel Gabriel has just alighted, the breeze of his passage lifting his mantle, his iridescent wings still beating. The gold of his sumptuous gown signals that he has descended from Heaven to deliver his message. The Virgin, putting down her book of devotions, shrinks demurely from Gabriel's reverent bow—an appropriate act in the presence of royalty. Mary draws about her the deep-blue, golden-hemmed mantle, colors befitting the queen of Heaven. Between the two figures is a vase of white lilies, symbolic of the Virgin's purity. Despite Mary's modesty and diffidence and the tremendous import of the angel's message, the scene subordinates drama to court ritual, and structural experi- mentation to surface splendor. The intricate tracery of the richly tooled (reconstructed) French Gothic-inspired frame and the elabo- rate punchwork halos (by then a characteristic feature of Sienese panel painting) enhance the tactile magnificence of the altarpiece. Simone Martini and his student and assis- tant, Lippo Memmi (active ca. 1317-1350), signed the Annunciation panel and dated it (1333). The latter's contribution to the altar- piece is still a matter of debate, but most art historians believe that he painted the two lateral saints (Ansanus at left, Margaret at right). These figures, which are reminiscent of the jamb statues of Gothic church portals, have greater solidity and lack the linear elegance of Martini's central pair. Given the nature of medieval and Renaissance workshop practices, it is often difficult to distinguish the master's hand from those of assistants, especially if the master corrected or redid part of the pupil's work.

Duccio, Virgin and Child Enthroned

The Sienese believed that the Virgin had brought them victory over the Florentines at the battle of Monteperti in 1260, and she was the focus of the religious life of the republic. Duccio and his assistants began work on the prestigious commis- sion in 1308 and completed the altarpiece in 1311, causing the entire city to celebrate. Shops closed, and the bishop led a great procession of priests, civic officials, and the populace at large in carrying the altarpiece from Duccio's studio outside the city gate through the Campo (literally "field"—Siena's main piazza, or plaza), past the town hall (fig. 14-16), and up to its home on Siena's highest hill. So great was Duccio's stature that the church's officials permitted him to include his name in the dedicatory inscription on the front of the altarpiece on the Virgin's footstool: "Holy Mother of God, be the cause of peace for Siena and of life for Duccio, because he painted you thus."

Santa Sussana

The facade (fig. 24-2) that Carlo Maderno (1556-1629) designed at the turn of the century for the Roman church of Santa Susanna stands as one of the earliest manifestations of the Baroque artistic spirit. In its general appearance, Maderno's facade resembles Giacomo della Porta's immensely influential design for Il Gesù (fig. 22-57), the church of the Jesuits in Rome. But the later facade has a greater verticality that concentrates and dramatizes the major features of its model. The tall central section projects forward from the horizontal lower story, and the scroll, buttresses connecting the two levels are narrower and set at a sharper angle. The elimination of an arch framing the pediment over the doorway further enhances the design's vertical thrust. The rhythm of Santa Susanna's vigorously projecting columns and pilasters mounts dramatically toward the emphatically stressed central axis. The recessed niches, which contain statues and create pockets of shadow, heighten the sculptural effect.

Feast of Herod, Donatello

Forming the backdrop for this dramatic staging of the biblical story are two successive arched courtyards in Herod's palace. Donatello's rendition of the architectural setting in the Feast of Herod marks the introduction of rationalized perspective in Renaissance art. As in Saint George and the Dragon (fig. 21-7), Donatello opened the space of the action well into the distance. But, instead of atmospheric perspective, he employed the new mathematically based science of linear perspective, in which the size of the piers and arches and even the bricks in the walls as well as the figures in the courtyards decrease in size systematically with increasing distance from the viewer (see "Linear Perspective," page 587). The inventor (or rediscoverer) of lin- ear perspective was Filippo Brunelleschi. In his biography of the Florentine artist, written around 1480, Antonio Manetti (1423-1497) described Brunelleschi's perspective system as a new "science":

Gates of Paradise, Ghiberti

Ghiberti's figure style mixes a Gothic patterning of rhythmic line, classical poses and motifs, and a new realism in characteriza- tion, movement, and surface detail. But the Florentine sculptor retained the medieval narrative method of presenting several epi- sodes within a single frame. In Isaac and His Sons, the women in the left foreground attend the birth of Esau and Jacob in the left back- ground. In the central foreground, Isaac sends Esau and his dogs to hunt game. In the right foreground, Isaac blesses the kneeling Jacob as Rebecca looks on. Yet viewers experience little confusion because of Ghiberti's careful and subtle placement of each scene. The figures, in varying degrees of projection, gracefully twist and turn, appear- ing to occupy and move through a convincing stage space, which Ghiberti deepened by showing some figures from behind. Ghiberti's classicism derived from his close study of ancient art. The artist admired and collected classical sculpture, bronzes, and coins. Their influence appears throughout the Isaac and His Sons panel, particularly in the figure of Rebecca, which Ghiberti based on a popular Greco-Roman statuary type. The emerging practice of collecting classical art in the 15th century had much to do with the incorporation of classical motifs and the emulation of classical style in Renaissance art (compare Botticelli's Venus [fig. 21-1], based on an ancient statue).

you need to understand the artwork and its cultural significance, that is to say the historical context in which the work was created. Giottos Arena Chapel

Giotto's masterwork is the fresco cycle of the Arena Chapel (fig. 14-1) in Padua, which takes its name from an adjacent ancient Roman arena (amphitheater). A banker, Enrico Scrovegni, built the chapel on a site adjacent to his palace and consecrated it in 1305, in the hope that the chapel would atone for the moneylender's sin of usury. In 38 framed panels, Giotto presented, in the top level, the lives of the Virgin and her parents, Joachim and Anna; in the middle zone, the life and mission of Jesus; and, in the lowest level, the Savior's passion and resurrection. The climactic Last Judgment covers most of the west wall, where Scrovegni appears among the saved, kneeling as he presents his chapel to the Virgin. ARENA CHAPEL Projecting on a flat surface the illusion of solid bodies moving through space presents a double challenge. Con- structing the illusion of a weighty, three-dimensional body also requires constructing the illusion of a space sufficiently ample to contain that body. In his fresco cycles (see "Fresco Painting," above), Giotto constantly strove to reconcile these two aspects of illusionistic painting. His murals in Enrico Scrovegni's Arena Chapel (figs. 14-1 and 14-9) at Padua show his art at its finest. scholars have suggested that Giotto may also have been the chapel's architect, because its design so perfectly suits its inte- rior decoration. The rectangular hall has only six windows, all in the south wall, which provide ample illumination for the fres- coes that fill the almost unbroken surfaces of the other walls.) In 38 framed scenes (figs. 14-9, 14-9A, and 14-9B), Giotto pre- sented one of the most impressive and complete Christian pictorial cycles ever rendered. The nar- rative unfolds on the north and south walls in three zones, read- ing from top to bottom. Below, imitation marble veneer—remi- niscent of ancient Roman revet- ment (fig. 7-51), which Giotto may have seen alternates with personified Virtues and Vices painted in grisaille (monochrome grays, often used for modeling in paintings) to resemble sculpture. On the west wall above the chapel's entrance is Giotto's dramatic Last Judgment, the culminating scene also of Cavallini's late-13th- century fresco cycle (fig. 14-7) in Santa Cecilia in Trastevere in Rome. In fact, Giotto's enthroned apostles are strikingly similar to Cavallini's. The chapel's vaulted ceiling is blue, an azure sky dotted with golden stars symbolic of Heaven. Medallions bearing images of Christ, Mary, and various prophets also appear on the vault. Giotto painted the same blue in the backgrounds of the narrative panels on the walls below. The color thereby functions as a unifying agent for the entire decorative scheme.

Claus Sluter, Well of Moses

CLAUS SLUTER In 1389, following the death of Jean de Marville, Philip the Bold placed the Netherlandish sculptor Claus Sluter (ca. 1360-1406) of Haarlem in charge of the sculptural program (figs. 20-2 and 20-2A). Sluter had joined the Chartreuse de Champ- mol sculpture workshop as Jean's assistant in 1385. For the portal (fig. 20-2A) of the monastery's chapel, Sluter's workshop produced statues of the duke and his wife kneeling before the Virgin and Child. For the cloister, Sluter designed a large sculptural fountain located in a well (fig. 20-2). The well served as a water source for the monastery, but water probably did not spout from the fountain because the Carthusian commitment to silence and prayer would have precluded anything producing sound. Sluter's Well of Moses features statues of Moses and five other prophets (David, Daniel, Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Zachariah) ringing a base that once supported a 25-foot-tall group of Christ on the cross, the Virgin Mary, John the Evangelist, and Mary Magdalene. The Carthusians called the Well of Moses a fons vitae, a fountain of everlasting life. The blood of the crucified Christ symbolically flowed down over the grieving angels and Old Testament proph- ets, spilling into the well below, washing over Christ's prophetic predecessors and redeeming anyone who would drink water from the well. Whereas the models for the Dijon chapel statues were the sculptured portals of French Gothic cathedrals, the inspiration for the Well of Moses may have come in part from contemporaneous mystery plays in which actors portraying prophets frequently deliv- ered commentaries on events in Christ's life. The six prophets have almost portraitlike features and distinct individual personalities and costumes. For example, David is an elegantly garbed Gothic king and Moses an elderly horned prophet (compare fig. 12-38) with a waist-length beard. Sluter intensely studied the natural appearance of faces and fabrics in order to sculpt the biblical figures in minute detail. Heavy draperies with voluminous folds swathe the life-size statues. Sluter succeeded in making their difficult, complex surfaces seem remarkably natural- istic. He enhanced this effect by skillfully differentiating textures, from coarse drapery to smooth flesh and silky hair. Originally, paint, much of which has flaked off, further augmented the natural- ism of the figures. (The painter was Jean Malouel [ca. 1365-1415], another Netherlandish master.) This fascination with the specific and tangible in the visible world became one of the chief character- istics of 15th-century Flemish art.

Nicola Pisona Pulpit of the Baptistery, 1259-6

Nicola fashioned the first such pulpit (fig. 14-2) in 1260 for Pisa's century-old baptistery (fig. 12-29, left). Some elements of the pulpit's design carried on medieval traditions—for example, the trefoil (triple-curved) arches and the lions supporting some of the columns—but Nicola also incorporated classical elements. The large capitals with two rows of thick overlapping leaves crowning the columns are a Gothic variation of the Corinthian capital. The arches are round, as in Roman architecture, rather than pointed (ogival), as in Gothic buildings. Also, each of the large rectangular relief panels resembles the sculptured front of a Roman sarcophagus (coffin; for example, fig. 7-68). The densely packed large-scale figures of the individual panels also seem to derive from the compositions found on Roman sarcophagi. One of the six panels of the baptistery pulpit depicts scenes from the infancy cycle of Christ (see "The Life of Jesus in Art,")

Rubens

The greatest 17th-century Flemish painter was Peter Paul Rubens (1577-1640), a towering figure in the his- tory of Western art. Rubens built on the innovations of the Italian Renaissance and Baroque masters to formulate the first truly pan- European painting style. Rubens's art is an original and powerful synthesis of the manners of many masters, especially Michelangelo, Titian, Carracci, and Caravaggio. His style had wide appeal, and his influence was international. Among the most learned individuals of his time, Rubens possessed an aristocratic education and a courtier's manner, diplomacy, and tact, which, with his facility for language, made him the associate of princes and scholars. He became court painter to the dukes of Mantua (descended from Mantegna's patrons), friend of King Philip IV (r. 1621-1665) of Spain and his adviser on collecting art, painter to Charles I (r. 1625-1649) of England and Marie de' Medici (1573-1642) of France, and permanent court painter to the Spanish governors of Flanders. Rubens also won the confidence of his royal patrons in matters of state, and they often entrusted him with diplomatic missions of the highest importance. Rubens's interest in Italian art, especially the works of Michel- angelo and Caravaggio, is evident in the Saint Walburga triptych. The choice of this episode from the passion cycle provided Rubens with the opportunity to depict heavily muscled men in unusual poses straining to lift the heavy cross with Christ's body nailed to it. Here, as in his Lion Hunt (fig. I-13), Rubens, deeply impressed by Michelangelo's heroic twisting sculpted and painted nude male figures, showed his prowess in representing foreshortened anatomy and the contortions of violent action. Rubens placed the body of Christ on the cross as a diagonal that cuts dynamically across the picture while inclining back into it. The whole composition seethes with a power that comes from strenuous exertion, from elastic human sinew taut with effort. The tension is emotional as well as physical, as reflected not only in Christ's face but also in the features To produce a steady stream of paintings for a rich and pow- erful international clientele, Rubens employed scores of assistants. He also became a highly successful art dealer, buying and selling contemporary artworks and classical antiquities for royal and aris- tocratic clients throughout Europe, who competed with one another in amassing vast collections of paintings and sculptures. One of those collections became the subject of a painting (fig. 25-1A) by Rubens and Jan Bruegel the Elder (1568-1625). Rubens's many enterprises made him a rich man, able to afford a mag- nificent townhouse in Antwerp and a castle in the countryside. Rubens, like Raphael, was a successful and renowned artist, a con- sort of kings, a shrewd man of the world, and a learned philosopher.

Ambrogio Lorenzetti, Allegroy of the Good Government "The peaceful city"

he elabo- rated his brother's advances in illusionistic representation in spectacular fashion while giving visual form to Sienese civic concerns in a series of allegorical paintings: Allegory of Good Government, Bad Government and the Effects of Bad Government in the City and Effects of Good Government in the City and in the Country. The turbulent politics of the Italian cities—the violent party struggles, the overthrow and reinstatement of govern- ments—called for solemn reminders of fair and just administration, and the city hall was just the place to display murals contrasting good and bad government. Indeed, the Sienese leaders who commissioned this fresco series had undertaken the "ordering and reformation of the whole city and countryside of Siena." In Effects of Good Government in the City and in the Country, Ambrogio depicted the urban and rural effects of good govern- ment. Peaceful City (fig. 14-17) is a panoramic view of Siena, with its clustering palaces, markets, towers, churches, streets, and walls, reminiscent of the townscapes of ancient Roman murals (fig. 7-19, left). The city's traffic moves peacefully, guild members ply their trades and crafts, and radiant maidens, clustered hand in hand, perform a graceful circling dance. Dances were regular features of festive springtime rituals. Here, dancing also serves as a metaphor for a peaceful commonwealth. The artist fondly observed the life of his city, and its architecture gave him an opportunity to apply Sienese artists' rapidly growing knowledge of perspective. In Peaceful Country (fig. 14-18), Ambrogio's representation of the countryside beyond Siena's walls, the painter presented a bird's- eye view of the undulating Tuscan terrain—its villas, castles, plowed farmlands, and peasants going about their occupations at different seasons of the year. Although it is an allegory, not a snapshot of the Tuscan countryside on a specific day, Lorenzetti's Peaceful Country, like his Good Government in the City, has the character of a por- trait of a specific place and environment. Peaceful Country is one of the first examples of a pure landscape in Western art since antiquity (fig. 7-20). A personification of Security hovers above the hills and fields, unfurling a scroll promising safety to all who live under the rule of 428 Chapter 14 Late Medieval Italy law—that is, the law administered by the Nine, who met in this room to oversee Sienese affairs. The Nine had the power to enforce their laws by imposing penalties, including even capital punishment. As a warning to those who might defy the Nine, Security carries a model of a gallows with a hanged criminal. The Nine, however, could not protect Siena's citizens from the plague sweeping through Europe in the mid-14th century. The Black Death (see page 417) killed thousands of Sienese and may have ended the careers of the Lorenzetti brothers. They disappear from historical records in 1348.