16th Century Northern Renaissance
Albrecht Durer, Knight, Death and the Devil, engraving, Nuremburg (Germany) 1513
-Middle tone, silvery gray -Article: Cuneo, His Horse, A Print, and Its Audience -Pay attention to the horse -How to represent the ideal horse: harmony, ratio, balance—trying to show off the horse. Problem: is no real singal meaning in the painting. Meaning and relationships of figures to one another remains elusive. -Cuneo said this was purposeful, so many people could find something interesting.
Albrecht Durer, Self-Portrait, oil on panel, Nuremburg (Germany), 1500
-Most famous self portrait, painting -Italian in it's composition: triangular -Northern: texture of fur is palpable—hand is inviting us to touch it -Monogram What is really striking about this painting? Looks like Jesus -Durer casting himself as Christ -Imitato: imitating them so you can feel what they felt, belongs to that religious idea, but also saying something about the status/nature of art. -Anticipates Michelangelo, God was the first artist, he created creation -Durer saying that because his painting appears to be so real, naturalistic—he is perhaps claiming for himself
Pieter Breughel the Elder, Peasant Wedding, oil of panel, Antwerp (Beligium), c. 1568
-Painter of regular scenes of life -group of humble folk gathered for a wedding -purpose of the image is to present to joys of everyday life: GENRE PAINTING
Albrecht Durer, Adam and Eve, engraving, Nuremburg (Germany), 1504
-Subject: garden of eden -Engraving—combines Northern Renaissance with Italian Renaissance -Northern characteristics: has the descriptive naturalism, interest in representing the particular, disguised symbolism ((mouse (mousetrap for devil), cat, rabbit, ox—have symbolic meaning)), deeper allegorical meaning -All animals together a way of representing of the balance of the world of nature, ut also of humanity—represent 4 humors -Human personality comes from 4 humors: blood, yellow bile, black bile—affected your mood. Black= depressed. Blood=happy/active. -Italian Reniassance characteristics: contrapposto, ideal nudes, male nude, proportions
Albrecht Durer, The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, woodcut, Nuremburg (Germany) 1498
-Subjects all drawn from the book of revelation -4 horsemen: death, famine, disease, war -Indicates Durers marketing savvy, really careful with choosing his subjects -1498, Why is that date important? → Leading up to the year 1500, there was a great interest in things that were apocalyptic. 1500, millennium—maybe it'll be the end of the world, real fear of the world ending. -Killing, trampling people, wreaking havoc on the world -the lines in the woodcut have a variety and shape in term of length, curve, shape, swell—each line is uniform -through this expanded vocabulary of lines, Durer is able to create images that are stunning
