06: Art in Florence

Santa Felicita`

Ognissanti

fi-o

Giotto di Bondone, 1256-1337, Ognissanti Madonna

giotto

Sandro Botticelli, St. Augustine, 1480

a

work of art

  •  How was it made?
  • By whom?
  • original location?
  • original use?   
  • Who paid for it?
    • relationship with the artist?
    • With the location of the work?   
  • Style. What are the norms? meeting norms? changing them?

producers: the artists

  • Who are artists in sociological terms?
  • How does this change?   
  • What kinds of education do they have?

painting: naturalism,realism, perspective architecture: ancient models  

“Art” and “The Arts” as categories

Renaissance: no system of “the arts”

Ars: as opposed to Nature; to Science

ex: Arte della Lana  

Scholarly disciplines:

  • Liberal arts
  • Humanities
  • Mechanical arts

visual arts: mechanical arts

poetry: humanities

music: quadrivium

Production of art  

Kinds produced ca. 1400

  • religious
  • public art and architecture
  •  private: palazzi, villas

  Religious art. Who pays for it: mostly private

  • buildings
  • chapels within churches
  • private religious art for home meditation


urban guilds
changes in worship affect art
ex: mendicant orders

patronage relationships

shop as location of production
independent business
Some commissions  by competition
contracts
changes by ca. 1500
       

Changes in artistic style: Drama and realism in painting

Italy: several imported traditions, then innovation
Examples: 
1. Byzantine
2. French: “International Gothic” style
3. Friars  emotional response on part of viewer
4. Ancient models: almost none before 1500
inspire admiration
slMaddalena master: S. Luca, late 13th c (Uffizi)

 

Leon Battista Alberti   1404-72

  • Padua education
  • law degree (Bologna);
  • cleric; at Florence cathedral; council of Florence, Eugenius IV:  
  •  friends with innovative artists: Masaccio, Brunelleschi, Donatello

Discovery of Vitruvius On Architecture: 1st c BCE (probably after 27)     

  • Petrarch; Poggio Bracciolini 
  • published: Rome, 1486       
  • ancient rules, ancient examples        
  • Architect as learned person  (like Quintilian, Cicero)


S. Francesco, Rimini
ri    Rimini, arch of Augustus

Perspective in painting

— Alberti, Brunelleschi
quadrivium: add perspective/optics?
Piero della Francesca, Luca Pacioli
artists need education
Influence of humanists on subject matter

Botticelli, Calumny of Apelles c