RENAISSANCE PERIOD

Known as the Renaissance, the period immediately

following the Middle Ages in Europe saw a great
revival of interest in the classical learning and values
of ancient Greece and Rome. Against a backdrop of
political stability and growing prosperity, the
development of new technologies–including the
printing press, a new system of astronomy and the
discovery and exploration of new continents–was
accompanied by a flowering of philosophy, literature
and especially art. The style of painting, sculpture and
decorative arts identified with the Renaissance
emerged in Italy in the late 14th century; it reached
its zenith in the late 15th and early 16th centuries, in
the work of Italian masters such as Leonardo da Vinci,
Michelangelo and Raphael. In addition to its
expression of classical Greco-Roman traditions,
Renaissance art sought to capture the experience of
the individual and the beauty and mystery of the
natural world.

Origins of Renaissance Art

The origins of Renaissance art can be traced to Italy
in the late 13th and early 14th centuries. During this
so-called “proto-Renaissance” period (1280-1400),
Italian scholars and artists saw themselves as
reawakening to the ideals and achievements of
classical Roman culture. Writers such as Petrarch
(1304-1374) and Giovanni Boccaccio (1313-1375)
looked back to ancient Greece and Rome and sought
to revive the languages, values and intellectual
traditions of those cultures after the long period of
stagnation that had followed the fall of the Roman
Empire in the sixth century.

DID YOU KNOW?

Leonardo da Vinci, the ultimate "Renaissance man,"

practiced all the visual arts and studied a wide range
of topics, including anatomy, geology, botany,
hydraulics and flight. His formidable reputation is
based on relatively few completed paintings, including
"Mona Lisa," "The Virgin of the Rocks" and "The Last
Supper."

The Florentine painter Giotto (1267?-1337), the most

famous artist of the proto-Renaissance, made
enormous advances in the technique of representing
the human body realistically. His frescoes were said to
have decorated cathedrals at Assisi, Rome, Padua,
Florence and Naples, though there has been diffi culty
attributing such works with certainty .

Early Renaissance Art (1401-

1490s)
In the later 14th century, the proto-Renaissance was
stifled by plague and war, and its influences did not
emerge again until the first years of the next century.
In 1401, the sculptor Lorenzo Ghiberti (c. 1378-1455)
won a major competition to design a new set of
bronze doors for the Baptistery of the cathedral of
Florence, beating out contemporaries such as the
architect Filippo Brunelleschi (1377-1446) and the
young Donatello (c. 1386- 1466), who would later
emerge as the master of early Renaissance
sculpture.The other major artist working during this
period was the painter Masaccio (1401-1428), known
for his frescoes of the Trinity in the Church of Santa
Maria Novella (c. 1426) and in the Brancacci Chapel of
the Church of Santa Maria del Carmine (c. 1427), both
in Florence. Masaccio painted for less than six years
but was highly influential in the early Renaissance for
the intellectual nature of his work, as well as its
degree of naturalism.

High Renaissance Art (1490s-

1527)
By the end of the 15th century, Rome had displaced
Florence as the principal center of Renaissance art,
reaching a high point under the powerful and
ambitious Pope Leo X (a son of Lorenzo de’ Medici).
Three great masters–Leonardo da
Vinci , Michelangelo and Raphael–dominated the
period known as the High Renaissance, which lasted
roughly from the early 1490s until the sack of Rome
by the troops of the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V of
Spain in 1527. Leonardo (1452-1519) was the ultimate
“Renaissance man” for the breadth of his intellect,
interest and talent and his expression of humanist and
classical values. Leonardo’s best-known works,
including the “Mona Lisa” (1503-05), “The Virgin of
the Rocks” (1485) and the fresco “The Last Supper”
(1495-98), showcase his unparalleled ability to
portray light and shadow, as well as the physical
relationship between figures–humans, animals and
objects alike–and the landscape around
them.Michelangelo Buonarroti (1475-1564) drew on
the human body for inspiration and created works on
a vast scale. He was the dominant sculptor of the
High Renaissance, producing pieces such as the Pietà
in St. Peter’s Cathedral (1499) and the David in his
native Florence (1501-04). He carved the latter by
hand from an enormous marble block; the famous
statue measures five meters high including its base.
Though Michelangelo considered himself a sculptor
first and foremost, he achieved greatness as a painter
as well, notably with his giant fresco covering the
ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, completed over four
years (1508-12) and depicting various scenes from
Genesis.Raphael Sanzio, the youngest of the three
great High Renaissance masters, learned from both da
Vinci and Michelangelo. His paintings–most notably
“The School of Athens” (1508-11), painted in the
Vatican at the same time that Michelangelo was
working on the Sistine Chapel –skillfully expressed the
classical ideals of beauty, serenity and harmony.
Among the other great Italian artists working during
this period were Sandro Botticelli, Bramante,
Giorgione, Titian and Correggio.

Renaissance Art in Practice

Many works of Renaissance art depicted religious
images, including subjects such as the Virgin Mary, or
Madonna, and were encountered by contemporary
audiences of the period in the context of religious
rituals. Today, they are viewed as great works of art,
but at the time they were seen and used mostly as
devotional objects. Many Renaissance works were
painted as altarpieces for incorporation into rituals
associated with Catholic Mass and donated by patrons
who sponsored the Mass itself.

BAROQUE PERIOD
The Baroque is a period of artistic style that started
around 1600 in Rome , Italy, and spread throughout the
majority of Europe during the 17th and 18th centuries. In
informal usage, the word baroque describes something
that is elaborate and highly detailed.
The most important factors during the Baroque era were the
Reformation and the Counter-Reformation ; the development of
the Baroque style was considered to be closely linked with the
Catholic Church. The popularity of the Baroque style was
encouraged by the Catholic Church, which had decided at the
Council of Trent that the arts should communicate religious
themes and direct emotional involvement in response to the
Protestant Reformation .
 CHARACTERISTICS
The Baroque style is characterized by exaggerated
motion and clear detail used to produce drama,
exuberance, and grandeur in sculpture , painting,
architecture, literature, dance, and music.
The chiaroscuro technique refers to the interplay
between light and dark that was often used in
Baroque paintings of dimly lit scenes to produce a
very high-contrast, dramatic atmosphere.

PAINTERS
Famous painters of the Baroque era include Rubens,
Caravaggio, and Rembrandt. In music, the Baroque
style makes up a large part of the classical canon,
such as Bach, Handel, and Vivaldi.

BAROQUE
RENAISSANCE
 Neoclassicism
New classics of the highest rank! This was the rallying cry
of populations immersed in the 18th century Age of
Enlightenment who wanted their artwork and architecture
to mirror, and carry the same set of standards, as the
idealized works of the Greeks and Romans. In conjunction
with the exciting archaeological rediscoveries of Pompeii
and Herculaneum in Rome, Neoclassicism arose as artists
and architects infused their work with past Greco-Roman
ideals. A return to the study of science, history,
mathematics, and anatomical correctness abounded,
replacing the Rococo vanity culture and court-painting
climate that preceded.
Neoclassical art arose in opposition to the overly
decorative and gaudy styles of Rococo and Baroque that
were infusing society with a vanity art culture based on
personal conceits and whimsy. It brought about a general
revival in classical thought that mirrored what was going
on in political and social arenas of the time, leading to the
French Revolution.
Neoclassical architecture was based on the principles of
simplicity, symmetry, and mathematics, which were seen
as virtues of the arts in Ancient Greece and Rome. It also
evolved the more recent influences of the equally
antiquity-informed 16th century Renaissance Classicism.
DID YOU KNOW? NEOCLASSICISM
The primary Neoclassicist belief was that art should
express the ideal virtues in life and could improve the
viewer by imparting a moralizing message. It had the
power to civilize, reform, and transform society, as society
itself was being transformed by new approaches to
government and the rising forces of the Industrial
Revolution, driven by scientific discovery and invention.

Neoclassicism's rise was in large part due to the

popularity of the Grand Tour, in which art students and the
general aristocracy were given access to recently
unearthed ruins in Italy, and as a result became enamored
with the aesthetics and philosophies of ancient art.

DID YOU KNOW? BAROQUE

Derived from the Portuguese barroco, or “oddly shaped

pearl,” the term “baroque” has been widely used since
the nineteenth century to describe the period in Western
European art music from about 1600 to 1750. Comparing
some of music history’s greatest masterpieces to a
misshapen pearl might seem strange to us today, but to
the nineteenth century critics who applied the term, the
music of Bach and Handel’s era sounded overly
ornamented and exaggerated. Having long since shed its
derogatory connotations, “baroque” is now simply a
convenient catch-all for one of the richest and most
diverse periods in music history.

The Baroque style used contrast, movement, exuberant

detail, deep colour, grandeur and surprise to achieve a
sense of awe
NEOCLASSICISM