In Thursday’s class we examined a number of different pieces depicting Madonna Enthroned. I enjoyed learning about the ways in which Renaissance artists worked to make their paintings look more lifelike. Learning that artists know exactly how to control your gaze when you look at their art was fascinating to me, and made me reconsider how I have been looking at art for my whole life. Along those lines, the most astonishing moment of class for me was when Professor Plesch zoomed in on Duccio’s Maestà and showed us the intricate details of the rich fabric that each of the people on either side of the throne were wearing. I was blown away by these details because I had not noticed them in the slightest until Professor Plesch brought our attention to it. She explained that the gorgeous fabrics likely looked like a lot of the expensive fabrics being imported from the Middle East and Asia at the time and were a powerful symbol of status and wealth. This made me wonder what other magnificent elements of art I have missed because I did not know to look for them.
Author: Caroline Beecher (Page 3 of 3)
In class on Tuesday we discussed iconography and its role in religious art around the Renaissance era. We defined iconography as the study of images and the ways a subject matter is represented. For the majority of class we unpacked the elements of Enguerrand Quarton’s Coronation of the Virgin. I was fascinated by the extraordinary attention to detail and unique representation of the Trinity. Being raised Catholic, I have spent a lot of time pondering this concept of the Trinity, and learning about the different ways artists have tried to make sense of a concept that eludes full human understanding was very interesting to me. This painting is quite astonishing, and one of the elements of it that I found to be most incredible is the fantastic attention to detail. My favorite tiny detail is of the Carthusian monk and Orthodox priest meeting on the street with arms outstretched (not far from people who are fighting). This wonderful little detail enriches one of the most important messages of the painting—that of the unification of the Eastern and Western Churches.
In class on Thursday we began by by discussing the problems with the modern museum’s emphasis on the individual artist. We talked about how this makes folks gravitate towards art done only by the people whose names they recognize, and this led to a conversation about anonymous artists. Professor Plesch implored us to think about how many of these anonymous artists were women, and I began to think about all the art that our culture has not engaged with in the way we have engaged with works by famous male European artists. We went off on a fabulous tangent about the art market, and I learned a lot about the manipulation of prices in art auctions, which made me think a lot about the perceived value of works we treasure as a society. I wonder how some of these famous works rose to their present levels of heady fame and the reasons why they surpassed works by anonymous artists. I think that the glorification of the artist in the modern museum has a lot to do with the extraordinary fame of artists and particular works of art.
In yesterday’s class, we talked about the Middle Ages and how even the name of that time period suggests that it was a period of buffer between two greater (more noteworthy) periods—Antiquity and the Renaissance. We talked about the negative connotations of the Middle Ages versus the positive connotations of the Renaissance. As part of this discussion, I learned that the art of the Middle Ages is referred to as Gothic art because it was art that came out of the fall of the Roman empire (at the hands of tribes from the north—one of which was called the Goths). We considered our own perception of gothic art (dark, medieval) and began to understand that our initial feelings about that style of art likely come from the negativity that the prevailing group in the Italian peninsula assigned to the style of art. This also explains part of the reason why Renaissance art was greeted with such exuberance—it looked more like the art from antiquity and in no way resembled the Gothic art that had taken over the peninsula. When I returned to the museum, I found myself asking a lot of questions about the use of color in Thompson’s work. I wonder why he keeps the colors that we see in nature true for the landscape portion of his work, but then chooses to make the human figures all sorts of vibrant colors with very little detail on the body. I am also curious to understand why he sometimes gives his human figures natural skin colors and why other times he does not (particularly as much of his work is a commentary on the African American experience).
In our first class of the Renaissance Art course, we had the opportunity to discuss the brief reading we had done before class. I was particularly interested in the concept of “period eye” that we touched on in class. I have never taken an art history course, so this was a new idea to me and one that I think will be of great importance and interest throughout the semester. Working to truly understand period eye seems like it is one of the greatest challenges and joys of studying art history, and I look forward to engaging with that work this semester. I also enjoyed our conversation about the meaning of the word “Renaissance,” particularly the implication that something had to have died in order for there to be a rebirth. I look forward to exploring the history and art of the time just before the Renaissance to examine what this “death” looked like and felt like, and then contrasting it with the work of the Renaissance to fully appreciate the innovation in art, technology, religion, and thinking of that time.