In this lesson, we talked about the layouts of towns, as well as the contributions to large, town buildings like the Florence Chapel. We started with our analyses of Colby’s campus. During this, we talked about the ways the college chooses to present itself to the outside world, and the ways it is arranged in order to be convenient to the students who live there. For one, athletics and the arts are presented at opposing entrances, and additionally, the central green is surrounded by academic buildings. Around those buildings are academic buildings, and dining halls. Next we talked about the Florentine Chapel, talking about the different guilds that were present in Florence at the time. As we talked about secular art before this, we continued our discussion in this, talking about the methods in which different artists were commissioned to work on the Florentine Chapel.
Author: jcdext23 (Page 1 of 3)
In this class, we continued our discussion on secular pieces of art. As our first example, we revisted The Garden of Earthly Delights, emphasizing how many of these pieces were often conversation pieces. Furthermore, we discussed how most of these secular art pieces came to have a market. In trading towns, like ports or towns with mercantile systems, artists began to make art that was not intedned for specific patrons, but instead was art that was created for the free market. Therefore, artists were able to specialize in certain, popular, or unique styles. Furthermore, this meant that the audience for their art was largely increased, so artists began to look for themes or traditions that were favored by the masses. Much like the art from the manuscripts of Dürer, the artists working in these free markets utilized stuff that the common person would understand. For example, Bruegel utuilized moral stories that would not have been unfamiliar to the standard person, and therefore, were conversation pieces that would have a higher likelyhood of selling.
In this class, we talked about how secular art in the Renaissance was formed, where it appeared, and the ways it was composed in order to fit its uses in its contemporary environment. We first looked at some Intarsia wood paneling, the primary example we saw was from the Duke’s house in Gubbio. The perspective in the intricate wood paneling was set to be approximately 5’9”, and inscriptions above the paneling contained adjectives describing the Duke, demonstrating how individualized secular art was. Furthermore, we saw how artists took care of their patrons in creating secular art, with Botticelli’s Primavera. The painting, which was made for the patron’s wedding and carried symbolism, with the depiction of Venus, that was fitting of that. One of the more interesting distinctions we made was with the consideration of art in the time period. While Primavera is reminiscent of art that was on tapestries at the time, the distinction between mediums probably wouldn’t have been made by those at the time.
In this video lecture, we discussed the parts and variations of manuscripts, as well as continuing some of our discussion on gender in the Renaissance. The manuscript made for the Queen by Jean Pucelle, we noted, is one of the most important manuscripts of the Renaissance. What I found particularly interesting was the use of Grisaille on the medium, which meant that shading was the only form of difference (without color) on each manuscript page. The other interesting implication from this is the fact that therefore, the page, without shading, can be interpreted as total light. This helps the prayer book use this imagery to create borders of light around the sacred art included. We also talked about schools of illumination, in which manuscripts were produced in large complexes and schools. What was interesting and new about these schools, is that the manuscripts produced were not personalized in the same way as earlier manuscripts we looked at – instead, they were personalized in small ways and commercialized and “mass-produced”.
In this recorded lecture, we looked at many more examples of intricate portraiture. Although we talked about Leonardo’s Mona Lisa, I found Van Eyck’s Giovanni Arnolfini and His Wife to be the most interesting piece we looked at. With many of the parts of the portrait acting as disguised symbolism. Within this portrait, we examined some of the ways in which gender played a part in portrait portrayals, with Giovanni portrayed in the city sphere, an open window to his side. His wife, on the other hand, is portrayed within her contemporary role at the time, within the house. Furthermore, the symbolism on their respective sides of the portrait, which we talked about might have served as part of a marriage pact, also matches values that were expected for a man or a woman at the time. Furthermore, I found Michelangelo’s sculpture of Giuliano de’ Medic to be very interesting, mostly due to his idealization of the looks of the man, and his commentary on it later. His understanding is interesting as he sees portraits as not needing to physically represent the subject, but rather portraying them through portraiture that presented the characteristics that represented the subject.
In this class, we continued our discussion on portraiture in Renaissance art. We first looked at how the intention of a portrait affects the composition, looking at the more modern representation of this through the examples of the class’s selfies. One of the first innovations in portraiture that we saw was the movement from black, amorphous backgrounds to portraits with backgrounds that put the subject in context, both physically and through connections to their character, class, and familial history. An example of this comes through the comparison of Campin’s Portrait of a Man and Woman, and Christus’ Edward Grymeston. While the former has a portrait with the aforementioned amorphous background, the portrait of Edward Grymeston has a background that contains much to give information on Grymeston. The background contains a household that would have been contemporary at the time, with Grymeston holding a necklace and the coat of arms of his family in the background. We also saw how the different focuses of Italian and Northern artists in the Renaissance affected portraiture. Where Italian portraits might have come off as more airbrushed and were focused more on the wholistic portraiture, artists like Van Eyck created portraits that were more naturalistic and focused on small, accurate details.
In this class discussion, we talked about the differences between Northern and Italian Renaissance artists’ focuses in their art, additionally examining the disguised symbolism in the Mérode Triptych to explore the work and styles of Northern artists. In summary, we discussed how while Italian Renaissance artists were more focused on capturing scenes and the general world and scene as a whole, artists to the north were more concerned with the specific details of the scene, thus choosing to use eye-balled, rising perspective, aerial perspective, and oil paints to further achieve this goal of specific details. Using Exeter Madonna as an example, we talked about the rules of aerial perspective: as things get further away, outlines and details get blurrier, colors shift towards blue, and saturation and value contrast lessen. These are all due to the water molecules in the atmosphere. Furthermore, in our discussion of the Mérode Triptych, we defined disguised symbolism as symbolism that would not necessarily be understood with prior education on the subject. The painting, which would have been housed in a domestic setting, depicts Mary, Joseph, the patrons, and the angel Gabriel in a similar contemporary domestic house that it would have been displayed in.
In this class discussion, we continued to talk about Leonardo’s exploration of art and elaborated on our conversation about perspective by examining perspective in The Last Supper and other paintings. Furthermore, we talked about his interest and use of numerology in The Last Supper. While I am familiar with the use of numbers in the Bible to connote specific meanings (namely the numbers 7, 666, 12 etc) the use of groups in paintings, and even some of the additional numbers we talked about (4 for the two different types of virtues) were new and unfamiliar concepts to me. It is an interesting intersection between math, on a basic level, and subliminal meaning that I found fascinating. Furthermore, in our explanation of perspective, we talked about how perspective helped to engage the reader. While I had already explored this lightly in my exhibition proposal, I found it very interesting to consider the fact that paintings “lock” the viewer’s perspective at a very specific point. Keeping this in mind, it is a helpful tool for analyzing art, as you can explore your perspective on the painting and determine why the artist chose to give you, as the viewer, this specific perspective.
In this class discussion, we talked about portraiture and mimetic representation. The specific representation of this that we talked about was the Portrait of the Artist and his Wife. The painting is different from other artwork that we have seen in that it contains artistic boasts from the artist about his skill. While one fly in the painting rests on a plate in a portrait, another, on the headdress of his wife, is positioned, as if it were on the painting. Another interesting aspect of the piece was how the artist was presumably drawing a self-portrait – which was indicated by the direction of his gaze, and the lack of a left arm (or right arm in the mirror) portrayed. Additionally, we talked about how while Vasari saw the progression of art as the progression towards naturalism, this wasn’t the route that occurred in every culture, and instead, changes in art stylistically were more likely to be in reaction to the art styles that came before them. Another instance where this did happen, however, was in Ancient Greek sculpture, which we are also currently talking about in AR111.
In this class, we finished our discussions of the Arena Chapel, paying close attention to how the composition of pieces contributed to explaining the narrative. We additionally talked about the life of St. Francis, and the movement he inspired, as well as the ties between The Garden of Earthly Delights and alchemical tools. Specifically, within the frescoes of the Arena Chapel, I found it interesting that Giotto might have used the same guides for multiple scenes, as we talked about with the pose of Christ in the raising of Lazarus and his entrance to Jerusalem. The choice of Giotto to portray the story of Jesus kicking the merchants out of the Temple was also an interesting element to the narratives in the frescoes, as it thematically matched the Arena Chapel’s goal of charity and disapproval of greed. The Lamentation scene was interesting in the ways in which it differed from the other frescos in the narrative. As we discussed, Giotto’s use of body language to convert emotion is quite spectacular, and even with this use of body language, he is able to build the composition in a manner that makes it bottom-heavy, towards Christ’s body. This, which is the primary difference between the earlier frescoes, conveys the gravity of the death of Christ, which at the time, would have felt like the end of the movement for His followers.