Italian Renaissance Art Notes

Italian Renaissance Art Notes

Discovering Art History chapter 9.1-9.2, p260-287

Key Ideas

Return to “classical” ideals and secular humanism

Open, light, balanced spaces in human proportion in architecture

Use of light and shadow to show form (chiaroscuro)

Triangular instead of linear composition

Linear perspective perfected

Return to accurate anatomy

Oil on stretched canvas

Italian Renaissance Art Vocabulary

Canvas

Chiaroscuro

Cupola

Foreshortening

Humanism

Orthogonal

Perspective (linear perspective)

Sfumato

Early Italian Renaissance Art – 1401 - 1494

Early Italian Architecture to Know
Filippo Brunelleschi, dome of Florence Cathedral Santa Maria Del Fiore, 1420-1436, brick masonry, 140’ dia., Florence, Italy. (p262-263)
Early Italian Renaissance Painting to Know
Tommaso Masaccio, Holy Trinity, 1425, fresco, 21 x 10’ 5”, Santa Maria Novella, Florence, Italy. / Tommaso Masaccio, Tribute Money, 1427, fresco, 8’ 1” x 19’ 7”, Brancacci Chapel, Santa Maria del Carmine, Florence, Italy. (p268) / Sandro Botticelli, Birth of Venus, 1485, tempera on canvas, 5’8 7/8” X 9’, Uffizi, Florence, Italy. (p272)
Early Italian Renaissance Sculpture to Know
Lorenzo Ghiberti, Gates of Paradise, 1425-1452, gilt bronze, 15’ high, Santa Maria Del Fiore Baptistry, Florence, Italy. (p264-265) / Donatello, David, 1420-1460, bronze, 62 ¼” high, National Museum, Bargello, Florence, Italy.(p266) / Luca della Robbia, Madonna and Child, 1455-1460, Glazed terracotta, 6’ dia., Orsanmichele, Florence, Italy.

High Italian Renaissance - 1495-1527

High Italian Renaissance Architecture to Know
Michelangelo Buonarroti, Saint Peter’s Basilica Dome, 1546-1564, brick masonry and iron, 138’ dia., Vatican City, Rome, Italy. (p280)
High Italian Renaissance Painting to Know
Leonardo da Vinci, The Last Supper, 1495-1498, tempera and oil on plaster, 15’ 2” x 28’ 10”, Santa Maria delle Grazie, Milan, Italy. (p276) / Leonardo Da Vinci, Mona Lisa (La Joconde), 1503-1505, oil on wood, 30 ¼ x 21”, Louvre, Paris, France. (p277)
Michelangelo Buonarotti, Old Testament Ceiling, 1508-1512, fresco, 45 x 128’, Sistine Chapel, Vatican City, Rome, Italy. (p281) / Michelangelo Buonarotti, Last Judgement Altar Wall, 1534-1541, fresco, 48 x 44’, Sistine Chapel, Vatican City, Rome, Italy. (p281)
Raphael Sanzio, The School of Athens, 1509-1511, fresco, 19 x 27’, Vatican, Rome, Italy. (p282) / Titian, Venus of Urbino, 1538, oil on canvas, 3’11” x 5’5”, Uffizi Gallery, Florence, Italy.
High Italian Renaissance Sculpture to Know
Michelangelo Buonarotti, David, 1501-1504, marble, 17’ high, Gallerie dell’Accademia, Florence, Italy. (p279)