Looking at the
Renaissance
Art, architecture
and the antique
For Giorgio Vasari,
writing in the mid 16th century, the astonishing development of the visual arts
during the previous 250 years was directly inspired by imitation of the
antique. But the relationship between the visual arts and classical models was
not anything like as clear cut as Vasari would have his readers believe. His
perspective was that of a Florentine whose outlook had been moulded by
humanism; hence he looked for the influence of the antique on the innovative
artists he admired, and found it where it did not necessarily exist. So for
example Giotto, who Vasari saw as the first to revive ancient art, cannot be
signed up as an early example of classicizing; both his technique and subject
matter derive in large measure from the new forms of spirituality associated
with the Franciscans. The inspiration of classical forms jostles with a whole
series of other influences on the development of the arts in the 14th century.
It was only in the 15th century that there came to be an acceleration of
classical influence on the visual arts as humanism became increasingly dominant
in shaping the outlook of the elite. To have credibility a person had to
demonstrate at least some acquaintance with classical learning; patrons
demanded classicizing from artists and architects and such classicizing became
increasingly faithful to antique models.
Where did these models
come from? No antique painting was known until the discovery of the Golden
House (Domus Aurea) of Nero, excavated in the last decade of the 15th century,
so that painters were reliant on literary sources such as that of the Roman
writer, Pliny the Elder, whose description of ancient Greek artists was buried
in a book otherwise devoted to natural history. In contrast Roman coins and
medals, sculpture and the remains of antique buildings were liberally scattered
throughout Italy. The trip made to Rome by the sculptor Donatello and the
architect Brunelleschi in the early years of the 15th century to draw and
measure ancient remains signals the beginning of the serious pursuit of
classical realism which gathered pace over the century. Making sense of these
remains was helped by the discovery of classical texts relating to the visual
arts. The most important of these, found in 1414, was that of Vitruvius, the
Roman architect which laid down precise rules governing the mathematical
proportions used in the construction of buildings. Vitruvius drew parallels
between these proportions and those of the ideal human figure, a concept
famously illustrated by Leonardo da Vinci in his drawing of 'Vitruvian Man'.
In the 16th century,
classical treatises such as that of Vitruvius began to be imitated: for example
Sebastian Serlio (1475-1554) published the first of his hugely influential
architectural treatises in 1537. But even with classical rule books to hand,
the artists of the Renaissance were open minded about the way that they used
these sources. New buildings were, after all, erected within an existing
context. They were also paid for by patrons who had firm agendas as to the
functions of those buildings. So in appearance neither the Renaissance city nor
the Renaissance court conformed perfectly to the rules. Venice for example
identified more closely with the Eastern Roman Empire, Byzantium, than with
ancient Rome. The city had for long conceived of itself in Imperial terms, and
with the fall of Constantinople to the Turks in 1453, considered itself chief
inheritor of the Byzantine legacy. Gentile Bellini's painting of the Procession
of the Cross, (1496) triumphantly records Venice's sacred vision of itself,
with the relic of the true cross being processed by massed ranks of religious
fraternities before the gloriously ornate facade of St. Marks. Renaissance
buildings in pure Vitruvian style were built in Venice: in the mid 16th century
the Venetian authorites commissioned a perfectly proportioned, classically
inspired library from Jacopo Sansovino, designed to house a spectacular
collection of humanist books. But Venetian tradition meant that extensions to
the Doge's Palace and to the Piazza San Marco in the 15th and 16th centuries
were designed to merge as far as possible with existing buildings.
Equally, where a
Renaissance court was not housed in classically correct buildings, this does
not therefore mean that the prince and his builders had 'failed' to understand
the classical models. Like the Venetians, princes saw the need to stress the
continuity and hence the credentials of their regimes, for the visual arts had
to speak in a language that would be understood and appreciated by those the
prince needed to impress. Henry VIII for example was well aware of the most up
to date styles when he commissioned the Florentine sculptor Pietro Torregiani
to make his parents' tomb. Henry VII and Elizabeth of York's tomb is finished
with immaculate classical detail. But it is surrounded by a gothic grill which
reflects the perpendicular architecture of the chapel in Westminster Abbey in
which they lie, a grill festooned with the chivalric emblems which still
featured so largely in the mind set of Renaissance princes and their courtiers.
The obsession with heraldry and its message of continuity is also evident at
Hampton Court, a palace appropriated by Henry VII from Cardinal Wolsey on the
latter's fall from favour in 1529. Henry did however reconstruct the interior,
re-orientating it so that the lay-out more adequately expressed the function of
the Renaissance court - as a theatre which constantly reiterated the authority
of the prince.
Awareness of new styles
was greatly accelerated by print. Increasingly sophisticated techniques of
engraving made possible the production of minutely detailed illustrations,
illustrations moreover that were not just a decoration but were themselves
devices for teaching and for exposition. The fruit of the new techniques can be
seen in scientific treatises as well as in the pattern books for architects or
prints made from paintings. And as with art and architecture, so with science,
we have to be wary of arguing for a simple one way relationship between the
world of the ancients and that of Renaissance Europe. Interaction between the
two was characterised more by a process of cultural negotiation than slavish
emulation. Dioscorides' Materia Medica (1st century AD) for example,
provides a model for many 16th-century herbals, but was nonetheless open to
criticism on many fronts. This became particularly evident as knowledge of the
exotic plant life of northern Europe and the New World - all absent from
Dioscorides' original compilation - found its way into the pioneering work of
German, Flemish and Dutch botanists.
Antique sources also
offered the means of conferring prestige on occupations hitherto denied
professional status. The anatomist for example, was long held as inferior to
the university educated physician, because his 'manual' labours were seen as
subsidiary to the main purpose of medicine. From the mid-16th century onward,
however, the professional status of the anatomist underwent radical
improvement, largely as a result of Vesalius's ground breaking study of the
human body, which sought to invoke the authority of classical physicians, such
as Galen.
Associated image links
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Artistic identities
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