Europe Art And The Gothic Style example essay topic

At the beginning of this era, a synthesis of local styles known as the International Style predominated Europe art and the Gothic style was dominant in architecture. This era also began in the shadow of the person sometimes seen as the precedent of the great Italian Renaissance masters. His frescoes, notably those in the Cappella dell Arena in Padua used the concepts of Byzantine art that governed ideas of foreshortening, shadow and texture to create the illusion of depth. Giottos mastery had recreated the concept of depth on a flat surface, and the slow progress to what we recognise as Renaissance art occurred throughout the fourteenth century. One of the finest pieces of International Style art is the Wilton Diptych, which dates from 1400 and portrays the commending of Richard II by St. Edmund, St. Edward the Confessor and St John the Baptist to the Christ Child. A love of detail is evident from the painstaking way in which fingers, flowers and even the Infants feet are marked out in loving detail.

The artist took a fractal approach to the painting, trying to add realism to his scene by adding layer upon layer of detail to the figures. The foreshortening of limbs and bodies in the painting is testament to Giottos influence and the figures themselves have a reasonable deal of realism to them, even if the painting overall does not. The flowers across the picture are typical of the pre-Renaissance fascination with the delicate and beautiful, and the diptych shows a great power of observation, but the early date of the painting is clear when we look at the background, and the way that space is portrayed within the picture. The gilded background was a show of wealth in a space that usually lay redundant in paintings of this era, as at the time a high calibre means of representing space had not yet been discovered.

The gilded background would have been massively expensive, as would the ultramarine pigments used so freely, notably upon the dress of the figure of the Virgin Mary. The Renaissance era is usually seen as starting at the point when artists ceased to be interested in telling a story so much as in portraying nature and collecting studies of the world. These achieved, they moved on to exploring the laws of vision and the way in which the viewer perceives the world. They began to study the human body with a view to enhancing their ability to portray it both in stone and in paint, as their classical forebears had done. The Greek artists of the fifth century were mainly concerned in how to build up the image of the beautiful body whilst to the Gothic artists, all their skill and tricks were merely means to an end, which was to tell a sacred story more movingly and more convincingly [1]. The rise of Petrarch, who had become a classic author even by this early stage, and the pre-eminence of humanism had led to a resurgence of respect for the classical world that we see reflected across the Renaissance world.

Renewed awareness of Italys great past led to renewed interest in some kind of revival of the ancient arts. The millennium that lay between the fall of Rome and their time was to them merely a sad interlude in Italys greatness. Giottos art and the art it spawned for a century afterwards had its roots in the artists genius in blending the concepts of the rigid Byzantine school into a combination with the precepts of the Italianate school, but further progress would require another genius. His reputation established with Florence Cathedral, Brunelleschi went on to spearhead a revival of Roman forms in architecture. He did not intend to copy Roman architecture, nor rebuild Italy in the ancient model, but to use Roman ideals to create new modes of harmony and beauty, using columns, pediments and pilasters. Although rightly remembered as a great architect, Brunelleschis mathematical methods used for his engineering were transferred by his artist friends to painting and thus created what we today call perspective.

Vitally, this mathematical model for the appearance of reality was far beyond the achievements of the ancient Greek artists. Pioneered in Masaccios celebrated The Holy Trinity, the Virgin, St. John and Donors, the paintings background, instead of being a static scene, a gilded backdrop or an ultramarine wash, shows a realistic transept chapel in Brunelleschis new style using perspective. The Florentine reaction to this painting, which appeared to have created a hole in the wall into a new burial chamber, was shocking due to its heavy, solemn figures and the lack of daintiness to which they had become accustomed. The innovation of perspective so dramatically introduced by Masaccio, a genius who was dead by the age of 28, was the most dramatic break with the past conceivable. Introducing the ability to represent space into paintings is as big a break with the past as is imaginable.

It took some rime for the Italianate trend to spread, where the Gothic architectural style continued to flourish. In northern Europe, the fifteenth century opened clearly favouring the High Gothic decorative style, a taste clearly visible at the Palace of Justice at Rouen and Exeter Cathedral. Just as the Italians began to revolt against the Gothic style, the century saw a reaction against complicated and heavy architecture. Kings College Chapel, Cambridge (1446), is an excellent example of the reactionary Perpendicular gothic style.

The Burgundian court at Dijon was also producing work in reaction to the old Gothic trend. Not as radical as Masaccio, Jan van Eycks style in the 1430's was of the lineage of his local forebears, but when introduced to perspective, van Eyck broke new boundaries. His celebrated portrait of The Betrothal of the Arnolfini with its mirror reflecting not only Arnolfini and his bride but also van Eyck himself, shows the painter as witness and person. In essence, van Eyck acknowledges that he is painting what he saw, to the extent of even leaving in his own impression. The subject, a betrothal, is also great naturalism. Despite the efforts of the van Eyck brothers, the medieval spirit reigned throughout Northern Europe at this time.

Perspective, realism and classical influence did not trouble the northern masters. The preoccupation with the skill of the artist as an expense incurred by the patron, so evident from the sums paid to Italian masters, is not clear from the works in the north where ultramarine and gold were still the greatest expenses troubling northern patrons and impressed contemporaries. Although Lo chner uses perspective timidly in the Fra Angelico style, contemporary northern work at this time tended to compare more easily with such work as the Wilton Diptych. Despite the guilds inadvertent prevention of dissemination of ideas, it did occur, as on Fouquets trip to Italy, where he painted the Pope and picked up Italian Renaissance ideas. Whilst still painting on the same theme as the Wilton Diptych, Fouquets image looks less like a collage but more like a real representation of the event. Light and shade, perspective and distance all new elements to the north, and all imported there from Italy.

Yet the synthesis was not all Italian. Whilst Piero was a great Master and had a great interest in light and shade, the van Eycks influence is clear from the attention to detail of the textures probably a by-product of the gothic fascination with delicate detail. A contemporary of Masaccio, Donatello was another leader of the Renaissance. His celebrated statue of St. George differs concertedly from the Gothic art that it was displayed alongside. Instead of heightening the building by accentuation of the height of the alcoves and using dainty lacework, Donatello aims to restore the art of sculpture to a representative art form based on the Greek ideals. Instead of telling the story of St. George by reference to dragon motifs under his feet, or other such devices that might have occurred earlier, Donatellos statue is concerned with portraying the saint as a man gazing at his enemy and ready for battle.

As opposed to the serene and vague expressions of the gothic statues of the decorative style, Donatellos George is determined, unyielding and brimming with vim, vigour and vitality. Just as Brunelleschi set the tone for architecture for centuries to come, Donatello and Masaccio set the tone for the coming centuries with their use of a new and vigorous observation of nature. Burckhardt claimed that this periods natural interest was indicative of mans new autonomy and command of the natural world, but this seems a little oversimplified and is probably just a reflection of 19th century liberal romanticism and pastoralism. This observation of the world was encouraged by collectors such as Aldo randi who saw himself as clarifying and classifying the universe by collecting. Imperator of Naples won status by showing off his collection, and saw himself as a Noah figure, rescuing the forms of nature.

Patrons were also happy to push for natural observation as a skill. Maximilian II made a great show a Byzantine medical text and his menageries, whilst gathering a court of scholars, philosophers and artists. Rudolph IIs Prague garden is also worthy of note, as is his extensive patronage. Appearing to be sage and wise by being scientific through support of the arts was a big incentive for the patrons of the day, quite aside from the usual reasons for patronage, such as Richard IIs obvious motives for the Wilton Diptych.

Just as the form of Masaccios painting is brutally real, Donatellos figure of St. George is real, although is a lighter, fresher way. By contrast, Donatello shows the capability to produce the viciously realistic with his relief of He rods Feast at Siena Cathedral. Whilst the Middle Ages produced dainty and delicate artwork that showed order and sterilised such gruesome passages, Donatellos realism is almost sadistic by comparison. Showing the executioner kneeling before a horrified Herod, his evil wife is shown rationalizing the horror of what was going on, whilst Salome is shown shocked and pausing in her dance. Meanwhile, the other diners recoil in horror at the sight of St. John the Baptists head. This idea of reflecting the real world was an innovation localised to a small group of painters in certain areas, and this in itself was a major development.

Although minor local variations on themes existed, Europe existed at this time as an integral continent. Art, architecture, learning and politics were universals, common to the continent. The emergence of burghers and merchants willing to protect their local interests changed this before our period opens, and guilds began to regulate cities and towns for the benefits of their members, thus excluding foreign employees from taking work from guild members. This encouraged the ending of the International Style and the formation of regional schools.

The guilds forced young boys whose parents saw art as their calling to train imitating the art of the local masters, so that the young artist would eventually be able to paint on the masters behalf. This formed and institutionalised very distinct and separate regional styles. Brunelleschis successors followed in his footsteps, with Alberti developing the Brunelleschi an style. Ghiberti's bronze of the Baptism in the Jordan is similarly a study on Donatellos style.

Using Donatellos Dance of Salome as a guide on the pieces character and aesthetics and a twelfth century brass at Liege for content, tone and the required depth. The printing of pictures preceded the printing of books by some decades and the most important innovation of the era was to impact on art also. The advent of the woodcut as a cheap means of printing meant that cheap pamphlets were easily producible. However, copper prints were more important for art. Copper prints could show variegation of shading by different depths of cut and the plates lasted much longer. Skilful use of the burin allowed the etcher to etch in the style of Botticelli and Mantegna two popularly copied artists in Italy and thus allowed ideas to spread far and wide about new artistic trends.

The sixteenth century brought Italy its most celebrated artistic period as the position of the artist had begun to change. As cities competed for artists to beautify their buildings, so the power of the artists grew. During the Quattrocento Renaissance, it is important to remember that artists were not the isolated visionaries as romanticized about today, but were businessmen in possession of demanding clients. Painters did not paint a picture in the hope of acquiring a buyer, except in extremely lean periods, when less demanded painters might produce a run of icons of the Madonna or of some similarly saleable subject. In the fifteenth century, pictures were made to order by the client and no painting was the artists genius acting in isolation: on the contrary, painting was still too important to be left to the painters.

[2] Art became to be viewed not as a craft, but as a skilled profession. Physicians, such as Vesalius, began to dissect bodies themselves in this period, instead of observing dissections. This was a fusion of liberal artist into craftsman, and indicative of an ongoing general trend that took the craft of painting into the bounds, despite Aristotle's snobbery into the realms of liberal art. The resulting liberation of the artist and the unleashing of creativity upon the world was vital for the obvious freedom of the periods art and served to increase the cult hood that Masters had attracted since Giotto, the first Master. Indeed, Giottos reputation was potent two hundred years on, and Masaccio still easily impressed the world. For all the praise of Burckhardt, Da Vinci makes surprisingly few innovations.

His magnificent Last Supper is important in that it is the culmination of the solution to the new problem of three-dimensional composition. Whilst Pollaiuolo's Martyrdom of St Sebastian is obviously forced and unnatural in its setting, Leonardo piece is natural yet compelling, chaotic in theme yet neat in order. He uses optical illusions in the Mona Lisa to compel the viewer so that sfumato hides the true expression of the model, and so that the mismatching background means that the angle of observation of the picture alters ones perception of it. These were more gimmicks than developments, but worth noting for they show the degree of sophistication of art as a science. Viewing art as a science, Michelangelos great contribution to art was his mastery of anatomy. In the same way that Turner would become known for his clouds, Michelangelo became known as a Master to rival his contemporary, Leonardo, by the age of thirty for his ability to depict the human form.

Younger still, Raphael was in Florence at a similar time, but made a vital innovation. Whereas the Quattrocento artists, Michelangelo and Leonardo were obsessed with the depiction of nature through their art, Raphael was happier to use an imaginary ideal for his models. Galatea is recognised for her beauty, as she symbolizes the classical world as it should have been, and was recognised as a representation of pure beauty, but famously, she had no model. Florence, it must be remembered, was not the sole cradle of art in Europe it was not even the sole cradle of reform in Italy. The great reformers of Florence were less taken by colour than form, whereas in the hazy, ambient lagoon light of Venice, colour was more important and developments occurred paralleling the achievements of Florence. Venice's preoccupation with colour is a result of the heritage of the Venetian schools direct descendancy from the medieval tradition, where real colour was almost irrelevant the gold and ultramarine miniatures of the era never claimed any air of realism.

Giorgi ones The Tempest is an excellent example of the local schools importance, as he forgets classical lessons about the importance of composition, the importance of careful representation and merely uses the colours of the painting to bind it together. Titian, who rose to the same heights in his own time as Michelangelo (possibly because of his exceptional longevity) masterminded the deliberate drawing of attention from location to location by using light and darkness and using straight converging lines. The Italian learning spread across the continent, fusing with native Gothic styles as a result of the plundering and the occupations of the Italian Wars, but Italy continued to drive forwards. In the 1520's, the plethora of talent led many to claim that perfection had been attained, and so, Mannerism developed. The inability to outdo their forebears in skill led many to try to outdo them in their invention and originality of form. Michelangelos own disregard for norms, especially in architecture, had briefed the European public for such an occurrence and taught the European public to admire an artists originality.

The result was the growth of the appeal of virtuosos such as Cellini and this led to bizarre and extravagant semi-reactionary works. Contravening the most basic of the classical texts on paintings, the Mannerist tried to drive themselves from what they saw as a rut. The Mannerist Jacob Robust i (Tintoretto) felt that the beauty of Titans work was not compelling enough for story telling. Using fragmented light instead of Titianesque swathes of colour and using imbalanced arrangements of figures, Tintoretto portrayed the legend of St. George and the discovery of St. Marks remains with great power and excitement. A further extension of this school was El Grecos work.

Raised in Crete, El Greco was used to the Byzantine style that was devoid of natural appearance or realism. Encouraged by Tintoretto work, El Grecos art disregarded natural form and colours producing stirring visions, notably in his Opening of the Fifth Seal, a very shocking piece. His residence in Spain where there was a religious fervour suited to his style is a happy coincidence for the art world... The idolatry of Spain that sustained El Greco and kept his reputation and finances afloat was lacking at this time in much of northern Europe. Protestantism prevented the production of religious images. Portrait painting and illustration alone sustained the northern painters.

Hals use of undignified poses, unlike Holbein's contrived dignity, was designed to convey a characteristic mood, but like Holbein, it followed strict rules of balance. The area of most interest to art historians in the Netherlands is the fate of the old altarpiece painters, many of whom began to paint landscapes. By becoming genre painters, the Dutch artists were able to continue to thrive. This era saw the birth of the landscape - a result of a financial necessity to find new subject matter. The landscape was a pure show of artistic talent; something that could not have happened prior to the cult of the artist.

The seventeenth century saw the greatest advances since Michelangelos death. The Roman Baroque style, with its abandonment of some of the simplicity of classical architecture whilst retaining its motifs, rose at this time. A reaction to the polarisation of wealth, extravagance unseen since the Gothic era was possible. The triumphalism of the Counter-Reformation, the renewed power of the Papacy and the rise of absolutism as a doctrine all led firstly the church, and then royalty, to turn to the Baroque as a show of might. Breaking new rules by sheer expense and extravagance, this was a Roman extension of Mannerist independent thinking. Bernini's David is not Michelangelos David.

Carracci, under Rafa elite influences, moved to an era of classically influenced anatomy, sentimentality, simple and harmonious painting. Meanwhile, Caravaggio moved to unravel the truth at the cost of beauty. To him, beauty was not of any importance, and the world as it existed was all that mattered. His irreverent Doubting Thomas was criticised for its depiction of the apostles as common labourers. The contrast between Carravaggios Aristotle an brutal realism (disparagingly called naturalism) and Carracci's Platonic world of ideals we see reflected elsewhere. Rubens idyllic landscapes contrast with Velazquez's early works.

The Renaissance changes were multifaceted. The artist was brought onto a skewed plain in relation to his art, and this eras love of Masters gives us our modern preoccupation with the works of famous artists. The printing press allowed dissemination of copies of Botticelli's or other popular works, so popular ising art and allowing widespread art appreciation. Despite this, the era saw the schools come to the fore, as each supported its champion against one another. Stylistically, perspective was the single most important innovation, as Giottos understanding of foreshortening had already allowed some realism to exist in art, paradoxically as a result of his study of the unnatural Byzantine school.

The movement for the real world as art grew until Raphael ability to conjure natural beauty showed an alternative. The movement from the realism of Michelangelo to the blurred impressions of Velazquez and Rembrandt indicate a middle ground. Finally surpassing the Ancients, the Renaissance was truly a rebirth for Italian art, as masters like Donatello, irritated by the staleness of the vogues of their fields, spearheaded reform, and genii such as Masaccio, Michelangelo and Leonardo applied the lessons of science to art. [1] P. 144, The Story of Art E.H. Gombrich [2] P. 3 Michael Baxendall Painting and Experience in Fifteenth Century Italy 389.