Section 3- A New World View in the Arts A Spirit of Adventure ________________________________________ ______ ________________________________________ _____ ________________________________________ _____ ________________________________________ ______ ________________________________________ _____ ________________________________________ ______ ________________________________________ _______ ________________________________________ _____ ________________________________________ _____ A New World View in the Arts ________________________________________________________ _____ ________________________________________________________ _____ Summary 1
Transcript
Section 3- A New World View in the Arts
A Spirit of Adventure ______________________________________________ _____________________________________________
Renaissance Artists and Writers Explored New Themes and Techniques
Artistic Vocabulary:
Classics
Perspective
Realism
Patron
Secular
Vanishing Point
Summary 2
Writers:
Painters:
Architects:
Renaissance Artists:
Leonardo da Vinci Michelangelo Buonarroti Raphael
Summary 3
Directions: Go to the Khan Academy website to complete the following art analysis:http://smarthistory.khanacademy.org/High-Renaissance.html
The High Renaissance is just that—the height of the Renaissance! When you think of the Renaissance, the names that come to mind are probably the artists of this period: Leonardo and Michelangelo, for instance. When many people think of the greatest work of art in the Western world, they think of Michelangelo's Sistine Ceiling. This is a period of big, ambitious projects.
What exactly is the High Renaissance, and how is it different from the Early Renaissance? As the Humanism of the Early Renaissance grows, a problem begins to develop. Have a look again at Fra Filippo Lippi's Madonna and Child with Angels. We see in this painting an image of the Madonna and Christ Child that has become so real, the figures so human, that we can hardly tell that these are figures (except for the faint shadow of a halo). On the other hand, we have seen that in the Middle Ages, if you want to make your figure spiritual then you sacrifice its realism.Its almost as if there is this feeling in the Early Renaissance that if you want to be spiritual, then your painting can't look real, and if you want it to be real, then it loses some spirituality. It has to be one or the other. Well, Leonardo da Vinci comes along, and basically says—you don't have to make that choice. It's not either/or. Leonardo is able to create figures who are physical and real -- just as real as Lippi's or Masaccio's figures and yet they have an undeniable and intense spirituality at the same time. So we can say that Leonardo unites the real and spiritual, or soul and substance.
Neo-Platonism- The Philosophy of Humanism
Excerpt- “A New World View: Humanism and the Arts”Renaissance scholars came to advocate more tolerance toward unorthodox (unusual) beliefs and began to focus on the important role played by the individual in society……During the Renaissance, the growing emphasis on the individual resulted in a more optimistic assessment of human nature…..
Amongst Renaissance thinkers, like Plato, believed the soul was immortal and complete enjoyment of God would be possible only in the afterlife, not here on earth. Like Plato, The Brilliant Florentine Humanist Marsilio Ficino, revived the Platonic notion of FREE WILL- the
power of humans to make of themselves what they wish. In Ficino’s hands, free will became the source of human dignity because human beings were able to choose to love God.
Ficino’s most prized student, Pico della Mirandola contributed to Ficino’s argument by stating Human beings, endowed with reason and speech… are set at the midpoint in the scale of God’s creatures, they are blessed with free will, which enables them either to raise themselves to God or to sink lower than the beasts. This liberty to determine private fate makes human beings the masters of their individual destinies.
1. Which of Plato’s ideas led to a new way of thinking about humanity during the Renaissance?____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
2. Is Mirandola stating free will as something good or bad? Explain. ____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
1. What is the medium? (Fresco, Sculpture, Painting)__________________________________________________________________________________________________________
2. What is the medium depicting? __________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
3. Is the content Humanist or Religious? If Humanist, Why? ________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
4. How does Michelangelo promote secularism, Perspective, and/or realism when creating the artwork?
Excerpt “Raphael’s School of Athens- Smart History”The two thinkers in the very center, Aristotle (on the right) and Plato (on the left, pointing up) have been enormously important to Western thinking generally, and in different ways, their different philosophies were incorporated into Christianity. Plato holds his book called The Timaeus.
Summary 7
Plato points up because in his philosophy the changing world that we see around us is just a shadow of a higher, truer reality that is eternal and unchanging (and include things like goodness and beauty). For Plato, this otherworldly reality is the ultimate reality, and the seat of all truth, beauty, justice, and wisdom.
Aristotle holds his hand down, because in his philosophy, the only reality is the reality that we can see and experience by sight and touch (exactly the reality dismissed by Plato). Aristotle's Ethics (the book that he holds) "emphasized the relationships, justice, friendship, and government of the human world and the need to study it."
Pythagoras (lower left) believed that the world (including the movement of the planets and stars) operated according to mathematical laws. These mathematical laws were related to ideas of musical and cosmic harmony, and thus (for the Christians who interpreted him in the Renaissance) to God. Pythagoras taught that each of the planets produced a note as it moved, based on its distance from the earth. Together, the movement of all the planets was perfect harmony -- "the harmony of the spheres."
What two great philosophers are at the center of the “School of Athens?”
Directions: Analyze the Painting, read the text, and answer the question.
Summary 9
“The Birth of Venus” by Sandro Botticelli 1482-1485 A.D.
Excerpt: The Ufffizi Gallery, Florence- “The Birth of Venus”The theme comes from Ovid’s Metamorphoses, a very important oeuvre of the Latin literature. Venus is portrayed naked on a shell on the seashore; on her left the winds blow gently caressing her hair, on her right a handmaid (Ora) waits for the goddess to go closer to dress her shy body. The meadow is sprinkled with violets, symbol of love.
Neo-Platonism was a philosophical current of thought that tried to connect the Greek and Roman cultural heritage with Christianity. The Neoplatonic philosophical thought believed beauty and excellence was an extension of a supreme being’s (God’s) existence, so the meaning is then clear: the work and promotion of art would mean the birth of love and the spiritual beauty as a driving force of life. The Medici commissioned the Birth of Venus, including the works Pallas and the Centaur and the Allegory of Spring at the Uffizi, and these belonged to Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco de’ Medici, a cousin of Lorenzo the Magnificent.
How does Neo-Platonism try to unite religion with Humanist thinking? Why?
Leonardo Da VinciVideo-Clip- http://smarthistory.khanacademy.org/leonardo-notebooks.htmlMona LisaVideo-Clip- http://smarthistory.khanacademy.org/leonardo-mona-lisa.html
“Mona Lisa” by Leonardo Da Vinci 1503-1506 A.D.Comparing Ideas:
Textbook pg. 339Renaissance Technique:
Roman art had been very realistic, and Renaissance painters developed new techniques for representing, both humans and landscapes in a realistic way. Renaissance painters learned the rules of perspective. By making distant objects smaller than those close to the viewer, artists could paint scenes that seemed three-dimensional. Renaissance painters used shading to make things look round and real. Painters and sculptors studied anatomy and drew from real models. As a result, they were able to portray the human body more accurately than medieval artists had done.
Excerpt: PBS “Treasures of the Art World”Leonardo Da Vinci was fascinated by the way light falls on curved surfaces. The gauzy veil, Mona Lisa's hair, the luminescence of her skin – all are created with layers of transparent color, each only a few molecules thick, making the
lady's face appear to glow, and giving the painting an ethereal, almost magical quality.
"Today's art critics call attention to the painting's mystery and harmony," says one historian. "But the first art historians to describe it emphasized its striking realism, pointing out 'the lips that smile' and 'the eyes that shine.'" Giorgio Vasari, for example, wrote in his early biography of da Vinci, Lives of the Painters: "As art may imitate nature, she does not appear to be painted, but truly of flesh and blood. On looking closely at the pit of her throat, one could swear that the pulses were beating."
1. Analyze the picture of the “Mona Lisa,” then read the two texts and explain how the art critic describes how Da Vinci’s “Mona Lisa” represents key techniques of the Renaissance.
