Titian of Venice

Venus of Urbino, 1538, photo courtesy of WCC

          The Venetian artist Titian attained great fame in his day through born talent for observing and painting realistically the natural world.  The painter’s exact birth year eludes art historians to this day, due to his own desire to create a mystery about himself.  He created this confusion for future generations by drastically changing his age in many paintings.  However, through ardent research, historians placed his birth year at somewhere between 1487-90, and the year of his death (something that artist could not befuddle) at 1576.

            Vasari’s biography of Titian, the last in The Lives of Artists, describes him as a man with so much natural talent that had he been given rigorous stylistic schooling, he could have reached the heights of Michelangelo, Leonardo or Raphael. 

Danae Receiving the Golden Rain, 1553, photo courtesy of WCC

            Titian began his studies with Giovanni Bellini, a prominent Venetian painter in his day, and learned the style of Venice at the time.  According to Vasari, in the year 1507, Titian discovered the new technique adopted by Giorgione of Castlefranco and began to emulate it.  Giorgione painted with softer lines and colors; and throughout his career, Titian became known for this chiarascuric style of painting.  His paintings were often mistaken for those of Giovanni. 

            Throughout the beginning of his career, it seems Titian was commissioned many times to finish paintings and portraits by Bellini, who had weakened with age.  He arose to prominence during this time, and received many commissions of both religious paintings and portraits – for which he is best known.  Titian painted many nudes, women who are so ethereal that even Michaelangelo noted (according to Vasari) that “If Titian…had been assisted by art and design as greatly as he had been by Nature…no artist could achieve more or paint better, for he possesse[d] a splendid spirit and a most charming lively style”. 

Boy with Dogs in a Landscape, 1576, photo courtesy of WCC

            In his later career, Titian’s style shifted from his meticulous detailed works to broad and bold brush strokes; and though they seem to be effortless, Vasari writes that “his paintings [we]re reworked and that he ha[d] gone back over them with colors many times, making his effort evident”.  Toward the end of his life, the biography states that Vasari visited the aging artist, who still had brushes in his hands.

Artistic Perspective

          Andrea Mantegna was a prominent Italian Renaissance artist who lived from 1431-1506.  His most famous work, Lamentation over the Dead Christ, is distinguished by its mastery of perspective and foreshortening.  Mantegna’s skill with this quality of realism make his works both intricately intruiging and difficult to recreate.

St. James Led to His Execution, photo courtesy of WCC

                   The Italian city of Padova houses some f Mantegna’s early frescoes in the Ovetari Chapel (dedicated to the lives of Saint James and Christopher), which lies close to Giotto’s Scrovegni Chapel.  Regrettably, during the second World War the Allies destroyed many of his frescoes here during an air strike; however, during the 1920s they had been photographed in black and white, and are now in the process of restoration.

St. James Before Herod Agrippa, photo courtesy of WCC

     These frescoes provide an excellent example of Mantegna’s early experimentaion with foreshortening and complicated perspective.  In one example, St. James Led to His Execution, Mantegna creates two point perspective – in the foreground he creates a v-shaped line of people who recede into the background, and in the upper portion he mimics this with the tops of the buildings and an arches hallway.  Mantegna’s precise attention to this scientific pattern adds a dimension of reality receding into space, as if there is no end to his image.  The artist was a master of three dimensionality, even in his early career.  Mantegna’s complicated frescoes create an illusion of reality.  They are not as spacially balanced as some images from contemporary artists, yet they harmoniously work together because of his attention to perfecting linear perspective and foreshortening.

Botticelli's Transformation

The lives of eccentric artists are often wrought with poverty and misunderstanding.  Appreciation comes to them after their deaths, when the rest of the world has caught up with their vision.  For Sandro Botticelli (1445-1510), it seems that his career began in fame, but through his own lifestyle spiraled downward into destitution.

Birth of Venus, (1486), photo courtesy of Wikipedia CC

Primavera, (1482), photo courtesy of Wikipedia CC

            Throughout his early career, Botticelli was most often commissioned by the Medici family.  He worked on many projects in the home of Lorenzo di Medici, most notably his Birth of Venus (1486), Primavera (1482) and Pallas and the Centaur (1482).  These paintings exemplify a whimsical painter, less concerned with the Christian ethereal than the mythical.  A student of Fra Filippo Lippi, the influence from his master is apparent in much of his painting, though it is less realistic than that of Lippi.  Botticelli’s figures often portray a style somewhat similar to Lippi, with exquisite detail in facial expression and structure, as well as small details such as strands of hair.  

            

Christ Crowned with Thorns, (1500),
photo courtesy of Wikipedia CC

According to Giorgio Vasari’s biography of the painter, Botticelli squandered all of his money, so that in his later life he had acquired no savings.  During the 1490s, Botticelli became greatly influenced by the friar Savonarola and his infamous “Bonfire of the Vanities”.  Though it is not recoreded that Botticelli actually took part in this destruction of books and paintings, he did alter his style and subject matter so significantly that is became vastly difficult for him to find work.  For the remainder of his life, Savonarola’s influence affected Botticelli so that he “abandon[ed] painting; unable to make enough to live on, [so that] he fell into the direst of straights.” 

            Although his later life left him impoverished and indisposed, Vasari describes Sandro Botticelli as a painter who “ deserved high praise for all his paintings, because he put all of his energy into his works and did them with loving care.” 

References: Giorgio Vasari's The Lives of Artists

The Youthful Master

            The Brancacci Chapel in Florence was commissioned by Felice Brancacci, begun by the painter Masolino and his twenty-one year old student, Masaccio, in 1386 and later completed Filippino Lippi in 1481-82.  The Chapel was part of the church of Santa Maria del Carmine, which burned almost completely in 1771.  Amazingly, the Brancacci Chapel remained unharmed, allowing the frescoes of an artist who lived a short but talented life to be preserved.

Baptism of Neophytes, Masaccio, photo courtesy of
Wikipedia Creative Commons

Expulsion from Paradise
Masaccio, photo courtesy
of Wikipedia Creative
Commons

        Masaccio’s frescoes here consist of The Expusion from Paradise, The Tribute Money, Baptism of Neophytes, St. Peter Healing the Sick with his Shadow, The Distribution of Alms and Death of Anias, as well as parts of Raising of the Son of Theophilus and St. Peter Enthroned and Healing of the Cripple and Raising of Tabitha.  The most famous of his frescoes in the Brancacci Chapel is The Tribute Money, most well known for its precise realism in perspective and figures.  The painting depicts the scene from the gospels in which Jesus directs St. Peter to fetch a coin out of the mouth of a fish with which to pay a tax collector, and is divided into three segments – on the left St. Peter crouches by the water to catch the fish, in the center Jesus stands with the apostles and tax collector (who wears a short tunic and faces the group) and on the right St. Peter delivers the coin to the   tax collector. 

The Tribute Money, Masaccio, photo courtesy of Wikipedia Creative Commons

            In this fresco, Masaccio utilizes his single-point perspective for the entire painting, so that even though it is divided into three segments, the painting exists harmoniously as one whole piece.  Another technique attributed to Masaccio is atmospheric perspective, which is seen in the slight blueing of the mountains in the distance.  Lastly, Masaccio was the first to create a specific light source, creating a unique three-dimensionality, especially in the figures.  Altogether, Masaccio’s techniques form a realism previously unseen in painting; and this is the reason why Masaccio is known as one of the forerunners of the Renaissance.

The Mathematical Artist

Funerary monument to Sir John
Hawkwood, 1436, photo courtesy
of Wikipedia Creative Commons

            A most interesting biography in Giorgio Vasari’s The Lives of Artists, the life of Paolo Uccello, recounts a somewhat downtrodden life for the artist.  Vasari writes at length about what he calls Uccello’s preoccupation with perspective, who spent less time on his figures, which often come out stiff.  He admires Uccello’s talent, but writes that “anyone who does violence to his nature with fanatical study may well sharpen one corner of his mind, but nothing that he creates will ever appear to have been done with the nature ease and grace of those who place each brush-stroke in its proper place”.  According to Vasari, Uccello lived a rather impoverished and lonely life, locking himself in his home due to his own embarrassment and lack of praise.

Uccello's Mazzochio drawing, photo courtesy of
Wikipedia Creative Commons

            Though Paolo Uccello was perhaps distracted with the mathematical perfection of his art, it allowed for a great improvement in the techniques of perspective – a fact which presents itself in his artwork.  Mazzochios, a wicker headdress fashionable for men in his day, are found in many of Uccello’s paintings.  While many artists would focus on the humanity and realism within an artwork, Uccello did extensive drawings on these mazzochios, striving to understand their structural complexity and perspective.

Vasari's fresco for the Earth element in
Palazzo Vecchio, photo by Tessa B.

        Uccello also often employed the terra verde (generally, earth toned) style of painting in many of his pieces.  This sometimes frustrates Vasari, who states that it is an error “because things that appear to be made from stone cannot and should not be tinted with another color”.  In other words, Uccello often painted buildings or nature in unnatural colors, a practice that Vasari does not quite understand.

            In all, Vasari seems to have admired Uccello for his talents.  Interestingly enough, it seems he borrowed an idea from Uccello’s frescos in the Peruzzi home for one of the rooms commissioned by Duke Ferdinand in the Palazzo Vecchio: the four elements painted with animals representing them, a mole for the earth, a fish for water, a salamander for fire, and a chameleon for air.

Gothic Transformation

Facade of Santa Maria Novella, photo courtesy
of Wikipedia Creative Commons

            The architect Leon Battista Alberti was commissioned in 1456 to redesign the façade of the Gothic style Church of Santa Maria Novella by the Florentine Rucelli family.  Alberti’s design reflected the high Renaissance classical spirit both physically and mathematically; but was also considered Romanesque in style, mainly in the arch and capitals.  The architect was influenced by the Church of San Minato al Monte for his Romanesque design.  The façade of Santa Maria Novella originally had six marble encased tombs, which were immovable, and are now situated under the six arches, located on each side of the entrance.

            Alberti’s plan borrowed classical techniques for design, including the pilasters, Corinthian capitals and a large tympanum.  As the first to seriously study the Treatise of Vitruvius from ancient Rome, Alberti became the first architect in the Renaissance to fully understand classical architecture, utilizing this knowledge to create a mathematically balanced façade.  Completely symmetrical, the dimensions of the different sections in this façade are bound together by the ratio of 1:2.  Each section can be broken down individually, but Alberti’s goal was for them to only exist harmoniously together. 

The bottom section, a rectangle, is twice the length of the square above it, and boasts four Roman pilasters and six Romanesque arches.  Reflecting classical temples, the square and tympanum sit atop a pediment.  The sun, which sits inside the tympanum, is the emblem of the convent of Santa Maria Novella.