It is possibly one of the best-known artistic periods in the history of art. The Renaissance is famous worldwide, especially through its most important artists. Names such as Brunelleschi, Botticelli, Raphael, Leonardo or Michelangelo are probably among the most pronounced among those interested in universal art.
Do we really know what the Renaissance represented, beyond the clichés that have been carried on for centuries? In this article we will try to delve into the reality of this movement that was not only artistic, but also philosophical and social.
What is the Renaissance?
As with most nomenclatures, the word “Renaissance” did not come into use until several centuries after the period to which it refers. Specific, It was the French writer Honoré de Balzac who, in 1829, first introduced the term in his novel Le Bal de Sceau Balzac refers to the culture that began in Italy in the 14th century and that takes classical models as a guide. Years later, the historian Jules Michelet consecrated the term “Renaissance” in his work The Renaissance (1855).
We can understand as “Renaissance” the cultural movement that began in Italy (and, specifically, in Florence) at the beginning of the 15th century and expanded until the end of the 16th century, and which represents a recovery of the models of Antiquity. However, it is important to note that these classic models had been present throughout the Middle Ages. What makes the Renaissance “different” is the full awareness that its artists had of living a renovatio, that is, the “awakening” of these ancient models.
In general, Renaissance intellectuals and artists see themselves as the resurrectors of “true art”, which they considered lost during the long centuries of medieval “slumber.” Giorgio Vasari, one of the most important theorists of the 16th century, considers the art of the Middle Ages as the “infancy” of art, while the Quattrocento (that is, the Italian 15th century) would represent its “youth,” the first shot of conscience. Finally, the Cinquecento (16th century) would be the maturity of art, with names as important as Leonardo, Michelangelo and Raphael.
But… Did the Renaissance represent a true recovery of this ancient art? We have already commented that, in the Middle Ages, the classics were not forgotten. Not only in the philosophical field, where we find a strong presence of Plato (for example, in the Chartres school) and Aristotle (in the thought of Saint Thomas Aquinas), but also in the plastic arts.
Indeed, in medieval sculpture and architecture we find motifs taken from Antiquity, which are living testimony that in no way did the Middle Ages represent a break with the classical era. However, Renaissance intellectuals and artists felt this way. Not in vain did Vasari call the art of the medieval centuries “monstrous and barbaric,” a concept that, by the way, remained valid well into the 19th century.
So, The Renaissance represents an “awakening” in a double sense First, because, as we have already mentioned, they were the first to be aware of turning this classical renewal into a radical break with medieval tradition, equal to or more radical than what the Middle Ages had been for the classical era; second because, in effect, the transition from a theocentric society to a humanist society takes place, a fact that, de facto, represents the true break with the Middle Ages.
The “break” with tradition
The rupture that the Renaissance was conscious of experiencing cannot be considered, strictly, as such. First of all, because we have already seen that during the Middle Ages the classics were not forgotten. And, secondly, and this is no less important, because during the Renaissance medieval resources continued to be used, such as the typology of some buildings, iconography and some of the technical procedures.
For all this, we can conclude that the Renaissance was not, by any means, the radical rupture that the Renaissanceists themselves considered. In fact, the historian Johan Huizinga maintains, in his work The autumn of the Middle Ages, that the last medieval centuries represented the preparation of the Renaissance scene, and in no way meant its antithesis. And, for his part, the art historian Erwin Panofsky was already talking about several “renaissances.” We understand, therefore, that What has been called “Renaissance” is nothing more than another of the great traps of illustrated European historiography the same one that labeled the ten centuries that followed the fall of the Roman Empire as the “Middle Ages.”
In any case, there is a series of factors that configure a clear context in which this “rupture” is located. We have already commented that at the end of the 14th century there was a transition from a theocentric society to humanistic thought. The gradual decline of the rural world, already beginning in the middle of the Middle Ages, as well as the consequent rise of cities, contribute in a fundamental way to expediting this change of mentality.
The new social group that emerges in the cities, the bourgeoisie, is going to have a fundamental role in this entire process either. Urban merchants and bankers make up a powerful oligarchy that controls the cities and acts, at the same time, as powerful patrons. Thus, starting in the 14th century, artists will be under the protection of these important figures, and it is through this conjunction of forces that some of the most important works of art in history will emerge. We only need to mention the powerful Medici family in Florence.
Thus, if the Renaissance represents a true break with the immediately preceding world, it is in the concept of the artist and the relationship he maintains with his clients. The artist continued to be an instrument in the hands of his patrons, but they used his protégés with a clear purpose of differentiation and political propaganda. Each powerful man assigns himself a style that represents him: the Sforza in Milan, Julius II in Rome, the Medici in Florence. Furthermore, collecting works of art also becomes a symbol of status and power.
On the other hand, the medieval mechanical craft of artists dissolves into a much more intellectual conception of art and its processes. Art treatises, such as the famous De Pictura by León Battista Alberti (1435), greatly help to consider the artist as much more than a mere craftsman, assuming intellectual qualities are necessary to carry out their work. As a consequence of this new consideration, artists begin to portray themselves in their works and begin to sign them.
A new figurative language: perspective
The changes that occurred during the Renaissance were, rather than plastic, philosophical-literary. Through a revaluation of ancient philosophy, the basis is established for the creation of a new formal system, which later manifested itself in various artistic trends. The models of Antiquity prevail as the only mirror in which the men of the Renaissance look at themselves and seek their aesthetic ideal.
But where to look for old models in painting? Because, just as sculptors and architects have examples to draw inspiration from, the same does not happen with painting. In the 15th century Pompeii and Herculaneum had not yet been discovered, which made the task of finding pictorial models from Antiquity on which to base the new figurative language extremely difficult. To this end, the discovery, in 1480, of Nero’s Domus Aurea in Rome helped, whose frescoes helped to establish, albeit belatedly, pictorial models that served as a model for Renaissance painters.
An example of this are the “grotesques”, pictorial ornaments based on plant decorations, human figures and fantastic animals, among others, that decorated the walls of Nero’s palace. However, the eccentricity of these decorations earned them harsh criticism from writers such as Giorgio Vasari.
It was precisely Vasari who laid the foundations for what he considered the “good painting” that, basically, had to be based on harmony and proportion and, above all, on correct perspective It is probably this last concept that most concerned Renaissance artists; to achieve, as Alberti said, a “window” through which a section of space could be glimpsed. In Italy, perspective in pictorial representations had been achieved around 1422: the frescoes in the Brancacci Chapel, by Masaccio, are good proof of this.
The Italians of the Quattrocento managed to master perspective, moving away from the plurality of points of view that the Trecento painters had used. Instead, they made that “window” that Alberti talked about feasible through the exact mathematical perspective, which makes all the lines of the composition converge into a single vanishing point. In this undertaking, the contribution of the architect Filippo Brunelleschi was crucial. However, it is no less true that, in Flanders, the early Flemish people arrived at an equally valid solution through a different process.
Flemish painting of the 15th century, including Jan van Eyck and Roger van der Weyden, represented as radical a change from Gothic forms as Renaissance painting in Italy. In the case of the Flemish, perspective was achieved through careful and absolutely empirical observation of reality.
The flamenco result was so surprising and unique that its style spread throughout Europe, to the point that territories such as England, Austria or the Iberian Peninsula took flamenco models as a reference, rather than the Renaissance ones that emerged from Italy. The artists of the Italian Quattrocento themselves deeply admired these innovators from Flanders, and there are many artistic exchanges that take place between both European latitudes. Suffice it to say that Bartolommeo Fazio, a 15th-century humanist from Genoa, says of Jan van Eyck that he is “the leading painter of our time.”
It all started in Florence
If there is any place that comes to mind when we talk about the Renaissance, it is, of course, Florence It is in this city where humanism develops, a cultural and thought current that vindicates the human being’s ability to know himself and the world around him. But let’s put ourselves in context.
In 1402, the Milanese troops of Gian Galeazzo Visconti advance towards Florence and threaten the peace and prosperity that had reigned in the Florentine Republic for years. The attack on Milan was repeated in the 15th century; a second threat that is only stopped thanks to the alliance of Florence and the city of Venice (1425). These continued military pretensions only revive the republican values, which the Florentines brandish in the face of what was considered a princely dictatorship. Patrons and artists thus began to search for a plastic language that reflected these republican ideals.
Ghiberti and Masaccio, the great plastic innovators
In 1401 a competition was held in Florence to find an artist to make the second doors of its Baptistery. The winner was Lorenzo Ghiberti; His first work in the Baptistery, although it is considered the “manifesto” of Renaissance art, still retains a lot of influence from the forms of the so-called International Gothic. It will not be until Ghiberti’s second work in the Baptistery (the third doors, made between 1425 and 1452), when it will be appreciated, this time without a doubt, the resounding appearance of a new plastic language which, among other solutions, includes the introduction of perspective by regulating the scales of the figures represented.
If Ghiberti’s work for the Baptistery represents an innovation in sculpture, Masaccio’s (1401-1427) is an innovation in the field of painting. The frescoes that the artist created for the Brancacci Chapel, in the Florentine church of Santa Maria del Carmine, represent a true revolution. Among them, the magnificent The tribute to Caesar, whose realism and forcefulness of its figures must have been a true revelation for his contemporaries. In the same way, the daring architectural perspective contained in his fresco The Trinity, in Santa Maria Novella, seems to open a hole in the wall of the church. It is the “window” that Alberti talks about; Masaccio has finally made it a reality.
Brunelleschi and the impossible dome
Since the mid-14th century, the Florentines wanted to provide their cathedral with a dome that would make it the largest in Christendom However, the magnitude of the project had frozen the architects’ desires: no less than 43 meters in diameter had to be saved, measurements practically equal to those of the Pantheon in Rome. No one since then had managed to raise such a dome.
In 1420, the works finally began, seduced by the Commission by Brunelleschi’s daring plan, which sought to raise the colossal structure without the help of scaffolding or falsework (starting from the base of the dome, it would be raised using horizontal strips). The project took 16 years (a ridiculous amount of time if we take into account the magnitude of the company). In 1436, and in Alberti’s own words, the dome of Florence “covered all of Tuscany with its shadow.” Since the Pantheon, that is, since Roman times, nothing like it had been achieved. Brunelleschi’s dome is a true milestone in Renaissance architecture.
The other Renaissance centers
Florence was the undisputed center from which humanism and the new Renaissance language radiated, but there were other Italian centers that took these ideas and made them their own, in order to create their own version. Let’s look at them below.
Rimini, with Segismundo Malatesta at the helm, used the new artistic expression as the basis of its official propaganda. The revival of the Malatesta court was essentially based on the spirit of chivalry and knowledge of the classics. One of the examples of the Renaissance in Rimini is the church of San Francisco, by Leon Battista Alberti. In addition, Malatesta also attracted the painter Piero della Francesca to his court.
Venice was a city with a great oriental influence behind it, which since the Middle Ages represented the point of confluence between the European and Byzantine worlds. As such, the Venetian Renaissance still takes up Byzantine models and fuses them with a Roman architectural and decorative vocabulary.
For its part, Federico de Montefeltro designs an immense program to attract talent to his Urbino court, among whom is the famous Piero della Francesca, whose portraits of the Duke and Duchess of Urbino in strict profile, emulating Roman coins, is sufficiently famous. In general, the iconography combines Christian and mythological elements, something common in Renaissance art.
Finally, in Mantua, Ludovico Gonzaga draws on a taste for classical antiquity to reform the city For this it counts, among others, on Leon Battista Alberti (Church of Saint Andrew) and Andrea Mantegna (frescoes from the spouses’ chamber). The consideration of artists in the Renaissance means that they have a much higher status than they had in previous centuries. Thus, Mantegna ordered his palace to be built in Mantua, which follows the models of Renaissance architecture and whose geometry follows the precepts of the Roman architect Vitruvius, the reference for architectural treatises of the time.