FLORENCE IN THE TRECENTO (1300S)- Cimabue, Santa Trinita Madonna (Madonna and Child Enthroned), 1280-90,

tempera on panel (Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence)

A New Style Emerges

During the late thirteenth century, artists in a handful of Italian cities began to move away from the Italo-Byzantine
style. The Roman artist Pietro Cavallini created frescoes and mosaics featuring solid, monumentalizing figures; the
sculptor Nicola Pisano studied ancient Roman sculpture; Sienese artists seem to have broken new ground in
.exploring perspective

Meanwhile, back in Florence, Cimabue’s paintings showed more interest in depicting space and modeling figures
with gradations of light and shade. These ideas spread as artists travelled throughout Italy and southern France in
.search of work, creating a network of artistic centers that all exerted influence on one another

Giotto

As the new century opened, the painter Giotto di Bondone observed many of these currents and forged them into
.something distinctively Florentine and enormously influential

Where earlier works of art engage us with the embellished splendor of the heavenly, Giotto’s paintings capture our
attention by representing holy figures and stories as if in a majestic but earthly realm. Bold modeling of draperies
and the bodies beneath them gives his figures greater volume and a sense of sculptural relief. Clever kinds of
perspective create the illusion that a space is opening up in front of the viewer, as if we might be peering onto a
.stage

Perhaps just as importantly, Giotto was a master of visual storytelling – a skill evident in his most important surviving
project, the frescoes in the Arena Chapel in Padua (c. 1305). Here the monumentality of the figures, the quiet dignity
of their movements, and the way architectural and landscape settings seem to echo the action all conjure up a
solemn aura of the sacred. Like many of the narrative paintings attributed to Giotto, the scenes use closely observed
.human gestures and careful composition to enhance the drama and emotion of the moment depicted

Art After Giotto

Giotto had an enormous workshop full of students and assistants, making it hard to tell which works he painted and
which were by his pupils. Even more confusingly, his style was so immediately influential that it is still difficult to say
who his formal students were. What we do know is that, in the years immediately after his death, the artists who
were the most “Giottesque” received the lion’s share of the important commissions for new projects. The success of
artists like Bernardo Daddi, Maso di Banco, and Taddeo Gaddi demonstrates that wealthy patrons were on board
.with Giotto’s new vision for art

Sometime around mid-century, though, certain artists began to drift from the clear, spare art of Giotto’s school.
Many experimented with visually crowded compositions or with complex subjects represented through elaborate
symbols and schemes. Some even seem to have purposefully echoed the ornamental, formal art of the
ItaloByzantine period. This has led art historians to wonder whether these changes in style were caused by
Florence’s collective despair after the outbreak of the bubonic plague—a sickness that wiped out over half the city’s
.population in one year alone (1348)

Andrea Bonaiuti, Triumph of St Thomas Aquinas, c. 1365-67, Guidalotti Chapel (Spanish Chapel) (Santa Maria
Novella, Florence)

Most scholars now think the situation was more mixed than this theory might lead us to believe. In fact, late
fourteenth-century art is hard to generalize. This is partly because no single workshop dominated the art of Florence
as much as Giotto and his school had in previous decades. But it is also because artists of the time were skilled at
.adapting their own style to the specific tastes of each patron and to the context and function of each image
Overall, however, Florentine art from 1348 to 1400 did not experience the same kind of major stylistic shift that
characterized Giotto’s years on the scene. Rather, the fundamental influence of Giotto continued into the early
.1400s. In the end, the long fourteenth century was Giotto’s century

FLORENCE IN THE EARLY RENAISSANCE

Introduction The Renaissance really gets going in the early years of fifteenth-century in Florence. In this period,
which we call the Early Renaissance, Florence is not a city in the unified country of Italy, as it is now. Instead, Italy
was divided into many city-states (Florence, Milan, Venice etc.), each with their own form of government

Now, we normally think of a Republic as a government where everyone votes for representatives who will represent
their interests to the government (remember the pledge of allegiance: “and to the republic for which it stands…”).
However, Florence was a Republic in the sense that there was a constitution which limited the power of the nobility
(as well as laborers) and ensured that no one person or group could have complete political control (so it was far
from our ideal of everyone voting, in fact a very small percentage of the population had the vote). Political power
resided in the hands of middle-class merchants, a few wealthy families (such as the Medici, important art patrons
who would later rule Florence) and the powerful guilds

Rebirth of the Renaissance

?So, why did the extraordinary rebirth of the Renaissance begin in Florence

There are several answers to that question: Extraordinary wealth accumulated in Florence during this period among
a growing middle and upper class of merchants and bankers. With the accumulation of wealth often comes a desire
to use it to enjoy the pleasures of life—and not an exclusive focus on the hereafter. Florence saw itself as the ideal
city state, a place where the freedom of the individual was guaranteed, and where many citizens had the right to
participate in the government (this must have been very different than living in the Duchy of Milan, for example,
which was ruled by a succession of Dukes with absolute power) In 1400 Florence was engaged in a struggle with the
Duke of Milan. The Florentine people feared the loss of liberty and respect for individuals that was the pride of their
.Republic

Luckily for Florence, the Duke of Milan caught the plague and died in 1402. Then, between 1408 and 1414 Florence
was threatened once again, this time by the King of Naples, who also died before he could successfully conquer
Florence. And in 1423 the Florentine people prepared for war against the son of the Duke of Milan who had
threatened them earlier. Again, luckily for Florence, the Duke was defeated in 1425. The Florentine citizens
interpreted these military “victories” as signs of God’s favor and protection. They imagined themselves as the “New
Rome”—in other words, as the heirs to the Ancient Roman Republic, prepared to sacrifice for the cause of freedom
.and liberty

Important! The Florentine people were very proud of their form of government in the early 15th century (as we are
of our democracy). A republic is, after all, a place that respects the opinions of individuals, and we know that
.individualism was a very important part of the Humanism that thrived in Florence in the fifteenth century

TOWARD THE HIGH RENAISSANCE

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 spiritual figures (except for the faint
shadow of a halo). On the other hand, as we have seen in the Middle Ages, if you want to make your figure spiritual
.then you sacrifice its realism
It’s 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 that 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

.The best way to see this is in this painting by Verrocchio, to whom Leonardo was apprenticed when he was young

Verocchio asked Leonardo to paint one of the angels in his painting of the Baptism of Christ, which we see here. Can
you tell which angel is Leonardo’s? One angel should look more like a boy—that’s the Early Renaissance angel (the
one painted by Verrocchio) and the other angel should look like a High Renaissance angel, like a spiritual figure—
truly like an angel sent by God from heaven (that’s Leonardo’s angel). Can you tell which one is by Leonardo? Take a
.minute and look closely

Leonardo’s angel is ideally beautiful and moves in a graceful and complex way, twisting to the left but raising her
head up and to the right. Figures that are elegant and ideally beautiful are a key characteristic of the High
.Renaissance

Leonardo da Vinci

Leonardo’s Early Life and Training

Four years later, Leonardo arrived in Milan bearing a silver lyre (which he may have been able to play), a gift for the
regent Ludovico from the Florentine ruler, Lorenzo the Magnificent. Ludovico sought to transform Milan into a
.center of humanist learning to rival Florence

Leonardo flourished in this intellectual environment. He opened a studio, received numerous commissions,
instructed students, and began to systematically record his scientific and artistic investigations in a series of
notebooks. The archetypal “renaissance man,” Leonardo was an unrivaled painter, an accomplished architect, an
engineer, cartographer, and scientist (he was particularly interested in biology and physics). He was influenced by a
variety of ancient texts including Plato’s Timaeus, Ptolemy’s Cosmography, and Vitruvius’s On Architecture.
Leonardo is credited with having assisted Luca Pacioli with his treatise, Divina Proportione (1509). Joining the
practical and the theoretical, Leonardo designed numerous mechanical devices for battle, including a submarine, and
.even experimented with designs for flight

In a now famous letter, Leonardo listed his talents to the Duke, focusing mostly on his abilities as a military engineer.
:The letter begins

Having until now sufficiently studied and examined the experiments of all those who claim to be experts and
inventors of war machines, and having found that their machines do not differ in the least from those ordinarily in
use, I shall make so bold, without wanting to cause harm to anyone, as to address myself to Your Excellency to
.divulge my secrets to him, and offer to demonstrate to him, at his pleasure, all the things briefly enumerated below

In ten short paragraphs, Leonardo enumerated the service he could perform for the Duke — he said (among other
things) that he could build bridges, tunnels, fortresses, and “make siege guns, mortars and other machines, of
”.beautiful and practical shape, completely different from what is generally in use

What might seem amazing to us is that it is not until the very last paragraph that Leonardo mentions art, and he
:mentions it so modestly! Here is what he wrote

In time of peace, I believe I am capable of giving you as much satisfaction as anyone, whether it be in architecture,
for the construction of public or private buildings, or in bringing water from one place to another. Item, I can sculpt
in marble, bronze or terracotta; while in painting, my work is the equal of anyone’s
Return to Florence, Then France

In 1489, Leonardo secured a long awaited contract with Ludovico and was honored with the title, “The Florentine
Apelles,” a reference to an ancient Greek painter revered for his great naturalism. Leonardo returned to Florence
when Ludovico was deposed by the French King, Charles VII. While there, Leonardo would meet the Niccolò
Machiavelli, author of The Prince and his future patron, François I. In 1516, after numerous invitations, Leonardo
.traveled to France and joined the royal court. Leonardo died on May 2, 1519 in the king’s chateau at Cloux

Leonardo’s Death and the Changing Status of the Artist

Finally, having grown old, he remained ill many months, and, feeling himself near to death, asked to have himself
diligently informed of the teaching of the Catholic faith, and of the good way and holy Christian religion; and then,
with many moans, he confessed and was penitent; and although he could not raise himself well on his feet,
supporting himself on the arms of his friends and servants, he was pleased to take devoutly the most holy
Sacrament, out of his bed. The King, who was wont often and lovingly to visit him, then came into the room;
wherefore he, out of reverence, having raised himself to sit upon the bed, giving him an account of his sickness and
the circumstances of it, showed withal how much he had offended God and mankind in not having worked at his art
as he should have done. Thereupon he was seized by a paroxysm, the messenger of death; for which reason the King
having risen and having taken his head, in order to assist him and show him favour, to then end that he might
alleviate his pain, his spirit, which was divine, knowing that it could not have any greater honour, expired in the arms
of the King. (Vasari)

This story is a good indication of the changing status of the artist. Leonardo, who spent the last years of his life in
France working for King Francis I, was often visited by the King! Remember that the artist was considered only a
.skilled artisan in the Middle Ages and for much of the Early Renaissance

In the High Renaissance, beginning with Leonardo, we find that artists are considered intellectuals, and that they
keep company with the highest levels of society. Quite a change! All of this has to do with Humanism in the
Renaissance of course, and the growing recognition of the achievement of great individuals (something virtually
unheard of in the Middle Ages!). Artists in the Early Renaissance insisted that they should in fact be considered
intellectuals because they worked with their brains as well as with their hands. They defended this position by
pointing to the scientific tools that they used to make their work more naturalistic (scientific naturalism): the study
!of human anatomy, of mathematics and geometry, of linear perspective. These were clearly all intellectual pursuits
Look closely at this self-portrait. Isn’t it clear that Leonardo thought of himself as a thinker, a philosopher, an
?intellectual

Leonardo’s Naturalism

Ancient Greek physicians dissected cadavers. The early church’s rejection of the science of the classical world, along
with the possibility of bodily resurrection led to prohibitions against dissection. Both Leonardo and Michelangelo
performed them — probably exclusively on the bodies of executed criminals. According to his own count, Leonardo
.dissected 30 corpses during his lifetime

END OF THE RENAISSANCE AND THE REFORMATION 1600–1500

A Challenge to the Church in Rome

In art history, the sixteenth century sees the styles we call the High Renaissance followed by Mannerism, and—at the
end of the century—the emergence of the Baroque style. Naturally, these styles are all shaped by historical forces,
the most significant being the Protestant Reformation’s successful challenge to the spiritual and political power of
the Church in Rome. For the history of art this has particular significance since the use (and abuse) of images was the
.topic of debate. In fact, many images were attacked destroyed during this period, a phenomenon called iconoclasm
The Protestant Reformation

Today there many types of Protestant Churches. For example, Baptist is currently the largest denomination in the
United States but there are many dozens more. How did this happen? Where did they all begin? To understand the
Protestant Reform movement, we need to go back in history to the early 16th century when there was only one
church in Western Europe—what we would now call the Roman Catholic Church—under the leadership of the Pope
in Rome. Today, we call this “Roman Catholic” because there are so many other types of churches (ie Methodist,
.Baptist, Lutheran, Calvinist, Anglican—you get the idea)

The Church and the State

So, if we go back to the year 1500, the Church (what we now call the Roman Catholic Church) was very powerful
(politically and spiritually) in Western Europe (and in fact ruled over significant territory in Italy called the Papal
States). But there were other political forces at work too. There was the Holy Roman Empire (largely made up of
German speaking regions ruled by princes, dukes and electors), the Italian city-states, England, as well as the
increasingly unified nation states of France and Spain (among others). The power of the rulers of these areas had
increased in the previous century and many were anxious to take the opportunity offered by the Reformation to
weaken the power of the papacy (the office of the Pope) and increase their own power in relation to the Church in
.Rome and other rulers

Keep in mind too, that for some time the church had been seen as an institution plagued by internal power struggles
(at one point in the late 1300s and 1400s church was ruled by three Popes simultaneously). Popes and Cardinals
often lived more like Kings than spiritual leaders. Popes claimed temporal (political) as well as spiritual power. They
commanded armies, made political alliances and enemies, and, sometimes, even waged war. Simony (the selling of
church offices) and nepotism (favoritism based on family relationships) were rampant. Clearly, if the Pope was
concentrating on these worldly issues, there wasn’t as much time left for caring for the souls of the faithful. The
corruption of the Church was well known, and several attempts had been made to reform the Church (notably by
John Wyclif and Jan Hus), but none of these efforts was successfully challenged Church practice until Martin Luther’s
.actions in the early 1500s

Martin Luther

Martin Luther was a German monk and Professor of Theology at the University of Wittenberg. Luther sparked the
Reformation in 1517 by posting, at least according to tradition, his “95 Theses” on the door of the Castle Church in
Wittenberg, Germany—these theses were a list of statements that expressed Luther’s concerns about certain Church
practices—largely the sale of indulgences, but they were based on Luther’s deeper concerns with church doctrine.
Before we go on, notice that Protestant contains the word “protest” and that reformation contains the word
“reform” —this was an effort, at least at first, to protest some practices of the Catholic Church and to reform that
.Church

Indulgences

The sale of indulgences was a practice where the church acknowledged a donation or other charitable work with a
piece of paper (an indulgence), that certified that your soul would enter heaven more quickly by reducing your time
in purgatory. If you committed no serious sins that guaranteed your place in hell, and you died before repenting and
atoning for all of your sins, then your soul went to Purgatory—a kind of way-station where you finished atoning for
.your sins before being allowed to enter heaven

Pope Leo X had granted indulgences to raise money for the rebuilding of St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome. These
indulgences were being sold by Johann Tetzel not far from Wittenberg, where Luther was Professor of Theology.
Luther was gravely concerned about the way in which getting into heaven was connected with a
financial transaction. But the sale of indulgences was not Luther’s only disagreement with the institution of the
.Church

Faith Alone
Martin Luther was very devout and had experienced a spiritual crisis. He concluded that no matter how “good” he
tried to be, no matter how he tried to stay away from sin, he still found himself having sinful thoughts. He was
fearful that no matter how many good works he did, he could never do enough to earn his place in heaven
(remember that, according to the Catholic Church, doing good works, for example commissioning works of art for
the Church, helped one gain entrance to heaven). This was a profound recognition of the inescapable sinfulness of
the human condition. After all, no matter how kind and good we try to be, we all find ourselves having thoughts
which are unkind and sometimes much worse. Luther found a way out of this problem when he read St. Paul, who
wrote “The just shall live by faith” (Romans 1:17). Luther understood this to mean that those who go to heaven (the
just) will get there by faith alone—not by doing good works. In other words, God’s grace is something freely given to
human beings, not something we can earn. For the Catholic Church on the other hand, human beings, through good
.works, had some agency in their salvation

Scripture Alone

Luther (and other reformers) turned to the Bible as the only reliable source of instruction (as opposed to the
.teachings of the Church)

The invention of the printing press in the middle of the 15th century (by Gutenberg in Mainz, Germany) together
with the translation of the Bible into the vernacular (the common languages of French, Italian, German, English, etc.)
meant that it was possible for those that could read to learn directly from Bible without having to rely on a priest or
other church officials. Before this time, the Bible was available in Latin, the ancient language of Rome spoken chiefly
by the clergy. Before the printing press, books were handmade and extremely expensive. The invention of the
printing press and the translation of the bible into the vernacular meant that for the first time in history, the Bible
was available to those outside of the Church. And now, a direct relationship to God, unmediated by the institution of
the Catholic Church, was possible

When Luther and other reformers looked to the words of the Bible (and there were efforts at improving the accuracy
of these new translations based on early Greek manuscripts), they found that many of the practices and teachings of
the Church about how we achieve salvation didn’t match Christ’s teaching. This included many of the Sacraments,
including Holy Communion (also known as the Eucharist). According to the Catholic Church, the miracle of
Communion is transubstantiation—when the priest administers the bread and wine, they change (the prefix “trans”
means to change) their substance into the body and blood of Christ. Luther denied that anything changed during
Holy Communion. Luther thereby challenged one of the central sacraments of the Catholic Church, one of its central
.miracles, and thereby one of the ways that human beings can achieve grace with God, or salvation

The Counter-Reformation

The Church initially ignored Martin Luther, but Luther’s ideas (and variations of them, including Calvinism) quickly
spread throughout Europe. He was asked to recant (to disavow) his writings at the Diet of Worms (an unfortunate
name for a council held by the Holy Roman Emperor in the German city of Worms). When Luther refused, he was
excommunicated (in other words, expelled from the church). The Church’s response to the threat from Luther and
.others during this period is called the Counter-Reformation (“counter” meaning against)

The Council of Trent

In 1545 the Church opened the Council of Trent to deal with the issues raised by Luther. The Council of Trent was an
assembly of high officials in the Church who met (on and off for eighteen years) principally in the Northern Italian
.town of Trent for 25 sessions

:Selected Outcomes of the Council of Trent

The Council denied the Lutheran idea of justification by faith. They affirmed, in other words, their Doctrine of .1
Merit, which allows human beings to redeem themselves through Good Works, and through the sacraments. 2. They
affirmed the existence of Purgatory and the usefulness of prayer and indulgences in shortening a person’s stay in
purgatory. 3. They reaffirmed the belief in transubstantiation and the importance of all seven sacraments 4. They
reaffirmed the authority of both scripture the teachings and traditions of the Church 5. They reaffirmed the necessity
and correctness of religious art (see below)
Session of the Council of Trent in Matthias Burglechner, “Tyrolischer Adler,” [Link]

The Council of Trent on Religious Art

At the Council of Trent, the Church also reaffirmed the usefulness of images—but indicated that church officials
should be careful to promote the correct use of images and guard against the possibility of idolatry. The council
decreed that images are useful “because the honour which is shown them is referred to the prototypes which those
images represent” (in other words, through the images we honor the holy figures depicted). And they listed another
reason images were useful, “because the miracles which God has performed by means of the saints, and their
salutary examples, are set before the eyes of the faithful; that so they may give God thanks for those things; may
order their own lives and manners in imitation of the saints; and may be excited to adore and love God, and to
”.cultivate piety

Violence

The Reformation was a very violent period in Europe, even family members were often pitted against one another in
the wars of religion. Each side, both Catholics and Protestants, were often absolutely certain that they were in the
.right and that the other side was doing the devil’s work

The artists of this period—Michelangelo in Rome, Titian in Venice, Durer in Nuremberg, Cranach in Saxony—were
impacted by these changes since the Church had been the single largest patron for artists. And now art was now
being scrutinized in an entirely new way. The Catholic Church was looking to see if art communicated the stories of
the Bible effectively and clearly (see Veronese’s Feast in the House of Levi for more on this). Protestants on the other
hand, for the most part lost the patronage of the Church and religious images (sculptures, paintings, stained glass
.windows etc) were destroyed in iconoclastic riots

Other Developments

It is also during this period that the Scientific Revolution gained momentum and observation of the natural world
replaced religious doctrine as the source of our understanding of the universe and our place in it. Copernicus
upended the ancient Greek model of the heavens by suggesting that the sun was at the center of the solar system
and that the planets orbited around it. At the same time, exploration, colonization and (the often forced)
Christianization of what Europe called the “new world” continued. By the end of the century, the world of the
Europeans was a lot bigger and opinions about that world were more varied and more uncertain than they had been
.for centuries

THE BAROQUE: ART, POLITICS, AND RELIGION IN SEVENTEENTH-CENTURY EUROPE

Gian Lorenzo Bernini, Cathedra Petri (or Chair of St. Peter), gilded bronze, gold, wood, stained glass, 1647-53 (apse of
Saint Peter’s Basilica, Vatican City, Rome)

Rome: From the “Whore of Babylon” to the Resplendent Bride of Christ When Martin Luther tacked his 95 theses to
the doors of Wittenburg Cathedral in 1517 protesting the Catholic Church’s corruption, he initiated a movement that
would transform the religious, political, and artistic landscape of Europe. For the next century, Europe would be in
turmoil as new political and religious boundaries were determined, often through bloody military conflicts. Only in
1648, with the signing of the Treaty of Westphalia, did the conflicts between Protestants and Catholics subside in
.continental Europe