Renaissance to Neoclassicism

– Mannerism and Late Renaissance - 1520 -

1600
– Baroque - 1600 - 1730
– Rococo - 1720 - 1780
– Neoclassicism - 1750 - 1830
 Mannerism
• is a period of European art which emerged from the later
years of the Italian High Renaissance around 1520. It
lasted until about 1580 in Italy, when a more Baroque
style began to replace it, but continued into the
seventeenth century throughout much of Europe.
• Mannerism encompasses a variety of approaches
influenced by, and reacting to, the harmonious ideals
and restrained naturalism associated with artists such as
Leonardo da Vinci, Raphael, and early Michelangelo.
• Mannerism is notable for its intellectual sophistication as
well as its artificial (as opposed to naturalistic) qualities.
In Parmigianino's
Madonna with the Long
Neck
(1534-40), Mannerism
makes itself known by
elongated proportions,
highly stylized poses,
and lack of clear
perspective.
Alessandro Allori's (1535 -
1607) Susanna and the
Elders uses artificial, waxy
eroticism and consciously
brilliant still life detail, in a
crowded contorted
composition. The viewer is
brought so close to the
subjects as to almost feel
claustrophobic—like a third
elder leering at the scene
of a young, seemingly
paralyzed Susanna being
groped and assaulted by
the two lecherous
predators.
Mannerist portraits by
Agnolo Bronzino are
distinguished by a still
elegance and
meticulous attention to
detail. As a result,
Bronzino's sitters have
been said to put an
uncommunicative
abyss between
subject and viewer,
concentrating on
rendering of the
precise pattern and
sheen of rich textiles.
Jacopo Tintoretto's Last Supper (at left) epitomizes Mannerism by
taking Jesus and the table out of the middle of the room. He
showed all that was happening. In sickly, disorienting colors he
painted a scene of confusion that somehow separated the angels
from the real world. He had removed the world from God's reach.
 Baroque
• Beginning around the year 1600, the demands for
new art resulted in what is now known as the
Baroque. The canon promulgated at the
Council of Trent (1545–63) by which the
Roman Catholic Church addressed the
representational arts by demanding that paintings
and sculptures in church contexts should speak to
the illiterate rather than to the well-informed, is
customarily offered as an inspiration of the
Baroque, which appeared, however, a generation
later.
 Baroque
• In paintings, Baroque gestures are
broader than Mannerist gestures: less
ambiguous, less arcane and mysterious,
more like the stage gestures of opera, a
major Baroque artform. Baroque poses
depend on contrapposto ("counterpoise"),
the tension within the figures that moves
the planes of shoulders and hips in
counterdirections. It made the sculptures
almost seem like they were about to move.
Aeneas flees burning Troy,
Federico Barocci, 1598: a moment caught
in a dramatic action from a classical
source, bursting from the picture plane in a
sweeping diagonal perspective.
Adoration, by
Peter Paul Rubens.
Dynamic figures spiral
down around a void:
draperies blow: a whirl of
movement lit in a shaft of
light, rendered in a free
bravura handling of paint.
Rembrandt,
Christ in the
Storm on the
Lake of Galilee,
1633. Still
missing after
robbery from the
Isabella Stewart
Gardner Museum
in 1990.
 Rococo
• is a style of 18th century French art and
interior design. Rococo rooms were designed as
total works of art with elegant and ornate
furniture, small sculptures, ornamental mirrors,
and tapestry complementing architecture, reliefs,
and wall paintings. It was largely supplanted by
the Neoclassic style.
• The word Rococo is seen as a combination of
the French rocaille, or shell, and the Italian
barocco, or Baroque style.
A Rococo Revival Parlor in the
Metropolitan Museum of Art.
A Rococo interior in
Gatchina.
Juste-Aurele Meissonnier
engraved design for a side
table, c 1730, engraving
Pilgrimage to Cythera by Jean-Antoine
Watteau, captures the frivolity and
sensuousness of Rococo painting.
(1721, Louvre)
Marie-Louise O'Murphy (1737-1818),
mistress to Louis XV of France, painted by
Francois Boucher (1703–1770) circa 1752
 Neoclassicism
(sometimes rendered as Neo-Classicism
or Neo-classicism) is the name given to
quite distinct movements in the decorative
and visual arts, literature, theatre, music,
and architecture that draw upon Western
classical art and culture (usually that of
Ancient Greece or Ancient Rome). These
movements were dominant during the mid
18th to the end of the 19th century.
Psyché ranimée par le baiser de l'Amour
(Psyche revived by the kiss of Love).
Marble, 1793.
• Porcelain vase of "Medici
Vase" profile, decorated in
"Pompeian" black and red,
St Petersburg, ca 1830
Henry Fuseli, The
Artist Moved to
Despair by the
Grandeur of
Antique Fragments
1778-79 Red chalk
on sepia wash,
Kunsthaus, Zürich
• Odysseus in front of
Scylla and
Charybdis, Fussli's
Romance painting
of Odysseus facing
the choice of
monsters, giving the
phrase: between
Scylla and
Charybdis, 1794-
1796
The End