Introduction

xlix
The art of the Renaissance is usually the most familiar to nonspecialists, and for
good reason. This was the era that produced some of the icons of civilization,
including Leonardo da Vincis Mona Lisa and Last Supper and Michelangelos Sistine
ceiling, Piet, and David. Marked as one of the greatest periods in history, the
outburst of creativity of the era resulted in the most influential artistic
revolution ever to have taken place. The period produced a substantial number of
notable masters, among them Donatello, Filippo Brunelleschi, Masaccio, Sandro
Botticelli, Raphael, Titian, and Tintoretto, who were fortunate to work in an
ambiance that encouraged creativity and art production and who enjoyed the
financial backing of eager patrons who believed in the power of art as
manifestation of social, political, religious, and intellectual attitudes. The
result was an outstanding number of exceptional works of art and architecture that
pushed human potential to new heights, among them Masaccios Holy Trinity,
Donatellos Judith and Holofernes, Leon Battista Albertis Tempio Malatestiano,
Botticellis Primavera, Giovanni Bellinis San Giobbe Altarpiece, Raphaels School
of Athens, and Titians Venus of Urbino. The movement was launched in Italy and
gradually spread to the Netherlands, Germany, Spain, France, and other parts of
Europe and the New World, with figures such as Robert Campin, Jan van Eyck, Rogier
van der Weyden, Albrecht Drer, and Albrecht Altdorfer emerging as the leaders in
the Northern artistic front. While disagreements on the chronology of the
Renaissance exist, most disciplines place the era between the years 1250 and 1648.
The first of these two dates marks the death of Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II,
which ended the Hohenstaufen rule and gave rise to the Hapsburg imperial line, and
the second is the year when the Peace of Westphalia was effected, putting an end to
the Thirty YearsWar.
The term Renaissance, which translates to rebirth, is a French word first used by
historians Jules Michelet and Jacob Burckhardt to denote the renewed interest in
all aspects of the classical world that existed during that time period and the
application of Greco-Roman learning and methodologies to everything from culture
and politics to philosophy, religion, and the sciences. Michelet and Burckhardt
were merely translating the term from the Italian Rinascita, first mentioned in
print in 1550 by Giorgio Vasari in Le Vite de pi eccellenti pittori, scultori, ed
architettori [The Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects],
but utilized since the era of Petrarch and Dante. Petrarch, in fact, had concluded
that the heights of human achievement had been reached during the Greco-Roman era
and he called for a return to the ideals of the classical past and its humanistic
method of learning. It was also Petrarch who labeled the medieval era the Dark Ages
and classified it as a stagnant episode in history. A major factor in the renewed
interest in antiquity was the conquest in 1204 by the crusaders of the Byzantine
Empire, which resulted in the rediscovery of the writings of the ancients that had
been lost to the West for a number of centuries but preserved in the East. This
conquest also resulted in the migration of Greek humanists to the Italian
peninsula; their familiarity with the classical past facilitated the dissemination
of the newly acquired knowledge. Italian men of letters eventually contributed to
this dissemination by translating ancient manuscripts from Greek into Latin,
thereby making them available to a Western audience, and also by recovering the
ancient Roman heritage that had remained just as obscure as the Greek past. Among
these men were Poggio Bracciolini, Lorenzo Valla, Marsilio Ficino, and Daniele
Barbaro, who played key roles in the development of the Renaissance ethos. The
introduction of the printing press in the 1450s allowed for the more economical
production of Greco-Roman texts and their translations than hand-written,
illuminated copies, thus making them available to a much wider audience. Some of
the recovered texts specifically dealt with art; for example, the original ancient
version of Vitruviustreatise on architecture (De architectura) provided direct
information on the ancient principles of building design and soon inspired
Renaissance architects to write their own treatises. The Renaissance began in
central Italy, and specifically in Florence. Italy at the time was not one nation;
rather, it consisted mainly of a se
lINTRODUCTION
ries of autonomous city-states ruled by a prince or merchant family. Florence,
located in the Tuscan region, was at the time one of the largest cities of Europe,
boasting by the 13th century over 100,000 inhabitants when London and Paris each
only had approximately 20,000 residents. Its flourishing economy, based on cloth
manufacturing and banking, permitted the necessary capital to finance major
artistic endeavors. The Ciompi Revolt (1378), carried out by day laborers in the
cloth industry, paved the way for the Albizzi family to emerge as the rulers of an
oligarchic political system. In 1434, that system was taken over by Cosimo de
Medici, from one of the leading banking families of Florence. Medici rule was to
last until 1737, with few interruptions, and the familys interest in learning and
the arts would give momentum to the development of the Renaissance. Soon, the
Renaissance ideals would spread to the neighboring Tuscan cities of Pisa and Siena,
and farther to places like Padua, Venice, Urbino, Mantua, and Rome. Art historians
have divided the Italian Renaissance period into various subcategories based on the
stylistic changes and technical developments that took place in each era: the
Proto-Renaissance, which encompasses the second half of the 13th and most of the
14th centuries; the Early Renaissance, the label given to the art of the 15th
century; the High Renaissance, when Leonardo, Michelangelo, and Raphael brought the
developments of the previous century to their highest refinement; Mannerism, a
movement that dissented from the rationality and classicism of the High
Renaissance; and Baroque, which rose in roughly the 1580s in response to the
requirements of the CounterReformation Church as it attempted to curtail the spread
of Protestantism. These labels, however, are not as clear cut as one would like
them to be, as overlaps are not uncommon. So, for instance, while Botticelli was
creating his lyrical masterpieces for the Medici rulers of Florence, masterpieces
normally qualified as Early Renaissance, Leonardo was inaugurating the High
Renaissance by introducing pyramidal compositions and voluminous figures with
naturalistic forms and lifelike temperament. While Michelangelo was sculpting his
expressive forms and imbuing them with life, the Mannerists were distorting their
figures anatomical details and posing them in bizarre, contorted ways. And as
Mannerists were receiving papal commissions all over Rome, Caravaggio was
introducing to the city a new, theatrical mode of painting that rejected the
contortions and ambiguities of
INTRODUCTION li
Mannerism, instead embracing naturalistic forms and unambiguous scenes that evoked
piety from viewers.