Characteristics and style of Renaissance art, main exponents and the description of the Dome of Santa Maria del Fiore in Florence.
The Renaissance is an artistic period that goes from 1400 to 1500, and is characterized by the renewal of artistic language, which includes architecture, sculpture and painting. The first to speak of “Renaissance” is Giorgio Vasari (1511-1574). He was a painter, an architect, but above all a treatise writer, that is, a man who wrote about his discipline. His treatise is “ The Lives of the Most Illustrious Painters, Sculptors, and Architects from Cimabue to the Present Day ”, his most famous book. In this book he only talks about Italian artists. According to Vasari, Michelangelo is the artist who has achieved perfection. He also considers Raphael and Leonardo among the best . In 1860 the Swiss historian Jacob Burckhardt wrote the book “The Civilization of the Renaissance” in which for the first time this word appears, understood as that very specific historical period.
Renaissance art: exponents
The artists of the early Renaissance period are: the architect Brunelleschi , the sculptor Donatello and the painter Masaccio . The artists of the Renaissance considered themselves the heirs of the great classical civilization and considered the previous artists (medieval) as insignificant artists of a dark and barbaric period. They therefore looked not at the Gothic but even at Greek and Roman works. The artists of the Renaissance considered it an obligation to go to Rome at least once. They measured the buildings and drew the sculptures they saw, returned to Florence they showed them to those who could not go to Rome so that they could study them.
The main sculptures were half-length and portrait bust (they are similar). A great work by Donatello is the equestrian monument to Gattamelata : a bronze statue located in Piazza del Santo in Padua. All the studies led to the development of perspective , a set of geometric and mathematical rules that allowed the creation of three-dimensional space on a two-dimensional surface. Perspective, therefore, conceives space in a limited and discontinuous way while the eye perceives space as unlimited and homogeneous.
The inventor of perspective is considered to be the architect Filippo Brunelleschi. Architectural practice in the Renaissance changed radically because the design phase became more important than the executive phase, which is why the architect became a prominent person in society and an intellectual.
Renaissance Art: Brunelleschi
Filippo Brunelleschi , son of a notary, had an education in science, Latin and mathematics, after starting out as a goldsmith. In 1401 he took part in the competition for the creation of the doors of the Baptistery of Florence. However, it was won by Lorenzo Ghiberti, much to Filippo’s displeasure, who later took revenge. Between 1402 and 1404 he travelled to Rome with Donatello to study the works of the city.
Dome of Santa Maria del Fiore
In 1418, a competition was announced for the dome of Santa Maria del Fiore in Florence. The financier was the Arte della Lana corporation. Brunelleschi decided to design the dome alone, but his project was rejected several times. In the end, however, he was accepted, and the construction of the “self-supporting” dome began. Ghiberti was assigned to him as a workmate. The work began in 1420 and ended in 1436.
The dome is formed by an octagonal drum, in each façade there is a circular window. Above rises the dome composed of eight white marble ribs that stand out on the covering of the segments, made with red tiles. At first it seemed that the dome had problems with cracks and little stability but after careful checks the commission concluded that the dome did not present any problems. At its top there is a lantern supported by buttresses. The dome, inside, contains another smaller dome. Between the two there is a cavity that can be crossed by narrow and steep stairs.
