A Hallmark of Renaissance Art Is the Use of Light and Dark to Model a Form

Jacopo Tintoretto: Summer, oil on canvas, c. 1555 (Washington, DC, National Gallery of Art, Samuel H. Kress Drove); paradigm courtesy of the National Gallery of Fine art

Competition and rivalry are hallmarks of Renaissance history, literature, and art. Renaissance artists strove to achieve the fame and retention of the great artists of antiquity by creating works that would be admired for their religious piety, classical erudition, beauty, and naturalism. Role of this miracle were several debates, or paragoni (Italian for "comparisons") almost the visual arts, which played a central role in the formation of creative theory and do during the menses. In this context, the discussion paragone well-nigh ofttimes refers to the debate arguing the merits of painting versus sculpture, but information technology tin also refer to the comparisons of painting and literature and of ii rival artful approaches to painting, referred to by the Italian words colore, or sometimes colorito (colour), and disegno (design or drawing). During the Renaissance each aesthetic had potent regional associations – disegno with key Italy, peculiarly Florence, and colore with Venice. The disegno/colore paragone therefore besides spoke to the period's civic rivalries and the all the same-relevant phenomenon of campanilismo, the strong sense of local (as opposed to national) identity amid Italians. Although the disegno/colore paragone emerged in the 16th century, its origins tin can be traced to earlier stylistic preferences and artistic practices among Florentines and Venetians. In turn, these differences have been explained through several historical, cultural, and geographic factors.

Venetian color

Renaissance Venice's artistic traditions and tastes owed much to its history every bit a urban center of the Byzantine Empire. The most prominent monument to this history is San Marco, the grandiose chapel adjoining the palace of Venice'southward head of state, the doge. San Marco, which boasted the relics of the Evangelist Mark, was begun c. 1063 and served equally the religious center of medieval and Renaissance Venice. The interior walls are covered in glittering gold mosaics, and its outside is clad in richly colored marble inlay and studded with sculptures taken from the Byzantine capital of Constantinople (at present Istanbul) in the 13th century. San Marco embodies the Venetian love of rich color and the effects of reflected or diffused lite, which are as well nowadays throughout the city, in the watery (and often foggy) environment of its canals.

Sunset over a Venetian culvert, via Wikimedia Commons; photograph credit: *christopher*

The humid climate of the lagoon city also fabricated fresco painting, common in other parts of Italy, impractical. The plaster deteriorated apace in the damp air, and then when the technique of oil painting became available to them in the belatedly 15th century, Venetian painters readily embraced it. Not simply was the new medium more durable, but information technology immune painters to fully explore the stylistic possibilities of oils, in particular rich colors and naturalistic effects of light. The medium was besides more than flexible than fresco and tempera painting, which required careful planning and the product of numerous preparatory drawings. Oil paint dries slowly and can be mixed on the canvas and applied in many layers. Equally a result, the technique allowed for spontaneous composition of paintings. Some Venetian painters drew very picayune, and others did and then for alternative purposes – to ensure the piece of cake copying of stock poses and figures, as in Giovanni Bellini'due south workshop, or to create finished, experimental compositions, as in the albums of Giovanni's male parent Jacopo Bellini.

Titian and workshop of Titian: Venus and the Lute Player, oil on canvas, 1651×2096 mm, c. 1565–70 (New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Munsey Fund, 1936, Accession ID: 36.29); epitome © The Metropolitan Museum of Art

The Bellini family unit of painters is oft credited with making the first Renaissance art in Venice, but the innovations of the painter Giorgione firmly established the hallmarks of the distinctly Venetian style. Giorgione'due south career was brief and his output small, only his pupil Titian was to accept a long and prolific career, rivaled merely by his Florentine counterpart Michelangelo. Titian's Venus and the Lute Player (above) is typical of his mature mode and a stunning example of Venetian colore. Emphasizing the lush, erotic atmosphere, Titian has softened forms through his painterly brushstrokes – specially in the landscape background – and given the interior space a warm glow (note the radiance of Venus'south skin and the sheen of the velvet drapes higher up). Because of these qualities, too as its more than spontaneous method, Venetian colore was characterized equally sensual and natural.

Design and invention

During the Renaissance in Florence, drawing was regarded as the unifying practice of all the arts, embodying the fundamental concept of design (disegno means both "cartoon" and "design"). Because of this, Florence had a reputation for producing so-called "universal" artists – those who had mastered painting, sculpture, and compages, from the 14th-century artist Giotto up to Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo in the 16th century. Drawing was a cardinal activity of cardinal Italian artists' grooming and practice, and adept draftsmanship was regarded as a prerequisite for skilful painting. Past drawing continuously, apprentices learned basic artistic principles (especially the scientific discipline of anatomy and perspective), and treasured drawings, sometimes collected in pattern books, recorded favorite motifs and poses. Painters produced sketches, studies, and cartoons to assistance the execution of finished pictures, especially frescoes. In add-on to these applied functions, during the Renaissance flow, drawings were increasingly viewed as a manifestation of the artistic process of invenzione – the conception of the artist'due south creative idea. Drawings became valued for showing the inner workings of a not bad artist'due south mind and were nerveless and preserved by early connoisseurs. Leonardo even exhibited one of his drawings, a cartoon of the Virgin and Kid with St Anne, to admiring crowds in Florence in 1501. Some drawings, such every bit Michelangelo's sheet of studies for the Lybian Sibyl in the Sistine Chapel, and Leonardo's studies for a Nativity, show several stages of a process of working out a composition or pose. Because of this deliberate process, and the central importance of the artist'south idea (as opposed to his ascertainment of nature) in the creation of a work, disegno was viewed every bit an intellectual, rational approach to painting.

Left: Michelangelo: Studies for the Libyan Sibyl, red chalk, 289×214 mm, 1508–12 (New York, Metropolitan Museum of Fine art, Buy, Joseph Pulitzer Bequest, 1924, Accession ID: 24.197.2); paradigm © The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Correct: Leonardo da Vinci: Designs for a Birth or Admiration of the Christ Child, perspectival projection (recto), metalpoint partly reworked with pen and dark brown ink on pink prepared paper and lines ruled with metalpoint, 193×162 mm, 1480–85 (New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Rogers Fund, 1917, Accession ID: 17.142.one); paradigm © The Metropolitan Museum of Art

In finished paintings, the guiding principle of disegno is manifested in definition of form and line. Raphael, another of the 16th century'south universal artists, was a primary at creating harmonious compositions in which colors, while beautiful, were secondary to clarity of form and flowing lines. In his Pala Colonna (below), this is evident in the crisp, undulating lines of the draperies and the stark shadows cast on the steps of the throne. The icy blues of the landscape groundwork, in contrast with the warmth of that in Titian'southward Venus and the Lute Role player, reflect the Florentine color palette derived from pigments used in fresco.

Raphael: Pala Colonna (or Virgin and Child Enthroned with Saints), oil and gold on wood, c. 1504 (New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Souvenir of J. Pierpont Morgan, 1916, Accretion ID: 16.30ab); image © The Metropolitan Museum of Fine art

Taking sides

By and large speaking, Renaissance painters throughout Italian republic wanted to produce naturalistic images and considered painting a liberal art, but Venetian painters strove for naturalism to a higher place all, and Florentines focused on painting as an intellectual exercise requiring the artist to manipulate what he observed in the natural world. The stylistic and technical preferences for each group had a theoretical underpinning that was discussed and eventually codified in 16th- and 17th-century writings. On the side of colore were, most notably, the writers Pietro Aretino, his admirer Lodovico Dolce, Paolo Pino, and Marco Boschini. Each of them championed Titian's colore and criticized Michelangelo'southward late, mannered style as represented in his Terminal Judgment (1536–41) in the Sistine Chapel. Dolce's L'Aretino (named in honor of Pietro) of 1557 responds to Giorgio Vasari's Lives of the Artists (1550; 2d edition 1568), which, in its biographies and discussions of theory in the prefaces, assumes the superiority of Tuscan fine art, culminating in the careers of Leonardo, Raphael, and Michelangelo. Vasari was followed by such artist-writers every bit Federico Zuccaro, Giovanni Paolo Lomazzo, and Giovanni Pietro Bellori, who all applied Platonic philosophy to the principle of disegno and peculiarly admired Raphael.

Left: Nicolas Poussin: The Assumption of the Virgin, oil on canvas, c. 1630/1632 (Washington, DC, National Gallery of Art, Ailsa Mellon Bruce Fund); image courtesy of the National Gallery of Fine art. Correct: Pieter Paul Rubens: The Crowning of Roxana, oil on panel (Los Angeles Canton Museum of Art, Gift of Varya and Hans Cohn); image courtesy of LACMA

A lasting legacy

The artists and theorists involved in the paragone had an impact on European painting for many generations. Italian Mannerist painters, like the Florentine Jacopo Pontormo and Venetian Jacopo Tintoretto, exaggerated the styles of artists like Michelangelo and Titian, creating an even greater stardom between the ii regional schools of painting. An offshoot of the debate, between classicism and naturalism, continued in Bizarre Rome, between the Carracci family of painters, especially Annibale, and Caravaggio. In the 17th century, French painters were classified as Poussinistes – the heirs to the disegno tradition influenced by the stark classicism of Nicolas Poussin – and Rubenistes – the followers of Pieter Paul Rubens, who looked to the Venetian tradition of shimmering, painterly compositions. Through instruction and practice at the artistic academies of Europe, the disegno/colore paragone persisted well into the 19th century.

Internet sources

Smarthistory, Introduction to Renaissance Venice [essay and links to related content]

Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Venetian Color and Florentine Design

Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History, Metropolitan Museum of Fine art, Painting in Oil in the Depression Countries and Its Spread to Southern Europe

National Gallery of Art, Giorgione and the High Renaissance in Venice [drove tour]

Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Renaissance Drawings: Textile and Function

Italian Renaissance Learning Resources, Kress Foundation, The Making of an Artist [essays, images, primary sources, and classroom activities on artists' training and education]

Projection Gutenberg, Giorgio Vasari's Lives of the Artists [unabridged, 10 book translation; complimentary to view online or download]

Google Books, Lodovico Dolce's Aretin (English edition of L'Aretino, 1770) [gratuitous due east-book]

Forvo, Italian pronunciations [recordings of Italian word pronunciations in a searchable database]

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Source: https://www.oxfordartonline.com/page/1635