RENAISSANCE ART
On Friday, February 11, SFU’s Liberal Arts and 55+ Program presented a free lecture by Efrat El Hanany called Splendours of Florentine Renaissance Art. I have never been to Italy, so it was fascinating for me to see the marble sculptures from 14th- and 15th- century Florence.
At the beginning of the 90-minute lecture, Efrat focused on one famous building, the Florence Baptistery, also named for St. John the Baptist, the patron saint of Florence. It was built between 1059 and 1128, of marble. It’s hard to imagine anything taking 69 years to be built. Equally shocking, is that it still stands today, almost 900 years later. Apparently, the Medici family and other important Renaissance people of the 14th/15th century Florence, were baptized there.
At first we learned about the sculptors of marble: Andrea Pisano (1290-1348), Filippo Brunelleschi (1377-1446), Lorenzo Ghiberti (1378-1455) and Donatello (c. 1386-1466). Between 1330 and 1336, Andrea Pisano sculpted the south set of the Baptistery bronze doors. In 1401 the governors of the Baptistery held a competition for bronze sculptors to create the north and east doors. Brunelleschi, Ghiberti and the young Donatello entered the competition. Ghiberti won. Pisano and Ghiberti were also goldsmiths so their bronze doors have gilded reliefs.
The Medici family were very influential in politics and finance in Florence and most of the sculptures and paintings were commissioned for rich people’s homes. But on the facades of the Church of Orsanmichele, built between 1296 and 1436, elaborate niches (“nests”) were designed and built between 1380 and around 1430, containing marble or bronze statues that represented the different trade guilds of the time. There was quite a competition among the 14 Florentine guilds to create the most elaborate niches and statues. Bronze cost about ten times more than stone, and showed off the richest guilds. Today, those niche statues are replicas and the originals are preserved in museums.
Sandro Botticelli (1445-1510) and Tomasso Masaccio (1401-1428) were Early Renaissance painters. The remarkable thing I learned in this lecture was that Masaccio, in his short life as a painter, developed the notion of linear perspective with a vanishing point. I’m once again fascinated that this comes from the Early Renaissance in Florence. (My bad!) I remember going to the Louvre and taking my time over the course of a week, to see if I could learn something from each of the galleries. (nb., my education in the arts is greatly lacking.) I felt let down at the old religious Gothic paintings, on wood, for their lack of depth. I also remember sitting for a few hours just looking through the Italian gallery, and loving the realism of the marble statues and the paintings. But I didn’t realize how novel it was to create the illusion of space and depth (distance) on a flat surface. Masaccio’s paintings set a standard for Italian painting that influenced generations of Florentine artists.
Thanks to SFU, I’m motivated to learn much more about the Italian Renaissance, before I visit Florence.
Fiona