Art History
1500-1600 End of the Renaissance and the Reformation
If there was one century in the past that saw radical changes in established ways of thinking comparable to the 20th Century, it would be the 16th. Before this, in Western Europe, there was only one type of Christianity—under the authority of the Pope in Rome. But in 1517 a German theologian and monk, Martin Luther, sparked the Protestant Reformation. His ideas spread quickly, thanks in part to the printing press. Luther challenged the power of the Pope and the Church, and asserted the authority of individual conscience. At the same time, it was increasingly possible for people to read the bible in the languages that they spoke. It is also during this period that the Scientific Revolution began and observation replaced religious doctrine as the source of our understanding of the universe and our place in it. At mid-century, Copernicus suggested that the sun was at the center of solar system (not the earth), radically repositioning human beings and therefore calling into question our centrality in the universe that God had created.
High Renaissance: Florence and Rome
We don’t call this the “High” Renaissance for nothing! This period sees hugely ambitious projects, from Michelangelo’s painting of the Sistine Chapel ceiling and the rebuilding of St. Peter’s in Rome, to Raphael’s frescoes in the papal palace. We use this term to refer to the art of the Italian Renaissance, beginning with Leonardo, whose great masterpiece the Last Supper, actually dates to the last decades of the 15th century (history is never neat!). In the painting and sculpture of this period, ideally beautiful figures who move gracefully, often in complex, multi-figure compositions conveying the sense that human beings are an echo of the perfection of God.
- Toward The High Renaissance
- Michelangelo, Pietà
- Michelangelo, David
- Representations of David in the Florentine Renaissance
- Michelangelo, Moses
- Michelangelo, Slaves
- Michelangelo, Last Judgment
- Michelangelo, Ceiling of the Sistine Chapel
- Michelangelo, Laurentian Library
- Leonardo da Vinci, Letter to the Duke of Milan
- Leonardo, Adoration of the Magi
- Leonardo, Virgin of the Rocks
- Leonardo, Last Supper
- Leonardo, Virgin and Child with St Anne and St John the Baptist (Burlington House Cartoon)
- Leonardo, Mona Lisa
- Raphael, Marriage of the Virgin, 1504
- Raphael, Madonna of the Goldfinch
- Raphael, La belle jardinière
- Raphael, School of Athens
- Raphael, Alba Madonna
- Raphael, Portrait of Pope Julius II
- Raphael, Galatea
- Bramante, Tempietto
- Bramante, et.al., Saint Peter's Basilica
Venice
The light is different in Venice, the sun glints off the city’s watery streets illuminating Renaissance palaces and churches filled with the art of Bellini, Giorgione, Tintoretto, Veronese and Titian. Perhaps due to the complex play of light reflected off the canals and Byzantine mosaics, Venetian art is known for its brilliant color and subtle tone. The great Venetian artists produced many of the most important paintings of the Renaissance, but their work was different from their colleagues in Florence and Rome who found inspiration in ancient ruins. The Venetians favored the sumptuous, the exotic and the poetic and created art for a society that had grown wealthy trading with distant lands.
- Introduction
- Giorgione, The Tempest, c. 1506-8
- Giorgione, Three Philosophers, c. 1506
- Giorgione's The Adoration of the Shepherds
- Titian, Noli me Tangere
- Titian, Portrait of a Man
- Titian, Assumption of the Virgin
- Titian, Madonna of the Pesaro Family
- Bellini and Titian, The Feast of the Gods
- Titian, Bacchus and Ariadne
- Titian, Venus of Urbino
- Titian, Christ Crowned with Thorns
- Correggio, Jupiter and Io
- Veronese, The Family of Darius Before Alexander
- Veronese, The Dream of Saint Helena
- Paolo Veronese. Feast in the House of Levi, 1573
- Tintoretto, The Miracle of the Slave
- Tintoretto, The Origin of the Milky Way
Mannerism
You could say that High Renaissance painters had achieved it all—ideally beautiful, graceful figures, rational spaces, and unified compositions with dozens of figures. If you were a young artist in the early decades of the 1500s you might have felt that there was nothing left to accomplish! Renaissance art was always based on the visual world—on representing things as we see them, but Mannerist art was more artificial, it looked to other art rather than to nature, and Mannerist artists purposely looked for complexity and difficulty to showcase their skills. Figures are elongated, the illusion of space that was so important for the Renaissance no longer makes sense, and the human body is often impossibly twisted.
- Parmigianino, Madonna of the Long Neck
- Parmigianino, Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror
- Pontormo, Entombment
- Rosso Fiorentino, The Dead Christ with Angels
- Bronzino and the Mannerist Portrait
- Bronzino, Portrait of Eleonora di Toledo with her son Giovanni
- Cellini, Perseus
- El Greco, Adoration of the Shepherds
Northern Renaissance
The Renaissance in the North continues, but now with the impact of the Protestant Reformation, where there was growing concern that images in the church violated the commandment against making likenesses, as part of the prohibition against worshipping idols. The Reformation had a direct impact on some of the greatest painters of this period, including the German artists Durer, who converted, and Cranach, who was a close friend of Luther. There was increasing exchange during this period between artists in Italy and those in Northern Europe in terms of both methods and style, though the two styles remain distinct. Here we see some of the most complex painting in the work of Holbein, some of the most playful in the work of Bruegel and some of the most terrifying in the work of Bosch.
- Dürer, Four Apostles
- Dürer, Self-portrait
- Dürer, Self-portrait (1500)
- Dürer, The Large Piece of Turf
- Dürer, Prints
- Bosch, The Last Judgment
- Gossaert, Saint Luke Painting the Madonna
- Altdorfer, The Battle of Issus
- Cranach, Adam and Eve
- Cranach the Elder, Cupid complaining to Venus
- Cranach the Elder, Judith with the Head of Holofernes
- Holbein the Younger, The Ambassadors
- Holbein the Younger, The Merchant Georg Gisze
- Holbein the Younger, Christina of Denmark
- Holbein the Younger, Henry VIII
- David, The Virgin and Child with Saints and Donor
- David, Virgin and Child with Angels
- Bruegel, Tower of Babel
- Bruegel, The Dutch Proverbs
The Protestant Reformation
In 1517 a German theologian and monk, Martin Luther, challenged the authority of the Pope and sparked the Protestant Reformation. His ideas spread quickly, thanks in part to the printing press. By challenging the power of the Church, and asserting the authority of individual conscience (it was increasingly possible for people to read the bible in the language that they spoke), the Reformation laid the foundation for the value that modern culture places on the individual.