FRANCESCO PETRARCA (1304-1374) - the founder of the Italian Renaissance, a great poet and thinker, politician. Coming from a popolan family in Florence, he spent many years in Avignon under the papal curia, and the rest of his life in Italy. Petrarch traveled a lot in Europe, was close to the popes, sovereigns. His political goals: the reform of the church, the cessation of wars, the unity of Italy. Petrarch was a connoisseur of ancient philosophy, he deserves the merit of collecting manuscripts of ancient authors, their textual processing.
Petrarch developed humanistic ideas not only in his brilliant, innovative poetry, but also in Latin prose writings - treatises, numerous letters, including his main epistolary "The Book of Everyday Affairs".
It is customary to say about Francesco Petrarch that he is stronger than anyone - at least in his time - focused on himself. What was not only the first "individualist" of the New Age, but much more than that - a strikingly complete egocentric.
In the works of the thinker, the theocentric systems of the Middle Ages were replaced by the anthropocentrism of Renaissance humanism. Petrarch's "discovery of man" made it possible for a deeper knowledge of man in science, literature, and art.
LEONARDO DA VINCI (1454-1519) - brilliant Italian artist, sculptor, scientist, engineer. Born in Anchiano, near the village of Vinci; his father was a notary who moved in 1469 to Florence. Leonardo's first teacher was Andrea Verrocchio.
Leonardo's interest in man and nature speaks of his close connection with humanistic culture. He considered the creative abilities of man to be unlimited. Leonardo was one of the first to substantiate the idea of the cognizability of the world through reason and sensations, which was firmly established in the ideas of thinkers of the 16th century. He himself said about himself: "I would comprehend all the secrets, getting to the bottom!"
Leonardo's research concerned a wide range of problems in mathematics, physics, astronomy, botany, and other sciences. His numerous inventions were based on a deep study of nature, the laws of its development. He was also an innovator in the theory of painting. Leonardo saw the highest manifestation of creativity in the activity of an artist who scientifically comprehends the world and reproduces it on canvas. The contribution of the thinker to the Renaissance aesthetics can be judged by his "Book on Painting". He was the embodiment of the "universal man" created by the Renaissance.
NICCOLO MACHIAVELLI (1469-1527) - Italian thinker, diplomat, historian.
Florentine, descended from an ancient but impoverished patrician family. For 14 years he served as secretary of the Council of Ten, in charge of the military and foreign affairs of the Republic of Florence. After the restoration in Florence, the Medici authorities were removed from state activity. In 1513-1520 he was in exile. This period includes the creation of the most significant works of Machiavelli - "The Sovereign", "Discourses on the first decade of Titus Livius", "History of Florence", which earned him European fame. The political ideal of Machiavelli is the Roman Republic, in which he saw the embodiment of the idea of a strong state, the people of which "much surpass the sovereigns both in virtue and in glory." ("Discourses on the first decade of Titus Livius").
The ideas of N. Machiavelli had a very significant impact on the development of political doctrines.
THOMAS MOP (1478-1535) - English humanist, writer, statesman.
Born into the family of a London lawyer, he was educated at Oxford University, where he joined the circle of Oxford humanists. Under Henry VIII, he held a number of high government posts. Very important for the formation and development of More as a humanist was his meeting and friendship with Erasmus of Rotterdam. He was accused of high treason and executed on July 6, 1535.
The most famous work of Thomas More is "Utopia", which reflected both the author's passion for ancient Greek literature and philosophy, and the influence of Christian thought, in particular Augustine's treatise "On the City of God", and also traces an ideological connection with Erasmus of Rotterdam, whose humanistic ideal was in close to More. His ideas had a strong influence on social thought.
ERASMUS OF ROTTERDAM (1469-1536) - one of the most prominent representatives of European humanism and the most versatile of the then scientists.
Erasmus, the illegitimate son of a poor parish priest, spent his youth in an Augustinian monastery, which he managed to leave in 1493. He studied the works of Italian humanists and scientific literature with great enthusiasm, and became the greatest connoisseur of Greek and Latin.
Erasmus' most famous work is the satire Praise of Stupidity (1509), modeled after Lucian, which was written in the home of Thomas More in just one week. Erasmus of Rotterdam tried to synthesize the cultural traditions of antiquity and early Christianity. He believed in the natural goodness of man, he wanted people to be guided by the requirements of reason; among the spiritual values of Erasmus - freedom of spirit, abstinence, education, simplicity.
THOMAS MUNTZER (circa 1490-1525) - German theologian and ideologist of the early Reformation and the Peasants' War of 1524-1526 in Germany.
The son of a craftsman, Müntzer was educated at the universities of Leipzig and Frankfurt an der Oder, where he graduated with a bachelor's degree in theology, and became a preacher. He was influenced by mystics, Anabaptists and Hussites. In the early years of the Reformation, Müntzer was an adherent and supporter of Luther. He then developed his doctrine of the popular Reformation.
In the understanding of Müntzer, the main tasks of the Reformation were not to establish a new church dogma or a new form of religiosity, but to proclaim an imminent socio-political upheaval to be carried out by a mass of peasants and the urban poor. Thomas Müntzer strove for a republic of equal citizens, in which people would take care that justice and law prevail.
For Müntzer, Holy Scripture was subject to free interpretation in the context of contemporary events, an interpretation directly addressed to the spiritual experience of the reader.
Thomas Münzer was captured after the defeat of the rebels in an unequal battle on May 15, 1525 and, after severe torture, was executed.
Conclusion
Based on the first chapter, we can conclude that the main features of the Renaissance culture are:
Anthropocentrism,
Humanism,
Modification of the medieval Christian tradition,
A special attitude to antiquity is the revival of ancient monuments and ancient philosophy,
New attitude to the world.
As for humanism, its leaders emphasized the value of the human person, the independence of the dignity of the individual from origin and generosity, the ability of a person to constantly improve and confidence in his limitless possibilities.
The Reformation played an extremely important role in the formation of world civilization and culture in general. It contributed to the process of the emergence of a man of bourgeois society - an autonomous individual with freedom of moral choice, independent and responsible in his beliefs and actions, thus preparing the ground for the idea of human rights. The carriers of Protestant ideas expressed a new, bourgeois type of personality with a new attitude to the world.
The figures of the Renaissance left us an extensive creative heritage that covers philosophy, art, political science, history, literature, natural sciences and many other areas. They made numerous discoveries, which are a huge contribution to the development of world culture.
Thus, the Renaissance is a phenomenon local in scope, but global in its consequences, which had a strong impact on the development of modern Western civilization and culture with its achievements: an effective market economy, civil society, a democratic rule of law, a civilized way of life, high spiritual culture.
[Francis Bacon's doctrine of "idols"
Idols and false concepts, which have already captivated the human mind and are deeply entrenched in it, so dominate the mind of people that they make it difficult for truth to enter, but even if the entrance to it is allowed and granted, they will again block the path during the very renewal of sciences and will hinder it, unless the people, warned, arm themselves against them as far as possible.
There are four kinds of idols that besiege the minds of people. In order to study them, let's give them names. Let us call the first type the idols of the clan, the second - the idols of the cave, the third - the idols of the square and the fourth - the idols of the theater.
The construction of concepts and axioms through true induction is undoubtedly the true means for suppressing and driving out idols. But the indication of idols is very useful. The doctrine of idols is for the interpretation of nature what the doctrine of the refutation of sophisms is for the generally accepted dialectics.
Idols of the clan find their foundation in the very nature of man, in the tribe or the very kind of people, for it is false to assert that the feelings of man are the measure of things. On the contrary, all perceptions, both of the senses and of the mind, rest on the analogy of man, and not on the analogy of the world. The human mind is likened to an uneven mirror, which, mixing its own nature with the nature of things, reflects things in a distorted and disfigured form.
Cave idols essence of the delusion of the individual. After all, in addition to the mistakes inherent in the human race, everyone has their own special cave, which weakens and distorts the light of nature. This happens either from the special innate properties of each, or from education and conversations with others, or from reading books and from authorities before whom one bows, or due to a difference in impressions, depending on whether they are received by souls prejudiced and predisposed, or souls cool and calm, or for other reasons. So the human spirit, depending on how it is located in individual people, is a changeable, unstable and, as it were, random thing. This is why Heraclitus rightly said that people seek knowledge in the small worlds, and not in the big or general world.
There are also idols that appear, as it were, due to the mutual connection and community of people. We call these idols, referring to the fellowship and fellowship of people that gives rise to them, the idols of the square. People are united by speech. Words are established according to the understanding of the crowd. Therefore, a bad and absurd establishment of words besieges the mind in a wonderful way. The definitions and explanations with which learned people are accustomed to arm themselves and protect themselves in no way help the cause. Words directly force the mind, confuse everything and lead people to empty and countless disputes and interpretations.
Finally, there are idols that have taken root in the souls of people from various dogmas of philosophy, as well as from the perverse laws of evidence. We call them theater idols, for we believe that as many philosophical systems are accepted or invented, as many comedies are staged and played, representing fictional and artificial worlds. We say this not only about the philosophical systems that exist now or once existed, since fairy tales of this kind could be combined and composed in multitude; for in general very different errors have almost the same causes. Here we mean not only general philosophical teachings, but also numerous principles and axioms of the sciences, which have received strength as a result of tradition, faith and carelessness. However, each of these kinds of idols should be more specifically and definitely said separately, in order to warn the mind of man.
The human mind, by virtue of its inclination, easily assumes more order and uniformity in things than it finds them. And while much in nature is singular and completely unresembling, he invents parallels, correspondences and relationships that do not exist. Hence the rumor that everything in the heavens moves in perfect circles\...\
The mind of man draws everything to support and agree with what he once accepted, whether because it is an object of common faith, or because he likes it. Whatever the strength and number of the facts to the contrary, the mind either does not notice them, or neglects them, or rejects and rejects them by means of discrimination with a great and pernicious prejudice, so that the reliability of those former conclusions remains intact. And therefore, he correctly answered who, when they showed him the images of those who were saved from shipwreck by taking a vow, exhibited in the temple, and at the same time sought an answer, whether he now recognizes the power of the gods, asked in turn: “Where are the images of those who perished after made a vow? This is the basis" of almost all superstitions - in astrology, in dreams, in beliefs, in predictions and the like. People who indulge in this kind of fuss note the event that has come true, and ignore the one that deceived, although the latter happens much more often. This evil penetrates even deeper into philosophy and the sciences. In them, what is once recognized infects and subjugates the rest, even if the latter is much better and stronger. In addition, even if these partiality and vanity, which we have indicated, did not take place, yet the human mind is constantly deluded that it is more amenable to positive arguments than negative ones, while in justice it should treat both equally; even more so, in the construction of all true axioms, the negative argument has great power.
The human mind is most affected by that which can immediately and suddenly strike him; this is what usually excites and fills the imagination. The rest he imperceptibly transforms, imagining it to himself the same as the little that owns his mind. To turn to distant and heterogeneous arguments, by means of which the axioms are tested, as if on fire, the mind is generally not inclined and is not capable of until severe laws and strong authority dictate it to him.
The human mind is greedy. He can neither stop nor remain at rest, but rushes further and further. But in vain! Therefore, thought is not able to grasp the limit and end of the world, but always, as if by necessity, represents something existing even further. \...\ This impotence of the mind leads to much more harmful results in the discovery of causes, for, although the most general principles in nature must exist as they were found, and in reality have no causes, yet the human mind, knowing no rest , and here looking for more famous. And so, striving for what is further, he returns to what is closer to him, namely, to final causes, which have their source rather in the nature of man than in the nature of the universe, and, starting from this source, they have distorted philosophy in an amazing way. But he who seeks causes for the universal philosophizes lightly and ignorantly, just as he who does not seek causes that are lower and subordinate.
The human mind is not a dry light, it is sprinkled with will and passions, and this gives rise in science to what is desirable for everyone. A person rather believes in the truth of what he prefers. He rejects the difficult - because there is no patience to continue the study; sober - because it captivates hope; the highest in nature is due to superstition; the light of experience - because of arrogance and contempt for it, so that it does not turn out that the mind is immersed in base and fragile; paradoxes - because of conventional wisdom. In an infinite number of ways, sometimes imperceptible, passions stain and corrupt the mind.
But to the greatest extent the confusion and delusions of the human mind come from inertia, inconsistency and deceit of the senses, for that which excites the senses is preferred to that which does not immediately excite the senses, even if this latter is better. Therefore, contemplation ceases when the sight ceases, so that the observation of invisible things is insufficient or absent altogether. Therefore, the whole movement of spirits, enclosed in tangible bodies, remains hidden and inaccessible to people. Similarly, subtler transformations in the parts of solid bodies remain hidden - what is usually called change, while it is actually the movement of the smallest particles. Meanwhile, without research and elucidation of these two things of which we have spoken, nothing significant in nature can be achieved in practical terms. Further, the very nature of air and of all bodies that are more subtle than air (and there are many of them) is almost unknown. Feeling in itself is weak and deluded, and the instruments designed to strengthen and sharpen the senses are of little worth. The most accurate interpretation of nature is achieved through observations in appropriate, expediently set experiments. Here feeling judges only about experience, while experience judges nature and the thing itself.
The human mind, by its very nature, is drawn to the abstract and thinks the fluid as permanent. But it is better to dissect nature into parts than to abstract. This was what the school of Democritus did, which penetrated deeper than others into nature. One should study more matter, its internal state and change of state, pure action and the law of action or motion, for forms are inventions of the human soul, unless these laws of action are called forms.
These are the idols we call idols of the family. They come either from the uniformity of the substance of the human spirit, or from its prejudice, or from its limitations, or from its relentless movement, or from the suggestion of the passions, or from the incapacity of the senses, or from the mode of perception.
Cave idols come from the inherent qualities of both the soul and the body, as well as from education, from habits and accidents. Although this kind of idols is varied and numerous, yet we will point out those of them that require the most caution and are most capable of corrupting and polluting the mind.
People love either those particular sciences and theories, the authors and inventors of which they consider themselves to be, or those in which they have invested the most labor and to which they are most accustomed. If people of this kind devote themselves to philosophy and general theories, then under the influence of their previous designs they distort and corrupt them. \...\
The biggest and, as it were, fundamental difference between minds in relation to philosophy and sciences is the following. Some minds are stronger and fitter for noticing the differences in things, others for noticing the similarities of things. Hard and sharp minds can focus their reflections, lingering and dwelling on every subtlety of difference. And lofty and mobile minds recognize and compare the subtlest similarities of things inherent everywhere. But both minds easily go too far in pursuit of either divisions of things or shadows.
Contemplations of nature and bodies in their simplicity pulverize and relax the mind; contemplation of nature and bodies in their complexity and configuration deafens and paralyzes the mind. \...\ Therefore, these contemplations must alternate and replace each other so that the mind becomes both penetrating and receptive and in order to avoid the dangers we have indicated and those idols that result from them.
Caution in contemplation must be such as to prevent and banish the idols of the cave, which are predominantly derived either from the dominance of past experience, or from an excess of comparison and division, or from a propensity for the temporal, or from the vastness and insignificance of objects. In general, let everyone contemplating the nature of things consider doubtful that which has especially strongly captured and captivated his mind. Great care is needed in cases of such preference, so that the mind remains balanced and pure.
But the worst of all idols of the square that penetrate the mind along with words and names. People believe that their mind commands words. But it also happens that words turn their power against reason. This has made the sciences and philosophy sophistical and ineffectual. The greater part of words, however, has its source in common opinion and separates things within the limits most obvious to the mind of the crowd. When a sharper mind and a more diligent observation wants to redefine these boundaries so that they are more in line with nature, words become a hindrance. Hence it follows that the loud and solemn disputes of scientists often turn into disputes about words and names, and it would be prudent (according to the custom and wisdom of mathematicians) to start with them in order to put them in order by definitions. However, even such definitions of things, natural and material, cannot cure this disease, for the definitions themselves consist of words, and words give rise to words, so it would be necessary to go to particular examples, their series and order, as I will soon say, when I turn to the method and way of establishing concepts and axioms.
Theater idols are not innate and do not secretly penetrate the mind, but are openly transmitted and perceived from fictitious theories and from perverse laws of evidence. However, an attempt to refute them would be decidedly inconsistent with what we have said. For if we do not agree on the grounds or on the proofs, then no better argument is possible. The honor of the ancients remains untouched, nothing is taken away from them, because the question concerns only the path. As they say, the lame who walks on the road outstrips the one who runs without a road. It is also obvious that the more agile and fast the runner on the road, the more his wanderings will be.
Our way of discovering the sciences is such that it leaves little to the sharpness and strength of talents, but almost equalizes them. Just as for drawing a straight line or describing a perfect circle, firmness, skill and testing of the hand mean a lot, if you use only your hand, it means little or nothing if you use a compass and a ruler. So it is with our method. However, although separate refutations are not needed here, something must be said about the types and classes of this kind of theory. Then also about the external signs of their weakness and, finally, about the reasons for such an unfortunate long and universal agreement in error, so that the approach to the truth would be less difficult and so that the human mind would be more willing to purify itself and reject idols.
The idols of the theatre, or theories, are numerous, and there may be more, and someday there may be more. If for many centuries the minds of people were not occupied with religion and theology, and if the civil authorities, especially monarchical ones, did not oppose such innovations, even speculative ones, and, turning to these innovations, people would not incur danger and would not suffer damage in their prosperity, not only without rewards, but also subject to contempt and ill-will, then, no doubt, many more philosophical and theoretical schools would have been introduced, like those that once flourished in great variety among the Greeks. Just as many assumptions can be invented regarding the phenomena of the celestial ether, in the same way, and to an even greater degree, various dogmas can be formed and constructed regarding the phenomena of philosophy. The fictions of this theater are like the theaters of poets, where stories invented for the stage are more harmonious and beautiful and more likely to satisfy the desires of everyone than true stories from history.
The content of philosophy, on the other hand, is formed in general by deriving a lot from a little, or a little from a lot, so that in both cases philosophy is established on a too narrow basis of experience and natural history and makes decisions from less than it should. Thus, philosophers of a rationalist persuasion snatch from experience various and trivial facts, without knowing them exactly, but having studied and weighed them diligently. Everything else they lay on the reflections and activities of the mind.
There are a number of other philosophers who, having labored diligently and carefully over a few experiments, have ventured to invent and derive their philosophy from them, perverting and interpreting everything else in relation to it in an amazing way.
There is also a third class of philosophers who, under the influence of faith and reverence, mix theology and tradition with philosophy. The vanity of some of them has reached the point where they deduce the sciences from spirits and geniuses. Thus, the root of the errors of false philosophy is threefold: sophistry, empiricism and superstition.
\...\ If people, prompted by our instructions and having said goodbye to sophistical teachings, seriously engage in experience, then, due to the premature and hasty ardor of the mind and its desire to ascend to the general and to the principles of things, perhaps a great danger will arise from philosophies of this kind . This evil we must warn now. So, we have already spoken about certain types of idols and their manifestations. All of them must be rejected and cast aside by a firm and solemn decision, and the mind must be completely freed and cleansed of them. Let the entrance to the kingdom of man, based on the sciences, be almost the same as the entrance to the kingdom of heaven, "where it is not given to anyone to enter without becoming like children."
PLAN
Renaissance.
1. Early Renaissance.
A. Giotto.
B. Brunelleschi.
2. High Renaissance
A. Bramante
Titans of the Renaissance.
1. Leonardo da Vinci.
2. Rafael Santi.
3. Michelangelo.
4. Titian.
3. Late Renaissance
RENAISSANCE
At the end of the XIV - beginning of the XV centuries. in Europe, namely in Italy, an early bourgeois culture began to take shape, called Renaissance culture (Renaissance). The term "Renaissance" indicated the connection of the new culture with antiquity. At this time, the Italian society begins to take an active interest in the culture of Ancient Greece and Rome, the manuscripts of ancient writers are being searched for, so the writings of Cicero and Titus Livius were found. The Renaissance was characterized by many very significant changes in the mentality of people compared to the period of the Middle Ages. Secular motives are growing in European culture, various spheres of society's life - art, philosophy, literature, education, science - are becoming more and more independent and independent from the church. The focus of the Renaissance was a man, so the worldview of the bearers of this culture is denoted by the term “ humanistic”(from lat. humanus - human).
Renaissance humanists believed that what matters in a person is not his origin or social status, but personal qualities, such as intelligence, creative energy, enterprise, self-esteem, will, and education. A strong, talented and comprehensively developed personality, a person who is the creator of himself and his destiny, was recognized as an “ideal person”. In the Renaissance, the human personality acquires an unprecedented value, the most important feature of the humanistic approach to life is individualism, which contributes to the spread of the ideas of liberalism and a general increase in the level of freedom of people in society. It is no coincidence that humanists, who in general do not oppose religion and do not dispute the basic provisions of Christianity, assigned God the role of the creator who set the world in motion and does not interfere further in people's lives.
The ideal person, according to humanists, is a “universal person”, a person who is a creator, an encyclopedist. The humanists of the Renaissance believed that the possibilities of human knowledge are endless, because the human mind is like the divine mind, and the man himself is like a mortal god, and in the end people will enter the territory of the heavenly bodies and settle there and become like gods. Educated and gifted people in this period were surrounded by an atmosphere of universal admiration, worship, they were honored, as in the Middle Ages, saints. The enjoyment of earthly existence- is an indispensable part of the culture of the Renaissance.
EARLY REVIVAL
Renaissance in cultural progress has a special place. The point is not only that in the history of mankind there are not many epochs marked by such an ebullient intensity of cultural, especially artistic, creativity, such an abundance of brilliant talents, such a wealth of magnificent achievements. Another thing is no less striking: five centuries have passed, life has changed beyond recognition, and the creations of the great masters of Renaissance art do not cease to excite more and more generations of people.
What is the secret of this amazing vitality? As fascinated as we are by the perfection of form, it alone is not sufficient for such active longevity. The secret is in the deepest humanity of this art, in the humanism that pervades it. After a millennium of the Middle Ages, the Renaissance was the first powerful attempt at the spiritual emancipation of man, the liberation and all-round development of the colossal creative possibilities hidden in him. The art born of this era carries immortal ethical values. It educates, develops humane feelings, it awakens the Man in man.
The painting of Byzantium, from the influence of which Italian artists began to free themselves only towards the end of the thirteenth century, created masterpieces that arouse our admiration, but they did not represent the real world.
The art of the artists of the Middle Ages does not give the viewer a sense of volume, depth, does not create the impression of space, and it does not strive for this.
Giving only a hint of reality, the Byzantine masters sought, first of all, to convey those ideas, beliefs and concepts that constituted the spiritual content of their era. They created images-symbols majestic and extremely spiritual, and in their painting and mosaics human figures remained as if incorporeal, conditional, as well as the landscape and the whole composition.
In order for a new, realistic art to triumph over both the Gothic and the Byzantine art system, a revolution in the worldview of people was needed, which can be called one of the greatest progressive revolutions in the history of mankind.
What is commonly called the Renaissance was the affirmation of the continuity of the great ancient culture, the affirmation of the ideals of humanism. This was the end of the Middle Ages and the beginning of a new era. The conductors of the new culture called themselves humanists, deriving this word from the Latin humanus - “human”, “human”. True humanism proclaims the human right to freedom, happiness, recognizes the good of man as the basis of the social order, affirms the principles of equality, justice, humanity in relations between people.
Italian humanists discovered the world of classical antiquity, searched for the works of ancient authors in the forgotten repositories and painstakingly cleared them of the distortions introduced by medieval monks. The search for them was marked by fiery enthusiasm. Others dug up fragments of columns, statues, bas-reliefs, coins. “I resurrect the dead,” said one of the Italian humanists, who devoted himself to archeology. And in fact, the ancient ideal of beauty was resurrected under that sky and on that earth, which were eternally dear to him. And this ideal, earthly, deeply human and tangible, engendered in people a great love for the beauty of the world and a stubborn will to know this world. Such a grandiose upheaval in the attitude of people took place on Italian soil after Italy embarked on a new path in its economic and social development. Already in the XI-XII centuries. in Italy, anti-feudal revolutions take place with the establishment of a republican form of government in many cities.
Historically, in Italy, the main channel of the rapid creative activity of the Renaissance was not mental activity in itself, and not even fine literature, but fine art. It was in artistic creativity that the new culture realized itself with the greatest expressiveness, it was in art that it was embodied in treasures over which time has no power. Perhaps, neither before (at least since classical antiquity), nor after mankind has experienced an era when the fine arts would play such an exceptional role in cultural, and even in public life. The very concept of “Renaissance culture” awakens in the mind, first of all, a boundless, enchanting string of soul-stirring creations of painting, sculpture, architecture - one more beautiful than the other. All this relates to the highest degree to the highest stage of development of this culture, to its culminating period, which, not without reason, is called the High Renaissance. What was previously an attempt, only a breakthrough, appears here in the fullness of thought, the perfection of harmony, in the seething flow of the struggle of titanic forces. However, a long and difficult path of ascent led to the top. Without it, one cannot understand the climax.
Harmony, beauty will find an unshakable basis in the so-called golden section (this term was introduced by Leonardo da Vinci; later another was used: “divine proportion”), known in antiquity, but interest in which arose precisely in the 15th century. in connection with its application both in geometry and in art, especially in architecture. This is the harmonic division of the segment, in which the larger part is the average proportional between the entire segment and its smaller part, which is exemplified by the human body. So, the human mind - as the driving force of the art of construction. Such was already the credo of the architects of the Quattrocento, and a hundred years later Michelangelo will say even more clearly:
“Architectural members depend on the human body, and whoever was not or is not a good master of figure as well as anatomy cannot comprehend this.”
In its structural and decorative-figurative unity, Renaissance architecture transformed the appearance of the cathedral - its centric domed structure does not crush a person, but does not tear it off the ground, but with its majestic rise, as it were, asserts the primacy of man over the world.
With every decade of the XV century. secular construction takes on an ever-increasing scope in Italy. Not a temple, not even a palace, but a public building had the high honor of being the first-born of truly Renaissance architecture. This is the Florentine Foundling Home, the construction of which Brunelleschi began in 1419.
Pure Renaissance lightness and elegance distinguish this creation of the famous architect, who brought a wide-open arched gallery with thin columns onto the facade and, as it were, connected the building with the square, architecture - “a part of life” - with the very part of the city. Charming medallions made of baked clay covered with glaze with images of swaddled newborns adorn small tympanums, colorfully enlivening the entire architectural composition.
Slenderly dissected in their mighty horizontal facades, without towers and arched rises, majestic, stately and picturesque Florentine palaces: Palazzo Pitti, Palazzo Riccardi, Palazzo Rucellai, Palazzo Strozzi and the wonderful central dome temple of the Madonna delle Carcelli in Prato. All these are famous architectural monuments of the Early Renaissance.
Let us add two words about another pictorial genre that flourished in Florence in the 15th century. These are elegant chests or caskets (cassone) in which favorite things, dresses, in particular, the dowry of girls were stored. Together with carvings, they were covered with paintings, sometimes very elegant, giving a vivid idea of the fashions of that time, sometimes with scenes borrowed from classical mythology.
At the origins of the Renaissance early Renaissance) in Italy standing great Dante Alighieri(1265-1321), author of the "Comedy", which the descendants, expressing their admiration, called " Divine comedy". Dante took a plot familiar to the Middle Ages and managed, by the power of his imagination, to lead the reader through all the circles of Hell, Purgatory and Paradise; some of his simple-hearted contemporaries believed that Dante really visited the other world.
"Divine Comedy" consists of three parts: "Hell", "Purgatory", "Paradise". In Hell, deep underground, sinners are tormented by eternal pain - murderers, suicides, traitors, rapists, experiencing eternal mental and physical torment. The inhabitants of Purgatory, the mountains-islands are wise and balanced. These are righteous pagans who do not know Christ, all good people worshiping false gods. Those who got here are waiting for long and painful thoughts about God, justice and the inevitability of retribution for sins; here, in Purgatory, they try to comprehend the highest expediency of the universe. The best corner of Purgatory is at the top of the mountain. This is Earth Paradise. The souls of many are able to cleanse themselves of sins, redeem them with repentance, rise to the Earthly Paradise and even fly up to heaven, to the real, heavenly Paradise. In the Heavenly Paradise, "The glory of the one who moves the entire Universe, penetratingly shining, flows." Dante describes how he, together with Beatrice, visited Heavenly Paradise and talked with the righteous there. The moon is inhabited by the souls of nuns abducted from monasteries and forcibly given in marriage, through no fault of their own and free will not keep their vow of virginity. These are the spirits of the moon. On Mercury - the second heavenly sphere - the soul-lights of ambitious figures live, whose life was righteous. The third heaven - Venus - a haven for the loving righteous. The sun is inhabited by the radiant souls of theologians, sages, philosophers. On Mars, the souls of warriors gather for the faith. Jupiter is the place where the souls of the just hover. The souls of righteous contemplatives aspire to Saturn. The next, the eighth heavenly sphere, is the "Nest of Leda" in the Constellation of Gemini, here the souls of the great righteous find shelter. In the same constellation of Gemini is the highest, ninth, sphere of Paradise - the Empyrean. Its center is a tiny and dazzlingly bright point, around which the other eight circles of paradise revolve. Here the souls of babies, blissful, come, from here comes the supreme and most dazzling Eternal Light, helping to gain the highest knowledge and truth. It is "Love that moves the suns and luminaries."
Dante Francesco petrarch(1304-1374) and Giovanni Boccaccio(1313-1375) - famous poets of the Renaissance, were the creators of the Italian literary language. During their lifetime, their works became widely known not only in Italy, but also far beyond its borders, and entered the treasury of world literature.
Petrarch's sonnets on the life and death of the Madonna Laura received worldwide fame. An example of them is sonnet No. 215 from the Book of Songs.
With the nobility of blood - this modesty,
A brilliant mind - and a heart of simplicity,
With external closure - heat,
And a ripe fruit - from a young color,
Yes, her planet was generous to her,
Rather, the king of the luminaries, and the height of her virtues,
Every feature
They would break the great poet.
In it the Lord combined love and honor,
Wearing charm to match
Nature's beauty - the eyes of the joy.
And there's something in her eyes
That at midnight the day will make it shine, shine,
Will give bitterness to honey and wormwood - sweetness.
The Renaissance is characterized by the cult of beauty, especially the beauty of man. Italian painting, which for a time becomes the leading art form, depicts beautiful, perfect people. Painting of the Early Renaissance is represented by creativity Botticelli(1445-1510), who created works on religious and mythological subjects, including the paintings “Spring” and “The Birth of Venus”, as well as Giotto(1266-1337), who freed Italian fresco painting from Byzantine influence.
GIOTTO
Trecento is not Renaissance yet, it is Pre-Renaissance, or Proto-Renaissance. Moreover, it can be said that proto-Renaissance trends appeared in Italian culture and in the general worldview already in the 13th century, and sometimes even in the 12th and 11th centuries. Already the Pre-Renaissance raised the motto of imitation of nature. It was for this that the humanists ardently praised Giotto. The Florentine Giotto is the first in time among the titans of the great era of Italian art. He was primarily a painter, but also a sculptor and architect. There is evidence that he was ugly and famous for his wit. The impression made on contemporaries by the creations of Giotto was enormous. Petrarch wrote that before the images of Giotto you experience delight, reaching to a stupor. And a hundred years later, the famous Florentine sculptor Ghiberti spoke of him like this:
“Giotto saw in art what others could not. He brought natural art… He was the inventor and discoverer of a great science that was buried for about six hundred years.”
"Natural art", because it is based on the image of the world around us as our eye sees it.
Here began the separation from medieval, religious art. There, the universal and supersensitive god was supposed to be the highest perfection, and only to him, as to the only real ideal, art should have aspired. Everything earthly, natural was declared deceptive, illusory, unworthy of admiration: after all, it distracted from the contemplation of the invisible - God. However, it is impossible to depict and perceive the supersensible, and therefore, in order to depict God, angels and saints, one had to resort to depicting people, and to some extent, elements of nature. But these images were not supposed to have an independent aesthetic value, but only serve as hints, symbols of the "heavenly", divine. The visible was allowed only to turn people's thoughts to the invisible.
Beginning with Giotto, nature and man themselves became an object of admiration, they began to look for (and found!) Beauty and spiritual wealth in them. The world seemed to open up again before people. Attention, interest, love of artists focused more and more on the person and everything that surrounds him. This was the strength and merit of the Early Renaissance, its great philosophical and artistic discovery: the impulse to man and nature as a sphere of beauty and goodness meant the transfer of the aesthetic and ethical center of gravity from the heavenly, imaginary, supernatural sphere to the earthly, real, human world.
But there was also his weakness. Fascinated by the world that opened before him, art could not help but be carried away by his “variegated decoration” and easily strayed onto the path of petty naturalism. Many artists could not stand the temptation and left to posterity pictures where there are both flowery cavalcades and skillfully depicted flies sitting on a written piece of paper, but where a person is depicted small, inexpressive, he is lost in this festive or everyday tinsel.
However, the art of the Early Renaissance, for all its limitations, was by no means unambiguously naturalistic, self-understandably simple. It was complex, contradictory, and this internal inconsistency led him forward. Strange as it may seem at first glance, in the art of the Early Renaissance, along with fine detailing, from the very beginning there is another, synthesizing trend: inextricably linked with the creation of a generalized, monumental and heroic image of a perfect person.
One of the most famous sculptors of that time was Donatello(1386-1466), the author of a number of realistic works of the portrait type, for the first time after antiquity he again presented a naked body in sculpture. The largest architect of the Early Renaissance - Brunelleschi(1377-1446). He sought to combine elements of ancient Roman and Gothic styles, built temples, palaces, chapels.
BRUNELLESCHI
Renaissance art proper began in the 15th century, when, in the first year of that century, the Florentine Commune announced a competition to decorate the doors of the Baptistery of San Giovanni. The best were the reliefs presented by two young artists - Filippo Brunelleschi and Lorenzo Ghiberti on the same theme: the sacrifice of Abraham. Both reliefs were magnificent, both were innovatively bold both in decision and in pictorial language. The palm was given to Ghiberti, probably because on Brunelleschi’s relief the figure of Isaac, dressed for slaughter by his father, looked too obedient to God, this is a “trembling creature”, a miserable, almost amorphous slave whom Abraham, like an unrequited cattle, drags to the altar. Not so with Ghiberti. His Isaac is alien to the features of a pitiful nonentity. This is a slender, flexible boy on the threshold of youthful flowering. Its plasticity is captivating. Yes, he was placed on the altar with his knees, his hands were tied behind his back, but he did not bow his head submissively. On the contrary, he proudly raised her, and we see how much beauty and dignity she has. There is not a shadow of fear on his face, there is a proud challenge to the wild injustice that is ready to fall on him. The same challenge - in the bare chest, fearlessly turned towards danger. This fearless young man will not bow before a ruthless father, and, probably, even before God himself, who was not embarrassed to give such an inhuman order.
"Isaac" Ghiberti not only expressed with rare persuasiveness the freedom-loving, rebellious spirit of the Florentine Republic. He, in fact, was the first, on the very threshold of the Quattrocento, in a high generalization, embodied the ideal image of a proud and beautiful man of the Renaissance.
Brunelleschi, on the other hand, had two great ideas: the first was to bring back good architecture to God's world, the second was to find, if he succeeded, a way to build the dome of Santa Maria del Fiore in Florence.
The fact is that in medieval Europe they were completely unable to build large domes, so the Italians of that time looked at the ancient Roman Pantheon with admiration and envy.
And here is how Vasari evaluates the dome of the Florentine Cathedral of Santa Maria del Fiore erected by Brunelleschi:
“It can be definitely asserted that the ancients did not reach such a height in their buildings and did not dare to take such a risk that would make them compete with the sky itself, as the Florentine dome seems to really compete with it, for it is so high that the mountains surrounding Florence, seem equal to him. And indeed, one might think that the sky itself envies him, because he constantly and often strikes him with lightning for days on end.
The proud power of the Renaissance! The Florentine dome was not a repetition of either the dome of the Pantheon or the dome of St. Sophia in Constantinople, which pleases us not with height, not even with the majesty of appearance, but above all with the spaciousness that they create in the temple interior.
Brunelleschi's dome cuts into the sky with all its slender bulk, signifying for contemporaries not the mercy of heaven to the city, but the triumph of human will, the triumph of the city, the proud Florentine Republic. Not “going down to the cathedral from heaven”, but organically growing out of it, it was erected as a sign of victory and power, in order (indeed, it seems to us) to draw cities and peoples under its shadow.
Yes, it was something new, unprecedented, marking the triumph of a new art. Without this dome, erected over a medieval cathedral at the dawn of the Renaissance, those domes would have been unthinkable that, following Michelangelo's (above the Roman Cathedral of St. Peter), crowned the cathedrals of almost all of Europe in subsequent centuries.
Brunelleschi entered world culture as the founder of the architectural system of the Renaissance and its first fiery conductor, as a transformer of all European architecture, as an artist whose work is marked by a bright personality. Let us add that he was one of the founders of the scientific theory of perspective, the discoverer of its basic laws, which were of great importance for the development of all contemporary painting.
In the era of humanism, the world seemed beautiful to man, and he wanted to see beauty in everything with which he surrounded himself in this world. And so the task of architecture was to frame human life as beautifully as possible. So beauty became the ultimate goal of architecture. The people of the Renaissance saw beauty as an exact, objectively defined concept, the same for everyone.
Leon Battista Alberti, the greatest art theorist of the 15th century, defined the laws of beauty in this way:
“Agreement of all parts into a harmonious whole so that none can be removed or changed without damage to the whole.”
And, praising one of Brunelleschi's creations, he emphasized that "not a single line lives in it independently."
The new art was based on logic, on the revelations of the human mind, confirmed by mathematical calculations. And the mind demanded clarity, harmony, proportion.
But it was impossible to directly continue the best traditions of the Early Renaissance - they had to be born again, in a new, higher quality. Humanistic art had to find strength and courage in itself in order to reject the temptations of fashionable, but false, decadent trends amidst spiritual confusion, to overcome the crisis, to fearlessly move forward, to lead it to where the art of the Early Renaissance stretched, but where it never managed to rise. Only the titans could do that. And they appeared.
HIGH REVIVAL
The golden age of Italian art is the age of freedom. The painters of the High Renaissance master all the means of depiction - a sharp and courageous drawing that reveals the skeleton of the human body, color that already conveys air, and shadows, and light. The laws of perspective are somehow immediately mastered by artists, as if without any effort. The figures moved, and harmony was achieved in their complete emancipation.
Movement becomes more confident, experiences - deeper and more passionate.
Having mastered form, chiaroscuro, mastering the third dimension, the artists of the High Renaissance mastered the visible world in all its infinite diversity, in all its expanses and recesses, in order to present it to us not in fractional terms, but in a powerful generalization, in the full brilliance of its sunny beauty.
BRAMANTE
Bramante should be recognized as a brilliant architect of the High Renaissance. The work of Bramante approved for many decades the general direction of High Renaissance architecture. His role in architecture was no less than that of Brunelleschi in the previous century.
The architecture of the Cinquecento restrains the joyful mobility of the Early Renaissance and turns it into a measured step. The flickering variety of details disappears, the choice of a few large figures increases the calm impressiveness of the whole. The famous Roman Palazzo Cancelleria (where the papal office was located), in the completion of the construction of which Bramante participated, marks the triumph of the wall over the order: it is the slender bulk of the wall that creates the majestic isolation of the huge facade. And in the very small domed temple of Tempietto (erected in Rome in 1502), with niches inside and outside, surrounded by a Romandoric colonnade, Bramante gave, as it were, an example of extreme monumentality, independent of the size of the building, so that this temple was perceived by contemporaries as “ manifesto of new architecture.
Like a true genius, Bramante was original. However, his art was nourished by the juices of a very high culture. When he worked in Milan, Leonardo da Vinci was there, with whom he collaborated in drawing up urban plans.
Seventy-year-old Bramante died in 1514 in the midst of his work on the reconstruction of the Vatican.
The era of the Early Renaissance ended by the end of the 15th century, it was replaced by the High rebirth- the time of the highest flowering of the humanistic culture of Italy. It was then that ideas about the honor and dignity of man, his high destiny on Earth were expressed with the greatest fullness and force. Titan of the High Renaissance Leonardo Yes Vinci(1456-1519), one of the most remarkable people in the history of mankind, with versatile abilities and talents. Leonardo was at the same time an artist, art theorist, sculptor, architect, mathematician, physicist, astronomer, physiologist, anatomist - and this is not a complete list of the main areas of his activity; he enriched almost all areas of science with brilliant conjectures. His most important artworks are The Last Supper, a fresco in the Milanese monastery of Santa Maria della Grazie, which depicts the moment of the supper after the words of Christ: “One of you will betray me”, as well as the world-famous portrait of the young Florentine Mona Lisa, which has another name - "La Gioconda", named after her husband Giocondo.
The great painter was also a titan of the High Renaissance Rafael Santi(1483-1520), creator of the "Sistine Madonna", the greatest work of world painting.
The last great representative of the culture of the High Renaissance was Michelangelo Buonarotti(1475-1654) - sculptor, painter, architect and poet, creator of the famous statue of David, sculptural figures "Morning", "Evening", "Day", "Night", made for the tombs in the Medici chapel. Michelangelo painted the ceiling and walls of the Sistine Chapel of the Vatican Palace; one of the most impressive frescoes is the scene of the Last Judgment. In the work of Michelangelo, more clearly than in his predecessors - Leonardo da Vinci and Raphael Santi, tragic notes sound, caused by the realization of the limit that is set for a person, an understanding of the limitations of human capabilities, the impossibility of “surpassing nature”.
The remarkable artists of this period were Giorgione (1477-1510), who created the famous canvases “Judith” and “Sleeping Venus”, and Titian(1477-1576), praising the beauty of the surrounding world and man. He also created a gallery of magnificent portraits of powerful and wealthy contemporaries.
TITANS OF THE RENAISSANCE
Four geniuses shine in what was then Italy. Four geniuses, each of which is a whole world, complete, perfect, having absorbed all the knowledge, all the achievements of the previous century and raising them to levels that were still inaccessible to man: Leonardo da Vinci, Raphael, Michelangelo, Titian.
LEONARDO DA VINCI
Leonardo da Vinci was born in 1452 in the village of Anchiano, near the town of Vinci, at the foot of the Alban Mountains, halfway between Florence and Pisa.
The landscape is majestic in those places where his childhood flowed: dark ledges of mountains, lush greenery of vineyards and foggy distances. Far beyond the mountains is the sea, which cannot be seen from Anchiano. Lost place. But there are open spaces and heights nearby.
Leonardo was the illegitimate son of the notary Piero da Vinci, who himself was the grandson and great-grandson of notaries. His father apparently took care of his upbringing.
The exceptional talent of the future great master manifested itself very early. According to Vasari, already in childhood he was so successful in arithmetic that he put teachers in a difficult position with his questions. At the same time, Leonardo studied music, played the lyre beautifully and "sang improvisations divinely." However, drawing and modeling most of all excited his imagination. His father took his drawings to his old friend Andrea Verrocchio. He was amazed and said that the young Leonardo should devote himself entirely to painting. In 1466, Leonardo entered the Florentine workshop of Verrocchio as an apprentice.
The famous Uffizi Gallery in Florence houses a painting by a Florentine master of the second half of the 15th century. Andrea Verrocchio "The Baptism of Christ". The artistic heritage of Verrocchio - he was a painter, sculptor, engraver and jeweler - pleases us to this day. But in this picture of him, we will select only the figure of the front angel on the left.
In comparison with her, the rest of the figures seem constrained in their movements, angular. Only he, this angel, can easily turn around, breathe freely, although his youthful strength is still timid, his new breath is weak.
The picture was painted at the very beginning of the seventies Quattrocento. In general, it is very typical for this era. But as has been noted for a long time, this angel touches us like the voice of some other world. It was not written by Verrocchio, but by his young student Leonardo da Vinci.
Vasari writes that Leonardo's angel came out much better than Verrocchio's figures. Of course, Verrocchio should have been struck by the creation of the student, and not only as evidence of Leonardo's greater giftedness. The point is different: the figure painted by Leonardo marked, as it were, a transition into a new quality unknown to his teacher, for it is really the brainchild of a different, new world, which was destined to appear in full splendor and strength only after a few decades.
This angel, so natural in its perfect elegance, so captivating in its spirituality, so graceful, with a radiant and deep look, is no longer a creation of the Early, but of the High Renaissance, i.e. a truly golden age of Italian art. His figure is naturally enveloped in chiaroscuro.
Already in the early works of Leonardo, features are found that were not in the art of the Quattrocento. Here is a small picture - “Madonna Benois”, but how much it carries in itself! Before Leonardo, Mary with the baby Jesus in her arms was depicted many times, and the theme went a long way of humanization: Mary among the artists of the 15th century. no longer sits on the throne, the crown disappears from her head, the halos are only guessed - the Mother of God and the God-man have lost most of their divinity, turned into a human mother with a child. However, representativeness was almost always preserved: Mary shows the son of God to people, and she herself poses in front of them. Such are the “Madonnas” of the largest artists of the Quattrocento, such as Andrea Mantegna, Pietro Perugino, Giovanni Bellini.
Not so with Leonardo. Neither the mother nor the baby is turned towards the viewer, they do not look at him. They are busy with their work: before us is a lively scene of the play of a young mother, a simple girl, almost a girl, with her firstborn. The game completely captured both. The mother smiles cheerfully, even laughs, admiring her baby; in the first joy of this game, her ingenuous soul, her inner freedom, her young maternal love are revealed. The sacred meaning is actually completely eliminated.
Never before has an artist focused his attention to such an extent on the most difficult side of nature to portray - on the inner life of a person, on his spiritual movements. And this is one of the most important innovations that the High Renaissance brought to Renaissance art. “The task of the artist,” Leonardo wrote, “is to depict what borders on the almost unattainable: to show the inner, spiritual world of a person.” This is the most important program requirement for a qualitatively new state of humanistic art, one of the defining features of the High Renaissance.
Important consequences naturally flowed from the fundamental setting, which significantly changed the nature of realism at the highest stage of Renaissance art. If the main thing is a person and, especially, his inner world, then everything extraneous, secondary, optional should be eliminated from the picture. In “Madonna Benois” a whole psychologically rich scene is unfolded before the viewer. But how concise her solution! The group is placed in the interior, but there is, in fact, no interior: not a single detail of the dwelling and its furnishings, except for the bench on which Maria sits, and even that is barely outlined. There is only a window with a semicircular vault (repeating the line of the semicircle that closes the entire composition at the top, and the upper contours of the heads of the mother and child). But cut not in the name of verisimilitude. This is the source of air in the picture, otherwise the picture would suffocate. And - a gracefully outlined spot of light, green-bluish, penetrated by the sun, like golden dust. It lightly and softly accompanies the color scheme of the group itself - the baby, the young mother and her clothes, that is, it does not distract from the main thing, but, on the contrary, serves to even greater unity of the whole.
Thus, in the emerging art of the High Renaissance, the acquisition of fundamentally new features entailed the rejection of certain features of the old - now there was no room for the petty naturalism characteristic of the Early Renaissance. Only by rejecting the admiration of external details, one could learn to comprehend and admire the inner life of a person. Only by discarding the superficial "nominalism" of things, it was possible to reveal in art the highest reality - the wealth of the spiritual world of man.
What "Apollonic" perfection, what kind of heartfelt wealth and heroic loftiness of spirit can and should be achieved by a person, was shown in full force only by the art of the High Renaissance - both in Michelangelo's "David" and in Raphael's "Sistine Madonna". What in the art of the Quattrocento was contained only in potency, in allusion, here unfolds in mighty flowering.
However, it would be a mistake to think that the art of the High Renaissance is the same art of the Early Renaissance, only “in full splendor of manifestations”. Even though the desire to reveal the inner world of a person broke through in some of the best creations of the quattrocento, in order for this trend to really be realized, the very understanding of a person, his inner world, had to change very significantly.
In the rich heritage of Leonardo the draftsman, a whole gallery of strange faces with ugly, often repulsive features is striking. In literature, they are called caricatures. Indeed, some of these drawings, especially group ones, are of a pronounced satirical nature: cruelty, stupidity, arrogance, cunning, not noticing the hideousness of their appearance. These are sharp-sighted and ruthless socio-psychological characteristics of the time, faces of social evil. Among them there are many images of arrogant and repulsive physiognomies of “respectable people”, “cream of society”.
However, the general orientation of the Caricatures is broader; on the whole, it goes in line with the humanist ideology, although it introduces something completely new into it. These are people, but people, as if seen for the first time not in their beauty, strength and nobility; no, what we have before us are mostly ugly faces, chewed up by life, mangled by greed, lust for power, cunning, gluttony, envy and other vices. Before Leonardo, such images of people in Renaissance art did not exist. Naturally, there were enough faces disfigured by life around, but the artists did not seem to notice them, art did not try to illuminate a person from this, shadowy side.
It was a discovery. Without him, Leonardo would never have been able to create his amazing "Last Supper". All the variety and typical expressiveness of the faces of the apostles and, of course, the face of Judas, could not be created by an artist whose gaze was limited by the iridescent blinkers of early humanism. The few sketches for this fresco that have come down to us testify that Leonardo prepared it in a long and persistent search in nature.
The Last Supper reflects a new stage in the maturity of the humanistic consciousness of the High Renaissance. It is striking in the variety of types, characters, spiritual movements of people, most expressively conveyed by the artist. Here, too, many are pokaverkany life. But this is not the main thing in the picture. Its semantic center is something more - a terrible act of betrayal, the triumph of disgusting villainy. The "discovery" of tragedy in life, the courage to speak openly about it - the conquest of the High Renaissance, one of the most important moments inherent in a qualitatively new stage in the development of Renaissance humanism and humanistic art. Here - one of the root points of the watershed between the Early and High Renaissance.
In The Last Supper there are beautiful, imposing figures, but there are also bald, and toothless, and crumpled ones. And most importantly - there is no conviction that one is right, there is no unity. More precisely, the unity is only apparent, it is disintegrating before our eyes. Next to individual brave, ready for action - tired, cowardly, indifferent, preoccupied only with themselves. Leonardo's fresco is a denunciation of evil prowling in the world - in the face of betrayal, but no less - in the face of what all evil feeds on - human indifference.
That is why the "Last Supper" is one of the main milestones that mark the beginning of a new stage of Renaissance culture - the High Renaissance. Life has shown that a person is much more complicated than the one-sided optimistic scheme on which both ethics and aesthetics of the Early Renaissance were based. Leonardo was the first to dare to look beyond this scheme and in his art he showed the other side of the medal, revealed all the contradictory complexity of man, without closing his eyes to his most disgusting sides.
The criticality of the view is what primarily separates the High Renaissance from the Early. But the High Renaissance did not turn to misanthropy; faith in man, which nourished humanistic art from the very beginning, he did not lose. On the contrary, only the High Renaissance, with exhaustive depth and power, managed to embody the humanistic ideal of man in art. Only in the work of the luminaries of the High Renaissance did the ideal person appear complex, ambiguous, but so wise, powerful and beautiful that the Early Renaissance could only dream of. Such deep, philosophically complex images as the Mona Lisa were beyond the power of Quattrocento art.
No matter what they say about the Gioconda, there is no doubt that we have an exceptional woman, a beautiful woman. No, not by prettiness or catchy prettiness (Leonardo preferred to avoid depicting such faces, and if he had to, he handed over most of the work to his students). And don't call her young. But how good it is, how rich in content! How much dignity in the proud landing of the head, how high self-consciousness emanates from this face, how much bewitching charm in the high, bright forehead, in deep eyes full of reason and understanding, how much inner freedom in the look! The amazing integrity of the image, closed by a ring of beautiful hands, creates a feeling of supreme perfection. In all the previous art of the Renaissance, one cannot find an equally penetrating embodiment of the humanistic ideal of man - beautiful, sublime, spiritually rich.
The magnetic appeal of the Gioconda is proof of its depth and, obviously, its fidelity to life. This means that the secret of this portrait is not far-fetched, but some kind of vital, necessary for people - historical and human. Undoubtedly, in the "La Gioconda" - the highest embodiment of the Renaissance ideal of an intelligent, proud, perfect person. But not only. Her strange smile, both captivating and bitter, also speaks of some other intention of the artist, and of a special psychological state of nature.
Between 1513 and 1516 Leonardo da Vinci creates the painting “John the Baptist”, which has long gained fame as perhaps the most mysterious of all his creations.
Of course, there is a lot of mystery in all the work of Leonardo. It is known that he kept all his notes in mirror writing, and clothed many of his most daring thoughts in the Aesopian form of fables, parables, and prophecies. Vincian's art is also distinguished by exceptional intellectual richness. The creations of the brush of this greatest artist-thinker are filled with such a deep, “multi-layered” ideological content that they cannot be deciphered with a superficial approach. They give rise to many perplexed questions, and sometimes directly opposite judgments.
And most of all this applies to “John the Baptist”. Perhaps, in all the art of the classical Renaissance, there is hardly another work that would cause such conflicting assessments as this picture. Some admired her, others considered her so weak that they refused to recognize the authorship of Leonardo; some glorified, others were ready to curse.
The picture was written, apparently, by order of the French, most likely - even Louis XII, at the end of his reign in Milan. Judging by the numerous copies and imitations of artists, according to individual testimonies of people who visited the French court in the 16th and 17th centuries, the painting delighted contemporaries, and the French monarchs were proud of it as one of the pearls of their collection; proud of her and the artist himself.
In the painting "John the Baptist" one feels a screaming discord. Calling to think about the heavenly and there, in the impenetrable darkness, to seek salvation, the full-bodied preacher of asceticism himself abides undisturbed in this sinful world. And this discord is entirely consistent with the ambiguity of his ironic smile. All this did not fit in so well with the traditional idea of John the Baptist that already in the 17th century the painting was given (despite the depicted cross) a second name: “Bacchus”.
This means that it is hardly reasonable to reproach the artist for insufficient adherence to the “historical authenticity” of the image of the New Testament character. It would be more correct to conclude that something incomparably more is hidden behind this John than one of the faces of the gospel story, that behind him is a whole phenomenon and a certain attitude of the artist himself towards him. In his latest creation, the humanist artist denounced the hypocrisy of ascetic preaching and said about the Catholic Church what he thought about it.
With his last, “testamentary” picture, as a sharp chord, Leonardo completed that battle of humanism against asceticism, which Boccaccio, Bruni, Poggio, Valla, and, in essence, all Renaissance art began and tirelessly waged.
RAFAEL SANTI
Rafael Santi reached the highest honors early. The Pope wanted to crown him with an unprecedented award for a painter, and only an untimely death prevented Raphael from becoming a cardinal.
We find the first characterization of Raphael in a letter from the sister of the Duke of Urbino, who calls the artist - he was then twenty-one years old (1504) - "a modest and sweet young man." The description of his personality according to Vasari should be given almost in full.
“In order to realize,” writes Vasari, “how much the sky can prove to be wasteful and supportive, placing on its head alone that infinite wealth of its treasures and beauties, which it usually distributes over a long time among several individuals, one must look at the same excellent, as well as beautiful, Raphael of Urbinsky. He was naturally endowed with that modesty and that kindness that can sometimes be observed in people who, more than others, are able to add to natural goodwill the most beautiful decoration of charming courtesy, which manifests itself in everything and under all circumstances equally sweet and pleasant. Nature made this gift to the world when, being defeated by the art of Michelangelo Buonarroti, she wanted to be defeated at the same time by the art and courtesy of Raphael. In Rafael, Vasari testifies, “the rarest spiritual qualities shone, with which so much grace, diligence, beauty, modesty and good morality were combined that they were enough to excuse all vices, no matter how shameful they were. Thus, it can be argued that those who are so fortunately gifted as Raphael of Urbinsky are not people, but mortal gods, if I may say so ... Throughout his life, he did not cease to set the best example of how we should be treated as equal, and with people above and below us. Among all his rare qualities, one surprises me: heaven has endowed him with the ability to behave differently than is customary among our fraternity of artists; among all the artists who worked under the leadership of Raphael there was such agreement that every evil thought disappeared at his very sight, and such agreement existed only with him. This was due to the fact that they all felt the superiority of his affectionate character and talent, but mainly due to his beautiful nature, always so attentive and so infinitely generous in mercy, that people and animals felt affection for him ... He constantly had many students who he helped and whom he led with purely paternal love. Therefore, going to the court, he was always surrounded by fifty artists, all kind and brave people, who made up his retinue to pay him honor. In essence, he lived not as an artist, but as a prince.”
Of course, one cannot attribute such an attitude of contemporaries to the genius of Raphael alone. Apparently, the nature of Raphael's work and at the same time his very personality combined everything that was then considered perfection. Therefore, he was close and understandable to everyone and seemed to be the embodiment of all human virtues.
Raphael was a student of Perugino and in his youth, as an artist, he was like his teacher. However, even in his earliest works, a different handwriting of the artist is noticeable.
In the London National Gallery hangs his charming painting "The Knight's Dream", written in 1500, i.e. when Raphael was only seventeen years old. Knight - a dreamy young man is depicted against the backdrop of a beautiful landscape. He is full of grace, perhaps not yet masculine enough, but already combined with some kind of inner balance, peace of mind.
This inner balance illuminates the famous Hermitage Conestabile Madonna painted a year or two later (so named after its former owner). There is no image more lyrical, as well as stronger in its internal structure. What harmony in the look of the Madonna, the tilt of her head and in every tree of the landscape, in all the details and the composition as a whole!
The Florentine period of Raphael's work includes his self-portrait, written in 1506 (Florence, Uffizi) at the age of twenty-three. His head and shoulders stand out clearly against the smooth background. The contour is unusually thin, slightly wavy (in Florence, Raphael had already joined the picturesque discoveries of Leonardo). The look is thoughtful and dreamy. Rafael seems to look at the world and is imbued with its harmony. But the artist is still timid, young, affectionate meekness is poured over his face. However, through his uncertainty and languor, a nascent peace of mind is already felt. The sharply protruding lower lip, the line of the mouth, beautifully and vigorously curved, the oval chin give out determination and authority.
And, looking at his self-portrait, how can one disagree with the Italian writer Dolce, his younger contemporary, who says that Raphael loved the beauty and tenderness of forms, because he himself was graceful and amiable, seeming to everyone as attractive as the figures depicted by him.
Around the same years, he painted “Madonna in the Green”, “Madonna with a Goldfinch”, “Beautiful Gardener”, marked by new, more complex compositional searches and high skill, coming from a clear pictorial tradition of the Florentine school.
Beyond Florence - Rome. In Rome, the art of Raphael reached its peak.
However, the most complete and organic combination of the spirit of freedom and thought is embodied by Raphael in the fresco "The School of Athens" (1508-1511). On the steps of the majestic ancient building, under the shadow of the statues of the most creative gods of antiquity - Apollo and Minerva, the famous sages of antiquity - philosophers, mathematicians, cosmographers - gathered. In the center, converging shoulder to shoulder, are the luminaries of the two main directions of philosophical thought - Plato and Aristotle. The gray-haired Plato, raising his hand, points to the sky: there is truth; the much younger Aristotle, on the contrary, turned his open palm towards the earth in an energetic gesture: no, the truth is here. To the right and to the left of these two fathers of wisdom are their disciples and supporters. Some listen intently, others think intently, others hurriedly write down, others do not hide their doubts, argue fervently, gesticulating vigorously, and those in a hurry not to be late for a scientific dispute. Separate circles seem to stand apart, but everywhere they work hard. Particularly expressive is a group of young people in the right corner of the picture, gathered around a venerable scientist (Archimedes? Euclid?), bending over some kind of drawing. They are athletically built, their postures, gestures are full of ardent interest, their faces glow with a thirst for knowledge: they try to understand and actively participate in solving a difficult task.
And no coercion. In their movements, in their lively curiosity, a natural (and at the same time graceful) looseness breathes. The whole picture moves and lives with the same freedom, every pose and every position - from ardent enthusiasm to doubt and denial. The viewer does not doubt, no matter what disputes may divide these sages, we have before us a great community of minds seeking truth.
To appreciate the strength and depth of this creation, one must take into account what an incredibly difficult task was set for the artist - to depict Philosophy (this is the original name of the fresco). Raphael solved this problem brilliantly and - quite in the spirit of the High Renaissance: perhaps in Renaissance art there is no other work where, with such artistic persuasiveness, in such powerful harmony, the separate and whole, individual and general merged and expressed.
The “School of Athens” is perhaps the most programmatic artistic creation of Renaissance humanism, but above all it is a hymn to the freedom and power of human thought, the boundlessness of the flight of a free, cognizing mind. In Raphael's fresco, thinking is presented as the highest embodiment of human freedom and dignity.
But the Renaissance will to freedom was not limited to the freedom of knowledge, intellectual activity. The humanistic conception of the world, as a sphere for the realization of all human potentials, necessarily included the emancipation of the emotional sphere, the freedom of human feelings. The exultant joy of direct, sensual perception of the world, one might say - merging with it, the triumph of happy love, beautiful nudity in the lap of a boundless, bright nature with the greatest force was expressed by the same Raphael in the fresco “The Triumph of Galatea” (1513).
Everything here breathes freedom - both the nakedness itself and the stormy movement that embraces everyone - nereids, newts, cupids, dolphins. Galatea's face, her big eyes shine with happiness and will. A headwind blows her hair. He grabbed the upper edge of her parade ground and, swirling, unfolded it like a banner. This dominant movement is echoed by the hair of another Nereid in the background on the right, fluttering in the same direction, and the golden silk scarf of the nymph in the foreground, swollen in an arc, on the left. But the leading major note is still the edge of the purple cloak of Galatea thrown back in a stormy impulse, which is rinsing over the heads of the figures on the left. This gives the entire movement of the group the character of an intoxicating free flight. Breath expands. We feel "the world's boundless delight."
It is usually noted that in this fresco, Raphael, like no one else, was able to comprehend and express the ancient, “pagan” attitude, full of sensual joy of being. This is generally true. But hardly anywhere in the art of antiquity can one find so much dynamics - not the intoxication of bacchanalia, but a healthy thirst for freedom and joy. This is more than getting used to the spirit of antiquity, it is the embodiment of the ebullient spirit of the Renaissance. This picture is the clearest expression of the free, joyful, pantheistic perception of the world inherent in Renaissance humanism.
The world is beautiful, our earthly world! Such is the slogan of all Renaissance art. Man discovered and tasted the beauty of the visible world, and he admires it as the most magnificent spectacle, created for the joy of the eyes, for spiritual delight. He himself is a part of this world, and therefore he admires in it and himself. The joy of contemplating earthly beauty is a life-giving, kind joy. The artist's job is to bring out more and more fully, more and more vividly the harmony of the world and thereby conquer chaos, to affirm a certain higher order, the basis of which is a measure, an internal necessity that gives birth to beauty.
In medieval churches, painting, mosaics or stained-glass windows seem to merge with architecture, creating together with it the whole, which should evoke a solemn mood in the worshiper. In Romanesque or Gothic churches, people of the Middle Ages sometimes did not realize that in front of them were not only symbols, conventional images glorifying the ideals of their faith, but also works of art. The painting of the temple did not seem to them an independent creation, it was good to look at it under the singing of the church choir, which, like the vaults of the temple with its high arches, carried their imagination into the world of dreams, comforting hopes or superstitious fears. And therefore they did not look for the illusion of reality in this painting.
Renaissance painting is addressed to the viewer. Like wonderful visions, pictures pass before his eyes, which depict a world where harmony reigns. People, landscapes and objects on them are the same as he sees around him, but they are brighter, more expressive. The illusion of reality is complete, but reality, transformed by the inspiration of the artist. And the viewer admires her, equally admiring the lovely childish head and the stern old head, which, perhaps, is not at all attractive in life. On the walls of palaces and cathedrals, frescoes are often painted at the height of the human eye, and in the composition some figure directly “looks” at the viewer so that through it he can “communicate” with all others.
Rafael is the end. All his art is extremely harmonious, and reason, the highest, is combined in him with philanthropy and spiritual purity. His art, joyful and happy, expresses a kind of moral satisfaction, acceptance of life in all its fullness and even doom. Unlike Leonardo, Raphael does not torment us with his secrets, does not overwhelm us with his omniscience, but kindly invites us to enjoy the earthly beauty with him. During his short life, he managed to express in painting, probably, everything that he could, i.e. full kingdom of harmony, beauty and goodness.
In Rome, the genius of Raphael fully blossomed, in Rome, where at that time the dream of creating a powerful state arose and where the ruins of the Colosseum, triumphal arches and statues of the Caesars reminded of the greatness of the ancient empire. Youthful timidity and femininity disappeared, epicness triumphed over lyrics, and the courageous art of Raphael, unparalleled in its perfection, was born.
“Raphael was aware,” writes Vasari, “that in anatomy he cannot achieve superiority over Michelangelo. As a man of great reason, he realized that painting does not consist only in depicting a naked body, that its field is wider ... Not being able to catch up with Michelangelo in this area, Raphael tried to catch up with him, and maybe surpass him in another ” .
Raphael, unlike Leonardo and Michelangelo, did not embarrass his contemporaries with the boldness of his searches: he strove for a higher synthesis, for the radiant completion of everything that had been achieved before him, and this synthesis was found and embodied by him.
The Florentine Madonnas of Raphael are beautiful, pretty, touching and bewitching young mothers. Madonnas created by him in Rome, i.e. in the period of full artistic maturity, acquire other features. These are already mistresses, goddesses of goodness and beauty, powerful in their femininity, ennobling the world, softening human hearts. “Madonna in an armchair”, “Madonna with a fish”, “Madonna del Foligno” and other world-famous madonnas (inscribed in a circle or reigning in glory over other figures in large altar compositions) mark Raphael’s new searches, his path to perfection in the embodiment of the ideal image of the Mother of God.
The commonality of the types of some Raphaelian female images of the Roman period gave rise to the assumption that the same woman served as a model for the artist, his beloved, nicknamed “Fornarina”, which means a baker. This Roman woman with clear noble features, who was loved by the great painter, was the daughter of a baker. Perhaps the image of her inspired Raphael, but he, apparently, was not the only one. For this is what we read in Raphael's letter: “I will tell you that in order to write a beauty, I need to see many beauties ... But due to the lack of both good judges and beautiful women, I use some idea that comes to me on mind. I don't know if it has any perfection, but I'm trying very hard to achieve it."
Let's look at this idea that came to Raphael's mind, an idea that he obviously nurtured for a long time before fully embodying it in art.
The Sistine Madonna (so named for the monastery for which this altarpiece was painted) is Raphael's most famous painting, and probably the most famous painting ever painted.
Mary is walking on the clouds carrying her child. Her glory is not underlined by anything. Bare feet. But as a mistress, Pope Sixtus, dressed in brocade, meets her on his knees; Saint Barbara lowers her eyes with reverence, and two little angels look up dreamily and thoughtfully.
She goes to people, young and majestic, holding something anxious in her soul; the wind blows the child's hair, and his eyes look at us, at the world with such great power and with such illumination, as if he sees both his own destiny and the destiny of the entire human race.
This is not reality, but a spectacle. No wonder the artist himself parted a heavy curtain in front of the audience in the picture. A spectacle that transforms reality, in the grandeur of things, wisdom and beauty, a spectacle that elevates the soul with its absolute harmony, conquers and ennobles us, the same spectacle that Italy of the High Renaissance longed for and finally found in the dream of a better world.
And how many beautiful and true words have long been said all over the world, and in particular in Russia. For, indeed, as Russian writers and artists went on a pilgrimage in the last century to Dresden to the “Sistine Madonna”. Let's listen to their judgments about a virgin carrying a baby with a childish, amazing look, about the art of Raphael and about what he wanted to express in these images.
Zhukovsky: “There is a canvas in front of my eyes, there are faces outlined in it, and everything is cramped in a small space, and, despite the fact, everything is immense, everything is unlimited ... The curtain parted, and the mystery of heaven was revealed to the eyes of a person ... In the Mother of God, walking through heaven, no movement is noticeable; but the more you look at it, the more it seems to draw near.”
Bryullov: “The more you look, the more you feel the incomprehensibility of these beauties: every feature is thought out, overflowing with expressions of grace, combined with the strictest style...”
Belinsky: “In her gaze there is something strict, restrained, there is no grace and mercy, but there is no pride, contempt, and instead of all this, some kind of indulgence that does not forget its greatness.”
Herzen: “Her inner world is destroyed, she was assured that her son is the Son of God, that she is the Mother of God; she looks with a kind of nervous enthusiasm, with maternal clairvoyance, she seems to be saying: "Take him, he's not mine." But at the same time, she hugs him to her so that, if possible, she would run away with him somewhere far away and would simply caress, breastfeed not the savior of the world, but her son.
Dostoevsky saw in the "Sistine Madonna" the highest measure of human nobility, the highest manifestation of maternal genius. A large half-length reproduction of it hung in his room, in which he died.
Thus, the unfading beauty of truly great works of art inspires the best talents and minds in subsequent centuries...
The Sistine Madonna is the embodiment of that ideal of beauty and goodness that vaguely inspired the popular consciousness in the age of Raphael and which Raphael expressed to the end, parting the curtain, the very one that separates everyday life from inspired dreams, and showed this ideal to the world, to all of us and to those who will come after us.
Raphael was not only an unsurpassed master of perfectly constructed composition: the color of his paintings, bright and at the same time transparent and light, wonderfully combined with a clear pattern.
This great painter left a mark in sculpture. Among his students is the sculptor Lorenzo Lorenzetti. According to the sketches and under the guidance of his great teacher, he made several sculptures, of which only one has come down to us - “Dead Boy on a Dolphin”. It embodies in marble the Raphaelian ideal of beauty, its rhythm and harmony: there is no horror of death, it seems as if the child fell asleep peacefully.
Raphael! He died in the prime of his life, at the zenith of his glory - thirty-seven years old.
Michelangelo Buonarroti
Michelangelo was born in 1475 and died in 1564, outliving Leonardo and Raphael by four and a half decades and leaving far behind the great era of humanism and freedom of the spirit. These lofty ideals had not previously been realized in the social life of Italy, but they were preached by philosophers, poets and artists and approved by the most enlightened rulers. Other times have come. In the last decades of his life, Michelangelo witnessed how these ideals were grossly trampled, church and feudal reaction triumphed.
The offspring of an old but impoverished noble family, Michelangelo Buonarroti was a patriot and a democrat. Unlike Leonardo, citizenship permeated his attitude. He took part in the battles against tyranny, was in charge of all the fortifications of his native Florence, besieged by the troops of the German emperor and pope, and only the glory he won in art saved him from the reprisals of the victors.
Michelangelo deeply felt his connection with his native people, with his native land.
His breadwinner was the wife of a stonemason. Remembering her, he said to his fellow countryman Vasari: “All the good in my talent was received by me from the mild climate of our native Arezzo, and from the milk of my nurse I extracted the chisel and hammer with which I create my statues.” Michelangelo's democracy was not to everyone's taste. In the titanic images of Michelangelo, they sometimes saw the glorification of brute physical strength. So, one of the then critics of art stated that "Raphael painted noble people, and Michelangelo painted porters."
The sad fate of the motherland, the oblivion in Italy of the time of high hopes that inspired all his work, deeply wounded the soul of Michelangelo. Stubbornly, until the end of his days, he fought for his ideal, for his faith.
The genius of Leonardo is the will to know the world and master it in art, full consciousness and affirmation of the strength and power of the human mind.
Raphael gave humanity the joy of serene admiration of the world in all its majestic and intoxicating beauty, revealed by the genius of the artist.
The genius of Michelangelo expresses another beginning in art.
The basis of faith and the ideal of Michelangelo is that of all the major representatives of the Renaissance, he most consistently and unconditionally believed in the great possibilities inherent in a person, in the fact that a person, constantly straining his will, can forge his own image, more solid and bright. than created by nature. And this image Michelangelo forged in art to surpass nature. It is necessary not just to imitate nature, but to comprehend its “intentions” in order to fully express, complete the work of nature in art and thereby rise above it.
Leonardo and Raphael aspired to this goal, but no one before Michelangelo showed in this aspiration such daring, stunning contemporaries.
Expressing universal delight, Vasari wrote that Michelangelo's gigantic statue of David "has taken away the glory from all statues, modern and ancient, Greek and Roman." This David, a majestic and beautiful young man, full of boundless courage and strength, ready to fight evil, confident in his rightness and in his triumph, is a true monument to a heroic personality, to a man as he should be, representing the highest crown of nature.
With all his art, Michelangelo wants to show us that the most beautiful thing in nature is the human figure, moreover, that beauty does not exist outside of it. And this is because external beauty is an expression of spiritual beauty, and the human spirit again expresses the highest and most beautiful in the world.
"Not a single human passion has remained alien to me." And: "There has not yet been born such a person who, like me, would be so inclined to love people."
And so, to exalt man in all his spiritual and physical beauty, Michelangelo put sculpture above other arts.
About sculpture, Michelangelo said that “this is the first of the arts”, referring to the biblical legend of God, who fashioned the first human figure, Adam, from the earth.
“It always seemed to me,” wrote Michelangelo, that sculpture is the beacon of painting and that there is the same difference between them as between the sun and the moon.”
Michelangelo also noted: “I mean by sculpture the art that is carried out by virtue of subtraction.” The artist has in mind the reduction of everything superfluous. Here is a block of marble: beauty lies in it, you just need to extract it from the stone shell. Michelangelo expressed this idea in wonderful verses (by the way, he was one of the first poets of his time):
And the highest genius will not add
One thought to those that marble itself
Conceals in abundance - and only this to us
The hand, obedient to reason, will reveal.
Michelangelo believed that just as beauty is in nature, goodness is in man. Like a sculptor, he must remove in himself everything that is gross, superfluous, everything that hinders the manifestation of goodness. He speaks about this in verses full of deep meaning, dedicated to his spiritual leader Vittoria Colonna:
Like a living statue from a rock
We extract, donna,
Which is all the more completed
The more stone we make dust, -
So good deeds
Soul, executed by fear,
Hides our own flesh
With its excessive, gross exuberance...
Not without reason, referring to the fashionable poets of that time, often empty of content, despite the elegance of form, one of the most thoughtful admirers of Michelangelo spoke of his poems like this: “He says things, you say words.”
… Located in a deep mountain basin, the city of Carrara was already famous for its marble in antiquity. There, eating almost nothing but bread, Michelangelo stayed for more than eight months to break as much white Carrara marble as possible and deliver it to Rome. The most grandiose plans arose in his imagination when he wandered alone among the rocks. So, looking at a mountain made entirely of marble, he dreamed of carving a colossal statue out of it, which would be visible from afar to sailors and serve as a lighthouse for them. In this mountain, he already discerned the titanic image that the hammer and chisel would extract from its bulk.
Michelangelo did not carry out this plan. However, what he accomplished is unparalleled in world art. Michelangelo has sculptures where the outlines of a stone block are preserved. There are also those where parts of the stone are not touched by the chisel, although the image appears in all its power. And this is the release of beauty that we see.
Michelangelo considered himself first and foremost a sculptor, and even only a sculptor. In proud thoughts, perhaps, he dreamed that not only the marble block he had chosen for work, but also every rock, mountain, everything formless, randomly piled up in the world needed his chisel. After all, the destiny of art is to complete the work of nature, to affirm beauty. And this, he believed, was only a match for a sculptor.
Michelangelo sometimes spoke about painting with arrogance, even irritation, as if not about his craft.
Like the sculptures of Michelangelo, the grandiose images created by his brush amaze with their unparalleled plastic expressiveness. In his work, and perhaps only in him, sculpture is truly the “beacon of painting”. For sculpture helped Michelangelo to harmoniously unite and concentrate in one specific pictorial image all the plastic beauty lurking in the human figure.
The initial formation of Michelangelo as an artist proceeded in conditions that made him related to Leonardo da Vinci. Like Leonardo, he was a student of the famous Florentine Quattrocento master. There is evidence that this master, Domenico Ghirlandaio, like the teacher Leonardo Verrocchio, envied his student. Like Leonardo, the refined art that flourished at the court of Lorenzo the Magnificent could not satisfy Michelangelo. And one of his first works is “Madonna at the Stairs”, carved by him in marble when he was barely sixteen years old, not a pampered patrician and not even a young mother touching in her love for a baby, but a stern and majestic maiden who is aware of her glory and knows about the tragic test prepared for her.
Only one completely reliable example of Michelangelo's easel painting has survived: the famous tondo (round painting) “Madonna Doni”. It can be assumed that in this composition, almost thirty-year-old Michelangelo, who already enjoyed loud fame, imagined surpassing Leonardo, asserting his superiority over his older brother, whose pictorial achievements were perceived in Florence as revelations.
“Madonna Doni” by Michelangelo and “St. Anna” by Leonardo da Vinci… The parallel is obvious. And the common goal is obvious: to concentrate the power of movement to the maximum, to curb energy in order to turn them into an unshakable monolith.
In Leonardo, the goal is achieved in harmony, reconciling all contradictions, harmony, as it were, carried out by nature itself.
Michelangelo has a concentrated force, and everything is a struggle in which, under the chisel or his or under the brush, more beautiful, more powerful and more daring people are born - people-heroes. Giant tension and dynamism in their every muscle, in every impulse, both physical and spiritual.
Unlike the artists of the previous century, who worked in the midst of the people, the Cinquecento artists join the higher, patrician circle. The ideals of popular freedom are trampled on by absolutism. Secular and spiritual rulers need art that would glorify their deeds: they attract the most famous painters, sculptors and architects to their service. Pope Julius II summoned Michelangelo to Rome to give him a grand task: this stern and stubborn ambitious man, who sometimes dreamed of creating an ecclesiastical empire, more powerful than the empire of the Caesars, wished that during his lifetime a tomb would be erected, which, with its size and splendor, would surpass everything created before in the world, and decided that only Michelangelo could cope with such a task.
The grandiose papal tombstone, as Michelangelo conceived it, a mausoleum adorned with forty statues, was not completed. Michelangelo had obtained marble, the quantity of which astonished all of Rome, and was about to set to work when he suddenly heard that the pope did not want to pay the cost of the marble. When he came to Julius II, they did not let him in, he announced that this was the order of the pope himself.
Offended, Michelangelo immediately left Rome. The Pope sent a chase after him, demanding his return, but the artist disobeyed, which was recognized as unheard of insolence.
The fact is that Julius II, on the advice of Bramante, Michelangelo's rival, decided to rebuild the Cathedral of St. Peter, so that this temple, the stronghold of the Catholic Church, would become the most grandiose and magnificent in the entire Christian world. The construction of the tomb therefore receded into the background. Michelangelo attributed this decision to the “envious machinations” of Bramante and considered his relationship with the pope terminated forever. This, however, did not happen. The reconciliation took place, and Michelangelo received a new order from the pope, which was not inferior in scale to the planned tombstone.
Julius II commissioned Michelangelo to paint the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, the house church of the popes in the Vatican.
Not a single Italian painter had to take on such a gigantic painting before: about six hundred square meters! Yes, not on the wall, but on the ceiling.
Michelangelo began this work on May 10, 1508 and finished on September 5, 1512. More than four years of labor, requiring almost superhuman spiritual and physical exertion. A visual representation of this is given by such sarcastic verses by Michelangelo:
I received for work only a goiter, an ailment
(This is how muddy water puffs cats
In Lombardy - there are often troubles!)
Yes, his chin wedged into the womb;
Chest like a harpy; skull to spite me
Climbed to the hump; and a beard on end;
And from the brush on the face flows burda,
Row me in brocade, like a coffin;
The hips have shifted cleanly into the stomach;
And the backside, in contrast, swelled into a barrel;
Feet do not converge with the ground suddenly;
The skin hangs box forward,
And behind the fold is turned into a line,
And all of me is arched like a Syrian bow.
Lying on the scaffolding on his back, he wrote everything himself, afraid to entrust his students. The Pope hurried him, but Michelangelo did not allow the formidable customer into the chapel during work, and when he nevertheless penetrated its vaults, he threw boards from the scaffolding, supposedly by accident, putting the angry old man to flight.
When painting the Sistine Chapel, Michelangelo trained his eyes to look up at the vault so that later, when the work was completed and he again began to hold his head straight, he could hardly see anything; when he had to read letters and papers, he had to hold them high above his head. And only gradually did he again get used to reading, looking down in front of him.
On the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, Michelangelo created images in which to this day we see the highest manifestation of human genius and human daring. In a letter to his brother, he rightfully declared: "I work with strength, more than any man that ever existed."
The titan, whose name is Michelangelo, was given to paint the ceiling, and he covered it with titanic images born of his imagination, caring little about how they would be “viewed” from below, be there below not only you and me, but also the formidable Pope Julius II himself . However, he was shocked by the greatness of the created. And everyone in Rome at that time was shocked, as we are today. Shocked, but not joyfully fascinated.
Yes, this is a completely different art than Raphael's, which affirmed the wondrous balance of the real world. Michelangelo creates, as it were, his own, titanic world, which fills our soul with delight, but at the same time with confusion, for his goal is to decisively surpass nature, to create a titan out of man. Michelangelo "disturbed the balance of the world of reality and took away from the Renaissance the serene enjoyment of himself."
Yes, he took away serenity from the art of this era, violated the peaceful Raphael balance, took away from a person the possibility of peaceful self-admiration. But on the other hand, he wished to show a person what he should be, what he can become.
Michelangelo created such an image of a man who can subdue the earth, and, who knows, maybe more than the earth!
Using an architectural plafond for his design, Michelangelo created a new “depicted” architecture with his painting, dividing the middle part of the plafond according to the window plafonds and filling the resulting rectangular fields with plot compositions. The sizes of the scenes themselves are not the same, the scales of the figures also change. Contrasts in scale and spatial arrangement of individual scenes and figures are deeply thought out in accordance with a single architectural and pictorial plan, and as a result, “the proportions of the paintings to the entire mass of the ceiling are matchless.”
Each composition exists simultaneously both on its own and as an integral part of the whole, since they are all mutually consistent. This is a great achievement of High Renaissance painting, brought here by Michelangelo to perfection. In the art of the previous century, the independence of individual parts interfered with the unity of the whole, and the Quattrocento often forgot about it. In the art of the next century, i.e. in the art of the Baroque style, the particular is completely subordinate to the whole and, losing its independence, seems to dissolve in it. Only in the golden age of Italian art, the age of Leonardo, Raphael, Michelangelo and Titian, was such harmony between the particular and the whole possible, their complete equivalence - and therefore the art of this century shows us, as it were, the prototype of such an ideal order, where individuality finds its complete expression in harmoniously coordinated team.
... Almost fifteen years (since 1520) Michelangelo worked on the tomb of the Medici in Florence - commissioned by Pope Clement VII, who was from the Medici family.
It was a matter of perpetuating the memory not of the former famous Medici, but of those representatives of this family who openly established monarchical rule in Florence, two dukes who died early and were unremarkable. The portrait was alien to Michelangelo. He depicted both dukes allegorically as commanders in brilliant armor, one as if courageous, energetic, but indifferent, at rest, the other immersed in deep thought. And on the sides - the figures of "Morning", "Evening", "Day" and "Night".
Internal tension and at the same time aching doubt, a premonition of doom - that's what all these figures express. Sadness is poured into everything and goes from wall to wall.
In honor of the most famous figure - the beautiful "Night" - the following verses were composed:
This is the night that sleeps so peacefully
Before you is an angel's creation.
She is made of stone, but she has breath:
Just wake up, she will speak.
But Michelangelo did not agree with this and so answered on behalf of the “Night” itself:
It is gratifying to sleep, it is gratifying to be a stone,
Oh, in this age, criminal and shameful,
Not to live, not to feel - an enviable lot,
Please be quiet, don't you dare wake me up.
In the thirties of the 16th century, Pope Paul III instructed Michelangelo to write the gospel scene of the Last Judgment on the altar wall of the same Sistine Chapel. Michelangelo worked on this fresco of almost two hundred square meters (with some interruptions) for six years.
V.N. Lazarev writes: “Here you cannot distinguish angels from saints, sinners from the righteous, men from women. All of them are carried away by one inexorable stream of movement, they all wriggle and writhe from the fear and horror that gripped them ... Michelangelo makes the figure of Christ the center of the movement going in a circle. And the more closely you peer into the overall composition of the fresco, the more persistently the feeling is born that you have before you a huge spinning wheel of fortune, involving more and more human lives in its rapid run, not one of which can escape doom. In such an interpretation of the cosmic catastrophe, there is no longer room for the hero and heroic deed, there is no room for mercy either. It is not for nothing that Mary does not ask Christ for forgiveness, but shyly cuddles up to him, overwhelmed by fear of the raging elements. Working on the fresco “The Last Judgment”, Michelangelo wanted to show the vanity of everything earthly, the perishability of the flesh, the helplessness of man before the blind dictates of fate. This, no doubt, was his main idea. And for this, he had to radically change his idea of a person and the human figure, which was supposed to become fragile, light, incorporeal. But just this did not happen ... As before, he portrays powerful figures with courageous faces, with broad shoulders, with a well-developed torso, with muscular limbs. But these giants are no longer able to resist fate. Therefore, their faces are distorted by grimaces, therefore all their, even the most energetic, movements, tense and convulsive, are so hopeless ... The titans doomed to death have lost what has always helped a person in the fight against elemental forces. They've lost their will!"
Already during the life of Michelangelo, his “Last Judgment” provoked fierce attacks from supporters of the counter-reformation.
The later work of Michelangelo is marked by anxiety, awareness of the frailty of being, deepening into mournful dreams and thoughts, sometimes despair.
In his frescoes in the Vatican Paolina Chapel, some images amaze with their expressiveness, powerful and sharp, but in general - the fragmentation of the composition, the decline in the general guiding will, the triumphant heroic principle - these scenes testify to the spiritual breakdown of their creator. Michelangelo's thoughts are increasingly turned to death, and, as he himself says in one of his poems, neither the brush nor the chisel brings him oblivion.
“He who wants to find himself and enjoy himself,” he writes, “must not seek entertainment and pleasure. He must think about death! For only this thought leads us to self-knowledge, makes us believe in our strength and protects us from relatives, friends and the powerful of this world would not tear us to pieces with all our vices and desires that dissuade a person in himself.
The thought of death, as if contemplating it, is imbued with his last sculptures, for example, “Pieta” (Florence), in which the life-affirming power of previous years is replaced by aching mental pain. The tragic expressiveness and passionate spirituality of the whole group are truly boundless.
Another group, "Pieta Rondanini" (Milan), emphasizes loneliness and doom; with what effort the Mother of God supports the elongated body of Christ, how ethereal, already unreal in their painful expressiveness, their mournful figures pressed against each other seem. Michelangelo was still working on this group six days before his death.
Finding no oblivion either in the brush or in the cutter, Michelangelo increasingly resorts to the pencil in the last two decades of his life. In the graphic studies of this period, the former Michelangelo's solid line disappears; in a light shadow of light, he barely outlines the figures, pouring out his deep, quiet sadness or deep suffering marked by feelings in a strikingly soft drawing.
But in one art, Michelangelo remains true to the ideals of his former years - this is the art of architecture. Here his faith in the boundless creative power of the artist is again fully manifested. It is not necessary to depict the visible world; the great impulse that stubbornly fills his soul, let it find its expression not in sensual reality - it is too deceptive! - but in the cohesion, struggle and victory of harmonious and stable forces, whose names are the column, cornice, dome, pediment. There is no betrayal of the ideal of human beauty, which he believed and worshiped, for Michelangelo claimed the dependence of architectural parts on the human body.
Although Michelangelo turned to architecture late, he glorified his name in this art. To him we owe the tomb of the Medici; the interior of the Laurenziana library (also in Florence, the first public library in Europe) with the famous staircase, which, according to V.N. like an irresistible alternation. He was engaged in a grandiose reconstruction of the ancient Roman Capitol Square with the installation in the middle of the ancient equestrian statue of Emperor Marcus Aurelius, crowned with a huge cornice, a masterpiece of Renaissance architecture, the Farnese Palace in Rome.
The construction of the new grandiose Cathedral of St. Peter, with which the papal state wished to glorify its power, was worked in turn by the most famous architects of that time: Bramante, Raphael, Baldassare Peruzzi, Antonio da Sangallo the Younger. In 1546, the management of the work passed to Michelangelo.
The dome of St. Peter's Cathedral is the crowning achievement of Michelangelo's architectural creativity. As in the most perfect creations of his brush and chisel, the stormy dynamism, the internal struggle of contrasts, all the filling movement are powerfully and organically included in a closed whole of ideal proportions.
Michelangelo died on February 18, 1564, at the age of eighty-nine, after a short illness that struck him in the midst of his work.
TITIAN VECELLIO
The exact age of Titian has not yet been established. He died in 1576, and was born, according to some sources, in the late eighties, according to others - in the late seventies of the XV century or even earlier.
It can only be said with certainty that Titian lived no less than eighty years and no more than a hundred and three, and he died, apparently, not from old age, but from the plague.
Titian was destined in his long life to sadly observe the tragic contradiction between the lofty ideals of the Renaissance and reality. He remained faithful to these ideals to the end, did not betray humanism.
Titian Vecellio was born into a military family in the mountain town of Pieve di Cadore, which was part of the possessions of Venice. His family was ancient and influential in this area. Having already shown an attraction to painting at an early age, for nine years he was assigned by his father to the workshop of a Venetian mosaicist. He stayed there, however, not for long and then studied alternately with Gentile Bellini and Giovanni Bellini. Became close to Giorgione and experienced in many ways his influence. And after his premature death, he became the generally recognized head of the Venetian school.
The glory of Titian quickly spread throughout Italy, and then throughout Western Europe. Pope Paul III calls Titian to Rome, where, already a mature master, he first gets acquainted with the works of Raphael and Michelangelo. The most powerful of the then monarchs, the German emperor Charles V, invites him to Augsburg, bestows on him the title of count and, posing for Titian, even seems to pick up a brush dropped by the artist. The son of Charles V, the cruel Spanish king Philip II, the French king Francis I and many Italian sovereigns were also customers of Titian, who held the official post of artist of the Venetian Republic.
According to the Venetian art theorist Dolce, Titian was "a magnificent, intelligent interlocutor who knew how to judge everything in the world."
A long, happy life among a refined, educated society, a life entirely filled with admiring the beauty of the world and glorifying this beauty in the great art of painting. Titian's work is very extensive: in terms of the number of creations, it almost surpasses the work of Leonardo da Vinci, Raphael and Michelangelo.
No one in painting before and after Titian sang with such inspiration as he did the radiant beauty of a woman, the captivating, midday beauty, as if personifying the joy of being, earthly happiness.
In one of his early works, Titian boldly contrasted the conformist, self-satisfied and vain “heavenly love” with free, dazzlingly beautiful in its nakedness, earthly love, which, with a phial in hand, seems to reveal to man the boundless world of free nature. “Earthly love and heavenly love” is an allegorical picture, full of bright, intoxicating cheerfulness, marking the possibility of such a blissful and generous happiness. The contemporary Flora expresses the same lofty ideal, the same pure joy. How gentle is the warm pink tone of the open shoulder of the goddess of flowers, what a truly divine “piece of painting” is the hand in combination with the transparent whiteness of the shirt and the light velvet of heavy vestments. "Bacchanalia" and "Feast of Venus" are wonderful links in the same chain.
The highest crowning of this ideal is the painting “Venus in front of a mirror”, written by Titian already in his old age. Perhaps, his brush has not yet reached such magnificence. Before us is truly regal femininity in all its pristine glory. The goddess of love in the guise of a golden-haired beauty shows us the most perfect image of love and bliss. There is nothing vicious in this image, just as there is nothing vicious in the fullness of happiness. How much affection, infinitely sweet and quivering, in the gaze of the goddess, how much joy this face and all this unique beauty created by painting brings us!
And here is another female image, also created by Titian in old age - “Girl with Fruit”, perhaps a portrait of his daughter Lavinia. The beauty of a woman and the luxury of nature, the gold of the sky and the gold of brocade, and what majesty in the turn of the head, in the whole appearance of this blooming Venetian! What a joyful and magnificent peace, full of enjoyment of life, the whole picture breathes!
The great promise of happiness, the hope for happiness and the complete enjoyment of life are one of the foundations of Titian's work.
"The Assumption of Mary", the famous "Assuntu" - a huge altarpiece by Titian in the church of Santa Maria Gloriosa dei Frari in Venice. Yes, this is precisely grandiose, and the inspired face of Mary is not inferior in its inner strength, in its pathos, in its passionate and majestic impulse to the most majestic images of the Sistine Chapel.
“Full of power,” Burnson writes about this picture, “the Mother of God rises above the universe submissive to her ... It seems that in the whole world there is no force that could resist her free ascent to heaven. Angels do not support it, but sing of the victory of human existence over frailty.”
This grandiosity of attitude and this high and joyful solemnity, like the thunder of an orchestra, also illuminate with their radiance the compositions of Titian, not at all joyful in plot, but created by him in the best, brightest years of his life, when he devoted himself entirely to the cult of beauty as an absolute good, destined to triumph in the world. This is especially clear in such a masterpiece as "The Entombment". This is undoubtedly one of the unsurpassed works of painting, for in this picture there is all perfection: both the contrast of the lifeless, falling body of Christ with the courageous figures of the apostles breathing power, and the tragedy of the whole composition, in which the grief of the tone in the general blessed harmony and beauty of such sonority, such power that, it seems, there is not and cannot be in nature more beautiful tones, warm white, azure, golden pink, deep tan, now flaming, now disappearing into darkness, than those with which Titian endowed this picture.
From this music of color, from this magical harmony, created by him from this special “substance”, which could be called a living body, the main material of painting, Titian creates his images, as if sculpting them from this wonderful, then liquid, translucent, then thick, juicy, to the limit saturated, always submissive to him grateful material. Such paintings are “pure painting”, and their individual beauties are “pieces of painting”, because as if there is nothing but painting in them, painting as the elements of color and light, which is commanded by the genius of the artist.
In another famous painting by Titian, “Caesar's Denarius,” according to the Gospel legend, the Pharisee, wanting to embarrass Christ, asked him if he should pay tax to Caesar, i.e. to the Roman emperor, to which Christ answered him: "Give God's things to God, and Caesar's things to Caesar." Before us are two faces: the face of Christ, molded by light, and the face of the Pharisee, emerging from the darkness that has placed its seal on him. With the element of color and light, Titian conveys the spiritual nobility of the first, the baseness and deceit of the second, the radiant triumph of the first over the second.
Titian painted many portraits, and each of them is unique, because it conveys the individual originality inherent in each person. With his brush, he captures it in its entirety, concentrates it in paint and light, and then spreads it out in front of us in a magnificent “piece of painting”.
How much strength, what reserve of energy and what potential fury in the portrait of Pietro Aretino, in this man with a powerful forehead, a powerful nose and a powerful black beard! And his luxurious spacious attire, as it were, emphasizes the scope of his passionate and merciless nature.
Another masterpiece of Titian "Madonna Pésaro" (1519-1526). The picture is striking in its integrity, grandiosity. Two mighty columns rise up. Behind them - a spacious sky with white cumulus clouds. On the right, on a massive dais at the base of a large column, the Madonna and Child are widely, freely and at the same time very simply located. On the left, against this group, energetically raised by the hand of a standard-bearer and obliquely resting on the steps as a sign of the conquered territory, a scarlet silk banner with the coat of arms of the patrician house of Pesaro flew high; its pommel, elevated above the head of the Mother of God, seems to rest on the sky. This bright spot coloristically balances, if not outweighs, the group of the Madonna, whose clothes are also dominated by scarlet silk. In the same tones, a cloak is given, crumpled on the knees of the Apostle Peter in the center of the picture, and a luxurious outfit in which one of the members of a noble family of customers is dressed, standing below the Madonna. Everything is filled with greatness, high spirits.
The line of acute indignation at the reigning evil, bitter disbelief in the triumph of the forces of good since the beginning of the 1540s has been developed in the work of Titian: The Louvre Crowning of Christ with Thorns is stormy, cruel, tragic; and "Behold the Man" (1543). There is no torture scene in the last picture, but it is no less shocking, and the social sound is deeper. Tortured, with his head bowed, helpless Christ, after being tortured, is taken out to the high porch. He's broken. Pilate grins smugly: you see, he is only a man. In the motley, variegated crowd in the square, the main figure in the foreground is a fat, rich patrician in a bright red robe over a luxurious brocade attire (is it a hint of the highest hierarchs of the Catholic Church?). With a self-satisfied movement of his shaved head on a fat neck, with an expressive gesture of his right hand, he seemed to say: “Well, of course, I had no doubts about it - this is only a man.” A little further away, a modest woman in a white dress (an obvious counter-parallel to the front figure), bowing her head sadly and clutching her little son, squints disapprovingly at the nobleman. A lonely young man in the lower left corner of the picture, under the steps of the front porch, shouts something in horror and indignation, but no one listens to him. The crowd in the square is noisy, curious, mocking. Christ is weak.
Between 1572 and 1575 Titian creates the second "Crowning with Thorns". Exhausted, with his hands tied, barely alive Christ is tortured, beaten with sticks on the head; they drag more sticks, and everyone tries to get them farther and more painfully. They are already carrying the axe. And all this takes place in thick darkness, which it does not dissipate, but only further emphasizes the ominous, feverish light of fuming lamps (you can hear the fire crackling). The picture is permeated with a heartbreaking tragedy, before which the terrible impression produced by the first version of the same theme fades. The artist expressed in this picture the triumph of human bestiality and the impotence of goodness.
Among the paintings of Titian, two are known to the whole world. These are “Penitent Mary Magdalene” and “St. Sebastian”. Although they are separated by a decade, both were written by the great artist already in his old age, when he achieved power over color and could build a composition with them alone, as flawless and plastic as Raphael's.
The aching grief of the penitent sinner is again buried in the beauty of painting, marks the triumph of the life-affirming principle inherent in all Titian's work. The face of the Magdalene is beautiful, the moisture of tears in her eyes, raised to heaven with such faith, is beautiful. And for us in this picture - a rainbow rapture: this blooming Venetian herself with a plump half-open mouth, delicate velvety skin and marvelously silky heavy braids, and an autumn evening landscape that forms an inseparable whole with her and her grief.
“St. Sebastian” was written by Titian shortly before his death. The theme is tragic, but this does not frighten Titian: he wants to overcome human suffering, doom, great anxiety that has seized his own soul in old age, showing them to us completely.
Up close, it seems as if the whole picture is a chaos of strokes. The painting of the late Titian must be viewed at some distance. And now the chaos has disappeared: in the midst of the darkness we see a young man dying under arrows, against the backdrop of a blazing fire.
The Titian palette creates a formidable symphony of colors, as if announcing a cosmic catastrophe in all its horror and hopelessness. But the cry of despair is overcome here too. Out of this symphony of strokes grows the heroically beautiful figure of a martyr. And this figure of ideal proportions is also all fashioned out of color.
One of Titian's students left a detailed description of how the master worked in recent years, bringing this symphony of color to perfection:
“Titian covered his canvases with a colorful mass, as if serving as a bed or foundation for what he wanted to express in the future. I myself have seen such vigorously made underpaintings, filled with a densely saturated brush in a pure red tone, which was intended to outline the halftone, or with white. With the same brush, dipping it first in red, then in black, then in yellow paint, he worked out the relief of the illuminated parts. With the same great skill, with the help of just four colors, he called out of oblivion the promise of a beautiful figure ... He then covered these skeletons, representing a kind of extract from all the most essential, with a living body, finalized it through a series of repeated strokes to such a state that it seemed to him: the only thing missing was breathing... He made the last retouches with light strokes of his fingers, smoothing out the transitions from the brightest highlights to midtones, and rubbing one tone into another. Sometimes with the same finger he applied a thick shadow to any corner to strengthen this place, or he glazed in a red tone, like drops of blood, to enliven the picturesque surface ... By the end, he truly wrote more with his fingers than with a brush.
The tragic line in the work of Titian reaches its apogee in his last painting - "Lamentation of Christ" (1573-1576), which remained unfinished. The action takes place near a heavy niche, behind it is a blank wall. This hopeless, desperate extreme suggests that the almost 90-year-old artist in this picture mourned himself, and there is obviously some truth in this assumption. But what he portrayed goes far beyond the personal.
The traditional theme of mourning is treated in an original and very free way. Full of lively and, at the same time, strict grief, Mary holds the body of Christ on her knees, and it slips, begins to fall. The impression is that he has just died, or even - now he is dying in her arms. The expression on his face is as if he is still trying to fight for his life, as if he wants to say something (also his mouth is half open), but he can no longer: his eyes close, and his left hand falls powerlessly. This impression is reinforced by the posture and movement of Nicodemus, who has just knelt down (the cloak has abruptly slipped off his shoulder) to help: he touches Christ’s dangling arm and, raising his head, looks into his face, or wants to hear his last words. But late, Christ died, and in horror from what had happened, Magdalena jumped to her feet and desperately screamed. She does not cry, she turned in the opposite direction - to the left and threw out her raised hand there: she screams that Christ is dead, she calls everyone. But no one is there, no one is in a hurry to answer the call. Near the deceased - only three lonely figures.
Titian took an unheard-of liberty: he deviated from the gospel narrative in its fundamental point and presented not the mourning of the dead body taken down from the cross, but the very death of Jesus - not on the cross, but in the arms of his mother, at this moment, in front of the audience. This all the more gives reason to think that the artist in this work mourned his own imminent death. However, the extreme excitement of the Magdalene, her ardent impulse addressed to people, and the indignant denunciations of the human race with which the stone statue of Moses breaks out irrefutably testify to the incomparably broader, public, warning significance of Titian's last creation. This is truly his spiritual testament.
And here we have this artist himself, who mastered the element of color, finally overcoming the dominant role of outlines and thus opening a new page in the history of painting. An artist who gave the world the most joyful, solemn and festive art, an artist who could not be overshadowed by either the decline of humanism or the thought of death, even in the most senile years. Majestic, calm and strict he is in the last self-portrait. Wisdom, complete sophistication and consciousness of one's creative power breathe in this proud face with an aquiline nose, a high forehead and a look that is spiritual and penetrating. Titian's features are fashioned from flaming Titian colors, in contrast to the black attire, they appear on the canvas as an eternal monument to the standard-bearer of great art, a monument created by him for the glory of this art.
LATE REVIVAL
The next stage in the culture of the Renaissance - Late Renaissance, which, as is commonly believed, lasted from the 40s. XVI century to the end of the XVI - the first years of the XVII centuries.
Italy, the birthplace of the Renaissance, was also the first country where the Catholic reaction began. In the 40s. 16th century here the Inquisition was reorganized and strengthened, persecuting the leaders of the humanist movement. In the middle of the XVI century. Pope Paul IV compiled the "Index of Forbidden Books", subsequently replenished many times with new works. This list includes works that were forbidden to be read by believers under the threat of excommunication, since, according to the church, they contradicted the basic provisions of the Christian religion and had a detrimental effect on the minds of people. The "Index" also includes the works of some Italian humanists, in particular, Giovanni Boccaccio. Forbidden books were burned, the same fate could well befall their authors, and all dissidents who actively defend their views and do not want to compromise with the Catholic Church. Many advanced thinkers and scientists died at the stake. So, in 1600 in Rome, on the Square of Flowers, the great Giordano Bruno (1540-1600), the author of the famous work “On Infinity, the Universe and the Worlds”, was burned.
Many painters, poets, sculptors, architects abandoned the ideas of humanism, trying to learn only the "manner" of the great figures of the Renaissance. The largest artists working in the style mannerism, were Pontormo (1494-1557), Bronzino (1503-1572), sculptor Cellini (1500-1573). Their works were distinguished by their complexity and intensity of images. At the same time, some artists continue to develop the realistic tradition in painting: Veronense (1528-1588), Tintoretto (1518-1594), Caravaggio (1573-1610), the Caracci brothers. The work of some of them, such as Caravaggio, had a great influence on the development of painting not only in Italy, but also in France, Spain, Flanders, and Holland. The interpenetration of cultures became ever deeper, thus forming a pan-European culture, a pan-European civilization.
The humanist movement was a pan-European phenomenon: in the 15th century. humanism goes beyond the borders of Italy and is rapidly spreading throughout all Western European countries. Each country had its own characteristics in the formation of the Renaissance culture, its national achievements, its leaders.
AT Germany the ideas of humanism become known in the middle of the 15th century, exerting a strong influence on university circles and the progressive intelligentsia.
An outstanding representative of German humanistic literature was Johann Reuchlin (1455-1522), who sought to show the divine in man himself. He is the author of the famous satirical work “Letters from dark people”, in which a string of ignorant, dark people is displayed - masters and bachelors, who, by the way, have academic degrees.
The revival in Germany is inextricably linked with the phenomenon of the Reformation - the movement for the reform of the Catholic Church, for the creation of a “cheap church” without extortions and fees for rituals, for the purification of Christian teaching from all kinds of incorrect provisions that are inevitable in the centuries-old history of Christianity. Martin Luther (1483-1546), doctor of theology and monk of an Augustinian monastery, led the Reformation movement in Germany. He believed that faith is an internal state of a person, that salvation is given to a person directly from God, and that it is possible to come to God without the mediation of the Catholic clergy. Luther and his supporters refused to return to the fold of the Catholic Church and protested the demand to renounce their views, marking the beginning of the Protestant trend in Christianity. Martin Luther was the first to translate the Bible into German, which greatly contributed to the success of the Reformation.
The victory of the Reformation in the middle of the XVI century. caused a public upsurge and the growth of national culture. Fine arts flourished remarkably. The famous painter and engraver Albrecht Durer (1471-1528), artists Hans Holbein the Younger (1497-1543), Lucas Cranach the Elder (1472-1553) worked in this area.
German literature has reached a noticeable upsurge. The largest German poets of the Reformation era were Hans Sachs (1494-1576), who wrote many edifying fables, songs, dramatic works, and Johann Fischart (1546-1590), the author of witty satirical works, the last representative of the German Renaissance.
The largest representative of the Renaissance culture in Netherlands was Erasmus of Rotterdam (1496-1536). The value of the works of the great humanist and educator, including his famous "Praise of Stupidity", for the education of free-thinking, a critical attitude towards scholasticism, superstition is truly invaluable. His satirical works were widely known in Germany, France, Spain, England. Excellent in form, deep in content, they have been finding their readers for more than one century.
One of the forerunners and founders of liberalism can be considered Dirk Koornhert, the spokesman for the ideas of freedom, religious tolerance and cosmopolitanism. The works of Philipp Aldohonde, the author of the national anthem of the Netherlands, the artists Pieter Brueghel (1525-1569), Frans Hals (1580-1660) belong to the same time. A feature of the cultural life of the Netherlands was rhetorical societies, which were organized not only in cities, but also in villages and even small villages. Members of these societies (and any person could join them) competed in composing poems, songs, plays, and stories. Rhetorical societies contributed to the spread of education in society, raising its cultural level.
AT England The center of humanistic ideas was Oxford University, where the leading scientists of that time worked - Grosin, Linacre, Colet. The development of humanistic views in the field of social philosophy is associated with the name of Thomas More (1478-1535), the author of "Utopia", who presented to the reader the ideal, in his opinion, human society: everyone is equal in it, there is no private property, and gold is not a value They make chains for criminals out of it. The most famous authors were Philip Sidney (1554-1586), Edmund Spenser (1552-1599).
The greatest figure of the English Renaissance was William Shakespeare (1564-1616), the creator of the world-famous tragedies Hamlet, King Lear, Othello, historical plays Henry VI, Richard III, sonnets. Shakespeare was a playwright at the London Globe Theatre, which was very popular with the population. English theaters of that time were visited by people of all classes - aristocrats, officials, merchants, clerks, peasants, workers, artisans, sailors. The rise of theatrical art, its public and democratic nature, contributed to the development of democratic structures in English society.
Renaissance in Spain was more controversial than in other European countries: many humanists here did not oppose Catholicism and the Catholic Church. Chivalric novels, as well as picaresque novels, were widely used. Fernando de Rojas, the author of the well-known tragicomedy Celestina (written c. 1492-1497), first appeared in this genre. This line was continued and developed by the great Spanish writer Miguel de Cervantes (1547-1616), the author of the immortal "Don Quixote", the satirist writer Francisco de Quevedo (1580-1645), who created the famous novel "The Life Story of a Rogue".
The founder of the Spanish national drama is the great Lope de Vega (1562-1635), the author of more than 1800 literary works, including such as “Dog in the Manger”, “Dance Teacher”.
Spanish painting achieved significant success. El Greco (1541-1614) and Diego Velazquez (1599-1660) occupy a special place in it, whose work had a huge impact on the development of painting not only in Spain, but also in other countries.
In France The humanist movement begins to spread only at the beginning of the 16th century. An outstanding representative of French humanism was Francois Rabelais (1494-1553), who wrote the satirical novel Gargantua and Pantagruel. In the 40s. 16th century in France there is a literary movement that went down in history under the name "Pleiades". The famous poets Pierre de Ronsard (1524-1585) and Joaquin du Bellay (1522-1566) headed this direction. Other notable poets of the French Renaissance were Agrippa d'Orbigné (1552-1630) and Louise Labe (1525-1565).
The most important theme in the poetry of the Renaissance was the chanting of love. Indicative in this regard are the sonnets of Pierre Ronsard, nicknamed the "prince of poets", who had a very strong influence on the development of French poetry as a whole.
The largest representative of the culture of France of the XVI century. was Michel de Montaigne (1533-1592). His main work - "Experiments", was a reflection on philosophical, historical, ethical topics. Montaigne proved the importance of experimental knowledge, glorified nature as a mentor of man. "Experiments" Montaigne were directed against scholasticism and dogmatism, argued the ideas of rationalism; this work had a significant impact on the subsequent development of Western European thought.
During the Renaissance, interest in the art of ancient Greece and Rome arose, which prompted Europe to change, which marked the end of the Middle Ages and the beginning of the new time. This period was not only a time of “revival” of the ancient past, it was a time of discoveries and research, a time of new ideas. Classical examples inspired new thinking, emphasizing the human personality, the development and manifestation of abilities, and not their limitations, which was characteristic of the Middle Ages. Teaching and scientific research was no longer exclusively the work of the church. New schools and universities arose, natural science and medical experiments were carried out. Artists and sculptors strove in their work for naturalness, for a realistic recreation of the world and man. Classical statues and human anatomy were studied. Artists began to use perspective, abandoning the planar image. The objects of art were the human body, classical and modern subjects, as well as religious themes. Capitalist relations were emerging in Italy, and diplomacy began to be used as a tool in relations between city-states. Scientific and technological discoveries, such as the invention of the printing press, contributed to the spread of new ideas. Gradually, new ideas took possession of the whole of Europe.
RENAISSANCE. TITANS OF THE RENAISSANCE.
Bibliography:
S.M. Stam. Coryphaeus of the Renaissance. Saratov, 1991
Lev Lyubimov. Art of Western Europe. Moscow “Enlightenment”, 1996
Culturology. History of world culture. Edited by Professor A.N. Markova. Moscow, "Culture and sport". Publishing house Association “UNITI”, 1995
D. Chisholm. World history in dates. Moscow, Rosmen, 1994
14th, 15th, 16th centuries some are designated in the history of Italian art by the Italian terms “trecento” (i.e. 300s), “quattrocento” (i.e. 400s) and “cinquecento” (i.e. 500s).
The end of the Quattrocento marks the transition from the Early Renaissance to the High Renaissance.
Glaze - apply a thin layer of transparent paint through which the lower layers shine through.
Renaissance (Renaissance). Italy. XV-XVI centuries. early capitalism. The country is ruled by wealthy bankers. They are interested in art and science.
The rich and powerful gather the talented and wise around them. Poets, philosophers, painters and sculptors have daily conversations with their patrons. At some point, it seemed that the people were ruled by sages, as Plato wanted.
Remember the ancient Romans and Greeks. They also built a society of free citizens, where the main value is a person (not counting slaves, of course).
The Renaissance is not just copying the art of ancient civilizations. This is a mixture. Mythology and Christianity. Realism of nature and sincerity of images. Beauty physical and spiritual.
It was just a flash. The period of the High Renaissance is about 30 years! From the 1490s to 1527 From the beginning of the flowering of Leonardo's creativity. Before the sack of Rome.
The mirage of an ideal world quickly faded. Italy was too fragile. She was soon enslaved by another dictator.
However, these 30 years determined the main features of European painting for 500 years ahead! Up to .
Image realism. Anthropocentrism (when the center of the world is Man). Linear perspective. Oil paints. Portrait. Scenery…
Incredibly, in these 30 years, several brilliant masters worked at once. At other times they are born one in 1000 years.
Leonardo, Michelangelo, Raphael and Titian are the titans of the Renaissance. But it is impossible not to mention their two predecessors: Giotto and Masaccio. Without which there would be no Renaissance.
1. Giotto (1267-1337)
Paolo Uccello. Giotto da Bondogni. Fragment of the painting “Five Masters of the Florentine Renaissance”. Beginning of the 16th century. . XIV century. Proto-Renaissance. Its main character is Giotto. This is a master who single-handedly revolutionized art. 200 years before the High Renaissance. If not for him, the era that humanity is so proud of would hardly have come.
Before Giotto there were icons and frescoes. They were created according to the Byzantine canons. Faces instead of faces. flat figures. Proportional mismatch. Instead of a landscape - a golden background. As, for example, on this icon.
Guido da Siena. Adoration of the Magi. 1275-1280 Altenburg, Lindenau Museum, Germany. And suddenly Giotto's frescoes appear. They have big figures. Faces of noble people. Old and young. Sad. Mournful. Surprised. Different.
Frescoes by Giotto in the Scrovegni Church in Padua (1302-1305). Left: Lamentation of Christ. Middle: Kiss of Judas (detail). Right: Annunciation of St. Anne (Mary's mother), fragment.
The main creation of Giotto is a cycle of his frescoes in the Scrovegni Chapel in Padua. When this church opened to parishioners, crowds of people poured into it. They have never seen this.
After all, Giotto did something unprecedented. He translated the biblical stories into a simple, understandable language. And they have become much more accessible to ordinary people.
Giotto. Adoration of the Magi. 1303-1305 Fresco in the Scrovegni Chapel in Padua, Italy. This is what will be characteristic of many masters of the Renaissance. Laconism of images. Live emotions of the characters. Realism.
Read more about the frescoes of the master in the article.
Giotto was admired. But his innovation was not further developed. The fashion for international gothic came to Italy.
Only after 100 years will a worthy successor to Giotto appear.
2. Masaccio (1401-1428)
Masaccio. Self-portrait (fragment of the fresco “Saint Peter in the pulpit”). 1425-1427 The Brancacci Chapel in Santa Maria del Carmine, Florence, Italy. Beginning of the 15th century. The so-called Early Renaissance. Another innovator enters the scene.
Masaccio was the first artist to use linear perspective. It was designed by his friend, the architect Brunelleschi. Now the depicted world has become similar to the real one. Toy architecture is a thing of the past.
Masaccio. Saint Peter heals with his shadow. 1425-1427 The Brancacci Chapel in Santa Maria del Carmine, Florence, Italy. He adopted the realism of Giotto. However, unlike his predecessor, he already knew anatomy well.
Instead of blocky characters, Giotto is beautifully built people. Just like the ancient Greeks.
Masaccio. Baptism of neophytes. 1426-1427 Brancacci Chapel, Church of Santa Maria del Carmine in Florence, Italy. 
Masaccio. Exile from Paradise. 1426-1427 Fresco in the Brancacci Chapel, Santa Maria del Carmine, Florence, Italy. Masaccio lived a short life. He died, like his father, unexpectedly. At 27 years old.
However, he had many followers. Masters of the following generations went to the Brancacci Chapel to learn from his frescoes.
So the innovation of Masaccio was picked up by all the great artists of the High Renaissance.
3. Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519)
Leonardo da Vinci. Self-portrait. 1512 Royal Library in Turin, Italy. Leonardo da Vinci is one of the titans of the Renaissance. He greatly influenced the development of painting.
It was da Vinci who raised the status of the artist himself. Thanks to him, representatives of this profession are no longer just artisans. These are the creators and aristocrats of the spirit.
Leonardo made a breakthrough primarily in portraiture.
He believed that nothing should distract from the main image. The eye should not wander from one detail to another. This is how his famous portraits appeared. Concise. Harmonious.
Leonardo da Vinci. Lady with an ermine. 1489-1490 Chertoryski Museum, Krakow. The main innovation of Leonardo is that he found a way to make images ... alive.
Before him, the characters in the portraits looked like mannequins. The lines were clear. All details are carefully drawn. A painted drawing could not possibly be alive.
Leonardo invented the sfumato method. He blurred the lines. Made the transition from light to shadow very soft. His characters seem to be covered in a barely perceptible haze. The characters came to life.
. 1503-1519 Louvre, Paris. Sfumato will enter the active vocabulary of all the great artists of the future.
Often there is an opinion that Leonardo, of course, a genius, but did not know how to bring anything to the end. And he often didn't finish painting. And many of his projects remained on paper (by the way, in 24 volumes). In general, he was thrown into medicine, then into music. Even the art of serving at one time was fond of.
However, think for yourself. 19 paintings - and he is the greatest artist of all times and peoples. And someone is not even close to greatness, while writing 6,000 canvases in a lifetime. Obviously, who has a higher efficiency.
Read about the most famous painting of the master in the article.
4. Michelangelo (1475-1564)
Daniele da Volterra. Michelangelo (detail). 1544 Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Michelangelo considered himself a sculptor. But he was a universal master. Like his other Renaissance colleagues. Therefore, his pictorial heritage is no less grandiose.
He is recognizable primarily by physically developed characters. He depicted a perfect man in whom physical beauty means spiritual beauty.
Therefore, all his characters are so muscular, hardy. Even women and old people.
Michelangelo. Fragments of the Last Judgment fresco in the Sistine Chapel, Vatican.
Often Michelangelo painted the character naked. And then I added clothes on top. To make the body as embossed as possible.
He painted the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel alone. Although this is a few hundred figures! He didn't even let anyone rub the paint. Yes, he was unsociable. He had a tough and quarrelsome personality. But most of all, he was dissatisfied with ... himself.
Michelangelo. Fragment of the fresco "Creation of Adam". 1511 Sistine Chapel, Vatican. Michelangelo lived a long life. Survived the decline of the Renaissance. For him it was a personal tragedy. His later works are full of sadness and sorrow.
In general, the creative path of Michelangelo is unique. His early works are the praise of the human hero. Free and courageous. In the best traditions of Ancient Greece. Like his David.
In the last years of life - these are tragic images. A deliberately rough-hewn stone. As if before us are monuments to the victims of fascism of the 20th century. Look at his "Pieta".
Sculptures by Michelangelo at the Academy of Fine Arts in Florence. Left: David. 1504 Right: Pieta of Palestrina. 1555
How is this possible? One artist went through all the stages of art from the Renaissance to the 20th century in one lifetime. What will the next generations do? Go your own way. Knowing that the bar has been set very high.
5. Raphael (1483-1520)
. 1506 Uffizi Gallery, Florence, Italy. Raphael has never been forgotten. His genius was always recognized: both during life and after death.
His characters are endowed with sensual, lyrical beauty. It is he who is rightfully considered the most beautiful female images ever created. External beauty reflects the spiritual beauty of the heroines. Their meekness. Their sacrifice.
Raphael. . 1513 Old Masters Gallery, Dresden, Germany. The famous words “Beauty will save the world” Fyodor Dostoevsky said precisely about. It was his favorite picture.
However, sensual images are not the only strong point of Raphael. He thought very carefully about the composition of his paintings. He was an unsurpassed architect in painting. Moreover, he always found the simplest and most harmonious solution in the organization of space. It seems that it cannot be otherwise.
Raphael. Athens school. 1509-1511 Fresco in the rooms of the Apostolic Palace, Vatican. Rafael lived only 37 years. He died suddenly. From caught colds and medical errors. But his legacy cannot be overestimated. Many artists idolized this master. And they multiplied his sensual images in thousands of their canvases..
Titian was an unsurpassed colorist. He also experimented a lot with composition. In general, he was a daring innovator.
For such a brilliance of talent, everyone loved him. Called "the king of painters and the painter of kings."
Speaking of Titian, I want to put an exclamation point after each sentence. After all, it was he who brought dynamics to painting. Pathos. Enthusiasm. Bright color. Shine of colors.
Titian. Ascension of Mary. 1515-1518 Church of Santa Maria Gloriosi dei Frari, Venice. Towards the end of his life, he developed an unusual writing technique. The strokes are fast and thick. The paint was applied either with a brush or with fingers. From this - the images are even more alive, breathing. And the plots are even more dynamic and dramatic.
Titian. Tarquinius and Lucretia. 1571 Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, England. Doesn't this remind you of anything? Of course, it's a technique. And the technique of artists of the XIX century: Barbizon and. Titian, like Michelangelo, will go through 500 years of painting in one lifetime. That's why he's a genius.
Read about the famous masterpiece of the master in the article.
Renaissance artists are the owners of great knowledge. To leave such a legacy, it was necessary to study a lot. In the field of history, astrology, physics and so on.
Therefore, each of their images makes us think. Why is it shown? What is the encrypted message here?
They are almost never wrong. Because they thoroughly thought out their future work. They used all the baggage of their knowledge.
They were more than artists. They were philosophers. They explained the world to us through painting.
That is why they will always be deeply interesting to us.
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Why is the role of the Renaissance more noticeable than the importance of any other era? Because the concept of the Renaissance was quite life-affirming, radiating the belief that a person is capable of much. And the figures of that time proved the veracity of such thoughts with their works and ideas. The Renaissance did not remain in textbooks or museums, it inspired and continues to inspire many people. Ideas change, are supplemented or rethought, but it is not only pleasant for a person, but it is also important to think that his activity is not useless.
We can see the creations of the Renaissance not only on the albums of famous artists (for example, Lady Gaga - "Artpop"), but also as a print. You can often see Botticelli's tender Venus on T-shirts, and Leonardo da Vinci's Mona Lisa has never been used anywhere. Therefore, the Renaissance is closer than you think, and knowing the important principles, main features and features of the works and figures of that time is simply necessary for those who consider themselves an educated person. And this article can help you, where everything is described briefly and easily.
The significance of the Renaissance for European culture is so enormous that it determined the further development of all areas: from science to poetry. It became a transition between the Middle Ages and the Enlightenment, but the creations made during this period make the Renaissance truly special. It all started in Italy, as such terms were also coined by the Italians, including the name "Renaissance", which means "born again". The rise of the Renaissance was indeed the birth of a new world. The growth of the influence of the estates creates people who were alien to the religious, ascetic culture created by the Middle Ages. Therefore, a new culture is being built, where the individual is proclaimed the center of the universe. The aesthetics and ideology of antiquity were taken as a model. Thanks to the invention of printing, it spread throughout Europe.
The Renaissance period lasted from the 14th century to the end of the 14th century. The stages of development are:
- Proto-Renaissance(Early Renaissance) - from the XIV century to the beginning of the XV century;
- High Renaissance(The highest flowering of the era, which stretched in time from the second half of the 15th century to the first half of the 16th century);
- Late (Northern) Renaissance- from the end of the 16th, and in some countries the beginning of the 17th century. When the Baroque era had already begun in Italy, other nations only comprehended its overripe fruit.
However, the Late Renaissance becomes darker. A crisis of ideas is inevitable, for troubles and battles continue, and the naive assertion that man is the center of something is questioned. Mysticism, a medieval worldview, returns, marking the Baroque era.
Main features
The general characteristic of the Renaissance is such that interest in a person is elevated to a cult of his capabilities, and in the field of aesthetics and philosophy there is a revival of ancient culture. Antiquity is recognized as a classic, which is actively studied and reworked. A material image of the world appears, people praise the mind of the individual. Individuality and personal responsibility in the Renaissance give grounds to look differently at the church structure, religion as a whole. Free criticism creates an attack on the religious life, on scriptural conformity. Thanks to this, the era of the Reformation arises, the reformation of the Catholic Church takes place. It is thanks to such sentiments and economic reasons that the Renaissance is born in Italy.
What are the main characteristics of the Renaissance?
- As we said above, the grip of the church is loosening. Religious asceticism is criticized, theaters appear, carnivals, holidays, pleasures are allowed;
- Attention from God is now redirected to his creation (anthropocentrism);
- The status of the creator acquires authority. People are no longer ashamed to sign their works and do not consider that God leads their hand;
- The philosophy of humanism is spreading - respect for a person as a large, strong, independent personality;
- The idea of the God-likeness of man arises.
The roots of European civilization go back to antiquity, not to the Middle Ages. Next, we will take a closer look at all aspects of the Renaissance and how exactly its achievements influenced further European culture.
Philosophy
The philosophy of the Renaissance is a set of philosophical schools united by common ideas. The rejection of theocentrism makes people concentrate on their own capabilities, thereby proclaiming a humanistic era.
The ideas of the Renaissance are addressed to ancient culture, from which thinkers not only mastered knowledge, but also processed it. From this the following principles and values of the era were formed:
- Anthropocentrism;
- The human right to creative self-expression and freedom is recognized. Creator man;
- Everything that exists in the world is understood through man;
- Aesthetics is more important than science and morality, the cult of the body.
Let's consider some philosophical directions and ideas of the Renaissance in more detail.
Humanism
In European latitudes, humanism spread in the XIV - mid-XV centuries. This philosophical direction had an anti-clerical orientation. From now on, thinkers prove that the makings of a person are not given by God out of grace, but become the result of people's own efforts. A person has the right to active, creative activity, the realization of individuality and freedom.
The philosophy of humanism breaks through into literature, so the famous humanists of the Renaissance took up the pen. Even the great Dante Alighieri in "" is already ironic about the fanatical errors of Christianity and its semi-literate interpreters. Dante believes in the virtue of mankind, not as God's will, but as a conscious decision of the individual. However, the Italian poet is considered the first humanist. In his poems, he preached the ideals of love and earthly joy, which we can achieve without God's will. He doubts the afterlife rewards for piety, but he knows a way to achieve real immortality of the soul. How to do it? There will be no other chance to be engaged in creative, vigorous activity, because being happens only here and now.
The thinkers of the Renaissance (Petrarch, Boccaccio, Lorenzo Valla and others) professed a passionate faith in the mental and physical potential of man, which has not yet been revealed. That is why the philosophy of humanism has a life-affirming character. It was during the Renaissance that humanism acquired an integral system of views, causing a real revolution in the culture and worldview of new people.
anthropocentrism
Anthropocentrism, as a philosophical thought, has become a characteristic feature of humanism. It comes from the Greek words "άνθροπος" - man and "centrum" - center, already by the etymology of the word one can guess its meaning. Literally, this is the placement of a person in the center of the Universe, the full concentration of attention on him. He is no longer seen as a sinful, imperfect being, as the bearer of a particular social group. He is an individual, unique, unique personality. Emphasis is placed on the god-likeness of a person, which is expressed in his ability to create, create.
From ancient culture, aesthetic attention to everything bodily and natural is adopted. They admire not only the spirit, but also the human body, exalt the unity of these principles.
The Italian philosopher Tommaso Campanella wrote in his treatises that bodily beauty is a gift from God, and bodily imperfection is a warning to others that they are facing an evil person. The personality of the Renaissance put the aesthetic principle above ethical considerations.
Man, as the center of the universe, is beautiful and created to enjoy the world. But he should spend his life not in idle pleasure, but in creative activity. Thus, anthropocentrism destroys the medieval ethics of asceticism, passivity and impotence of people before the almighty fate.
Natural philosophy
Renaissance thinkers again turn to the study of nature, revising its medieval understanding as a non-independent sphere.
The salient features of philosophy are:
- Natural philosophers approached the study of nature not through experience, but through reflection;
- The desire to separate philosophy from theology;
- The world can be known by reason and feelings, and not by divine revelation;
- The knowledge of nature is combined with mysticism.
Representatives of natural philosophy developed various concepts. For example, the philosopher Francesco Patrici developed the doctrine of the world as an animated infinity. And the mystic Yakbo Boehme developed a complex cosmogonic system, where nature is the mentor of man.
The legendary German physician Paracelsus, an outstanding researcher of the natural world, adjoined the natural philosophers.
Paracelsus considered man a small world, which contains all of nature. In his opinion, there are no prohibitions for human knowledge, we are able to study not only all entities and nature, but also what is outside the world. The unusualness of knowledge should not confuse, stop a person in the process of research.
Man and nature are still in harmony. But the expansion of human possibilities entails the study and subjugation of nature.
Pantheism
The philosophical doctrine of pantheism identifies the Divine forces with what they allegedly created. The Creator in pantheism did not waste a week in vain, he did not create our world, for he himself is a part of it, equivalent to all living things. Turning to the ancient heritage and natural philosophy, the pantheists paid attention to the natural sciences, recognizing the animation of the world and the cosmos. There are two completely different directions in this teaching:
idealistic (nature is a manifestation of divine power)
naturalistic (God is only a set of laws of nature).
That is, if in the first direction the Universe is in God, then in the second direction God is in the Universe.
The philosopher Nicholas of Cusa believed that God reveals the world from himself, and does not create it from nothing. And Giordano Bruno believed that God is in all things, but in the form of related laws.
Galileo Galilei continued to study nature (he studied ancient philosophy, which led him to the idea of the unity of the world), Nikolai Copernicus (although he gave people the first positions in the ranking of all living things, but still in a global sense their place is peripheral, since the Earth is not a leader in the open solar system).
Pantheism was characteristic of many philosophical theories of the Renaissance, and it was he who became the unifying link between natural philosophy and theology.
Culture and art
The transition from medieval, dark thought to the freedom of the Renaissance was not forced. The primacy of the church was preserved in the minds of the people, and not immediately painting and poetry, creativity itself acquired a good reputation. In addition, illiteracy prevailed among the population. But the directions of the Renaissance gradually laid the foundation for a new culture, where education mattered, where creative individuals tried to win universal recognition with intelligence and talent.
For example, the Italian writer Boccaccio believed that a true poet must have extensive knowledge: grammar, history, geography, art, even archeology.
Apparently, the creators themselves tried to imitate the ideals that they nurtured. These features of the Renaissance gave rise to the image of a god-like Man, creating, universal, which was embodied in sculpture and paintings, received a voice in books. It was in art that the spirit of the Renaissance was best revealed.
Painting
The new picture of the world puts art first in Italy, as it was the only creative expression of oneself. Painting, sculpture, architecture are great masters and creations that every educated person knows. The art of the Renaissance is divided into several stages, and each of them has its own interesting features.
For example, the proto-Renaissance (XIV - early XV centuries) became a transitional period from the Middle Ages. The great painters Giotto, Mosaccio turn to religious themes, but the emphasis is on emotions, on the life experience of people. The heroes are humanized, and the halos of the saints become more transparent, less noticeable in the paintings, as happens in the picture of Botticelli's "Annunciation" or Raphael's "Sistine Madonna".
Artists of this era strove for a material image of the world. They were rational painters, Renaissance paintings are distinguished by the use of geometry, the golden ratio. A perspective was depicted, thanks to which the masters could expand the range of depicted things and phenomena. Painting became monumental, for example, such is the painting of the Sistine Chapel by Michelangelo, created during the High Renaissance (second half of the 15th - first half of the 16th centuries). It's voluminous and extending beyond 
fresco frame, which is a cycle, and created in three years. Among the plots, one can notice the image of the creation of Adam, important for the Renaissance, where God is about to touch Man and bring a soul into his body. Another significant creation of Michelangelo is the sculpture of David, which 
proclaims the cult of man, the body. Proud, self-confident, physically developed - a clear nod to ancient sculpture. The essence of a person was grasped by the masters in a pose, gesture, posture. Portraits of this era were also distinguished by a special kind of face - proud, strong, understanding their capabilities.
For a long time, art developed on the basis of the principles created by the artists of the Renaissance. Today, the art of the Renaissance has not lost its appeal, many images created in this era can be found everywhere. For example, cosmetics firm Lime Crime dedicated eyeshadow palettes to Botticelli's Birth of Venus. The creators of cosmetics assigned thematic names to each color, for example, “shell”, “muse”. Of course, the popularity of such products speaks of the immortality of the masterpieces created in the Renaissance.
Literature
The humanistic worldview of the Renaissance also influenced literature. In the foreground is a man freed from the influence of the Middle Ages. An important role in the development of literature in Italy was played by the preservation of the heritage of ancient culture. From there is taken the concept of the ideal of man, an example of high humanity. Renaissance works have characteristic features, for example, the main subject of the image is a strong personality, her life and contradictions. Attitude towards nature has also changed - they began to admire it.
The easiest way to show the literature of the Renaissance is on the example of Giovanni Boccaccio's collection of short stories "The Decameron". The first short story of the collection is the main connecting story. 7 girls and 3 boys are hiding from the plague in the castle. They sing, dance and tell each other different stories. These living, young people are the personification of the new man of the Renaissance, and the plague is the shackles of the Middle Ages. The main themes of the stories are different: love, anti-church, adventure, instructive. For the first time the reader can see the heroes of the people, namely students, grooms, carpenters and others. But at the same time, the author condemns the heroes who are ugly, laughs at the shortcomings of the body, which is quite within the framework of the era with its cult of a physically developed organism. Boccaccio shows life as it is, allowing some frivolity. Therefore, church ministers strongly disliked this book, and even publicly burned it in the square. But even such persecutions were not able to kill the popularity of Boccaccio's collection, because people's worldview changed, and their preferences followed.
Poets
“Through the word, the human face becomes beautiful,” writes the Renaissance poet Francesco Petrarca.
It was he who became the founder of the new European lyrics, creating in sonnets a harmonious combination of purity and love languor, passion and purity. Pushkin identified the "language of Petrarch" and the language of love itself, since the poet of the Renaissance masterfully, inspiredly, vividly wrote about feelings between a man and a woman. We wrote more about his work.
More talented poets appear in Italy, namely Ludovico Ariosto (author of the poem "Furious Roland"), Torquato Tasso, Jacopo Sannadzor. In France, the great poet of the era was Pierre de Ronsard, here. Then he was considered the "prince of poets", as he introduced into poetry a variety of poetic meters, the harmony of rhyme and syllable. In England, the most important representatives of poetry were Geoffrey Chaucer and Edmund Spenser. True, Geoffrey Chaucer anticipated the Renaissance, he became the "father of English poetry." And Edmund Spenser gave melody to English verse, was "the arch-poet of England." Renaissance poets were revered, considered great masters of the word, and they retain this title to this day.
Composers
Influential composer schools developed in Italy: Roman (Giovanni Palestrina) and Venetian (Andrea Gabrieli). Palestrina created an example of Catholic sacred music, while Gabrieli combined the choir with the sound of other instruments, approaching secular music.
Composers John Dubsteil and William Bird worked in England in different centuries. The masters preferred sacred music. William Byrd has been called the "father of music".
The talented composer Orlando Lasso showed musical abilities from childhood. His secular music contributed to the fact that Munich became the musical center of Europe, where other talented musicians came to study, namely Johann Eckard, Leonard Lechner and Gabrieli.
Of course, Renaissance composers developed not only traditional styles, but also instrumental music, expanding the range of musical instruments used (bowed string instruments, clavier, and so on). The activities of the musicians of the Renaissance created the possibility of the appearance of opera in the future, providing the art of sounds and melodies with a systematic and productive development.
Architects
Filippo Brunelleschi is called the "father of architecture" of the Renaissance. He created many works of art, one of which is the Church of San Lorenzo. Another representative of the early Renaissance, the architect Alberti, built the Rucellai Palace in Florence. Unlike Brunelleschi, he did not use lancet and used individual orders for different floors. During the High Renaissance, the main architect was Donato Angelo Bramante. He was the first architect of St. Peter's Basilica in Rome, created his plan.
But what is remarkable about the masters of the Renaissance is that many finished, completed each other's projects. So, the construction of St. Peter's Cathedral was continued by Michelangelo, and after his death, another architect took over the project. It turned out that as many as 12 architects were involved in the construction of the main Catholic church at different times.
Or another example, the interior decoration of the church of San Lorenzo, which Brunelleschi built, was created by Michelangelo. In other countries, the Italian Renaissance style of architecture is spreading, but with the introduction of local architectural traditions. Further, experiments in architecture lead to styles such as baroque and rococo.
Conclusion
We hope that this article has helped you get acquainted with the Renaissance or encouraged you to study this or that area of culture in more detail. Indeed, it was thanks to the strong desire of the geniuses of the Renaissance for knowledge that great discoveries were made and the rigid framework of prejudice was destroyed.
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Introduction
What is commonly called the Renaissance was the affirmation of the continuity of the great ancient culture, the affirmation of new ideals. During the Renaissance, experimental natural science arose, the monuments of ancient culture were discovered and studied, the arts and secular worldview developed, weakening the spiritual dictate of the church, literature appeared in new modern languages, and a professional theater appeared.
Changes affected all aspects of spiritual life. These phenomena seemed to be a revival of science, philosophy, literature and art that existed in the ancient world, especially among the Greeks. The very term "Renaissance" arose as a result of the conviction that only through the revival of ancient culture after the difficult Middle Ages can one come to a true knowledge and image of nature itself.
Art becomes an integral part of social life. In the Middle Ages, the artist was considered a craftsman, his place was at the lower levels of the social hierarchy, and the personality was obscured in front of the customer. During the Renaissance, when the human personality was highly exalted in the general consciousness, the creative individuality of the artist began to attract the attention of everyone who was interested in his work.
The culture of the Renaissance found its expression primarily in the works of Italian painters, sculptors, and poets. But unlike the ideals of the ancient world, where a person is presented as a toy of fate, they exalt a person, consider him the master of his fate, pay tribute to his (personal) qualities and will. This is the main greatness of the Renaissance, which made a revolution in the minds of people.
Culture of the Italian Renaissance of the XIV-XV centuries.
Awareness of the spiritual value of earthly man led to a bright flowering of art, fertilized by a new view of the world. This movement in the field of culture, which sought to go beyond the Middle Ages and was called the Proto-Renaissance, in many ways paved the way for a revival and enriched world art with such phenomena as the sculpture of Niccolo Pisano, the painting of Giotto, and the poetry of Dante.
Latin was the main literary language of the Middle Ages. At the turn of the XIII-XIV centuries. it gradually began to be replaced by the modern vernacular. The famous work of the Bolognese lawyer Guido Guinicelli "Love nests in a noble heart" is written in the Tuscan dialect. Guido's poetic skill was further developed in Florence. This direction was called "sweet new style." He was joined by Guido Cavalcanti, Chino de Pistoia and Dante Alighieri.
Dante's work is of great importance for the entire subsequent development of literature. Dante's works are written in Italian. His early cycle of poems, New Life, sings of his love for Beatrice. Here, for the first time in literature, the feeling of love is considered in development. It ceases to be a fixed characteristic of the "noble heart", as in Dante's predecessors.
In his unfinished work The Feast, Dante tries to present all the scholastic learning of his time in the form of 14 canzones and a prose commentary on them. In the introduction, he addresses the question of the need to use the Italian language in his work.
In the work “On Folk Speech”, Dante points to 3 new literary languages: Old French, Provencal and Italian. In the latter, he distinguishes many dialects and proves that the Tuscan dialect has the greatest potential to become a general literary language in Italy.
The greatest work of Dante is "Comedy", where the author turned to a broader language material than in the work "On Folk Speech". He used not only the language of the "sweet new style" poets, but also poetry close to colloquial speech.
In the Comedy, the Italian language acquired such richness, acquired such completeness and stability that no Western European language of that time knew. Dante is considered the creator of the Italian literary language.
Proto-Renaissance trends appeared in Italian culture and in the general attitude as early as the 13th century. In 1316, lectures on human anatomy were given in Bologna - the first in the Middle Ages on a topic from which, according to church doctrine, one should turn away.
In Pisa, where already in the Romanesque period a famous architectural ensemble was created, expressing the special, iridescent aspirations of the Italian artistic genius, the sculptor Niccolò Pisano. In the reliefs decorating the pulpit, he created images not so much of gospel scenes as of purely secular events. N. Pisano is considered the initiator of the Proto-Renaissance in Italian plastic. His son Zhdovani should also be recognized as one of the sculptors of the Proto-Renaissance. His work is full of pathos and dynamism.
The initiator of the proto-Renaissance in painting is Cavellini. He tried to revive his figures with chiaroscuro, to convey in them not an abstract idea, but a visual impression. An example is the fresco "The Last Judgment", where the image of Christ is no longer a symbol, not a face, but a dignified, beautiful man with an open face.
Giotto the painter. He guessed the highest simplicity: nothing superfluous, no patterns, no detailing. All the artist's attention is focused on the main thing, and a synthesis is given, a grandiose generalization. He abandoned the planar character of Byzantine icon-painting images, their conditional backgrounds and tried to convey the depth of space. The image of a person was his main task. All characters in Giotto's paintings become participants in one dramatic event, they all contribute to the disclosure of a single plan. This is clearly seen in the scene "Kiss of Judas", in the frescoes in the Chapel del Arena in Padua.
A decisive step in building a secular culture was made by the humanists, the ideologists of the Renaissance. Humanists emphasized the value of the human person in itself. Therefore, they put forward an interest in human affairs - a human, and not a religious point of view on all phenomena of life and, in particular, the protection of the human person.
Francesco Petrarco was one of those humanists. In the verses in which he sang of his beloved during his lifetime and after her death, the poet describes his experiences with unprecedented subtlety. Unlike Beatrice in Dante's Divine Comedy, Laura is an earthly woman, not a symbol.
The beginning of a new science - epigraphy was given by the merchant banker Jonazo Manetti, who, during his travels to the East, began to collect preserved ancient inscriptions. He also recognized the need to study the third ancient language - Hebrew, necessary for understanding the books of the Old Testament. Thus, he deprived the church of its centuries-old privilege: the study of "holy scripture" passed into the hands of secular scholars-philosophers.
Italian art of the 15th century.
Artists of the 15th century were members of associations on a professional basis - painters, sculptors, jewelers, architects, and were in the form of independent corporations in one of the officially recognized workshops. In most cases, artists built, decorated with statues and frescoed churches and public institutions under an agreement with customers.
One of the greatest Italian architects of the XV century. was Filippo Brunelleschi, who created a new type of building that had secular significance (the Orphanage). Proportions, rhythm, articulation, processing of details served to reveal design features, and with their harmony and simplicity they were guided by a person, raising his value.
Bruneleschi's art was based on logic, confirmed by mathematical calculations. He was the first of the Renaissance artists to understand how mathematics can help art. He was one of the founders of the scientific theory of perspective, the discoverer of its basic laws, which were of great importance for the development of all contemporary painting.
The revival of ancient architecture put into the hands of architects a new system, fundamentally different from Gothic.
Donatelio is the first to achieve in relief a true impression of space. In observing the nine laws of perspective, he brings early Renaissance plastic art closer to painting and finally departs from the principles and forms of Gothic.
A giant leap in the history of European painting marks the work of a friend of Brunelleschi and Donatelio, the painter Masaccio. He was considered the first artist after Giotto. He understood the essence of his work and developed it.
His fresco "Trinity" seems to push the walls of the temple apart, creating the illusion of a recessed space in compliance with scientifically based laws of perspective. The whole composition is calm and solemn. In the ability to distribute light and shadows, in creating a clear spatial composition, in the power with which he conveys volume, Masaccio is far superior to Giotto.
In addition, he is the first in painting to depict a naked body and gives a person heroic features, glorifying human dignity. He was the first to introduce portrait images of customers into religious composition, as, for example, in Trinity.
A. Mantegna actively asserted Renaissance tendencies in northern Italian art. Brought up in humanistic circles, he introduced into his harsh-spirited painting a true passion for Roman antiquity, inspired by which he created his generalized heroized image of a person, as, for example, in the Ovetari chapel of the Eremetani church in Padua.
The work of Montechieu had a partly direct, partly indirect influence on the entire northern Italian painting of the second half of the 15th century, contributing to the formation of Renaissance principles in the art of Lombardy, Liguria and Venice. Venetian artists paid special attention to the problem of color, which became one of the main means of expression in their painting. In the decoration of buildings, colored plaster and various shades of brick were combined with colored marble lining, the finest carvings and inlays. The builders treated with love the most modest architectural elements of the city, starting with the different bowls of the wells and ending with the piers.
Culture of the High and Late Renaissance.
End of the 15th century and the first 30 years of the XVI century. - The culture of the High Renaissance is one of the most striking phenomena in the history of European culture. The 16th century is the golden age of Italian literature, fine arts, natural philosophy, and great discoveries in the field of natural science. At this time, the foundations of a new worldview were laid, in the center of which were nature and man.
In the period from the 30s to the end of the 16th century, the art of the late revival was formed, which is a complex picture of the struggle of various currents. The militant Catholic Church understood how important art was in the eyes of society, and therefore tried to use it for its own purposes. The decrees of the Council of Trente directly pointed to the desire of the church to appropriate control over works of art. Therefore, those artists who connected their work with serving the needs of the church or reflected in their work moods of depression and internal breakdown turned out to be in the public eye. These artists were called "mannerists" because they did not seek to study nature and its laws, but outwardly assimilate the manner of the great masters: Leonard, Raphael, and mainly Michelangelo. Many of them were good draftsmen, among them there were many major portrait painters (Pontormo, Bronzio), since the portrait is more closely associated with nature than other pictorial genres, but their paintings, regardless of the plot, are far-fetched, artificial, false in design and execution (Vasari, ? ???). These artists did not stop at the deformation of the human body, as a result, paintings such as the Madonna with a Long Neck (Parmegianico) appeared. Michelangelo once said, seeing how artists copy his "Last Judgment": "My art will make many fools."
The development of the artistic culture of the High Renaissance was greatly influenced by Leonardo da Vinci, a painter and sculptor.
One of the first independent works made by him after leaving Verroco's workshop is "Madonna of Benz". The artist abandoned the traditional interpretation of the image of the Madonna - majestic, sad, created an image of joyful, full of purely earthly charms. Exploring the laws of optics, he first used chiaroscuro as a means of "revitalizing" the characters in his paintings. Leonardo put an equal sign between the external and internal appearance of a person. “If the soul is disorderly and chaotic,” Leonardo argued, “then the body itself in which this soul lives is disorderly and chaotic.” Leonardo was also an inventor. Among his inventions were improved tools.
The artistic and scientific activities of Leonardo made him the founder of a new type in the development of Italian art - the High Renaissance.
A major master of the late Renaissance was Benvento Cellini - realistic art. “We have no other books to teach us about art, except for the book of nature,” Cellini declares. His large bronze statue of Perseus depicts a beautiful human body sculpted with a deep knowledge of anatomy. Cellini's violent passions, his superstitions, frank desire for fame, naive boasting, indestructible thirst for life and love for art make him one of the most typical representatives of this turbulent and controversial time.
The rise of the professional theatre.
In Italy, carnival masks were widespread, where everyone had fun as best they could, but professional "entertainers" also performed there. Such entertainers, somehow parodied famous people, birds, animals - became professionals. They moved from city to city, because carnivals were held in different places. In the 60s of the XV century. they began to organize themselves into groups, into acting groups. This is how "professional comedy" was born. This theater had its own peculiar features: each actor "performed one mask." This folk comedy did not have a written text, it did not have its own dramaturgy. The actors had only a script, which outlined the entrance and exit to the stage and the general course of events. Thirdly, to give more comedy, this comedy used dialects - Venetian, Padua. Stunts were an obligatory accessory of the performance - acrobatic numbers, mise-en-scene.
Conclusion
The creativity of the Renaissance period is distinguished by pathos and dynamism. The artist brought together in his fantasies, feelings (this applies not only to artists, but also to writers, sculptors and other representatives of art). For example, Petrarco, he is not constrained, he does not keep his feelings, emotions to himself, he shares them, describes them. The emotional world of a person is important for the Renaissance. That Renaissance period is characterized by freedom: a departure from the church framework into secular life, where there is space, freedom, where the individual (man) and interests dominate. They build large, spacious, voluminous colorful buildings - everything for a person, to satisfy his needs, to exalt his significance.
The art of the Renaissance period is calculated, exactly. The calculations were done with the help of mathematics, therefore it was also practical, since the calculations were done for the convenience of that person again.
Literature
1. L.M. Batkin. Italian Renaissance in search of individuality. M., 1989.
2. World History: Renaissance and Reformation. ed. Alyabieva et al. M., 1996. V.9-10
