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Summary
In keeping with the spirit of humanism, artists of the early Renaissance strove to portray human forms with correct proportions, realistic clothing, and natural expressions. Artists developed new techniques to give paintings a more three-dimensional, life-like quality, and commonly studied human and animal anatomy in efforts to better understand their subjects.
The first major painter of the Renaissance was Giotto di Bondone. Giotto broke away from the Gothic and Byzantine artistic traditions at the turn of the 14th century. He deeply studied nature to infuse his paintings with reality, an effort most apparent in his especially realistic facial expressions. In 1334, Giotto was appointed chief architect in Florence, where he remained until his death in 1337.
Giotto’s innovations in the painting perspective were improved upon by a later artist, Tommaso Guidi, known as Masaccio (Messy Tom) because of his disheveled appearance. Masaccio is credited with mastering perspective, and was the first Renaissance artist to paint models in the nude, often using light and shadow to define the shape of his models rather than clear lines. Masaccio’s most well-known work is a scene from the Bible called The Tribute Money.
Furthering the accomplishments of his predecessors, Sandro Botticelli emerged as a dominant artist during the early Renaissance. One of a circle of artists and scholars sponsored by the Medici in Florence, Botticelli’s most famous work, The Birth of Venus, shows the goddess rising from the sea on a conch shell. During the late 15th century, Botticelli became a follower of the Girolamo Savonarola, and burned many of his paintings with pagan themes.
The merchants and city officials whose patronage supported the Renaissance artists were frequently more interested in architecture than they were in painting. Therefore, as the city-states of Italy began to develop great wealth during the early 15th century, architects and sculptors rose to fame and power.
In 1401, Florence held a competition to choose the artist to design and sculpt a pair of bronze doors for the Baptistry, a church honoring St. Paul the Baptist. The winner of the contest, Lorenzo Ghiberti, spent 28 years completing the doors, which were decorated with scenes from the Bible and later came to be known as “The Gates of Paradise.” The loser of the contest, Filippo Brunelleschi, competed against Ghiberti again in 1417 for the right to design the dome of the cathedral of Florence, this time winning the competition. The dome he designed, combining the modern trends in architecture and the style of ancient Rome, still dominates the Florentine skyline, and is considered one of the great architectural masterpieces of all time.
In terms of sculpture, the acknowledged master of the early Renaissance was Donato di Niccolo di Betto Bardi, better known as Donatello. Donatello studied under both Ghiberti and Brunelleschi, and went on to create several masterpieces for Cosimo de Medici in Florence. His most important work is the sculpture David, which depicts the Hebrew king in the classical style of a Greek god and was the first freestanding nude figure sculpted since the Roman era. Donatello also went on to create the first bronze statue of the Renaissance, depicting an incredibly realistic soldier on horseback.
Analysis
The artists of the early Renaissance were both liberated by the patronage of the wealthy and constricted in their choice of subject matter. Despite the changes wrought by humanism, the Italian population remained, more than anything else, highly religious. Wealthy patrons most often commissioned works of art that were in some way related to the Catholic Church. Altarpieces and religious murals were common among the works created during the early Renaissance, and artists were often confined to the Bible in choosing their own subject matter. Nevertheless, they still experienced great freedom to develop new techniques and work with new materials, as can be seen by the groundbreaking work of Giotto and Ghiberti.
Botticelli's experience was indicative of the tension all Renaissance artists felt between traditional values, represented by the Church, and the progressive (and simultaneously antiquarian) nature of Renaissance art. The artistic community often attempted to align its ideals of learning, reason, and self-expression with religious dogma, yet as can be seen in the example of Botticelli’s own destroyed artwork, the alignment was not easy. The two schools of thought often seemed antithetical and irreconcilable, but even so, the persistence of religious themes in Renaissance art is a testament to the continuing importance of the Church in Renaissance culture.
Despite sharing similarities with medieval art regarding subject matter, there can be no doubt that Renaissance artists broke the static mold of medieval art. While technique, style, and materials stayed relatively constant throughout much of the Middle Ages, the Renaissance was a period of rapid change and development. For example, immediately after Giotto’s methods and ideas concerning perspective changed the face of art significantly, Masaccio and others built upon and improved the techniques.
Similarly, Ghiberti and Brunelleschi pushed each other through competition to new artistic heights. Donatello studied under each of the older masters and incorporated the developments they contributed to the art form with his own talents and ideas, producing the most admired works of the era. This rapid evolution and the continuing advance of artistic techniques and talent was one of the primary characteristics of the Renaissance.
