Florentine Renaissance and the Medici
The Renaissance was officially born in Florence, a city that is often referred to as its cradle. This new figurative language, also linked to a different way of thinking about man and the world, began with local culture and humanism, which had already been brought to the fore by people like Francesco Petrarca or Coluccio Salutati. The news, proposed in the early fifteenth century by masters such as Filippo Brunelleschi, Donatello and Masaccio, were not immediately accepted by the client, indeed remained at least for twenty years a minority and largely misunderstood artistic fact, in the face of the now dominant international Gothic.
Later the Renaissance became the most appreciated figurative language and began to be transmitted to other Italian courts (first of all the papal one of Rome) and then European, thanks to the movements of the artists.
The cycle of the Florentine Renaissance, after the beginnings of the first twenty years of the fifteenth century, spread with enthusiasm until the middle of the century, with experiments based on a technical-practical approach; the second phase took place at the time of Lorenzo the Magnificent, from about 1450 until his death in 1492, and was characterized by a more intellectualistic arrangement of conquests. A third phase is dominated by the personality of Girolamo Savonarola, which deeply marks many artists convincing them to rethink their choices. The last phase, datable between 1490 and 1520, is called “mature” Renaissance, and sees the presence in Florence of three absolute genes of art, which influenced the generations to come:Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo Buonarroti and Raffaello Sanzio.
Features
At least three were the essential elements of the new style:
Formulation of the rules of the linear centric perspective, which organized the space together;
Attention to man as an individual, both in physiognomy and anatomy and in the representation of emotions
Repudiation of decorative elements and return to essentiality.
Among these the most characteristic was certainly that of linear centric perspective, built according to a mathematical-geometric and measurable method, developed at the beginning of the century by Filippo Brunelleschi. The ease of application, which did not require geometric knowledge of particular refinement, was one of the key factors in the success of the method, which was adopted by the shops with a certain elasticity and with not always orthodox ways.
The linear centric perspective is only one way of representing reality, but its character was particularly consonant with the mentality of Renaissance man, since it gave rise to a rational order of space, according to criteria established by the artists themselves. If on the one hand the presence of mathematical rules made the perspective an objective matter, on the other the choices that determined these rules were of a perfectly subjective nature, such as the position of the vanishing point, the distance from the viewer, the height of the horizon. Ultimately, the Renaissance perspective is nothing more than a representative convention, which today is so deeply rooted as to appear natural, even if some nineteenth-century movements such as cubism, have shown how it is just an illusion.
Historical context
First half of the 15th century
After the economic and social collapse of the mid-fourteenth century (caused by bank failures, the black plague, famine and fierce civil strife), culminating with the Tumult of the Ciompi of 1378, Florence was beginning a recovery. The population resumed its growth and, under the domination of the upper middle class mining oligarchy, public worksites interrupted in the city were reopened. At the Cathedral in 1391 it was started the decoration of the Almond door and more or less in the same period began the decoration of the external niches of Orsanmichele by Art. In 1401the competition for the north door of the Baptistery was announced.
On the upswing, however, was the threat of Gian Galeazzo Visconti, who had encircled Florence in the project to create a nation-state in Italy under the rule of Milan. On the other hand, the Florentines were more than ever ready to maintain their independence, nurturing a strong civic pride that appealed to Libertas’ historic motto. With the sudden death of Visconti in 1402 the military grip on the city was loosened, allowing an economic recovery, however ephemeral. In 1406 Pisa was conquered and in 1421 the port of Livorno.
In 1424 the city suffered a severe defeat against the Visconti and Lucca, and the weight of the war, added to the feverish building activity to complete the dome of the Duomo, made the imposition of new taxes necessary. In 1427 the Lordship imposed the ” cadastre “, the first attempt at tax equity in modern history, which taxed families on the basis of their wealth estimates, drawing for the first time where money was really concentrated, that is in the hands of those families of merchants and bankers who also mastered political activity.
The Medici Lordship
It was perhaps at that moment that a banker like Cosimo de ‘Medici realized that in order to protect his interests, greater direct control over politics was necessary. Despite his known prudence he began a gradual climb to power, which he never saw direct protagonist, but always in second line behind men of his close trust. But arrived at the clash with the other powerful families of the city, first of all the Albizi and the Strozzi, had to give up at first to exile and then return triumphant in the city, acclaimed by the people who paid tribute in the name of Pater Patriae and drove away his enemies. It was the first triumph of the Medici, which since then dominated the city for about three centuries. In 1439 Cosimo crowned his dream of a “new Rome” in Florence making you hold the Council where the schism of the East was effem- erly welded.
The era of Lorenzo the Magnificent (in power from 1469 to 1492), after a critical beginning with the Pazzi conspiracy, was later an era of peace, prosperity and great cultural achievements for the city, which became one of the most refined in Italy and in Europe, exporting its ideals in the other centers of the peninsula thanks to the sending of artists and writers in “cultural ambassadors”: emblematic is the first decoration of the Sistine Chapel carried out by a ‘pool’ of artists coming from Florence (Botticelli, Ghirlandaio, Perugino, etc.).
With the death of Lorenzo an era of crisis and re-thinking opened up, dominated by the figure of Girolamo Savonarola, who after the expulsion of Piero the Fatuo re-established the Republic and created a state of theocratic inspiration. His proclamations from the pulpit of San Marco profoundly influenced the Florentine society, which, frightened also by the political crisis that crossed the Italian peninsula, returned to a more austere and superstitious religiosity, in contrast with the ideals inspired by the classical world that characterized the period previous one. Many artists remained influenced by the Ferrara friar and since then they abstained from creating works of profane inspiration (such as Botticelli and the young Michelangelo), sometimes even destroying his own compromising front production (like Fra Bartolomeo).
The battle of Savonarola against Pope Alexander VI Borgia decreed the end of the prestige of the friar, who was condemned as a heretic and burnt in Piazza della Signoria in 1498. Since then the political and social situation became even more confused, with the departure of numerous artists from the city. In the meantime a son of Lorenzo the Magnificent, Giovanni, had become cardinal and with the force of intimidation (with the tremendous sack of Prato of 1512, for demonstrative purposes) he had the town returned to him. Ascended to the papal throne with the name of Pope Leo X (1513), he ruled from Rome through some family members the restless city.
In 1527 the Sacco di Roma was the occasion for a new rebellion against the Medici, but with the siege of Florence of 1529 – 30 the Florentine republic was finally put to an end, which since then became a duchy in the firm hands of Cosimo I de ‘ Medici, then Grand Duke after the bloody conquest of Siena. Florence was now the head of a regional state of Tuscany.
Social and cultural context
The cultural and scientific renewal began in the last decades of the fourteenth century and in the early fifteenth century in Florence and was rooted in the rediscovery of the classics, started already in the fourteenth century by Francesco Petrarca and other scholars. In their works man began to be the central argument rather than God (the Canzoniere di Petrarca and the Decameron of Boccaccio are a clear example).
At the beginning of the century the city artists were poised on two main choices: adherence to the international gothic style or a more rigorous recovery of the classical ways, for others always echoed in Florentine art since the twelfth century. Each artist dedicated himself, more or less consciously, to one of the two roads, even though the one that prevailed was the second. It is wrong, however, to imagine an advanced triumphant Renaissance language that proceeds against a sclerotic and dying culture, as set by a historiography now outdated: the late Gothicit was a lively language like never before, which in some countries was appreciated well beyond the fifteenth century, and the new Florentine proposal was initially only an alternative of a clear minority, unheard and misunderstood for the last twenty years in Florence itself, as demonstrated by for example the success in those years of artists such as Gentile da Fabriano or Lorenzo Ghiberti.
The “rebirth” succeeded in having an extraordinarily wide diffusion and continuity, from which there emerged a new perception of man and the world, where the individual is able to self-determine and cultivate his own abilities, with which he can win the Luck (in the Latin sense, “fate”) and dominate nature by modifying it. Also important is the associated life, which acquires a particularly positive value linked to dialectics, to the exchange of opinions and information, to comparison.
This new concept spread with enthusiasm, but, based on the strength of individuals, it was not without hard and distressing sides, unknown in the reassuring medieval system. To the certainties of the Ptolemaic world, the uncertainties of the unknown were substituted, the fickle Fortuna alternated with the faith in Providence, and the responsibility of self-determination entailed the anguish of doubt, of error, of failure. This downside, more suffering and frightening, came back every time the fragile economic, social and political equilibrium failed, taking away support for ideals.
The new themes were in any case the heritage of a small elite, which enjoyed an education designed for a future in public offices. The ideals of the humanists, however, were shared by the greater share of bourgeois mercantile and artisan society, above all because they were reflected effectively in everyday life, under the banner of pragmatism, individualism, competitiveness, the legitimacy of wealth and exaltation. of active life. The artists were also participants in these values, even if they did not have an education that could compete with that of the literati; nevertheless, thanks also to the opportune collaborations and to the great technical skills learned in the field, their works aroused a wide interest at all levels, eliminating the elitist differences because they are easier to use than literature, rigorously still written in Latin.
The years of the first Medici dominion (1440-1469)
The next generation of artists elaborated the legacy of the first innovators and their direct followers, in a climate that registered a different orientation of the clients and a new political framework.
Art under Cosimo de ‘Medici
With the return of Cosimo de ‘Medici from exile in fact (1434), the Republic had entered a phase of formal continuation but of profound substantial change, with the de facto centralization of power in the hands of Cosimo through a subtle and prudent strategy of alliances and control of the magistracies by men of close trust, who never saw him engaged in the city government. His behavior was inspired by Cicero’s Stoic models, outwardly based on the pursuit of the common good, moderation, rejection of personal prestige and ostentation. Following this model he commissioned important works of public value, such as the restructuring of theBadia Fiesolana, the convent of San Marco or the Medici palace itself.
The works of private patrons were instead informed by a different taste, such as the David-Mercurio di Donatello (circa 1440-1443), animated by an intellectual and refined taste, which satisfied the needs of a cultured and refined environment. Among the classic quotations (Antinoo silvano, Prassitele) and the homages to the patrons (the frieze of the Goliath helmet taken from an antique cameo), the sculptor also imprinted an acute sense of reality, which avoids falling into pure complacency Aesthetic: the slight asymmetries of the pose and the Monolithic expression, which give life to the cultural references in something substantially energetic and real, are evidence of this.
After all, the foundation of the Neoplatonic Academy had sanctioned the intellectual horizons of culture under Cosimo, developing the humanistic disciplines towards a more noble and ideal re-enactment of the classical past.
Art under Piero de ‘Medici
Under the son of Cosimo, Piero de ‘Medici, the taste for intellectualism was further accentuated, with a lesser emphasis on public works in favor of a taste geared mainly towards collections of precious and often minute objects (gems, antiques, tapestries), sought both for their intrinsic value and their status as rare objects that demonstrated social prestige.
The government of Piero on Florence lasted only five years (1464 – 1469), but took a well-defined orientation, which resumed the ways of refined aristocratic courts, which was also inspired by the emulation of the city aristocracy. Emblematic work of that season are the frescoes of the Chapel of the Magi by Benozzo Gozzoli, the private chapel of Palazzo Medici (1459), decorated by Piero. In the sumptuous procession of the Magi family members and their supporters are transfigured into the sacred episode, where the myth becomes a pretext for portraying the glittering bourgeois society of the age.
In the central decades of the century, the sculptors often took inspiration from the principles of Copia et Varietas, theorized by Alberti, which included repetitions of similar models with slight variations and evolutions, in order to satisfy the articulated taste of the client. Exemplary in this sense is the evolution of funeral monuments, from that of Leonardo Bruni by Bernardo Rossellino (1446 – 1450), to that of Carlo Marsuppini by Desiderio da Settignano (1450 – 1450) to the tomb of Piero and Giovanni de ‘Medici by Andrea del Verrocchio(of the first Laurentian period, 1472). In these works, even if starting from a common model (the arcosolium), we get results that are gradually more refined and precious.
One of the most significant works of the central decades of the fifteenth century in Florence was however the chapel of the Cardinal of Portugal, a refined celebration of Jacopo di Lusitania, who died in Florence in 1458, and of his royal family. The chapel is the best example of that typical taste of Florence in the central decades, linked to the variety of materials, techniques, expressive ways and cultural references, which all together create an elegant and subtly scenographic effect. The architecture is a Greek cross, with each arm with a different decoration (based on painting or sculpture), but the whole is unified by the continuous frieze with the weapons of the royals of Portugal and the recurrence ofporphyry and serpentine. No surface is devoid of decoration: from the cosmatesco floor up to the pavilion vault with dazzling glazed terracottas by Luca della Robbia.
The focal side is the east side, where is the tomb of the cardinal sculpted by Antonio and Bernardo Rossellino. The space is scenographic and underlined by a curtain that, at the sides of the arch, is pulled back like a curtain by two painted angels. Each decoration contributes to staging the cardinal’s “supernatural triumph”. The general style is characterized by the richness of figures, posed with naturalness loose, which create an elegant animation, never experienced in previous monuments. The modeling of the sculptures is very sensitive and creates illusionistic effects that are now far from the rational research that had animated the Renaissance artists of the first generation. The bas-relief of the basement contains one of the oldest evidence of ancient myths reused in Neoplatonic and Christian key: the theme of the tauromachy of Mithraic descent on the short sides (symbol of resurrection and moral force), the charioteer (Platonic symbol of mind that guides the soul and dominates the passions), the unicorns that face each other (symbol of virginity) and the genes seated on leonine heads (strength). In the center, above the wreath, is the skull flanked by the lily and the palm, symbols of the purity and immortality of the soul. The symbolic complex alludes to the moral virtues of the young prelate, to victory over passions and asceticism.
The protagonists
Fra Angelico
Beato Angelico was one of Masaccio’s very first followers and in the mature phase he played a major role in Florentine art. His culture, derived from the Dominican Thomist tradition, led him to try to weld the Renaissance conquests (especially the use of perspective and realism) with values of the medieval world, such as the teaching function of art. In the fourth decade of the fourteenth century its production was oriented towards the “painting of light” influenced by Domenico Veneziano, with a rational use of light sources, which order and unify all the elements of the scene. Among the examples are the altarpiece of the Coronation of the Virgin of theLouvre and his predella, where the rhythms and the typically Gothic symmetries are actualized by a virtuosistic spatial composition with a shining color, richer with highlights and shadows, which gives volume and investigates materials with sensitivity. An interest in the surrender of the luminous phenomena brought the Angelico, in its mature phase, to abandon the indistinct and generic lighting in favor of a more attentive and rational rendering of lights and shadows, where each surface is identified by its “luster” specific.
Of fundamental importance for the Florentine art scene in the central decades of the century was the construction and decoration of the convent of San Marco, funded by Cosimo de ‘Medici, which took place between 1436 and the fifties of the fifteenth century. The Angelico and his staff were the protagonists of a fresco cycle that had to offer meditation and prayer cues to the monks. The scenes destined to the monks’ cells often show some Dominican saints who are an example, with their attitude, of the behavior to be taken in front of each episode: meditation, compassion, humility, prostration, etc. Among the frescoes executed for common areas of the convent the so-called Madonna delle Ombre stands out for its originality(dated to the first or last years of the decoration), painted in the narrow corridor on the first floor where the light comes from a small window at the bottom on the left; also in painting the angelic tried to use this same source of illumination, with the shadow of the painted capitals that looms over the plaster, while the saints on the right have even the reflection of the window in the eyes.
Domenico Veneziano
Domenico Veneziano was one of the first Florentine artists to assimilate some features of Nordic painting, particularly Flemish, which at the time enjoyed a particular vogue and collecting interest, for virtuosity that responded to the then dominant Varietas taste.
The artist’s education is uncertain (Venice, but more likely Florence itself), but he acquired all the suggestions then available in Italy. A first trial, commissioned by Piero de ‘Medici, was the round of the Adoration of the Magi (1438-1441), where the elegance and sumptuousness of the late Gothic brand added a concrete sense of space and volume, which minute details in the foreground up landscape outdoors in the background. The work had to please the client, in fact in the years immediately following Domenico was enlisted in the decoration of the church of Sant’Egidio, to a lost cycle of frescoes in which also participated Andrea del Castagno, Alesso Baldovinetti and the young Piero della Francesca, who was decisively influenced by Domenico’s luministic research. In these years, in fact, the Venetian was developing a painting accorded on the very clear tones of the colors, which seem to be impregnated with diaphanous light.
The masterpiece of his research is the Pala di Santa Lucia dei Magnoli (1445-1447), where he also demonstrated full familiarity with the rules of linear centric perspective, set in that case to three vanishing points. The dominant element of the painting is however the play of light that spiove from above defining the volumes of the characters and the architecture, and minimizes the linear suggestions: the profile of Saint Lucia, for example, stands out not in contour line, but thanks to the contrast of its light on the green background.
Filippo Lippi
Filippo Lippi was another painter who suffered many influences, including the Flemish one. After a stay in Padua he returned to Florence in 1437 and in that year he executed the Madonna of Tarquinia, where he used a Masacean plastic relief, a taste for the glimpse and for the gestures taken from Donatello real life and, above all, a new attention for the setting and the play of light. Some details, such as the card hanging at the base of the throne, are unequivocally Flemish.
Gradually, the art of Fra ‘Filippo turned towards a preponderant taste towards the line, as in the Pala Barbadori (1438), where the unity of the scene is given by the rhythmic progression of the contours. Light does not plastically throw off figures created by casting, as in Masaccio, but it seems to wrap the figures starting from the drawing, in a chiaroscuro that returns the relief in a more muffled way.
A crucial crux in Lippi’s career was the frescoes with the Stories of St. Stephen and St. John the Baptist in the Duomo of Prato (1452-1464). In these scenes human figures and their dynamism dominate the representation, with deep glimpses of the architecture, built with multiple vanishing points, which accentuate the sense of motion. The actions told are flowing and careful to restore the human truth of the characters.
Filippo Lippi had a profound influence on subsequent Florentine artists, placing the emphasis above all on the sophistication of the poses with a virtuosistic dominance of the outline. To this dominant current was opposed, in a minority, the one that sought harmony between clear colors and pure volumes, headed by Domenico Veneziano, which was especially successful in the Umbrian-Marche area.
Andrea del Castagno
Andrea del Castagno developed a rigorous painting, inspired by features that until then had been little followed by Masaccio and Donatello, such as the plastic chiaroscuro, accentuated and made more dramatic by the use of more contrasting colors, and the realism of physiognomies and attitudes, sometimes exaggerated. up to reach expressionistic outcomes.
A key work of his artistic career is the Cenacle of St. Apollonia in Florence, where on a solid perspective base he painted a solemn Last Supper, with figures intensely characterized and isolated from the clean outline, rendered in relief by a raw lateral lighting. The upper part of the cycle contains instead the Deposition, the Crucifixion and the Resurrection where, although very ruined, there are episodes of great emotional participation, which disprove the current image coined by Vasari of an artist incapable of tenderness, which colo bad colorire made the “somewhat cruel and harsh” works.
Even in later works, such as the Trinity and saints, he accentuated the expressive values with a spectacular glimpse of the cross and exasperated the realism of the figures. His lecture, hardly implemented in Florence, was the basis for the development of the Ferrara school.
Alberti architect
Important was the presence in the city of Leon Battista Alberti, who in the central decades worked mainly as an architect for the rich merchant Giovanni Rucellai, with whom he had a bond of friendship and intellectual affinity.
Alberti had a concept of architecture as a purely intellectual activity, which was exhausted in the creation of the project, without the need for a constant presence on the building site. For him it was a “practical philosophy”, where he put to good use a complex baggage of literary, philosophical and artistic experiences, in meditations that involved ethics and aesthetics.
From 1447 he set up Palazzo Rucellai, then the facade of Santa Maria Novella (1456) and finally built the temple of the Holy Sepulcher. These were always partial interventions, which Alberti itself belittled as “parietal decoration”. At Palazzo Rucellai, he unified several pre-existing buildings, focusing mainly on the facade, which was composed as a grid of horizontal and vertical elements within which the windows were inserted. With classical elements (portals, frames, orders superimposed in the capitals) fused elements of medieval tradition, such as the bugnato and the mullioned windows. The overall effect is varied and elegant, due to the vibrating of light between the light and smooth areas (pilasters) and the dark ones (openings, grooves of the rustication).
In Santa Maria Novella the façade had remained unfinished from 1365, reaching the first order of small arches, and with some elements already defined as the rose window. Alberti tried to integrate the old part with the new one, keeping the decoration in two- tone marble inlays and leaving the lower arches, inserting only a portal in the center (derived from the Pantheon), closed by the pillar-column motif on the sides. The upper area is separated from the lower area by a frame on which runs a square inlaid band, and a similar connecting function has the two side scrolls. The set is based on the principles of modular composition (based on the use of the squareand its multiples and submultiples), mitigated by some asymmetries (volutes or due to the material performers), such as the non-axis positioning of some vertical elements and the inlays of the attic.
Also in the temple of the Holy Sepulcher, a funeral monument by Giovanni Rucellai, Alberti used the marble inlays of the Florentine Romanesque tradition, creating a strictly classical structure with dimensions based on the golden ratio.
The essential difference between Brunelleschi and Alberti lies above all on the geometrical plane: where the former always modulated three-dimensional spaces, the second organized geometrically the two-dimensional surfaces. A common point is instead the enhancement of local tradition, drawing on the history of the individual building and rationalizing the existing elements, in order to obtain something extremely modern but rooted in the specific locale.
Donatello’s return
In the meantime, the gap between the artists of the first humanism and those of the new generation, linked to a more varied and ornate taste, was evident when Donatello returned from his ten-year stay in Padua in 1453. His heartbreaking Magdalene penitent (1453-1455) could not be more different from the coeval one of Desiderio da Settignano, much more composed.
Donatello found himself so isolated in his own city and received the last commission (the two pulpits for San Lorenzo) thanks to the direct intervention of Cosimo de ‘Medici, who was a long-standing admirer of his. In the Pulpit of the Passion (1460-1466) scenes like the Lamentation and Deposition show a refusal of the rules of perspective, order and harmony, under the banner of expressionism even more vivid than in the reliefs in Padua. The eye struggles to distinguish the protagonists in the palpitating mass of characters, while the composition cuts without scruple whole passages, like the robbers on the cross of which only the feet are seen, giving the effect of an infinitely indeterminate space, which amplifies,dramatic pathos of the scene.
The artist and the workshop
The fifteenth century saw, with special continuity in Florence, important progress in the development of the figure of the “artist”, according to a process already begun in the previous century. The artisans aspired to disengage from the figure of the manual worker, who produces objects on commission (“craftsman”), in favor of a more intellectual and creative conception of their work, which aspired to be part of the ” liberal arts “. A fundamental role was played by the theoretical writings of Leon Battista Alberti, who already in De picturahe portrayed the figure of an educated, literate, skilled artist who mastered all the phases of the work in person, from the idea to the translation in the artifact, taking care of all the details. The figure described by Alberti, however, represented an ideal goal, achieved not before the eighteenth century, bringing a whole series of consequences (such as the dichotomy between artist and craftsman, or the distinction between Major and Minor Arts) that in the fifteenth century were still unknown.
The basic cell of artistic production remained in fact the workshop, which was a place of production, commerce and training at the same time. The course of the master began in the workshop, where he entered very young (13, 14, 15 years..) and began to gain confidence with the trade in a practical way, starting from side tasks (such as the reorganization and cleaning of tools) and gradually taking on greater responsibility and weight in the creation and production of artifacts. A constant was the practice of drawing, regardless of the prevailing artistic discipline in which to specialize. The theoretical preparation was limited to a few basic notions of mathematics and geometry and was mostly left to the good will of the individual. Complex procedures, like the perspective, were learned empirically, without knowing the basic theoretical principles underlying it.
The shops dealt with two basic types of production:
A more demanding one, of works requested on commission contract, where the characteristics of the object, the materials, the execution times and the payment methods were established. Freedom was usually left on issues of composition and style.
A second type linked to current productions, easy to sell (wedding chests, birth desks, votive pictures, furnishings), which were produced directly without specific commission (in most cases). There was no lack serial productions, using molds and casts, such as Madonna in stucco, terra cotta raw or glazed.
In the second category of products were often taken, simplifying and vulgarizing them, the innovations of the most important and original works: even the most audaciously innovative solutions, after a certain period of time, underwent this process of assimilation and diffusion, becoming part of the repertoire common. The decantings and revisitations also between very different artistic disciplines were frequent and stimulating, such as the use as a motif of the goldsmith’s art of miniature reproductions of the lantern of Santa Maria del Fiore (for example in the Croce del Tesoro di San Giovanni, at Museo dell’Opera del Duomo di Firenze, and in numerous other reliquaries, candelabras and monstrances).
Source from Wikipedia