Humanism

Projekt 4 Exercise: Humanism

       1)      Did an interst in humanism mean a movement away from Christianity?

       2)      How was an interest in the classical world reflected in Renaissance art?

       3)       Was it possibly successfully to combine Christian and classical elements in painting, sculpture and    
              architecture?

 During Medieval times paintings, sculptures and reliefs that showed humans and saints in one setting the thing that was most conspicuous was that saints were always shown taller than humans, more colourful than humans, what is also very is that the background of paintings, reliefs that showed saints most of the time had a golden background. It all changed with the influence of humanism. Humans and saints matched in their height and the background changed from gold to a much simpler background. Artists wanted to tell stories in front of a landscape in the background as to make it look more realistic more naturalistic. The gap between otherworldy and reality was closed. What also was an important factor to think about was that in early Renaissance fresco became more and more important and they were painted on church walls. There are several reason why churches became wall paintings. First reason was that the persons who were unable to read would be able to understand the stories that were in the bible, secondly it was important for the church to transport the emotions of the story to other people and they thought that it was easier to do through the power of paintings and thirdly people would remember paintings better than stories they would hear.

Humanists recreated the values from ancient Greek and medieval Europe; they turned the medieval ideals of chivalry and nobility or the rang given by birth into individual prowess and individual abilities that each and everyone had to offer. The wanted to establish the importance of civic virtue and self-reliance.

In the early Renaissance Brunelleschi discovered linear perspective which made every painting and relief look more real, more natural.

1)      People interested in humanism weren’t anti-Christian but rather than giving thought about the hereafter they concentrated on the present. Of course some of the humanist’s ideals didn’t match with the Chrisitan ideals of obidient Christians, worshippers and church people and the expressing of individual perception, individual opinions about things that were going on in the world wouldn’t have been a supporting act for the church. Humanism can be understood as a movement away from Christianity but it doesn’t necessary have to be a movement away from it; it was rather a movement of self consciousness and awareness of the own person and being connecting to the outer world.

2)      In ancient Rome the movement of naturalism and realism started and it was to be carried on during the Renaissance throughout new techniques of showing persepective and using different colours. What was still carried on from ancient Greek and Roman times was the idealisation of the body, still shown nude very often and the use of ancient architectural motives in the background. The believe of the classical world that miracles could happen also carried through Renaissance and humanism and it was still often portrayed in painting, sculpture and architectural decorations as ornaments and sculptures.


3)      It was possible for example in the case of St. Sebastian – a painting that shows the condemned to be shot to death with arrows Saint, strapped to a classical column, showing gods and Greek letters carved into the stone of the column. In architecture columns and arches only developed further from ancient times, they turned churches into majestic buildings full of frescos telling stories from the bible, sculptures of Saints (still with idealised body and face) and use of reliefs over the entrance.

References:

Web pages:

http://faculty.uml.edu/CulturalStudies/Italian_Renaissance/8_9.htm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renaissance_humanism

Bibliography:

Honour&Fleming, A World History of Art, Lauren King Publishing, London, 2009 

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Giotto di Bondone:

I also got very interested in learning more about the artist Giotto when I found a book about him in my local library. He was one of the first to draw figures as they were individuals with imperfections; he separated himself from the ideal of a perfect human body and face and tried to stay true to reality when he painted. He was one of the first to make huge wall paintings in great churches, telling the stories from the bible, working with the newest material called tempera (it would dry very quick so there was a lot of work to be done before they could actually start painting, drawings and sketching on walls show that he put a lot of work in the art of fresco.

Image from http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/c/ca/Giotto_Ognissanti_Madonna.jpg/389px-Giotto_Ognissanti_Madonna.jpg (Accessed 14 Dec 2011)

                                                                          

I was very fortunate and have been able to visit the Galleria degli Uffizi twice and I’ve seen this image in its original form and I remember being very fascinated with the details of the throne, all the faces and how the seemingly so similar looking angels and saints surrounding Mary and child don’t look that similar when you take a closer look. He developed paintings that were more emotional and naturalistic more accessible to everybody that’s why he painted the stories of the bible in churches.

References:

Web pages:

http://www.encyclopedia.com/topic/Giotto.aspx

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giotto_di_Bondone

Bibliography:

Anne Mueller von der Hagen, Meister der Italienischen Kunst –Giotto, Könemann Verlagsgesellschaft mbH, Köln, 1998 

Finished reading about "Ancient Greek"

Yesterday I finished reading about "The Greek and their Neighbours" and I am now excited to continue reading about the Romans. I already learned that a lot of Roman art was directly influenced by the Greek and I know that Romans are going to take over parts of Greek in 2nd century BC. So I am very eager to know what else there was....

I also watched the first episode of "Art in the Western World" and I have to say that I tought it was very informative - it was kind of a bundled version of the things that I have read over the past few days.

Research: Greek art periods + architecture orders

After reading a lot about ancient Greek art I couldn’t fall asleep and thought more about the different periods within ancient Greek art and for me to understand better I felt like I needed some kind of organised system to document the most important facts about those periods so I came up with the idea to make a table to bring some structure in my new knowledge.

Period	Sculpture	Architecture	Relief
Geometric (1000 BC – no real knowledge about this period because of the war when most art got destroyed)	-	-	-
Archaic (7th – 5th century BC)	Attributes: standing male nude: head held high, eyes to front, arms hanging down the sides, hands forming fists, one leg a little in front of the other, athletic figure, showing strength in muscles, hard knee cap, round thighs, facial expressions: witty, knowledge, slight smile, impassive, pert (Example: Kouros c. 570 BC); standing clothed female (Example: Kore c. 510 BC); seated female		“black-figure”: Most of the time they showed silhouettes picked with red lines, eyes always had to be shown frontally even when figure was portrait from profile “red-figure”: Showing more than silhouettes because painting on red with black, making characters visible, more variety (Example: Exekias 540 – 530 BC)
Classical (5th – 4th century BC)	Attributes: poses became naturalistic, showing some kind of movement, more “action”, artists started to explore, face seems expressionless, clear-cut outline, typical Greek profile (Example: Charioteer c. 478 – 474 BC)	Parthenon Attributes: “bold in outline, delicate in detail, majestically imposing” (World of Art History, 2009), show off for wealth and power, Doric style for columns (e.g. practical style of stone on stone without particular details in design), optical refinements	Parthenon frieze (447-432 BC) Attributes: showing mainly war scenes
Hellenistic (4th – 1st century BC)	Attributes: sculptures started looking more real, if cloth was involved it looked very real, artists started changing reproducing the human form into translating the human form as an ideal form to a sculpture, more detailed than before + first female nude of goddess Aphrodite	Theater Epidaurus begun c. 350 BC Attributes: Pure geometric form, simple, regularised earliest type of theatre – but columns became more and more detailed (see different architecture styles page 5)

Web pages:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Art_in_ancient_Greece

Different architecture orders during Ancient Greek architecture

Doric order:

-          Pretty simple

-          Stone architecture – blocks resting on each other without mortal

-          Following the natural shape of a tree trunk (origin in wooden architecture)

Image from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:DoricParthenon.jpg (Accessed 3 Dec 2011)

Ionic order:

-          Main part as simple as Doric order (origin in wooden architecture)

-          Decorated with volutes or ornaments

 Image from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Illustrerad_Verldshistoria_band_I_Ill_179.png  (Accessed 3 Dec 2011)

          
Corinthian Order:

-          Origin not in wooden architecture

-          Came from Ionic order in mid 5th century BC

-          Capital is formed like a large krater

-          Capital was ornamented with double row of leaves, roses growing out of them

Image from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Illustrerad_Verldshistoria_band_I_Ill_180.png (Accessed 3 Dec 2011) 

                                    

Web pages:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archaic_Greece#Architecture

Today I was also looking at some images that I could use for my first image to annotate and I visited the Bridgeman Education Library for the first time and thought it was a great source for all kinds of art – I love it! I searched for Greek art and I found a lot of sculptures that I would love to annotate – now I just have to decide which one I like – I am really interested in female sculptures so I am probably going to choose a female sculpture.  I am also planning my visit to a classical building. I looked for a neo-classical building online around the place I live and it was very hard to find one – most of them are in Munich or Berlin which is about 6-7 hours drive for me so I looked for something closer to my home and I found one building which is very neo-classical and I am excited to go there and look at all the classical architecture features. There isn’t a lot of information to fin about that place. It’s called “Wandelhalle” and it is located in a city about an hour from here. I don’t think I can go inside but I hope that I will get a lot from it anyway with just looking and analysing it from the outside – there are lots of pictures of the inside to find on the internet. I hope the weather is going to be better soon – so I can go and visit my first building.