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Art Appreciation
The Arts of Byzantium and Islam: Paintings, Mosaics, and Manuscript Illumination
General Characteristics:
1. The content of Byzantine art focuses on human figures. The figures reveal three main elements (a) Holy Figures
[Christ, the Virgin Mary, the saints, the apostles with bishops and angels portrayed in their company] (b) the
Emperor [believed to be divinely sanctioned by God] (c) the Classical Heritage [images of cherubs, mythological
heroes, gods and goddesses, and personification of virtues].
Byzantine two-dimensional art increasingly reflected a consciously derived spirituality.
2. Fundamental to the visual art of the Eastern Empire is the idea that art can be used to interpret as well as to
represent its subject matter.
3. Byzantine art was conservative, and for most part, anonymous and impersonal.
The Virgin Hodegetria and the Man of Sorrows
*Icon of the Virgin Hodegetria, last quarter of 12th century, tempera and silver on
wood, Kastoria, Byzantine Museum
The double-sided icon at left depicts two of the most influential images in Byzantine
art. On the front, the Virgin Hodegetria (she who points the way) gestures toward
the Christ child as the path to salvation.
*The image derives ultimately from a venerated model that was the subject of legend:
it was believed to have been painted from life by Saint Luke and brought to
Constantinople from Jerusalem in the fifth century. Widely copied, it is one of the most
common types of images of the Virgin.

*Ostentation of the Imperial court influenced artistic style; artists depict Christ and the saints as frozen in immobile
poses and garbed in regal purples.
*The characteristic of abstraction and its focus on spirituality or what was referred to as Byzantine style took shape in
5th and 6th century.
*Throughout the 7th century, classicism and decorative abstraction intermingled freely.
*By the 11th century, Byzantine wall painting and mosaics had developed a hierarchical formula with are reduced
emphasis on narrative. The church represented the kingdom of God, and as one moves up the hierarchy, one encounters
figures ranging from human to the divine. Placement of figures in the composition depended upon religious, not spatial,
relationships.
*In 12th and 13th century art, the approach intensified, detailed with architectural backdrops, flowing garments, and
elongated but dynamic figures.
*The style in which these mosaics and frescoes were executed reflected their function as static, symbolic images of the
divine and the Absolute.
*The 14th century produced small-scale, crowded works with highly narrative space confused by irrational perspective,
and distorted figures with small heads and feet. This creates an effect of intense spirituality.
HIERATIC STYLE
*Hieratic which mean holy or sacred emerged, consisting of formal, almost rigid images.
*It inspired reverence and meditation than to represent real life.
*The intent of the hieratic style is to create social and spiritual distinction and some distance between the viewer and
the image.

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*Byzantine medieval art began with mosaics decorating the walls and domes of churches, as well fresco wall-paintings.
So beautiful was the effect of these mosaics that the form was taken up in Italy, especially in Rome and Ravenna.
*A less public art form in Constantinople, was the icon (from the Greek word 'eikon' meaning 'image') - the holy
image panel-paintings which were developed in the monasteries of the eastern church, using encaustic wax paint on
portable wooden panels.
*The greatest collection of this type of early Biblical art is in the monastery of St Catherine in Sinai, founded in the 6th
century by the Emperor Justinian.
*The church of the Holy Trinity at Sopocani in Serbia is adorned with an important painting
ensemble, which is considered as the ultimate creation of the Byzantine painting of the 13th
century, but also as one of the artistic masterpieces of the world.
*The practice of including donors or founders of a church among the figures represented in its
frescoes was widespread during the Late Byzantine period and it is typical in Serbian
monuments.
*The wall paintings at Sopocani are, according to some scholars, the climactic point of the
stylistic tendency which is inspired by the Classical tradition and is known as the first
Palaiologan style.
*Characteristics features of this style are the plastic and monumental rendering of the figures
and composition. The sense of three-dimensional space, the modelling of the faces, achieved
only with colour and without the use of lines, the forms, the robust figures treading
realistically on the pictorial ground, the warm colours of the garments, which envelop the forms in an ethereal way, are
some of the artistic features of this important monumental ensemble.
MOSAIC
*By the 13th century, mosaics had returned to more naturalistic depictions, but they did not lose the clear sense of the
spiritual apparent.
*Mosaic is the decorative art of creating pictures and patterns on a surface by setting small coloured pieces of glass,
marble or other materials in a bed of cement, plaster or adhesive.
*Employed as a form of interior or exterior decoration, and originally developed in ancient Greece, mosaics were
developed extensively by Roman craftsmen, mostly in the form of pavements.
*Later, during the era of Byzantine art, artists specialized in creating mosaic designs for walls, and were renowned for
their shimmering masterpieces of gold and multi-coloured glass.
*One of the earliest examples of two-dimensional art in the mosaic floor can be found in the Imperial palace of
Constantinople. The mosaics depict figures, buildings, and scenes, unconnected with each other, presented against a
white background. The grandeur and elegance of these works reveal Greek classical influence.
The most celebrated of the
12th century Byzantine mosaics
in the Hagia Sophia in
Constantinople - the picture
of Christ Pantocrator in the
upper southern gallery.

Mosaic of the Byzantine

Emperor Justinian the
Great, from the San Vitale
Cathedral in Ravenna

Medieval Byzantine
mosaics in Saint Marks
Basilica in Venice, Italy

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MANUSCRIPT ILLUMINATION
* Illuminated manuscripts are hand-written books that had been decorated with gold or silver, brilliant colours, or
elaborate designs or miniature pictures.
*The term illumination originally denoted the embellishment of the text of handwritten books with gold or, more
rarely, silver, giving the impression that the page had been literally illuminated.
*The Byzantine-influenced Garima Gospels - world's most ancient illuminated gospel manuscript
- from Ethiopia.
*The Ethiopian Garima Gospels - both housed in Ethiopia's Abba Garima Monastery - are the
oldest known illuminated manuscripts in existence. Consisting of two separate 10-inch-thick
books - Garima 2 (the older text) and Garima 1 (the younger text) - written on goat skin and
decorated with colourful illustrations.
(Figure is from Garima 1)

ISLAM PAINTING
*Theoretically, Islam prohibits depiction of all human and animal figures, but in reality, images appear widespread: the
only prohibition seems to have been on those objects intended for public display.
*The Arabs obtained manuscripts from Byzantium, and had great interest in Greek science.
*Typical of the illustration drawn in Arab manuscripts, a pen and ink sketch.
*In very simple line, the artist captures human character, thus showing a strong observational ability. The witty flavour
of the drawing goes far beyond mere illustration.
*In the 14th century, painting that depicted narratives about Muhammad became quite common.
*Chinese influences work strongly in an Islamic manuscript illustration from the 16 th century.
*Prophet Muhammad pictured in an Islamic manuscript. It comes from a royal miniature made to illustrate a copy of the
poems of the celebrated Persian Nizami, and depicts the Prophet's ascension to heaven on the horse Buraq.
Islam disapproves of human or animal representation in a religious context. Qur'ans are never illustrated; the ultimate
artistic expression is to be found in sacred calligraphy and
illumination, such as in the magnificent 'carpet pages' of the
royal Qur'ans.
*However, the image of the Prophet's ascension to heaven is
often depicted in religious Islamic painting, particularly in Persian
manuscripts. It is also often found in secular literature, as in this
manuscript of the poems of the celebrated Persian poet Nizami.
(The Ascension of Muhammad: Persian Manuscript)
*According to tradition, the face of the Prophet Muhammad has been whitened out.
*This miniature depicts the ascent to heaven of the Prophet Muhammad on the flying horse Buraq, guided by the
archangel Gabriel, with an escort of angels.
THE EARLY MIDDLE AGES
*Early Christian painting adopted local styles. The tomb paintings in the catacombs of Rome, for example took Roman
style but incorporated Christian symbolism.
*Painting served as a tangible expression of faith. Later, it made the rites of the church more vivid. Its final role depicted
and recorded Christian history and tradition.
*Painting became once again a private art, more an intellectual pursuit than an inspiration to the faithful. A new and
exquisite form of two-dimensional art emerged, not on canvases or church walls, but on the beautifully illustrated pages
of scholarly Church manuscripts.
*Rolls of papyrus had been replaced by more convenient and durable parchment pages bound together between hard,
protective covers known as codex. Scrolls continued to be used for special occasions throughout the middle ages,
consisted of stitch parchment.
*The only illustrated manuscript of the New Testament in Latin to survive from this early period, a copy of the Gospels,
probably came to England in 597 with St. Augustine, the first Archbishop of Canterbury.

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Lindesfarne Gospels, St. Luke, portrait
*Lukes incipit page is in marked contrast to his straightforward portrait page. Here
Eadfrith seats the curly-haired, bearded evangelist on a red-cushioned stool against an
unornamented background. Luke holds a quill in his right hand, poised to write words on a
scroll unfurling from his lap. His feet hover above a tray supported by red legs. He wears a
purple robe streaked with red, one that we can easily imagine on a late fourth or fifth
century Roman philosopher. The gold halo behind Lukes head indicates his divinity. Above
his halo flies a blue-winged calf, its two eyes turned toward the viewer with its body in
profile. The bovine clasps a green parallelogram between two forelegs, a reference to the
Gospel.
HIGH MIDDLE AGES
*The term Gothic arose in the 16th century and described a style of buildings then considered to have descended from
the Goths: tribes living in northern Europe during the early Middle ages.
*The Gothic style began in the area of France around Paris, called the Ile de France, and spread outward variously.
*Gothic painters and illuminators had not mastered perspective, and their compositions do not exhibit the spatial
rationality of later works. They have more or less broken free from the frozen two-dimensionality of earlier styles.
*Gothic style also exhibits spirituality, lyricism, and a new sense of individuality.
*Manuscript illuminators typically stylized body parts such as hands and heads, and used decorous treatment of fabric
juxtaposed against linear items such as furniture, leaving the work with a sense of tension.
*Figures seem to have space to move and do not crowd their borders.
(Madonna Enthroned, by Cimabue: Tempera on Wood)@Uffizi Gallery Florence, Italy
*Cimabue was the nickname of painter, Cenni de Peppi and meant ox head.
*The picture originally stood on the high altar of Santa Trinit church in Florence. The
iconography is frequent in medieval painting and represents the Madonna enthroned
with Child and angels, a pattern commonly said Maest as shows the Virgin as Queen of
Paradise. In the lower part are four biblical figures, symbolizing foundations of Christ's
kingdom: the prophets Jeremiah and Isaiah under lateral arches, Abraham and King David
under the chair of the throne.
*There is an unprecedented tension in the profiles and in the attempt to create spatial
depth, which is rendered by superimposing the figures and in the concave structure at the
base of the throne behind the figures of the prophets.
*The architectural structure of the throne becomes a sort of robust spatial scheme which
creates a three-dimensional effect, while the edges of the painting seem to compress and
hold in the bodies.
(Madonna Enthroned by Giotto; Tempera on Panel)@Uffizi Gallery Florence, Italy
*This painting of Mary holding Christ was done by Giotto, a revolutionary artist that
contributed much to the art style of the Proto-Renaissance.
*Giotto displaced the Byzantine style in Italian painting, and like many renaissance painters,
attempted to revive the naturalistic elements of the classical style. In this particular
painting, there are many dimensions, floors, and levels.
*People overlap, providing a sense of depth in the painting, and shadows are cast in a
particular way to make certain portions seem closer to the viewer than others, such as the
cloth draping over the various figures that are shown.
*Giotto was revolutionary for his time because of his emphasis on viewing something, He
recognized that the world must be observed before it can be analyzed and understood,
something he did often for his paintings, to ensure a naturalistic painting.

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(Duccio, Madonna Enthroned: Tempera on Panel) @ Museo dell Opera Siena, Italy
*The front depicts the Madonna enthroned in majesty with saints and angels. In the
predella, spandrels, and pinnacles are scenes from the life of the Virgin and portraits of the
Prophets.
*It is splendid with gold leaf and rich colors. The design of the front is conventional, with the
Madonna enthroned, flanked by regular ranks of saints and angels.
*Duccio did, however, substitute a solid blue mantle for the gold-feathered mantle of the
typical Byzantine Madonna and painted a marble Cosmatesque throne in place of the
Byzantine wooden throne.
*In the narrative scenes on both front and back, Duccio evolved a remarkably accurate
figure-setting relationship which created convincing environments for the figures to move
through.
(Pietro Lorenzetti, The Birth of the Virgin:Panel Painting)@ Siena Italy
*Birth of

the Virgin was commissioned for the Siena Cathedral and completed in 1342 by Pietro
Lorenzetti.
*This tempera on panel painting, like many Sienese paintings, celebrates the Virgin, the patron
saint of Siena.
*Around this time, a majority of Sienese paintings honored the Madonna with depictions of her
life. Scenes of the Nativity of Mary, or Birth of the Virgin, are no exception.
*Birth of the Virgin was the third painting in a series completed for the Siena Cathedral, which
started with Duccio di Buonisegna's Maest and included Simone Martini's Annunciation
THE NEW RENAISSANCE
The Masaccian Heritage
*While the content of paintings might treat religious themes, the manner of expression turned toward earthly
observation and the application of mechanical perspective to the field of the painting changed the ethereal tone of
medieval works to a new reality that appeared as things appear in real life.
*The champion of this new style of painting is Tommaso di Giovanni better known as Masaccio, who joined the
painters guild in Florence in 1422.
*The hallmark of Masaccios invention and development of a new style lies in the way he employs deep space and
rational foreshortening or perspective in his figures.
*The most famous of the frescoes, The Tribute Money, makes full use of the new discovery of linear perspective, as
rounded figures move freely in unencumbered deep space. It employs continuous narration, where series of events
unfolds across a single period. It depicts a New Testament story from Matthew. The figures in this fresco appear like
clothed nudes dressed in fabric which appears like real cloth.
*Masaccios works have a gravity and monumentality that make them larger than life size. The use of deep perspective,
plasticity, and modelling to create dramatic contrast gives solidity to the figures and unifies the paintings. Atmospheric
perspective enhances the deep spatial naturalism. Figures appear strong, detailed, and very human.
*FRA ANGELICO (Guido di Pietro) known as the angelic painter.
*His most popular and best known work is the Anununciation. It was created as the altarpiece for San Domenico,
Cortona, Italy. A portico of slender Corinthian columns provides the setting as the angel comes to Mary. The delicacy of
the columns and the simplicity of the capital details lend delicacy and classical appropriateness to the simple faith and
obedience of the Virgin.

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Lyricism
*Outward reality loses favor to more abstract values, and classical intellect sublimates into a more emotional
introspection.
*This tradition emerges in the paintings of Sandro Boticelli. The linear quality of his La Primavera or Spring suggests
an artist apparently unconcerned with deep space or subtle plasticity in light and shade. Instead, the forms emerge
through outline. The composition moves gently across the picture, through a combination of gently undulating curved
lines, with focal areas in each grouping. Mercury, the three Graces, Venus, Flora, Spring, and Zephyruseach part of this
human, mythical composition carries its own emotion: contemplation, sadness, or happiness. The subject matter seems
classical and non-Christian, but in fact, the painting uses allegory, to equate Venus with the Virgin Mary.
*Andrea Mantegna illustrates the early Renaissance period in north Italy. St. James led to Execution presents us with a
breathtaking example of early Italian Renaissance monumentalism. The forces of scale, chiaroscuro (the use of highlight
and shadow to create dimensionality), perspective, detail, unity, and drama emerge strongly.
*Much of the effect of this work comes from the artists placement of the horizontal linethe assumed eye level of the
viewerbelow the lower border of the painting.
THE HIGH RENAISSANCE AND MANNERISM
*The time from around 1495 until around 1520, primarily in Rome and characterized by the works of Michelangelo,
Raphael, and Leonardo da Vinci.
*High Renaissance painting sought a universal ideal achieved through impressive themes and styles.
*Figures emerged as types again, rather than individualsgodlike human beings in the Greek classical tradition.
*They tried to emulate rather than to imitate. High Renaissance art idealizes all forms and delights in composition; it
shows stability without immobility, variety without confusion, and definition without dullness.
*Artists carefully observed how the ancients borrowed motifs from nature, and then set out to develop a system of
mathematically defined proportion and composition beauty emanating from a harmony of parts.
LEONARDO DA VINCI
*His work has an ethereal quality which he achieved by delicately blending light and shadow in a technique called
sfumato (smoky).
*His figures hover between reality and illusion as form disappears into another, with only
the highlighted portions emerging. In THE MADONNA OF THE ROCKS, he interprets the
doctrine of the Immaculate Conception, which proposed that Mary remained pure, freed
from original sin in order to be a worthy vessel for the Incarnation of Christ.
The Virgin of the Rocks (sometimes The Madonna of the Rocks) is the name used for two
Leonardo da Vinci's paintings, of the same subject, and of a composition which is
identical except for two significant details.
The Virgin of the Rocks which usually hangs in the Louvre is considered by most art
historians to be the earlier of the two and date from around 1483-1486. It is about 8 cm
(3 in) taller than the London version. The first certain record of this picture is in 1625,
when it was in the French royal collection. It is generally accepted that this painting was
produced to fulfil a commission of 1483 in Milan. This painting is regarded as a perfect
example of Leonardo's "sfumato" technique.
*One painting hangs in the Louvre, Paris, and the other in the National Gallery, London. Both
paintings show the Madonna and Christ Child with the infant John the Baptist and an angel, in
a
rocky setting which gives the paintings their usual name. The significant compositional
differences are in the gaze and right hand of the angel. There are many minor ways in which
the works differ, including the colours, the lighting, the flora, and the way in which sfumato
has been used.

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The Last Supper - by Leonardo Da Vinci

*The Last Supper is a mural painting painted from 1495
to 1498 on the back wall of the dining hall at the
Dominican convent of Sta Maria delle Grazie in Italy.
*The Last Supper is Leonardo's visual interpretation of
an event chronicled in all four of the Gospels (books in
the Christian New Testament). The evening before
Christ was betrayed by one of his disciples, he gathered
them together to eat, tell them he knew what was
coming and wash their feet (a gesture symbolizing that all were equal under the eyes of the Lord). As they ate and drank
together, Christ gave the disciples explicit instructions on how to eat and drink in the future, in remembrance of him. It
was the first celebration of the Eucharist, a ritual still performed.
*The painting was made using experimental pigments directly on the dry plaster wall and unlike frescos, where the
pigments are mixed with the wet plaster, it has not stood the test of time well. Even before it was finished there were
problems with the paint flaking from the wall and Leonardo had to repair it. Over the years it has crumbled, been
vandalized bombed and restored. Today we are probably looking at very little of the original.
*The sharp angling of the walls within the picture, which lead back to the seemingly distant back wall of the room and
the windows that show the hills and sky beyond. The type of day shown through these windows adds to the feeling of
serenity that rests in the centre of the piece, around the figure of Christ.
Portrait of Mona Lisa, also known as La Gioconda, the wife of Francesco del Giocondo; this
painting is painted as oil on wood. The original painting size is77 x 53 cm (30 x 20 7/8 in) and is
owned by by the Government of France and is on the wall in the Louvre in Paris, France.
This figure of a woman, dressed in the Florentine fashion of her day and seated in a visionary,
mountainous landscape, is a remarkable instance of Leonardo's sfumato technique of soft,
heavily shaded modelling. The Mona Lisa's enigmatic expression, which seems both alluring and
aloof, has given the portrait universal fame.
It is a visual representation of the idea of happiness suggested by the word "gioconda" in Italian.
Leonardo made this notion of happiness the central motif of the portrait: it is this notion which
makes the work such an ideal. The nature of the landscape also plays a role. The middle
distance, on the same level as the sitter's chest, is in warm colors. Men live in this space: there is a winding road and a
bridge. This space represents the transition between the space of the sitter and the far distance, where the landscape
becomes a wild and uninhabited space of rocks and water which stretches to the horizon, which Leonardo has cleverly
drawn at the level of the sitter's eyes.
The painting was among the first portraits to depict the sitter before an imaginary landscape and Leonardo was one of
the first painters to use aerial perspective. The enigmatic woman is portrayed seated in what appears to be an open
loggia with dark pillar bases on either side. Behind her a vast landscape recedes to icy mountains. Winding paths and a
distant bridge give only the slightest indications of human presence. The sensuous curves of the woman's hair and
clothing, created through sfumato, are echoed in the undulating imaginary valleys and rivers behind her. The blurred
outlines, graceful figure, dramatic contrasts of light and dark, and overall feeling of calm are characteristic of da Vinci's
style.

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MICHELANGELO
*Michelangelo Buonarroti was a man of great faith. He showed little interest in anything other than human form.
*His paintings and frescoes were largely taken from mythological and classical sources works. He managed to combine
his high level of technical competence and his rich artistic imagination to produce the perfect High-Renaissance blend of
aesthetic harmony and anatomical accuracy in his works.
SISTINE CHAPEL CEILING (Vatican, Rome)
*When Michelangelo actually started painting the Ceiling at the east end,
probably in the early months of 1509, the implications of the structure had
not been entirely established in his mind. The first section still contains sharp
discrepancies in scale between the large figures outside the central scenes
and the smaller figures that crowd within them. Furthermore, there is at the
start little sense of unity of design among the various components of the
entire structure.
*As he proceeded, however, he was able to integrate the elements so closely,
and move the observer's eye from one to the other so logically.
*All of the last five prophets and sibyls are so richly integrated with their
surrounding elements in this manner that it is artificial to detach them. Michelangelo intended all the forces to work
together, like those in the flying buttresses, transverse, diagonal, and wall ribs that support the vault of a Gothic
cathedral.
*Color throughout is calculated to enhance the total sense of structure. While the Ceiling is dominated by the soft gray
and whitish tones of the simulated marble and the gray-blue of the sky, it is punctuated by sharper accents of
sometimes extremely vivid color, chiefly the bright garments of the prophets and sibyls and the figures in the corner
spandrels, but also the warm flesh colors of the nudes, sometimes pale, sometimes deeply tanned, the brownish bronze
of the medallions, the gold-bronze of the nudes between the thrones, and the soft lilac of their background, echoed in
the lilac and gray-violet tones in the Lord's mantle.
*Throughout the entire Ceiling, among all the figures which are imagined to exist in the actual space of the room outside
the frames - the seated nudes, the prophets and sibyls, and their attendant figures - the lighting is unified. It comes not
from the windows of the Chapel, as would have been customary in the illusionistic wall paintings of the fifteenth
century, but from the direction of the altar, toward which, in the vast, celestial world of the Ceiling, all forms and forces,
symbols and events, are directed.
THE LAST JUDGEMENT
The gloom and terror of The Last Judgment come as a tremendous shock after
the beauty of the Sistine Ceiling. The change is symptomatic of the
transformation which had come over Rome itself after the dreadful events of the
Sack of Rome in 1527 and its aftermath, from which the center of Christendom
did not recover for many years.
*The space directly above the altar is reserved for the mouth of Hell, into which
the celebrant of the Mass frequently could look as he performed the sacred
ritual. To the left of Hell Mouth extends what little of earth has not yet been
dissolved, and from its barren ground, reminiscent of the earth on which Adam
lies in the Creation of Adam, the dead crawl out of their graves.
*Throughout the Last Judgment, the dominant color is that of human flesh
against the slaty blue sky, with only a few touches of brilliant drapery to echo
faintly the splendors of the Sistine Ceiling. The dead rising from their graves still
preserve the colors of the earth - dun, ocher, drab. A few patches of red appear in the angels' cloaks. The whole section,
moreover, has darkened considerably from the smoke of the candles at the altar.

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RAPHAEL
*Raphael Sanzio is generally regarded as the third painter in the High Renaissance triumvirate.
* His work is admired for its clarity of form and ease of composition and for its visual achievement of the Neoplatonic
ideal of human grandeur. Together with Michelangelo and Leonardo da Vinci, he forms the traditional trinity of great
masters of that period. Raphael was enormously productive, running an unusually large workshop, and despite his death
at 37, a large body of his work remains.
*Raphael was one of the finest draftsmen in the history of Western art, and used drawings extensively to plan his
compositions.
The Alba Madonna (Originally Oil on Panel)
*On the top of the painting is the clear sky with some dots of clouds.
The pastoral physical world is used as the setting with mountains and
green fields.
*In the middle of the painting there are three human images of a
lady, a naked child on the lap of the lady as well as another elder child
with furry clothes on the ground. Both of the children are fixing the
cross but the look of all of them is very mysterious.
*Along with the pastoral elements there are also petals of flowers
that are in the front part of the painting.
*The Alba Madonna is in the Italian language which means My Lady in
English language.
*The Italian Renaissance painter Raphael generally paints on the
subject matter of lost human world and the beautiful world of nature.
*In this painting the lady is Mary, the mother of Jesus Christ and the children are Jesus and John.
*Jesus is the younger child who is necked and sitting on the lap of the mother while John is out of the lap
*The pastoral setting used in the painting with clear sky and the silent natural world ideally support the seriousness of
the situation. The nakedness of the child not only suggests his innocence but also tells the reality of the human world.
*The painting has the contrast between experience and innocence, contrast of colors, contrast between nature and
human as well as nakedness and artificial clothing.
THE DELIVERANCE OF SAINT PETER
In 1514, Raphael was commissioned to make a series of frescoes for Stanza di
Eliodoro. One of these paintings was the Deliverance of Saint Peter.
This fresco contains three parts with the one soldier waking his comrade on the left,
an angel guiding the saint on his way out of prison, and Saint Peter being wo ken by
an angel at the center.
The painting is said to be significant since this artwork especially the middle one was
one of the first paintings to use the elements of lighting in creating and emphasizing
the divinity of the figure, in this case, an angel.
THE HIGH RENAISSANCE IN VENICE
*Tiziano Vecellio (ca. 14881576), known as Titian, was the greatest Venetian artist of the sixteenth century, eventually
gaining international fame. Titian is known above all for his remarkable use of color; his painterly approach was highly
influential well into the seventeenth century. Titian contributed to all of the major areas of Renaissance art, painting
altarpieces, portraits, mythologies, and pastoral landscapes with figures.

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Early Works
Titian trained under two other seminal Venetian artists, Giovanni Bellini and Giorgione. The latter, with whom Titian also
collaborated, was influential for his tonal approach to painting and for his landscape style, which was atmospheric and
evocative. The two artists worked in such a similar manner that the line between them has been hard to fix: this is true
especially for some pastoral landscapes, in which the beauty of nature is celebrated alongside love and music.
Titian and Altarpiece Painting
Titians first major public commission in Venice, the Assumption of the Virgin for the high altar of Santa Maria Gloriosa
dei Frari (151618), established his place as the leading painter of the city. It broke with tradition as well in the heroic
scale of the figures and the use of bold color. The Assumption can be seen from the far end of the church, drawing the
eye to the sacred space of the altar. Titian went on to paint other influential altarpieces, above all the Death of Saint
Peter Martyr for the Church of SS. Giovanni e Paolo (destroyed by fire in the nineteenth century), which Vasari thought
the artists greatest work.
MANNERISM
*A movement in art characterized by a mannered or affected appearance of subjects.
*Mannerist paintings seem formal and inward-looking. Their oddly proportional forms, icy stares, and subjective
viewpoint make them puzzling yet intriguing.
*Mannerism has an intellectual component that distorts reality, alters space, and makes often obscure cultural allusions.
*Mannerism originated as a reaction to the harmonious classicism and the idealized naturalism of High
Renaissance art as practiced by Leonardo, Michelangelo, and Raphael in the first two decades of the 16th century.
*In the portrayal of the human nude, the standards of formal complexity had been set by Michelangelo, and the norm of
idealized beauty by Raphael. But in the work of these artists Mannerist successors, an obsession with style and
technique in figural composition often outweighed the importance and meaning of the subject matter.
*The highest value was instead placed upon the apparently effortless solution of intricate artistic problems, such as the
portrayal of the nude in complex and artificial poses.
*Mannerist artists evolved a style that is characterized by artificiality and artiness, by a thoroughly self-conscious
cultivation of elegance and technical facility, and by a sophisticated indulgence in the bizarre.
*The figures in Mannerist works frequently have graceful but queerly elongated limbs, small heads, and stylized facial
features, while their poses seem difficult or contrived.
*Mannerists sought a continuous refinement of form and concept, pushing exaggeration and contrast to great limits.
*The results included strange and constricting spatial relationships, jarring juxtapositions of intense and unnatural
colours, an emphasis on abnormalities of scale, a sometimes totally irrational mix of classical motifs and other visual
references to the antique, and inventive and grotesque pictorial fantasies.
Madonna with the Long Neck: Oil on Canvass
Parmigianino, by name of Girolamo Francesco Maria Mazzola, is an Italian painter who was one
of the first artists to develop the elegant and sophisticated version of Mannerist style that
became a formative influence on the post-High Renaissance generation.
*In Madonna with the Long Neck, there was a quality of elongation. The line, color, and
proportions of the painting have an exotic, ethereal, and almost other-worldly appearance,
especially the Christ child.
*Simplicity of composition has been replaced by myriad of detail so complex that every square
inch of the painting reveals something intriguing and captivating.
Bronzinos Portrait of a Young Man: Oil on Wood
*Bronzino (Agnolo di Cosimo di Mariano) was a Florentine painter of the Mannerist period who
lived from 1503-1572.
*The Portrait of a Young Man hangs in New Yorks Metropolitan Museum of Art and your
correspondent visits this picture regularly. The Young Man of the portrait holds an open book.

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RENAISSANCE & REFORMATION IN THE NORTH
Flanders
*Flemish painting of the 15th century was revolutionary.
*Flemish painters achieved pictorial naturalism through linear and aerial perspective. They controlled line, form, and
color, painstakingly to create subtle, varied three dimensional representations.
*The versatile properties of oil paints gave Flemish painters new opportunities to vary surface texture and brilliance,
and to create far greater subtlety form. Oils allowed the blending of color areas because they remained wet and could
be worked on the canvass for a while, compared with the earlier medium, egg tempera, which dried almost immediately
upon application.
* Flemish painters refined aerial or atmospheric perspectivethe increasingly hazy appearance of the objects farthest
from the viewer.
Jan van Eyck is a Netherlandish painter who perfected the newly developed technique of oil painting. His naturalistic
panel paintings, mostly portraits and religious subjects, made extensive use of disguised religious symbols. His
masterpiece is the altarpiece in the cathedral at Ghent, The Adoration of the Mystic Lamb (also called the Ghent
Altarpiece, 1432).
The Arnolfini Marriage: Oil on Panel
*It uses strong perspective in the bedroom to create a sense of great depth. All forms
achieve three-dimensionality through subtle color blending and softened shadow edges.
Natural highlights originate from the window, and this ties the figures and objects
together.
*The artist has signed the painting in legal script above the mirror Johannes de Eyck fuit
hic, 1434 (Jan van Eyck was here, 1434).
THE NETHERLANDS
*Two of the greatest painters:
(1) Hieronymus Bosch, born Jeroen Anthonissen van Aken was an Early Netherlandish painter of the fifteenth and
sixteenth centuries. Many of his works depict sin and human moral failings. Bosch used images of demons, half-human
animals and machines to evoke fear and confusion to portray the evil of man. His works contain complex, highly original,
imaginative, and dense use of symbolic figures and iconography, some of which was obscure even in his own time.
Garden of Earthly Delights
The Garden of Earthly Delights is a big three-paneled painting. The left panel is called
The Creation of Eve, contains a fairly straightforward portrayal. The figures are set in
a landscape populated by exotic animals and unusual semi-organic hut-shaped
forms.The large central panel, The World before the Flood, (measuring 7 feet by more
than 6 feet) takes us into a much more complex and mystifying world. The central
panel is a broad panorama teeming with socially engaged nude figures seemingly
engaged in innocent, self-absorbed joy, as well as fantastical animals, oversized fruit
and hybrid stone formations. The Last Judgment is depicted on the right panel. The right panel presents a hell escape; a
world in which humankind has succumbed to the temptations of evil and is reaping eternal damnation. Set at night, the
panel features cold colours, tortured figures and frozen waterways.
(2) Pieter the Elder Bruegel was a Netherlandish Renaissance painter and printmaker known for his landscapes and
peasant scenes (Genre Painting). He is nicknamed 'Peasant Bruegel' to distinguish him from other members of the
Brueghel dynasty, but is also the one generally meant when the context does not make clear which "Bruegel" is being
referred to. From 1559 he dropped the 'h' from his name and started signing his paintings as Bruegel.
Landscape with the Fall of Icarus: Oil on Panel
*It is in the Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium in Brussels.
*The painting tells the story from Greek mythology of Icarus, who against the advice
of the father, flew so high that the wax of his wings was melted by the sun.
*Icarus, a popular symbol in Italian art, represented unbridled ambition and gave
artist opportunity to depict the human body in flight or falling.

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GERMANY
*Albrecht Durer whom many regard as Germanys greatest artist, could be viewed as the Leonardo of the northern
Renaissance. Durer shared Leonardos deep curiosity about the natural world, a curiosity expressed in his drawings,
which explore physiognomy, animals, plants, and landscapes.
*His famous works include the Apocalypse woodcuts, Knight, Death, and the Devil (1513), Saint Jerome in his Study
(1514) and Melencolia I (1514), which has been the subject of extensive analysis and interpretation.
*His watercolors mark him as one of the first European landscape artists, while his ambitious woodcuts revolutionized
the potential of that medium.
*Durer's introduction of classical motifs into Northern art, through his knowledge of Italian artists and German
humanists, have secured his reputation as one of the most important figures of the Northern Renaissance.
*His prints established his reputation across Europe when he was still in his twenties, and he has been conventionally
regarded as the greatest artist of the Renaissance in Northern Europe ever since.
FRANCE
*The impetus of the Italian Renaissance came to France at least part from the insistence of King Francis I, who greatly
admired the achievements of Italian Renaissance art. He tried to coax Italian artists to his court, and Leonardo Da Vinci
actually spent two years there toward the end of his life.
*Jean Clouet portraits of the king (Francis I: Tempera and Oil in wood) reveal a self-indulgent, calculating character of a
man notorious for his sexual affairs. Nonetheless the likeness of the king remains stiff and formal.
ENGLAND
* Hans, the Younger Holbein was a German artist and printmaker who worked in a Northern Renaissance style. He is
best known for his numerous portraits and his woodcut series of the Dance of Death, and is widely considered one of
the finest portraitists of the Early Modern Period.
*Holbein was born in Augsburg, and learned how to paint from his father Hans Holbein the Elder. In 1515 he and his
brother Ambrosius Holbein went to Basel, where they designed prints, murals and stained glass.
*During this period, Holbein drew a famous series of pen and ink illustrations in the margins of a book owned by his
schoolmaster, The Praise of Folly, by the Dutch humanist Erasmus. Holbein was introduced to Erasmus, and later painted
three portraits of him.