Renaissance. "Ideal cities" of the Renaissance

Introduction

The Renaissance as a new worldview and a new artistic style arose in Italy at the end of the 14th century. The first urban planning ideas presented the city as an architectural whole according to a pre-drawn plan. Under the influence of these ideas, instead of narrow and crooked medieval alleys, straight, wider streets lined with large buildings began to appear in Italian cities.

The layout and architecture of squares during the Renaissance took shape in the 15th–16th centuries. in Rome and other major cities in Italy.

During this period, several cities were reconstructed here using new principles of urban planning. In most cases, palaces in such cities were located on central squares, which sometimes represented the beginning of three-ray compositions.

Renaissance cities gradually acquired new features under the influence of social changes. However, due to private ownership of land and backward technology, it was impossible to quickly move from the old city to the new. During all periods of the Renaissance, the main efforts of city planners were directed to the development of the city center - the square and nearby neighborhoods. During the heyday of monarchical states in the 18th century. the ensembles of the central squares of cities were given exceptional importance as their main decorations. City squares had mostly geometrically regular outlines.

If the architecture of ancient Greek and Roman squares was characterized by columns and porticoes, then for the squares of the Renaissance, arcades became new elements, developing simultaneously with the development of entire systems of squares.

In most medieval cities there was no decorative greenery. Fruit orchards were grown in monastery gardens; the orchards or vineyards of the townspeople were located behind the city fortifications. In Paris in the 18th century. alleys, trimmed greenery, and flower gardens appear. However, the parks of palaces and castles were privately owned. Public gardens in most European cities appeared only at the end of the 18th century.

In the Middle Ages, water basins were essentially an obstacle to the development of the city, dividing its districts, and served for narrow practical purposes. Since the 18th century rivers began to be used as connecting elements of cities, and in favorable conditions - as compositional axes. A striking example is the wise urban planning use of the Neva and Nevka rivers in St. Petersburg. The construction of bridges and the construction of embankments consolidated this direction in urban planning.

During the medieval period, the city's skyline was largely defined by the pointed spiers on city halls, churches and public buildings. The silhouette of the city was determined by many small verticals and several dominant ones. In connection with the new artistic understanding of the city's silhouette, high medieval roofs were gradually eliminated, and Renaissance buildings were completed with roofs with attics and balustrades.

With an increase in the scale of buildings and new types of coatings, the silhouette of the city is softened by domes of smooth outlines, which have acquired a dominant role in city panoramas. Their change was greatly influenced by gardens and parks, whose trees largely hide the buildings.

The architects of the Renaissance used strict means of expression in urban planning: harmonious proportions, the scale of a person as a measure of the surrounding architectural environment.

The ideological struggle of the emerging bourgeoisie of Italy against medieval forms of religion, morality and law resulted in a broad progressive movement - humanism. Humanism was based on civic life-affirming principles: the desire to liberate the human personality from spiritual constraint, the thirst for knowledge of the world and man himself and, as a consequence of this, a craving for secular forms of social life, the desire for knowledge of the laws and beauty of nature, for the comprehensive harmonious improvement of man . These shifts in worldview led to a revolution in all spheres of spiritual life - art, literature, philosophy, science. In their activities, humanists relied heavily on ancient ideals, often reviving not only ideas, but also the very forms and expressive means of ancient works. In this regard, the cultural movement of Italy in the 15th–16th centuries. received the general name of the Renaissance, or Rebirth

The humanistic worldview stimulated the development of personality and increased its importance in public life. The individual style of the master played an increasingly important role in the development of art and architecture. The culture of humanism brought forward a whole galaxy of brilliant architects, sculptors, artists, such as Brunellesco, Leonardo da Vinci, Bramante, Raphael, Michelangelo, Palladio and others.

The desire to create an “ideal image of a person”, combined with the search for methods of artistic exploration of the world, led to a kind of cognitive realism of the Renaissance, based on a close union of art with rapidly developing science. In architecture, the search for “ideal” forms of buildings based on a complete and complete composition has become one of its defining trends. Along with the development of new types of civil and religious buildings, architectural thought is developing, and there is an urgent need for theoretical generalizations of modern experience, especially historical and, above all, ancient experience.

Three periods of the Italian Renaissance

Renaissance architecture in Italy is divided into three main periods: early, high and late. Architectural Center Early Renaissance there was Tuscany with its main city - Florence. This period covers the second quarter and middle of the 15th century. The beginning of the Renaissance in architecture is considered to be 1420, when the construction of the dome over the Florence Cathedral began. Construction achievements that led to the creation of a huge centric form became a kind of symbol of the architecture of the New Age.

1. Early Renaissance period

The Early Renaissance in architecture is characterized primarily by the forms of buildings created by the famous architect engineer Filippo Brunellesco (first half of the 15th century). In particular, he used a light semi-circular arch instead of a pointed arch in the Orphanage in Florence. The rib vault, characteristic of Gothic architecture, began to give way to a new design - a modified box vault. However, pointed arch forms continued to be used until the middle of the 16th century.

One of Brunellesco's outstanding buildings was the huge dome of the Cathedral of Santa Maria del Fiore in Florence, which had remained unfinished since the 14th century.

In the shape of the large dome created by the architect, an echo of the Gothic pointed arch is noticeable. The span of the dome of this cathedral is large - 42 m. The dome's vaults, made of brick, rest on an octagonal base made of logs covered with iron sheets. Thanks to the favorable location of the cathedral on a hill and its high height (115m), its upper part, especially the dome, adds solemnity and uniqueness to the architectural panorama of Florence.

Civil architecture occupied a significant place in the architecture of the Italian Renaissance. This includes, first of all, large city palaces (palazzos), intended in addition to housing for ceremonial receptions. Medieval palaces, gradually shedding their harsh Romanesque and Gothic clothing with the help of marble cladding and sculpture, acquired a cheerful appearance.

Features of the Renaissance facades are huge arched window openings separated by columns, rustication of the first floors with stones, upper slabs, large cornices and finely traced details. In contrast to the strict facades, the architecture of well-lit interiors has a cheerful character.

Rusticism was often used to decorate the facades of early Renaissance palaces. Stones for rustication usually had an uncut (chipped) front surface with a cleanly hewn edge path. The relief of the rustics decreased with the increase in the number of floors. Later, rustic decoration was preserved only in the processing of plinths and on the corners of buildings.

In the 15th century Italian architects often used the Corinthian order. There were often cases of a combination of several orders in one building: for the lower floors - the Doric order, and for the upper floors - a composition of capitals close in proportions and design to the Ionic type.

One of the examples of palace architecture of the mid-15th century. in Florence can serve as the three-story Medici-Riccardi Palace, built according to the design of the architect Michelozzo di Bartolomeo in the period 1444–1452 by order of Cosimo de' Medici, the ruler of Florence. Hundreds of palaces were later built in other cities based on the design of the façade of the Palazzo Medici.

A further development of the composition of the palace is the palazzo Ruccilai in Florence, built 1446–1451 designed by Leon Battista Alberti (1404–1472). Like the ancient Roman Colosseum, its facade is divided into floors by orders with a transition from the simplest Doric order in the lower tier to the more subtle and rich Corinthian order in the upper.

The impression of the building being lighter towards the top, created in the Palazzo Medici-Riccardi by means of the rustication of the walls, is expressed here in the form of a tiered system of orders being lighter towards the top. At the same time, the large crowning cornice is correlated not with the height of the upper tier, but with the height of the building as a whole, which is why the composition acquired the features of completeness and staticity. In the design of the façade, traditional motifs are still preserved: double arched windows derived from the medieval shape of the windows, rustication of the walls, the overall monumentality of the cloud, etc.

Pazzi Chapel (1430–1443) - a domed building placed in the courtyard of the monastery. The composition of the façade reflected the internal structure dissected by the order with the dominant volume of the hall with a dome on sails. The colonnade, cut along the axis by an arch and completed with a finely dissected attic, corresponds to cartelized pilasters on the inner wall of the loggia, and on the vaulted ceiling there are protruding segments of arches.

The correspondence of the orders and the repetition of small domes in the loggia and the altar contribute to the organic connection of the facade with the interior. The walls inside are divided by flat, but highlighted by color pilasters, which, continuing in the divisions of the vaults, give an idea of ​​the logic of the construction of space, the tectonic structure. Developing three-dimensionally, the order emphasizes the unity and subordination of the main parts. The visual “framework” also characterizes the dismemberment of the dome from the inside, which is somewhat reminiscent of the structure of the Gothic nerve vaults. However, the harmony of order forms and the clarity of the tectonic structure, balance and commensurability with man speak of the triumph of new architectural ideals over the principles of the Middle Ages.

Along with Brunellesco and Michelozzo da Bartolomeo, other masters (Rosselino, Benedetto da Maiano, etc.), whose work was mainly associated with Tuscany and Northern Italy, also played a large role in the formation of new architecture. Alberti, who in addition to the Palazzo Ruccellai built a number of large structures (the facade of the Church of Santa Maria Novella, the Church of Sant Andrea in Mantua, etc.), completes this period.

2. High Renaissance period

The period of the High Renaissance covers the end of the 15th - first half of the 16th century. By this time, due to the movement of the main trade routes from the Mediterranean Sea to the Atlantic Ocean, Italy was experiencing a certain economic decline and a decrease in industrial production. Often the bourgeoisie bought up land and turned into moneylenders and landowners. The process of feudalization of the bourgeoisie is accompanied by a general aristocratization of culture; the center of gravity is transferred to the court circle of the nobility: dukes, princes, popes. Rome becomes the center of culture - the residence of popes, who are often elected from representatives of the humanist-minded aristocracy. Huge construction work is taking place in Rome. In this undertaking, undertaken by the papal court to raise its own prestige, the humanistic community saw the experience of reviving the greatness of ancient Rome, and with it the greatness of all of Italy. At the court of those who ascended the throne in 1503. The most outstanding architects worked for the humanist Pope Julius II - among them Bramante, Raphael, Michelangelo, Antonio da Sangallo and others.

In the architecture of this period, the main features and trends of the Renaissance receive their complete expression. The most perfect centric compositions are created. The type of urban palazzo finally takes shape, which during this period acquires the features of not only a private but also a public building, and therefore, to a certain extent, becomes the prototype of many subsequent public buildings. The contrast characteristic of the early Renaissance period is overcome (between the architectural characteristics of the external appearance of the palazzo and its courtyard. Under the influence of a more systematic and archaeologically accurate acquaintance with ancient monuments, order compositions acquire greater rigor: along with the Ionic and Corinthian orders, simpler and more monumental orders are widely used - Roman-Doric and Tuscan, and the finely designed arcade on the columns gives way to a more monumental order arcade. In general, the compositions of the High Renaissance acquire greater significance, severity and monumentality. The problem of creating a regular urban ensemble is being built. Country villas are being built as integral architectural complexes. .

The most important architect of this period was Donato d'Angelo Bramante (1444–1514). Cancelleria building attributed to Bramante (the main papal office) in Rome - one of the outstanding palace buildings - is a huge parallelepiped with a rectangular courtyard surrounded by arcades. The harmonious composition of the facades develops the principles laid down in the Ruccellai Palazzo, but the overall rhythmic structure creates a more complex and solemn image. The first floor, treated as a basement, enhanced the contrast with the lightweight top. Rhythmically located plastic accents created by large openings and the frames framing them acquired great importance in the composition. The rhythm of horizontal divisions became even clearer.

Among Bramante's religious buildings, a small chapel in the courtyard of the monastery of San Pietro in Montrio, called Tempietto, stands out (1502) - a building located inside a rather cramped courtyard, which was supposed to be surrounded by a circular arcade in plan.

The chapel features a domed rotunda surrounded by a Roman Doric colonnade. The building is distinguished by perfect proportions, the order is interpreted strictly and constructively. In comparison with the centric buildings of the early Renaissance, where linear-planar development of walls predominates (Pazzi Chapel), the volume of Tempietto is plastic: its order plasticity corresponds to the tectonic integrity of the composition. The contrast between the monolithic core of the rotunda and the colonnade, between the smooth surface of the wall and the plasticity of deep niches and pilasters emphasizes the expressiveness of the composition, full of harmony and completeness. Despite its small size, Tempietto gives the impression of monumentality. Already by Bramante's contemporaries this building was recognized as one of the masterpieces of architecture.

Being the chief architect at the court of Pope Julius II, Bramante from 1505. is working on the reconstruction of the Vatican. A grandiose complex of ceremonial buildings and ceremonial courtyards located at different levels, subordinate to a single axis closed by the majestic exedra of the Belvedere, was conceived. In this, essentially the first Renaissance ensemble of such grandiose design, the compositional techniques of ancient Roman forums were masterfully used. The papal residence was supposed to be connected with another grandiose building in Rome - Peter's Cathedral, for the construction of which Bramante's design was also adopted. The perfection of the centric composition and the grandiose scope of the design of the cathedral by Peter Bramante gives reason to consider this work as the pinnacle of the development of Renaissance architecture. However, the project was not destined to be realized in kind: during Bramante’s lifetime, construction of the cathedral had just begun, which in 1546, 32 years after the death of the architect, was transferred to Michelangelo.

The great artist and architect Raphael Santi, who built and painted the famous loggias of the Vatican, which received his name (“Raphael’s loggias”), as well as a number of remarkable buildings, took part in the competition for the design of Peter’s Cathedral, as well as in the construction and painting of Vatican buildings, together with Bramante. both in Rome itself and outside it (construction and painting of Villa Madama in Rome, Palazzo Pandolfini in Florence, etc.).

One of Bramante's best students, the architect Antonio da Sangallo Jr., designed the Palazzo Farnese in Rome. , to a certain extent, completing the evolution of the Renaissance palace.

The design of its façade lacks traditional rustication and vertical divisions. On the smooth, brick-plastered surface of the wall, wide horizontal belts running along the entire façade are clearly visible; as if leaning on them, windows with relief platbands in the shape of an antique “aedicule” are placed. The windows on the ground floor, unlike in Florentine palaces, are the same size as the windows on the upper floors. The building was freed from the fortress isolation still inherent in the palaces of the early Renaissance. In contrast to the palaces of the 15th century, where the courtyard was surrounded by light arched galleries on columns, a monumental order arcade with half-columns appears here. The gallery order becomes somewhat heavier, acquiring features of solemnity and representativeness. The narrow passage between the courtyard and the street is replaced by an open “lobby”, revealing a perspective onto the front courtyard.

3. Late Renaissance

The late Renaissance period is usually considered to be the mid to late 16th century. At this time, the economic recession in Italy continued. The role of the feudal nobility and church-Catholic organizations increased. To combat the reformation and all manifestations of the anti-religious spirit, the Inquisition was established. Under these conditions, humanists began to experience persecution. A significant part of them, persecuted by the Inquisition, moved to the northern cities of Italy, especially to Venice, which still retained the rights of an independent republic, where the influence of the religious counter-reformation was not so strong. In this regard, during the late Renaissance, two schools were the most prominent - Roman and Venetian. In Rome, where the ideological pressure of the Counter-Reformation greatly influenced the development of architecture, along with the development of the principles of the High Renaissance, there was a departure from the classics towards more complex compositions, greater decorativeness, a violation of the clarity of forms, scale and tectonics. In Venice, despite the partial penetration of new trends into architecture, the classical basis of architectural composition was more preserved.

A prominent representative of the Roman school was the great Michelangelo Buonarroti (1475–1564). His architectural works lay the foundations of a new understanding of form characteristic of this period, characterized by great expression, dynamics and plastic expressiveness. His work, which took place in Rome and Florence, reflected with particular force the search for images capable of expressing the general crisis of humanism and the internal anxiety that progressive circles of society then experienced before the approaching forces of reaction. As a brilliant sculptor and painter, Michelangelo knew how to find bright plastic means to express in art the inner strength of his heroes, the unresolved conflict of their spiritual world, and titanic efforts in struggle. In architectural creativity, this was consistent with an emphasized identification of the plasticity of forms and their intense dynamics. Michelangelo's order often lost its tectonic meaning, turning into a means of decorating walls, creating enlarged masses that amaze people with their scale and plasticity. Boldly violating the architectural principles customary for the Renaissance, Michelangelo to a certain extent was the founder of a creative manner that was later picked up in Italian Baroque architecture. Michelangelo's largest architectural works include the completion of Peter's Cathedral in Rome after Bramante's death. Michelangelo, taking as a basis a centric scheme close to Bramante’s plan, introduced new features into its interpretation: he simplified the plan and generalized the internal space, made the supports and walls more massive, and added a portico with a solemn colonnade on the western façade. In the volumetric-spatial composition, the calm balance and subordination of the spaces of Bramante’s project are translated into an emphasized dominance of the main dome and the under-dome space. In the composition of the facades, clarity and simplicity were replaced by more complex and large plastic forms; the walls are dissected by ledges and pilasters of a large Corinthian order with a powerful entablature and a high attic; between the pilasters there are window openings, niches and various decorative elements (cornices, belts, sandriks, statues, etc.) that seem to be squeezed into the piers, giving the walls an almost sculptural plasticity.

In the composition of the Medici Chapel Church of San Lorenzo in Florence (1520) by Michelangelo, the interior and sculptures merged into a single whole. Sculptural and architectural forms are full of internal tension and drama. Their acute emotional expressiveness prevails over the tectonic basis; the order is interpreted as an element of the artist’s fundamentally common sculptural plan.

One of the outstanding Roman architects of the late Renaissance is also Vignola, the author of the treatise “The Rule of the Five Orders of Architecture”. His most significant works are the Caprarola Castle and the Villa of Pope Julius II. . During the Renaissance, the type of villa undergoes significant development associated with a change in its functional content. Back at the beginning of the 15th century. it was a country estate, often surrounded by walls, and sometimes even had defensive towers. By the end of the 15th century. the villa became a country retreat for wealthy citizens (Villa Medici near Florence), and from the 16th century. it often becomes the residence of large feudal lords and high clergy. The villa loses its intimacy and acquires the character of a ceremonial front-axial structure, open to the surrounding nature.

The Villa of Pope Julius II is an example of this type. Its strictly axial and rectangular composition in external outlines descends along the mountainside in ledges, creating a complex game of open, semi-open and closed spaces located at various levels. The composition shows the influence of ancient Roman forums and Vatican courtyards.

Outstanding masters of the Venetian school of the late Renaissance were Sansovino, who built the building of the Library of San Marco in Venice (begun in 1536) - an important component of the remarkable ensemble of the Venetian center, and the most prominent representative of the classical school of the Renaissance - the architect Palladio.

The activities of Andrea Palladio (1508 - 1580) took place mainly in Vicenza, near Venice, where he built palaces and villas, as well as in Venice, where he built mainly church buildings. His work in a number of buildings was a reaction to the anti-classical tendencies of the late Renaissance. In an effort to preserve the purity of classical principles, Palladio relies on the rich experience he acquired in the process of studying the ancient heritage. He tries to revive not only order forms, but entire elements and even types of buildings of the ancient period. Structurally true order portico becomes the main theme of many of his works.

In the Villa Rotunda , built near Vicenza (started in 1551), the master achieved exceptional integrity and harmony of the composition. Situated on a hill and clearly visible from a distance, the four facades of the villa with porticoes on all sides, together with the dome, form a clear centric composition.

In the center there is a round domed hall, from which exits lead to porticoes. Wide portico staircases connect the building with the surrounding nature. The centric composition reflected the general aspirations of Renaissance architects for the absolute completeness of the composition, clarity and geometricity of forms, the harmonious connection of individual parts with the whole and the organic merging of the building with nature.

But this “ideal” composition scheme remained isolated. In the actual construction of numerous villas, Palladio paid more attention to the so-called three-part scheme, consisting of a main volume and one-story order galleries extending from it to the sides, serving to communicate with the services of the estate and organizing the front courtyard in front of the facade of the villa. It was this scheme of a country house that later had numerous followers in the construction of manor palaces.

In contrast to the free development of the volumes of country villas, Palladian city palaces usually have a strict and laconic composition with a large-scale and monumental main facade. The architect widely uses the large order, interpreting it as a kind of “column-wall” system. A striking example is the palazzo Capitanio (1576), the walls of which are decorated with columns of a large composite order with a powerful, loose entablature. The upper floor, expanded in the form of a superstructure (attic floor), gave the building completeness and monumentality,

Palladio also widely used in his city palaces two-tiered division of facades with orders, as well as an order placed on a high rusticated ground floor - a technique first used by Bramante and subsequently widespread in the architecture of classicism.

Conclusion

Modern architecture, when searching for forms of its own stylistic manifestation, does not hide the fact that it uses historical heritage. Most often, she turns to those theoretical concepts and principles of shaping that in the past achieved the greatest stylistic purity. Sometimes it even seems that everything that previously lived in the 20th century returned in a new form and was quickly repeated again.

Much of what a person values ​​in architecture appeals not so much to a scrupulous analysis of individual parts of an object, but to its synthetic, holistic image, to the sphere of emotional perception. This means that architecture is art or, in any case, contains elements of art.

Sometimes architecture is called the mother of the arts, meaning that painting and sculpture developed for a long time in an inextricable organic connection with architecture. The architect and the artist always had a lot in common in their work, and sometimes got along well in one person. The ancient Greek sculptor Phidias is rightfully considered one of the creators of the Parthenon. The elegant bell tower of the main cathedral of Florence, Santa Maria del Fiore, was built “according to a drawing” by the great painter Giotto. Michelangelo, who was equally great as an architect, sculptor and painter. Raphael also worked successfully in the architectural field. Their contemporary, the painter Giorgio Vasari, built the Uffizi Street in Florence. Such a synthesis of the talents of an artist and an architect was found not only among the titans of the Renaissance, but also marked modern times. Applied artists, the Englishman William Morris and the Belgian Van de Velde, made a great contribution to the development of modern architecture. Corbusier was a talented painter, and Alexander Vesnin a brilliant theater artist. Soviet artists K. Malevich and L. Lisitsky interestingly experimented with architectural form, and their colleague and contemporary Vladimir Tatlin became the author of the legendary project of the Tower 111 of the International. The author of the famous project of the Palace of Soviets, architect B. Iofan, is rightfully considered the co-author of the sculpture “Worker and Collective Farm Woman” together with the wonderful Soviet artist Vera Mukhina.

Graphic representation and three-dimensional layout are the main means by which the architect seeks and defends his solutions. The discovery of linear perspective during the Renaissance actively influenced the spatial concept of architecture of this time. Ultimately, the understanding of linear perspective led to the linking of the square, staircase, and building into a single spatial composition, and subsequently to the emergence of gigantic architectural ensembles of Baroque and high classicism. Many years later, the experiments of cubist artists had a great influence on the development of architectural form-making. They tried to depict an object from different points of view, achieve its three-dimensional perception by superimposing several images, and expand the possibilities of spatial perception by introducing the fourth dimension - time. This volumetricity of perception served as the starting point for the formal search for modern architecture, which contrasted the flat screen of the facade with an intricate play of volumes and planes freely located in space.

Sculpture and painting did not immediately gain independence from architecture. At first they were just elements of an architectural structure. It took more than one century for painting to separate from the wall or iconostasis. At the end of the Renaissance, in Piazza della Signoria in Florence, sculptures still timidly crowd around the buildings, as if afraid to completely break with the facades. Michelangelo is the first to place an equestrian statue in the center of the Capitoline Square in Rome. The year is 1546. Since then, a monument, a monumental sculpture, has acquired the rights of an independent element of composition that organizes urban space. True, the sculptural form continues to live on the walls of the architectural structure for some time, but gradually these last traces of “former luxury” disappear from them.

Corbusier affirms this composition of modern architecture with his characteristic certainty: “I recognize neither sculpture nor painting as decoration. I admit that both can evoke deep emotions in the viewer in the same way that music and theater affect you - it all depends on the quality of the work, but I am definitely against decoration. On the other hand, considering an architectural work and mainly the site on which it is erected, you see that some places in the building itself and around it are certain intensive mathematical places that turn out to be, as it were, a key to the proportions of the work and its surroundings. These are the places of the highest intensity, and it is in these places that the architect's specific goal can be realized - either in the form of a pool, or a block of stone, or a statue. We can say that in this place all the conditions are connected for a speech to be made, an artist’s speech, a plastic speech.”

The problem of creating an ideal city, despite its relevance today, became especially acute in the distant era of the Renaissance (XIV - XVI centuries). This theme, through the prism of the philosophy of anthropocentrism, becomes leading in the art of urban planning of this period. Man with his needs for happiness, love, luxury, comfort, convenience, with his thoughts and ideas, becomes the measure of that time, a symbol of the reviving ancient spirit, called upon to glorify this very Man with a capital M. He encourages the creative thought of the Renaissance to search for unique, sometimes utopian, architectural and philosophical solutions to the problem of the formation of a city. The latter begins to play a new role; it is perceived as a closed, integral, interconnected space, fenced off and different from nature, where a person’s entire life takes place.

In this space, both the physical and aesthetic needs and desires of a person had to be fully taken into account, and such aspects of human stay in the city as comfort and safety had to be fully thought out. New firearms made medieval stone fortifications defenseless. This predetermined, for example, the appearance of walls with earthen bastions along the perimeter of cities and determined the seemingly bizarre star-shaped shape of the line of city fortifications. A general revivalist idea of ​​the “ideal city” is being formed - the city that is the most convenient and safe for living. In a word, such trends are not alien to the modern architect, but the Renaissance then marked a new frontier, a new breath of life in the thinking of the creator, establishing certain unknowns. previously criteria, standards and stereotypes, the consequences of which are felt in the search for an ideal city today.

The first studies in this vein were carried out by Marcus Vitruvius (second half of the 1st century BC), an architect and engineer in the army of Julius Caesar - in his treatise “Ten Books on Architecture” Vitruvius posed the problem of the golden mean between theory and practice, described the basic concepts of aesthetics, the proportionality of a building and a person, and for the first time in history studied the problem of musical acoustics of premises.

Vitruvius himself did not leave an image of the ideal city, but many researchers and successors of his ideas did, with which, as is often noted, the Renaissance itself began.

But discussions about the ideal city and its concepts originate in the treatises of ancient Greek philosophers - so, for a second, it’s worth turning to an era somewhat earlier than the one we are considering - to antiquity.

Sforzinda - typical houses of the architect. Filarete (drawing by Leonardo da Vinci)

The centuries-long process of building city-states in the capital of Ancient Greece, Athens, was summarized in the works of two of the greatest philosophers of antiquity: Plato (428 - 348 BC) and Aristotle (384 - 322 BC).

Thus, the idealist philosopher Plato, associated with the aristocratic circles of his time, was an adherent of a strictly regulated government system, and it was not for nothing that he wrote a story about the mythical country of Atlantis, ruled by a king and archons. In Plato’s interpretation, Atlantis was the historical prototype of the ideal city-state that he discussed in his works “The State” and “The Laws.”

Returning to the Renaissance, let's talk about Leone Baptiste Alberti - the first true urban planning theorist in the history of mankind, who describes in detail “how to make a city,” starting from the choice of location and ending with its internal structure. Alberti wrote that “beauty is a strict proportionate harmony of all parts, united by what they belong to, such that nothing can be added, subtracted, or changed without making it worse.” In fact, Alberti was the first to proclaim the basic principles of the urban ensemble of the Renaissance, linking the ancient sense of proportion with the rationalistic beginning of a new era. A given ratio of the height of the building to the space located in front of it (from 1:3 to 1:6), the consistency of the architectural scales of the main and secondary buildings, the balance of the composition and the absence of dissonant contrasts - these are the aesthetic principles of Renaissance town planners.

Alberti, in his treatise “Ten Books on Architecture,” paints an ideal city, beautiful in its rational layout and appearance of buildings, streets, and squares. The entire living environment of a person is arranged here so that it meets the needs of the individual, family, and society as a whole.

Bernardo Gambarelli (Rosselino), having picked up already existing ideas, makes his contribution to the development of the vision of an ideal city, the result of which was the city of Pienza (1459), which actually exists to this day, incorporating elements of many projects that remained on paper or in creative works. the creators' intentions. This city is a clear example of the transformation of the medieval settlement of Corsignano into an ideal Renaissance city with straight streets and a regular layout.

Antonio di Pietro Averlino (Filarete) (c. 1400 - c. 1469) in his treatise gives an idea of ​​the ideal city of Sforzinda.

The city was an octagonal star in plan, formed by the intersection at an angle of 45° of two equal squares with a side of 3.5 km. There were eight round towers in the protrusions of the star, and eight city gates in the “pockets”. The gates and towers were connected to the center by radial streets, some of which were shipping canals. In the central part of the city, on a hill, there was a main square, rectangular in plan, on the short sides of which there should have been a princely palace and the city cathedral, and on the long sides - judicial and city institutions.

In the center of the square there was a pond and a watchtower. Adjacent to the main square were two others, with houses of the most eminent residents of the city. At the intersection of the radial streets with the ring road there were sixteen more squares: eight shopping areas and eight for parish centers and churches.

Pienza was not the only city in Italy that embodied the principles of an “ideal” layout. Italy itself at that time was not a unified state as we know it now, it consisted of many separate independent republics and duchies. Each such region was headed by a noble family. Of course, every ruler wanted to have in his state a model of an “ideal” city, which would allow him to be considered an educated and advanced Renaissance person. Therefore, in 1492, the representative of the d'Este dynasty, Duke Ercole I, decided to rebuild one of the main cities of his duchy - Ferrara.

The reconstruction was entrusted to the architect Biagio Rossetti. He was distinguished by his breadth of views, as well as his love of innovation, which was evident in almost all of his works. He thoroughly studied the old layout of the city and came to an interesting solution. If before him architects either demolished old buildings or built from scratch, then Biagio decided to build a new city on top of the old one. Thus, he simultaneously embodied the concept of the Renaissance city with its straight streets and open spaces and emphasized the integrity and self-sufficiency of the medieval city. The main innovation of the architect was a different use of spaces. He did not obey all the laws of regular urban planning, which required open squares and wide streets. Instead, since the medieval part of the city was left intact, Biagio plays on opposites: he alternates main roads with narrow streets, bright squares with dark dead ends, large houses of dukes with low houses of ordinary residents. Moreover, these elements do not contradict each other at all: the reverse perspective is combined with the direct one, and the running lines and increasing volumes do not contradict each other.

The Venetian scholar and architectural expert Daniele Barbaro (1514-1570) devoted most of his life to the study of Vitruvius’s treatise, which resulted in his book entitled “Ten Books on the Architecture of Vitruvius with a Commentary by Daniele Barbaro,” written in 1556. In this book reflected the attitude towards ancient architecture not only of the author himself, but also of most architects of the 16th century. Throughout his life, Daniele Barbaro thoroughly studied the treatise and tried to recreate a diagram of ideal cities, which would reflect the ideas of Vetruvius and his own concepts that complemented his vision.

Somewhat earlier, the Renaissance architect Cesare Cesarino published his commentaries on the Ten Books on Architecture in 1521 with numerous illustrations, including theoretical diagrams of an ideal city.

Among the many similar theorists of the 16th century. Andrea Palladio (1508-1580) occupied a special place. In his treatise “Four Books on Architecture” (Italian: Quattro Libri deHArchitettura), published in 1570, Palladio did not allocate a special section on the city, but his entire work was essentially devoted to this topic. He said that “a city is nothing more than a kind of big house, and vice versa, a house is a kind of small city.”

By equating a residential building with a city, Palladio thereby emphasized the integrity of the urban organism and the interconnectedness of its spatial elements. He reflects on the integrity of the urban organism and the interconnection of its spatial elements. About the urban ensemble he writes: “Beauty is the result of a beautiful form and the correspondence of the whole to the parts, the parts to each other, and also the parts to the whole.” A prominent place in the treatise is given to the interior of buildings, their dimensions and proportions. Palladio tries to organically connect the external space of streets with the interior of houses and courtyards.

At the end of the 16th century. During the siege of cities, artillery weapons with explosive shells began to be used. This forced city planners to reconsider the nature of city fortifications. The fortress walls and towers were replaced by earthen bastions, which, being moved forward beyond the city boundaries, were capable of both repelling enemy attacks and conducting flanking fire on the enemy approaching the city. Based on this, there was no longer a need to protect the city gates, which from now on turned from powerful defensive hubs into the main entrances to the city. These innovations in the form of a variety of star-shaped bizarre shapes were reflected in the projects of ideal cities by Buonaiuto Lorini, Antonio Lupicini, Francesco di Giorgio Martini, Girolamo Maggi, Giovanni Bellucci, Fra Giocondo, Francesco de Marchi, Daniel Speckle, Jacques Perret, Albrecht Durer, Vicenzo Scamozzi , Giorgio Vasari Jr. and etc.

And the culmination of the fortification architecture of the Renaissance can rightfully be considered the fortified city of Palmanova, the plan of which, according to the plan of the architect Vicenzo Scamozzi, has the shape of a nine-sided star, and the streets radiate from the square located in the center. The city area was surrounded by twelve bastions, each of which was designed to protect its neighbors, and had four city gates, from which there were two main streets intersecting at right angles. At their intersection was the main square, overlooked by the palace, cathedral, university and city institutions. Two trading areas adjoined the main square from the west and east; in the north there was an exchange area, and in the south there was an area for trading hay and firewood. The territory of the city was crossed by a river, and eight parish churches were located closer to its periphery. The city layout was regular. The fortress was surrounded by a moat.

In the engineering environment of the Renaissance, issues of composition, harmony, beauty, and proportion were diligently studied. In these ideal constructions, the city layout is characterized by rationalism, geometric clarity, centricity of composition and harmony between the whole and parts. And finally, what distinguishes Renaissance architecture from other eras is the man standing in the center, at the heart of all these constructions. Examples include many more names and city names. Surviving Urbino with its grandiose Ducal Palace, a “city in the form of a palazzo” created by the architect Luciano Laurana for Duke Federico da Montefeltro, Terradel Sole (“City of the Sun”), Vigevano in Lombardy, Valletta (capital of Malta). As for the latter, this majestic fortified city grew up on the waterless steep cliffs of the Mount Sciberras peninsula, rising between the two deep harbors of Marsamxett and the Grand Harbour. Founded in 1566, Valletta was completely built, along with its impressive bastions, forts and cathedral, in an astonishingly short period of 15 years.

The general ideas and concepts of the Renaissance flowed far beyond the turn of the 17th century and splashed out in a stormy stream, covering subsequent generations of architects and figures of engineering thought.

Even in the example of many modern architectural projects, one can see the influence of the Renaissance, which over several centuries has not lost its idea of ​​humanity and the primacy of human comfort. Simplicity, convenience, “accessibility” of the city for residents in all sorts of variable devices can be found in many works, and following each in their own path, architects and researchers, all as one, still walked along the already paved road by the Renaissance masters.

The article did not examine all the examples of “ideal cities”, the origins of which go back to us from the depths of the wonderful Renaissance - in some the emphasis is on the convenience and ergonomics of being a civilian, in others on the maximum efficiency of defensive actions; but in all examples we observe a tireless desire for improvement, for achieving results, we see confident steps towards the convenience and comfort of a person. The ideas, concepts, and, to some extent, aspirations of the Renaissance flowed far beyond the turn of the 17th century and splashed out in a stormy stream, covering subsequent generations of architects and figures of engineering thought.

And the example of modern architects clearly shows the influence of the concepts of the Renaissance figures, somewhat modified, but without losing their idea of ​​humanity and the primacy of human comfort in urban planning projects. Simplicity, convenience, “accessibility” of the city for residents in all sorts of variable devices can be found in many other works, implemented and by no means remaining on paper. Following each their own path, architects and researchers, all as one, nevertheless walked along the already paved road by the masters of the Renaissance, following the immortally relevant and alluring light of the idea of ​​​​rebirth, the rebirth of the human soul, and the main steps in this direction were taken in distant XIV century.

The concepts of the ideal city of the Renaissance, for all their utopianism and impossibility from the pragmatic point of view of man, much less a modern one, do not cease completely in their splendor, or at least partially, as elements periodically creep into the works of romantic architects, striving not so much for perfection in their difficult creative craft, how much to perfection in a medium more complex and unpredictable than parchment and perspective - to the unattainable perfection of the human soul and consciousness.

Palmanova - Cathedral

The creation of an ideal city tormented scientists and architects from various countries and eras, but the first attempts to design something like this arose during the Renaissance. Although, at the court of the pharaohs and Roman emperors, scientists worked, whose works were aimed at creating some kind of ideal settlement, in which not only everything would clearly obey the hierarchy, but also in which it would be comfortable to live for both the ruler and a simple artisan. Just remember Akhetaten, Mohenjodaro, or the fantastic project proposed by Stasicrates to Alexander the Great, according to which he proposed to carve a statue of a commander with a city located on his arm from Mount Athos. The only problem was that these settlements either remained on paper or were destroyed. Not only architects, but also many artists came to the idea of ​​designing an ideal city. There are references to the fact that Piero della Francesca, Giorgio Vasari, Luciano Laurana and many others were involved in this.

Piero della Francesco was known to his contemporaries primarily as the author of treatises on art. Only three of them have reached us: “Treatise on the Abacus”, “Perspective in Painting”, “Five Regular Bodies”. It was he who first raised the question of creating an ideal city, in which everything would be subordinated to mathematical calculations and promising constructions of clear symmetry. For this reason, many scholars attribute to Pierrot the image “View of an Ideal City,” which fits perfectly into the principles of the Renaissance.

Leon Battista Alberti came closest to implementing such a large-scale project. True, he was not able to realize his entire idea, but he left behind a large number of drawings and notes, from which other artists were later able to achieve what Leon failed to achieve. In particular, Bernardo Rossellino performed many of his projects. But Leon implemented his principles not only in writing, but also through the example of many of the buildings he built. Basically, these are numerous palazzos designed for noble families. The architect reveals his own example of an ideal city in his treatise “On Architecture”. The scientist wrote this work until the end of his life. It was published posthumously and became the first printed book revealing the problems of architecture. According to Leon's teachings, the ideal city should reflect all human needs and answer all his humanistic needs. And this is no coincidence, because the leading philosophical thought in the Renaissance was anthropocentric humanism. The city should be divided into quarters, which would be divided according to a hierarchical principle or by type of employment. In the center, on the main square, there is a building where city power would be concentrated, as well as the main cathedral and the houses of noble families and city managers. Closer to the outskirts were the houses of traders and artisans, and the poor lived on the border itself. This arrangement of buildings, according to the architect, became an obstacle to the emergence of various social unrest, since the houses of the rich would be separated from the homes of poor citizens. Another important planning principle is that it had to meet the needs of any category of citizens, so that both the ruler and the clergy would feel comfortable living in this city. It was supposed to contain all the buildings, from schools and libraries to markets and baths. The general accessibility of such buildings is also important. Even if we ignore all the ethical and social principles of an ideal city, external, artistic values ​​remain. The layout had to be regular, according to which the city was divided into clear blocks by straight streets. In general, all architectural structures should be subordinated to geometric shapes and drawn along a ruler. The squares were either circular or rectangular in shape. According to these principles, old cities, such as Rome, Genoa, Naples, were subject to partial demolition of old medieval streets and the creation of new spacious quarters.

In some treatises a similar remark was found about the leisure of people. It concerned mainly boys. It was proposed to build playgrounds and intersections of such a type in cities that young people playing would be under the constant supervision of adults who could watch them without hindrance. These precautions were aimed at instilling prudence in young people.

The culture of the Renaissance in many ways provided food for further reflection on the structure of an ideal city. This was especially true for humanists. According to their worldview, everything should be created for a person, for his comfortable existence. When all these conditions are fulfilled, a person will receive social peace and mental happiness. Therefore, in this
In a society, wars or riots simply cannot arise a priori. Humanity has been moving toward this result throughout its entire existence. Just remember the famous “Utopia” by Thomas More or “1984” by George Orwell. Works of this kind touched not only on functional features, but also thought about the relationships, order and structure of the community that lived in this locality, not necessarily a city, maybe even the world. But these foundations were laid back in the 15th century, so we can safely say that the scientists of the Renaissance were comprehensively educated people of their time.

Renaissance art in Italy (XIII-XVI centuries).

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Features of Renaissance art in Italy.

The art of the Renaissance arose on the basis of humanism (from the Latin humanus - “humane”) - a movement of social thought that originated in the 14th century. in Italy, and then during the second half of the 15th and 16th centuries. spread to other European countries. Humanism proclaimed man and his good as the highest value. Followers of this movement believed that every person has the right to freely develop as an individual, realizing their abilities. The ideas of humanism were most fully and vividly embodied in art, the main theme of which was a beautiful, harmoniously developed person with unlimited spiritual and creative potential. Humanists were inspired by antiquity, which served for them as a source of knowledge and a model of artistic creativity. The great past of Italy, constantly reminding itself, was perceived at that time as the highest perfection, while the art of the Middle Ages seemed inept and barbaric. The term “renaissance,” which arose in the 16th century, meant the birth of a new art that revived classical ancient culture. However, the art of the Renaissance owes much to the artistic tradition of the Middle Ages. The old and the new were in indissoluble connection and confrontation. With all the contradictory diversity of its origins, the art of the Renaissance is marked by deep and fundamental novelty. It laid the foundations of European culture of the New Age. All major types of art - painting and graphics, sculpture, architecture - have changed enormously.
In architecture, creatively reworked principles of ancient architecture were established. order system , new types of public buildings emerged. Painting was enriched by linear and aerial perspective, knowledge of the anatomy and proportions of the human body. Earthly content penetrated into the traditional religious themes of works of art. Interest in ancient mythology, history, everyday scenes, landscapes, and portraits increased. Along with the monumental wall paintings that decorated architectural structures, a painting appeared; Oil painting arose.
Art has not yet ceased to be a craft, but the creative individuality of the artist, whose activity at that time was very diverse, has already come to the fore. The universal talent of the Renaissance masters is amazing - they often worked simultaneously in the fields of architecture, sculpture and painting, combining their passion for literature, poetry and philosophy with the study of the exact sciences. The concept of a creatively rich, or “Renaissance” personality subsequently became a household word.
In the art of the Renaissance, the paths of scientific and artistic comprehension of the world and man were closely intertwined. Its cognitive meaning was inextricably linked with sublime poetic beauty; in its desire for naturalness, it did not stoop to petty everyday life. Art has become a universal spiritual need.
The formation of Renaissance culture in Italy took place in economically independent cities. In the rise and flowering of Renaissance art, a large role was played by the Church and the magnificent courts of the uncrowned sovereigns - the ruling wealthy families who were the largest patrons and customers of works of painting, sculpture and architecture. The main centers of Renaissance culture were first the cities of Florence, Siena, Pisa, then Padua, Ferrara, Genoa, Milan, and later than all, in the second half of the 15th century, wealthy merchant Venice. In the 16th century Rome became the capital of the Italian Renaissance. From this time on, all other cultural centers, except Venice, lost their former importance.
In the era of the Italian Renaissance, it is customary to distinguish several periods:

Proto-Renaissance (second half of the XIII-XIV centuries),

Early Renaissance (XV century),

High Renaissance (end of the 15th - first third of the 16th century)

Late Renaissance (last two thirds of the 16th century).

Proto-Renaissance

In Italian culture of the XIII-XIV centuries. Against the backdrop of the still strong Byzantine and Gothic traditions, features of a new art began to appear, which would later be called the art of the Renaissance. Therefore, this period of its history was called Proto-Renaissance(from the Greek “protos” - “first”, i.e. prepared the offensive of the Renaissance). There was no similar transition period in any of the European countries. In Italy itself, proto-Renaissance art arose and developed only in Tuscany and Rome.
Italian culture intertwined features of old and new. The last poet of the Middle Ages and the first poet of the new era, Dante Alighieri (1265-1321), created the Italian literary language. What Dante started was continued by other great Florentines of the 14th century - Francesco Petrarca (1304-1374), the founder of European lyric poetry, and Giovanni Boccaccio (1313-1375), the founder of the novella (short story) genre in world literature. The pride of the era are the architects and sculptors Niccolo and Giovanni Pisano, Arnolfo di Cambio and the painter Giotto di Bondone .
Architecture
Italian architecture for a long time followed medieval traditions, which was expressed mainly in the use of a large number of Gothic motifs. At the same time, Italian Gothic itself was very different from the Gothic architecture of northern Europe: it gravitated toward calm large forms, even light, horizontal divisions, and wide wall surfaces. In 1296, construction began in Florence Cathedral of Santa Maria del Fiore. Arnolfo di Cambio wanted to crown the altar part of the cathedral with a huge dome. However, after the death of the architect in 1310, construction was delayed; it was completed already during the Early Renaissance. In 1334, according to Giotto's design, construction began on the cathedral's bell tower, the so-called campanile - a slender rectangular tower with floor-by-floor horizontal divisions and graceful Gothic windows, the pointed arched shape of which remained in Italian architecture for a long time.
Among the most famous city palaces is the Palazzo Vecchio (Palazzo della Signoria) in Florence. It is believed to have been built by Arnolfo di Cambio. It is a heavy cube with a high tower, lined with rusticated hard stone. The three-story facade is decorated with paired windows set in semicircular arches, which gives the entire building an impression of restrained severity. The building defines the appearance of the old city center, encroaching on the square with its stern bulk.
Sculpture
Earlier than in architecture and painting, artistic quests emerged in sculpture, and above all in the Pisan school, the founder of which was Niccolò Pisano (around 1220 - between 1278 and 1284). Niccolò Pisano was born in Puglia, southern Italy. It is believed that he studied sculpting in the southern schools, where the spirit of revival of the classical traditions of antiquity flourished. Without a doubt, Niccolo studied the sculptural design of late Roman and early Christian sarcophagi. The earliest known work of the sculptor is a hexagonal marble pulpit, made by him for the baptistery in Pisa (1260), became an outstanding work of Renaissance sculpture and had a huge influence on its further development. The main achievement of the sculptor is that he was able to give volume and expressiveness to the forms, and each image has bodily power.
From the workshop of Niccolò Pisano came remarkable masters of Proto-Renaissance sculpture - his son Giovanni Pisano and Arnolfo di Cambio, also known as an architect. Arnolfo di Cambio (circa 1245 - after 1310) gravitated towards monumental sculpture, in which he used his life observations. One of the best works he completed together with father and son Pisano is fountain in Piazza Perugia(1278). Fonte Maggiore, decorated with numerous statues and reliefs, has become the pride of the city. It was forbidden to give water to animals from it, to take water into wine barrels or into unwashed dishes. The city museum preserves fragments of reclining figures made by Arnolfo di Cambio for the fountain. In these figures, the sculptor was able to convey all the richness of the movements of the human body.
Painting
In the art of the Italian Renaissance, wall painting occupied a dominant place. It was made using fresco technique. Using paints prepared in water, they painted either on wet plaster (fresco itself) or on dry plaster - this technique is called “a secco” (translated from Italian as “on dry”). The main binder of plaster is lime. Because It took a little time for the lime to dry; fresco painting had to be done quickly, often in parts, between which connecting seams remained. From the second half of the 15th century. The fresco technique began to be supplemented with a secco painting; the latter allowed for slower work and allowed for finishing of parts. Work on the paintings was preceded by the production of synopias - auxiliary drawings applied under the fresco on the first layer of plaster. These drawings were made with red ocher, which was extracted from clay near the city of Sinop, located on the Black Sea coast. Based on the name of the city, the paint was called Sinope, or sinopia, and later the drawings themselves began to be called the same. Sinopia was used in Italian painting from the 13th to the mid-15th century. However, not all painters resorted to synopia - for example, Giotto di Bondone, the most prominent representative of the Proto-Renaissance era, did without them. Gradually, synopia was abandoned. From the middle of the 15th century. Cardboards - preparatory drawings made on paper or fabric in the size of future works - have become widespread in painting. The contours of the design were transferred to wet plaster using coal dust. It was blown through holes pierced in the contour and pressed into the plaster with some sharp instrument. Sometimes synopias from a sketch turned into a finished monumental drawing, and cardboards acquired the significance of independent works of painting.

Cimabue (actually Cenni di Pepo, c. 1240 - c. 1302) is considered the founder of the new Italian style of painting. Cimabue was famous in Florence as a master of solemn altar paintings and icons. His images are characterized by abstraction and staticity. And although Cimabue followed Byzantine traditions in his work, in his works he tried to express earthly feelings and soften the rigidity of the Byzantine canon.
Piero Cavallini (between 1240 and 1250 - around 1330) lived and worked in Rome. He is the author of the mosaics of the church of Santa Maria in Trastevere (1291), as well as the frescoes of the church of Santa Cecilia in Trastevere (circa 1293). In his works, Cavallini gave shapes volume and tangibility.
Cavallini’s achievements were adopted and continued Giotto di Bondone(1266 or 1267 - 1337), the greatest artist of the Proto-Renaissance. The name of Giotto is associated with a turn in the development of Italian painting, its break with medieval artistic canons and traditions of Italo-Byzantine art of the 13th century. Giotto's most famous works are the paintings of the Arena Chapel in Padua (1304-06). The frescoes are distinguished by their clarity, uncomplicated storytelling, and the presence of everyday details that add vitality and naturalness to the scenes depicted. Rejecting the church canon that dominated the art of that time, Giotto depicts his characters as similar to real people: with proportional, squat bodies, round (rather than elongated) faces, regular eye shape, etc. His saints do not hover above the ground, but stand firmly on it with both feet. They think more about earthly things than about heavenly things, experiencing completely human feelings and emotions. For the first time in the history of Italian painting, the state of mind of the heroes of a painting is conveyed by facial expressions, gestures, and posture. Instead of the traditional golden background, Giotto's frescoes depict a landscape, an interior, or sculptural groups on the facades of basilicas.
In the second half of the 14th century. The pictorial school of Siena comes first. The largest and most refined master of Siena painting of the 14th century. was Simone Martini (c. 1284-1344). The brush of Simone Martini is the first in the history of art to depict a specific historical event with a portrait of a contemporary. This image " Condotiera Guidoriccio da Fogliano"in the Hall of Mappamondo (Map of the World) in the Palazzo Publico (Siena), which became the prototype for numerous future equestrian portraits. The altarpiece “The Annunciation” by Simone Martini, now kept in the Uffizi Gallery in Florence, enjoys well-deserved fame.

Features of the Renaissance. Proto-Renaissance

Features of the Renaissance

Early Renaissance

In the 15th century Italian art took a dominant position in the artistic life of Europe. The foundations of humanistic secular (i.e., non-ecclesiastical) culture were laid in Florence, which pushed Siena and Pisa into the background. Political power here belonged to merchants and artisans; several wealthy families, constantly competing with each other, had the strongest influence on city affairs. This struggle ended at the end of the 14th century. victory of the Medici banking house. Its head, Cosimo de' Medici, became the unofficial ruler of Florence. Writers, poets, scientists, architects, and artists flocked to the court of Cosimo de' Medici. The Renaissance culture of Florence reached its peak under Lorenzo de' Medici, nicknamed the Magnificent. Lorenzo was a great patron of the arts and sciences, the creator of Plato's Academy, where the outstanding minds of Italy, poets and philosophers gathered, where refined debates were held, elevating the spirit and mind.

Architecture

Under Cosimo and Lorenzo de' Medici, a real revolution took place in the architecture of Florence: extensive construction took place here, significantly changing the appearance of the city. The founder of Renaissance architecture in Italy was Filippo Brunelleschi(1377-1446) - architect, sculptor and scientist, one of the creators of the scientific theory of perspective. Brunelleschi's greatest engineering achievement was the construction of the dome Cathedral of Santa Maria del Fiore in Florence. Thanks to his mathematical and technical genius, Brunelleschi managed to solve the most difficult problem for his time. The main difficulty that faced the master was caused by the gigantic size of the span of the middle cross (42 m), which required special efforts to facilitate the expansion. Brunelleschi solved the problem by using an ingenious design: a light hollow dome consisting of two shells, a frame system of eight load-bearing ribs connected by encircling rings, a skylight that closes and loads the vault. The dome of the Cathedral of Santa Maria del Fiore became the predecessor of numerous domed churches in Italy and other European countries.

Brunelleschi was one of the first in Italian architecture to creatively comprehend and originally interpret the ancient order system ( Ospedale degli Innocenti (foundling shelter), 1421-44), laid the foundation for the creation of domed churches based on the ancient order ( Church of San Lorenzo ). A true pearl of the Early Renaissance was created by Brunelleschi at the request of a wealthy Florentine family. Pazzi Chapel(started in 1429). The humanism and poetry of Brunelleschi's creativity, the harmonious proportionality, lightness and grace of his buildings, which retain connections with the Gothic traditions, the creative freedom and scientific validity of his plans determined Brunelleschi's great influence on the subsequent development of Renaissance architecture.

One of the main achievements of Italian architecture of the 15th century. was the creation of a new type of city palaces-palazzos, which served as a model for public buildings of later times. Features of the 15th century palazzo are a clear division of the enclosed volume of the building into three floors, an open courtyard with summer floor-by-floor arcades, the use of rustication (stone with a roughly rounded or convex front surface) for facing the facade, as well as a strongly extended decorative cornice. A striking example of this style is the capital construction of Brunelleschi’s student Michelozzo di Bartolommeo (1396-1472), court architect of the Medici family, - Palazzo Medici - Riccardi (1444-60), which served as a model for the construction of many Florentine palaces. Close to Michelozzo's creation Palazzo Strozzi(founded in 1481), which is associated with the name of the architect and sculptor Benedetto da Maiano (1442-97).

A special place in the history of Italian architecture occupies Leon Battista Alberti(1404-72). A comprehensively gifted and widely educated man, he was one of the most brilliant humanists of his time. His range of interests was unusually diverse. He covered morality and law, mathematics, mechanics, economics, philosophy, poetry, music, painting, sculpture, and architecture. A brilliant stylist, Alberti left numerous works in Latin and Italian. In Italy and abroad, Alberti gained fame as an outstanding art theorist. The famous treatises “Ten Books on Architecture” (1449-52), “On Painting”, “On the Statue” (1435-36) belong to his pen. But Alberti's main vocation was architecture. In his architectural work, Alberti gravitated towards bold, experimental solutions, innovatively using the ancient artistic heritage. Alberti created a new type of city palace ( Palazzo Rucellai ). In religious architecture, striving for grandeur and simplicity, Alberti used motifs of Roman triumphal arches and arcades in the design of facades ( Church of Sant'Andrea in Mantua, 1472-94). The name Alberti is rightfully considered one of the first among the great cultural creators of the Italian Renaissance.

Sculpture

In the 15th century Italian sculpture, which acquired an independent meaning independent of architecture, is flourishing. The practice of artistic life begins to include orders for the decoration of public buildings; art competitions are held. One of these competitions - for the manufacture of bronze of the second northern doors of the Florentine Baptistery (1401) - is considered a significant event that opened a new page in the history of Italian Renaissance sculpture. The victory was won by Lorenzo Ghiberti (1381-1455).

One of the most educated people of his time, the first historian of Italian art, a brilliant draftsman, Ghiberti devoted his life to one type of sculpture - relief. Ghiberti considered the main principle of his art to be balance and harmony of all elements of the image. The pinnacle of Ghiberti's creativity was eastern doors of the Florentine Baptistery (1425-52), immortalizing the name of the master. The decoration of the doors includes ten square compositions made of gilded bronze (“ Creation of Adam and Eve"), with their extraordinary expressiveness reminiscent of paintings. The artist managed to convey the depth of space, saturated with pictures of nature, human figures, and architectural structures. With the light hand of Michelangelo, the eastern doors of the Florentine Baptistery began to be called "The Gates of Heaven"

Ghiberti's workshop became a school for a whole generation of artists, in particular, the famous Donatello, the great reformer of Italian sculpture, worked there. The work of Donatello (c. 1386-1466), which absorbed the democratic traditions of the culture of Florence in the 14th century, represents one of the peaks of the development of the art of the Early Renaissance. It embodied the search for new, realistic means of depicting reality, characteristic of Renaissance art, and close attention to man and his spiritual world. The influence of Donatello's work on the development of Italian Renaissance art was enormous.

The second generation of Florentine sculptors gravitated towards a more lyrical, peaceful, secular art. The leading role in it belonged to the della Robbia family of sculptors. The head of the family, Lucca della Robbia (1399/1400 - 1482), became famous for his use of glaze techniques in circular sculpture and relief. The technique of glaze (majolica), known since ancient times to the peoples of Western Asia, was brought to the Iberian Peninsula and the island of Majorca (where its name came from) in the Middle Ages, and then widely spread in Italy. Lucca della Robbia created medallions with reliefs on a deep blue background for buildings and altars, garlands of flowers and fruits, majolica busts of the Madonna, Christ and saints. The cheerful, elegant, kind art of this master received well-deserved recognition from his contemporaries. His nephew Andrea della Robbia (1435-1525) also achieved great perfection in the majolica technique ( reliefs on the façade of the Ospedale degli Innocenti).

Painting

The huge role that Brunelleschi played in Early Renaissance architecture, and Donatello in sculpture, belonged to Masaccio (1401-1428) in painting. Masaccio died young, not reaching the age of 27, and yet managed to accomplish a lot in painting. The famous art historian Whipper said: “Masaccio is one of the most independent and consistent geniuses in the history of European painting, the founder of new realism...” Continuing the search for Giotto, Masaccio boldly breaks with medieval artistic traditions. In fresco "Trinity"(1426-27), created for the church of Santa Maria Novella in Florence, Masaccio used full perspective for the first time in wall painting. In the paintings of the Brancacci Chapel of the Church of Santa Maria del Carmine in Florence (1425-28) - the main creation of his short life - Masaccio gives the images unprecedented life-like persuasiveness, emphasizes the physicality and monumentality of his characters, masterfully conveys the emotional state and psychological depth of the images. In fresco "Expulsion from Paradise" the artist solves the most difficult task for his time of depicting a naked human figure. The stern and courageous art of Masaccio had a huge impact on the artistic culture of the Renaissance.

The development of Early Renaissance painting was ambiguous: artists followed their own, sometimes different, paths. The secular principle, the desire for a fascinating narrative, and a lyrical earthly feeling found vivid expression in the works of Fra Filippo Lippi (1406-69), a monk of the Carmelite Order. A charming master, the author of many altar compositions, among which the painting is considered the best « Adoration of the Child » , created for the chapel in Palazzo Medici - Riccardi, Filippo Lippi managed to convey in them human warmth and poetic love for nature.

In the middle of the 15th century. painting in Central Italy experienced a rapid flourishing, a striking example of which is creativity Piero della Francesca(1420-92), the greatest artist and art theorist of the Renaissance. The most wonderful creation of Piero della Francesca - cycle of frescoes in the Church of San Francesco in Arezzo, which are based on the legend of the Life-Giving Tree of the Cross. The frescoes, arranged in three tiers, trace the history of the life-giving cross from the very beginning, when the sacred tree grows from the seed of the tree of paradise of the knowledge of good and evil on the grave of Adam ("Death of Adam") and until the end, when the Byzantine Emperor Heraclius solemnly returns the Christian relic to Jerusalem (« Battle between Heraclius and Khosroes » ). The work of Piero della Francesca went beyond the local painting schools and determined the development of Italian art as a whole.

In the second half of the 15th century, many talented craftsmen worked in Northern Italy in the cities of Verona, Ferrara, and Venice. Among the painters of this time, the most famous is Andrea Mantegna (1431-1506), a master of easel and monumental painting, draftsman and engraver, sculptor and architect. The artist’s pictorial style is distinguished by the chasing of forms and designs, the rigor and truthfulness of generalized images. Thanks to the spatial depth and sculptural nature of the figures, Mantegna achieves the impression of a real scene frozen for a moment - his characters look so three-dimensional and natural. Mantegna lived most of his life in Mantua, where he created his most famous work - "Camera degli Sposi" painting in the country castle of the Marquis L. Gonzaga. Using only the means of painting, he created here a luxurious Renaissance interior, a place for ceremonial receptions and holidays. Mantegna's art, which was extremely famous, influenced all of Northern Italian painting.

A special place in the painting of the Early Renaissance belongs to Sandro Botticelli(actually Alessandro di Mariano Filipepi), who was born in 1445 in Florence in the family of a wealthy leather tanner. In 1459-64. the young man studies painting from the famous Florentine master Filippo Lippi. In 1470 he opened his own workshop in Florence, and in 1472 he became a member of the Guild of St. Luke.

Botticelli's first creation was the composition "Force", which he completed for the commercial court of Florence. The young artist quickly won the trust of customers and gained fame, which attracted the attention of Lorenzo the Magnificent, the new ruler of Florence, and became his court master and favorite. Botticelli completed most of his paintings for the houses of the Duke and other noble Florentine families, as well as for churches, monasteries and public buildings in Florence.

Second half of the 1470s and 1480s. became a period of creative flourishing for Botticelli. For the main façade of the Church of Santa Maria Novella he writes the composition “ Adoration of the Magi" - a kind of mythologized group portrait of the Medici family. A few years later, the artist creates his famous mythological allegory “Spring”.

In 1481, Pope Sixtus IV ordered a group of painters, among whom was Botticelli, to decorate his chapel with frescoes, which later received the name “Sistine.” Botticelli painted frescoes in the Sistine Chapel " Temptation of Christ », « Scenes from the Life of Moses », « Punishment of Korah, Dathan and Abiron" Over the next few years, Botticelli completed a series of 4 frescoes based on short stories from Boccaccio’s Decameron, and created his most famous mythological works (“Birth of Venus”, “ Pallas and Centaur"), as well as several altar compositions for Florentine churches (" Coronation of the Virgin Mary », « Altar of San Barnaba"). Many times he turned to the image of the Madonna (“ Madonna del Magnificat », « Madonna with pomegranate », « Madonna with a book"), also worked in the portrait genre (" Portrait of Giuliano Medici", "Portrait of a young woman", "Portrait of a young man").

In the 1490s, during the period of social movements and mystical sermons of the monk Savonarola that shook Florence, moralizing notes and drama appeared in Botticelli’s art (“Slander”, “ Lamentation of Christ », « Mystical Christmas"). Under the influence of Savonarola, in a fit of religious exaltation, the artist even destroyed some of his works. In the mid-1490s, with the death of Lorenzo the Magnificent and the expulsion of his son Pietro from Florence, Botticelli lost his fame as a great artist. Forgotten, he quietly lives out his life in the house of his brother Simon. In 1510 the artist died.

Botticelli's exquisite art with elements of stylization (i.e. generalization of images using conventional techniques - simplification of color, shape and volume) is considered one of the pinnacles of the development of painting. Botticelli's art, unlike most of the Early Renaissance masters, was based on personal experience. Exceptionally sensitive and sincere, Botticelli went through a difficult and tragic path of creative quest - from a poetic perception of the world in his youth to mysticism and religious exaltation in adulthood.

EARLY RENAISSANCE

EARLY RENAISSANCE

High Renaissance

The High Renaissance, which gave humanity such great masters as Leonardo da Vinci, Raphael, Michelangelo, Giorgione, Titian, Bramante, covers a relatively short period of time - the end of the 15th and the first third of the 16th centuries. Only in Venice did the flowering of art continue until the middle of the century.

Fundamental changes associated with the decisive events of world history and the successes of advanced scientific thought have endlessly expanded people's ideas about the world - not only about the earth, but also about space. The perception of the world and the human personality seems to have become larger; in artistic creativity this was reflected not only in the majestic scale of architectural structures, monuments, solemn fresco cycles and paintings, but also in their content and expressiveness of images. The art of the High Renaissance is a living and complex artistic process with dazzlingly bright ups and subsequent crises.

Donato Bramante.

The center of High Renaissance architecture was Rome, where, on the basis of previous discoveries and successes, a single classical style emerged. The masters creatively used the ancient order system, creating structures whose majestic monumentality was in tune with the era. The largest representative of High Renaissance architecture was Donato Bramante (1444-1514). Bramante's buildings are distinguished by their monumentality and grandeur, harmonious perfection of proportions, integrity and clarity of compositional and spatial solutions, and free, creative use of classical forms. Bramante's highest creative achievement is the reconstruction of the Vatican (the architect actually created a new building, organically incorporating scattered old buildings into it). Bramante is also the author of the design of St. Peter's Cathedral in Rome. With his work, Bramante determined the development of architecture in the 16th century.

Leonardo da Vinci.

In the history of mankind it is not easy to find another person as brilliant as the founder of the art of the High Renaissance Leonardo da Vinci(1452-1519). The comprehensive nature of the activities of this great artist, sculptor, architect, scientist and engineer became clear only when the scattered manuscripts from his legacy were examined, numbering over seven thousand sheets containing scientific and architectural projects, inventions and sketches. It is difficult to name an area of ​​knowledge that his genius would not touch. Leonardo's universalism is so incomprehensible that the famous biographer of Renaissance figures Giorgio Vasari could not explain this phenomenon except by heavenly intervention: “Whatever this man turned to, his every action bore the stamp of divinity.”

In his famous “Treatise on Painting” (1498) and other notes, Leonardo paid great attention to the study of the human body, information on anatomy, proportions, the relationship between movements, facial expressions and the emotional state of a person. Leonardo was also interested in the problems of chiaroscuro, volumetric modeling, linear and aerial perspective. Leonardo paid tribute not only to the theory of art. He created a number of magnificent altar images and portraits. Leonardo's brush belongs to one of the most famous works of world painting - “Mona Lisa” (“La Gioconda”). Leonardo created monumental sculptural images, designed and built architectural structures. Leonardo remains to this day one of the most charismatic personalities of the Renaissance. A huge number of books have been dedicated to him, his life has been studied in detail. And yet, much in his work remains a mystery and continues to excite people’s minds.

Rafael Santi.

The art of Raphael Santi (1483-1520) also belongs to the peaks of the Italian Renaissance. In the history of world art, the work of Raphael is associated with the idea of ​​sublime beauty and harmony. It is generally accepted that in the constellation of brilliant masters of the High Renaissance, it was Raphael who was the main bearer of harmony. The tireless striving for a bright, perfect beginning permeates all of Raphael’s work and constitutes its inner meaning. His works are unusually attractive in their natural grace (“ Sistine Madonna"). Perhaps that is why the master gained such extraordinary popularity among the public and had many followers among artists at all times. Raphael was not only an amazing painter and portrait painter, but also a monumentalist who worked in fresco techniques, an architect, and a master of decor. All these talents manifested themselves with particular force in his paintings of the apartments of Pope Julius II in the Vatican (“School of Athens”). In the art of the brilliant artist, a new image of the Renaissance man was born - beautiful, harmonious, perfect physically and spiritually.

Michelangelo Buonarotti.

Contemporary Leonardo da Vinci and Raphael was their eternal rival - Michelangelo Buonarroti, the greatest master of the High Renaissance - sculptor, painter, architect and poet. This titan of the Renaissance began his creative path with sculpture. His colossal statues became a symbol of a new man - a hero and fighter (“David”). The master erected many architectural and sculptural structures, the most famous of which is the Medici Chapel in Florence. The splendor of these works is built on the colossal tension of the characters’ feelings ( Sarcophagus of Giuliano Medici). But Michelangelo’s paintings in the Vatican, in the Sistine Chapel, are especially famous, in which he proved himself to be a brilliant painter. Perhaps no one in world art, neither before nor after Michelangelo, has created characters so strong in body and spirit (“ Creation of Adam"). The huge, incredibly complex fresco on the ceiling was painted by the artist alone, without assistants; it remains to this day an unsurpassed monumental work of Italian painting. But in addition to painting the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, the master, already in old age, created the fiercely inspired “Last Judgment” - a symbol of the collapse of the ideals of his great era.

Michelangelo worked a lot and fruitfully in architecture, in particular, he supervised the construction of St. Peter's Cathedral and the ensemble Capitol Square in Rome. The work of the great Michelangelo constituted an entire era and was far ahead of its time; it played a colossal role in world art, in particular, it influenced the formation of the principles of the Baroque.

Giorgione and Titian.

Venice, where painting flourished, added a bright page to the history of High Renaissance art. Giorgione is considered the first master of the High Renaissance in Venice. His art is completely special. The spirit of clear harmony and some special intimate contemplation and dreaminess reigns in it. He often painted delightful beauties, real goddesses. Usually this is a poetic fiction - the embodiment of an unrealizable dream, admiration for a romantic feeling and a beautiful woman. His paintings contain a hint of sensual passion, sweet pleasure, unearthly happiness. With the art of Giorgione, Venetian painting acquired pan-Italian significance, establishing its artistic characteristics.

Titian in went down in the history of Italian art as a titan and the head of the Venetian school, as a symbol of its heyday. The breath of a new era - stormy, tragic, sensual - was manifested with particular force in the work of this artist. Titian's work is distinguished by its exceptionally wide and varied coverage of types and genres of painting. Titian was one of the founders of monumental altar painting, landscape as an independent genre, and various types of portraits, including ceremonial ones. In his work, ideal images coexist with bright characters, tragic conflicts with scenes of jubilant joy, religious compositions with mythological and historical paintings.

Titian developed a new painting technique that had an exceptional influence on the further development of world fine art until the 20th century. Titian belongs to the greatest colorists of world painting. His paintings shine with gold and a complex range of vibrating, luminous undertones of color. Titian, who lived for almost a century, experienced the collapse of Renaissance ideals; the master's work half belongs to the Late Renaissance. His hero, entering the fight against hostile forces, dies, but retains his greatness. The influence of Titian's great workshop affected all Venetian art.

HIGH RENAISSANCE

HIGH RENAISSANCE

Late Renaissance

In the second half of the 16th century. In Italy, the decline of the economy and trade was growing, Catholicism entered into a struggle with humanistic culture, art was experiencing a deep crisis. It strengthened anti-Renaissance tendencies, embodied in mannerism. However, Mannerism almost did not affect Venice, which in the second half of the 16th century became the main center of Late Renaissance art. In line with the high humanistic Renaissance tradition, in new historical conditions, the work of the great masters of the Late Renaissance, enriched with new forms, developed in Venice - Palladio, Veronese, Tintoretto.

Andrea Palladio

The work of the northern Italian architect Andrea Palladio (1508-80), based on a deep study of ancient and Renaissance architecture, represents one of the peaks in the art of the Late Renaissance. Palladio developed the principles of architecture that were developed in the architecture of European classicism of the 17th-18th centuries. and received the name Palladianism. The architect outlined his ideas in the theoretical work “Four Books on Architecture” (1570). Palladio's buildings (mainly city palaces and villas) are full of graceful beauty and naturalness, harmonious completeness and strict orderliness, are distinguished by clarity and expediency of planning and organic connection with the environment ( Palazzo Chiericati). The ability to harmoniously connect architecture with the surrounding landscape was demonstrated with particular force in Palladio’s villas, imbued with an elegiacally enlightened sense of nature and marked by classical clarity and simplicity of form and composition ( Villa Capra (Rotunda)). Palladio created the first monumental theater building in Italy, the Teatro Olimpico. Palladio's influence on the development of architecture in subsequent centuries was enormous.

Veronese and Tintoretto...

The festive, life-affirming character of the Venetian Renaissance was most clearly manifested in the work of Paolo Veronese. A muralist, he created magnificent decorative ensembles of wall and ceiling paintings with many characters and interesting details. Veronese created his own style: his spectacular, spectacular paintings are full of emotion, passion and life, and the heroes, the Venetian nobility, are usually located in patrician palaces or against the backdrop of luxurious nature. They are carried away by grandiose feasts or enchanting celebrations (“Marriage at Cana”). Veronese was the master of merry Venice, its triumphs, the poet of its golden splendor. Veronese had an exceptional gift as a colorist. His colors are permeated with light, intense and not only give objects color, but themselves transform into an object, turning into clouds, fabric, a human body. Because of this, the real beauty of figures and objects is multiplied by the beauty of color and texture, which produces a strong emotional impact on the viewer.

The complete opposite of Veronese was his contemporary Tintoretto (1518-94), the last major master of the Italian Renaissance. The abundance of external artistic influences dissolved in the unique creative individuality of Tintoretto. In his work he was a gigantic figure, the creator of a volcanic temperament, violent passions and heroic intensity. His work was a great success among his contemporaries and subsequent generations. Tintoretto was distinguished by a truly inhuman capacity for work and tireless quest. He felt the tragedy of his time more acutely and deeply than most of his contemporaries. The master rebelled against established traditions in the fine arts - adherence to symmetry, strict balance, staticity; expanded the boundaries of space, filled it with dynamics, dramatic action, and began to express human feelings more clearly. 1590 g . The art of mannerism departs from the Renaissance ideals of a harmonious perception of the world. A person finds himself at the mercy of supernatural forces. The world appears unstable, shaky, in a state of decay. Mannerist images are full of anxiety, restlessness, and tension. The artist moves away from nature, strives to surpass it, following in his work a subjective “inner idea”, the basis of which is not the real world, but the creative imagination; the means of execution is “beautiful manner” as the sum of certain techniques. Among them are the arbitrary elongation of figures, a complex serpentine rhythm, the unreality of fantastic space and light, and sometimes cold, piercing colors.

The largest and most gifted master of mannerism, a painter of complex creative fate, was Jacopo Pontormo (1494-1556). In his famous painting " Descent from the Cross“The composition is unstable, the figures are pretentiously broken, the light colors are harsh. Francesco Mazzola, nicknamed Parmigianino (1503-40), loved to amaze the viewer: for example, he wrote his “ Self-portrait in a convex mirror" Deliberate deliberateness distinguishes his famous painting “ Madonna with a long neck ».

The Medici court painter Agnolo Bronzino (1503-72) is famous for his ceremonial portraits. They echoed the era of bloody atrocities and moral decline that engulfed the highest circles of Italian society. Bronzino’s noble customers seem to be separated from the viewer by an invisible distance; the rigidity of their poses, the impassivity of their faces, the richness of their clothes, the gestures of their beautiful ceremonial hands - all this is like an outer shell hiding an inner flawed life. In the portrait of Eleanor of Toledo with her son (c. 1545), the inaccessibility of the cold, aloof image is enhanced by the fact that the viewer's attention is completely absorbed by the flat large pattern of the duchess's magnificent brocade clothing. The type of court portrait created by the Mannerists influenced the portrait art of the 16th-17th centuries. in many other European countries.

The art of mannerism was transitional: the Renaissance was fading into the past, and the time was coming for a new all-European artistic style - Baroque.

Art of the Northern Renaissance.

The countries of Northern Europe did not have their own ancient past, but the Renaissance period stands out in their history: from the turnXV – XVIthrough the second halfXVIIcentury. This time is distinguished by the penetration of Renaissance ideals into various spheres of culture and the gradual change in its style. As in the birthplace of the Renaissance, in the art of the Northern Renaissance, interest in the real world changed the forms of artistic creativity. However, the art of the northern countries was not characterized by the pathos of Italian painting, glorifying the power of the titanic man. The burghers (as wealthy townspeople were called) valued integrity, loyalty to duty and word, and the sanctity of the marital vow and home. In burgher circles, their own ideal of a person was formed - clear, sober, pious and businesslike. The art of the burghers poetizes the ordinary average person and his world - the world of everyday life and simple things.

Masters of the Renaissance in the Netherlands.

New features of Renaissance art appeared primarily in the Netherlands, which was one of the richest and most industrialized countries in Europe. Because of its extensive international connections, the Netherlands absorbed new discoveries much more quickly than other Nordic countries.

The Renaissance style in the Netherlands opened Jan Van Eyck(1390-1441). His most famous work is Ghent Altarpiece, on which the artist began to work together with his brother, and continued to work independently after his death for another 6 years. The Ghent altarpiece, created for the city cathedral, is a two-tier fold, on 12 boards of which there are pictures of everyday, everyday life (on the outer boards, which were visible when the fold was closed) and festive, jubilant, transformed life (on the inner doors, which appeared open during church holidays). This is a monument of art glorifying the beauty of earthly life. Van Eyck's emotional feeling - "the world is like paradise", every particle of which is beautiful - is expressed clearly and clearly. The artist relied on many observations from nature. All figures and objects have three-dimensional volume and weight. The Van Eyck brothers were among the first to discover the possibilities of oil painting; from this time on, it begins to gradually replace tempera.

In the second half of XVcentury, full of political and religious strife, complex, unique art stands out in the art of the Netherlands Hieronymus Bosch(1450?-1516). This is a very curious artist with an extraordinary imagination. He lived in his own and terrible world. In Bosch's paintings there is a condensation of medieval folklore ideas, grotesque montages of the living and the mechanical, the terrible and the comic. In his compositions, which had no center, there is no main character. The space in several layers is filled with numerous groups of figures and objects: monstrously exaggerated reptiles, toads, spiders, terrible creatures in which parts of different creatures and objects are combined. The purpose of Bosch's compositions is moral edification. Bosch does not find harmony and perfection in nature; his demonic images remind of the vitality and omnipresence of world evil, the cycle of life and death.

The man in Bosch's paintings is pitiful and weak. So, in the triptych " Wagonload of hay"The artist reveals the history of humanity. The left wing tells the story of the fall of Adam and Eve, the right one depicts Hell and all the horrors that await sinners here. The central part of the picture illustrates the popular proverb “The world is a haystack, everyone takes from it what he manages to grab.” Bosch shows how people fight over a piece of hay, die under the wheels of a cart, and try to climb onto it. On top of the cart, having renounced the world, lovers sing and kiss. There is an angel on one side of them, and a devil on the other: who will win? Creepy creatures are dragging the cart into the underworld. God looks at all the actions of people with bewilderment. The painting is imbued with an even more gloomy mood. Carrying the cross": Christ carries his heavy cross surrounded by disgusting people with bulging eyes and gaping mouths. For their sake, the Lord sacrifices himself, but his death on the cross will leave them indifferent.

Bosch had already died when another famous Dutch artist was born - Pieter Bruegel the Elder(1525-1569), nicknamed Muzhitsky for his many paintings depicting the life of peasants. Bruegel took folk proverbs and the everyday concerns of ordinary people as the basis for many of his subjects. The completeness of the images of the paintings " Peasant wedding" And " Peasant dance"carries the power of the folk element. Even Bruegel’s paintings of biblical scenes are populated by the Netherlands, and the events of distant Judea take place against the backdrop of snow-covered streets under the dim sky of his native country (“ Sermon of John the Baptist"). Showing the seemingly unimportant, secondary, the artist speaks about the main thing in people's lives, recreates the spirit of his time.

Small canvas " Hunters in the snow"(January) from the series "Seasons" is considered one of the unsurpassed masterpieces of world painting. Tired hunters with dogs return home. Together with them, the viewer enters the hill, from which a panorama of a small town opens. Snow-covered banks of the river, thorny trees frozen in the clear frosty air, birds fly, sit on tree branches and roofs of houses, people are busy with their daily affairs. All these seemingly little things, together with the blue sky, black trees, and white snow, create in the picture a panorama of the world that the artist passionately loves.

Bruegel's most tragic painting " Parable of the Blind"Written by the artist shortly before his death. It illustrates the Gospel story: “if a blind man leads a blind man, they will both fall into a pit.” Perhaps this is an image of humanity, blinded by its desires, moving towards its destruction. However, Bruegel does not judge, but, by comprehending the laws of relationships between people with each other, with the environment, penetrating into the essence of human nature, he reveals to people themselves, their place in the world.

Painting of Germany during the Renaissance.

The features of the Renaissance in the art of Germany appear later than in the Netherlands. The flowering of German humanism, secular sciences and culture falls in the early yearsXVIV. This was a short period during which German culture gave the world the highest artistic values. These include, first of all, the work Albrecht Durer(1471-1528) - the most important artist of the German Renaissance.

Dürer is a typical representative of the Renaissance; he was a painter, an engraver, a mathematician, and an engineer, and wrote treatises on fortification and art theory. On self-portraits he appears intelligent, noble, focused, full of deep philosophical thoughts. In his paintings, Dürer is not content with formal beauty, but strives to give a symbolic expression of abstract thoughts.

A special place in Dürer’s creative heritage belongs to the “Apocalypse” series, which includes 15 large woodcuts. Dürer illustrates predictions from the “Revelation of John the Evangelist”, for example, the leaf “ Four Horsemen“symbolizes terrible disasters - war, pestilence, famine, unjust judgment. The premonition of change, difficult trials and disasters expressed in the engravings turned out to be prophetic (the Reformation and the Peasant and Religious Wars that followed it soon began).

Another remarkable artist of that time was Lucas Cranach the Elder(1472-1553). His paintings are kept in the Hermitage " Madonna and Child under the Apple Tree" And " Female portrait" In them we see a woman’s face, depicted in many of the master’s paintings (it is even called “Cranach’s”): a small chin, narrow eyes, golden hair. The artist carefully designs jewelry and clothing, his paintings are a feast for the eyes. The purity and naivety of the images once again make you look at these paintings. Cranach was a wonderful portrait painter; he created images of many famous contemporaries - Martin Luther (who was his friend), Duke Henry of Saxony and many others.

But the most famous portrait painter of the Northern Renaissance, without a doubt, can be recognized as another German painter Hans Holbein the Younger(1497-1543). For a long time he was the court artist of the English king HenryVIII. In his portrait, Holbein perfectly conveys the imperious nature of the king, who is unfamiliar with doubt. Small, intelligent eyes on a fleshy face reveal him as a tyrant. Portrait of Henry VIII was so reliable that it frightened people who knew the king. Holbein painted portraits of many famous people of that time, in particular the statesman and writer Thomas More, the philosopher Erasmus of Rotterdam and many others.

The development of Renaissance culture in Germany, the Netherlands, and some other European countries was interrupted by the Reformation and the religious wars that followed it. Following this, the time came for the formation of new principles in art, which entered the next stage of its development.

The history of the Renaissance begins in This period is also called the Renaissance. The Renaissance changed into culture and became the forerunner of the culture of the New Age. And the Renaissance ended in the 16th-17th centuries, since in each state it has its own start and end date.

Some general information

Representatives of the Renaissance are Francesco Petrarca and Giovanni Boccaccio. They became the first poets who began to express sublime images and thoughts in frank, common language. This innovation was received with a bang and spread in other countries.

Renaissance and art

The peculiarity of the Renaissance is that the human body became the main source of inspiration and subject of study for artists of this time. Thus, the emphasis was placed on the similarity of sculpture and painting with reality. The main features of the art of the Renaissance period include radiance, refined use of the brush, the play of shadow and light, care in the work process and complex compositions. For Renaissance artists, the main images were from the Bible and myths.

The resemblance of a real person to his image on a particular canvas was so close that the fictional character seemed alive. This cannot be said about the art of the twentieth century.

The Renaissance (its main trends are briefly outlined above) perceived the human body as an endless beginning. Scientists and artists regularly improved their skills and knowledge by studying the bodies of individuals. The prevailing view then was that man was created in the likeness and image of God. This statement reflected physical perfection. The main and important objects of Renaissance art were the gods.

Nature and beauty of the human body

Renaissance art paid great attention to nature. A characteristic element of the landscapes was varied and lush vegetation. The blue-hued skies, pierced by the sun's rays that penetrated the white clouds, provided a magnificent backdrop for the floating creatures. Renaissance art revered the beauty of the human body. This feature was manifested in the refined elements of the muscles and body. Difficult poses, facial expressions and gestures, a harmonious and clear color palette are characteristic of the work of sculptors and sculptors of the Renaissance period. These include Titian, Leonardo da Vinci, Rembrandt and others.