Italy In The 16th Century: Leonardo, Raphael And Michelangelo

Italy in the 16th Century: Leonardo, Raphael and MichelangeloLEONARDOUnlike some artists, Leonardo did not believe in improving on or idealizing nature. Hebelieved that the true artist became a mirror of nature. To this end, he also believed that allclasses of natural things should be observed -- the good, the bad, the beautiful, the ugly.Part of his belief was a response to what he saw as the increasing conventionalization ofnature in paintings of the early Renaissance as artists developed "formulae" for depictingliving things (not entirely surprising since most artists at the time were basing theirobservations of nature on classical sculpture). Leonardo’s interest in science related to hisgoal of returning reality to nature and to his belief that painting was the "granddaughter" ofnature.Following the precepts of his teacher, Andrea Verrochio, Leonardo kept notebooks with himat all times, filling them with drawings of everything he saw and imagined. Leonardo'sunderstanding of the role of the imagination was also important. In his system, imaginationmeant a recombination of things (or the parts of things) which already existed, and creatingsome previously unimagined form.Many of the characteristics of 16th-century Italian renaissance painting, although not directlyinvented by Leonardo, reached a degree of perfection in his hands: spatial clarity, simplicity,richer vocabulary of body movement and gesture, more convincing light and atmosphere.Sfumato, a technique invented by his teacher Verrochio and used by Leonardo in both hispainting and drawing, can create an atmospheric effect of haze and distance but it alsoprovides unity to the figures by softening outlines and letting them merge into a sculpturalunit. In many of his paintings, such as The Madonna and Child with St. Anne, we findLeonardo's increasing use of a "pyramidal" composition or grouping of figures. Thetendency to cluster figures together, depicting them in physically connected groups, is animportant change from the paintings of the earlier 15th century and will be very importantfor artists such as Raphael and later developments in the 16th century. Overall, we mightnote that Leonardo was not the only one to do this. Raphael, Michelangelo and other 16th

century artists began to think in terms of unified compositions rather than just thearrangement of figures in space, making this one of the important differences between 15thcentury Italian painting and the developments which we see in the 16th century.Leonardo's portraits of women were unique for the time, partly because he used the 3/4profile position before most other artists used it with female portraits and partly because hegave the sitter in the painting a strong presence. These are not generalized portraits ofbeautiful women as virtue and as Mary; these are portraits of individuals who seem to bemaking contact with the viewer. This is even truer in the case of the Mona Lisa, partlybecause her head and body are not aligned in the same position, as they are in his earlierpainting of Ginevra. What both paintings share, in addition to the interest in conveying afemale subject who is more than the sum of her jewelry and fashion (as would have beentrue in many other portraits), is the way Leonardo uses the landscaped background as acontinuation of the qualities of the female subject. The rhyming curves, colors and formswhich unite the figure and the background is something he did in his paintings of religiousscenes as well. In those paintings, the landscape communicated religious symbolism; inthese, it communicates the virtues of the women.MICHELANGELOIf we tried to summarize Michelangelo's philosophy in four phrases, it would probably golike this:·dual allegiance to nature and beauty·the importance of the idea [the image in the artist's mind]·the freedom to break rules·the role of sculpture as a model for his artAlthough Michelangelo revised his plans for Pope Julius’ tomb more than once, and the finalversion had far fewer figures than he originally intended, the figure of Moses does seem to

express his true intentions. Looking at the face of Moses up close, it's hard to know exactlywhat emotion to call it: anger? a mixture of fear and awe? Something like the determinationwe see in the face of David? Standing below the statue, as Michelangelo originally planned,we might not care about the precise identification of the emotion so much as the sense thatthis figure conveys of dynamism and potential movement. The bound and struggling slaveswhich may have been designed for the tomb are a good expression of Michelangelo's neoplatonic beliefs. Not only did the soul need to struggle to escape from the mortal body, butin his hands, the act of sculpting was a comparable struggle to release the sculpture fromthe stone. Michelangelo took the classical idea of contrapposto, a balanced body positionwhich suggests movement through the slight imbalance of the hips, and exaggerated it tothe point where the entire body is twisted. It is a much more dynamic body position,suggesting extreme struggle. [The term which is generally used to describe the bound slaveis figura serpentinata, meaning that body twists in opposing directions.]Sistine Chapel ceiling: In the entire ceiling, note how most of what appears to bearchitectural formations (cornices, entablatures, partitions) is actually illusionistic painting.It is important to recognize that despite the use of illusionistic architecture and statuessitting or standing on the walls, Michelangelo did not create the type of illusion that Raphaelor Mantegna did in their frescoes. In the works of both of those artists, the painting on thewall became a stage or window opening onto another scene. Michelangelo treated eachscene in his ceiling as a separate painting, the way Giotto did in the Arena Chapel. As aresult, the illusion, or trompe l'oeil effect of architecture, is limited to the architecturalframework but does not extend to the actual scenes of genesis painted in the ceiling. Eachscene has its own perspective and independent space. This more effectively creates thesense that they are taking place in another realm or sphere, one which is above the viewerand on another plane of existence.The arrangement of the scenes of genesis is chronological, alternating in terms of size of thescenes, large and small, in a regular and rhythmic pattern. The structure is true to

Renaissance beliefs about the shape of Christian history, that it did and would continue tounfold in an ordered sequence of events, following a divine plan. The only deviation is thatmost of the scenes can be read as more than one event, giving Michelangelo's creation aquality which is similar to that of Leonardo's Last Supper: the sense of time unfolding in acontinuous and dream-like reality as opposed to a linear, minute-by-minute narrative.Historians have long debated the stylistic changes which can be seen in the Last Judgment -in particular, the fact that Michelangelo ceased to idealize the human body (with theexception of Christ, St. Bartholomew, and a few other figures surrounding Christ). Inaddition to the unusual self-portrait in the flayed skin of Marsyas, it is a despairing LastJudgment. Located on the altar wall, conveying a sense of sloping weight which drags downon the side of evil, people have wondered if the wall represented Michelangelo'sdisillusionment with the effects of the Reformation, or conversely, if it represents hiscontinued hope for the possibility of change. A third possibility is that the wall should simplybe understood as a revision in his style near the end of his career. What is undeniable,regardless of interpretation, is that the Sistine Chapel, as a large body of work, gives usMichelangelo's study of illusionism and beauty in the human body at a degree of perfectionthat he could only surpass in his sculpture. In that sense, the ignudi (nude male figures) andprophets, imitations of sculpture which appear to be coming to life, evoke the bound slaves,the Pietas, and the other sculptural works which precede and follow the Sistine Chapel.With Michelangelo we find the beginning of a shift in terms of Renaissance ideals aboutarchitecture. In particular, he begins to introduce the idea of architecture as embodyingmovement. Although we only see hints of this in the statue of David, we see the hint ofsomething which will become increasingly important to Michelangelo and will most certainlybe felt in his architecture -- a quality which signals the beginning of a change away from theideals of Renaissance and classical art to a new type of art. In Michelangelo, this quality is asense of movement and power, rather than beauty, as the new ideal. Movement and power

result in a sense of incomplete form, even formlessness, as the forms of perfect anatomyare denied. For Michelangelo, this incomplete form or formlessness was the sign of theorganic quality of the living thing. In fact, for Michelangelo the forces of the building couldbe understood as the muscles of human body. The parts of the building would fit togetherand function in much the same way as the parts of the human being, because the buildingwould live and breathe just as a living organism did.RAPHAELRaphael’s short career spanned the years of 1500-1520. Born in 1483 to a father who washimself a painter and poet in the court of the Montefeltro dukes, his early career wasinfluenced by the Umbrian artist Perugino, whose workshop may or may not have been hisfirst school. We can clearly see the influences of Perugino's style in Raphael's work untilaround 1504. When Raphael moved to Florence at this time, his style underwent significantchange, largely under the influence of having seen the work of Leonardo, Michelangelo andFra Bartolommeo.Throughout his career, Raphael appears to respond to the influences of both Leonardo daVinci and Michelangelo. Although his own style can be recognized, we can also find the waysin which he surely looked at both Leonardo and Michelangelo and absorbed their influences.The resulting fusion is a style which retains the clarity and precision of the 15th centuryItalian painters, such as Masaccio, but contains the more communicative and expressivestyle of Leonardo, and the more dynamic and sculptural quality of figures that we find in thework of Michelangelo. In The Madonna of the Meadow, we can see how Raphael hasabsorbed the pyramidal grouping which was so characteristic of Leonardo's compositionsbut at the same time, he has rejected the mysterious atmospheric effect created by thesfumato technique and replaced it with a much more luminescent background (the influenceof Perugino). Raphael's tendency to retain the more overt symbols associated with thereligious painting is notably different from Leonardo.