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Still thinking about the Renaissance - where it comes from, and how its creative bursts aren't a sudden revolutionary moment when everything changes. Which got us thinking..
As you read this, ask yourself why the globalist beast system might push the idea that sudden revolutionary cultural transformations happen and are good?
The last post [click for a link] saw how the modern picture of the Renaissance was a product of German Romantic nationalism at the start of modern academia. It began as what we are calling a "micro-spirit of the age". That is, a small academic discursive structure built off of some historical facts that is held up as "what happened" instead of what really happened. The name comes from the real-life The Spirit of "George Hegel" History - an undead wizard who changed the flow of time into magical blocks of anima.
According to The Spirit of History, what we think of as a vast, complex historical flow is really just a few chunks - each defined by a lesser spiritual entity. It's ontologically incoherent but very influential. Go figure.
That method of historical
The inversion that The Spirit of the Age pulls off is subtle. Perhaps even inadvertent. Three Age structures of history are nothing new - the Renaissance trio of Ancient, Dark, Modern is one example. But Hegel's is not a V-shape - it's stages of Progress! - defined as "progress of the consciousness of freedom" in a good summary of how idiotic this is as an authority. It's too stupid to recap. Hegel is such a slog to read that it's hard to spot the overall inanity of the ideas. Lets just say his Age of the Orient, the Age of the Greeks, and the Age of Reason (the “German world”) - click for a summary - have less connection to historical reality than the Three Ages of Middle Earth.
The bride of Christ under the Law as the daughter of Babylon, from Honorius Augustodunensis' Opera exegetica, a commentary on the Song of Songs, around 1170, Bavarian State Library
Christian time falls into three ages divided by spiritual events. Ante legem (before the Law); sub lege (under the Law); sub gratia (under Grace) are defined by changes in God's relationship to man. These divisions are based on metaphysical things - our vertical ontology explains why the twists and turns of material history don't matter to them. Time keeps flowing and God makes adjustments at fixed points. Each thing in its proper place.
The Band's contempt for The Spirit of History comes from the pretentious hypocrisy of wanting teleology but being too arrogant a special boy to accept what this necessarily means. He wants to make up his own magic force that doesn't put any demands on him because his "reason" made it up. This is the idea of the Spirit - the Geist - of the Age that was named after him and guides the flowering of a fake Idea in time, but only in human conscious. That's the human conscious of freedom mentioned above. Or man in the place of God.
So we have the same trajectory as the Christian move from animal materialism to spiritual enlightenment. Only with a self-detonating secular transcendence preached by a fake prophet in place of logos.
So we may dismiss the snapshot moment when everything changed as a fictionalized micro-spirit of history, but Hegel was "hard" and "dense". Faux intellectuals love convoluted language because it lets them pretend inane things they don't understand are True. And the idea of teleological progress in material history became more than Marxist inversion - it infected what we foolishly trusted as impartial academic history.
This matters for us now because what we know about history is the work of scholars. And most modern historical scholarship took place inside academic contexts. The timelines and summaries that the Band relies on for big picture stuff are the products of lots of accumulated research. So we are attentive to and concerned about how this is made.
We can see what looks like two paths for scholars over the years. Some are narrative engineers - professionally invested in the cache of their models and stories. Others are real historians - motivated by an interest in the past and a desire to learn more about it. You can probably guess where The Spirit of History has a seat at the head table.
Kenneth Bartlett, Florence in the Age of the Medici and Savonarola, 1464-1498: A Short History with Documents, Hackett Publishing Company, 2018
Joseph Campana and Scott Maisano, Renaissance Posthumanism, Fordham University Press, 2016
See if you can pick which is which...
For a long time they could coexist. To an extent they still do, though the Band suspects that has become increasingly difficult as academe converges around narratives. But the point is that the disciplines were pulled in two directions from the start.
Both are "history" but one is a top-down abstraction and the other a bottom up empirical inquiry. One assumes there's a trendy contemporary narrative - Posthumanism - that the past can be fitted to, the other is as granular as possible. And the longer the second kind piles up into a puzzle picture, the bigger the gap with the first type gets.
The history of Renaissance history - a mass of fact-based real historicans trying to contest, rethink, or problematize small parts of a fake structure, while discourse huffers weave in and out with new "theories". Some huffers cottoned onto the idea that the Renaissance is an artificial set of universal assumptions that don't mean what they're said to. The answer - a new term! "Early Modern" does away with the rebirth stuff, but stretches what referred to the 19th century back 500 years to meaninglessness. All to keep the micro-spirit of the age in practice while ditching the problematic name. If the Renaissance is now Early Modern - it's still the moment everything changed. Now ask yourself why the globalist beast system might push the idea that sudden positive revolutionary cultural transformations happen?
Like the Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies.
It's a typical academic periodical - nothing particularly wrong with it - it's the name that we;re interested in. They up the ante by throwing in the Middle Ages as well. Since that goes all the way back to the collapse of Rome, we're up around 1500 years. Why not just call it the Journal of the West? Because there might be non-Western material? Fine. Journal of Everything.
Being a bit facetious, but this is typical. Academics are terrified of being called names for the terms they use, so are always trying to change them. But they work in discourses that are structurally fixed and can't change on that level. So you wind up with this as a "specialty" journal. The target is probably the Gothic and Renaissance periods, but those are problematic to say. Better the Journal of Everything.
Early Modern wants to lump this...
John Atkinson Grimshaw, Princes Dock (detail), 1887, oil on canvas, private collection
...together with this...
Gentile Bellini, Procession of the True Cross in St. Mark's Square, 1496, tempera and oil on canvas, Gallerie dell'Accademia, Venice
... and pretend that they're the same enough to be a meaningful designation. The reality is that all categories are arbitrary and rough at the edges. It's a necessary evil of the sorting process. Reducing it all to gray goo would make the Hermetic satanists happy, but removes any structure. We'll keep the term "Renaissance" for convenience, but localized and stripped of it's fake universal totemhood.
So much ink has been spilled trying to pin down when the Renaissance started. But if it doesn't mean the rebirth of Antiquity, realistic art, the human spirit... what's the point in arguing over the non-existent birthday? The Band's take is that honest historians can see that there really is no moment of rebirth. It's just that Western History! is so structurally dependent on the Progress! to Modernity - and The Renaissance such an important symbolic milestone - that there is no escaping it. And no one cares about antiquity. It's the solipsism and secular transcendence that is so irresistable.
Titian, Portrait of a Man with a Quilted Sleeve, around 1510, oil on canvas, National Gallery, London
The explosion of portraiture is an indication of that focus on human banalities that supposedly made the Renaissance Early Modern.
We're so accustomed to the idea of the Renaissance that it's hard to picture a timeline without it on it. We'll split the difference and keep it local. The roots of the art of the West gives us an easy focus. To a point anyhow. As we start rethinking, see if you can spot where we're storytelling.
Whenever you try and sort out the beginnings of Renaissance art, the lack of clear starting point is instantly obvious. It's why historians settle on things like the invention of linear perspective as a ceremonial starting point. But even that creates problems.
Fra Filippo Lippi, Annunciation, c. 1445, tempera on wood, San Lorenzo, Florence
Here's some Renaissance perspective. See how the space shoots back to the vanishing point? It's almost tunnel-like, with the figures in front. Here's a good site on perspective in art and a shorter summary. Perspective has been interpreted as a sign of realism - Renaissance humanism vs. flat, superstitious, unreal Dark Age crudity. Not just because it's more "accurate" but also mathematical. "Disciplining" space with mathematical logic is a big part of the march to the "Age of Reason" and all the hegemony and oppression that Postmodernism heaps on its doorstep. The Band has issues with this entire line of thought - the ironic quotes reveal out assessment.
Not everyone buys the paradigm-shifting importance of the mathematical ordering of space stuff. It's the usual projection of a moment of universal change from a few data points. It turns out that when Alberti wrote the first piece on perspective, he made it look a lot more strict than it was in reality. And if there's no magic moment when space became "perspectival" then historians can squabble over who first seemed to consider it. Or realism in general. It's not coherent because it's not real.
This is how what we called the new art of the 13th century gets pulled into the Renaissance. Giotto and others do seem to have approached painting as an integrated scene of figures in space. Like a stage, if not a full-blown view through a window.
Giotto, Presentation of the Virgin in the Temple, 1304-06, fresco, 200 x 185 cm, Cappella Scrovegni (Arena Chapel), Padua
The setting isn't exactly realistic, but the figures fit into the space and interact with each other in a materially real way. Especially compared to Gothic painting. The realist attitude extends to little anecdotal details like the figures talking to each other on the right.
This is a good link with video on Giotto's chapel.
The Assisi problem that we alluded to it in an earlier post on Italian Gothic was a result of this search for Renaissance origins. It was so important to figure out who painted the frescoes in the Upper Church of S. Francesco at Assisi because of their unusual space and human presence.
Apparition to Fra Agostino and to Bishop Guido of Arezzo from The Legend of St. Francis cycle, 1300, fresco, Upper Church, San Francesco, Assisi
Not hard to see why many credit Giotto. Assisi is an interesting question from a modern point of view. It is a landmark in the treatment of figures in space. But it has nothing to do with Renaissances, Italian or otherwise.
We say this because there doesn't appear to be any sign in the historical record that these were celebrated for their innovation in their time. Giotto is wildly successful with this style, but it fizzles after he dies and the Gothic takes over for much of the century. No texts appear praising realism - or even talking about the art at all. There is a self-conscious Renaissance art with humanistic trappings circa 1400. It even picks up a Giotto thread in the work of Masaccio and Masolino. But it's revival more than continuity.
The most influential source for the progress model of Renaissance art starting with Giotto and Cimabue is Giorgio Vasari - a 16th-century Florentine humanist, painter, and patriot. If we want to unravel some discourse, start here.
Jacopo Zucchi, Portrait of Giorgio Vasari, between 1571 and 1574, oil on panel, Uffizi Museum, Florence
He was groundbreaking in his efforts to confirm his stories and verify accounts - traveling around Italy to see works. But the standards of scholarship, evidence, and record keeping were such that he is riddled with errors and urban legends. Errors are easy to fix - that's how real history builds cumulatively. Vasari's big picture was another matter.
Writing at the end of the Renaissance Vasari was able to look back and apply the old humanist Dark Age / Rebirth model to three centuries of Italian - mainly Florentine - art. His Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects, from Cimabue to Our Times of 1550 is a series of artist biographies with discussions of their major works. His art theory is woven throughout. Click for a copy of Vasari's On Technique. The overall arc of the bios is a mix of self-promoting historical fantasy and Florentine bias. He starts with the canard that the perfect arts of antiquity were "lost" and that generations of mainly Florentine artists gradually restored ancient perfection. Eventually the High Renaissance surpasses it with Michelangelo as the best artist ever.
Not exaggerating the influence. There are all English except for the Renaissance one. From one search. It's not only that Vasari invented the idea of a history of art, his archetype was always present and in print. Here's a link to a site that has collected most of the pictures Vasari refers to with his comments. It's very long, but interesting if you're into this stuff.
Vasari will turn up again. What matters here is the idea that Giotto kicks off the Florentine cradle of genius that saves art. There is some truth in this - the Florentine school does seem to be the most consistently innovative and influential. But there's a lot of that exaggerated humanist civic pride in the works of great men here too. Rhetoric that wouldn't have been out of place in an earlier civic humanist like Bruni.
You have to see where these humanists were coming from to get anything out of them. They're so rhetorical - taking them at their word is what led Burckhardt to his micro-spirit Renaissance mirage. What Vasari does is nail down the notion of "rebirth" but subtly change it at the same time. Change from the rebirth of ancient style or forms to the rebirth of overall quality. There's a lot of slippery language - ancient and good being used interchangeably without any acknowledgment of what he's doing. The result is to weld the humanist concept of rebirth of ancient culture in a literal sense onto a return to the ancient's standards of artistic skill.
Instead of copying Ciceronian Latin perfectly, write as good as Cicero.
Michelangelo, Moses, 15, marble, San Pietro in Vincoli, Rome
The incredible centerpiece to Michelangelo's tomb for Pope Julius II. The tomb was a source of frustration for much of his life and the finished version was greatly scaled down from the original plan. The Moses was not compromised and is one of his greatest works.
The Moses doesn't look like an ancient statue. Michelangelo was clearly inspired by ancient art - but the expression, pose, setting - the overall vibe - are of his time. He isn't bringing back sculpture the way the ancients did it. He's bringing back sculpture as good as or better than theirs.
It's not an exaggeration to say that Vasari's Renaissance - with its slippery terms and sloppy concepts - was the template for Burckhardt's. He's so influential, he's probably the primary reason that the Humanist and artistic "rebirths" get treated as the same.
The funny thing is that Vasari's own Lives don't trace out this sort of continuity. The artists he presents after Giotto are the same Gothic ones we can look at. It's more of a Three Ages structure than a steady evolution. Click for a piece on Vasari. But it creates a bridge between Giotto and the 15th century that modern historians can use to push "The Renaissance" back. Medievalists like it because it rehabilitates the Middle Ages as "the real" birth of modernity.
And all of it fully accepts the Dark Age/Rebirth model of history. Look at these two paintings:
Cimabue, Maestà, 1280, tempera on panel, Louvre, Paris
Giotto, Ognisanti Madonna, 1310, tempera on panel, Uffizi, Florence
Giotto has clearly advanced in the handling of figures in space and has a sense of material reality that the flatter and more decorative Cimabue lacks. This can be seen as progress, but in fixed terms. It assumes a certain set of values are being prioritized. Vasari sees it as the start of a universal rehabilitation of culture from Dark Age ruin to new classic heights. But Dante - who didn't live three centuries later with a head full of humanist puffery - saw the opposite lesson in them. For him it's fleeting fame - Cimabue is it, then Giotto - it's ephemeral. Getting caught up in it distracts from what really matters.
Renaissance solipsism isn't full-on modernism - worldly fame as the only picture - but it sets the stage. Whether you see this as progress depends on what you think of dancing for shadows in the halls of the beast as a life plan. And there is the opening for secular transcendence. Situational technical progress recast as metaphysical Progress! in human history.
You can see the inanity in the nomenclature.
Giotto, Marriage of the Virgin, 1304-1306, fresco, Scrovegni Chapel, Padua
No one takes Vasari's general air of classical quality seriously. Somehow Re-naissance becomes "whenever we can claim modernity starts".
The lesson - just like arguing with SJWs and NPCs today, there is no way to engage a fake structure with specific facts. One is material knowledge, the other inverted faith. But a powerful inverted faith - the idea of history as frozen snapshots with defining spirits shambles on into the present. We don't need to fight over when "The Renaissance" starts because there isn't one. Not in the general everything changed on the way to flying cars sense, What we will do is look at the historical specifics that became the props for 'that time when everything changed' to be built on.
The first problem is an academic buzzword that's also a real complication - interdisciplinarity. The actual changes occur across different domains at different times. And they aren't all the same. We need to be able to identify what, how and when things were moving, when they were overlapping, and when they were separate. We can't cover it all, but we should be able to trace an outline that isn't fake.
There are the unique socio-economic conditions.
Niccolo di Pietro Gerini, The Calling of St. Matthew, 1380s, fresco, San Francesco, Prato
It's a Gospel scene and a glimpse at early Florentine banking - money changing - that was the basis of the remarkable early Renaissance prosperity. Alongside banking were other lucrative trades. Florence was wealthy on average and without a titled aristocracy. This is a different socio-econonic context that the International Gothic courts of late medieval Europe.
There's way too long a timeframe for sudden change models.
Michelangelo, The Last Judgment, 1536-1541, fresco, Sistine Chapel, Vatican
Michelangelo's last work in the Sistine Chapel is late for the Renaissance and reflects a new style. Three and a half centuries after Cimabue! That's a long time for a quick change.
Michelangelo is such a powerful artistic personality - one of the strongest we've ever encountered - and his late art follows his own path. His example pulls other artists away from classical values and creates problems for later interpreters. Vasari considered him the greatest of all time, but Vasari was his follower and a Florentine patriot. The later European academies acknowledged his vision, but were wary of his disregard for the rules.
The Italian Renaissance isn't a monolithic thing. This doesn't look like Renaissance Florence.
Mauro Codussi, Ca' Vendramin Calergi, Venice, from 1481
The socio-economics and timeline are different in Venice too. What gets called the Italian Renaissance was a several different movements happening in different places and domains that get clustered together. Florence was the early epicenter, but it spreads, and the other contexts add things too. This post will try and sort out some of the main parts that make up the Renaissance
It is important not to latch onto this as "The Band Model of Renaissance History". It's a schematic account of a the main concepts that make up The Italian Renaissance in the official discourse. The thing to remember is that "discourse" is only complete nonsense in the postmodern sense of being reality. While it is entertaining to mock Foucault, the truth is that discourse - like most inverted globalist shams - is based on real observations.
James Watt seeking to improve the Newcomen steam engine (1767), from Album de la Science; savants illustres; Grandes découvertes,1896
Knowledge production and organization has fallen into "disciplines" and those develop their own cants - from technical terms to luciferian theory. An engineer speaks differently to his colleagues. There's nothing inherently wrong with this notion of discourse. It's professional language.
Japanese Department of Education, James Watt, inventor of the steam engine, between 1850 and 1900, woodcut print, Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington
The picture shows Watt collecting steam from a boiling kettle while his aunt chides him for foolishness. The style is typical of Japanese woodcuts - this Watt looks different from the one above. There are real frames of reference - we could call them discourses but that would be confusing - that shape how things are presented and understood.
Think of legitimate discursive frames of reference like these pictures - their based on the same facts but show you different things,
The Band is mapping Western culture by considering things from the historical record that credibly appear to be what they claim. That means dealing with several different discourses because that information is couched in disciplinary language. What we've done is identify some main discursive channels where the idea of Renaissance rebirth appears. These aren't all the places where it appears or comprehensive accounts of any of them.
A social or economic historian would be more interested in land-use patterns, housing distribution, or the relative size of guilds. Point of view determining what you look at is another part of discourse that isn't inverted. It's limited, but also necessary given the limits of our own scope.
Palazzo Pubblico, begun 1297, Siena
The city hall of Florence's chief early rival. Siena and Florence were quite similar in the 13th and early 14th centuries - rich, literate city-states that were hubs of banking and late medieval civic ideals. Sienese artists were at least as influential as their Florentine counterparts at this time. We see the same blend of art, wealth, and local culture in both places.
Both cities had a Palazzo Publico, where the republican government would meet. Eventually Florence will dominate, but in the late Middle Ages, we can see the same pre-Renaissance culture in both.
The main council chamber of the Siena Palazzo Publico was the Sala dei Nove - Room or Hall of the Nine - with frescoes by the innovative painter Ambrogio Lorenzetti. Here's a view inside. Note how the walls are covered in frescoes. These are a reminder to the ruling council because the subject of the whole thing is good and bad government. The end walls have big allegories at the ends symbolizing Good and Bad Government and their accompanying virtues - you can see Good Government in the shots of the room. The side walls show the effects of each on the city and country.
This is a really interesting room and deserves more investigation, but for now keep to the pair of side wall scenes in the lower of the two shots. The Lorenzetti Brothers were very innovative when it came to realism - we've shown Ambrogio and Pietro's paintings in the Gothic Italy posts. But those were for their complicated interior spaces. Here Ambrogio is pretty much inventing the landscape and cityscape genres.
Ambrogio Lorenzetti, The Effects of Good Government in the Country, 1338-40, fresco, Palazzo Pubblico, Siena
Just government results in a productive and orderly countryside. Farmers go about their work, while the wealthy party leaving the city needs no guards. Like the Limbourgs, but a century earlier. The winged allegory in the top left delivers the message - it's a personification of Security holding an image of a hanged man with this inscription:
“Without fear every many may travel freely and each may till and sow, so long as this commune shall maintain this lady [Justice] sovereign, for she has stripped the wicked of all power.”
Now think how many ways this could be of interest. We've mentioned the artistic innovation of painting a landscape. There's the connection to ideas of communal government in late medieval Tuscany. We could mention the use of a nude allegory at this date as a sign of classical influence. An agricultural historian would want to know about crops and land use. A social historian - settlement patterns, a political or legal historian - laws and titling, and so on. Every one of these has its own spin on discourse. Different timelines and important events that don't always overlap.
What we are doing is selecting the threads that have had the most influence on shaping the idea of the Renaissance that we've inherited today. The art and humanist secular transcendence...
The thought patterns that modernism was built on.
For a rough cultural overview, we will consider four major hubs where Italian Renaissance culture developed. Then break down each hub by general socio-politics, arts, and letters. The whole thing will be chronological because the Band is tracing the arts of the West chronologically. Also because it lets us see how big a timeframe is actually covered by the moment everything changed.
The first hub will be Florence. It is the main center for Renaissance humanism and art from the beginning. We'll add in the surrounding Tuscan towns - main ones like Siena and smaller places too. We'll break it down and work through the thinking so you can see where we're coming from. Start with a rough timeline and a socio-political axis
Any structure is going to impose arbitrary transition points on the even flow of history. Shifting color intensity isn't perfect, but does better imply the nature of change, The dates aren't evenly spaced on the timeline because not every century between Florence's founding in the 12th century and the High Renaissance of the early 16th is equally eventful.
The early republic was dominated by families in their fortified urban "palaces". That's the translation of the Italian word, though these were closer to fortresses or compounds in luxury. Family politics coalesce around parties first - Guelf Ghibelline fighting extended support for papacy or emperor into civic affairs. Blending of secular and sacred isn't limited to Gothic France. Stability is attained with a government dominated by guilds - trade and craft groups - that tied politics and economics in a very productive way. Rising wealth turbocharged with the invention of international banking and dominance of the Bankers' Eventually the Medici prevail and become unofficial then official rulers. There is a brief interlude where the Republic is restored, but the Medici regain power, eventually becoming Dukes.
The more we think about it, the more important the socio-political history is to the cultural developments. The whole turbulent history sets the table for the genius catalysts. There is no guarantee that these conditions impel genius, but without them, the genius lack an outlet. The moment everything changes is looking more like a local reaction to a long singular chain of circumstances. Why might the globalist beast system push the idea that sudden revolutionary cultural transformations bring positive outcomes and Progress!?
One of the few surviving medieval family towers that once dominated Florence. The push to stabilize the Republic wasn't the application of strongly worded opinion pieces - despite all the Humanist rhetoric post facto. The push was a reaction to decades of factional fighting along different lines.
Arnolfo di Cambio, Palazzo Vecchio, begun 1299
The biggest fort and tallest tower belonged to the seat of the Republican government. The families were still dominant, but running government through the guilds channeled their energies more productively. Guild power was economic, so family ambition was best served through commercial success. It worked until the Medici slowly took power.
Power going from private armies and forts to finance and politics is a sign of the modern world to come. But it didn't come from blowhards - it evolved organically out of unique challenges.
We can break letters down the same way - letters meaning the mastery of Latin at the center of the Humanist identity. Humanism and art are the two pillars Renaissance history has traditionally stood on, and they are related but different. Art never reaches the level of classicism of literary movements like Ciceronianism but artists do get more humanistic and classical themes creep in. The new art theory is written by humanists and philosophers, and they work for the same clients. The development patterns are parallel for a while, and once the basic art theory is worked out, the fields diverge.
We can see the connection between the socio-political structure and the literary culture. The late medieval Italian landscape of rich, small, competitive city-states required a comparatively well-educated population. The clerks and scribes of the 13th century weren't obsessing over perfect Ciceronian Latin, but made up the population of Latin users necessary for a movement like Humanism.
Petrarch seems singular in his focus on the ancients, but he's hugely influential. His idea of classical supremacy and dark ages is worked into a theory of history by eminent Humanist and Florentine Chancellor Leonardo Bruni, (c. 1370 – 1444). That's civic humanism - and it looks a lot like a culture for the new "stable" guild-based republic.
As the Medici take power and Florence gets more aristocratic, the Humanists reflect that. Republican Rome is replaced by Greece and Imperial Rome and civic virtue replaced with more speculative things. This is where Marsilio Ficino from our occult posts is working out his Hermetic theology.
Leonardo Bruni, (c. 1370 – 1444) was the leading humanist historian of the early Renaissance, a chancellor of Florence, and the first to build Petrarch's Dark Age-Rebirth concept into a formal history. His main work is the Historiarum Florentini populi libri XII (History of the Florentine People, 12 Books), started in 1416 and worked on for the most of his life. Here's an in-depth article that goes into Bruni, his civic humanism and classical study, and his career as papal secretary and Florentine chancellor before analyzing the Historiarum Florentini. If you're really interested in this culture, it's worth a read. It's written by the same guy that translated the copy of Ficino's Platonic Theology that we've used for occult posts.
Bruni's History of the Florentine People is a landmark of humanist historiography. It took Petrarch's idea that classical culture went into medieval decline and credited Florence with reviving it. This was probably the most influential formulation of the Dark Age model of history - Bruni had a huge impact on Renaissance letters. The work was patterned after Livy - a conscious revival - and narrated how it was Florence that brought civilization back. Vasari didn't follow a Roman model so closely and wrote in Italian. But his plot is Bruni's 'Florence saves civilization' applied to art.
Bernardo Rossellino, Tomb of Leonardo Bruni, 1444-47, marble, Santa Croce, Florence
When Bruni died he was given a splendid funeral and this imposing classical tomb. Even though the Medici and their allies had neutered the old government, Bruni was a revered figure in Florence. Click for a link on his tomb.
We can also credit Bruni with the idea of the studia humanitatis - the predecessor of the humanities - as a formal and worthy area of study. This is another one of those historical milestones held up as Progress! towards modern solipsism. The Band sees it as the first glimpse of secular transcendence - that transcendent things can be grasped by finite subjective minds. And placing human wisdom on a par with theology and metaphysics is the first glimmer of the luciferian be your own god.
But all that's way in the future. There is something sad and amusing at once about humanist bombast - it makes it harder to detest them for their vanity. Consider the inscription of Bruni's tomb. It's a nice piece of sculpture - cool and classical - but that puffery. Here's the translation.
Lets just say it isn't, it's not, and they aren't. Renaissance humanism is fundamentally dishonest. They can call it rhetoric or eloquence or oratory but in the end it's a movement based on fronting liars and intellectual frauds. Bruni was a gifted linguist and stylist, but those are different skills from thinker, and there he was lacking. It's a nice dream though and a good glimpse at the rhetorical posture of Renaissance humanist letters.
Now for the main focus of the post - start by breaking down the visual arts the same way.
Do it again with art and we see a different pattern. Early Tuscan art was a fairly crude mix of Romanesque and Byzantine-influenced provincialism. In our Gothic post, we saw how the prosperity of the Tuscan cities came with an art rivalry between Florence and Siena symbolized in Giotto and Duccio. Ideas of civic pride, fame, and artistic glory are in play well before Petrarch. This implies that the Humanists didn't invent these concepts with their classical studies. They were using classical studies to express ideas that were already there. "Renaissance" as symptom not a cause.
After Giotto, the International Gothic dominates. What we think of as Renaissance art is connected to Florentine civic humanism, but near the end of that pipe dream. The Medici create an environment that fosters creativity, but 15th-century art doesn't look like classical revival.
The High Renaissance peaks in Rome, but starts in Florence in the late 15th century. This is the era of Michelangelo, Leonardo, and Raphael - the objective zenith of Renaissance art. It's where we see some earlier threads come together, and when the crazy speculative Hermetic humanism also peaks. After the early 16th century, Florence and Rome fairly close artistically.
It works a lot better when we put it together as a hub of cultural activities. This lets us see the movements over time in the areas most associated with the Renaissance as a historical period. This is just Florence - there will be similar for the other hubs we identified in the next post. This post is going to finish the historiographic problems and focus on the significant artistic change that happened in Florence. It isn't a moment of sudden transformation that the globalist servants of the lie are invested in. But it will change art.
This covers a pretty big area of the timeline for a sudden shift. You realize that if the Renaissance really was built off Italian Humanism 1500 is a terrible rough date. The kernel developed out of the late Middle Ages and branches extend almost to 1600. The length of time is roughly the same as the birth of Jesus to the fall of Rome, or Shakespeare to us. This is only an inflection point because the model needed there to be one. The actual empirical historians have traced the gradual shift to naked material solipsism was a long and uneven historical process. The way history is.
Lord Leighton, Cimabue's Celebrated Madonna, 1853-1855, oil on canvas, National Gallery, London
Then there's the complicated way that even these few streams interact. Art and humanism develop in relation to the socio-politics but not at the same time or the same way. Giotto's innovations predate Petrarch. Both are taken as early signs of the Renaissance but Giotto couldn't have been reacting to Petrarch's new attitude to antiquity. It hadn't happened yet. This implies that Petrarch's classical humanism is expressing a new take on an interest in human subjects and affairs that was already there. That's also coming through in the realism and human spirit of Giotto.
The timing is more consistent with Petrarch's humanism being a personal response to a cultural turn to human experience than the cause. It's also more realistic that cultural forces take unpredictable turns in individual's hands than one dude writes a letter to Cicero and transforms minds universally. What Petrarch does do is provide a new way to express a new social mood.
Pietro Lorenzetti, Christ as the Man of Sorrows, 1340-45, tempera om panel, Lindenau-Museum Altenburg
We do know that the same emotion-driven human-centric religiosity that we saw in the Gothic also appears in Italy. The heightened emotionalism of later Byzantine art was also influential. The Man of Sorrows type had Byzantine roots and appeared in Italy first in Western Christendom.
We know historical models and assumptions distort meaning. Could the "early Renaissance" of Vasari's First Age masters be the same impulse just seen through a different discourse?
Putting the threads together shows that the developments aren't steady - not in art anyhow. After Giotto, the International Gothic and early civic humanism proceed together. The Renaissance art of the early 15th century shows clear humanistic impact, but Giotto's doesn't. If we think of Giotto as part of a Gothic move move towards humanizing religion that leads into the International Gothic, he makes way more sense. Both the International Gothic and Humanism were offshoots of wealthy Tuscan culture.
What we think of as Renaissance art happens when humanistic thought moves into art directly. The fact that the artists of the 15th and 16th century claimed a continuity with Giotto stylistically doesn't mean he saw the world as they did. Renaissance artists claim Giotto as the founder of an artistic transition that is contemporary with Humanism, but not the same thing.
Giotto is not a "Renaissance artist. But he is the taproot of the Renaissance tradition.
See the problem aligning general models and actual history? The artists looking back at Giotto - including Vasari - were laying down a local "school" - an art or craft tradition connected to a place. They didn't care when or what Petrarch did because they weren't claiming a universal cultural transformation. It's the Dark Age / Rebirth model of fake history, but applied purely to art. Vasari doesn't claim his timeline applies elsewhere. That's the Burckhardt legacy.
Now we see why space is a big deal in the Gothic posts. In the early fake binary world that the Renaissance was made in, perspectival vs. flat was a big opposition. We've seen how that mischaracterizes Gothic art in the rest of Europe - the same is true in Italy.
Giotto, Pentecost, 1304-1306, fresco, Scrovegni Chapel
This is what the Lorenzetti Brothers from Siena seem most poised to carry forward. It is curious given the narrative because Siena and Florence are supposed to be arch rivals. It appears that the animosity that we see in the written sources was less of a concern for artists. This actually is a big deal.
Ambrogio Lorenzetti, Saint Nicholas Provides Dowries for Three Poor Girls , c. 1332-34, Uffizi, Florence
Hey, it's Santa! If further proof was needed for the impact of culture on the shape of material life...
It's not hard to see the debt to Giotto in the overall style, but Lorenzetti creates much more complicated settings for his figures. The close-ups show other sides of his realism - the happiness between mother and daughter and details like a window box. It is not known whether Ambrogio had a perspective system or was doing it by observation.
It's an inviting alternative history. But the Lorenzetti Brothers die in the Black Death, and as Siena is eclipsed by Florence, it's art tradition fades. It's one of Duccio's other students - Simone Martini - how had the immediate splash. He went to Avignon, kicked off the International Gothic, and hung out with Petrarch.
Giotto's influence does linger on in Florence. Not surprising - his simple style is very powerful. But that legacy is wrapped in the flattened, decorative, linear style of the Gothic. Like this piece by one of the three di Cione brothers who were big names in the mid 14th century. They had their own styles - Infogalactic says Nardo had a feeling for poetic values, human sympathies and sensitivity to colour. You can see that, and the influence of Giotto - facial and figure types - but with the grace and delicacy of the aristocratic Gothic. Even the space is a pointed arch.
It's an exquisite picture. Note the little Man of Sorrows in the gable. Beauty and horror - the emotion-driven religiosity of the late Middle Ages - but with beauty dominating.
Nardo di Cione, Madonna and Child, with Saints Peter and John the Evangelist, and Man of Sorrows, around 1360, tempera on wood, National Gallery of Art, Washington
This is while humanism is brewing. Petrarch dies in 1374, his great younger contemporary Giovanni Boccaccio a year later. Florence is moving into Renaissance humanism but the art is becoming less "humanistic". To put it in perspective, here's Jacopo di Cione's Crucifixion from around 1370. Look at the Gothic architecture, the splendid carnival of colors, the suffering Byzantine-inspired bodies - there isn't much of Petrarch or Boccaccio here.
Jacopo di Cione, The Crucifixion, from 1369 until 1370, tempera on wood, National Gallery
The contrast is extreme. Which suggests again that the Renaissance in art has it's own dynamic. The Italian Gothic post highlighted some of the main differences with the rest of Europe - the prevalence of panel and wall painting being a main one. If we imagine the European Gothic developments we traced - beauty, linear grace, emotion-driven piety - through the artistic environment of Italy, it does a better job of explaining 14th century art than micro-spirits of ages. There's a human focus, but it isn't Humanist. Humanism is more likely a later expression of the same human interest.
Here's what we won't do. We won't suggest an alternative interpretation, speculate on the probability, than proceed as if its ironclad fact. That's really common and even more irritating.
We'll leave it at this. The Band feels Vasari and those who came after were building a tradition by appropriating late medieval artists to their newer humanistic viewpoint. This has caused historians to think of painters like Giotto as proto-Renaissance when he isn't. This would explain why a more pronounced Gothic followed him and why his art has such a aura of sincerity. But we can't prove it.
Art and humanism finally do cross in the early 15th century. If there was a moment when an artistic Renaissance kicked off, this mix of civic identity, humanistic government, and visual innovation is it.
Here's what we won't do. We won't suggest an alternative interpretation, speculate on the probability, than proceed as if its ironclad fact. That's really common and even more irritating.
We'll leave it at this. The Band feels Vasari and those who came after were building a tradition by appropriating late medieval artists to their newer humanistic viewpoint. This has caused historians to think of painters like Giotto as proto-Renaissance when he isn't. This would explain why a more pronounced Gothic followed him and why his art has such a aura of sincerity. But we can't prove it.
Art and humanism finally do cross in the early 15th century. If there was a moment when an artistic Renaissance kicked off, this mix of civic identity, humanistic government, and visual innovation is it.
Florence Cathedral, begun 1296, Brunelleschi's dome, 1418-1436
We looked at the Duomo in the architecture posts - Brunelleschi's dome was an engineering feat that became a symbol of Florentine ingenuity. Giotto's bell tower adds a sense of continuity.
The seamless way that Christian and civic identities overlap is one of the things that makes Renaissance Florence appealing. Later historians took the wrong message - it's not copy Florence, it's live in a coherent way like Florence. Not the details, but the logos.
Important point - globalists like to pretend that conditions are the sole cause of things. This has two benefits, neither of which have anything to do with understanding reality. Globalism is based on convincing the empty that complex material world things have single solitary causes - if you admit otherwise, their asinine just-so stories collapse. It's also important to avoid personal responsibility when the entire system is predicated on falsehoods. Because failure is inevitable, assigning fake causes keeps the dupes from getting discouraged and disillusioned.
One of the misconceptions of modern society is that our historical models and analyses are products of the cognitive elite. They aren't. And this isn't just ego puncturing - what we've shown points to lack of academic intelligence as a huge factor in distorting our understanding of the past.
These are taken from studies from the 1950s - before the universities bloated, so presumably the ideal era of meritocracy. The Cambridge faculty one says "The scores range from 110 to 141 with a mean of 126.5 and a standard deviation of 6.3 points". Also "more than 70 percent of all doctorates for 1958 had IQs below the 98th percentile. Even in the physical sciences, more than 60 percent fell below the 98th percentile".
This matters because a 2 SD IQ can't put the pieces together and see the big picture interactions that the Band traces in a blog - let alone manage the entire historical record. Simplified midwit models and binary oppositions are all they can handle - they don't even perceive their limits because monocausal explanations seem like complex formations to them. But the general public thinks they're smart. So the midwit models get the imprimatur of genius without anyone really thinking it through.
It's not surprising that midwit model builders trip over the word "and". The reality is that something like the Renaissance needed favorable circumstances and the talent to take advantage. And the discipline and work ethic to do so. All things like "nature-nurture" debates do is confess intellectual limits.
One of the most striking things about 15th century in Florence is the number of gifted creators in the historical record. The first three decades are the most focused burst of artistic innovation in one place since Periclean Athens. The first two decades of the 16th century will surpass it, but by then the limelight is shared with Rome.
So what happens? Brunelleschi, Ghiberti, Donatello, Massaccio, and Alberti to name five. Not an exhaustive list, but good enough.
If there is a Florentine Renaissance in art that combines elements of contemporary humanism, it's these guys who are at the center. And if it wasn't for the High Renaissance cluster of Leonardo, Michelangelo, Raphael, Bramante, and Titian, they'd probably be the greatest collection of artistic talent and innovation at one point in history. And the later were all born outside of Florence and worked in different places - Titian never even met the others as far as we know. The earlier bunch were Florentines who all knew each other and worked in close proximity. Some were close friends and the influence is hard to sort out. Florentine Renaissance vs. Italian High Renaissance.
Before jumping into this, a few comments on how to process.
There's so much material. Here are results from three searches from the Harvard library. It's the world's largest academic library and one of the biggest in America overall. Quantity doesn't equal quality, but since it's the only university library on the biggest library list, we'll use it as a proxy for the extent of discourse. Most academic books will be there.
One of the Band's greatest strengths is the ability to absorb enormous amounts of information and process it on different levels at once. It's how we notice the intellectual limitations of academics, historians and other thinkers. But neither we, nor anyone else, is going through all of this. We can't get at the material to sample it, but just the number of books is enough to draw the conclusion. A book a day for 30 years wouldn't get you 20% through "renaissance history". The wasted resources are staggering.
The vast majority contributes little to the historical record. Academics are encouraged to cite as many other academics as possible - it's how discourse proliferates over time. But the factual base is based on primary source research - documents, old books, etc. in archives and library collections. The volume of this that has been published in some form by modern researchers - is a fraction of the vast mushroom cap of discourse exhaled by modern university bloat.
US National Archives at College Park, MD
Box of letters from the More House Archive, Clark Library, UCLA.
We can never know history with the certainty of being there - we have to depend on what turns up in the historical record. The best we can do is turn to the original sources that do survive. This is far from perfect. Documents can be missing, false, or wrong. Without context the individual pieces can mislead. Discourse cherry-picks and distorts to fit the narrative. But any remotely credible history stands on the record.
But this kind of work is really hard. You need expertise with handling documents and artifacts, languages, historical knowledge, time and awareness. There are too many collections - from big modern national archives to private collections, with organization, regional, local, religious, etc. in between.
The Medici papers are in the Italian National Archive branch in Florence. Because the Renaissance has been on the radar for so long, material like this is unusually well mined. This stuff is what responsible history is built on.
It's also going to be riddled with lies, rhetoric, and false fronts - it's Medici correspondence after all. But it lets us nail down dates, people, concerns, patterns of communication, etc. This is the historical record that is reflected in available surveys and doesn't need millions of selections of discursive spin.
This is a really underrated problem for anyone trying to improve the historical record outside the official system. Major collections and repositories require institutional affiliation for access. It's understandable that rare and fragile material be protected. But setting up modern university history departments as gatekeepers didn't turn out so well. Smaller collections are easier to get into, but you can't build Renaissance history without access to places like the Medici archives. Universities also pay researchers to do this - it's part of the job description. It works well when it's sincere, but it puts what historical record we have in the hands of the system.
If we really wanted to get the maximum historical impact out of our bloated budgets, we'd be digitizing and making public as much archival material from as many places as possible. Just look what the Band can do in banged-out blog posts with the source material available with image searches and free old book scans.
Like the second, expanded edition of Vasari.
As it is, there's a historical record we can comfortably work with. We just can't add to it.
We need to clarify what a school is. The natural inclination to think of it in educational terms, but for art, school of fish is closer. An art school refers to the artists connected to a place or a movement. The Florentine school or Renaissance Florentine school refers to more or less specific groups of painters from Florence. The Hudson River School was a group of American painters with a shared vision. The qualifier tells you what type of group it is.
The place where you learn art - literally an art school - is referred to as an Academy. Classic academies combined teaching and theoretical speculation - like academia is supposed to. So the French Academy is an official body presiding over the direction and teaching of fine arts in France. The French school is the artists from France.
Charles West Cope, The Council of the Royal Academy selecting Pictures for the Exhibition, 1875, oil on canvas, Royal Academy of Arts, London
Academies start in the late 16th century as a way to formalize and develop the artistic principles that appear in the Renaissance. It's also how the state controlled the arts. Put it together and you can see why the Renaissance matters for Art!
We can't really call the early 15th-century Florentine crew a school since they all worked in different media and were usually competing. Brunelleschi was a mathematician, architect, engineer, and occasional sculptor, Ghiberti was a sculptor, writer and goldsmith, Donatello was a sculptor who worked in every material - bronze, marble, clay, wood - and a designer. Masaccio was a painter, and Alberti was an architect and classical humanist. But they worked for the same clients in a small, intense, art-focused town and all knew each other. Some were close friends. A lot of the innovations probably came out of private conversations and seeing each other's work. Unique talent in the right environment with lots of resources made a perfect storm.
The Florence Baptistery with the Duomo [Cathedral] and Brunelleschi's dome behind. Early medieval churches commonly had separate free-standing buildings for baptisms.
If we need to pinpoint the birthplace of what would snowball into "Renaissance Art" it's here. See how small the setting was? These guys were on top of each other. Organic growth.
Some more shots to give a sense of how close together this all is. Different talents and personalities within a common frame of reference. It's the common frame of reference that lets their talents mesh synergistically. It's the difference between diversity as compatible creative breadth and incompatible fragmentation.
The question - is the goal to actually work and produce something of value? These guys worked. Try doing large-scale precision bronze casting with medieval materials and tech.
It's easy to see why people like to study these guys. It's all so tidy. Humanists held sway in the republican government, Florence was rich and relatively stable, and a cadre of self-aware artistic geniuses changed medieval art for the betterment of the city. Funding for city works and the Duomo came from the same place. And the wealthy families that dominated the guilds and ruled the city supported and were guided by humanists. It's one of those moments that when read selectively and frozen in crystal does seem sort of perfect. It just couldn't last.
The Renaissance notion of art - objectively qualitative, steadily improving - is applicable to any cumulative collective creative enterprise. And the big lesson shouldn't be a reveal -
talent is optimized with a common frame of reference and creative friction and/or competition.
One of the the outcomes of this period that really was revolutionary was the notion that art was higher in intellectual and social status that "mere" craft labor. It needed an intellectual basis. Not episteme - a "theory" of techne. A way to make art based on solid empirical principles. Alberti was at the forefront of this - his On Painting is one of the most famous works in the history of art and as as influential as Vasari a century later.
There are more editions of Vasari out there, but Alberti's historical influence really is comparable. To the point where the Band can't pick a number one but could be talked into either.
This is literally the foundation of the Western fine arts. The first theory of painting - including the first account of perspective, declaration of painting as supreme among the arts, classical antiquity as an absolute standard... It first appeared in 1435 and distilled all the ideas of that early 15th-century creativity into a treatise written in the humanist way.
1725 edition of Alberti's works on art.
Painting was considered supreme, but Alberti also laid out the footprint for what would be centuries of Western fine arts. Two other books covered painting and architecture, with the architecture one as important to the history of that discipline as the painting one.
Painting, sculpture, and architecture don't really fit as a logical trio. Stained glass, needlework, and mosaic seem closer to painting and sculpture than architecture. It was the early Renaissance where these three were distinguished and pedestalized and Alberti's books nailed it down.
Alberti was an actual humanist who could write for other humanists or humanist adjacent aristocrats and clergy. He had access to the highest circles - working for Medici and popes as a consultant as well as an architect. This put him in the unique position to synthesize the early 15th-century innovations and bridge the gap to the ruling and learned classes. It also means what will become art theory had Renaissance humanism baked into the start.
The influence comes from being the first and being systematically presented. Ever since, it's referenced back to and built on - into a huge web of texts and ideas that all trace back to Alberti's basic precepts. Part of it is that he is continually read and studied as a foundational primary source text in Art History, Humanities, and some History programs. But the web of chains of other writers referencing and passing on the same Albertiesque ideas is just as important.
Giovanni Battista Cipriani, An Allegory of the Fine Arts and Architecture, engraved by F. Bartolozzi, 1766, London, Wellcome Collection
Painting, sculpture, architecture - Alberti's arts. This show us the arbitrariness of art - who decides what's acceptable? The Renaissance context that Alberti turned into art theory wasn't following these rules as rules. It's later that they get codified into a rigid system - the rigid system that serves as the fake catalyst for modernism.
This is important for a reason that's never mentioned by linear thinkers and simple model builders that stand in for history. All revivals are retro - self-conscious returning to past materials for reasons from inspiration to faddishness. It doesn't matter how "accurate" or "authentic" they are - all revivals are self-consciously retro. This seems painfully obvious but it needs to be made clear because this is only possible when the past materials and present revivers share this sort of cultural DNA.
The Renaissance was so receptive to classical ideals because of the classical influences flowing organically through late medieval culture. The Romanesque and Byzantine roots of the new art of the 14th century weren't Classical, but they were classically derived.
Illumination from the Leo Bible, mid 10th century, Vatican, Bib. Apostolica, MS. Reg. gr. 1
Click for a link to the illuminations in this amazing Byzantine manuscript. The style of the painting and architecture is quite close to ancient painting.
This kind of retro revival is possible because 10th century Byzantium was culturally descended from antiquity. The substructure is there - same as Renaissance Florence.
The same pattern carries forward. Alberti, and the Renaissance in general - lays down a humanist epistemology in history, arts, and letters - an interdisciplinary one that lends itself to Burckhardt's frozen moment. The picture is honest in that it is how they saw themselves but calling yourself universal isn't being universal.
Interdisciplinary humanist Renaissance conflicts with the Wolfflin specialized art silo Renaissance - we're trying to move past both of them here. And not via "synthesis" because we aren't retarded. But Alberti gave us that too. His individual books separate the arts and spell out different rule sets and values for each.
The points...
Discourse builds on tiny foundations. This leads to approaches and methods that don't fit together or even clash with each other.
The generalized model - the frozen moment - was internalized without any regard for the actual historical details. Subsequent writers accept this as the "big picture" then try and backform the historiography to fit. It's why looking back, the story seems so fragmented and full of incongruity.
This gives the models too much power over past reality. They become filters between us and the historical record. There's nothing wrong with a shared frame of reference. When it allows for creative friction, innovation follows. But we have to be aware of how it distorts - both our past and present. It's one thing to bleat about unnamed cultural forces.
It's another to unravel the filters and reconsider the facts.
This post is running long - there's so much to unravel. So let's meet the figures who became the foundation of Western art. Art! and art alike.
We've met Brunelleschi. He was a genius polymath with a quantitative mind. Like many cognitive outliers he seems to have struggled socially, but his achievements made him celebrated regardless. The dome alone made him a civic legend - the personification of what the humanist culture of the republic could achieve. If you're interested, here are the architecture posts on Brunelleschi. The first sets Renaissance theory up against the medieval background and shows where we were coming from the first time around. The second gets deeper into Brunelleschi, Alberti, and other theory.
Filippo Brunelleschi, San Lorenzo, 1421-1469, Florence
Architecturally, he introduced a simplified classically-based style that made an abrupt turn from Romanesque or Gothic styles. The forms were classical, but he applied a mathematical rigor that turned buildings into ideal geometries. There's a clean beauty in Brunelleschi's designs because he served logos. And he recognized that even the most abstract purity needed ornament and craft.
Brunelleschi wasn't a trained humanist and didn't write books of theory - his ideas mainly filter through his younger follower Alberti. So it's hard to pin down exactly what occurred to him when. Put it this way - he was the more innovative of the two, and together they laid the foundation for that Pythagorian geometric architecture theory that tied into esoteric humanist reading.
Preface to a manuscript copy of Alberti's De re aedificatoria, around 1485, State Archive Cod. Lat. C. O. 330, Czech Republic
Alberti's Ten Books on Architecturewas written in 1452 and circulated in manuscript form until the first published edition appeared in 1485. This made it the first printed book on architecture, one year ahead of the ancient Roman Vitruvius.
The Band has written posts on humanist literary culture. Here it is overlapping directly with the visual arts.
In painting, Brunelleschi appears to have invented linear one-point perspective as a formal system. We've mentioned a few times that this was a big deal historically because it gave the art a quantitative foundation. Giotto and other Gothic painters had been thinking of pictures like coherent unified scenes for a while, but in an observational, anecdotal way. Brunelleschi gave this realism systematic mathematical objectivity - like the Pythagorean harmonies in architecture. Here's a short history of perspective in art.
Brunelleschi is generally credited with inventing perspective, but Alberti codified the system in Della pittura. Here's his drawing and a modern version that's clearer. Organize the picture around a vanishing point. The converging lines set the relative size and place of objects. It works best when the person looking is lined up with the vanishing point.
As to the inventor - Alberti credits Brunelleschi with the idea, but Donatello may have been in on it too.
This mattered because late medieval arts had objective quantitative theoretical bases. It's a truism in Renaissance history that the visual arts were elevated in status. Brunelleschi gave painting and architecture the abstract logical theory that arts that didn't make the cut didn't have. The account of perspective that Alberti spelled out in his On Painting is probably the one Brunelleschi showed him.
Raphael's School of Athens is one of the archetype masterpieces of the High Renaissance and a masterful application of one-point perspective.
Raphael, School of Athens, 1509-11, fresco, Rome.
As we mentioned in the last post, Raphael's genius is hard to fathom. Look at the date. We will address him at some point. Having traced the arts of the West, the creative explosion of the High Renaissance gets more and more incredible. The idea that he was doing this down the hall from where Michelangelo was painting the Sistine Chapel ceiling is kind of mindbending.
This photo shows what happens if you aren't at least close to lining up with the vanishing point like Alberti says to do.
The Band wonders if the reason Alberti's sculpture book is his least significant is because Brunelleschi didn't devise a system of sculpture. The sculpture book is math based too - it uses a system of classical proportions. But it's rarely mentioned and we can't find enough to say more about it.
Brunelleschi seems a bit like Leonardo for his vast intellect, polymath abilities, and transforming influence on the arts. Leonardo looks smarter, but it's a difference of degree not kind. Neither of them were humanists in the technical sense - but because it was limiting, not too hard. Both innovated in ways that humanists could understand and apply. And they each provided real empirical genius that distorted the historical impression of the period as being more "rationalist" - pre-Enlightenment - than it was.
Engineering feats like the machines he invented to hoist materials and men up the hundreds of feet to the cathedral dome are signs of this intelligence. Like a crane that switched direction without having to turn the teams. As is the dome itself - a brick vault built without supports. Click for a link on Brunelleschi's machines.
And for frame of reference? Brunelleschi went to Rome to study ancient ruins - his architectural theory is abstract but he uses classical decorations and proportions based in classical thought. This shared frame of reference let Alberti appreciate the core ideas and dress them up in the proper humanist jargon for wide circulation.
Lorenzo Ghiberti, Joseph panel from the Doors of Paradise, 1425-52, bronze, Florence
Next we have Brunelleschi's contemporary and rival Lorenzo Ghiberti - a very different personality. Ghiberti was more of a tie to the International Gothic and a smooth and successful operator socially and in business. But he was also a gifted artist. He was the first to really get how to work bronze comparably to ancient foundries, but retained the beauty and delicate touch that distinguished him as a goldsmith. And unlike many Gothic artists, he was able to adapt new ideas without losing his personality - his most magnificent work was his last.
Ghiberti was also a writer. His Commentaries have some serious historical problems - surviving in a single manuscript copy and only appearing in a critical edition in 1912. Click for a link. So the Band doesn't know that much about them.
The link says the parts weren't intended as a finished book - the manuscript is most probably three unrelated pieces. The first is an account of ancient art drawn from Pliny the Elder and Vitruvius, and the thrid a collection of medieval optics treatises. The second is the best known - the rebirth of art by Giotto and it's development in Tuscany. It's the Vasari story, a century early and with Ghiberti as the climax rather than Michelangelo.
Ghiberti wasn't widely read in his time, but this does show that the humanist history of art was part of the early 15th-century as well.
Ghiberti comes on the scene in 1401 - as good a ceremonial start to Italian Renaissance as any. This was when the civic government funded a competition for new bronze doors for the Baptistery. Brunelleschi and Ghiberti were the finalists, with Ghiberti winning the contract that put his name on the map. For over 20 years, his workshop was designing and casting bronze panels. And when the magnificent finished product was in place, the city commissioned another set - even more splendid. For almost 50 years, Ghiberti was making bronze doors! Looking at the results, all we can say is good thing.
The Florence Baptistery with Ghiberti's second set of doors - his masterpiece known as the Gates of Paradise. The first set was originally installed here, replacing a set from the 1330s that was moved to the north entrance. When the Gates of Paradise were ready, his first set was moved to the north entrance and the medieval set to the south. That's the current set-up, but the Gates of Paradise are replicas - the originals are inside a museum for protection. Not sure about the other two sets.
Click for a link on the Baptistery.
Here are the doors before a recent cleaning and restoration. Centuries of pollution, oxidation, graffiti, and wear darkened the bronze and obscured the gold gilding. It's why they always look almost monotone in pictures.
Lorenzo Ghiberti, Scenes from the Life of Christ, 1404–24, gilt bronze, north doors of the Baptistery, Florence.
The layout follows the medieval original - 28 panels showing the life of Christ with allegories in the bottom two rows. The Baptistery was dedicated to St. John the Baptist, but the first doors from 1330 told the story of his life. Since they were being kept, a new subject was needed.
A look at Ghiberti's style. His vision was in line with the International Gothic - flowing, curving figures in integrated decorative groups. And gilded bronze is a suitably luxe material.
But look at the architecture. Ghiberti is setting up complicated spatial arrangements. His Commentaries are full of classical references, humanist ideas and studies on perspective. He was clearly interested in the new ideas around art, antiquity, and realism that were swirling around. His aristocratic style and grasp of the new ideas made him very attractive to wealthy clients like the wool merchants guild that paid for the doors.
This set seems to have been recently cleaned - no easy to find quality pictures. It's always a trade-off deciding how much time to search one photo. Here's a pair in progress showing the impact of the gilding and the replicas installed in the Baptistery after. Click for a link on the cleaning with this and more pictures.
Ghiberti's scenes shone with International Gothic splendor.
This is our first real look at creative friction. Both Brunelleschi and Ghiberti submitted samples that pushed the envelope of bronze sculpture at the time. Once he won the contract, Ghiberti was under constant pressure to improve and justify his status in a fast-changing art world. Because of this, he continually developed and arguably got the most out of his considerable talent. Consider the Doors of Paradise - Ghiberti's last and greatest major work.
These were funded by the same Arte di Calimala - the cloth finishers and importers guild - that was the richest and most powerful before the rise of the Medici. The wool trade was the main economic driver of the city and its international networks were critical to the rise of Florentine banking. Their status among guilds translated to the Republican government - made up by guilds - and the populace - tons of well-paying jobs.
Palazzo dell'Arte di Calimala, late 14th century, Florence
The base of the guild from completion. An imposing guildhall for the Middle Ages. We find it helpful to look at photos of how dense Florence was to better understand the Renaissance.
Another thing that made Florence so successful was the notion that the elites worked for the community that allowed them to get rich. This is one place humanism may take some credit - the classical notions of civic pride and the fame and deeds of great men were a eucivic foundation for elite education. And a love of fame meant competition for the adoration of the people. There were some real bastards in the Renaissance, but they were Florentine bastards. The Arte di Calimala maintained the Baptistery of San Giovanni at their expense - which is why they were commissioning doors from Ghiberti. Their patron was John the Baptist, making it a natural fit.
See how organic and unified Florentine society was? The economy, religious devotion, government, and the public good were are woven together in the same bodies. The religion is a yuge part of that. A guild of plutocratic traders and financiers is expending fat stacks on the most expensive artist in town for decorative doors. By honoring their patron saint, they show their devotion. That it also shows their devotion to Florence and their economic power and the belief that art is beneficial to the public is what healthy culture is.
Ghiberti, Doors of Paradise, east door of the Florence Baptistery, 1425-52, bronze with gilding
The doors got their nickname from Michelangelo, and after all this time, he's still not wrong. Decades of restoration brought them back to their original golden splendor. Click for a link.
Almost a quarter century had passed since he first started - during which time Florentine art had changed immensely. Brunelleschi's perspective and Donatello's compositions made the original doors look old fashioned before they were finished. The Arte di Calimala liked them, but wanted something cutting edge too. Ghiberti had the chance to apply what he'd learned about bronze sculpture and the new developments into something totally original.
Lorenzo Ghiberti, Solomon and the Queen of Sheeba panel from the Doors of Paradise, 1425-52, bronze, Florence
The panels tell stories from the Old Testament - because there's only 10 panels, Ghiberti had to include multiple moments in each like a medieval manuscript. But the modeling and placement of the figures is very real and the perspective is a perfect application of Brunelleschi's principles. Because it's a relief, he can make the space seem even more real by projecting things outward.
Came across this close-up from the Joseph panel. It does a good job of showing how Ghiberti plays with relief depth. The scene in the upper left is really flat, while the main scene is fully 3D.
If creative friction within a common, logos-based frame of reference can get this out of Ghiberti...
A last look. The Creation scene is one of the most beautiful in the Renaissance. Setting the creation of Eve in the center was unusual, but it let Ghiberti structure the story of the Fall with her as the center. Look at how the story flows from the creation of Adam in the lower left through Eve to the expulsion. She embodies the two sides of material beauty - all the glory of Heaven attends her birth - but that same beauty makes her irresistible if corrupted. You can see Ghiberti's skill in the way the flow of the attending angels transitions into the gate that excludes them the first pair.
Lorenzo Ghiberti, Solomon and the Queen of Sheeba panel from the Doors of Paradise, 1425-52, bronze, Florence
The power of creative friction plus logos goes both ways. Stung by the defeat over the doors, Brunelleschi turned the tables when he beat Ghiberti out for the contract to build the cathedral dome. This was also funded by the "civic" money. Now remember how close the Duomo and the Baptistery are. The two - who by contemporary accounts immensely disliked other - were overseeing the works that would make them remembered six centuries later a few hundred feet apart.
Works that tied artistic innovation, individual fame and triumph over adversity, civic pride and identity, humanistic principles, political authority, and religion together into one culturally unified ball. This is creative tension in a common frame of reference.
It's how you max out the arts.
Speaking of competition and cultural unity, Donatello was the artistic visionary nipping at Ghiberti's heels. If the Baptistery doors art the symbolic starting pistol for the Florentine Renaissance, the statues at the Orsanmichele are the coming out party.
Orsanmichele, 1336, Florence - a grain market converted into a chapel for the guilds. A replica of Donatello's St.George in the original niche is the white marble statue on the right. Ghiberti's bronze St. Matthew is on the far right.
Orsanmichele was given over to the guilds to use as a chapel and hall. Click for a link. In compensation, each had to provide a statue of their patron saint for one of the empty niches on the outside. Note once again how art, civics, and church are tied together. Also the mentality of wanting public art - the idea that the city and people benefit from exposure to beauty and logos. The hideous blemishes of modern public Art! are an inversion of this idea. Contemporary sources say that the Florentine populace was unusually cognizant of art - these high profile projects are why.
Then there's the competition - the guilds competed to show off the most impressive statue. The artists may have been competing harder - their work is going on permanent display, side by side, for an art-savvy public.
Donatello, Saint Mark, 1411–1413, marble, Church and Museum of Orsanmichele, Florence
The young Donatello was contracted by the Arte dei Linaioli - the Linen Merchants guild - for a marble saint. Bronze was too costly, but the sculptor brought value beyond materials. It's early in his career but you can already see the shocking for the time realism in expression and clothing. Mark looks like a powerful old seer with real life in his eyes. His robe falls in skillful folds that would have made the linen merchants happy.
Also note how the curving forms of the International Gothic have been replaced with the classical contrapposto - weight on one leg.
It's not ancient-looking, but the pose and realism are interpreted as reborn classical influence. That is, Renaissance. To really appreciate what a departure this is, look at the date and think of the International Gothic. The flowing ideal grace has been replaced by an emphatically real presence. Even better, look at what Ghiberti contributed for the Arte di Calimala.
Unlike Donatello's clients, the cloth importers had money to burn and an ongoing relationship with Ghiberti at the Baptistery. Adding a statue was easy. Ghiberti's bronze was the first life-size cast since antiquity, making it another humanistic achievement of Florentine cultural revival.
Ghiberti, St John the Baptist, 1412-16, bronze, Orsanmichele, Florence
Fabric takes center stage here as well. But the style is aristocratic Gothic grace - suited to the clients, but old-fashioned next to what Donatello unveiled.
Note how the frame of the conversation is changing. These judgments of quality and fashion don't appear in the medieval sources. Florentine art-consciousness and competitive environment - driven by clients and artists - were inventing a new cultural concept of art, it's purpose, and values.
If you're going to theorize a new way of conceptualizing art on theoretical lines, you have to first have an environment where art is considered. It's genius and the right conditions. For Alberti to lay down "rules" of good art, it means that art is already accepted as a thing that has qualitative gradients and best practices.
When you see aristocratic patrons and talented artists assessing conscious stylistic differences for public approval, you know art is accepted as a thing. Ditto the notion that artistry had sufficient value to compensate for materials.
Donatello is a revolutionary artist. Perhaps the most talented "pure" artist of the group. The diversity and range of his creations are too broad to do justice to in a summary, but the expressiveness and mastery of materials are constant. What he does more than revive ancient standards is bring sculpture to life - antiquity wasn't something to copy but to learn from to make modern classics. He's never derivative. So revolutions exist on the creator level, but they aren't overnight revolutionary cultural transformations.
One more statue from the Orsanmichele - Donatello's second - to demonstrate his vision. This one was contracted by the armorers guild and shows their patron, the armored Saint George. The classical contrapposto, realism, and living expression propelled the artist to the top of the art world. And this is where tradition is such a factor. By becoming "names" through their skill, artists like Donatello serve as lessons and measuring sticks for the future. Michelangelo might have the most powerful artistic personality of all time. But he is inconceivable without his great Florentine predecessor to show the way.
Donatello, St. George, 1416-17, Museo del Bargello, Florence
There's nothing of the International Gothic in this poised, watchful figure.
Afterwards, Donatello stays based in Florence, but works all over Italy. He spends time in Rome working and studying ancient art, and was close with Venetian humanist groups. He didn't write or theorize himself, but was an archetype of the knowledgeable, classically-inspired Renaissance genius artist.
And the face. You can see how he carves out around the eyes so the shadows will form the alert expression.
The base of the statue has a relief showing St. George and the Dragon. It's notable for its perspective - some have argued this is the earliest one-point perspective image. The answer is inconclusive - Donatello was friendly with Brunelleschi. Just more data on the inventiveness of this artist and the closeness of the Florentine art scene.
Before moving on - just one more example from Donatello's wide body of work. This another classically-inspired piece - a mounted portrait of the kind not seen since antiquity. But cast with all Donatello's realism and personality. The piece was for a mercenary commander and civic hero in Padua and inspired the countless imitations that followed.
The early 15th century is unusual for having the sculptors leading the innovation - this despite of Alberti's claim that painting is first among the arts. To be fair, by the time Alberti was publishing Della pittura, painting had moved to the fore again. Because it wasn't long before the painters got in on the party. Particularly Masaccio and his older collaborator Masolino - the first to paint with Brunelleschi's new perspective technique.
Masaccio, frescos in the Brancacci Chapel, 1423-1426, Santa Maria del Carmine in Florence
It was Masolino who got the Brancacci Chapel contract - Masaccio was a younger collaborator he brought along and who quickly surpassed him as an artist. The narrative credits Masaccio with being the first to paint with correct perspective, but it looks like Masolino may have done it first. It's hard to sort the exact chronologies out and Masaccio dies in 1428 at 26 so there's no life's work to consider. Masaccio is the more talented painter - he's the one who revives the storytelling and sense of presence of Giotto, only filtered through the new artistic developments. This makes him a bit like Donatello - the artist who most symbolizes the turn away from the Gothic.
Masaccio's majestic Trinity used perspective to turn a painted wall tomb into an illusory chapel - one of the earliest and finest examples of the technique. Note the classical - not Gothic - architecture. It's derived from the work of Brunelleschi and is yet another example of the closeness of the Renassance art world. That plus the perspective makes this one of the landmark paintings of the Renaissance. The solid, non-curving Giotto-like figures show the conscious looking back to tradition.
Masaccio, The Trinity, 1426, fresco, Santa Maria Novella, Florence
The picture is unusual for combining the Throne of Grace depiction of the Trinity with a standard crucifixion - note Mary and John flanking the Cross. Click for a link on the symbolism. The lower parts include a skeleton on a tomb reminding you of your eventual death beneath portraits of the clients in prayer. A perfect Renaissance combination of classical ideas of fame and Gothic emotion-driven religion. Masaccio's space is radical - look how the saints on the inside connect you to a vision that seems both real and removed. But the context is familiar. Like everything didn't suddenly change when the art leapt forward. Click for a link on Massacio's perspective.
Compare Jesus to Giotto's crucifix from around 1290 in the same church. You can see Masaccio's debt and improvement on the figure's anatomy and sense of real presence. Tradition.
Giotto, Crucifix, 1290, tempera on wood, Santa Maria Novella, Florence
But it's the Brancacci Chapel where perspective painting really came into its own. Click for an introduction. The theme is the lives of Saints Peter and Paul - with Old Testament bookends. The idea of a painted chapel off a church was nothing new in Italy. Wall painting was one of the arts that distinguished Gothic Italy from the rest of Europe. Masolino and Masaccio were working in a traditional medium, but with the latest ideas. Here's the view into the chapel - you can see there have been a lot of later additions. Click for a link on the chapel with the appropriate Scripture passages.
Brancacci Chapel, frescos by Masolino and Masaccio, 1423-1427
Masolino, The Healing of the Cripple and the Raising of Tabitha, 1423-1425, fresco, Brancacci Chapel
The painting that might be the first true perspective in paint. Masolino was innovative, but oddly bloodless as an artist. His figures lack the assertive presence of Giotto. Or Masaccio...
The Tribute Money is Masaccio's most famous painting and a good way to show the difference in force and vitality between the two. Masaccio is the one who revives Giotto's legacy and weaves it into the developments of the early 15th century. And the perspective is flawless - with the vanishing point landing on Jesus like a pointer. See for yourself...
Masaccio, The Tribute Money, around 1425, fresco, Brancacci Chapel
Masaccio died young, but Masolino continued on and took work in Rome. This doesn't seem that significant, but Rome was just starting the recovery process from over a century of Avignon and schism. The papacy wasn't in a position to be a serious player in the art world, but that wouldn't be long. By the early 16th century, Rome would surpass Florence as the art center. Masolino bringing the perspective style was a faint harbinger.
Masolino, frescos in the Castiglione Chapel, 1425-31, San Clemente, Rome
Note the Annunciation above the chapel arch. It's set in an elaborate space box and unfolds across the interior. This is the cutting edge perspective design that Masolino brought with him.
Finally it was Alberti - the Humanist and architect - who turned this into a theory that could be passed on. And in addition to writing books, consulted with popes and adapted ancient models to modern needs all over Italy. His late church of Sant'Andrea in Mantua was designed in 1471 - a year before he died. It adapts colossal Roman buildings like the Basilica of Maxentius, but is unmistakably Renaissance.
This is long enough. It lays the foundation for the burst of artistic creativity that happened in early 15th century Florence. The next post will take up the artistic changes as they develop out. What we can conclude is that the Renaissance isn't a sudden change but a series of developments in different times and places. We looked at the art in Tuscany as distinct from the humanism and noticed something very different from the sudden everything changes. The conditions for the real innovation and growth that doesn't change everything at once. That's creative friction in a supportive, logos-based common frame of reference. Like Renaissance Florence really was. Whatever the Spirit of History whispers.
We know it's a burgeoning tradition in the most supportive environment. It doesn't stop.
Fra Angelico, The Coronation of the Virgin, 1434 to 1435, Uffizi Museum
Consider Florence and patronized art as an antecedent or an analogue. Florence was a wealthy city, supported by high-tech manufacturing and commerce. The city was amidst a network of road and sea lanes, allowing reliable transport of goods, raw materials, food, and messages or ideas (including artwork). The accumulated wealth went into banking, public works and into public and private art, pushing boundaries of representation, materials and processing. Political systems went from internal oligarchy, to a unified republic, to family/oligarch rule and finally family rule by the Medicis. What started “Ad gloriam Dei” got a sinister inversion, because Man now got credit. Sponsored artwork originally supporting faith, and traditions became more personalized, depicting scions and ladies of the ruling families for certain subjects. The media used became the message. After ruinous wars, use of public art to influence the people developed into a form of its own, all intended to support the Medicis.
ReplyDeleteCompare this to the West, or the United States in particular. We have a wealthy nation, supported by high-tech manufacturing in all industries . The nation has a world-spanning web of secure trade routes, allowing reliable transport of goods, raw materials, food, and messages or ideas. The accumulated wealth went into banking, public works and into public and private art, pushing boundaries of representation and materials – with engineering and science spawned by electricity. Political systems went from a unified republic of internal states, to family/oligarch rule, to rule by a self-selected technocratic elite “family.” What began “For the Glory of God and …” inverted to the credit of Man. Sponsored artwork became dreck or personalized for Their Betters. The media became the message: “obey your betters, peasant.”
In Florence, the common people were stunned by the levels of detail in 2D and then 3D depictions of scenes from the Gospel, and from the amount of realistic proportion wrought into sculptures. The fascination sets up conditions where a humanist can redirect interest from Subject to Artist, creating cults of personality. The people start wanting some of that wealth and decoration to come to them. Fighting and rebellion start from temptation and dissatisfaction.
In the United States, media glamour begins with music recordings, then mass radio broadcasting and talkies in the ‘20s-‘30s. After worldwide Depression and world war(s), media weaponization was perfected. Public art no longer meant going into public spaces, cathedrals, or museums. Radio and television allowed for immediate, instant broadcast into the home, with no change in reference frame from the home to the public square. Envy of material goods was transferred to the home.
Advances in mechanization and transportation made it inexpensive for impressionable youth to travel to art sites: New York City and Hollywood. Prometheans had the feast spread for them –, an unlimited supply of aspiring models, actors, and hangers-on, alone and anonymous, without consequence. What began with the Greatest (06-25) was cultivated in the Silents (26-45), and with television was plowed and seeded into the Boomers (46-65). “But there’s more!” Gen X got virulent strains of 24-hour cable and MTV, squaring the circle of music and video with soundbites and clips. Cheap, common recorders meant you could watch or personally record anything. Generations 11 and 12 (Y and Z) get the “benefit” of personal devices that record everything and upload this for everyone to see, no matter how good or tawdry, at the tap of a button. Prometheans have a worldwide feast, and make any stodgy traditionalists vanish - so they think.
This is a thought-provoking comparison. We need to consider further, but it seems right at a glance. If the Renaissance starts the path of secular transcendence that leads to the current day, those threads will be there.
ReplyDeleteCult of personality is a perfect way to describe Renaissance solipsism manifest in the arts. It's as if there's a period when you commit to the the vanities of this world when you're riding on residual logos and seem capable of anything. The late stage Numenoreans being a good fictional example. The Renaissance artists seem like this.
Thanks for stopping by and leaving something to chew on.