Giovanni Battista Piranesi, The Temple of Neptune, Paestum, etching
Benjamin West, Victory and Death of General Wolfe, exemplum virtutis
Abraham Darby, Iron Bridge at Ironbridge, England, Industrial Revolution
Thomas Telford, Pontcysylte Aqueduct, Wales, Industrial Revolution
Thomas Telford, Menai Bridge, Wales, Industrial Revolution
Thomas Jefferson, Library, University of Virginia Campus Library, American Revolution
Jacques Louis David, The Oath of the Horatii
Jacques Louis David, The Death of Marat, The French Revolution
NEO-CLASSICISM
archaeology
exemplum virtutis
The Industrial Revolution
--Abraham Darby
--Thomas Telford
The American Revolution
--Thomas Jefferson
----University of Virginia
The French Revolution
--Jacques Louis David
----Jean Paul Marat
Catholic Baroque
Caravaggio
--tenebrism
Artemisia Gentileschi
Gianlorenzo Bernini
--Cornaro Chapel
Peter Paul Rubens
France Under King Louis XIV
--National Academy
--genre
--Salon exhibition
--Versailles
Diego Velazquez Global Catholic Baroque
The Jesuit Order Dutch Protestant Baroque
Dutch Republic
Jan Vermeer
--camera obscura
Rembrandt
--etching
Music From the 17th Century
Psalm 147, Lauda Jerusalem from the Vespers of the Blessed Virgin Mary by Claudio Monteverdi, 1610
Raphael, The "School of Athens" (Philosophy), from the Stanza della Segnatura
Bramante, Tempietto
Michelangelo, David
Michelangelo, The Creation of Adam from the Sistine Chapel Ceiling
Michelangelo and Bramante, St. Peter's Basilica
THE HIGH RENAISSANCE
Leonardo da Vinci
--sketching
--atmospheric perspective
--sfumato
--Lisa Gherardini Giocondo
Raphael
--The Grand Manner
Bramante
Michelangelo
--Pope Julius II
--Sistine Chapel
St. Peter's
--Bramante
--Michelangelo
read Chapter 16
The Sistine Chapel in Use
The Sistine Chapel was built for the election of new popes. Here are the cardinals processing from the Pauline Chapel into the Sistine Chapel for the recent election of Pope Francis. The Vatican Master of Ceremonies orders everyone not involved in the election to leave and shuts the doors before the voting begins.
The Mystery of the Mona Lisa Solved ... Maybe.
For reasons that have never been clear to me, the identity of the sitter
of this painting has been controversial since the mid 20th century.
Vasari in his chapter on Leonardo in Lives of the Artists
identifies the woman in this painting as Lisa Gherardini Giocondo, the
wife of a young Florentine silk merchant by the name of Francesco
Giocondo. Vasari says that Leonardo painted it on the occasion of their
marriage. Ever since, the painting has been known as Mona Lisa (old Florentine dialect that means "My Lady Lisa"), or La Gioconda, "The Smiler" which is a play on the name Giocondo. Until the 20th century, no one ever thought to question that identity.
Since
the mid-20th century, there have been all sorts of proposed alternative
identifications such as the Duke of Milan Francesco Sforza's mistress
Cecilia Gallerani, or the Duke's long suffering Duchess Caterina Sforza,
or Isabella d'Este, or Leonardo's mother (supposedly done from memory),
or Leonardo's boyfriend, bodyguard, and assistant Salai, or even
Leonardo himself.
In the 1990s, the best scholar on Leonardo in the
English language, Martin Kemp, did something no one thought to do, and
that was to go looking through the city records in Florence for
information on Lisa Gherardini. It turns out that there was a lot about
her. She had married young (as did most women of the time). The
Gherardinis were very close friends with Leonardo. He lived at their
country villa for many years, including the years 1503 and 1504 when the
painting was made. It was probably painted at that villa (which still
exists). Lisa Gherardini would have been the right age for the woman in
the painting. The artist probably knew her very well, and they may
have been close friends. Kemp believed that despite all the laser scans
and computer analyses of the mysterious face comparing the sitter to
this or that person, Vasari may have been right all along, that the
sitter was indeed Lisa Gherardini.
In 2005, a scholar in the
University of Heidelberg made a discovery that appears to have ended the
controversy once and for all. While cataloging rare books in the
university library, Dr. Armin Schlechter discovered a note written in
the margin of a 1477 edition of Cicero's Epistulae ad Familiares.
It was written by Agostino Vespucci, cousin of the famous explorer Amerigo and
a secretary to Niccolo Machiavelli when he was Chancellor of the
Florentine Republic. In that note, Vespucci praises Leonardo as a new
Apelles (a celebrated painter from Antiquity) for his work on the
portrait of the wife of Francesco Giocondo, Lisa Gherardini, that the
painting was made to commemorate the birth of her son Andrea, and writes
a date of October 1503. That appears to be the end of the controversy
and since then, there have been no more "experts" coming forward to
claim that the painting is Leonardo in drag.
Agostino Vespucci's note from October 1503 in the margin of Cicero's Epistulae.
Lorenzo Ghiberti, Sacrifice of Abraham, Competition Panel, Italian Renaissance
Filippo Brunelleschi, Sacrifice of Abraham, Competition Panel, Italian Renaissance
Florence Cathedral, dome designed and built by Filippo Brunelleschi, Italian Renaissance
Filippo Brunelleschi, The Pazzi Chapel, Florence, The Italian Renaissance
Linear Perspective; print by Vredeman de Vries
Linear Perspective: Masaccio, The Trinity, Italian Renaissance
Masaccio, The Tribute Money from the Brancacci Chapel, Italian Renaissance
Lorenzo Ghiberti, Second set of doors for the Florence Baptistery, "The Gates of Paradise," Italian Renaissance
Donatello, St. George, Italian Renaissance
Donatello, David, the first free-standing nude sculpture since ancient times, Italian Renaissance.
Jan Van Eyck, The Arnolfini Betrothal, Flemish Renaissance, an oil painting.
Rogier Van Der Weyden, Descent from the Cross, Flemish Renaissance, oil painting
Sandro Botticelli, The Birth of Venus, Italian Renaissance
THE RENAISSANCE
Florence
Lorenzo Ghiberti
--competition panels
Filippo Brunelleschi
--Dome of the Cathedral of Florence
--linear perspective
-----horizon
-----vanishing point
-----orthogonal
International Gothic
egg tempera painting
Masaccio
--Brancacci Chapel
Donatello
Flemish Painting
--Flanders
--oil painting
--Jan Van Eyck
----symbolic realism
--Rogier Van Der Weyden
Botticelli
read Chapter 15
Easter in Florence
The Scoppio del Carro del Fuocco, "Explosion of the Cart of Fire."
Every Easter, the Florentines drag out an enormous 4 story high cart called the Brindellone ("The Big Old Wreck"), hitch it up to a team of 4 white oxen and parade it through the streets of the city stopping in front of the Cathedral in time for Easter Mass. After the choir sings the Gloria of the Mass, a deacon takes a candle and lights it from the Paschal candle, and then ... well, watch what happens.
From the 2013 Scoppio del Carro,
The Florentines have been doing this ceremony in its present form complete with fireworks in church for almost 600 years. They've been doing some form of this Easter ritual for almost a thousand years. Remarkably, they have not yet burned down the Cathedral.
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