Wednesday, January 25, 2012

Week Four


I have chosen to compare Piero della Francesca’s “Battista Sforza and Federico da Montefeltro” (1474) and Raphael’s “The Small Cowper Madonna” (1505).
Both works utilize atmospheric perspective applied to a rural landscape including trees/shrubberies, fields, buildings, and hills or mountains.  Raphael’s Madonna and Child are shown with a church in the background, giving the piece religious connotations from the figures in the front to the setting found behind them. The portraits of Battista Sforza and Fredrico feature a little harbor in their background. Instead of the usual religious propaganda painted into portraits, Piero della Francesca inserted a setting for business, located on the husband’s half, and behind the wife there are serene hills an fields with suggestions of a city. These patrons are firmly planted in a secular world blatantly announced by the painting and inscriptions praising their Earthly accomplishments. Raphael’s “small” Madonna and Child are subtly discussing religious matter, not blatantly announcing anything. Even their halos are barely visible, practically just hints of holiness. Though they are presenting two completely different ideas, both works present portraits with landscapes that support each other.
The woman and her baby are positioned in an intimate, comfortable way. Slouching, heads tilted, they hold on to each other, smiling gently and sweetly as they look to something in the viewer’s plan of existence. Most of the Madonna’s body is shown so that there can be a pyramid structure with her legs on the bottom coming the closest to us followed by her hands and the Child, topped by her face. Her hair recedes as it goes behind her, continuing the pyramidal structure behind her, which is further stabilized by the cloak or blanket she sits. Battista Sforza and Federico da Montefeltro are placed facing each other, looking languidly into each other’s eyes, and distancing themselves from the viewers and the background. We see profiles, stiff and straight, showing the top of their torso and the good sides of their faces. They are placed in the center of each of their respective frames. They make a solid image that reflects what you might be able to see through a window, while Raphael’s figures look more like two characters you could sit by a wall and have a conversation with.  Piero della Francesca’s work is to be admired and looked at, but Raphael’s is to be appreciated with emotional or imaginary interaction.
 Both use mostly saturated colors, especially to emphasize atmospheric perspective. Vibrant reads and deep blues and greens mark what is close up and the hills or mountains in the back disappear into a white horizon. The main difference that I see in the color usage is in the flesh. While Piero della Francesca seems to have been attempting a realistic rendering of their faces, they seem much flatter than Raphael’s and, to me at least, sicklier.  Raphael’s flesh, pale as it is, seems rounder and softer as well as healthier or more lively. If Raphael’s figures started moving, it would not surprise me. Battista Sforza and Federico da Montefeltro, on the other hand, do not really look as if they are capable of more movement than blinking, since they might be halfway through a blink as they are. The range of shading used on these two seem minimal when compared to “The Small Cowper Madonna,” and the result is a flatness that High Renaissance artists appear to have abandoned. Another contributor is the shifts in color. Raphael painted soft changes in color, while Piero della Francesco moved much more abruptly. Battista Sforza’s head goes from pale skin directly to greenish blonde hair while Raphael’s Madonna’s temples slowly turns into her hair which blends with her ears and the shadows around her neck.
So, even though both works used very similar colors and settings, they accomplished a sense of realism to different degrees, and, using different configurations and subject matter, they both present unified and coherent portraits with singular intimations.

Wednesday, January 18, 2012

Week Three


In “The Tribute Money,” the artist Masaccio’s intent was to portray a realistic narrative that glorified St. Peter.
The piece’s height is a little over 8 feet, so the figures portrayed are around life-size. The artist used both linear perspective and atmospheric perspective in his scenery. The building’s angles on the right lead to a vanishing point and the scenery dulls in colors and details as it seems to be farther away. The figures overlap each other and get smaller or larger depending on how close to the viewer they’re meant to be seen as. The artist was very interested in convincing the viewer of a real space. Also a light source is clearly defined, as are the folds in the drapery and clothing and the toes and muscles that are visible. The halos, of course, are an obvious attempt to try something new that would make spatial relationships more believable. Earlier halos were flat circles behind a figures head no matter what, and even if the rest of the painting seemed to be illusionist, the flat disk of a halo would give an annoying sense of two dimensionality. Masaccio’s halos recede into space and are affected by the position of the head they adorn. They still aren’t something we find in real life, but they are easier to associate with something real, like a hat.
The figures are depicted with facial expressions, a lot of them confused or concerned like the central Peter is. Peter’s forehead is rankled, his eyebrows raised in question, and his left hand reaches for Jesus tilted in a questioning manner. This figure is convincingly a human being, knowing he should do as Jesus says but is unsure of the methods involved. Peter’s figure shows the most emotion and has some of the greatest contrasts with highlights and shadows. He is apparently very important.
The figures’ poses show not only what it is that they are saying (the tax collector demanding payment if they want to continue on; Jesus directing Peter to the water; Peter clearly unsure if going over there makes any sense), but they lead the viewer through the story. Even with his back to me, the foremost figure speaks to me first, then guides my eye with his arm to Jesus who leads me to Peter as they point to the next scene on the left. Though I want to identify the leftmost side of a narrative as the beginning, the middle area grabs my attention first because that is where most of the bright colors, interesting faces, and busyness occur along with having figures that appear closer. Then the central figures send the viewer to the left. After admiring the solitary figure fishing, I am drawn back to the middle, where the tax collector points me to the right scene and I can finally appreciate Peter paying off the tax man.
The final scene seems to me to be the most important.  The figures appear to be the closest, the details are the crispest, and the colors are the sharpest. That could all be dependent on what photograph I’m looking at, but I’m going to assume it’s because Masaccio was trying to put this final Peter in the best light. The miracle of finding money in a fish’s mouth is downsized. That scene is dully colored and placed at a distance. Peter’s handling the situation is what is important.
The scene arrangement is a cleaver way to get around placing fishable waters in the middle of the paint and breaking up the scenes into a typical left to right narrative.  Life doesn’t always happen in a left to right way. In reality, Peter wouldn’t have gone 1) from the group to 2) the water to 3) the tax collector, left to right – he would have had to go through Jesus and the disciples standing around waiting for him, just like the viewer does. The scene placement is more concerned with the realistic spaces than the chronological organization. The story is not told in a direct, linear way, but shows realistic locations of scenes. Going from left to right in the typical manner would have sacrificed the realism Masaccio was striving for. He used other means to describe the story without losing any accuracy.

Wednesday, January 11, 2012

Week Two


It kind of depresses me when we get to the parts of history where we can actually attribute achievements to specific people. That’s when we start focusing more on the individual’s work and less on the general development of the time period. At least most of the people mentioned in history books led interesting lives.
I was surprised by how much could be attributed to Jan van Eyck: the three-quarter pose, working outside of a court or guild and being recognized as an individual, layering to get an increased sense of depth, being a spy, etc. He was one revolutionary artist. It was amazing to get to see so many close ups of the “Altar at Ghent.” Sometimes I think it’s easier for us to stand way back and get the overall idea of something and go, “Oh, yeah. That looks like a real person. Sure,” instead of getting up close and seeing all the little things emphasized in a painting of a human being that we would hardly even notice on ourselves. The way Jan van Eyck recorded hairlines and tans, veins, poses and postures, and the way light hits the eyes is really amazing. We’re not as interested in some of those details anymore. I think it was genius to take into account the actual window from the work’s intended location. I know I wouldn’t do that, at least not to such a huge thing with an outside and an inside. That was one detail that really helps to involve the viewer. Not only are the figures “realistic” and recognizable, but they are using the same light as you are. The images seem to be literally in the same plane of existence as us. Maybe that was something they were striving for in the Northern Renaissance. Maybe it wasn’t just about depicting a biblical scene with the addition of pious wealthy families and familiar locations. Maybe it was trying to bring any viewer into the scene, make them feel like they really were there, like it wasn’t just a story told at Christmas. Maybe that was why Jan van Eyck was so frequently commissioned. Everyone wanted to share experiences as literally as they could.
Another thing that interested me was the extent of iconography and symbolism used. The documentary mentioned towards the end that some pieces have limitless interpretations because of all the little symbols and clues artists stuck in, like in “Arnolfini and His Wife.” I can’t believe how an intimate portrait like that has been loved and owned by so many different people/institutions. It’s a little creepy. But at the same time, it’s such an amazing piece that I wouldn’t mind having it. I also think it’s funny how much attention a single painting can get. Both “Altar at Ghent” and “Arnolfini and His Wife” have ridiculous histories, and it just goes to show how much we love figuring out all we can about a single item. We can’t just let it be what it is. We need a back-story. We pay people to find out weird and interesting tidbits about a painting. I think it’s funny.
I also thought it was funny how apparently Burgundian artists and lords would have their art melted down to reused the materials for other works after being on display for a short while. We wouldn’t do that to a non-functional art piece, but we try to recycle everything else from packaging to computers, from clothes to cars, from eyeglasses to cell-phones. Our artwork doesn’t ever seem to get repurposed, just resold.

Friday, January 6, 2012

Winter Week One

As human beings, we like to worship specific things and people. We like to compare stuff and think of one work as better than another. The 15th and 16th centuries are a part of our history that we tend to regard as a rather good time for Western Civilization, because society was greatly concerned about improving itself through the development of logic, philosophy, science, medicine, literature, music and visual arts – the overall improvement of education (of noblemen), getting out of the Dark Ages and enlightening the mind. I think we view Renaissance art so highly, because that was the start of seeing art from a more scholarly approach. Everything was taken from a more scholarly approach and could be treated as a serious line of study or occupation. More realistic techniques were found and employed to make visual creations more believable and aesthetically pleasing. It was the first time that humans could afford to give enough attention, improve and refine arts and philosophies after the Medieval Times.
Because of the Enlightenment taking place, there was more interest in ideas beyond the church, and, therefore, there were more patrons of the arts aside from religious figures. Secular art became more profitable to artists. I think this improved sacred art, making it more varied and interesting, because there were more intentions for artistic content. A painting of the crucifixion was not just a narrative that existed so people could see and understand the event – there were more focused, underlying messages. Renaissance art was expressing for a single person, the commissioner/patron, instead of for a whole church, though sometimes it may speak for the artist if he was sneaky enough or successful enough to paint/compose/sculpt in his own interests.
Also, improving commerce benefitted the arts in the same manner. More and more patrons could exist and the religious significance decreased. People were allowed to be driven by money and intellectual enlightenment. The rich and educated felt compelled by a desire to improve on Classical ideals. “They imagined a golden age of philosophy, literature, and the arts,” as the textbook put it. Meanwhile, profit would be a greater motivator for artists to improve their work. Money was starting to flow much more freely then in the Middle Ages. Plus, the artists would come in contact with the ideas of Enlightenment when they worked for their patrons, and they probably became caught up in the same desires for progress.
This desire to improve oneself and/or his works led to new and perfecting techniques, which is why a few names stick out, like Michelangelo and Leonardo. They managed to be innovative and successful, becoming inspiration for many, many, many, many, many… many other artists, and they got the attention of many, many patrons and scholars. The illusion of perspective was properly harnessed at this time, and scientific proportions were realized.
So, in other words, the Renaissance artists held themselves up to raising standards, so we respect them by viewing their work as beautiful and genius.