One of my favorite artists of all time is Albrect Durer. His work he created in prints are, in my opinion, some of the most detailed and best well done pieces of artwork and most fabulous prints in all of art history. When Albrect was studying art and taking his time in  his youth to travel, one of his trips was to Italy to learn about the art of the Italian Renaissance and he loved it. He liked the Roman and Greek idealized presentation the Italians used ad their subjects in their paintings, along with the religious content and all the different hidden and the clearly stated items that had meaning and were in the painting for specific reasons.

One of Durer's well known prints is his interpretation of Adam and Eve. He presents Adam and Eve in the center and up in the foreground. The first man and woman are etched in the idealized perfection of the Italian Renaissance, both being muscular, in perfect equal proportions, and showing them standing in loose, relaxed stances. Durer placed Adam and Eve in the setting of the Garden, and places many meaningful atributes and items that fit in with the idea of behaving or being punished by God, to enforce the message of having an etching of Adam and Eve. This etching is Durers first documented representation of ideal human figures in his prints.

Most of Durer's prints were scenes showing the result of what would happen if the community was to misbehave, with Adam and Eve, he is plainly showing the iconic story of the first sin. My favorite piece by Durer is The Apocalypse. It is an etching showing the actions that would lead to the Apocalypse. I like that he shows such epic, and meaningful scenes that are so full of meaning and invoke such a... scared and powerful message, yet are done so in a way that makes his work elegant and beautiful, and seem to be made for a very high, important class.

Week 5: Manneristic Art

As a student at Central, I have had the opportunity to embark on the fairly new and small Museum Studies Program. In the introduction course of this minor, we are required to study and learn how to make our own museum mission statement. The mission statement of a museum states the educational and communal goal of the institution. The mission statement of a museum can be quite long and lengthy or just a few sentences. The Seattle Art Museum has a fairly short mission statement, and gets to the point about what kind of art they show. The SAM mission statement reads, “From its early 20th-century roots as the Seattle Fine Arts Society to its growth into an internationally renowned museum with three distinct venues, explore how the Seattle Art Museum evolved into a vital Seattle institution.” For me, this means that the SAM collects and shows items as an institution to contribute to the evolution of Seattle, and that the items they collect will help to teach the community about art history and the different aspects of art.

Among the permanent collection in the SAM, are two pieces believed to be from the Mannerism period of the late Renaissance; Abraham Janssens’, The Origin of the Cornucopia, and Vincent Sellaer’s, Leda and the Swan and Her Children. When looking at a painting and attempting to determine the time from which it came, there are many things to look at and think about. For some periods, it is quite easy to pin point the time of origin. For art work done in the Mannerism time, it may be hard for some people to find the differences when comparing it to a piece from the late Renaissance. Seen as these art periods are about the same time in history, they have many of the same aesthetic characteristics. Both use bright, yet natural colors and the artists worked to portray the clarity of contours and used sharp details and showed pictorial boundaries and depth. . Both realms of artists use mostly humans as their subjects, even though both are not depicting actual humans (Renaissance artists painted angels and saints, and Mannerism artists depicted gods and the people they chose to contact on earth.) The artists of these times both paint in a fairly realistic way, showing the humans with real human features, with real human colors and real human expressions or actions.

Even though these two art periods are closely related, they do now, however, portray the same message as one another. The Renaissance was about The Church, and the rebirth of the people. It was important to use proportions and balance to convey human-heavens balance; they showed the normal and supernormal (angels and saints) to show the religious concepts of earth-universe dominance (Universe and church ruled all).The Mannerism art period, however, was the reaction to the rebirth. The artists and other people in the community began to reform and started to speak out against the church. The ideals of Greek Mythology came back to play in some people’s outlook on life and religion, while others took the Catholic faith and revamped it to make their own. Most Mannerism artists took the opportunity to paint depictions of stories not related to the bible. Some took Greek and Roman mythology stories to show their true feelings about the church and they way church officials were acting. Others were hired or just chose the opportunity to do paintings of Greek Mythology.

The two pieces in the Seattle Art Museum’s collection mentioned above, do belong in the Mannerism period. I feel that they do, because they both depict stories that are closer related to, if not actually are, Greek Mythology. Vincent Sellaer’s piece, Leda and the Swan and Her Children, is a depiction of when Zeus came to Leda in the form of a swan, causing Leda to bear Zeus’ children into eggs. This story is in no way related to the bible, the church, nor would they acknowledge this an accurate depiction of Leda and her children. The other piece, Abraham Janssens’, The Origin of the Cornucopia, would also fall into the realm of being a Mannerism painting due to that it also does not depict a story from the bible, but a legend about how the tradition of this presentation of Autumn harvest. Abraham shows four river nymphs moving slowly and majestically to place the harvest into the cornucopia.

Week 3: Italian Renassaince

• • When the Renaissance came into full swing, the study of anatomy and the body was at the forefront of the interest in artists, scientists and scholars in general. For artists, the study of anatomy allowed them to put elaborate detail in their at work, and present the ideal and the perfection of the human body. In Pollaiuolo’s engraving, The Battle of The Nudes, every human presented in the piece is given precise detail and muscle structure
    The study of the human body was steamed after the love and study of the body the Greeks and their perfection in their sculptures. In the presentation of the bodies in Pallaiuolo's engraving is thought to have been presented as a model of the human body for other artists of the time as apposed to be a presentation of a story. The piece does, however is thought to tell a story about an episode from the life of Hercules. According to an ancient Greek Myth, the Greek Hero Jason sowed a field with dragon's teeth, and armed men sprang up and started fighting each other.
    The battle depicted shows ten nude men fighting for what it seems like their life. Their bodies are tense, and every thing down to the looks on their faces have tension, showing that what ever battle they are fighting is a very deep and tragic one.
    I feel this piece is important to the Renaissance and to our time now because it shows every muscle in the human body tense and full of emotion. The amount of detail and precision Pollaiuolo puts into the work makes the bodies emanate the idea of body perfection, and allows the viewer to really understand the concept of perfection and take that knowledge into their own work.
    There is a part of me that doesn't like this piece because of the amount of tension. I feel that even the corn behind the men is in tension and I feel like it is unnecessary. I feel that the idea of human perfection and the story of the Greek Hero Jason could have been presented without the amount of tension in the background.
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Week 1: The Renaissance

When the Renaissance Art period surfaced, the ideal of bodily perfection and picture perfect paintings began to surface as the type of art people loved and wanted the most. Art of the Renaissance also began to depict more and more religious art then ever before. The Church of Rome began to take over Europe and wanted to stress the importance of themselves and of religion across the board. They began to commission paintings of themselves shown in a great standard, with markings and attributes to tell who they were and what they did. The Renaissance was named the period of “rebirth” due to the high volumes of paintings, sculptures, books and even buildings that were erected to promote the ideas and teachings of the church; and how heavily influenced the art was by the religion of the region.

I feel as students of art history, it is important to study The Renaissance and how it affected art after it. I feel that the art of The Renaissance is some of the most important art of our culture. (note, not THE most important…) I feel this way due to the amount of studying also occurred during the time period, and I think that if that study of the human body, both inside and out hadn’t occurred, we wouldn’t know now about how the body works or how to depict the body properly. I think that Michelangelo and da Vinci began paving the road for perfection in art and are some of the founding fathers of great art for us to learn about and how to do today.

I feel that our society likes to focus on art of this period because it was so important to The Church, and that people still heave a strong connection to the church, cannot find any better way to depict their images of angles, saints, or the stories of the bible. I also feel that people in the church like to remember the “happy, shiny, puppies and rainbows” version of the stories. Even in the paintings that are about sad or horrific events, the artist still shows the events in a… “Good light” for example, The Expulsion of Adam and Eve From Paradise by Masccio on Page 611, shows the story of Adam and Eve being tossed out of the garden, but the colors are still bright, and the sun shines. The only “down” part of the painting is the look on the faces of Adam and Eve.

Extra Post: Rose Windows

 

As the meaning of religion evolved, so did the décor of the churches and cathedrals. One of the things that started to make an appearance in churches was the rose window. If you were to ask somebody what they thought of when you said, “rose window,” most people would tell you the church of Notre Dame. Three rose windows help decorate the walls of Notre Dame, and the one most widely known of the three is the one sitting in the south façade. It was constructed in 1250, is almost 43 feet in diameter, and is about 62 feet tall including it’s bay. The circular floral stained glass window has eighty-four panes divided into four concentric circles. The stories of the glass are dedicated to the New Testament, and the window is dedicated to symbolism of the four apostles by being split into four and along with the multiples of four as well. Throughout the floral circle are the twelve apostles, saints and martyrs, and the wise virgins, along with various angels and different scenes from the Old Testament. On the outside of the circle, two corner pieces represent the descent into Hell on one side, and the resurrection of Christ on the other. The center medallion may have once shown God in majesty, it now shows the Cardinal de Noailles coat of arms, after he spent £ 80,000 to restore the rose window. All in all, the colored glass in the window of the south façade  represents Christ’s triumphant, his reigning over Heaven, and he is surrounded by all his witnesses on Earth.

The rose window can be viewed from both the inside of the building and the outside of the building. It is still up for debate what side is best to view the window, but according to Abbot Sugar, the stained glass’s beauty is meant to be fully enjoyed from the inside of the building. After commissioning the building of the abbey church of Saint-Denis in 1144, he said that the light that came though the stained glass was the enlightenment of God’s love and His word to be absorbed by the people inside the church. Even though stained glass had been around for about 100 years before his use of the colored windows, the way he combined the technology of rib vaulting and stained glass to create bigger areas for windows. (note: Saint-Denis did not have a Rose window, neither was Notre Dame the first to have one. Saint-Denis was among the first to have larger scale stained glass windows, and among the first to incorporate the oculus and colored glass; and helped pave the way to large scale, colored windows. The first rose window is suspected to be in 1200)

Sources:

http://www.notredamedeparis.fr/spip.php?article448

http://dragon_azure.tripod.com/UoA/Med-Arch-Rose-Window.html