Gothic Art in Italy
Key Ideas:
1. Gothic art in Italy forms a bridge between Medieval and Renaissance art.
2. The artist becomes an important historical personality whose life story can be traced and recorded.
3. Aspects of ancient sculpture are revitalized under the artistic leadership of the Pisani family.
4. The Sienese and Florentine schools of painting dominate trecento art.

Birth of Virgin

Florence Cathedral (dark interior of French Gothic are answered by a lighter interior)

Duccio, Maesta(richest and most complex altarpiece of its time)

Early Renaissance in Northern Europe: Fifteenth Century
Key Ideas:
1. An active and prosperous capitalist society inspired a cultural ferment in fifteenth-century Flanders and Holland.
2. Important secular works of fifteenth-century architecture are influenced by the Gothic church architecture.
3. The international Gothic style dominates Northern European painting in the early fifteenth century.
4. Flemish painting is characterized by symbolically rich layers of meaning applied to crowded compositions with high horizon lines.
5. Secular art becomes increasingly important.
6. The introduction of printmaking, the first mass-produced art form, radically transforms art history.
Summary:
Northern European art form from the fifteenth century is dominated by monumental altarpieces prominently erected in great cathedrals. Flemish artists delight in symbolically rich compositions that evoke a visually enticing experience along with a religiously sincere. Flemish artists emphasis on minute details does not minimize the total effect.

Early Renaissance in Italy: Fifteenth Century
Key ideas:
1. The revitalization of classical ideals in literature, history and philosophyhad its impact on the fine arts.
2. Renaissance courts were influenced by the spirit of humanism, which stressed thesecular alongside the religious.
3.Artists created realistic three-dimensional paintings based on the newly rationalized theories on linear perspective.
4. Italian Renaissance sculpture is marked by a greater understanding of human anatomy; there is a revival of large-scale nude works.
5. Architecture emphasizes open light spaces in a balanced and symmetrical environment.
Summary:
Bruneleschi's discovery of one-point perspective revolutionized Italian painting. At first, artists like Massaccio faithfully used the formula in their compositions, creating realistic three-dimensional spaces on their surfaces. Later, painterslike Castagno and Mantegna used perspectives as a tool to manipulate the viewer'simpression of a particular scene.

Filippo Brunelleschi, San Lorenzo

Holy Trinity, Masaccio
Andrea del Castagno, Last Supper

Andrea Mantegna Room of the Newlyweds

Andrea del Castagno, Last Supper

High Renaissance
Key Ideas:
1. The revitalization of the city of Rome under the patronage of Pope Julius II ledto one of the most creative outbursts in the history of art.
2. High Renaissance artists seek to emulate Roman grandeur by undertaking awe-inspiring artistic projects.
3. High Renaissance composition are marked by balance, symmetry, and ideal proportions. Triangular compositions are also favored.
4. Venetian painters stress sensuous forms with sophisticated color harmonies.
5. Portraits reveal the likenesses of the sitters as well as their character and personality.

Michelangelo, Saint Peter's

Giorgione, the Tempest

Michelangelo, Moses

Mannerism and Other Trends of Late Sixteenth-Century Italy
Key ideas:
1. Mannerist art is deliberately intellectual, asking the viewer to respond in a sophisticated way to the spatial challenges presented in a painting or a sculpture.
2. Mannerist painting and sculpture are characterized by complicated compositions, distorted figure styles, and complex allegorical interpretations.
3. Mannerist architecture often employs classical elements in a new and unusual waythat defies traditional formulas.
Summary:
Mannerist architects seek to combine conventional architecture element in a refinedand challenging interplay of forms. It is this ambiguity that gives Mannerism a fascination today.
The questioning of artistic values extends to the types of paintings as well. Stilllifes and genre paintings, long considered too low for sophisticated artists, make their first appearance.

Giacomo della Porta. Facade of Il Gesu, Rome, ñ . 15 7 5-84

Jacopo Tintoretto, the Last Supper

Giovanni da Bologna, Abduction of the Sabine Women

Later Renaissance in Northern Europe and Spain: Sixteenth Century
Key ideas:
1. The reformation sparked a series of iconoclasm throughout Northern Europe, destroying much greater art work and prohibiting new work from being created; nontheless, in most place in Northern Europe, the sixteenth century was a creative and dynamic period.
2. Artist, particularly sculptors, sought new ways to represent figures without appearing to create pagan idols.
3. Northern Europe art is powerfully influenced by the achievement of the Italian Renaissance although most Northern painters retained their own artistic traditions.
4. Albrecht Durer represents the combination of Northern Renaissance realism and interest in detail with Italian concern for size and monumentality.

Pierre Lescot, Louvre

Albrecht Durer, Adam and Eve (Assimilation of Italian Renaissance ideas into a Northern European context)

Hans Holbein, the French Ambassador

Baroque Art
Key Ideas:
1. The Counter-Reformation, which symbolized the Catholic resurgence, finds an artistic parallel in Baroque art of Italy, Flanders, Spain, and France.
2. Baroque art also flourishes in Protestant Holland, which becomes a counter-voiceto Catholic art.
3. Baroque painting is divided into two schools of thought: the classicists, inspired by the work of central Italian artists such as Raphael; and the naturalists, inspired by Venetian painters such as Titian.
4. Baroque artists experiment with different art forms, such as genre paintings, landscapes, and still lifes, and bring them artistically to the same level as traditional subjects.
5. Baroque architecture is associated with the majestic royal courts of Europe.
Summary:
Baroque has always symbolized the grand, the majestic, the colorful and the sumptuous in European art. Illusion is a key element of the Baroque aesthetic. Whether it be the floating of Saint Theresa on a cloud or the tromp I'oeil ceilings of Roman palaces, the Baroque teases our imagination by streching the limits of the space deep into the picture plane.
The Baroque is characterized by a sense of ceaseless movement. Building facades undulate, sculptures are seen in the round and portraits show sitters ready to speak or interact with the viewer. The Baroque achieves a splendor through an energetic interaction reminiscent of Helllenistic Greek art.

Gianlorenzo Bernini, Colonnade of Saint Peters

Caravaggio, Calling of Saint Matthew

Anthony van Dyck, Charles I Dismounted