home › Cooling system › School Encyclopedia. Venetian renaissance painting Venetian renaissance painting

School Encyclopedia. Venetian renaissance painting Venetian renaissance painting

The legacy of the Venetian school of painting is one of the brightest pages in the history of the Italian Renaissance. The "Pearl of the Adriatic" a quaintly picturesque city with canals and marble palaces, spread over 119 islands in the waters of the Gulf of Venice, was the capital of a powerful trading republic that controlled all trade between Europe and the countries of the East. This became the basis for the prosperity and political influence of Venice, which included part of Northern Italy, the Adriatic coast of the Balkan Peninsula, overseas territories. It was one of the leading centers of Italian culture, printing, and humanistic education.

She also gave the world such wonderful masters as Giovanni Bellini and Carpaccio, Giorgione and Titian, Veronese and Tintoretto. Their work enriched European art with such significant artistic discoveries that later artists from Rubens and Velazquez to Surikov constantly turned to Venetian Renaissance painting.

The Venetians extremely fully experienced the feeling of the joy of being, discovered the world around them in all its fullness of life, inexhaustible colorful wealth. They were characterized by a special taste for everything concretely unique, emotional richness of perception, admiration for the physical, material diversity of the world.

The most important discovery of the Venetians was the coloristic and pictorial principles developed by them. Among the others Italian artists there were many excellent colorists, endowed with a sense of the beauty of color, the harmonious harmony of colors. But the basis of the pictorial language was drawing and chiaroscuro, which clearly and completely modeled the form. Color was understood rather as the outer shell of the form, not without reason, applying colorful strokes, the artists fused them into a perfectly smooth, enamel surface. This style was also loved by Dutch artists, who were the first to master the technique of oil painting.

The Venetians, to a greater extent than the masters of other Italian schools, appreciated the possibilities of this technique and completely transformed it. For example, the relation Dutch artists a reverently contemplative beginning, a shade of religious piety, was inherent in the world; in each, the most ordinary object, they were looking for a glimpse of the highest beauty. For them, light became the means of transmitting this inner illumination. The Venetians, who perceived the world openly and in a major way, almost with pagan joie de vivre, saw in the technique of oil painting an opportunity to communicate living corporality to everything depicted. They discovered the richness of color, its tonal transitions, which can be achieved in the technique of oil painting and in the expressiveness of the very texture of the painting.

Paint becomes the basis of the pictorial language among the Venetians. They do not so much work out the forms graphically as they mold them with strokes, sometimes weightlessly transparent, sometimes dense and melting, penetrating with internal movement human figures, bends of folds of fabrics, sunset reflections on dark evening clouds.

Features of Venetian painting took shape over a long, almost one and a half century, path of development. The founder of the Renaissance school of painting in Venice was Jacopo Bellini, the first of the Venetians who turned to the achievements of the most advanced Florentine school at that time, the study of antiquity and the principles of linear perspective. The main part of his heritage consists of two albums of drawings with the development of compositions for complex multi-figured scenes on religious themes. In these drawings, intended for the artist's studio, the characteristic features of the Venetian school are already showing through. They are imbued with the spirit of gossip, interest not only in legendary event but also to the real life environment.

The successor of Jacopo's work was his eldest son Gentile Bellini, the largest master of historical painting in Venice of the 15th century. On his monumental canvases, Venice appears before us in all the splendor of its bizarrely picturesque appearance, at the moments of festivities and solemn ceremonies, with crowded magnificent processions and a motley crowd of spectators crowding on narrow embankments of canals and humpbacked bridges.

The historical compositions of Gentile Bellini had an undeniable influence on the work of his younger brother Vittore Carpaccio, who created several cycles of monumental paintings for the Venetian brotherhoods Scuol. The most remarkable of them “History of St. Ursula" and "A Scene from the Life of Saints Jerome, George and Typhon". Like Jacopo and Gentile Bellini, he loved to transfer the action of a religious legend and the atmosphere of contemporary life, unfolding a detailed narrative rich in many life details before the audience. But he saw everything with different eyes, the eyes of a poet who reveals the charm of such simple life motives as a scribe diligently writing from dictation, a peacefully dozing dog, a log deck of a pier, an elastically inflated sail sliding over the water. Everything that happens is, as it were, filled with Carpaccio's inner music, the melody of lines, the sliding of colorful spots, light and shadows, inspired by sincere and touching human feelings.

The poetic mood makes Carpaccio related to the greatest of the Venetian painters of the 15th century, Giovanni Bellini, the youngest son of Jacopo. But his artistic interests lay in a somewhat different area. The master was not fascinated by detailed narration, genre motifs, although he had a chance to work a lot in the genre of historical painting, beloved by the Venetians. These canvases, with the exception of one written by him together with his brother Gentile, have not come down to us. But all the charm and poetic depth of his talent were revealed in compositions of a different kind. They do not have an action, an unfolded event. These are monumental altars depicting a Madonna enthroned surrounded by saints (the so-called “Holy Interviews”), or small paintings in which, against the backdrop of a quiet, clear nature, we see the Madonna and Child immersed in thought or other characters of religious legends. In these laconic, simple compositions there is a happy fullness of life, lyrical concentration. The pictorial language of the artist is characterized by majestic generalization and harmonic order. Giovanni Bellini is far ahead of the masters of his generation, asserting new principles of artistic synthesis in Venetian art.

Having lived to a ripe old age, he led the artistic life of Venice for many years, holding the position of official painter. The great Venetians Giorgione and Titian came out of Bellini's workshop, whose names are associated with the most brilliant era in the history of the Venetian school.

Giorgione da Castelfranco lived short life. He died at the age of thirty-three during one of the frequent plagues of that time. His legacy is small in scope: some paintings by Giorgione, which remained unfinished, were completed by a younger comrade and assistant in the workshop, Titian. However, the few paintings by Giorgione were to be a revelation to contemporaries. This is the first artist in Italy, whose secular themes decisively prevailed over the religious, determined the whole system of creativity.

He created a new, deeply poetic image of the world, unusual for the Italian art of that time, with its inclination towards grandiose grandeur, monumentality, heroic intonations. In the paintings of Giorgione, we see an idyllic, beautiful and simple world, full of thoughtful silence.

Giovanni Bellini. "Portrait of Doge Leonardo Loredan".
Oil. About 1501.

The art of Giorgione was a real revolution in Venetian painting, had a huge impact on his contemporaries, including Titian, whose work the readers of the magazine already had the opportunity to get acquainted with. Recall that Titian is a central figure in the history of the Venetian school. Coming out of the workshop of Giovanni Bellini and collaborating with Giorgione in his youth, he inherited the best traditions of the older masters. But this is an artist of a different scale and creative temperament, striking in the versatility and comprehensive breadth of his genius. In terms of the grandiosity of the worldview, the heroic activity of the images of Titian can only be compared with Michelangelo.

Titian revealed the truly inexhaustible possibilities of color and paint. In his youth, he loved rich, enamel-clear colors, extracting powerful chords from their comparisons, and in his old age he developed the famous “late manner”, so new that it did not find understanding among most of his contemporaries. The surface of his late canvases close up is a fantastic chaos of randomly applied strokes. But at a distance, the color spots scattered over the surface merge, and before our eyes there are full of life human figures, buildings, landscapes as if in eternal development, full of drama world.

With the last, final period Venetian Renaissance the work of Veronese and Tintoretto is connected.

Paolo Veronese was one of those happy, sunny natures to whom life reveals itself in the most joyful and festive aspect. Lacking the depth of Giorgione and Titian, at the same time he was endowed with a heightened sense of beauty, the finest decorative flair and a true love for life. On huge canvases, shining with precious colors, solved in an exquisite silvery tonality, against the backdrop of magnificent architecture, we see a colorful, striking crowd of vital brightness - patricians and noble ladies in magnificent robes, soldiers and commoners, musicians, servants, dwarfs.

In this crowd, the heroes of religious legends are sometimes almost lost. Veronese even had to appear before the court of the Inquisition, who accused him of daring to portray in one of the compositions many characters that had nothing to do with religious themes.

The artist especially loves the theme of feasts (“Marriage in Cana”, “Feast in the House of Levi”), turning modest gospel meals into magnificent festive spectacles. The vitality of Veronese's images is such that Surikov called one of his paintings "nature pushed behind the frame." But this is nature, cleansed of every touch of everyday life, endowed with Renaissance significance, ennobled by the splendor of the artist's palette, the decorative beauty of rhythm. Unlike Titian, Veronese worked a lot in the field of monumental and decorative painting and was an outstanding Venetian decorator of the Renaissance.

The last great master of Venice of the 16th century, Jacopo Tintoretto, seems to be a complex and rebellious nature, a seeker of new paths in art, who acutely and painfully felt the dramatic conflicts of modern reality.

Tintoretto introduces a personal, and often subjective-arbitrary, beginning into its interpretation, subordinating human figures to some unknown forces that scatter and circle them. By accelerating the perspective contraction, he creates the illusion of a rapid run of space, choosing unusual points of view and intricately changing the outlines of the figures. Simple, everyday scenes are transformed by the invasion of surreal fantastic light. At the same time, the world retains its grandeur, full of echoes of great human dramas, clashes of passions and characters.

The greatest creative feat of Tintoretto was the creation of an extensive painting cycle in Scuola di San Rocco, consisting of more than twenty large wall panels and many plafond compositions, on which the artist worked for almost a quarter of a century, from 1564 to 1587. According to the inexhaustible richness of artistic fantasy, according to the breadth of the world, which contains both the universal tragedy (“Golgotha”), and the miracle that transforms the poor shepherd’s hut (“The Nativity of Christ”), and the mysterious grandeur of nature (“Mary Magdalene in the Desert” ), and lofty feats of the human spirit (“Christ before Pilate”), this cycle is unparalleled in the art of Italy. Like a majestic and tragic symphony, it completes, together with other works of Tintoretto, the history of the Venetian Renaissance school of painting.

VENICE SCHOOL OF PAINTING

The legacy of the Venetian school of painting is one of the brightest pages in historyItalian Renaissance . The "Pearl of the Adriatic" - a quaintly picturesque city with canals and marble palaces, spread over 119 islands in the waters of the Gulf of Venice - was the capital of a powerful trading republic that controlled all trade between Europe and the countries of the East. This became the basis for the prosperity and political influence of Venice, which included part of Northern Italy, the Adriatic coast of the Balkan Peninsula, overseas territories. It was one of the leading centers of Italian culture, printing, and humanistic education.

She gave the world such wonderful masters as JoeBellini and Carpaccio, Giorgione and Titian, Veronese and Tintoretto. Their work enriched European art with such significant artistic discoveries that later artists from Rubens and Velazquez to Surikov constantly turned to Venetian Renaissance painting.

Artists were attracted by the bizarrely picturesque view of Venice, the festivity and colorfulness of its life, the characteristic appearance of the townspeople. Even paintings on religious themes were often interpreted by them as historical.compositions or monumental genre scenes. Painting in Venice, more often than in other Italian schools, it had a secular character. The vast halls of the magnificent residence of the Venetian rulers - the Doge's Palace were decoratedportraits and large historical compositions. Monumental narrative cycles were also written for the Venetian Scuols - religious and philanthropic brotherhoods that united the laity. Finally, in Venice, private collecting was especially widespread, and the owners of the collections - rich and educated patricians - often commissioned paintings forstories taken fromantiquity or the works of Italian poets. It is not surprising that Venice is associated with the highest flowering for Italy of such purely secular genres as portraiture, historical and mythological painting,scenery , rural scene. The most important discovery of the Venetians was the coloristic and pictorial principles developed by them. Among other Italian artists there were many excellent colorists endowed with a sense of beauty.colors , harmonic Consent of Colors. But the basis of the pictorial language remaineddrawing And chiaroscuro , clearly and completely modeledform . Color was understood rather as the outer shell of form; not without reason, applying colorful strokes, the artists fused them into a perfectly smooth, enamel surface. Thismanner loved by Dutch artists, who were the first to masteroil painting technique .

The Venetians are more thanmasters other Italian schools, appreciated the possibilities of this technique and completely transformed it. For example, the attitude of the Dutch artists to the world was characterized by a reverently contemplative beginning, a shade of religious piety; in every, the most ordinary object, they were looking for a reflection of the highest beauty. For them, light became the means of transmitting this inner illumination. The Venetians, who perceived the world openly and in a major way, almost with pagan joie de vivre, saw in the technique of oil painting an opportunity to communicate living corporality to everything depicted. They discovered the richness of color, its tonal transitions, which can be achieved in the technique of oil painting and in the expressiveness of theinvoices letters.

Paint becomes the basis of the pictorial language among the Venetians. They do not so much work out the forms graphically as they mold them with strokes - sometimes weightlessly transparent, sometimes dense and melting, penetrating with internal movement human figures, bends of fabric folds, sunset reflections on dark evening clouds.

Features of Venetian painting took shape over a long, almost one and a half century, path of development. The founder of the Renaissance school of painting in Venice was Jacopo Bellini, the first of the Venetians who turned to the achievements of the most advanced Florentine school at that time, the study of antiquity and the principles of linear perspective. The main part of his heritage consists of two albums of drawings with the development of compositions for complex multi-figured scenes on religious themes. In these drawings, intended for the artist's studio, the characteristic features of the Venetian school are already showing through. They are imbued with the spirit of gossip, interest not only in the legendary event, but also in the real life environment.

The successor of Jacopo's work was his eldest son Gentile Bellini, the largest in VeniceXV century master of historical painting. On his monumental canvases, Venice appears before us in all the splendor of its bizarrely picturesque appearance, at the moments of festivities and solemn ceremonies, withcrowded magnificent processions and a motley crowd of spectators crowding along narrow canal embankments and humpbacked bridges.

Historical compositionsGentile Bellini had an undeniable influence on the work of his younger brother Vittore Carpaccio, who created several cycles of monumental paintings for the Venetian brotherhoods - Scuol. The most remarkable of them are "The Story of Saint Ursula" and "A Scene from the Life of Saints Hieronima, George and Typhon. Like Jacopo and Gentile Bellini, he liked to transfer the action of a religious legend to the environment of contemporary life, unfolding a detailed narrative rich in many life details before the audience. But everything is seen by him with different eyes - the eyes of a poet who reveals the charm of such simple lifemotives , like a scribe diligently writing from dictation, a peacefully dozing dog, a log flooring of the pier, an elastically inflated sail sliding over the water. Everything that happens is, as it were, filled with Carpaccio's inner music, melodylines , slip colorfulspots , light and shadows, inspired by sincere and touching human feelings.

The poetic mood makes Carpaccio related to the greatest of the Venetian painters of the 15th century - Giovanni Bellini, the youngest son of Jacopo. But his artistic interests lay in a somewhat different area. The master was not fascinated by detailed narration, genre motifs, although he had a chance to work a lot in the genre of historical painting, beloved by the Venetians. These canvases, with the exception of one written by him together with his brother Gentile, have not come down to us. But all the charm and poetic depth of his talent were revealed in compositions of a different kind. They do not have an action, an unfolded event. These are monumental altars depicting a Madonna enthroned surrounded by saints (the so-called “Holy Interviews”), or small paintings in which, against the backdrop of a quiet, clear nature, we see the Madonna and Child immersed in thought or other characters of religious legends. In these laconic, simple compositions there is a happy fullness of life, lyrical concentration. The pictorial language of the artist is characterized by majestic generalization and harmonic order. Giovanni Bellini is far ahead of the masters of his generation, asserting in Venetian artve new principles of artistic synthesis.

Having lived to a ripe old age, for many years he headed the artisticlife of Venice, holding the position of official painter. The great Venetians Giorgione and Titian came out of Bellini's workshop, whose names are associated with the most brilliantera in the history of the Venetian school.

Giorgione da Castelfranco lived a short life. He died at the age of thirty-three during one of the frequent plagues of that time. His legacy is small in scope: some paintings by Giorgione, which remained unfinished, were completed by a younger comrade and m workshop assistant Titian. However, the few paintings by Giorgione were to be a revelation to contemporaries. This is the first artist in Italy, whose secular themes decisively prevailed over the religious, determined the whole system of creativity.

The art of Giorgione was a real revolution in Venetian painting, had a huge impact on contemporaries, including Titian. Titian is the centralfigure in the history of Viennacyan school. Departed fromworkshop of Giovanni Bellini andcollaborated withGiorgione, he inherited the beamold traditions of creativityour masters. But it's an artistdifferent scale and creativetemperament, striking versatility and comprehensive breadth of his genius. In terms of the grandiosity of the worldview, the heroic activity of the images of Titian can only be compared with Michelangelo.
Titian revealed the truly inexhaustible possibilities of color and paint. In his youth, he loved rich, enamel-clear paints, extracting from their compositionpowerful chords, and in his old age he developed the famous "late manner", so new that it did not find understanding among most of his contemporaries. The surface of his late canvases close up is a fantastic chaos of randomly applied strokes. But at a distance, the color spots scattered over the surface merge, and human figures full of life, buildings, landscapes appear before our eyes - as if in eternal development, full of drama.

The last, final period of the Venetian Renaissance is associated with the work of Veronese and Tintoretto.

Paolo Veronese was one of those happy, sunny natures to whom life reveals itself in the most joyful and festive aspect. Lacking the depth of Giorgione and Titian, at the same time he was endowed with a heightened sense of beauty, the finest decorative flair and a true love for life. On huge canvases, shining with precious colors, solved in an exquisite silvery tonality, against the backdrop of magnificent architecture, we see a colorful crowd striking with vital brightness - patricians and noble ladies in magnificent robes, soldiers and commoners, musicians, servants, dwarfs.

In this crowd, the heroes of religious legends are sometimes almost lost. Veronese even had to appear before the court of the Inquisition, who accused him of daring to depict in one of his compositions manycharacters that have nothing to do with religion.

The artist especially loves the theme of feasts (“Marriage at Cana”, “Feast in the House of Levin”), turning modest gospel meals into magnificent festive spectacles. The vitality of Veronese's images is such that Surikov called one of his paintings “nature pushed behind the frame.” But this is nature, cleansed of every touch of everyday life, endowed with Renaissance significance, by sculpting the artist's palette, by the decorative beauty of rhythm. Unlike Titian, Veronese worked a lot in the field of monumental and decorative painting and was an outstanding Venetian decorator of the Renaissance.

The greatest creative feat of Tintoretto was the creation of an extensive painting cycle in Scuola di San Rocco, consisting of more than twenty large wall panels and many plafond compositions, on which the artist worked for almost a quarter of a century - from 1564 to 1587. According to the inexhaustible richness of artistic fantasy, according to the breadth of the world, which contains both the universal tragedy (“Golgotha”), and the miracle that transforms the poor shepherd’s hut (“The Nativity of Christ”), and the mysterious grandeur of nature (“Mary Magdalene in the Desert” ), and lofty feats of the human spirit (“Christ before Pilate”), this cycle is unparalleled in the art of Italy. Like a majestic and tragic symphony, it completes, together with other works of Tintoretto, the history of the Venetian Renaissance school of painting.

I. SMIRNOV

VENETIAN SCHOOL in painting, one of the main art schools in Italy, established in Venice in the 14th-18th centuries. The Venetian school during its heyday is characterized by perfect mastery of the expressive possibilities of oil painting, and special attention to the problems of color. Venetian painting of the 14th century is distinguished by decorative ornamentation, festive sonority of colors, interweaving of Gothic and Byzantine traditions (Lorenzo and Paolo Veneziano). In the middle of the 15th century, Renaissance tendencies appeared in the painting of the Venetian school, reinforced by the influence of the Florentine and Netherlandish (through the mediation of Antonello da Messina) schools. In the works of the masters of the early Venetian Renaissance (the middle and the end of the 15th century; Antonio, Bartolomeo and Alvise Vivarini, Jacopo and Gentile Bellini, Vittore Carpaccio, Carlo Crivelli, etc.), the secular beginning is growing, the desire for a realistic transfer of space and volume is intensifying; religious stories and stories of miracles are interpreted as colorful images of everyday life in Venice. The work of Giovanni Bellini prepared the transition to the art of the High Renaissance. The heyday of the Venetian school in the 1st half of the 16th century is associated with the names of his students - Giorgione and Titian. Naive narrative gave way to attempts to create a generalized picture of the world in which man exists in natural harmony with the poetically inspired life of nature. In the later works of Titian, deep dramatic conflicts are revealed, the painting style acquires exceptional emotional expressiveness. In the works of the masters of the 2nd half of the 16th century (P. Veronese and J. Tintoretto), the virtuosity of the transfer of the colorful richness of the world, the spectacular side by side with a dramatic sense of the infinity of nature and the dynamics of large human masses.

In the 17th century, the Venetian school experienced a period of decline. In the works of D. Fetti, B. Strozzi and I. Liss, the techniques of baroque painting, realistic observations and the influence of caravaggism coexist with the traditional interest for coloristic searches for Venetian artists. The new flowering of the Venetian school of the 18th century is associated with the development of monumental and decorative painting, which combined cheerful festivity with spatial dynamics and an exquisite lightness of color (G. B. Tiepolo). Genre painting is developing, subtly conveying the poetic atmosphere of everyday life in Venice (G. B. Piazzetta and P. Longi), architectural landscape (veduta), documentary recreating the image of Venice (A. Canaletto, B. Bellotto). The chamber landscapes of F. Guardi are distinguished by lyrical intimacy. The keen interest in the depiction of the light-air environment, characteristic of Venetian artists, anticipates the quest of the painters of the 19th century in the field of plein air. At various times, the Venetian school influenced the art of H. Burgkmair, A. Dürer, El Greco and other European masters.

Lit.: Pallucchini R. La pittura veneziana del cinquecento. Novara, 1944. Vol. 1-2; idem. La pittura veneta del quattrocento. Bologna, 1956; idem. La pittura veneziana del settecento. Venice; Rome, 1960; Smirnova I. A. Titian and the Venetian portrait of the 16th century. M., 1964; Kolpinsky Yu. D. Art of Venice. 16th century M., 1970; Levey M. Painting in eighteenth - century Venice. 2nd ed. Oxf., 1980; Pignatti T. Venetian School: Album. M., 1983; Art of Venice and Venice in art. M., 1988; Fedotova E. D. Venetian painting of the Enlightenment. M., 1998.

Send your good work in the knowledge base is simple. Use the form below

Students, graduate students, young scientists who use the knowledge base in their studies and work will be very grateful to you.

Hosted at http://www.allbest.ru/

FEDERAL STATE BUDGET EDUCATIONAL INSTITUTION

HIGHER PROFESSIONAL EDUCATION

"RYAZAN STATE UNIVERSITY NAMED AFTER S.A. YESENIN"

Faculty of Russian Philology and National Culture

Direction of preparation "Theology"

ControlJob

In the discipline "World Artistic Culture"

On the topic: "Venetian Renaissance"

Completed by a 2nd year student

part-time education:

Kostyukovich V.G.

Checked by: Shakhova I.V.

Ryazan 2015

Plan

Introduction
Conclusion
Bibliography

Introduction

The term "Renaissance" (in French "Renaissance", in Italian "Rinascimento") was first introduced by the painter, architect and art historian of the 16th century. George Vasari, for the need to determine the historical era, which was due to the early stage of development of bourgeois relations in Western Europe.

The Renaissance culture originated in Italy, and this was connected, first of all, with the appearance of bourgeois relations in feudal society, and as a result, the emergence of a new worldview. The growth of cities and the development of crafts, the rise of world trade, the great geographical discoveries of the late 15th and early 16th centuries changed the life of medieval Europe. Urban culture created new people and formed a new attitude to life. A return to the forgotten achievements of ancient culture began. All changes manifested themselves to the greatest extent in art. At this time, the Italian society began to take an active interest in the culture of Ancient Greece and Rome, and the manuscripts of ancient writers were being searched for. Various spheres of society's life - art, philosophy, literature, education, science - are becoming more and more independent.

The chronological framework of the Italian Renaissance covers the time from the second half of the 13th to the first half of the 16th century. Within this period, the Renaissance is divided into several stages: the second half of the XIII-XIV centuries. - Proto-Renaissance (pre-revival) and Trecento; 15th century - early renaissance(Quattrocento); late 15th-first third of the 16th century - High Renaissance (the term Cinquecento is used less often in science). Ilyina s. 98 This paper will examine the features of the Renaissance in Venice.

The development of the Italian Renaissance culture is very diverse, which is due to the different levels of economic and political development of different cities in Italy, the different degrees of power and strength of the bourgeoisie of these cities, their varying degrees of connection with feudal traditions. Leading art schools in the art of the Italian Renaissance in the 14th century. were Sienese and Florentine, in the 15th century. - Florentine, Umbrian, Padua, Venetian, in the 16th century. - Roman and Venetian.

The main difference between the Renaissance and the previous cultural era was the humanistic view of man and the world around him, the formation of the scientific foundations of humanitarian knowledge, the emergence of experimental natural science, the peculiarities of the artistic language of the new art, and finally, the assertion of the rights of secular culture to independent development. All this was the basis for the subsequent development of European culture in the 17th - 18th centuries. It was the Renaissance that carried out a wide and diverse synthesis of two cultural worlds - pagan and Christian, which had a profound impact on the culture of modern times.

The figures of the Renaissance created, in contrast to the feudal worldview, the scholastic, a new, secular, rationalistic worldview. The center of attention in the Renaissance was a man, so the worldview of the bearers of this culture is denoted by the term "humanistic" (from Latin humanitas - humanity). For the Italian humanists, the focus of man on himself was the main thing. His fate is largely in his own hands, he is endowed by God with free will.

The Renaissance is characterized by the cult of beauty, especially the beauty of man. Italian painting depicts beautiful, perfect people. Artists and sculptors strove in their work for naturalness, for a realistic recreation of the world and man. Man in the Renaissance again becomes the main theme of art, and the human body is considered the most perfect form in nature.

The theme of the Renaissance, and in particular the Renaissance in Venice, is relevant because the art of the Renaissance developed on the basis of a synthesis of all the best that was created in the medieval art of previous centuries and the art of the ancient world. The art of the Renaissance was a turning point in the history of European art, putting man in the first place, with his joys and sorrows, mind and will. It developed a new artistic and architectural language, which retains its significance to this day. Therefore, the study of the Renaissance is an important link for understanding the entire further development of the artistic culture of Europe.

Features of the Venetian Renaissance

By the abundance of talented craftsmen and scope artistic creativity Italy was ahead in the 15th century. all other European countries. The art of Venice represents a special variant of the development of the artistic culture of the Renaissance in relation to all other centers of Renaissance art in Italy.

Since the 13th century Venice was a colonial power that owned territories on the coasts of Italy, Greece, and the islands of the Aegean Sea. She traded with Byzantium, Syria, Egypt, India. Thanks to intensive trade, huge wealth flowed to it. Venice was a commercial and oligarchic republic. For many centuries, Venice lived as a fabulously rich city, and its inhabitants could not be surprised by the abundance of gold, silver, precious stones, fabrics and other treasures, but the garden at the palace was perceived by them as the ultimate limit of wealth, since there was very little greenery in the city. People had to abandon it in favor of increasing living space, expanding the city, which was already squeezed by water from everywhere. This is probably why the Venetians became very receptive to beauty, and each artistic style reached a fairly high level in their decorative possibilities. The fall of Constantinople under the onslaught of the Turks greatly shook Venice's trading position, and yet the enormous monetary wealth accumulated by the Venetian merchants allowed it to maintain its independence and Renaissance way of life for a significant part of the 16th century.

Chronologically, the art of the Renaissance took shape in Venice somewhat later than in most other major centers of Italy of this era, but it also lasted longer than in other centers of Italy. It took shape, in particular, later than in Florence and in general in Tuscany. The revival in Venice, as was said, had its own characteristics, she was little interested in scientific research and excavations of ancient antiquities. The Venetian Renaissance had other origins. The formation of the principles of the artistic culture of the Renaissance in the fine arts of Venice began only in the 15th century. This was by no means determined by the economic backwardness of Venice, on the contrary, Venice, along with Florence, Pisa, Genoa, Milan, was one of the most economically developed centers of Italy at that time. It is precisely the early transformation of Venice into a great trading power that is responsible for this delay, since a large trade, and correspondingly greater communication, with the eastern countries influenced its culture. The culture of Venice was closely connected with the magnificent grandeur and solemn luxury of the imperial Byzantine culture, and partly with the refined decorative culture Arab world. As far back as the 14th century, the artistic culture of Venice was a kind of interweaving of magnificent and festive forms of monumental Byzantine art, enlivened by the influence of the colorful ornamentation of the East and a peculiarly elegant rethinking of the decorative elements of mature Gothic art. Of course, this will also be reflected in the Venetian artistic culture of the Renaissance. For the artists of Venice, the problems of color come to the fore, the materiality of the image is achieved by gradations of color.

The Venetian Renaissance was rich in great painters and sculptors. The largest Venetian masters of the High and late Renaissance are Giorgione (1477-1510), Titian (1477-1576), Veronese (1528-1588), Tintoretto (1518-1594) “Culturology p. 193 .

Major representatives of the Venetian Renaissance

George Barbarelli da Castelfranco, nicknamed Giorgione (1477-1510). A typical artist of the High Renaissance. Giorgione became the first most famous painter of the High Renaissance in Venice. In his work, the secular principle finally wins, which is manifested in the dominance of plots on mythological and literary themes. Landscape, nature and the beautiful human body became the subject of art for him.

Giorgione played the same role for Venetian painting that Leonardo da Vinci played for the painting of central Italy. Leonardo is close to Giorgione with a sense of harmony, perfection of proportions, exquisite linear rhythm, soft light painting, spirituality and psychological expressiveness of his images, and at the same time, Giorgione’s rationalism, who undoubtedly had a direct influence on him when he was passing from Milan in 1500. in Venice. Ilyina s. 138 But still, compared with the clear rationality of Leonardo's art, Giorgione's painting is permeated with deep lyricism and contemplation. Giorgione is more emotional than the great Milanese master, he is interested not so much in linear as in aerial perspective. Color plays a huge role in his compositions. Sound paints, laid in transparent layers, soften the outlines. The artist skillfully uses the properties of oil painting. The variety of shades and transitional tones helps him to achieve the unity of volume, light, color and space. The landscape, which occupies a prominent place in his work, contributes to the disclosure of the poetry and harmony of his perfect images.

Among his early works, Judith (circa 1502) attracts attention. The heroine, taken from the Old Testament apocryphal literature, from the Book of Judith, is depicted as a young beautiful woman against the backdrop of hushed nature. The artist depicted Judith at the moment of her triumph in all the strength of her beauty and restrained dignity. The soft black-and-white modeling of the face and hands is somewhat reminiscent of Leonard's "sfumato". Ilyina s. 139 A beautiful woman against the backdrop of beautiful nature, however, introduces a strange disturbing note into this seemingly harmonious composition of the sword in the heroine's hand and the severed head of the enemy, trampled by her. Another of the works of Giorgione should be noted "Thunderstorm" (1506) and "Country Concert" (1508-1510), where you can also see the beautiful nature, and of course the painting "Sleeping Venus" (circa 1508-1510). Unfortunately, Giorgione did not have time to complete work on "Sleeping Venus" and, according to contemporaries, the landscape background in the picture was painted by Titian.

Titian Vecellio (1477? - 1576) - the greatest artist of the Venetian Renaissance. Although the date of his birth has not been established with certainty, most likely he was a younger contemporary of Giorgione and his student, who surpassed the teacher, according to researchers. For many years he determined the development of the Venetian school of painting. Titian's fidelity to humanistic principles, faith in the mind and capabilities of man, powerful colorism give his works a great attractive force. In his work, the originality of the realism of the Venetian school of painting is finally revealed. Unlike Giorgione, who died early, Titian lived a long happy life full of inspired creative work. Titian retained the poetic perception of the female naked body, taken out of Giorgione's workshop, often literally reproduced on the canvas almost the recognizable silhouette of the "Sleeping Venus", as in "Venus of Urbino" (circa 1538), but not in the bosom of nature, but in the interior of a contemporary painter Houses.

Throughout his life, Titian was engaged in portraiture, acting as an innovator in this area. His brush belongs to an extensive gallery of portrait images of kings, popes, nobles. He deepens the characteristics of the personalities depicted by him, noticing the originality of posture, movements, facial expressions, gestures, manners of wearing a suit. His portraits sometimes develop into paintings that reveal psychological conflicts and relationships between people. In his early portrait "Young Man with a Glove" (1515-1520), the image of a young man acquires individual specific features, and at the same time, he expresses a typical image of a Renaissance man, with his determination, energy and sense of independence.

If in early portraits he, as was customary, glorified the beauty, strength, dignity, integrity of the nature of his models, then later works are distinguished by the complexity and inconsistency of images. In the paintings created by Titian in last years creativity, a genuine tragedy sounds, in the work of Titian the theme of the conflict of man with the outside world is born. Towards the end of Titian's life, his work undergoes significant changes. He still writes a lot on ancient subjects, but more and more often he turns to Christian themes. His later works are dominated by themes of martyrdom and suffering, irreconcilable discord with life, and stoic courage. The image of a person in them still has a powerful force, but loses the features of internal harmonic balance. The composition is simplified, based on a combination of one or more figures with an architectural or landscape background, immersed in twilight. The technique of writing also changes, refusing bright, jubilant colors, he turns to cloudy, steel, olive complex shades, subordinating everything to a common golden tone.

In his later, even the most tragic-sounding works, Titian did not lose faith in the humanistic ideal. Man for him to the end remained the highest value, which can be seen in the "Self-Portrait" (circa 1560) of the artist, who carried the bright ideals of humanism through his whole life.

At the end of the 16th century in Venice, the features of the impending new era in art are already evident. This can be seen in the work of two major artists, Paolo Veronese and Jacopo Tintoretto.

Paolo Cagliari, nicknamed Veronese (born in Verona, 1528-1588) was last singer festive Venice of the 16th century. He started with the execution of paintings for the Verona palazzos and images for the Verona churches, but nevertheless fame came to him when, in 1553, he began to work on murals for the Venetian Doge's Palace. From that moment and forever his life is connected with Venice. He makes paintings, but more often he paints large oil paintings on canvas for the Venetian patricians, altarpieces for Venetian churches on their own order or on the official order of the Venetian Republic. All he painted were huge decorative paintings of festive Venice, where a smartly dressed Venetian crowd is depicted against the backdrop of a Venetian architectural landscape. This can also be seen in paintings on evangelical themes, such as "The Feast at Simon the Pharisee" (1570) or "The Feast in the House of Levi" (1573).

Jacopo Robusti, known in art as Tintoretto (1518-1594) ("tintoretto" - a dyer: the artist's father was a silk dyer), unlike Veronese, had a tragic attitude, which manifested itself in his work. A student of Titian, he highly appreciated the coloristic skill of his teacher, but sought to combine it with the development of Michelangelo's drawing. Tintoretto stayed in Titian's workshop for a very short time, however, according to contemporaries, the motto hung on the doors of his workshop: "Michelangelo's drawing, Titian's coloring." Ile s. 146 Most of Tintoretto's works are mainly written on the plots of mystical miracles, in his works he often depicted mass scenes with dramatic intense action, deep space, figures in complex angles. His compositions are distinguished by exceptional dynamism, and in the late period also by strong contrasts of light and shadow. In the first painting that brought him fame, The Miracle of St. Mark (1548), he presents the figure of the saint in a complex perspective, and people in a state of such violent movement that would be impossible in the classical art of the High Renaissance. Tintoretto was also the author of large decorative works, a giant cycle of paintings occupying two floors of the premises of the Scuolo di San Rocco, on which he worked from 1565 to 1587. In the last period of his work, Tintoretto works for the Doge's Palace (composition "Paradise", after 1588), where earlier, before him, the well-known Paolo Veronese managed to work.

Speaking of the Venetian Renaissance, one cannot help but recall the greatest architect, born and working in Vicenza near Venice - Andrea Palladio (1508-1580), using the example of his simple and elegant buildings, he demonstrated how the achievements of antiquity and the High Renaissance can be creatively processed and used . He succeeded in making the classical language of architecture accessible and universal.

The two most important areas of his activity were the construction of city houses (palazzo) and country residences (villas). In 1545, Palladio won the competition for the right to rebuild the Basilica in Vicenza. The ability to emphasize the harmony of the building, skillfully place it against the backdrop of picturesque Venetian landscapes, was useful to him in his future work. This can be seen in the example of the villas he built Malcontenta (1558), Barbaro-Volpi in Maser (1560-1570), Cornaro (1566). Villa "Rotonda" (or Capra) in Vicenza (1551-1567) is rightfully considered the most perfect building of the architect. It is a square building with Ionic six-columned porticos on each façade. All four porticos lead to a round central hall covered with a low dome under a tiled roof. In the design of the facades of villas and palazzos, Palladio usually used a large order, as can be seen in the example of the Palazzo Chiericati in Vicenza (1550). Huge columns rise on ordinary stylobates, as in the Palazzo Valmarana (begun in 1566) and in the unfinished Loggia del Capitanio (1571), or very high, completely absorbing the first floor, as in the Palazzo Thiene (1556). At the end of his career, Palladio turned to church architecture. He owns the church of San Pietro in Castello (1558), as well as San Giorgio Maggiore (1565-1580) and Il Redentore (1577-1592) in Venice.

Palladio gained great fame not only as an architect, but also as the author of the treatise "Four Books on Architecture", which was translated into many languages. His work had a huge impact on the development of the classicist direction in European architecture of the 17th-18th centuries, as well as on the architects of Russia in the 18th century. The followers of the master formed a whole trend in European architecture, called "Palladianism".

Conclusion

The Renaissance was marked in the life of mankind by a colossal rise in art and science. The renaissance that arose on the basis of humanism, which proclaimed man the highest value of life, had its main reflection in art. The art of the Renaissance laid the foundations of the European culture of the New Age, radically changed all the main types of art. Creatively revised principles of the ancient order system were established in architecture, and new types of public buildings were formed. Painting was enriched with a linear and aerial perspective, knowledge of the anatomy and proportions of the human body. Earthly content penetrated the traditional religious themes of works of art. Increased interest in ancient mythology, history, everyday scenes, landscapes, portraits. Along with the monumental wall paintings that adorn architectural structures, a picture appeared, oil painting arose. In the first place in art came the creative individuality of the artist, as a rule, a universally gifted person. And all these trends are very clearly and clearly visible in the art of the Venetian Renaissance. At the same time, Venice, in its creative life, was significantly different from the rest of Italy.

If in Central Italy during the Renaissance the art of Ancient Greece and Rome had a huge influence, then in Venice the influence of Byzantine art and the art of the Arab world was mixed with this. It was the Venetian artists who brought sonorous bright colors into their works, were unsurpassed colorists, the most famous of which is Titian. They paid great attention to the nature surrounding man, the landscape. An innovator in this area was Giorgione with his famous painting "Thunderstorm". He depicts man as part of nature, paying great attention to the landscape. A huge contribution to architecture was made by Andrea Palladio, who made the classical language of architecture public and universal. His work had far-reaching consequences under the name of "Palladianism", which manifested itself in European architecture of the 17th - 18th centuries.

Subsequently, the decline of the Venetian Republic was reflected in the work of its artists, their images became less sublime and heroic, more earthly and tragic, which is clearly seen in the work of the great Titian. Despite this, Venice remained faithful to the traditions of the Renaissance longer than others.

Bibliography

1. Bragin L.M.,Varyash ABOUT.AND.,Volodarsky IN.M. History of culture of the countries of Western Europe in the Renaissance. - M.: Higher school, 1999. - 479 p.

2. Gukovsky M.A. Italian Renaissance. - L.: Leningrad University Press, 1990. - 624 p.

3. Ilyin T.IN. Art history. Western European art. - M.: Higher School, 2000. - 368 p.

4. Culturology: Textbook / Ed. editorial A.A.Radugina. - M.: Center, 2001. - 304 p.

Hosted on Allbest.ru

...

Similar Documents

The discovery of personality, awareness of its dignity and the value of its capabilities at the heart of the culture of the Italian Renaissance. The main reasons for the emergence of the Renaissance culture as a classic focus of the Renaissance. Timeline of the Italian Renaissance.

term paper, added 10/09/2014

general characteristics Renaissance and its chronological framework. Acquaintance with the main features of the revival culture. The study of the foundations of such art styles as mannerism, baroque, rococo. The development of the architecture of the Western European Renaissance.

test, added 05/17/2014

Approximate chronological framework of the Northern Renaissance - XV-XV centuries. The tragedy of Renaissance humanism in the works of W. Shakespeare, F. Rabelais, M. De Cervantes. The Reformation movement and its influence on the development of culture. Features of the ethics of Protestantism.

abstract, added 04/16/2015

Chronological framework of the Renaissance, its distinctive features. The secular nature of culture and its interest in man and his activities. Stages of development of the Renaissance, features of its manifestation in Russia. The revival of painting, science and worldview.

presentation, added 10/24/2015

General characteristics of the Renaissance, its distinctive features. The main periods and man of the Renaissance. The development of the knowledge system, the philosophy of the Renaissance. Characteristics of the masterpieces of artistic culture of the period of the highest flowering of Renaissance art.

creative work, added 05/17/2010

The development of world culture. The Renaissance as a sociocultural revolution in Europe in the 13th-16th centuries. Humanism and rationalism in the culture of the Renaissance. Periodization and national character of the Renaissance. Culture, art, the greatest masters of the Renaissance.

test, added 08/07/2010

The people of the Renaissance renounced the previous era, presenting themselves as a bright flash of light in the midst of eternal darkness. Renaissance literature, its representatives and works. Venetian School of Painting. Founders of early Renaissance painting.

abstract, added 01/22/2010

The basic concept of the term "Northern Renaissance" and essential differences from the Italian Renaissance. The most prominent representatives and examples of the art of the Northern Renaissance. Danube school and its main directions. Description of Dutch painting.

term paper, added 11/23/2008

Socio-economic background, spiritual origins and characteristic features of the culture of the Renaissance. The development of Italian culture during the periods of the Proto-Renaissance, Early, High and Late Renaissance. Features of the Renaissance period in the Slavic states.

abstract, added 05/09/2011

The problem of the Renaissance in modern cultural studies. The main features of the Renaissance. The nature of the culture of the Renaissance. Humanism of the Renaissance. Freethinking and secular individualism. Science of the Renaissance. The doctrine of society and the state.

Y. Kolpinsky

Venetian Renaissance art is an integral and inseparable part of Italian art in general. The close relationship with the rest of the centers of the artistic culture of the Renaissance in Italy, the commonality of historical and cultural destinies - all this makes Venetian art one of the manifestations of the art of the Renaissance in Italy, just as it is impossible to imagine the High Renaissance in Italy in all its diversity of creative manifestations without the work of Giorgione and Titian. The art of the late Renaissance in Italy cannot be understood at all without studying the art of the late Titian, the work of Veronese and Tintoretto.

However, the originality of the contribution of the Venetian school to the art of the Italian Renaissance is not only somewhat different from that of any other school in Italy. The art of Venice represents a special version of the development of the principles of the Renaissance in relation to all art schools in Italy.

The art of the Renaissance took shape in Venice later than in most other centers, in particular than in Florence. The formation of the principles of the artistic culture of the Renaissance in the fine arts in Venice began only in the 15th century. This was determined by no means by the economic backwardness of Venice. On the contrary, Venice, along with Florence, Pisa, Genoa, Milan, was one of the most economically developed centers of Italy. Paradoxical as it may seem, it was precisely the early transformation of Venice into a great commercial, and, moreover, predominantly commercial, rather than a manufacturing power, which began in the 12th century. and especially accelerated in the course of the crusades, is to blame for this delay.

The culture of Venice, that window of Italy and Central Europe, "cut through" to the eastern countries, was closely connected with the magnificent grandeur and solemn luxury of the imperial Byzantine culture and partly with the subtly decorative culture of the Arab world. Already in the 12th century, that is, in the era of the dominance of the Romanesque style in Europe, a wealthy trading republic, creating art that affirmed its wealth and power, widely turned to the experience of Byzantium - the richest, most developed Christian medieval power at that time. In essence, the artistic culture of Venice as early as the 14th century. It was a kind of interweaving of magnificently festive forms of monumental Byzantine art, enlivened by the influence of the colorful ornamentation of the East and peculiarly elegant, decoratively rethought elements of mature Gothic art. In fact, proto-Renaissance tendencies made themselves felt under these conditions very weakly and sporadically.

Only in the 15th century there is an inevitable and natural process of the transition of Venetian art to the secular positions of the artistic culture of the Renaissance. His originality was manifested mainly in the desire for increased festivity of color and composition, in a greater interest in the landscape background, in the landscape environment surrounding a person.

In the second half of the 15th century there is a formation of the Renaissance school in Venice as a significant and original phenomenon, which occupied an important place in the art of the Italian Quattrocento.

Venice in the middle of the 15th century reaches the highest level of his power and wealth. The colonial possessions and trading posts of the “Queen of the Adriatic” covered not only the entire eastern coast of the Adriatic Sea, but also spread widely throughout the eastern Mediterranean. In Cyprus, Rhodes, Crete, the banner of the Lion of St. Mark flutters. Many of the noble patrician families that make up the ruling elite of the Venetian oligarchy act as rulers across the sea big cities or entire regions. The Venetian fleet firmly controls almost the entire transit trade between East and Western Europe.

However, the defeat of the Byzantine Empire by the Turks, which ended with the capture of Constantinople, shook the trading positions of Venice. Yet in no way can one speak of the decline of Venice in the second half of the 15th century. The general collapse of the Venetian eastern trade came much later. The Venetian merchants, who at that time had been partially released from trade, invested huge amounts of money in the development of crafts and manufactories in Venice, and partly in the development of rational agriculture in their possessions located in the areas of the peninsula adjacent to the lagoon (the so-called terra farm). Moreover, the rich and still full of vitality republic in 1509-1516 managed to defend its independence in the fight against the hostile coalition of a number of European powers, combining the force of arms with flexible diplomacy. The general upsurge, due to the successful outcome of the difficult struggle that temporarily rallied all sections of Venetian society, caused the growth of the features of heroic optimism and monumental festivity that are so characteristic of the art of the High Renaissance in Venice, starting with Titian. The fact that Venice retained its independence and, to a large extent, its wealth, determined the duration of the heyday of the art of the High Renaissance in the Venetian Republic. The turn to the late Renaissance was outlined in Venice only around 1540.

The period of formation of the High Renaissance falls, as in the rest of Italy, at the end of the 15th century. It was during these years that the narrative art of Gentile Bellini and Carpaccio began to resist the art of Giovanni Bellini, one of the most remarkable masters of the Italian Renaissance, whose work marks the transition from the early to the High Renaissance.

Giovanni Bellini (c. 1430-1516) not only develops and improves the achievements accumulated by his immediate predecessors, but also raises Venetian art to a higher level. In his paintings, a connection of mood is born, created by the landscape, with the state of mind of the heroes of the composition, which is one of the remarkable achievements of modern painting in general. At the same time, in the art of Giovanni Bellini, and this is the most important thing, the significance of the moral world of man is revealed with extraordinary force. True, the drawing in his early works is sometimes somewhat harsh, the combinations of colors are almost sharp. But the feeling of the inner significance of the spiritual state of a person, the revelation of the beauty of his inner experiences in the work of this master already in this period of great impressive power.

Giovanni Bellini frees himself early from the narrative verbosity of his immediate predecessors and contemporaries. The plot in his compositions rarely receives a detailed dramatic development, but all the more through the emotional sound of color, through the rhythmic expressiveness of the drawing, and, finally, through the restrained, but full of inner strength mimicry, the greatness of the spiritual world of man is revealed.

The early works of Giovanni Bellini can be brought closer to the art of Mantegna (for example, The Crucifixion; Venice, Correr Museum). However, already in the altarpiece in Pesaro, the clear linear “Mantenevian” perspective is enriched by a more subtly conveyed aerial perspective than that of the Padua master. The main difference between the young Venetian and his older friend and relative (Mantegna was married to Bellini's sister) is expressed not so much in the individual features of the letter, but in the more lyrical and poetic spirit of his work as a whole.

Particularly instructive in this regard is his so-called "Madonna with a Greek inscription" (1470s; Milan, Brera). This image of a mournfully pensive Mary, vaguely reminiscent of an icon, gently hugging a sad baby, speaks of another tradition from which the master repels - the tradition of medieval painting. However, the abstract spirituality of the linear rhythms and color chords of the icon is decisively overcome here. Restrainedly strict in their expressiveness, the color ratios are concrete. The colors are true, the solid modeling of the volumes of the modeled form is very real. The subtly clear sadness of the rhythms of the silhouette is inextricably linked with the restrained vital expressiveness of the movements of the figures themselves, with the lively human expression of Mary's face. Not abstract spiritualism, but a poetically inspired, deep human feeling is expressed in this simple and modest-looking composition.

In the future, Bellini, deepening and enriching the spiritual expressiveness of his artistic language, simultaneously overcomes the features of the rigidity and harshness of the early manner. Since the end of the 1470s. he, relying on the experience of Antonello da Messina (who worked in Venice from the mid-1470s), introduces colored shadows into his compositions, saturating them with light and air (“Madonna with Saints”, 1476), giving the whole composition a wide rhythmic breath.

In the 1580s Bellini enters the time of his creative maturity. His "Lamentation of Christ" (Milan, Brera) strikes with a combination of almost merciless life truthfulness (mortal cold blue of the body of Christ, his half-pendulous jaw, traces of torture) with the genuine tragic grandeur of the images of mourning heroes. The general cold tone of the gloomy radiance of the colors of the robes of Mary and John is fanned by the evening grayish-blue light. The tragic despair of the look of Mary, who clung to her son, and the mournful anger of John, not reconciled with the death of a teacher, rhythms that are severely clear in their straightforward expressiveness, the sadness of a desert sunset, so consonant with the general emotional structure of the picture, are composed into a kind of mournful requiem. It is no coincidence that at the bottom of the board on which the picture is written, an unknown contemporary inscribed the following words in Latin: “If the contemplation of these mourning eyes will tear your tears, then the creation of Giovanni Bellini is capable of crying.”

During the 1580s Giovanni Bellini takes a decisive step forward, and the master becomes one of the founders of the art of the High Renaissance. The originality of the art of the mature Giovanni Bellini comes out clearly when comparing his "Transfiguration" (1580s; Naples) with his early "Transfiguration" (Museum Correr). In the "Transfiguration" of the Correr Museum, the rigidly traced figures of Christ and the prophets are located on a small rock, reminiscent of both a large pedestal and an iconic "bream". Somewhat angular in their movements (in which the unity of vital characteristic and poetic elation of gesture has not yet been achieved) the figures are stereoscopic. Light and cold-clear, almost flashy colors of volumetrically modeled figures are surrounded by a cold-transparent atmosphere. The figures themselves, despite the bold use of colored shadows, are still distinguished by a certain static and uniform uniformity of illumination.

The figures of the Neapolitan "Transfiguration" are located on a gently undulating plateau characteristic of the northern Italian foothills, whose surface covered with meadows and small groves spreads over the rocky-vertical walls of the cliff located in the foreground. The viewer perceives the whole scene as if he were on a path running along the edge of a cliff, fenced with a light railing of hastily tied, unpeeled felled trees. The immediate reality of the perception of the landscape is extraordinary, especially since the entire foreground, and the distance, and the middle plan are bathed in that slightly damp light-air environment that would be so characteristic of Venetian painting of the 16th century. At the same time, the restrained solemnity of the movements of the majestic figures of Christ, the prophets and prostrate apostles, the free clarity of their rhythmic juxtapositions, the natural dominance of human figures over nature, the calm expanse of landscape distances create that mighty breath, that clear grandeur of the image, which make us foresee in this work the first features of a new stage in the development of the Renaissance.

The calm solemnity of the style of the mature Bellini is embodied in the monumental balance of the composition “Madonna of St. Job” (1580s; Venice Academy). Bellini places Mary, seated on a high throne, against the background of the conch of the apse, which creates a solemn architectural background, consonant with the calm grandeur of human images. The upcoming ones, despite their relative abundance (six saints and three angels praising Mary), do not clutter up the compositions. The figures are harmoniously distributed in easily readable groups, which are clearly dominated by a more solemn and spiritually rich image of Mary with the baby.

Colored shadows, soft shining light, calm sonority of color create a feeling of a general mood, subordinate numerous details to the general rhythmic, coloristic and compositional-figurative unity of the whole.

In the "Madonna with Saints" from the Church of San Zaccaria in Venice (1505), written almost simultaneously with the "Madonna of Castelfranco" by Giorgione, the old master created a work remarkable for the classical balance of the composition, the masterful arrangement of the few majestic heroes immersed in deep thought. Perhaps the image of the Madonna herself does not reach the same significance as in the Madonna of St. Job. But the gentle poetry of the youth playing the viol at Mary's feet, the stern gravity and at the same time the softness of the facial expression of the gray-bearded old man immersed in reading, are really beautiful and full of high ethical significance. The restrained depth of the transfer of feelings, the perfect balance between the generalized sublimity and the concrete vitality of the image, the noble harmony of color found their expression in his Berlin Lamentation.

Fig. pp. 248-249

Calmness, clear spirituality are characteristic of all the best works of Bellini's mature period. Such are his numerous Madonnas: for example, the Madonna with Trees (1490s; Venice Academy) or the Madonna in the Meadows (c. 1590; London, National Gallery), striking with the plein air luminosity of painting. The landscape not only faithfully conveys the nature of the terra farm - wide plains, soft hills, distant blue mountains, but reveals in terms of gentle elegy the poetry of the labors and days of rural life: a shepherd resting by his flocks, a heron descending near a swamp, a woman stopping at the well crane. In this cool spring landscape, so consonant with the quiet tenderness of Mary, reverently Bent over the baby sleeping on her knees, that special unity, the inner consonance of the breath of the life of nature and the spiritual life of man, which is so characteristic of the Venetian painting of the High Renaissance, has already been achieved. It is impossible not to notice in passing that in the interpretation of the image of the Madonna herself, which bears a somewhat genre character, Bellini's interest in the pictorial experience of the masters of the northern Renaissance is noticeable.

A significant, although not leading place in the work of the late Bellini is occupied by those compositions usually associated with some poetic work or religious legend, which the Venetians were fond of.

This is inspired by a French poem of the 14th century. the so-called "Lake Madonna" (Uffizi). Against the backdrop of calmly majestic and somewhat severe mountains rising above the motionless deep grayish-blue waters of the lake, the figures of saints located on the marble open terrace act in silvery soft lighting. In the center of the terrace is an orange tree in a tub, with several naked babies playing around it. To the left of them, leaning against the marble of the balustrade, stands the venerable old man, the apostle Peter, deeply thoughtful. Next to him, raising his sword, stands a black-bearded man dressed in a crimson-red mantle, apparently the Apostle Paul. What are they thinking? Why and where are the elder Jerome, dark bronze from sunburn, and the thoughtful naked Sebastian slowly walking? Who is this slender Venetian with ashy hair, wrapped in a black scarf? Why did this solemnly enthroned woman, perhaps Mary, fold her hands in prayer? Everything seems mysteriously obscure, although it is more than likely that the allegorical plot meaning of the composition was clear enough to a contemporary of the master, a refined connoisseur of poetry and a connoisseur of the language of symbols. And yet the main aesthetic charm of the picture is not in the ingenious symbolic story, not in the elegance of the rebus decoding, but in the poetic transformation of feelings, the subtle spirituality of the whole, the elegantly expressive juxtaposition of motives that vary the same theme - the noble beauty of the human image. If Bellini's Madonna of the Lake to some extent anticipates the intellectual refinement of Giorgione's poetry, then his Feast of the Gods (1514; Washington, National Gallery), which is distinguished by a wonderful cheerful pagan conception of the world, rather anticipates the heroic optimism of "poetry" and mythological compositions. young Titian.

Giovanni Bellini also addressed the portrait. His relatively few portraits, as it were, prepare the flowering of this genre in Venetian painting of the 16th century. Such is his portrait of a boy, an elegant dreamy youth. In this portrait, that image of a beautiful person, full of spiritual nobility and natural poetry, is already being born, which will be fully revealed in the works of Giorgione and the young Titian. "Boy" Bellini - This is the childhood of the young "Brocardo" Giorgione.

Bellini’s late work is characterized by a wonderful portrait of the Doge (before 1507), which is distinguished by sonorously shining color, excellent modeling of volumes, accurate and expressive transmission of all the individual originality of the character of this old man, full of courageous energy and intense intellectual life.

In general, the art of Giovanni Bellini - one of the greatest masters of the Italian Renaissance - refutes the once widespread opinion about the supposedly predominantly decorative and purely "painterly" nature of the Venetian school. Indeed, in the further development of the Venetian school, the narrative and outwardly dramatic aspects of the plot will not occupy a leading place for some time. But the problems of the richness of the inner world of a person, the ethical significance of a physically beautiful and spiritually rich human personality, conveyed more emotionally, sensually concretely than in the art of Tuscany, will always occupy an important place in the creative activity of the masters of the Venetian school.

One of the masters of the turn of the 15th and 16th centuries, whose work was formed under the decisive influence of Giovanni Bellini, was Giambattista Cima da Conegliano (c. 1459-1517/18). In Venice he worked between 1492-1516. Cima owns large altar compositions in which, following Bellini, he skillfully combined figures with an architectural frame, often placing them in an arched opening ("John the Baptist with four saints" in the church of Santa Maria del Orto in Venice, 1490s, " Unbelief of Thomas"; Venice, Academy, "St. Peter the Martyr", 1504; Milan, Brera). These compositions are distinguished by a free, spacious placement of figures, which allows the artist to widely show the landscape background unfolding behind them. For landscape motifs, Cima usually used the landscapes of his native Conegliano, with castles on high hills, to which steep winding roads lead, with isolated trees and a light blue sky with light clouds. Not reaching the artistic height of Giovanni Bellini, Cima, however, like him, combined in his best works a clear drawing, plastic completeness in the interpretation of figures with rich color, slightly touched by a single golden tone. Cima was also the author of the lyrical images of Madonnas characteristic of the Venetians, and in his remarkable Introduction to the Temple (Dresden, Picture Gallery) he gave an example of a lyric-narrative interpretation of the theme with a subtle outline of individual everyday motifs.

The next stage after the art of Giovanni Bellini was the work of Giorgione, the first master of the Venetian school, wholly owned by the High Renaissance. George Barbarelli of Castelfranco (1477/78-1510), nicknamed Giorgione, was a junior contemporary and student of Giovanni Bellini. Giorgione, like Leonardo da Vinci, reveals the refined harmony of a spiritually rich and physically perfect person. Just like Leonardo, Giorgione's work is distinguished by deep intellectualism and, it would seem, crystalline rationality. But, unlike Leonardo, whose deep lyricism of art is very hidden and, as it were, subordinated to the pathos of rational intellectualism, the lyrical beginning, in its clear agreement with the rational beginning, in Giorgione makes itself felt with extraordinary force. At the same time, nature, the natural environment in the art of Giorgione begins to play an increasingly important role.

If we still cannot say that Giorgione depicts a single air environment that connects the figures and objects of the landscape into a single plein-air whole, then we, in any case, have the right to assert that the figurative emotional atmosphere in which both the characters and nature live in Giorgione is the atmosphere is already optically common both for the background and for the characters in the picture.

Few works of both Giorgione himself and his circle have survived to our time. A number of attributions are controversial. However, it should be noted that the first complete exhibition of works by Giorgione and Giorgionescos, held in Venice in 1958, made it possible not only to make a number of clarifications in the circle of the master’s works, but also to attribute to Giorgione a number of previously controversial works, helped to more fully and clearly present the character his work as a whole.

Relatively early works by Giorgione, completed before 1505, include his Adoration of the Shepherds in the Washington Museum and Adoration of the Magi in the National Gallery in London. In The Adoration of the Magi (London), with the well-known fragmentation of the drawing and the insurmountable rigidity of the color, the master’s interest in conveying the inner spiritual world of the characters is already felt.

The initial period of creativity Giorgione completes his wonderful composition "Madonna da Castelfranco" (c. 1505; Castelfranco, Cathedral). In his early works and the first works of the mature period, Giorgione is directly connected with that monumental heroizing line, which, along with the genre-narrative line, passed through all the art of the Quattrocento and on the achievements of which the masters of the generalizing monumental style of the High Renaissance relied in the first place. So, in the "Madonna of Castelfranco" the figures are arranged according to the traditional compositional scheme adopted for this theme by a number of masters of the Northern Italian Renaissance. Mary sits on a high plinth; to the right and left of her, St. Francis and the local saint of the city of Castelfranco Liberale stand before the viewer. Each figure, occupying a certain place in a strictly built and monumental, clearly readable composition, is nevertheless closed in itself. The composition as a whole is somewhat solemnly motionless. II, at the same time, the relaxed arrangement of the figures in a spacious composition, the soft spirituality of their quiet movements, the poetic image of Mary herself create in the picture that atmosphere of a somewhat mysterious pensive dreaminess that is so characteristic of the art of a mature Giorgione, who avoids the embodiment of sharp dramatic collisions.

From 1505, the period of the artist's creative maturity began, soon interrupted by his fatal illness. During this short five years, his main masterpieces were created: "Judith", "Thunderstorm", "Sleeping Venus", "Concert" and most of the few portraits. It is in these works that the mastery of the specific pictorial and figuratively expressive possibilities of oil painting, characteristic of the great masters of the Venetian school, is revealed. Indeed, a characteristic feature of the Venetian school is the predominant development of oil painting and the weak development of fresco painting.

In the transition from the medieval system to the Renaissance realistic painting, the Venetians, of course, almost completely abandoned mosaics, the increased brilliant and decorative color of which could no longer fully meet the new artistic tasks. True, the increased light radiance of the iridescent shimmering mosaic painting, although transformed, indirectly, but influenced the Renaissance painting of Venice, which always gravitated towards sonorous clarity and radiant richness of color. But the mosaic technique itself, with rare exceptions, should have become a thing of the past. The further development of monumental painting had to go either in the form of fresco, wall painting, or on the basis of the development of tempera and oil painting.

The fresco in the humid Venetian climate very early revealed its instability. Thus, the frescoes of the German Compound (1508), executed by Giorgione with the participation of the young Titian, were almost completely destroyed. Only a few half-faded fragments, spoiled by dampness, have survived, among them the figure of a naked woman, full of almost Praxitele charm, made by Giorgione. Therefore, the place of wall painting in the proper sense of the word was taken by a wall panel on canvas, designed for a specific room and performed using the technique of oil painting.

Oil painting received a particularly wide and rich development in Venice, not only because it was the most convenient painting technique for replacing frescoes, but also because the desire to convey the image of a person in close connection with his natural environment, interest in the realistic embodiment of tonal and the coloristic richness of the visible world could be revealed with particular fullness and flexibility precisely in the technique of oil painting. In this regard, tempera painting on boards for easel compositions, precious with its large color strength, clearly shining sonority, but more decorative in nature, inevitably had to give way to oil, which more flexibly conveys the light-color and spatial shades of the environment, more gently and sonorously sculpting the shape of the human body. . For Giorgione, who worked relatively little in the field of large monumental compositions, these possibilities, inherent in oil painting, were especially valuable.

One of the most mysterious in its plot sense of the works of Giorgione of this period is The Thunderstorm (Venice Academy).

It is difficult for us to say on what specific plot "Thunderstorm" is written.

But no matter how vague the external plot meaning for us, which, apparently, neither the master himself, nor the refined connoisseurs and connoisseurs of his art of that time, did not attach decisive importance, we clearly feel the artist’s desire through a kind of contrasting juxtaposition of images to reproduce a certain special state of mind. , with all the versatility and complexity of sensations, characterized by the integrity of the general mood. Perhaps this one of the first works of a mature master is still excessively complicated and outwardly confusing compared to his later works. And yet, all the characteristic features of the mature style of Giorgione in it quite clearly assert themselves.

The figures are already located in the landscape environment itself, although still within the foreground. The diversity of nature's life is shown amazingly subtly: flashing lightning from heavy clouds; the ash-silver walls of buildings in a distant city; a bridge spanning a river; waters, sometimes deep and motionless, sometimes flowing; winding road; sometimes slenderly fragile, sometimes lush trees and bushes, and closer to foreground- fragments of columns. Into this strange landscape, fantastic in its combinations, and so truthful in details and general mood, a mysterious figure of a naked woman with a scarf thrown over her shoulders, feeding a child, and a young shepherd are inscribed. All these heterogeneous elements form a peculiar, somewhat mysterious whole. The softness of the chords, the muffled sonority of the colors, as if enveloped in the semi-twilight air characteristic of pre-storm lighting, create a certain pictorial unity, within which rich relationships and gradations of tones develop. The orange-red robe of the young man, his shimmering greenish-white shirt, the gentle bluish tone of the woman’s white cape, the bronze oliveness of the greenery of the trees, now dark green in deep pools, now the river water shimmering in the rapids, the heavy lead-blue tone of the clouds - everything is shrouded , united at the same time by a very vital and fabulously mysterious light.

It is difficult for us to explain in words why these figures, so opposite, are here somehow incomprehensibly united by a sudden echo of distant thunder and a flashing snake of lightning, illuminating with a ghostly light nature, warily hushed in anticipation. "Thunderstorm" deeply poetically conveys the restrained excitement of the human soul, awakened from its dreams by the echoes of distant thunder.

Fig. pp. 256-257

This feeling of the mysterious complexity of the inner spiritual world of a person, hidden behind the apparent clear transparent beauty of his noble external appearance, finds expression in the famous "Judith" (before 1504; Leningrad, the Hermitage). "Judith" is formally a composition on a biblical theme. Moreover, unlike the paintings of many Quattrocentists, it is a composition on a theme, and not its illustration. It is characteristic that the master depicts not some culminating moment from the point of view of the development of the event, as the Quattrocento masters usually did (Judith strikes the drunken Holofernes with the sword or carries his severed head with the maid).

Against the backdrop of a calm pre-sunset clear landscape under the canopy of an oak, slender Judith stands thoughtfully leaning on the balustrade. The smooth tenderness of her figure is set off in contrast by the massive trunk of a mighty tree. Softly scarlet clothes are permeated with a restlessly broken rhythm of folds, as if by a distant echo of a passing whirlwind. In her hand she holds a large double-edged sword rested with a sharp end on the ground, the cold shine and straightness of which contrastly emphasizes the flexibility of a half-naked leg trampling Holofernes's head. An imperceptible half-smile glides across Judith's face. This composition, it would seem, conveys all the charm of the image of a young woman, coldly beautiful and clear, which is echoed, like a kind of musical accompaniment, by the soft clarity of peaceful nature. At the same time, the cold cutting edge of the sword, the unexpected cruelty of the motif - a tender naked foot trampling on a dead head - brings a feeling of some kind of vague anxiety and anxiety into this seemingly harmonious, almost idyllic in mood picture.

On the whole, of course, the clear and calm purity of the dreamy mood remains the dominant motive. However, the very bliss of the image and the mysterious cruelty of the motive of the sword and the trampled head, the almost rebus complexity of this dual mood leave the modern viewer in some confusion. But Giorgione's contemporaries, apparently, were less struck by the cruelty of the contrast (Renaissance humanism was never overly sensitive), rather than attracted by that subtle transmission of the echoes of distant storms and dramatic conflicts, against which the acquisition of refined harmony, the happy state of the dreamily dreaming beautiful human soul.

It is typical for Giorgione that in the image of a person he is interested not so much in the unique strength and brightness of an individually expressed character, but in a certain subtly complex and at the same time harmoniously integral ideal of a perfect person, or, more precisely, the ideal of that spiritual state in which a person resides. Therefore, in his compositions, that portrait specificity of characters is almost absent, which, with some exceptions (for example, Michelangelo), is present in the monumental compositions of most masters of the Italian Renaissance. Moreover, Giorgione's compositions themselves can only be called monumental to a certain extent. As a rule, they are small in size. They are not addressed to large crowds of people. The refined muse of Giorgione - This is the art that most directly expresses the aesthetic and moral world of the humanistic elite of Venetian society. These are paintings designed for long-term calm contemplation by an art connoisseur with a subtle and complexly developed inner spiritual world. This is the specific charm of the master, but also his certain limitations.

In literature, there is often an attempt to reduce the meaning of Giorgione's art to the expression of the ideals of only this small humanistically enlightened patrician elite of Venice of that time. However, this is not entirely true, or rather, not only so. The objective content of Giorgione's art is immeasurably broader and more universal than the narrow social stratum with which his work is directly connected. The feeling of the refined nobility of the human soul, the striving for the ideal perfection of the beautiful image of a person living in harmony with the environment, with the surrounding world, also had a great general progressive significance for the development of culture.

As mentioned, interest in portrait sharpness is not characteristic of Giorgione's work. This does not mean at all that his characters, like the images of the classical ancient art, devoid of any specific originality. This is wrong. His magi in the early Adoration of the Magi and the philosophers in The Three Philosophers (c. 1508) differ from each other not only in age, but also in their personal appearance. Nevertheless, philosophers, with all the individual differences in images, are primarily perceived not so much as unique, bright, portrait-characterized individuals, or even more so as an image of three ages (a young man, a mature husband and an old man), but as the embodiment of various sides, various facets of the human spirit.

A kind of synthesis of the ideal and the living specific person are the portraits of Giorgione. One of the most characteristic is his remarkable portrait by Antonio Brocardo (c. 1508-1510; Budapest, Museum). In it, of course, the individual portrait features of a noble young man are accurately and clearly conveyed, but they are clearly softened, subordinated to the image of a perfect person.

The unconstrainedly free movement of the young man’s hand, the energy felt in the body half-hidden under loose-wide robes, the noble beauty of the pale swarthy face, the head bowed on a strong and slender neck, the beauty of the contour of the elastically outlined mouth, the thoughtful dreaminess of the gaze looking far and away from the viewer - all this creates an image full of noble power, captured by a deep, clear-calm thought of a person. The soft curve of the bay with still waters, the silent mountainous shore with solemnly calm buildings form a landscape background, which, as always with Giorgione, does not unisonly repeat the rhythm and mood of the main figure, but, as it were, indirectly consonant with this mood.

The softness of the cut-off sculpting of the face and hands is somewhat reminiscent of Leonardo's sfumato. Leonardo and Giorgione simultaneously solved the problem of combining the plastically clear architectonics of the forms of the human body with their softened modeling, which makes it possible to convey the richness of its plastic and chiaroscuro shades - so to speak, the very “breathing” of the human body. If in Leonardo it is rather a gradation of light and dark, the finest shading of the form, then in Giorgione sfumato has a special character - it is, as it were, a micro-modeling of the volumes of the human body with that wide stream of soft light that floods the entire space of the paintings. Therefore, Giorgione's sfumato also conveys that interaction of color and light, which is so characteristic of Venetian painting of the 16th century. If his so-called portrait of Laura (c. 1505-1506; Vienna) is somewhat prosaic, then his other female images are, in essence, the embodiment of ideal beauty.

Giorgione's portraits begin a remarkable line of development of the Venetian, in particular Titian, portrait of the High Renaissance. The features of the Giorgione portrait will be further developed by Titian, who, however, unlike Giorgione, has a much sharper and stronger sense of the individual uniqueness of the depicted human character, a more dynamic perception of the world.

Giorgione's work ends with two works - his "Sleeping Venus" (c. 1508-1510; Dresden) and the Louvre "Concert". These paintings remained unfinished, and the landscape background in them was completed by Giorgione's younger friend and student, the great Titian. "Sleeping Venus", in addition, has lost some of its pictorial qualities due to a number of damages and unsuccessful restorations. But be that as it may, it was in this work that the ideal of the unity of the physical and spiritual beauty of man was revealed with great humanistic fullness and almost ancient clarity.

Immersed in a calm slumber, naked Venus is depicted against the backdrop of a rural landscape, the calm gentle rhythm of the hills is in such harmony with her image. The cloudy atmosphere softens all contours and at the same time preserves the plastic expressiveness of forms.

Like other creations of the High Renaissance, George's Venus is closed in its perfect beauty and, as it were, alienated both from the viewer and from the music of the surrounding nature, consonant with its beauty. It is no coincidence that she is immersed in clear dreams of a quiet sleep. The right hand thrown behind the head creates a single rhythmic curve that embraces the body and closes all forms into a single smooth contour.

A serenely light forehead, calmly arched eyebrows, gently lowered eyelids and a beautiful strict mouth create an image of transparent purity indescribable in words. Everything is full of that crystal transparency, which is achievable only when a clear, unclouded spirit lives in a perfect body.

"Country Concert" (c. 1508 -1510; Louvre) depicts a group of two young men in magnificent clothes and two naked women against the backdrop of a calmly solemn landscape. The rounded crowns of trees, the calmly slow movement of moist clouds surprisingly harmonize with the free wide rhythms of the clothes and movements of young men, with the luxurious beauty of naked women. The lacquer darkened with time gave the picture a warm, almost hot golden color. In fact, her painting was originally characterized by a balanced overall tone. It was achieved by an accurate and subtle harmonic juxtaposition of restrainedly cold and moderately warm tones. It was precisely this subtle and complex, acquired through accurately captured contrasts, the soft neutrality of the general tone that not only created the unity characteristic of Giorgione between the complex differentiation of shades and the clarity of the coloristic whole, but also somewhat softened that joyfully sensual hymn to the magnificent beauty and enjoyment of life, which is embodied in this picture. .

To a greater extent than other works by Giorgione, the "Country Concert" seems to prepare the appearance of Titian. At the same time, the significance of this late work by Giorgione is not only in its, so to speak, preparatory role, but in the fact that it once again reveals the original charm of this artist’s work, which no one has repeated in the future. The sensual joy of being in Titian sounds like a bright and upbeat excited hymn to human happiness, its natural right to enjoyment. In Giorgione, the sensual joy of the motive is softened by dreamy contemplation, subordinated to a clear, enlightenedly balanced harmony of a holistic view of life.

Therefore, the coloring of this whole composition as a whole is neutral, therefore the movements of beautiful pensive women are so calmly restrained, therefore the colors of the luxurious robes of the two young men sound muffled, therefore both of them are not so much turned to contemplating the beauty of their girlfriends as immersed in the quiet world of music: they just fell silent the gentle sound of the flute, which the beauty took away from her lips; the chords of the lute strings sound gently in the hands of a young man; from afar, from under the clumps of trees, the dull sounds of a bagpipe are barely heard, on which a shepherd grazing his sheep plays. The second woman, leaning against a marble well, listens to the quiet murmur of a jet running from a transparent glass vessel. This atmosphere of soaring music, immersion in the world of its melodies give a special noble charm to this vision of a clarified and poetic sensually beautiful joy of being.

The work of Titian, like Leonardo, Raphael, Michelangelo, marks the pinnacle of the art of the High Renaissance. The works of Titian forever entered the golden fund of the artistic heritage of mankind. Realistic persuasiveness of images, humanistic faith in the happiness and beauty of a person, wide, flexible and obedient to the master's plan of painting are the characteristic features of his work.

Tiziano Vecellio of Cadore was born, according to traditional data, in 1477, died in 1576 from the plague. According to recent research, the date of birth is attributed by various researchers to 1485-1490.

Titian, like Michelangelo, lived a long life; recent decades his works take place in the atmosphere of the late Renaissance, in the conditions of preparation in the depths of European society for the next stage of its historical development.

Italy, which during the late Renaissance remained aloof from the main path of further development of capitalist relations, turned out to be historically unable to create a single national state, fell under the rule of foreign powers, and became the main stronghold of feudal Catholic reaction. The forces of progress in Italy continued to exist and made themselves felt in the field of culture (Campanella, Giordano Bruno), but their social base was too weak. Therefore, the consistent approval of new progressive ideas in art, the creation of a new artistic system of realism met with particular difficulties in most areas of Italy, with the exception of Venice, which retained its freedom and partly its well-being. At the same time, the high traditions of realistic craftsmanship, the breadth of the humanistic ideals of the one and a half century development of the Renaissance determined the aesthetic perfection of this art. Under these conditions, the work of Titian of the late period is remarkable in that it provides an example of progressive realistic art, based on the processing and development of the main achievements of the High Renaissance and at the same time preparing the transition of art to the next stage of its historical development.

The freedom of Venice from the power of the pope and from the domination of foreign interventionists facilitated the solution of the tasks facing Titian. The social crisis in Venice came later than in other regions of Italy and took on different forms. II if one should not exaggerate the “freedoms” of the Venetian oligarchic republic, then nevertheless the preservation of the secular character of culture, the preservation for the time being of a certain share of economic well-being had a positive effect on the development of art, although on the whole the general growth and intensification of reaction made themselves felt in Venice.

The work of Titian until the 1540s completely connected with the artistic ideals of the High Renaissance. In the 1540-1570s, when Venice enters a period of crisis, Titian, from the standpoint of the advanced ideas of the Renaissance, displays with severe courage and sincerity the new social position of man, the new social conditions for the development of Italy. Titian resolutely protests against everything ugly and hostile to the dignity of man, against everything that the time of reaction that has come in Italy brings, hindering and delaying the further social progress of the Italian people. True, Titian did not set himself the direct task of a detailed and direct reflection and critical assessment of the social conditions of life of his time. This qualitatively new stage in the history of realism came much later and received its real development only in the art of the 19th century.

We can distinguish two main stages in the work of Titian: Titian - the master of the High Renaissance (and in the first stage, the early, "Georgionev period" - up to 1515/16 should be distinguished) and Titian - starting from about the 1540s - the master late Renaissance. In his idea of the harmonic beauty and perfection of man, Titian of the first period largely continues the traditions of his great predecessor and older contemporary, Giorgione.

In his work, the artist develops and deepens the peculiar pictorial problems characteristic of both Giorgione and the entire Venetian school. It is characterized by a gradual transition from the soft modeling of forms and the soft, restrained, cold radiance of Giorgione's colors to the powerful, light-filled coloristic symphonies of the period of creative maturity, that is, starting from 1515-1516. During these years, at the same time, Titian introduces new and very significant shades into the understanding of human beauty, into the emotional and figurative structure of the language of Venetian painting.

The heroes of Titian may be less refined than the heroes of Giorgione, but also less mysterious, more full-blooded active, more integral, more imbued with a clear, sensual, "pagan" beginning. True, his "Concert" (Florence, Pitti Gallery), long attributed to Giorgione, is still very close in spirit to this master. But here, too, the composition is more naturally simple in its rhythms, the feeling of the sensual fullness of a clear and happy being already bears shades of something actually Titianian.

“Love on Earth and Heaven” (1510s; Rome, Galleria Borghese) is one of the first works by Titian, in which the originality of the artist is clearly revealed. The plot of the picture is still mysterious. Regardless of whether the dressed and naked women depict the meeting of Medea and Venus (an episode from the literary allegory "The Dream of Polyphemus", written in 1467) or, less likely, symbolize earthly and heavenly love - the key to understanding the content of this work lies not in storytelling. Titian's goal is to convey a certain state of mind. The soft and calm tones of the landscape, the freshness of the naked body, the clear sonority of the color of beautiful and somewhat cold clothes (the golden yellowness of the color is the result of time) create the impression of calm joy. The movements of both figures are majestically beautiful and at the same time full of vital charm. The calm rhythms of the landscape spreading behind us, as it were, set off the naturalness and nobility of the movement of beautiful human bodies.

This calmness and refined contemplation is not in his "Assunta" - "Ascension of Mary" (1518; Church of Santa Maria Gloriosa dei Frari in Venice). The juxtaposition of the joyfully excited Mary, beautiful in the prime of her feminine beauty, and the apostles, strong, courageously beautiful people who turned admiring glances at her, is permeated with a sense of extraordinary optimistic energy and vitality. Moreover, "Assunta" is distinguished by the heroically monumental nature of its entire figurative structure. The heroic optimism inherent in Titian's work after 1516-1518 seems to be associated with a general upsurge in the spiritual and social life of Venice, caused by a sense of vitality of the city, shown during the struggle with the League of Cambrai and the subsequent war of the so-called Holy League. There is no "Georgionian silence" in his "Bacchanalia", in particular in "Bacchus and Ariadne" (1532). This picture is perceived as an agitated hymn to the beauty and strength of the human feeling asserting itself.

The composition of the picture is holistic and free from distracting secondary scenes and details. Joyfully jubilant Bacchus addresses Ariadne with a wide and free gesture. Hot color, the beauty of swift movements, an agitated landscape, consonant with the mood, are characteristic of this picture.

The affirmation of the joy of being finds its vivid expression in Titian's Venus (c. 1538; Uffizi). It may be less sublimely noble than Giorgione's Venus, but at this price a more direct vitality of the image is achieved. A concrete, almost genre-based interpretation of the plot motif, while enhancing the immediate vitality of the impression, does not diminish the poetic charm of the image of a beautiful woman.

Titian's Venice was one of the centers of advanced culture and science of its time. The breadth of trade relations, the abundance of accumulated wealth, the experience of shipbuilding and navigation, the development of crafts determined the flourishing of the technical sciences, natural sciences, medicine, and mathematics. The preservation of independence and the secular nature of government, the vitality of the traditions of humanism contributed to the high flowering of philosophy and artistic culture, architecture, painting, music, and book printing. Venice has become largest center publishing activity in Europe. The advanced culture of Venice was characterized by the relatively independent position of the most prominent cultural figures, their high intellectual prestige.

The best representatives of the intelligentsia, forming a special social stratum, formed a closely knit circle, one of the most prominent representatives of which was Titian; close to him were Aretino, the founder of journalism, writer, publicist, "thunderstorm of tyrants", as well as Jacopo Sansovino. According to contemporaries, they formed a kind of triumvirate, which was the legislator of the cultural life of the city. Here is how an eyewitness describes one of the evenings spent by Titian with friends. Before sunset, Titian and his guests spent their time “in contemplation of the living images and most beautiful pictures with which the house was filled, in discussion of the true beauty and charm of the garden, to the great pleasure and surprise of everyone, located on the outskirts of Venice above the sea. From that place you can see the Murano Islands and other beautiful places. This part of the sea, as soon as the sun had set, was filled with thousands of gondolas, adorned with the most beautiful women and sounding in an enchanting harmony of music and songs, which accompanied our joyful supper until midnight.

It would be wrong, however, to reduce the work of Titian of this period only to the glorification of the sensual enjoyment of life. The images of Titian are free from any kind of physiology, which was generally alien to the art of the Renaissance. Best Looks Titian are beautiful not only physically, but also spiritually. They are characterized by the unity of feeling and thought, the noble spirituality of the human image.

Thus, Christ in his painting depicting Christ and the Pharisee (“Denarius of Caesar”, 1515-1520; Dresden Gallery) is understood as a harmoniously perfect, but real, not at all divine person. The gesture of his hand is natural and noble. His expressive and beautiful face strikes with light spirituality.

This clear and deep spirituality is felt in the figures and the altar composition of the Pesaro Madonna (1519-1526; Church of Santa Maria Gloriosa dei Frari). In it, the master managed to endow the participants of this seemingly only ceremonial scene with a rich spiritual life, a clear balance of spiritual forces. It is characteristic that the major sonority of the color chord of the composition - Mary's radiant white veil, blue, cherry, carmine, golden tones of clothes, green carpet - does not turn the picture into an outwardly decorative spectacle that prevents the perception of the image of people. On the contrary, the pictorial gamut appears in complete harmony with the bright, colorful and expressive characters of the depicted characters. The boy's head is especially charming. With restrained liveliness, he turned his head to the viewer, his eyes, full of young interest and attention to life.

The themes of a dramatic nature were not alien to Titian of this period, which was natural against the backdrop of that strain of forces, in that difficult struggle that Venice had recently experienced. Obviously, the experience of this heroic struggle and the trials associated with it largely contributed to the achievement of that full courageous strength and mournful grandeur of pathos, which was embodied by Titian in his Louvre Entombment (1520s).

The beautiful and strong body of the dead Christ evokes in the viewer's imagination the idea of a courageous fighter hero who fell in battle, and not at all of a voluntary sufferer who gave his life to atone for human sins. The restrainedly hot coloring of the painting, the power of movement and the strength of feeling of strong courageous people carrying the body of the fallen, the very compactness of the composition, in which the figures brought to the fore fill the entire plane of the canvas, give the picture a heroic sound, so characteristic of the art of the High Renaissance. In this work, for all its drama, there is no feeling of hopelessness, no internal breakdown. If this is a tragedy, then, in modern terms, it is an optimistic tragedy that glorifies the strength of the human spirit, its beauty and nobility even in suffering. This distinguishes it from the full hopeless grief of the later, Madrid "Laying in the Coffin" (1559).

In the Louvre “The Entombment” and especially in the “Assassination of St. Peter the Martyr" (1528-1530), a new stage achieved by Titian in conveying the connection between the mood of nature and the experiences of the depicted heroes is noteworthy. Such are the gloomy and menacing tones of the sunset in The Entombment, the stormy whirlwind that shakes the trees in The Assassination of St. Peter”, so consonant with this explosion of merciless passions, the fury of the murderer, the despair of Peter. In these works, the state of nature is, as it were, caused by the action and passions of people. In this respect, the life of nature is subordinated to man, who still remains "master of the world." Later, in the late Titian and especially in Tintoretto, the life of nature as the embodiment of the chaos of the elemental forces of the universe acquires a force of existence independent of man and often hostile to him.

The composition "Introduction to the Temple" (1534-1538: Venice Academy) stands, as it were, on the verge of two periods in the work of Titian and emphasizes their internal connection. Compared to Madonna Pesaro, this is the next step in the mastery of the group scene. Bright and strong characters appear in all their definiteness and form an integral group, united by a common interest in the ongoing event.

Clear at first glance, a coherent composition is perfectly combined with a detailed narrative of the event. Titian consistently switches the attention of the audience from relatives and friends of the Maria family to a crowd of curious people, given against the backdrop of a majestic landscape, and then to the small figure of the girl Mary climbing the stairs, stopping for a moment on the steps of the temple. At the same time, the platform of the stairs on which she stands, as it were, creates a pause in the steps going up, corresponding to a pause in the movement of Mary herself. And finally, the composition ends with the majestic figures of the high priest and his companions. The whole picture is permeated with the spirit of festivity and a sense of the significance of the event. The image of an old woman selling eggs is full of vital folk juiciness, which is typical for a number of works by the artist of the 1530s, as well as the image of a servant rummaging in a chest in the painting “Venus of Urbino” (Uffizi). Thus, Titian introduces a note of immediate vitality, softening the majestic elation of his compositions.

Titian manages to most fully embody the ideal of a physically and spiritually beautiful person, given in all the vital fullness of his being, in a portrait. Such is the portrait of a young man with a torn glove (1515-1520; Louvre). In this portrait, individual similarities are perfectly conveyed, and yet the main attention of the artist is drawn not to private details in the appearance of a person, but to the general, to the most characteristic of his image. Titian, as it were, reveals through the individual originality of the personality the general typical features of a Renaissance man.

Broad shoulders, strong and expressive arms, free grace of posture, a white shirt carelessly unbuttoned at the collar, a swarthy youthful face, on which eyes stand out with their lively brilliance, create an image full of freshness and charm of youth. The character is conveyed with all the spontaneity of life, but it is in these features that the main qualities and all the unique harmony of a happy person and who does not know painful doubts and internal discord are revealed.

This period also includes his full of somewhat cold elegance "Violanta" (Vienna), as well as the portrait of Tommaso Mosti (Pitti), which surprises with the picturesque freedom of characterization and nobility of the image.

But if in the portraits Titian with exceptional completeness conveyed the image of a Renaissance man full of strong-willed energy and conscious intelligence, capable of heroic activity, then it was in the portrait of Titian that those new conditions of human life that are characteristic of the late Renaissance found their deep reflection.

The portrait of Ippolito Riminaldi (Florence, Pitti Gallery) gives us the opportunity to catch the profound changes that are outlined in the 1540s. in Titian's work. On Riminaldi's lean face, bordered by a soft beard, the struggle with the intricate contradictions of reality left its mark. This image resonates to some extent with the image of Shakespeare's Hamlet.

Titian's portraits, created during the late Renaissance - starting from the 1540s, amaze precisely with the complexity of the characters, the intensity of passion. The people he represented came out of a state of closed balance or a simple and integral impulse of passion, characteristic of the images of the classical Renaissance. The depiction of complex and contradictory images, characters, often strong, but often ugly, typical of this new era, is Titian's contribution to portraiture.

Now Titian creates images that are not typical of the High Renaissance. Such is his Paul III (1543; Naples), outwardly reminiscent of the composition of the portrait of Julius II Raphael. But this similarity only emphasizes profound difference images. The head of Julius is depicted with a certain objective calmness; it is characteristic and expressive, but in the portrait itself, first of all, the main features of his character that are constantly characteristic of this person are conveyed.

Concentrated-thoughtful strong-willed face correspond calmly, authoritatively lying on the arms of the chair hands. Pavel's hands are feverishly nervous, the folds of the cape are full of movement. Slightly sinking his head into his shoulders, with an senile sagging predatory jaw, he looks at us from the portrait with wary cunning eyes.

Titian's images of these years are contradictory and dramatic by their very nature. The characters are conveyed with Shakespearean power. This affinity for Shakespeare is especially acute in the group portrait depicting Paul with his great-nephews Ottavio and Alessandro Farnese (1545-1546; Naples, Capodimonte Museum). The restless vigilance of the old man, looking angrily and distrustfully at Ottavio, the representative banality of Alessandro's appearance, the groveling flattery of the young Ottavio, a bold in his own way, but a cold and cruel hypocrite, create a scene that is striking in its drama. Only a person brought up by Renaissance realism could not be afraid to show so mercilessly truthfully all the peculiar strength and energy of these people and at the same time reveal the essence of their characters. Their cruel egoism, immoral individualism are revealed with severe precision by the master through their comparison and collision. It was precisely the interest in revealing characters through their comparison, in reflecting the complex inconsistency of relationships between people that prompted Titian - in fact, for the first time - to turn to the genre of group portrait, which was widely developed in the art of the 17th century.

The value of the realistic portrait heritage of the late Titian, his role in the preservation and further development of the principles of realism is especially evident when comparing Titian's portraits with his contemporary portrait of the Mannerists. Indeed, the portrait of Titian strongly opposes the principles of portraiture by artists such as Parmigianino or Bronzino.

In the masters of mannerism, the portrait is imbued with a subjectivist mood, mannered stylization. The image of a person is given by them either in a frozen immobility and some kind of cold alienation from other people, or in terms of a nervously pointed, superficially artistic characterization. In both cases, the truthful disclosure of a person's character, his spiritual world, in essence, is relegated to the background. The portraits of Titian are just remarkable in that they continue and deepen the realistic line of the Renaissance portrait.

This is especially clearly seen in the portrait of Charles V sitting in an armchair (1548, Munich). This portrait is by no means a forerunner of the ceremonial official Baroque portrait. It strikes with the merciless realism with which the artist analyzes inner world of a person, his properties as a person and as a statesman. In this he resembles the best portraits of Velasquez. The colorful power of the characterization of this complex, cruel, hypocritically cunning and at the same time strong-willed and intelligent person is distinguished by plastic integrity and picturesque brightness.

In the equestrian portrait of Charles V, depicted at the Battle of Mühlberg (1548; Prado), the strength of the psychological characterization of the emperor is combined with the brilliance of the pictorial solution, both monumental-decorative and vividly realistic. This portrait, unlike the Munich one, is indeed the forerunner of the large ceremonial portraits of the Baroque era. At the same time, the successive connection with the large portrait compositions of the great master of realism of the 17th century, Velasquez, is no less clearly felt in it.

In contrast to these portraits, Titian, in a number of other works marked by simplicity of composition (usually a half-length or generational image on a neutral background), focuses his attention on a bright and holistic disclosure of the character in all his vital, sometimes rough energy, as, for example, in the portrait of Aretino (1545; Pitti), which perfectly conveys the impetuous energy, health and cynical mind, greed for pleasure and money of this remarkable and so characteristic of Venice of that era of a person. Pietro Aretino, the creator of a number of comedies, witty, though not always immaculately decent short stories and poems, was mainly famous for his "judgments", semi-joking predictions, dialogues, letters, widely published and representing, in essence, works of a journalistic nature, where it is bizarre combined a bright and passionate defense of free thought and humanism, ridiculing hypocrisy and reaction with outright blackmail of the "powerful ones" of all of Europe. Journalistic and publishing activities, as well as poorly hidden extortion, allowed Aretino to lead a truly princely lifestyle. Greedy for sensual pleasures, Aretino was at the same time a subtle and intelligent connoisseur of the arts, a sincere friend of artists.

The problem of the relationship of a person - the bearer of the humanistic ideals of the Renaissance - to the hostile reactionary forces that dominated the life of Italy, is vividly reflected in all the work of the late Titian. This reflection is indirect, not always, perhaps, fully realized by the artist himself. So, already in the painting “Behold the Man” (1543; Vienna), Titian for the first time shows the tragic conflict of the hero - Christ with the world around him, with the forces hostile to him dominating this world, personified in the crudely cynical, disgustingly vile, ugly Pilate. In the images dedicated, it would seem, to the affirmation of the sensual joys of life, a new tragic note is clearly heard.

Already his "Danaë" (c. 1554; Madrid, Prado) bears new features in comparison with the previous period. Indeed, "Danae", unlike "Venus of Urbino", strikes us with a kind of drama that permeates the whole picture. Of course, the artist is in love with the real beauty of earthly life, and Danae is beautiful, moreover, frankly sensual beauty. But it is characteristic that Titian now introduces the motive of dramatic experience, the motive of the development of passion. The very artistic language of the master is changing. Titian boldly takes color and tonal ratios, combining them with, as it were, luminous shadows. Thanks to this, he conveys a mobile unity of form and color, a clear contour and soft modeling of volume, which help to reproduce nature, full of movement and complex changing relationships.

In Danae, the master still affirms the beauty of a person's happiness, but the image is already devoid of its former stability and tranquility. Happiness is no longer a permanent state of a person, it is acquired only in moments of a bright outburst of feelings. It is not for nothing that the clear majesty of “Love on Earth and Heaven” and the calm bliss of “Venus of Urbino” are opposed here by a feeling of an excited outburst of strong feelings.

Exceptionally expressive is the comparison of Danae with a rude old maid, who greedily catches coins of golden rain in an outstretched apron, greedily following its flow. Cynical self-interest rudely invades the picture: the beautiful and the ugly, the sublime and the base are dramatically intertwined in the work. The beauty of the humanly bright and free impulse of Danae's feelings is opposed by cynicism and rude self-interest. This clash of characters is emphasized by the contrast of the rough, knotted hand of the old woman and the tender knee of Danae, almost touching each other.

To some extent, with all the differences in the images, Titian finds a solution here, reminiscent of the composition of his painting “Denarius of Caesar”. But there, the comparison of the full moral beauty of the image of Christ with the dark, ugly face of the Pharisee, embodying gross cunning and base human passions, leads to the assertion of the absolute superiority and victory of the humane principle over the base and cruel.

In Danae, although Titian affirms the victory of happiness, the forces of ugliness and malice have already acquired a certain independence. The old woman not only sets off the beauty of Danae in contrast, but also opposes it. At the same time, it was during these years that Titian created a new series of his truly beautiful paintings dedicated to the glorification of the sensual charm of female beauty. However, they are profoundly different from the clear, life-affirming sound of "Love on Earth and Heaven" and from "Bacchanalia" (1520s). His "Diana and Actaeon" (1559; Edinburgh), "The Shepherd and the Nymph (Vienna)" shrouded in shimmering warm tones with restrainedly hot flashes of red, golden, cold blue, is rather a poetic dream, a charming and exciting fairy tale song about beauty and happiness, leading away from the tragic conflicts of real life - it is not for nothing that the artist himself called paintings of this kind "poetry". The same applies to his wonderful "Venus with Adonis" (Prado), which is distinguished, however, by a greater direct drama of passion than most of his other "poetry" of this time. However, hidden anxiety, languor of the spirit sounds in all the best Titian works of this cycle of 1559-1570s. This is felt in the restless flickering of light and shadow, and in the excited swiftness of the stroke, and in the most excited dreaminess of the nymph, and in the restrained passionate animation of the young shepherd (“The Shepherd and the Nymph”, Vienna).

Consistently and with great pictorial power, the late Titian's aesthetic ideas about life find their expression in his The Penitent Magdalene (1560s), one of the masterpieces of the Hermitage collection.

This picture is written on a plot that is very characteristic of the era of the counter-reformation. In fact, in this picture, Titian once again affirms the humanistic and “pagan” basis of his work. The great realist, resolutely rethinking the religious-mystical plot, creates a work that, in its content, is openly hostile to the reactionary-mystical line in the development of Italian late Renaissance culture.

For Titian, the meaning of the picture is not in the pathos of Christian repentance, not in the sweet languor of religious ecstasy, and even more so not in the affirmation of the perishability of the flesh, from the “dungeon” of which the “incorporeal soul” of man is torn to God. In "Magdalene" the skull - a mystical symbol of the perishability of everything earthly - for Titian is just an accessory imposed by the canons of the plot, which is why he treats it rather unceremoniously, turning it into a stand for an extended book.

Excitedly, almost greedily, the artist conveys to us the figure of the Magdalene, full of beauty and Health, her beautiful thick hair, her tender breasts breathing violently. Passionate look "is full of earthly, human sorrow. Titian resorts to a brushstroke that conveys excitedly and at the same time immaculately accurate real color and light relationships. Restless, intense color chords, dramatic flickering of light and shadow, dynamic texture, the absence of rigid contours isolating the volume with plastic the definiteness of form as a whole creates an image full of inner movement.Hair does not lie, but falls, the chest breathes, the arm is given in motion, the folds of the dress sway excitedly.Light flickers softly in lush hair, reflected in moisture-covered eyes, refracted in the glass of the phial, struggles with thick shadows, confidently and juicy sculpts the shape of the body, the entire spatial environment of the picture.Thus, an accurate depiction of reality is combined with the transmission of its eternal movement, with its vivid figurative and emotional characteristics.

But what, in the end, is the meaning of the image created with such pictorial power? The artist admires Magdalene: the person is beautiful, his feelings are bright and significant. But he suffers. The former clear and serene happiness is irrevocably broken. The human environment, the world as a whole, is no longer the calm background, submissive to man, as we saw it before. Dark shadows overwhelm the landscape beyond the Magdalene, thunderclouds cloud the sky, and in the dim light of the last rays of the fading day, the image of a grief-stricken man emerges.

If in the Magdalene the theme of the tragic suffering of a beautiful person does not receive its complete expression, then in The Crowning with Thorns (c. 1570; Munich, Alte Pinakothek) and in Saint Sebastian it appears with the utmost nakedness.

In The Crowning with Thorns, the torturers are shown as cruel and ferocious executioners. Christ, bound by the hand, is by no means a celestial being, but an earthly man, endowed with all the features of physical and moral superiority over his tormentors and yet given over to them for reproach. The gloomy coloring of the picture, full of gloomy anxiety and tension, enhances the tragedy of the scene.

In later paintings, Titian shows the cruel conflict of man with the environment, with reactionary forces hostile to humanism, free reason. Especially significant is "Saint Sebastian" (c. 1570; Leningrad, Hermitage). Sebastian depicts a truly Renaissance titan in strength and greatness of character, but he is shackled and alone. The last gleams of light go out, the night descends to the earth. Gloomy heavy clouds run across the confused sky. All nature, the whole vast world is full of spontaneously formidable movement. The landscape of the early Titian, obediently in tune with the mental structure of his heroes, is now acquiring an independent life and, moreover, hostile to man.

Man for Titian is the highest value. Therefore, although seeing the tragic doom of his hero, he cannot come to terms with this doom, and, full of tragic pathos and courageous grief, the image of Sebastian evokes a feeling of angry protest against forces hostile to him. The moral world of the late Titian, his mournful and courageous wisdom, stoic fidelity to his ideals are beautifully embodied in his penetrating self-portrait from the Prado (1560s).

Fig. pp. 264-265

One of the most profound in thought and feeling of the creations of the late Titian is "Pieta", completed after the artist's death by his student Palma the Younger (Venetian Academy). Against the backdrop of a heavily crushing niche built of roughly hewn stones, framed by two statues, a group of people, engulfed in grief, appears in the tremulously fading light of twilight. Maria holds the naked body of the deceased hero on her knees. She froze in immeasurable grief, like a statue. Christ is not an emaciated ascetic and not a “good shepherd”, but rather a man defeated in an unequal struggle.

The decrepit old man looks at Christ with sadness. Like the cry of despair ringing in the silence of the desert sunset world is the swift gesture of the raised hand of the Magdalene. The flash of her flowing golden-red hair, the restless color contrasts of her attire stand out sharply from the darkness of the gloomy shimmering tone of the picture. Angry and mournful is the expression on the face and movements of the entire figure of the stone statue of Moses, illuminated by the bluish-gray flickering flickering of the fading day.

With extraordinary power, Titian conveyed in this canvas all the immeasurable depth of human grief and all its mournful beauty. The painting created by Titian in the last years of his life is a requiem dedicated to his beloved heroic images receding into the past bright era of the Renaissance.

The evolution of Titian's painting skill is instructive.

In the 1510-1520s. and even later, he still adheres to the principle of contouring the silhouette of figures, a clear comparison of large color spots that generally convey the real coloring of objects. Bold and sonorous color ratios, their colorful intensity, a deep understanding of the interaction of cold and warm tones, the plastic power of sculpting a form with the help of impeccably accurate tonal ratios and fine light and shade modeling are the characteristic features of Titian's pictorial skill.

The transition of the late Titian to the solution of new ideological and figurative tasks causes further evolution in his painting technique. The master understands the ratio of tones, the laws of chiaroscuro more and more deeply, masters the texture and color development of the form more and more perfectly, gradually changing the entire system of his artistic language in the process of this work. Revealing in painting the main relations of form and color, he is able to show all the thrill, all the complex rich life of nature in its eternal development. This gives him the opportunity to enhance the immediate vitality in the transfer of the subject and at the same time emphasize the main thing in the development of the phenomenon. The main thing that Titian is now conquering is the transmission of life in its development, in the bright richness of its contradictions.

The late Titian extensively poses the problems of color harmony in painting, as well as the problem of creating an expressive technique of a free and precise pictorial brushstroke. If in "Love of the Earth and Heaven" the stroke is strictly subordinated to the task of constructing the basic color and light ratios that create a realistic completeness of the image, then in the 1540s and especially from the 1555s. the smear takes on special significance. The stroke not only conveys the texture of the material, but its movement sculpts the form itself - the plasticity of the object. The great merit of the artistic language of the late Titian is that the texture of the brushstroke gives an example of the realistic unity of the pictorial and expressive moment.

That is why the late Titian succeeds with two or three strokes of white and blue paint over a dark underpainting to evoke in the viewer’s eyes not only an extremely plastic sensation of the shape of a glass vessel (“Magdalene”), but also a sensation of the movement of a light beam sliding and refracting in the glass, as if revealing the shape and the texture of the object in front of the viewer. Titian characterizes the late technique in his famous saying Boschini from the words of Palma the Younger:

“Titian covered his canvases with a colorful mass, as if serving as a bed or foundation for what he wanted to express in the future. I myself have seen such vigorously made underpaintings, filled with a densely saturated brush in a pure red tone, which was intended to outline the halftone, or with white. With the same brush, dipping it first in red, then in black, then in yellow paint, he worked out the relief of the illuminated parts. With the same great skill, with the help of just four strokes, he evoked the promise of a beautiful figure from non-existence. Having laid these precious foundations, he turned his paintings to face the wall and sometimes left them in this position for months without even deigning to look at them. When he took them up again, he examined them with stern attention, as if they were his worst enemies, in order to see any flaws in them. And as he discovered features that did not correspond to his subtle plan, he began to act like a good surgeon, without any mercy removing tumors, cutting out meat, adjusting his arm and leg ... He then covered these skeletons, representing a kind of extract from all the most essential, living body, refining it through a series of repeated strokes to such a state that he seemed to lack only breath.

In the realistic power of Titian's technique - a flexible tool for deeply truthful artistic knowledge of the world - lies the enormous impact that it had on the further development of realistic painting in the 17th century. Thus, the painting of Rubens and Velazquez is firmly based on the legacy of Titian, developing and modifying his painting technique already at a new historical stage in the development of realism. Titian's direct influence on contemporary Venetian painting was significant, although none of his direct students found the strength to continue and develop his remarkable art.

The most gifted students and contemporaries of Titian include Jacopo Nigreti, nicknamed Palma Vecchio (the Elder), Bonifacio de Pitati, nicknamed Veronese, that is, the Veronian, Paris Bordone, Jacopo Palma the Younger, great-nephew of Palma the Elder. All of them, except for Palma the Younger, were born on a terra farm, but spent almost their entire creative life in Venice.

Jacopo Palma the Elder (c. 1480-1528), like his peers Giorgione and Titian, studied with Giovanni Bellini. In its own way creative manner he is closest to Titian, although he is significantly inferior to him in all respects. Religious and mythological compositions, as well as portraits of the artist, are distinguished by a sonorous richness of color with some of its monotony (these properties are also inherent in his compositional techniques), as well as an optimistic cheerfulness of images. An essential feature of Palma's work was the creation of an artistic type of Venetian - a magnificent blond beauty. This type of female beauty had some influence on the art of the young Titian. His best works are "Two Nymphs" (1510-1515; Frankfurt am Main), "Three Sisters" (c. 1520) and "Jacob and Rachel" (c. 1520), the latter are in Dresden. The Hermitage keeps his "Portrait of a Man".

One of the best male portraits created by the master is his unknown youth of the Munich Museum. He is close in his manner to Giorgione, but differs from Giorgione in the transfer of an active volitional principle. The turn of the head, full of restrained strength, the imperious and energetic features of a beautiful face, the almost impetuous gesture of the hand raised to the shoulder, squeezing the glove, the elastic tension of the contours, to a large extent, violate the spirit of closed self-immersion inherent in the images of Giorgione.

Developing under the direct influence of Titian, Bonifazio Veronese (1487-1553) in the last years of his life was not free from some influences of mannerism. His work is characterized by large canvases dedicated to episodes from sacred history, combining decorativeness with genre narrative (“The Feast of Lazarus”, “The Massacre of the Innocents”, 1537-1545; both in the Venice Academy and others).

The student of Titian, Paris Bordone (1500-1571), is distinguished by the extraordinary mastery of color, the bright decorativeness of painting. Such are his "Holy Family" (Milan, Brera), "Presenting the Doge of the Ring of St. Mark" (1530s; Venice, Academy). In the later works of Paris Bordone, a strong influence of mannerism and a certain decline in skill are felt. His portraits are distinguished by the veracity of life characteristics. Special mention should be made of "The Venetian Lovers" (Brera), full, perhaps, of a somewhat cold sensual charm.

Palma the Younger (1544-1628), a student of the aging Titian, was at the same time strongly influenced by the work of Tintoretto. Gifted (he very successfully coped with the completion of "Pieta", the last work of Titian), but a little independent master, during his stay in Rome he was imbued with the influence of late mannerism, in line with which he continued to work until the end of his life, already in the period of the birth of baroque art. . Among his works associated with the style of the late Renaissance in Venice, we should mention the "Self-Portrait" (Brera) and the very expressive "Head of an Old Man" (Brera), earlier attributed to Bassano. An idea of his large compositions, close in spirit to late mannerism, is given by the murals of the Oratorio dei Crociferi in Venice (1581 - 1591).

In the art of the Venetian school, the works of a group of artists of the so-called terraferma, that is, the "solid land" - Venetian possessions, located on the part of Italy adjacent to the lagoon, usually stand out.

Generally speaking, most of the masters of the Venetian school were born in the towns or villages of the terra farm (Giorgione, Titian, Paolo Veronese). But they spent all or almost all their lives in the capital, that is, in Venice itself, only from time to time working for the cities or castles of the terra farm. Some artists, who constantly work in the terra farm, represent with their work only provincial variants of the Venetian metropolitan school itself.

At the same time, the way of life, the “social climate” in the towns of the terra farm differed markedly from the Venetian one, which determined the originality of the terra farm school. Venice (a huge trading port and financial center for that time) was, especially until the end of the 15th century, more closely connected with its rich eastern possessions and overseas trade than with the Italian hinterland, in which, however, the luxurious villas of the Venetian nobility were located.

However, life in small quiet towns, where there was a strong layer of wealthy landowners who derived income from a rationally set economy, proceeded in many ways differently than in Venice. To some extent, the culture of these areas of terra farms was close and understandable to the life and art of the cities of Emilia, Lombardy and other northern Italian regions of that time. It should be recalled that from the end of the 15th century. and especially after the end of the war with the League of Cambrai, the Venetians, as the Oriental trade declined, invest their free capital in agriculture and in the crafts of terra farms. There comes a period of relative prosperity for this part of Italy, which, however, does not violate its somewhat provincial way of life.

Therefore, the appearance of a whole group of artists (Pordenone, Lotto and others) should not be surprising, whose art remained aloof from intense searches, the wide creative scope of the Venetian school proper. The picturesque breadth of Titian's monumental vision is replaced by the colder and more formal decorativeness of their altar compositions. On the other hand, the features of directly observed life, noticeable in the heroic art of the mature and late Titian, or in the festively elevated work of Veronese, or especially in the passionate and restless creations of Tintoretto, have been especially widely developed by some of the terraferma artists since the first third of the 16th century.

True, this interest in observed everyday life is somewhat reduced. It is rather a calm interest in the amusing details of the life of a person living peacefully in a quiet town than the desire to find a solution to the great ethical problems of the time in the analysis of life itself, which distinguishes their art from the work of the great realists of the next era.

For the first third of the century, one of the best among these artists was Lorenzo Lotto (1480-1556). His early works are still associated with the Quattrocento tradition. The closest to the great humanistic ideals of the High Renaissance is his early portrait of a young man (1505), which is also distinguished by the immediate vitality of the perception of the model.

The well-known altar and mythological compositions of the mature Lotto usually combine an inner dullness of feeling with a rather outward beauty of the composition. Their chilly coloring and general even “pleasant” texture are also, in general, quite banal and stylistically close to mannerism. The lack of deep thought and feeling is sometimes made up for by very ingeniously introduced everyday details, on the depiction of which the artist willingly focuses. Thus, in his “Annunciation” (late 1520s; Recanati, Church of Santa Maria sopra Mercanti), the viewer allows himself to be distracted from the restlessly interpreted main figures to the amusingly depicted frightened cat, rushing to the side of the archangel suddenly flying in.

In the future, especially in the portrait, the features of concrete-life realism in the artist’s work are growing (“ Female portrait»; Hermitage, "Triple portrait of a man"). With a decrease in interest in revealing the ethical significance of the individual and the strength of her character, these portraits of Lotto, to some extent, still oppose the openly anti-realist line of Mannerism. The most significant realistic and democratic tendencies in Lotto's work were expressed in his cycle of paintings from the life of St. Lucia (1529/30), where with obvious sympathy he depicts entire scenes, as if snatched from the life of his time (for example, ox-drivers from the Miracle of St. Lucia, etc.). In them, the master, as it were, finds rest and peace from those feelings full of contradictions that arise in him in the context of the growing general political and economic crisis in Italy and which color a number of his later compositions in tones of subjective nervousness and uncertainty, leading him away from the tradition of Renaissance humanism.

Much more meaningful is the work of a contemporary of Lotto, a native of Brescia, Girolamo Savoldo (c. 1480-1548). In the work of the late Savoldo, who deeply experienced the temporary ruin of his native country during the war with the Cambrai League, the short-term rise of Venice after 1516, and then the general crisis that engulfed Italy, the tragic contradictions of the art of the Renaissance were revealed in a very peculiar way and with great force.

The duration of the Quattrocentist traditions, characteristic of the somewhat provincial life of the terra farm (until the beginning of the 16th century), the noticeable influence of the painting of the northern Renaissance with its outwardly allegedly prosaic narrative, craving for genre and interests in psychological life ordinary people in Savoldo's work they organically fused with the principles of Renaissance humanism and helped him create one of the most democratic variants of realistic Renaissance art, in many respects anticipating the search for masters of the first third of the 17th century.

In Savoldo's early, still rather dry Quattrocentist works (for example, The Prophet Elijah; Florence, Leather collection), his interest in ordinary, ordinary people is already felt. In his beautiful Adoration of the Shepherds (1520s; Turin, Pinacoteca), the atmosphere of the enlightened concentration of the feelings of three shepherds, contemplating the newborn with deep meditation, is soulfully conveyed. Clear spirituality, light and slightly sad harmony of the rhythms of the quiet movements of the participants in the event and the entire color system of the composition clearly indicate the connection between the art of the mature Savoldo and the traditions of Giorgione. But the absence of an idealized nobility of the image, the natural sincerity and simplicity of life give this picture a very special originality. In the future, interest in the truthful poeticization of images of ordinary people is still growing (for example, the elegiac image of a shepherd against the backdrop of a rural landscape - "The Shepherd"; Florence, the collection of Contini-Bonacossi). The contribution of other artists who belonged to the school that had developed in Brescia is certainly less significant. However, among them should be mentioned Alessandro Bonvicino, nicknamed Moretto (c. 1498-1554), whose work, going in line with classical traditions, is distinguished by a soft silvery color, somewhat provincial heavy, serious solemnity, not without, however, lyricism (“Madonna with Saints "; Frankfurt). This feature, more noticeable in the secondary characters of his composition, is of the greatest value in big pictures(for example, the figure of a servant in the painting "Christ at Emmaus"). His most famous work is St. Justina with a donor. Moretto's contribution to the development of the Renaissance portrait is significant. His "Portrait of a Man" (London) is one of the first full-length portraits.

His gifted student was Giovanni Moroni (c. 1523-1578), who worked mainly in Bergamo. He not only, like his teacher, retains a commitment to the realistic method, but his portraits represent a significant and unique contribution to the realistic line of development of art of the late Renaissance. The portraits of Moroni of the mature period, starting from the 1560s, are characterized by a truthful and accurate transfer of the appearance and character of representatives of almost all social strata of the cities of the then terra-farm (“Portrait of a Scientist”, “Portrait of Pontero”, “Portrait of a Tailor”, etc. ). The last portrait is distinguished by the absence of any kind of glorification of the image and carefully accurate transfer of the external resemblance and character of the person being portrayed. At the same time, this is an example of a kind of genreization of a portrait, which gives the image a special life-like concreteness and authenticity. The tailor is depicted standing at a work table with scissors and a cloth in his hands. He paused his work for a moment and peered attentively at the spectator who seemed to have entered the room. If the very clear and plastic transfer of form, the dominant position of the human figure in the composition are characteristic of the art of the Renaissance, then the genre interpretation of the compositional motif goes beyond the boundaries of Renaissance realism, anticipating the search for masters of the 17th century.

In a special position in relation to the schools of the terra farm was the Ferrara school. The rule of the Dukes of d'Este was preserved in Ferrara, it is from here that the features of that courtly splendor stem, which, combined with the well-known provincial isolation of traditions, determined the somewhat ponderous and cold style of Ferrara art of the 16th century, overloaded with decorative details, which failed to develop the interesting undertakings of its Quattrocentist predecessors. The most significant artist of this period was Dosso Dossi (c. 1479 - 1542), who spent his youth in Venice and Mantua and settled in Ferrara from 1516.

In his work, Dosso Dossi relied on the traditions of Giorgione and Francesco Cossa, traditions that are difficult to combine. The experience of the Titian stage remained alien to him. Most of the compositions of the mature Dossi are distinguished by brilliant cold painting, the power of several heavy figures, an overload of decorative details (“Justice”; Dresden, “St. Sebastian”; Milan, Brera). The most interesting side in Dossi's work is his interest in the developed landscape background, which sometimes dominates the picture (Circe, ca. 1515; Borghese Gallery). Dosso Dossi also owns a number of finished landscape compositions, which are very rare for that time, an example of which is the “Landscape with the Figures of Saints” (Moscow, Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts).

A very special place in the art of the terra farm is occupied by the work of the most significant of its masters, Jacopo del Ponte from Bassano (1510 / 19-1592), a contemporary of Tintoretto, in comparison with whose art, perhaps, his work should be considered. Although Bassano lived most of his life in his native town of Bassano, located in the foothills of the Alps, he is closely connected with the circle of Venetian painting of the late Renaissance proper, occupying a peculiar and rather important place in it.

Perhaps, of all the masters of Italy in the second half of the 16th century. Bassano came closest to becoming the protagonist of the paintings of an ordinary person of his time. True, in the early works of the artist (“Christ at Emmaus”) genre and everyday moments are interspersed with traditional schemes for solving plots of this kind. In the future, more precisely, in the 1540s. his art is undergoing a kind of turning point. The images become more restless, internally dramatic. From the image of individual characters arranged in stable balanced groups according to the canons of the High Renaissance, which Bassano, by the way, did not master very well, the master moves on to the image of human groups and crowds covered by general anxiety.

Ordinary people - shepherds, farmers - become the main characters in his paintings. Such are his Rest on the Flight into Egypt, Adoration of the Shepherds (1568; Bassano, Museum) and others.

His "Return of Jacob" is, in essence, a kind of interweaving of a story on a biblical theme with the image of the "works and days" of ordinary residents of a small Alpine town. The latter, in this case, clearly prevails in the entire figurative structure of the picture. In a number of his works of the late period, Bassano is completely freed from the formal plot connection with the religious and mythological theme.

His "Autumn" is a kind of elegy, glorifying the calm joys of the pores of mature autumn. A magnificent landscape, a poetic motif of a group of hunters going into the distance, embraced by a damp silvery autumn atmosphere, constitute the main charm of this picture.

In the work of Bassano, the art of the late Renaissance in Venice came closest to creating a new system of genres that directly addressed real life in its everyday forms of development. However, this important step could not be taken on the basis of the greatness of Venice, that is, the Renaissance city-state, living out its last days, but on the basis of cultures that arose on the basis of nation-states, on the basis of a new, progressive stage in the history of human society.

Along with Michelangelo, Titian represented a generation of titans of the High Renaissance, caught halfway through their lives by the tragic crisis that accompanied the onset of the late Renaissance in Italy. But they solved the new problems of the time from the positions of humanists, whose personality, whose attitude to the world was formed in the heroic period of the High Renaissance. The artists of the next generation, including the Venetians, developed as creative individuals under the influence of the already established stage in the history of the Renaissance. Their work was his natural artistic expression. Such are Jacopo Tintoretto and Paolo Veronese, who so differently embodied different facets, different sides of the same era.

In the work of Paolo Cagliari (1528-1588), nicknamed after the birthplace of Veronese, all the power and brilliance of Venetian decorative and monumental oil painting is revealed with particular fullness and expressiveness. A student of the insignificant Verona master Antonio Badile, Veronese first worked on a terra farm, creating a number of frescoes and oil compositions (frescoes in Villa Emo of the early 1550s and others). But already in 1553 he moved to Venice, where his talent matured.

The History of Esther (1556) is one of the finest cycles of the young Veronese, adorning the ceiling of the Church of San Sebastiano. The composition of the three plafonds is filled with a relatively small number of large-scale, plastically clearly defined figures. The artistry of the movements of strong and beautiful human figures, the magnificent angles of rearing horses are striking. We are pleased with the strength and lightness of sonorous color combinations, for example, the juxtaposition of a black and white horse in the composition “The Triumph of Mordecai”.

In general, the plastically clear study of individual figures brings this cycle, like all of Veronese's early works in general, closer to the art of the High Renaissance. However, the outward somewhat theatrical elation of the movements of the characters largely deprives them of that inner fortitude, that true greatness that distinguishes the heroes of the monumental compositions of the early and High Renaissance from Masaccio and Castagno to Raphael's "Athenian School" and the ceiling of Michelangelo's Sistine Chapel. This feature of the art of the young Veronese is most noticeable in such of his official ceremonial compositions as "Juno distributing gifts of Venice" (c. 1553; Venice, Doge's Palace), where the decorative brilliance of painting does not redeem the outward pomp of the idea.

Veronese's images are more festive than heroic. But their cheerfulness, bright decorative power and at the same time the subtlest richness of the picturesque form are truly extraordinary. This combination of a general decorative-monumental pictorial effect with a rich differentiation of color relationships is also manifested in the plafonds of the sacristy of San Sebastiano and in a number of other compositions.

An important place in the work of the mature Veronese is occupied by the frescoes of the Villa Barbaro (in Maser), built by Palladio on a terra farm, not far from Treviso. The elegant small villa-palace is beautifully inscribed in the surrounding rural landscape and framed by a flowering garden. Veronese's frescoes, full of light movement and sonorous brilliance, correspond to its architectural image. In this cycle, compositions full of foaming “dancing fun” naturally alternate on mythological themes - the ceiling “Olympus” and others - with witty unexpected motifs snatched from life: for example, the image of a door through which a handsome young man enters the hall, taking off his hat in a bow, as addressed to the owners of the house. However, in "everyday" motives of this kind, the master does not set himself the task of artistic disclosure through the natural course of life of ordinary ordinary people of all the typical characteristics of their relationship.

He is only interested in the festive, amusingly expressive side of life. Everyday motifs woven into a cycle or into separate compositions should only enliven the whole, remove the feeling of solemn splendor and, so to speak, the invention of the composition, enhance the sense of persuasiveness of that sparkling poem about the jubilant celebration of life that Veronese creates in his paintings. This understanding of the "genre" is characteristic of Veronese not only in decorative (which is completely natural), but in all plot compositions masters. Of course, Veronese's colorful compositions are not only poetic tales. They are true and not. only in their private genre details, especially generously used by the master in the mature period of creativity. Indeed, feasting festivity, a feature characteristic of the life of the patrician elite of Venice, still rich and tattered, is the real side of the life of that time. Moreover, spectacles, processions, extravaganzas were arranged by the republic and for the people. And the city itself struck with the fabulousness of its architectural appearance.

The mature period of Veronese is also distinguished by a gradual change in his pictorial system. His compositions are becoming, as a rule, more and more crowded. Complex and rich in plastic and picturesque effects, the movement of a large mass of people - the crowd - is perceived as a kind of single living whole. A complex symphony of colors, their interweaving full of pulsating movement creates a different sound than in the High Renaissance, the sound of the colorful surface of the picture. Most clearly, these features of the mature art of Veronese are revealed in the huge (10x6 m) "Marriage at Cana" (1563; Louvre). Against the background of the slender and magnificent architecture of the terraces and porticos permeated with light, the frisoobrazio unfolds the scene of a feast that unites about one hundred and thirty figures. Servants now in Venetian, now in fancifully oriental clothes, musicians, jesters, feasting youths, luxuriously dressed beautiful ladies, bearded men, venerable elders form a colorful composition full of movement. Some of the heads are portraits. These are the images of the sovereigns of Europe from Sultan Suleiman I to Charles V. In a group of musicians, Veronese portrayed Titian, Bassano, Tintoretto and himself.

Fig. pp. 272-273

With all the diversity of motives, the picture forms a single pictorial compositional whole. Numerous characters are arranged in three frieze-like ribbons or tiers flowing one above the other. The restlessly noisy movement of the crowd is closed from the edges of the picture by columns, the center is emphasized by a group symmetrically located around the seated Christ. In this regard, Veronese continues the tradition of balanced monumental compositions of the High Renaissance.

And in terms of color, Veronese compositionally highlights the central, nodal figure of Christ with the most dense, stable color construction, combining the sonorous, very material red and blue colors of the robe with the golden radiance of the halo. However, Christ is the central node of the picture only in a narrow-color and compositional-geometric sense; he is calm and internally relatively insignificant. In any case, he is not ethically distinguished from other characters in any way.

In general, the charm of this picture is not in the moral strength or dramatic passion of the characters, but in the combination of immediate vitality and harmonious refinement of the images of people happily celebrating the holiday of life. Full of joyful boiling and coloring of the picture: fresh, sonorous, with bright flashes of red, from pink-lilac to wine, fiery and juicy dark ruts. The suite of red appears in combination with the cold brilliance of blue, greenish-blue, as well as warmer olive and brown-golden tones with a dull velvety sound. All this is united by a common silvery-bluish atmosphere that envelops the whole picture. A special role in this sense belongs to the white color, sometimes bluish, sometimes lilac, sometimes pinkish-gray in shades. From the density of the color of silver amphorae and brittle elastic silks, through linen tablecloths, to the bluish ash of white columns, the fluffiness of light clouds floating across the moist green-blue sky of the lagoon, this color develops, gradually dissolving in the general silvery pearl of the illumination of the picture.

The noisy boiling of the crowd of guests feasting in the lower tiers of the composition is replaced by the graceful grace of movements of the rare figures of the upper tier - the upper balcony of the loggia - looming against the sky. It all ends with a vision of distant bizarre, hazy buildings and softly shining skies.

In the field of portraiture, Veronese's accomplishments were less significant. Brilliantly passing resemblance, while achieving at the same time some idealization of the image, bordering on its embellishment, Veronese did not focus his attention on the deep disclosure of the character of the person portrayed, without which, in fact, there is no great art of the portrait. However, the brilliance of painting, superbly painted accessories, noble aristocratic ease of poses make his portraits very pleasing to the eye and perfectly “fit” them into the luxurious palace interiors of the late Venetian Renaissance. Some of his relatively early portraits are distinguished by a shade of indefinite romantic daydreaming - "Portrait of a Man" (Budapest, Museum). Only in a few of his earliest portraits, such as Count da Porto with his son, does the young artist create images that unexpectedly captivate with their cordiality and the natural unpretentiousness of the motive. In the future, this trend does not develop, and the magnificent elegance of his subsequent works rather continues the line outlined in the already mentioned Budapest portrait (for example, the portrait of Bella Nani in the Louvre).

Veronese's canvases seemed to take the artist away from the struggle, from the contrasts of historical reality. In part, this was so. And yet, in the context of the counter-reformation, the growing ideological aggression of Catholicism, his cheerful painting, whether the master wanted it or not, occupied a certain place in the contemporary ideological struggle. These are “The Family of Darius before Alexander the Great” (London, National Gallery), “Marriage at Cana” (Dresden), “Feast in the House of Levi” (Venice). The church could not forgive Veronese the secular, pagan cheerfulness of his biblical compositions, which so sharply contradicted the church line in art, that is, the revival of mysticism, faith in the perishability of the flesh and the eternity of the spirit. Hence the unpleasant explanation with the Inquisition that Veronese had to have about the too "pagan" nature of his "Feast in the House of Levi" (1573). Only the continued secular nature of government in the commercial republic saved Veronese from more serious consequences.

In addition, the general crisis of the Venetian Republic also affected the master's work more directly, mainly in the later period of his work. Already in the Madonna of the House of Kuchchin (Dresden), created around 1570, brilliant in craftsmanship, not everything is completely serene and joyful. Of course, the composition is solemn and magnificent, individual motives of the movement and types of people are brilliantly snatched from life; especially charming is the boy, gently and a little wearily clinging to a column of colored marble. But in the expression on the face of Kuccin himself, the master, perhaps, involuntarily conveys a feeling of some kind of bitterness and hidden anxiety.

Drama was not a strong point of Veronese and was, generally speaking, alien to the creative warehouse of his character. Therefore, often, even taking a dramatic plot, Veronese is easily distracted from the transfer of the clash of characters, from the inner experiences of the characters to the bright and colorful moments of life, to the beauty of painting itself. Yet notes of grief and sadness begin to resound in some of his later Descent from the Cross. This is especially felt in the Budapest and especially the Louvre paintings, imbued with a genuine sense of noble sadness and grief.

In the later period, in some of Veronese's works, pessimistic moods break through with unexpected force. Such is his Hermitage Lamentation of Christ (between 1576 and 1582), gloomily restless and subdued in color. True, the gesture of the angel, bent over Christ, differs somewhat out of place in its almost courtly grace, but it is perceived in relation to the picture as a whole approximately as we would perceive a gracefully thoroughbred movement that accidentally slipped through - a gesture from a recent minion seized with sincere grief, defeated by fate fortune. During these years, Veronese basically continued to carry out orders for ceremonial, festive works. In 1574, as a result of several large fires, a significant part of the interior of the Doge's Palace burned out, during which, in particular, the remarkable works of painting by both Bellini were lost. New cycles were ordered, to which Tintoretto and Veronese were involved. The latter completed a number of paintings: "The Betrothal of St. Catherine", the allegorical "Triumph of Venice" (c. 1585; Venice, Doge's Palace), in fact, no longer triumphant and not victorious, and other compositions of this kind. Naturally, being in such a sharp contradiction with life, these compositions were performed by an aging and wiser master with an increasingly dispassionate, more and more indifferent hand. In contrast to these ceremonial works, the already mentioned "Lamentation of Christ", the mournful "Crucifixion" from the Louvre and Budapest, and some other small easel works created "for oneself", full of sad lyricism and sadness, are of the greatest value in later work master, once in love with the joy and beauty of life.

In many respects, the art of a gifted Slavic painter, a Dalmatian by origin, Andrea Meldolla (Medulich), nicknamed Schiavone (1503/22-1563), which means Slav, comes into contact with Tintoretto's circle of creative interests. Schiavone, who died early, did not have time to fully reveal his talent, and yet his contribution to the development of Venetian painting is quite noticeable.

Schiavone experienced the well-known influence of Parmigianino, but the main focus of his activity was determined by following the art of the late Titian and the direct influence of Tintoretto on him. IN early period Schiavone's art was distinguished by a well-known idyllic mood in the transfer of genre-interpreted mythological scenes ("Diana and Actaeon"; Oxford). Later, in his mythological compositions, as well as gospel ones (he rarely addresses this range of topics), they acquire a more restless and dramatic character. Schiavone pays much attention to the development of the landscape environment in which he places the heroes of his works. The feeling of full excitement of the elemental life of mighty nature is a remarkable quality of the works of the mature Schiavone (Jupiter and Io; the Hermitage, the Midas Judgment; the Venice Academy, etc.). The disclosure of human characters, the tragic severity of conflicts between them, Schiavone succeeded with less depth and power of generalization than the late Titian or Tintoretto. With all his interest in these problems, Schiavone could not free himself from several external methods of dramatizing the image, and in some cases from excessive narrative allegorism (for example, the allegorical triptych "Nature, Time and Death"; Venice Academy).

The most deeply and widely tragic contradictions of the era were expressed in the work of Jacopo Robusti, nicknamed Tintoretto (1518-1594). Tintoretto came from the democratic circles of Venetian society, he was the son of a silk dyer, hence his nickname Tintoretto - dyer.

Unlike Titian and Aretino, the life of the son of a silk dyer was distinguished by its modesty. All his life, Tintoretto lived with his family in a modest dwelling, in a modest quarter of Venice on the Fondamenta dei Mori. Selflessness, disregard for the joys of life and the temptations of its luxury - characteristic masters. Often, striving first of all to realize his creative idea, he was so moderate in his fee requirements that he undertook to complete large compositions only for the price of paints and canvas.

At the same time, Tintoretto was distinguished by a purely Renaissance breadth of humanistic interests. He was part of a close circle of the best representatives of the Venetian intelligentsia of the late Renaissance - scientists, musicians, advanced public thinkers: Daniele Barbaro, the Venier brothers, Tsarlino and others. In particular, Tsarlino, a composer and conductor, was closely associated with the transition of music to polyphony, with the creation of double counterpoint, with the development of the doctrine of harmony, which echoes the polyphony of the complex, full of restless dynamics and expression of the painting of Tintoretto, who had an outstanding musical talent.

Although Tintoretto studied painting with Bonifazio Veronese, he is much more indebted to the deep development of the creative experience of Michelangelo and Titian.

The complex and contradictory developing art of Tintoretto can be very roughly divided into three stages: early, where his work is still directly connected with the traditions of the High Renaissance, covering the very end of the 1530s and almost all of the 1540s. In the 1550-1570s. the original artistic language of Tintoretto as a master of the late Renaissance is finally taking shape. This is his second period. The last fifteen years of the master's work, when his perception of life and artistic language reach a special power and tragic force, form the third, final period in his work.

The art of Tintoretto, like the art of Titian, is unusually multifaceted and rich. These are large compositions on religious themes, and works that can be called fundamental for the formation of the historical genre in painting, and wonderful "poetry", and compositions on a mythological theme, and numerous portraits.

For Tintoretto, especially starting from the end of the 1550s, it is characteristic, first of all, to express his inner experience and his ethical assessment of the images he embodied. Hence the passionate emotional expressiveness of his artistic language.

The desire to convey the main thing, the main thing in the content of the image dominates in his work over the interests of a purely technical and pictorially formal nature. Therefore, Tintoretto's brush rarely achieves the virtuoso flexibility and graceful subtlety of Veronese's artistic language. Very often, the master, who worked furiously and always in a hurry to express himself, created paintings that were almost careless, “approximate” in their execution. In his best works, the unusually spiritual content of his pictorial form, the passionate animation of his vision of the world lead to the creation of masterpieces, where the fullness of feeling and thought is in harmony with the powerful painting technique adequate to the artist’s feeling and intention. These works of Tintoretto are the same masterpieces of perfect mastery of the language of painting, as well as the creations of Veronese. At the same time, the depth and power of the idea bring his best works closer to the greatest achievements of Titian. The unevenness of the artistic heritage of Tintoretto is partly due to the fact that the master (albeit to a completely different extent than his younger contemporary Spaniard El Greco) embodies in his work one of the most characteristic aspects of the artistic culture of the late Renaissance, which is both his weak and strong side, - this is a direct disclosure in art of the subjective personal relationship of the artist to the world, his experiences.

The moment of direct transmission of subjective experience, emotional mood in the handwriting itself, in the manner of execution, perhaps, is clearly reflected for the first time in the art of the late Titian and Michelangelo, that is, in the period when they became masters of the late Renaissance. In the period of the late Renaissance, the impulses of the artist’s confused, then clarified soul, the lively pulsation of his emotions are no longer subject to the task of a harmoniously clear reflection of the whole, but. on the contrary, they are directly reflected in the very manner of performance, they determine the angle of view of the depicted or imaginary phenomena of life.

In some cases, this could lead to a departure from the knowledge of the world, immersion in the subjective "insights" of the soul, as happened with El Greco, in other cases it led to a coldly artistic and egoistic play with mannered stylized forms, subject to personal arbitrariness or a random whim of fantasy , - in the Parma school of mannerism. But where the artist was captured by the great tragic conflicts of the time, where the artist passionately sought to know, experience and express the spirit of the era, there this side of the culture of the late Renaissance strengthened the direct emotional expressiveness of the artistic image, gave it a thrill of sincere human passion. This side of the art of the late Renaissance found a particularly complete expression in the work of Tintoretto.

The new thing that Tintoretto brought to Italian and world art was not limited to expressing the immediate sincere passion for perceiving the world, but, of course, was embodied in other, more significant moments.

Tintoretto was the first in the art of that time to create the image of a crowd of people, embraced by a single or complexly contradictory spiritual impulse. Of course, Renaissance artists previously depicted not only individual heroes, but entire groups of people, but in Raphael’s School of Athens or Leonardo’s Last Supper there was no feeling of a single human mass as a living integral collective. It was a collection of separate independently existing personalities entering into certain interactions. In Tintoretto, for the first time, a crowd appears, endowed with a common, unified and complex psychological state, moving, swaying, polyphonic.

Tragic contradictions in the development of Italian society destroyed the notion of Renaissance humanism about the dominance of a perfect, beautiful person over the world around him, about his happy and joyful heroic existence. These tragic conflicts are reflected in the work of Tintoretto.

The early works of Tintoretto are not yet imbued with this tragic spirit, they still live in the joyful optimism of the High Renaissance. And yet, in such early works as The Last Supper in the Church of Santa Marquola in Venice (1547), one can already feel that heightened interest in the dynamics of movement, in sharp contrasting lighting effects, which, as it were, predicts the further course of development of his art. The first period of Tintoretto's work ends with his large composition "The Miracle of St. Mark" (1548; Venice Academy). This is a large and spectacular monumental and decorative composition. A young man professing the Christian faith is stripped and thrown by the pagans on the pavement slabs. By order of the judge, he is subjected to torment, but Saint Mark, swiftly flying from heaven, performs a miracle: hammers, sticks, swords break on the body of the martyr, which has acquired magical invulnerability, and a group of executioners and spectators leans over his prostrate body with frightened surprise. The composition, like the Renaissance ones, is built on the principle of a clear closure: the violent movement in the center is closed due to the movements of the figures located in its right and left parts directed towards the center of the picture. Their volumes are modeled very plastically, their movements are full of that complete expressiveness of gesture, which is so characteristic of the art of the Renaissance. Given in a bold perspective, the figure of a young woman with a child in the left corner of the picture continues the tradition of a peculiarly heroized genre, which found expression in the work of Titian in the 1520s and 1530s. ("Bringing Mary into the Temple"). However, the rapid flight - the fall of St. Mark, bursting from above into the composition of the picture, introduces a moment of extraordinary dynamics, creates a feeling of a huge space outside the frame of the picture, thereby anticipating the perception of the event not as a whole closed in itself, but as one of the bursts in perpetual motion. flow of time and space, so characteristic of the art of the late Renaissance.

The same motif is felt in Tintoretto's somewhat earlier painting The Procession of St. Ursula, where an angel swiftly flying in from outside the picture invades the calmly smooth procession moving from the depths. And in Tintoretto's interpretation of traditional mythological themes, new notes also appear. Such is the juxtaposition, full of dramatic contrast, of the youthful beauty of naked Venus, the baby Cupid peacefully dozing in the cradle, and the angular movements of the voluptuous old man Vulcan (“Venus and Vulcan”, 1545-1547; Munich).

In the 1550s the features of the new in the work of Tintoretto finally triumph over the old, already obsolete schemes. One of the most characteristic works of this time is his “Entrance of Mary into the Temple” (c. 1555; Venice, Church of Santa Maria del Orto), which is so different from Titian’s frieze-like solemn “Entrance into the Temple”. A steep staircase leading from the viewer into the depths of the picture leads to the threshold of the temple. On it, in a sharply diagonal perspective, separate figures covered by restless excitement are scattered. At the top of the stairs, against the background of a calm sky, a solemnly strict elder-high priest looms, surrounded by acolytes. To him, climbing the last steps of the stairs, the fragile figure of Mary is rapidly moving. The feeling of the vastness of the world, the rapid dynamics of space, the permeation of the people participating in the action with some kind of rapidly pulsating, vibrating movement give the entire composition an extraordinary excitement, special significance.

In The Abduction of the Body of St. Mark (1562-1566; Venice Academy), another feature of Tintoretto's work of the Mature period comes out especially clearly. At the moment when the pious Venetians steal the body of the saint from Alexandria, which belongs to the "infidels", a storm breaks out, putting the dismayed Alexandrians to flight. Formidable forces the elements, the restless lighting of the picture with flashes of lightning, the struggle of light and darkness of a stormy cloudy sky turn nature into a powerful accomplice of the event, enhance the overall restless drama of the image.

In The Last Supper in the Church of San Trovaso, Tintoretto decisively violates the clear and simple hierarchy of characters so characteristic of, say, Raphael's The School of Athens or Leonardo's The Last Supper. The figures are not in front of the viewer, they are, as it were, snatched from the space of the natural environment. The square table at which Christ and the apostles sit in the semi-basement of the old tavern is given in a sharp diagonal foreshortening. The environment that surrounds the apostles is the most common environment of a common tavern. Chairs woven with straw, wooden stools, a staircase leading to the next floor of the tavern, the dim lighting of a poor room - all this, as it were, is snatched from life. It would seem that Tintoretto returns to the naive narrative of Quattrocentist art, lovingly depicting his characters against the backdrop of the street or their contemporary interior.

But there is also a significant difference here. Firstly, from the time of Giorgione, the Venetians placed their figures directly in the environment itself, not against the background of the room, but in the room. Tintoretto also does not care about the petty love writing out everyday objects so sweet and dear to the Quattrocentist. He wants to convey the very atmosphere of the real environment as a characteristically expressive sphere of action for the characters. Moreover, which is typical of his plebeian democratic sentiments, he emphasizes the commonness of the environment in which the carpenter's son and his students operate.

Tintoretto strives for the integrity of the composition, natural for a finished work of art, but in comparison with the masters of the previous stage, he keenly feels the complex polyphony of life, where the great, the main thing never appears in its pure form.

Therefore, depicting a certain moment full of inner significance in the stream of life, Tintoretto saturates it with diverse, outwardly contradictory motifs: Christ pronounces his words “One of you will betray me” at the very moment when his companions are busy with a wide variety of actions. One of them, holding a cup in his left hand, reached out with his right hand to a large bottle of wine standing on the floor; another bent over a dish of food; the servant, holding some kind of dish, had already gone halfway behind the frame of the picture; a woman sitting on the stairs, indifferent to what is happening, is busy spinning. It was precisely at the time when people were distracted by such diverse activities that the words of the teacher that amazed everyone were heard. They were all united by an instant violent reaction to these terrible words. Those who were not busy with anything managed to respond to them in different ways. One leaned back in surprise, the second clasps his hands indignantly, the third, mournfully pressing his hands to his heart, excitedly bows to his beloved teacher. Those of the disciples who were distracted by their daily affairs seemed to freeze in instant bewilderment. The hand extended to the bottle has hung down and will no longer rise to pour wine; a person bending over a dish will no longer remove its lid. They are also seized by a general outburst of indignant surprise. In this way, Tintoretto tries to simultaneously convey both the complex diversity of the daily course of everyday life and that instantaneous flash of emotion and passion that suddenly unites this group of seemingly heterogeneous people into a single whole.

In the 1550-1560s. Tintoretto creates not only works in which the tragic confusion of the era is already guessed, but also a series of paintings imbued with the desire to escape from the conflicts of reality into the world of a poetic fairy tale, into the world of dreams. But even in them, a keen sense of contrasts and the unsteady instability of a changeable being, albeit in the transformation of a fabulous and poetic form, still makes itself felt.

So, in a 13th-century French story written on the motive. In the painting “The Saving of Arsinoe”, the artist creates, seemingly in the tradition of Renaissance pictorial “poetry”, a charming tale about how a knight and a young man, sailing on a gondola to the foot of a gloomy castle tower growing out of the sea, rescue two naked beauties chained in chains. This is a beautiful poem that takes a person into the world of poetic fiction from the restless and unsteady instability of real life. But with what sharpness the master compares the cold metal cuirass of a knight, in contact with the soft tenderness of the female body, and how unsteady, unstable support is a light boat, swaying on the waves of an unsteady sea.

One of the best paintings from the “poetry” series is Susanna, formally dedicated to the biblical myth, from the Vienna Gallery (c. 1560). The enchanting magic of this composition is irresistible. Firstly, this is one of the paintings in which traces of the rush, often characteristic of Tintoretto, are not felt. It is written with a thin and precise virtuoso brush. The whole atmosphere of the picture is fanned by a peculiarly gentle silvery-bluish coolness, giving it a feeling of freshness and a slight chill. Susanna has just come out of the bath. Her left leg is still submerged in cold water. The radiant body is shrouded in light bluish shadows, it all seems to glow from the inside. The glow of her softly lush and flexible body is contrasted by the more viscous texture of the restlessly crumpled folds of the bluish-green towel in the shadows.

In front of her, in the dark olive green of the trellis, roses burn with a pinkish-purple color. In the background, a strip of a stream is silvering, and behind it, written in a light, slightly grayish, pistachio tone, rise the thin trunks of small poplars. The silvery poplars, the cold radiance of roses, the shimmer of the calm waters of the pool and the stream seem to pick up the motif of the radiance of Susanna's naked body and, starting from the brownish-olive background of the shadows and the earth, create that silvery cool and softly shining atmosphere that envelops the whole picture.

Susanna peers into a mirror placed in front of her on the ground, admiring her own reflection. We don't see him. In the shaky pearl surface of the mirror set at an angle to the viewer, only a golden pin and the lacy tip of the towel with which she wipes her feet are reflected. But this is enough - the viewer guesses what he does not see, following the direction of the gaze of the golden-haired Susanna, slightly surprised by her own beauty.

Magnificent in painting, lively, excitedly bright, and the composition "The Origin of the Milky Way" (London), created in 1570. According to ancient myth, Jupiter, wanting to reward immortality for his baby, born of a mortal woman, ordered to press him to Juno's chest in order to if he drank the milk of the goddess, he himself would become immortal. From the splashes of milk taken by surprise and recoiling in fright, Juno, the Milky Way arose, encircling the sky. The composition, full of restless awe, is built on the contrast of Jupiter's maid, rapidly invading from the depths of space, and the gently lush pearl body of the naked goddess leaning back in surprise. The contrast of the sharp flight of the maid and the soft tenderness of the movements of the beautiful goddess is full of extraordinary sharpness and charm.

But these dreamily tender dreams of "poetry" are only one facet in the master's work. Its main pathos is different. The stormy movement of human masses, filling the vast world, more and more attracts the attention of the artist.

Fig. pp. 280-281

The tragic conflicts of time, the sorrow and suffering of people are expressed with particular force, although, as was typical of the era, in an indirect form, in The Crucifixion (1565), created for the scuola di San Rocco and characteristic of the second period of Tintoretto's work. The picture fills the entire wall of a large square room (the so-called Alberto), adjacent to the huge upper hall. This composition, covering not only the scene of the crucifixion of Christ and two thieves, includes the disciples clinging to the cross, and the crowds of people surrounding them. It makes an almost panoramic impression from the point of view from which it is viewed, as the light pouring through the windows of both side walls, as it were, expands the entire room. The interweaving of two opposite streams of light, changing as the sun moves, enlivens the picture with its colors, either smoldering, or flashing, or fading. The composition itself does not immediately appear before the viewer in all its integrity. When the viewer is in the large hall, then only the foot of the cross and the group of disciples of the crucified man, embraced by grief, are visible in the gap of the door. Some with care and sadness bend over their broken mother; others in passionate despair turn their eyes to the executed teacher. He, raised by the cross high above the people, is not yet visible. The group forms a complete, self-contained composition, clearly limited by the door frame.

But the look of John and the shaft of the cross going up indicate that this is only part of a wider and more comprehensive composition. The viewer comes to the door, and he can already see Christ exhausted by suffering, a beautiful and strong man, with tender sadness bowing his face to his family and friends. Another step - and in front of the viewer who entered the room, a huge picture unfolds in its entire breadth, populated by crowds of people, confused, curious, triumphant and compassionate. In the midst of this surging sea of people, a lone group of people clung to the foot of the cross.

Christ is surrounded by an indescribable radiance of colors, phosphorescent against the background of a gloomy sky. His outstretched hands, nailed to the crossbar, seem to embrace this restless noisy world in a wide embrace, blessing and forgiving it.

"Crucifixion" is really a whole world. It cannot be exhausted in one description. As in life, everything in it is unexpected and at the same time necessary and significant. The Renaissance plastic modeling of characters and the deep clairvoyance of the human soul are also striking. With cruel truthfulness, the artist also sculpts the image of a bearded chief on a horse, looking at the execution with swaggering complacency, and an old man, with sad tenderness, bending over the exhausted Mary, and young John, in mournful ecstasy, turned his gaze to the dying teacher.

The composition of the "Crucifixion" is complemented by two panels placed on the wall opposite, on the sides of the door - "Christ before Pilate" and "Carrying the Cross", embodying the main stages of the "passion of Christ". Taken together, these three works form a complete ensemble both in compositional and figurative terms.

Interest in large monumental cycles is a characteristic feature of the mature and late Tintoretto, who strives precisely in the “many-voiced” change of images that echo and contrast with each other to convey his idea of \u200b\u200bthe elemental power and the complex dynamics of being. They were most fully revealed precisely in the gigantic ensemble of the Scuola di San Rocco, unprecedented for oil painting, consisting of several dozen canvases and plafonds - the upper (1576-1581) and lower (1583-1587) large backs. Among them, the Last Supper, permeated with swift drama; imbued with elegiac dreaminess and a subtle sense of the merging of the human soul with the world of nature, “Mary of Egypt in the Desert” (lower hall); full of hidden tension and anxiety "The Temptation of Christ"; the formidably majestic “Moses cutting water from a stone”, showing the tense struggle of a titan with the elemental forces of a hostile nature.

In some of the works of the San Rocco cycle, the folk underlying basis of Tintoretto's work comes out especially clearly. This is his "Adoration of the Shepherds". The plebeian situation of a two-tier barn, typical for peasant farms of a terra-farm, captured from life, is characteristic (on the floor of the upper tier, where hay was stored for livestock, Maria and the baby took shelter). At the same time, the unusual lighting, the agitation of the movements of the shepherds bringing their modest gifts transform this scene, revealing the inner significance of the event.

The appeal to the image of large masses of people as the protagonist of the work is typical of a number of other works of Tintoretto of the last period.

So, in the last period of his work, he creates for the Doge's Palace and Venice one of the first historical paintings in the proper sense of the word - "The Battle of Dawn" (c. 1585). On a huge canvas that fills an entire wall, Tintoretto depicts crowds engulfed in the fury of battle. However, in The Battle of Dawn, Tintoretto does not seek to give a kind of land map of battles, as the masters of the 17th century sometimes did later. He is more concerned with the transmission of the diverse rhythms of battle. In the picture, either groups of archers throwing arrows, then horsemen who have come down in battle, then crowds of infantrymen slowly moving in the attack, then a group of artillerymen, dragging a heavy cannon with tension, alternate. The flash of red and gold banners, the heavy puffs of gunpowder smoke, the swift years of arrows, the dull flickering of light and shadow convey the dramatic brightness and complex polyphony of the roar of the unfolding battle. It is no coincidence that Tintoretto Surikov, the great master of depicting folk life, a complex, many-sided human collective, fell in love with him so much.

His "Paradise" (after 1588) also belongs to the later period - a huge composition occupying the entire end wall of the grandiose main hall of the Doge's Palace. The picture is written in detail rather casually and very much darkened from time to time. An idea of the original pictorial character of this composition can be given by its large sketch kept in the Louvre.

"Paradise" and in particular the "Battle of Dawn" by Tintoretto, of course, do not formally conflict with the impressively festive ensemble of the Doge's Palace, glorifying the magnificent power of patrician Venice already going to sunset. And yet, their images, feelings and ideas that they evoke are much broader than an apology for the fading greatness of the Venetian power, and, in essence, are imbued with a sense of the complex significance of life and experiences, if not of the people in our understanding, then of the people's crowd, the people's mass.

Like the last bright flash of a dying lamp, the gift of the master, standing at the end of his long journey, is revealed in The Gathering of Manna and The Last Supper in the Church of San Giorgio Maggiore (1594).

These last works of his are distinguished by a complex atmosphere of agitated feelings, enlightened sadness, deep meditation. The dramatic sharpness of the clashes, the stormy movements of the masses, the sharp outbursts of impetuous passion - everything appears here in a softened, clarified embodiment.

At the same time, the outwardly relatively restrained movements of the apostles who partake of Christ are full of enormous concentrated inner spiritual strength. And although they are sitting at a table that goes diagonally into the depths of a long, low room, and the foreground shows the figures of energetically moving servants and maids, the viewer’s attention is riveted on the apostles. The light, gradually growing, dispersing the darkness, flooding Christ and his disciples with its magical phosphorescent radiance, it is this light that singles them out, focuses our attention on them.

The flickering symphony of light creates a feeling of magic that transforms a seemingly ordinary event into a miracle of revealing the excited spiritual communication of a small group of people who are faithful to each other, to the teacher and to some great idea. Streams of dazzling radiance exude modest copper lamps suspended from the ceiling; swirling vaporous light clouds condense into incorporeal, ghostly images of angels, a fabulously bizarre light glides over the surface of the shimmering, lit up with a quiet colored glow of ordinary objects of the modest decoration of the room.

In The Gathering of Manna, a gentle shining silvery-greenish light envelops the bright distances, gently glides over the bodies and clothes of the figures of the foreground and middle ground, as if revealing the beauty and poetry of people engaged in simple ordinary labors: a spinner at the machine tool, a blacksmith, laundresses rinsing linen , a peasant driving a mule. And somewhere off to the side, a few women are picking up grains of manna. No, but the manna that feeds the people falls from heaven. The miracle lies elsewhere, in the poetry of labor consecrated by its moral beauty.

In these farewell works of the enlightened genius, Tintoretto, perhaps, is closest to all the masters of the 16th century. approaches Rembrandt, his sense of deep poetry and the significance of the moral world ordinary person. But it is precisely here that the decisive difference between the art of Tintoretto and the great realist of the 17th century is most clearly revealed. Tintoretto is characterized by a desire for wide crowded canvases and an elevated heroic interpretation of the image coming from the tradition of the Renaissance, while Rembrandt's images are full of modest concentration, self-immersion, they seem to involuntarily reveal the beauty of their inner moral world. Streams of light pouring from the big world flood the heroes of Tintorett's compositions with their waves: in Rembrandt - a soft glow, as if exuded by sad, calmly rejoicing, listening to each other people, disperses the deaf darkness of the surrounding space.

Although Tintoretto was not such a born portrait painter as Titian, he left us a large, albeit uneven in quality, portrait gallery. The best of these portraits, of course, are artistically very significant and occupy an important place in the development of the portrait of modern times.

Tintoretto in his portraits strives not so much to reveal, first of all, the unique individuality of a person, but to show how some universal human emotions, feelings, moral problems typical of the time are refracted through the originality of the human individual character. Hence a certain softening in the transfer of traits of individual similarity and character, and at the same time the extraordinary emotional and psychological content of his images.

The originality of Tintorett's portrait style was determined no earlier than the mid-1550s. Thus, the images of earlier portraits, for example, a male portrait (1553; Vienna), are distinguished rather by a great material tangibility, restrained dynamics of gesture and a general indefinite pensive mood of mood than by the tension of their psychological state.

Among these early portraits, perhaps the most interesting is the generational portrait of a Venetian (late 1540s - early 1550s; Dresden Gallery). The general state of noble dreaminess is conveyed here especially subtly and poetically. A touch of affectionate femininity is restrainedly woven into it.

In later portraits, for example, in the portrait of Sebastiano Venier (Vienna) and especially in the Berlin portrait of an old man, the images achieve great spiritual, psychological depth and dramatic power of expression. The characters in Tintoretta's portraits are often seized with deep anxiety, mournful reflection.

Such is his self-portrait (1588; Louvre). From the vague darkness of an indefinitely unsteady background, the mournful, haggard face of the old master, illuminated by a restless, uncertain, as if fading light, emerges. It is devoid of any representativeness or physical beauty, it is the face of an old man tired, exhausted by heavy thoughts and moral suffering. But the inner spiritual beauty, the beauty of the moral world of a person, transforms his face, gives it extraordinary strength and significance. At the same time, this portrait does not have that feeling of intimate connection, a quiet intimate conversation between the viewer and the person being portrayed, or the viewer's participation in the hero's spiritual life, which we feel in the portraits of the late Rembrandt. The gaze of Tintoretto's wide-open mournful eyes is directed at the viewer, but he glides past him, he is turned into an infinite distance or, what is the same, inside himself. At the same time, in the absence of any external gestures (this is a bust portrait, where the hands are not depicted), the restless rhythm of light and shadow, the almost feverish nervousness of the stroke with exceptional force convey a feeling of inner turmoil, a restless outburst of thought and feeling. This is a tragic image of a wise old man, seeking and not finding an answer to his mournful questions turned to life, to fate.

In extremely close connection with architecture, sculpture also developed in Venice. The sculptors of Venice more often performed work directly related to the monumental decoration of magnificent Venetian buildings than with work on an independent sculptural monument or easel sculpture. It is no coincidence that the greatest master of Venetian sculpture was the architect Jacopo Ansovino (1486-1570).

Naturally, in his monumental and decorative works, the sculptor Sansovino subtly felt the intention of Sansovino the architect. Such synthetic works, where the master acts both as a sculptor and as an architect, for example, the beautiful logetta in St. Mark's Square (1537), are distinguished by an amazing harmonious unity of noble festive architectural forms and the reliefs and round statues decorating them.

In general, the art of Sansovino, especially in the early period of his work, is closely connected with the art of the High Renaissance. The peculiarity of his early works is the subtle feeling of the soft play of chiaroscuro, the free fluidity of rhythm, which connect the plasticity of Sansovino even before he moved to Venice with the general tendencies characteristic of Venetian art as a whole. These, so to speak, picturesque features of Sansovino's plasticity are clearly reflected for the first time in his statue of the young Bacchus (1518), located in the Florentine National Museum.

Sansovino settled in Venice after 1527, where all further creative life artist. During this period, on the one hand, there is an increase in pictorial trends in Sansovino's multi-figure relief compositions, for example, in his bronze reliefs dedicated to the life of St. Mark (Cathedral of San Marco in Venice). Despite the fact that these reliefs are built on the principle of perspective relief, the sharp play of chiaroscuro, the violation of the front plane of the relief by bold angles, the image of the cloudy sky on the back plane of the relief give a pronounced picturesqueness and emotional dynamics to these works. In the later reliefs for the bronze doors of the sacristy of the Cathedral of San Marco, Sansovino consistently refers to the techniques of perspective relief, and in order to more strongly convey a sense of the depth of space, he makes the surface of the doors concave. Essentially speaking, the last reliefs in their emotional "painting" to some extent echo the works of the late Titian and early Tintoretto.

In statuary plastic, the mature Sansovino, continuing to create images full of heroic beauty and grandeur, seeks to connect them as actively as possible with the surrounding spatial environment. Hence the “painterly” freedom of angles, hence the desire, when he decorates the facade of a building with several statues, to interconnect these statues with a common rhythm, a kind of compositional roll-call of the motives of the juxtaposed movements. Although each of them is placed in a separate niche and, it would seem, isolated from one another, some common rhythmic thrill, some kind of emotional echo binds them into a kind of single emotional-imaginative whole.

In the late period of Sansovino's work, that feeling of fracture, rhythmic unrest, which is generally characteristic of the Italian late Renaissance, finds expression in his works. Such, in particular, is the image of the young, exhausted by internal contradictions, John the Baptist.

Alessandro Vittoria (1525-1608) worked from the age of twenty in Venice. He was a student of Sansovino and participated with him in the implementation of large monumental and decorative works (he owns the caryatids of the gates of the Sansovino Library, 1555, the statue of Mercury in the Doge's Palace, 1559). Worthy of mention is the gravestone of Doge Venier (1555; Venice). Among his works of the late period, imbued with Mannerist influences, John the Baptist (1583; Treviso) stands out. His portraits are noteworthy, distinguished by their liveliness of characteristics and effective composition. Such are the busts of Marcantonio Grimani, Tommaso Rangone and others. Vittoria was also the creator of a remarkable series of small bronze sculptures that adorned the rich secular interiors of that time, as well as churches, such as, for example, his elegantly whimsical candelabra of the Chapel del Rosario. His works of this kind are closely connected with the general development of Italian applied art.

Popular in category: