Renaissance art. Culture and art of the renaissance - abstract Work of art in the renaissance essay

The renaissance era refers, according to some sources, to the XIV-XVII centuries. according to others - to the XV - XVIII centuries. There is also a point of view not to single out the revival as an era, but to consider it as the late Middle Ages. This is the period of the crisis of feudalism and the development of bourgeois relations in the economy and ideology. The term renaissance (Renaissance) was introduced in order to show that in this era the best values ​​and ideals of antiquity, destroyed by the barbarians (architecture, sculpture, painting, philosophy, literature), were revived, but this term was interpreted very conditionally, because. You can't restore the whole past. This is not a revival of the past in its pure form - it is the creation of a new one using many of the spiritual and material values ​​of antiquity. In addition, it was impossible to cross out the values ​​of the nine centuries of the Middle Ages, especially the spiritual values ​​associated with Christianity. The Renaissance is a synthesis of ancient and medieval traditions, but at a higher level. At each stage of this era, a certain direction was dominant. If at first it was "Prometheism", i.e. an ideology that assumes the equality of all people by nature, as well as the recognition of private interest and individualism. Further, new social theories appear that reflect the spirit of the time, and the theory of humanism occupies the leading role. The humanism of the renaissance era is focused on freethinking and, accordingly, on a fair structure of social and public life, which is most often supposed to be achieved on a democratic basis within the framework of a republican system. Views on religion are also undergoing changes. Natural philosophy is becoming popular again and "panthemism" (a doctrine that denies God as a person and brings him closer to nature) is becoming widespread. The last period of the Renaissance is the era of the Reformation, completing this greatest progressive upheaval in the development of European culture. Usually, the historical significance of the Renaissance is associated with the ideas and artistic achievements of humanism, which proclaimed, in contrast to medieval Christian asceticism, the greatness and dignity of man. His right to rational activity, to enjoyment and happiness in earthly life. Humanists saw in man the most beautiful and perfect creation of God. They extended to man the creation, creative abilities inherent in God, saw his destiny in the knowledge and transformation of the world, adorned with his labor, in the development of sciences and crafts. Starting in Germany, the Reformation swept a number of European countries and led to the falling away from the Catholic Church of England, Scotland, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, the Netherlands, Finland, Switzerland, the Czech Republic, Hungary, and partly Germany. This is a broad religious and socio-political movement that began at the beginning of the 16th century in Germany and aimed at transforming the Christian religion.

The renaissance era refers, according to some sources, to the XIV-XVII centuries. according to others - to the XV - XVIII centuries. There is also a point of view not to single out the revival as an era, but to consider it as the late Middle Ages. This is the period of the crisis of feudalism and the development of bourgeois relations in the economy and ideology. The term renaissance (Renaissance) was introduced in order to show that in this era the best values ​​and ideals of antiquity, destroyed by the barbarians (architecture, sculpture, painting, philosophy, literature), were revived, but this term was interpreted very conditionally, because. You can't restore the whole past. This is not a revival of the past in its pure form - it is the creation of a new one using many of the spiritual and material values ​​of antiquity. In addition, it was impossible to cross out the values ​​of the nine centuries of the Middle Ages, especially the spiritual values ​​associated with Christianity. The Renaissance is a synthesis of ancient and medieval traditions, but at a higher level. At each stage of this era, a certain direction was dominant. If at first it was "Prometheism", i.e. an ideology that assumes the equality of all people by nature, as well as the recognition of private interest and individualism. Further, new social theories appear that reflect the spirit of the time, and the theory of humanism occupies the leading role. Renaissance humanism is focused on freethinking and, accordingly, on a fair arrangement of public and state life, which is most often supposed to be achieved on a democratic basis within the framework of a republican system. Views on religion are also undergoing changes. Natural philosophy is becoming popular again and "panthemism" (a doctrine that denies God as a person and brings him closer to nature) is becoming widespread. The last period of the Renaissance is the Reformation, completing this greatest progressive revolution in the development of European culture. Usually, the historical significance of the Renaissance is associated with the ideas and artistic achievements of humanism, which proclaimed, in contrast to medieval Christian asceticism, the greatness and dignity of man. His right to rational activity, to enjoyment and happiness in earthly life. Humanists saw in man the most beautiful and perfect creation of God. They extended to man the creation, creative abilities inherent in God, saw his destiny in the knowledge and transformation of the world, adorned with his labor, in the development of sciences and crafts. Starting in Germany, the Reformation swept a number of European countries and led to the falling away from the Catholic Church of England, Scotland, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, the Netherlands, Finland, Switzerland, the Czech Republic, Hungary, and partly Germany. This is a broad religious and socio-political movement that began at the beginning of the 16th century in Germany and aimed at transforming the Christian religion.

Control work in the discipline: "Culturology"

on the topic: "Culture of the Renaissance (Renaissance)"

Completed:

Student

Saint Petersburg 2008

Introduction

1. Culture of the Renaissance

2. The art of renaissance

3. Poetry of the Renaissance

4. Theater of the Renaissance

Conclusion

Introduction

The Renaissance is a very important stage in the development of European culture. Chronologically included in medieval history European nations that arose in the depths of feudal culture, the Renaissance opens up a fundamentally new cultural era, marking the beginning of the struggle of the bourgeoisie for dominance in society.

At this early stage of development, bourgeois ideology was a progressive ideology and reflected the interests not only of the bourgeoisie itself, but also of all other classes and estates that were subordinate to the feudal structure of relations that was becoming obsolete.

The Renaissance is a period of rampant Inquisition, a split in the Catholic Church, brutal wars and popular uprisings that took place against the backdrop of the formation of bourgeois individualism.

The culture of the Renaissance originated in the second half of the 14th century. And it continued to develop throughout the 15th and 16th centuries, gradually covering all the countries of Europe one after another. The emergence of the Renaissance culture was prepared by a number of pan-European and local historical conditions.

In the XIV - XV centuries. early capitalist, commodity-money relations were born. Italy was one of the first to embark on this path, which was largely facilitated by: a high level of urbanization, the subordination of the countryside to the city, the wide scope of handicraft production, financial affairs, oriented not only to the domestic, but also to the foreign market.

The formation of a new culture was also prepared by public consciousness, by changes in the moods of various social strata of the early bourgeoisie. The asceticism of church morality in the era of active commercial, industrial and financial entrepreneurship was seriously at odds with the real life practice of these social strata with their desire for worldly goods, hoarding, craving for wealth. In the psychology of the merchants, the craft elite, the features of rationalism, prudence, courage in business endeavors, awareness of personal abilities and wide opportunities clearly appeared. There was a morality that justified "honest enrichment", the joys of worldly life, the crown of success of which was considered the prestige of the family, respect for fellow citizens, glory in the memory of descendants.

The term "Renaissance" (Renaissance) appeared in the 16th century. The term "Renaissance" originally meant not so much the name of the entire era, but the very moment of the emergence of a new art, which was usually timed to coincide with the beginning of the 16th century. Only later did the concept acquire a broader meaning and began to designate the era when in Italy, and then in other countries, a culture opposed to feudalism was formed and flourished. Engels described the Renaissance as "the greatest progressive upheaval of all that mankind has experienced up to that time."

1. Culture of the Renaissance

XIII - XVI centuries were a time of great changes in the economy, political and cultural life of European countries. The rapid growth of cities and the development of crafts, and later the emergence of manufactory production, the rise of world trade, which involved ever more remote areas in its orbit, the gradual deployment of the main trade routes from the Mediterranean to the north, which ended after the fall of Byzantium and the great geographical discoveries of the late 15th and early 16th centuries changed the face of medieval Europe. Almost everywhere cities are now coming to the fore. Once the most powerful forces of the medieval world - the empire and the papacy - were in deep crisis. In the 16th century, the decaying Holy Roman Empire of the German nation became the scene of the first two anti-feudal revolutions - the Great Peasants' War in Germany and the Netherlands Uprising. The transitional nature of the era, the process of liberation from medieval fetters taking place in all areas of life, and at the same time the still underdevelopment of emerging capitalist relations could not but affect the characteristics of the artistic culture and aesthetic thought of that time.

All changes in the life of society were accompanied by a broad renewal of culture - the flourishing of natural and exact sciences, literature in national languages ​​and, in particular, fine arts. Originating in the cities of Italy, this renewal then captured other European countries. The advent of printing opened unprecedented opportunities for the dissemination of literary and scientific works, and more regular and closer communication between countries contributed to the widespread penetration of new artistic movements.

This does not mean that the Middle Ages retreated before new trends: traditional ideas were preserved in the mass consciousness. The church resisted new ideas, using a medieval means - the Inquisition. idea of ​​freedom human personality continued to exist in a society divided into classes. The feudal form of dependence of the peasants did not completely disappear, and in some countries (Germany, Central Europe) there was a return to serfdom. The feudal system showed quite a lot of vitality. Each European country lived it out in its own way and within its own chronological framework. Capitalism for a long time existed as a way of life, covering only part of the production in both the city and the countryside. However, the patriarchal medieval slowness began to recede into the past.

The great geographical discoveries played a huge role in this breakthrough. In 1456, Portuguese ships reached Cape Verde, and in 1486, the expedition of B. Diaz circled the African continent from the south, passing the Cape of Good Hope. Mastering the coast of Africa, the Portuguese simultaneously sent ships to the open ocean, to the west and southwest. As a result, previously unknown Azores and Madeira Islands appeared on the maps. In 1492, a great event happened - H. Columbus, an Italian who moved to Spain, crossed the Atlantic Ocean in search of a way to India and landed near the Bahamas, discovering a new continent - America. In 1498, the Spanish traveler Vasco da Gama, rounding Africa, successfully brought his ships to the shores of India. From the 16th century Europeans are penetrating into China and Japan, of which they previously had only the most vague idea. From 1510, the conquest of America begins. In the 17th century Australia was discovered. The idea of ​​the shape of the earth has changed: the round-the-world trip of the Portuguese F. Magellan (1519-1522) confirmed the conjecture that it has the shape of a ball.

2. The art of renaissance

The art of antiquity is one of the foundations of the artistic culture of the Renaissance. Representatives of the Renaissance find in ancient culture something that is consonant with their own aspirations - commitment to reality, cheerfulness, admiration for beauty. earthly world before the greatness of the heroic feat. At the same time, having taken shape in different historical conditions, having absorbed the traditions of the Romanesque and Gothic styles, the art of the Renaissance bears the stamp of its time. Compared with the art of classical antiquity, the spiritual world of man is becoming more complex and multifaceted.

At this time, the Italian society begins to take an active interest in the culture of Ancient Greece and Rome, the manuscripts of ancient writers are being searched for, so the writings of Cicero and Titus Livius were found.

Drawing the ideal of the human personality, the figures of the Renaissance emphasized its kindness, strength, heroism, the ability to create and create a new world around itself. The high idea of ​​a person was inextricably linked with the idea of ​​his free will: a person chooses his own life path and is responsible for his own destiny. The value of a person began to be determined by his personal merits, and not by his position in society: “Nobility, like a kind of radiance emanating from virtue and illuminating its owners, no matter what origin they are.” (From The Book of Nobility by Poggio Bracciolini, 15th-century Italian humanist).

The Renaissance is a time of great discoveries, great masters and their outstanding works. It is marked by the appearance of a whole galaxy of artists-scientists, among whom the first place belongs to Leonardo da Vinci. It was the time of titanism, which manifested itself both in art and in life. Suffice it to recall the heroic images created by Michelangelo and their creator (poet, artist, sculptor). People like Michelangelo or Leonardo da Vinci were real examples of limitless possibilities person.

Fine art in the Renaissance reaches an unprecedented flowering. This is due to the economic upsurge, with a huge shift that has taken place in the minds of people who have turned to the cult of earthly life and beauty. In the Renaissance, the objective image of the world was seen through the eyes of a person, so one of the important problems faced by artists was the problem of space.

Artists began to see the world differently: flat, as if incorporeal images of medieval art gave way to three-dimensional, relief, convex space. Rafael Santi (1483-1520), Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519), Michelangelo Buonarroti (1475-1564) sang with their creativity the perfect personality, in which physical and spiritual beauty merge together in accordance with the requirements of ancient aesthetics. Renaissance artists rely on the principles of imitation of nature, use perspective, the rule of the "golden section" in the construction human body. Leonardo da Vinci characterizes painting as "the greatest of sciences". The principle of “conformity to nature”, the desire to reproduce the depicted object as accurately as possible, as well as the interest in individuality inherent in this period, impart subtle psychologism to the works of the Renaissance masters.

Artists' works become signatures, i.e. underlined by the author. More and more self-portraits appear. An undoubted sign of a new self-awareness is the fact that artists are increasingly avoiding direct orders, giving themselves to work from an inner impulse. By the end of the 14th century, the external position of the artist in society also changed significantly. Artists are beginning to receive all sorts of public recognitions, positions, honorary and monetary sinecures. And Michelangelo, for example, is elevated to such a height that, without fear of offending the crowned bearers, he refuses the high honors offered to him. The title "divine" is enough for him. He insists that all titles be omitted in letters to him, and they simply write "Michelangelo Buonarotti." The genius has a name. The title is a burden for him, because it is associated with inevitable circumstances and, therefore, at least with a partial loss of that very freedom from everything that hinders his creativity. But the logical limit to which the artist of the Renaissance gravitated was the acquisition of complete personal independence, assuming, of course, primarily creative freedom.

If Michelangelo can be called the most brilliant Renaissance artist, then Leonardo is the greatest idea of ​​​​the Renaissance artist. Michelangelo materialized the spirit, and Leonardo spiritualized nature. If Leonardo and Michelangelo can be imagined as 2 poles of the Renaissance, then Raphael can be called its middle. It was his work that most fully expressed all the principles of the Renaissance, it fit within the Renaissance. The art of Raphael for all time has become a symbol of harmony, embodied it in itself.

In the art of the Renaissance, man became a real and independent value. In architecture, this manifests itself not only in the humanization of the proportions of buildings, but also in the creation of floor ideas. In architecture, the appeal to the classical tradition played a particularly important role. It manifested itself not only in the rejection of Gothic forms and the revival of the ancient order system, but also in the classical proportionality of proportions, in the development of a centric type of buildings in temple architecture with an easily visible interior space. Especially a lot of new things were created in the field of civil architecture. In the Renaissance, multi-storey city buildings (town halls, houses of merchant guilds, universities, warehouses, markets, etc.) get a more elegant look, a type of city palace (palazzo) appears - the dwelling of a wealthy burgher, as well as a type of country villa. Issues related to the planning of cities are being resolved in a new way, urban centers are being reconstructed. The attitude towards architecture as a manifestation of individual skill is being formed.

In music, the development of vocal and instrumental polyphony continues. Particularly noticeable is the Dutch polyphonic school that developed in the 15th century, which played a significant role in professional European music for two centuries, until the advent of opera (composers J. Despres, O. Lasso). New genres appear in secular music: frottole - a song of folk origin in Italy; villanisco - a song on any topic, from lyrical and pastoral to historical and moralizing - in Spain; madrigal - a type of song lyrics performed in the native language. At the same time, some musical figures justify the advantages of monadic music, as opposed to the passion for polyphony. Genres appear that contribute to the establishment of homophony (monophony) - solo song, cantata, oratorio. Music theory is also developing.

3. Poetry of the Renaissance

Speaking about the Renaissance as a great historical upheaval, F. Engels, in the preface to The Dialectic of Nature, emphasized that during this upheaval nations were formed in Europe, national literatures were born, forged new type person. This era "needed titans" - and "gave birth to titans in strength of thought, passion and character, but in versatility and learning."

It is difficult to find a major cultural figure of the Renaissance who would not write poetry. Talented poets were Raphael, Michelangelo and Leonardo da Vinci; poems were written by Giordano Bruno, Thomas More, Ulrich von Hutten, Erasmus of Rotterdam. The art of writing poetry was taught by Ronsard to the princes of France. Poems were composed by popes and Italian princes. Even the extravagant adventuress Mary Stuart dropped graceful poetic lines, saying goodbye to France, where her cheerful youth flowed. Lyric poets were prominent prose writers and playwrights. Obviously, the great upheaval had its own rhythm, clearly captured by talented people, and their pulse beat. In visible chaos historical events that fell on Europe - in wars, uprisings, great campaigns to distant lands, in new and new discoveries - that "music of the spheres" sounded, that voice of history that is always intelligible in revolutionary epochs to people who are able to hear it. These new rhythms of life sounded with great force in the poetry that was born on new European languages, which in many cases acquired swap laws precisely in connection with the activities of poets.

important and common moment for all European poetry of the Renaissance was that it broke away from singing art, and soon from musical accompaniment, without which the folk lyrics of the Middle Ages, as well as the art of knightly poets - troubadours and minnesingers, were inconceivable. At the cost of the efforts of bold reformers, poetry became an area of ​​strictly individual creativity, in which a new personality, born in the storms of the Renaissance, revealed its relationship with other people, with society, with nature. Collections of Italian poets of the XIV-XV centuries are still called in the old way: "Songbooks" - "Canzoniere", but poems are already being printed to be said aloud or read to oneself, for the sake of an increasing tribe of poetry lovers who forgot the whole world over a book of poems, like young heroes " Divine Comedy» Paolo and Francesca.

However, the poetry of modern times helped to completely break the connection with the song, especially folk. Moreover, it was precisely in the era of the early Renaissance that a mighty wave of folk poetry, mainly song poetry, swept through all the countries of Europe. It can be said that the flowering of lyric poetry at that time began precisely with the poetry of the masses of the people - peasant and urban, who everywhere in Europe felt how their strength was growing, their impact on the life of society. The Renaissance was the era of great popular movements that undermined the foundations of the Middle Ages, heralding the coming of a new time.

The deep connections between popular revolt and criticism of feudal ideology are revealed in The Vision of Peter the Plowman, a poem of the 1470s attributed to the obscure loser William Langland and replete with echoes of folklore. The bearer of moral truth here is a worker, a plowman. In the XIV century, obviously, the plot of the main backbone of the ballads about the rebel and the people's protector Robin Hood was formed, which became a favorite folk reading as soon as the printing presses started working in England.

The ballad's original preserve, where it still exists as a living poetic genre, has become the numerous archipelagos of the North Atlantic with their mixed population of predominantly Danish origin. The Danish renaissance ballad, samples of which are included in this volume, has become a classic genre of northern European folk poetry.

Since the middle of the 15th century, printing presses have been throwing away many publications designed for a wide range of readers, samples of folk poetry - songs, romances, riddles, as well as "folk books" (among them - a book about Til Ulenspiegel and a book about Dr. Faust). They are processed and used by humanist writers, even those who are very far from the movement of the masses, but who feel a craving for popular sources. Let's look through the plays of Shakespeare, his contemporaries and predecessors. How many folk ballads we will find in the very heart of their designs; in Desdemona's song about willow-willow, in Ophelia's song about Valentine's Day, in the atmosphere of the Ardennes forest ("Much Ado About Nothing"), where Jacques wanders, so reminiscent of another forest - Sherwood, the den of the shooter Robin Hood and his cheerful green brethren. But, before getting into the inkwells of writers, these motifs walked around the squares of English cities, at rural fairs and roadside taverns, were performed by wandering singers, and frightened the devout Puritans.

The poet of that era had another source of inspiration: classical antiquity. Passionate love for knowledge drove the poet on long journeys to anatomical theaters, to forges and laboratories, but also to libraries. Until the 15th century, the educated European knew some works of Latin literature that had survived from ancient Rome, in turn, learned a lot from the culture of ancient Greece. But Greek culture itself became widely known later, especially after the 15th century, when Byzantium, the last pillar of medieval Greek civilization in the Middle East, collapsed in the struggle against the Turks. Thousands of Greek refugees who poured from the lands conquered by the Turks to the Christian countries of Europe carried with them the knowledge of their native language and art, many became translators at European courts, teachers Greek in European universities, as advisers at large printing houses that published the ancient classics in the original and translations.

Antiquity became, as it were, the second world in which the poets of the Renaissance lived. They rarely guessed that the culture of antiquity was built on the sweat and blood of slaves; they imagined the people of antiquity as an analogy to the people of their time, and so they portrayed them. An example of this is the rebellious mob in Shakespeare's tragedies, "antique" peasants and artisans on the canvases of Renaissance artists, or shepherds and shepherdesses in their poems and poems.

Gradually, two trends emerged in the stream of literary development of that era: one, in the struggle for the formation of a new national literature, was guided by ancient samples, preferred their experience of folk tradition, taught young people to write “according to Horace” or “according to Aristotle”. Sometimes, in their desire to be closer to antique models, these "learned" poets even discarded rhyme, which was an indisputable conquest of European medieval poetry. Representatives of another direction - among them Shakespeare and Lone de Vega - highly appreciating ancient literature and often extracting plots and images from its treasuries for their works, nevertheless defended for the writer not only the right, but also the duty, first of all, to study and reproduce in poetry living life. Hamlet talks about this with actors, in relation to stage skills, Lone de Vega repeats the same thing in his treatise “On the New Art of Writing Comedies”. It is Lipe who directly expresses the idea of ​​the need to reckon with the folk tradition in art. But Shakespeare, in his sonnets, talking about a certain fellow writer who challenged his poetic fame, opposes his "learned", "decorated" manner with his own "simple" and "modest" style. Both currents as a whole constituted a single stream of humanistic poetry, and although there were internal contradictions in it, due to different social causes in different countries, the humanist poets opposed those writers of their time who tried to defend the old feudal world, outdated aesthetic norms and old poetic techniques.

The fifteenth century brought a lot of new things to Italian poetry. By this time, patrician families began to gradually seize power in the cities, which from merchant states-communes were transformed into duchies and principalities. The sons of the Florentine rich, for example, the famous banking house of the Medici, flaunted humanistic education, patronized the arts and were themselves no strangers to them. Humanist poets wrote Latin verse with educated readers in mind. Under the pen of such talents as Angelo Poliziano, the cult of gallant knights and beautiful ladies was revived for the needs of the city's nobility. The city-commune, defending its rights from the heavy grip of the Medici house, responded to the emergence of a new aristocratic culture with the rapid development of folk satirical and everyday songs; Pulci sneered at the romantic passion for the feudal past in the heroic poem "Big Morgant". However, in Florence and, in particular, in Ferrara, the capital-fortress of the Dukes d "Este, the love-adventure knightly poem was revived in an updated version. Count Matteo Boiardo, and later, already in the 16th century, the Ferrara poet Ludovico Ariosto narrate in elegant octaves about the unheard-of exploits and adventures of the knight Roland (Orlando), who turned from a stern hero of a medieval epic into an ardent lover distraught with jealousy.Referring to the fantasy of different centuries and peoples, Ariosto created a work in which Don Quixote portends a lot.

The latest contribution to the European poetry of the Renaissance belongs to the poets of the Iberian Peninsula; decisive turn towards a new worldview and new culture occurred here only at the turn of the 15th and 16th centuries, for which there were reasons. First of all, the protracted reconquista, which required the exertion of all the forces of the disunited and often hostile fraternal peoples inhabiting the peninsula. The historical development of Spain proceeded in a peculiar way. Royal power did not have a strong foothold in the Spanish cities, and although it in turn broke the recalcitrant aristocracy and urban communes, there was no real state and national unification: the Spanish kings ruled, relying only on the power of arms and the church inquisition. The discovery of America at the end of the 15th century and the capture of its vast areas with gold and silver mines for a short time led to an unprecedented enrichment of Spain, and then to a fall in gold in price and a catastrophic impoverishment of the country, where the pursuit of easy money replaced the concern for the development of crafts and arable farming. The Spanish state began to lose its political power, at the end of the 16th century the Netherlands fell away from it, in 1588 the Invincible Armada, the Spanish fleet sent to conquer England, was defeated. There was a reaction. Crowds of beggars and vagabonds stretched along the sun-scorched fields and roads of the country, which, having become the kingdom of adventurers and marauders, remained largely a feudal country.

And yet, a brilliant Renaissance culture flourished in Spain. Already the literature of the late Middle Ages was rich and varied here. Aragonese, Castilian, Andalusian traditions merged into something new, absorbing the influences of Galicia with its school of troubadours, and Catalonia, and especially Portugal, which already in the 15th century began to fight for new sea routes and generally overtook Spain in the field of cultural development. Close cultural ties with Spain were strengthened by half a century (1580 - 1640) of Portugal's subjugation to the Spanish crown. Very important for the literatures of the Iberian Peninsula was their centuries-old proximity to the literatures of the Arab world. Through this neighborhood, Spanish poets received many motives and images, especially noticeable in the romances of the 15th-16th centuries. On the other hand, Spain at that time was closely connected with the Sicilian kingdom, with Venice, kept garrisons and fleets in many cities and harbors of Italy. During its formation, Spanish Renaissance poetry experienced the strongest and lasting influence of Italian poetry. (The same applies to the literature of Portugal)

Romantics in any literature of Western Europe were successors and students of the masters of the Renaissance. Her full-blooded, humane art served as a model for numerous progressive poets of the 20th century. The artist of socialist realism, Johannes R. Becher, found it necessary to include in his studies on modern literature "A Small Doctrine of the Sonnet" - a study containing a careful analysis of the six linguistic aspects of the sonnet: French, German, English, Italian, Portuguese and Spanish.

Dante, Shakespeare, Lope de Vega, Cervantes, published in many languages ​​of the peoples of the USSR, became not only our contemporaries, but also our comrades-in-arms. Like the paintings of the Renaissance artists, dramaturgy, songs and poems of the Renaissance poets entered the cultural life of the Soviet people.

One of the titans of the Renaissance - Giordano Bruno - called his book: "Dialogue on Heroic Enthusiasm." This name very accurately defines the spiritual atmosphere of the Renaissance, captured in the poetry of the XIV - XVI centuries. This poetry revealed the beauty of man, the richness of his inner life and the innumerable variety of his sensations, showed the magnificence of the earthly world, proclaimed the human right to earthly happiness. The literature of the Renaissance raised the calling of the poet to the lofty mission of serving humanity.

4. Theater of the Renaissance

Theater is the art of presenting dramatic works on stage. Such a definition of this concept gives Dictionary Ozhegov.

The Renaissance theater is one of the brightest and most significant phenomena in the history of the entire world culture; it is a powerful source of European theatrical art - for all time. The new theater was born from the need to pour young energy into action. And if you ask yourself the question, in what sphere of art this action should have poured out, this is a sea of ​​​​fun, then the answer is clear: of course, in the sphere of the theater. The carnival game could no longer remain at its former stage of spontaneous amateur performance and entered the shores of art, becoming creativity enriched with the experience of ancient and new literatures.

In Italy - for the first time in Europe - professional actors took the stage and amazed the world with a bright, strong game, born right there, in front of the viewer, and enchanting with their freedom, excitement, brilliance and wit.

So in Italy the beginning of the theatrical art of the new time was laid. It happened in the middle of the XVI century.

The Renaissance theater reached its peak in England. Now he truly absorbed all spheres of life, penetrated into the depths of being. A mighty cohort of talents rose as if from the ground. And the main miracle of the century was a man from Stratford who came to London to write plays for the Globe Theatre. The loud name of the theater was justified - the world really opened up in Shakespeare's works: the historical distances of the past were visible, the main truths of the present century were clarified, and miraculously, through the veil of time, the contours of the future were visible.

In the majestic era of the Renaissance, in the era of Dante, Leonardo and Michelangelo, a small flag flying over the Globe heralded a grandiose accomplishment. The genius of Shakespeare brought together everything previously achieved in drama and on stage. Now, in two or three hours, one could see worlds and epochs on six or eight square meters.

A truly great theatre. The new theater was born in Italy. This birth cannot be attributed to a strictly defined date, name or work. There was a long, multilateral process - both at the "top" and at the "bottom" of society. It gave a historically complete result only after the necessary trinity of drama, stage and large audience.

About the first experiments of the Renaissance dramaturgy, it can be said with all certainty that they were creations of the pen, but by no means of the stage. Emerged from the maternal womb of literature, the humanistic drama, if it left the bookshelves, then only occasionally and without much hope of stage success. And uncomplicated common folk farces and improvisations of carnival masks attracted crowds of spectators, although they did not possess even a tenth of the literary merits of written plays. It was at the carnival that the source of commedia dell'arte - this true progenitor of the new European theater - scored. It must be said that at an early stage in the development of the new theater, the mutual alienation of stage and drama went to both. The drama turned out to be free from the primitives of the farcical stage, and the stage, that is, the performing arts, devoid of drama and left to itself, got the opportunity to intensively develop its own creative resources.

Pomponio's learned studio became the first gathering of amateurs who played the comedies of Plautus. Characters who have been in a position for many centuries literary heroes, again walked across the stage (although, probably, not very confidently yet).

The news of the discovery of the Roman scientist soon spread throughout Italy. Among other spectacles at the courts, it became fashionable to show the comedies of Plautus. The fashion was so great that Plautus was played in Latin in the Vatican. However, not everyone understood Latin, so in the late 70s, the humanist Batista Guarini translated the works of Plautus and Terentius into Italian.

Successful development comedy was determined by the fact that the traditional ancient scheme - the struggle of a young man for the possession of his beloved, guarded by strict parents, and the tricks of evasive and energetic servants - turned out to be convenient for lively sketches of modern life.

During the carnival of 1508 in the Ferrara Palace, the poet Ludovico Ariosto showed his Comedy of the Chest.

And it was as if the floodgates had broken through, holding back the life-giving stream for a long time. The following year, Ariosto's second comedy, The Changelings, appears, and in 1513 Cardinal Bibbiena demonstrates his Calandria in Urbino. In 1514, the most astute Niccolo Machiavelli, the former secretary of the Florentine Republic, wrote the best play of the era - Mandrake.

Italian comedy The 16th century developed a certain standard for dynamic plots: the same situations were constantly repeated here with substitute children, with girls in disguise, the tricks of servants, the comic fiasco of old people in love.

Italian humanists were intensively studying the legacy of Seneca; then the Greek tragedians - Sophocles and Euripides - fell into the orbit of their interests. Under the influence of these ancient authors, the Italian tragedy of the Renaissance was born, the first example of which was Sofonisba by Giangiorgio Trissino (1515).

Trissino was a deep connoisseur of the ancient Greek theater. Composing his own tragedy, he was guided by the works of Sophocles and Euripides. In "Sofonisba" all the components of the ancient tragedy were used - the choir, confidants, messengers, there was no division into acts, the laws of three unities and three actors were observed. But in the tragedy there was no main thing - a significant social theme, the dynamics of passions, a holistic action.

The modern audience was interested in the tragic genre either in terms of a purely academic, or with the expectation of finding food for "shocks" here.

Such food, the Italian tragedy gave in abundance.

The new tragedy sought to "capture the spirit" of the audience. The father killed the children of his daughter, born of a secret marriage, and offered her their heads and hands on a platter, the shocked daughter killed her father and stabbed herself (“Orbecca” by G. Cinthio, 1541). The wife, abandoned by her husband, forced her rival to kill the children he had adopted from him, after which she killed her and sent the dead heads to her husband; the husband, in turn, beheaded his wife's lover. By the end, the hard-hearted spouses were poisoning each other (“Dalida” by L. Groto, 1572).

"Tragedies of Horrors" stunned with their bloody scenes, without awakening thoughts, without raising questions about the meaning of life and the duties of a person.

In an age when comedy was on the decline, and tragedy did not enter the main road of art, the winner pastoral appeared on the dramatic arena.

At first, the pastoral direction received the most vivid expression in poetry - in the works of Boccaccio ("Ameto", "Fiesolan Nymphs") and in the lyrics of the Petrarchists. But soon a new one was born dramatic genre.

If fatal passion dominated in tragedy, and sensual attraction prevailed in comedy, then “pure love” reigned in the pastoral, appearing outside of specific life connections as a kind of poetic ideal.

The theater of the English Renaissance is Shakespeare and his brilliant entourage: Marlowe, Greene, Beaumont, Fletcher, Chapman, Nash, Ben Jonson. But all these last names belong to their age and their nation; Shakespeare, who most profoundly expressed the spirit of his time and the life of his people, belongs to all ages and all peoples.

Shakespeare Theater - it is a kind of synthesis of the culture of the Renaissance. Having identified the most mature stage of this culture, Shakespeare spoke with his age and with the coming centuries, as if on behalf of the entire era of the "greatest progressive upheaval."

Creativity of Shakespeare was the result of the development of the national English theater. At the same time, to a certain extent, it summarized the achievements of all previous poetic, dramatic and stage culture of ancient and modern times. Therefore, in Shakespeare's dramas, one can feel the epic scope of the Homeric plot, and the titanic modeling of the monotragedies of the ancient Greeks, and the whirlwind play of the plots of the Roman comedy. Shakespeare's theater is rich in the high lyricism of the Petrarchist poets. In the works of Shakespeare, the voices of modern humanists are clearly audible, starting from Erasmus of Rotterdam and ending with Montaigne.

The in-depth development of the inherited - that was the most important prerequisite for the birth of a new and most perfect type of Renaissance drama, Shakespeare's drama.

Conclusion

The ideas of humanism are the spiritual basis for the flourishing of Renaissance art. The art of the Renaissance is imbued with the ideals of humanism; it created the image of a beautiful, harmoniously developed person. The Italian humanists demanded freedom for man. “But freedom is in the understanding of the Italian Renaissance,” wrote A.K. Dzhivelegov, - meant a separate person. Humanism proved that a person in his feelings, in his thoughts, in his beliefs is not subject to any guardianship, that there should not be willpower over him, preventing him from feeling and thinking as he wants. In modern science there is no unambiguous understanding of the nature, structure and chronological framework of Renaissance humanism. But, of course, humanism should be considered as the main ideological content of the Renaissance culture, inseparable from the entire course of the historical development of Italy in the era of the beginning of the disintegration of feudal and the emergence of capitalist relations. Humanism was a progressive ideological movement that contributed to the establishment of a means of culture, relying primarily on the ancient heritage. Italian humanism went through a series of stages: formation in the 14th century, a bright heyday of the next century, internal restructuring and gradual declines in the 16th century. The evolution of the Italian Renaissance was closely connected with the development of philosophy, political ideology, science, and other forms of social consciousness and, in turn, had a powerful impact on the artistic culture of the Renaissance.

Revived on an ancient basis, humanitarian knowledge, including ethics, rhetoric, philology, history, turned out to be the main area in the formation and development of humanism, the ideological core of which was the doctrine of man, his place and role in nature and society. This doctrine developed mainly in ethics and was enriched in various areas of the Renaissance culture. Humanistic ethics brought to the fore the problem of man's earthly destiny, the achievement of happiness through his own efforts. Humanists approached the issues of social ethics in a new way, in the solution of which they relied on ideas about the power of man's creative abilities and will, about his wide possibilities for building happiness on earth. They considered the harmony of the interests of the individual and society to be an important prerequisite for success, they put forward the ideal of the free development of the individual and the improvement of the social organism and political orders, which is inextricably linked with it. This gave a pronounced character to many ethical ideas and teachings of the Italian humanists.

Many problems developed in humanistic ethics acquire a new meaning and special relevance in our era, when the moral stimuli of human activity perform an increasingly important social function.

The humanistic worldview became one of the largest progressive conquests of the Renaissance, which had a strong influence on the entire subsequent development of European culture.

The Reformation played an important role in the formation of world civilization. Without proclaiming any specific socio-political ideal, without requiring a reshaping of society in one direction or another, without making any scientific discoveries or achievements in the artistic and aesthetic field, the Reformation changed the consciousness of man, opened up new spiritual horizons for him. A person received the freedom to think independently, freed himself from the guardianship of the church, received the highest sanction for him - a religious sanction that only his own mind and conscience dictate to him how to live. The Reformation contributed to the emergence of a man of bourgeois society - an independent autonomous individual with freedom of moral choice, independent and responsible in his judgments and actions.

List of used literature

1. L.M. Bragina "Social and ethical views of Italian humanists" (second half of the 15th century) MGU Publishing House, 1983

2. From the history of culture of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. Publishing house "Science", M 1976

3. 5 0 biographies of masters of Western European art. Publishing house "Soviet artist", Leningrad 1965

4. Garay E. Problems of the Italian Renaissance. - M., 1996.

5. History of art of foreign countries. - M., 1998.

6. Culturology. History of World Culture: Textbook for High Schools / Ed. prof. A.N. Markova. - M, 1995.

7. Culturology. Theory and History of Culture: Textbook. - M.: society "Knowledge" of Russia, CINO, 1996.

8. Losev L.F. Aesthetics of the Renaissance. - M., 1993.

9. Polikarpov V.S. Lectures on cultural studies. - M .: "Gardarika", "Expert Bureau", 1997.

Renaissance art

Graduate work

Pupil 4 "E" class

Art School No. 2

Galaydy Yury

Introduction ................................................ ................... 3

1. Italian Renaissance....................................3

2. Northern Renaissance...............................................5

3. The Netherlands.............................................. ..........9

Conclusion................................................. ............. 13

Details about the artists:

1.Leonardo da Vinci …………………………………14

2.Rafael Santi…………………………………….19

3. Michelangelo Buonarroti……………………..24

Introduction.

In the Middle Ages in Europe, rapid changes took place in the economic, social and religious spheres of life, which could not but lead to changes in art. At any time of change, a person tries to rethink the world around him anew, there is a painful process of “reassessment of all values”, using the famous expression of F. Nietzsche.

These quests, first of all and most expressively, are manifested in the work of people of art, who, like the thinnest tuning forks, enter into resonance with the unsteady surrounding world and weave a symphony of feelings into their works.

So, in the Middle Ages, Italy, Germany, the Netherlands and France became the focus of such changes. Let's try to figure out what actually happened in these countries in that distant time from us, what thoughts were occupied by the minds of thinkers of bygone days, let's try through works of art to delve into the essence of the occurring phenomena of the time, called "Renaissance".

1. Italian Renaissance.

Due to the transitional nature of the Renaissance, the chronological framework of this historical period is rather difficult to establish. Based on the signs that will be indicated later (humanism, anthropocentrism, modification of the Christian tradition, the revival of antiquity), then the chronology will look like this: Protorenaissance (ducento and trecento - XII-XIII - XIII-XIV centuries), Early Renaissance (quattrocento XIV-XV centuries), High Renaissance (cinquecento XV-XVI centuries).

The Italian Renaissance is not one pan-Italian movement, but a series of either simultaneous or alternating movements in different centers of Italy. The fragmentation of Italy was not the last reason here. The most complete features of the Renaissance manifested themselves in Florence, Rome. Milan, Naples and Venice also experienced this era, but not as intensely as Florence.

The term "Renissance" (Renaissance) was introduced by the thinker and artist of the era itself, Giorgio Vasari ("Biography of famous painters, sculptors and architects"). So he called the time from 1250 to 1550. From his point of view it was time revival of antiquity. For Vasari, antiquity appears ideally.

In the future, the content of the term has evolved. The revival began to mean the emancipation of science and art from theology, a cooling towards Christian ethics, the birth of national literatures, the desire of man for freedom from the restrictions of the Catholic Church. That is, the Renaissance, in essence, began to mean humanism.

Why was there such a clear focus on man in the culture and aesthetics of the Renaissance? From a sociological point of view, urban culture has become the cause of man's independence, his growing self-affirmation. In the city, more than anywhere else, a person discovered the virtues of a normal, ordinary life.

This happened because the townspeople were more independent people than the peasants. Initially, the cities were inhabited by genuine craftsmen, craftsmen, because they, having left the peasant economy, expected to live only by their handicraft skills. Replenished the number of urban residents and enterprising people. Real circumstances forced them to rely only on themselves, formed a new attitude to life.

Simple commodity production also played a significant role in the formation of a special mentality. The feeling of the owner, who both produces and disposes of income himself, certainly also contributed to the formation of a special independent spirit of the first inhabitants of cities.

Italian cities flourished not only for the reasons indicated, but also because of their active participation in transit trade. (The rivalry of cities competing in the foreign market was even one of the reasons for the fragmentation of Italy). In the VIII-IX centuries, the Mediterranean Sea again becomes a place of concentration of trade routes. All coastal residents, according to the French historian F. Braudel, benefited from this. This largely explains that cities that did not have sufficient natural resources, flourished. They connected the coastal countries with each other. Crusades played a special role in the enrichment of cities.

So, urban culture created new people, formed a new attitude to life, created an atmosphere in which great ideas and great works were born. But ideologically, all this was formalized at the elite level. Ordinary residents were far from the ideological formulation of the worldview.

The new emerging worldview of a person needed an ideological support. Antiquity provided such a support. Of course, it was not by chance that the inhabitants of Italy turned to her, because this peninsula, prominent in the Mediterranean Sea, was inhabited by representatives of the bygone ancient (Roman) civilization more than a thousand years ago. " The most appeal to the classical antiquity is explained by nothing more than the need to find support for the new needs of the mind and new life aspirations,- wrote the Russian historian N. Kareev at the beginning of the century.

So, the Renaissance is an appeal to antiquity. But the whole culture of this period once again proves that the Renaissance in its pure form, the Renaissance as such does not exist. Renaissance thinkers saw what they wanted in antiquity. Therefore, it is not by chance that Neoplatonism underwent a special intellectual development in this era. A.F. Losev brilliantly shows in his book "Aesthetics of the Renaissance" the reasons for the special prevalence of this philosophical concept in the era of the Italian Renaissance. Ancient (actually cosmological) Neoplatonism could not but attract the attention of the revivalists with the idea of ​​emanation (origination) of divine meaning, the idea of ​​saturation of the world (cosmos) with divine meaning, and finally, the idea of ​​the One as the most concrete design of life and being.

God is getting closer to man. It is conceived pantheistically (God is merged with the world, he spiritualizes the world). That is why the world attracts a person. Man's comprehension of a world filled with divine beauty becomes one of the main ideological tasks of the Renaissance.

Character fiction Renaissance.

The best way to comprehend the Divine beauty, dissolved in the world, is rightly recognized as the work of human feelings. Therefore, there is such a keen interest in visual perception, hence the flowering of spatial arts (painting, sculpture, architecture.). After all, it is these arts, according to the leaders of the Renaissance, that make it possible to more accurately capture the Divine beauty. Therefore, the culture of the Renaissance has a distinct artistic character.

Interest in antiquity is associated among the revivalists with the modification of the Christian (Catholic) tradition. Thanks to the influence of Neoplatonism, the pantheistic tendency becomes strong. This gives uniqueness and uniqueness to the culture of Italy of the XIV-XVI centuries. The revivalists took a fresh look at themselves, but at the same time they did not lose faith in God. They began to realize themselves responsible for their fate, significant, but at the same time they did not cease to be people of the Middle Ages.

The contradictory nature of the culture of the Renaissance: the joy of self-affirmation and the tragedy of the worldview. The presence of these two intersecting trends (antiquity and the modification of Catholicism) determined the inconsistency of the culture and aesthetics of the Renaissance. On the one hand, the Renaissance man knew the joy of self-affirmation, on the other hand, he comprehended the whole tragedy of his existence. Both one and the other are connected in the attitude of the Renaissance man with God.

The origins of the tragedy in the work of Renaissance artists are convincingly shown by the Russian philosopher N. Berdyaev. The clash of ancient and Christian principles was the cause of a deep bifurcation of man, he emphasized. The great artists of the Renaissance were obsessed with a breakthrough into another, transcendental world. The dream of him was already given to man by Christ. Artists were focused on creating a different being, they felt in themselves forces similar to the forces of the Creator; set themselves essentially ontological problems. However, these tasks were obviously impossible in earthly life, in the world of culture. Artistic creativity, which is distinguished not by an ontological but by a psychological nature, does not and cannot solve such problems. The reliance of artists on the achievements of the era of antiquity and their aspiration to the higher world, discovered by Christ, do not coincide. This leads to a tragic worldview, to resurrection longing. Berdyaev writes: “The secret of the Renaissance is that it failed. Never before has such creative forces been sent into the world, and never before has the tragedy of society been so revealed.

The culture of the Italian Renaissance gave the world a whole galaxy of brilliant figures who immeasurably enriched the treasury of world culture. Among them, it is necessary to mention the names of Dante Alighieri (1265-1321), the painter Giotto di Bondone (1266-1337), the humanist poet Francesco Petrarca (1304-1374), the poet, humanist writer Giovanni Boccaccio (1313-1375), the architect Filippo Brunelleschi, the sculptor Donatello Donato di Nicollo di Betto Bardi (1386-1466), painter Masaccio Tommaso di Giovanni di Simone Guidi (1401-1428), humanist writer Lorenzo Vallu (1407-1457), humanist writer Pico della Mirandola (1463-1494), humanist philosopher Marsilio Ficino (1433-1499), painter Sandro Botticelli (1445-1510), painter, scientist Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519), painter, sculptor, architect Michelangelo Buonaroti (1475-1564), painter Giorgione (1477-1510), painter Tiziano Vecellio li Cadore (1477-1566), painter Rafael Santi (1484-1520), painter Jacopo Tintoretto (1518-1594) and many others.

2. Northern Renaissance.

Under the "Northern Renaissance" it is customary to mean the culture of the XV-XVI centuries in European countries lying north of Italy.

This term is rather arbitrary. It is used by analogy with the Italian Renaissance, but if in Italy it had a direct original meaning - the revival of traditions ancient culture, then in other countries, in essence, nothing was “reborn”: there were few monuments and memories of the ancient era. The art of the Netherlands, Germany and France (the main centers of the northern Renaissance) in the 15th century developed as a direct continuation of the Gothic, as its internal evolution towards The end of the 15th and 16th centuries was a time of great upheaval for the countries of Europe, the most dynamic and stormy era in their history. Widespread religious wars, the struggle against the dominance of the Catholic Church - the Reformation, which grew into a grand Peasant War in Germany, a revolution in the Netherlands, a dramatic intensity at the end of the Hundred Years War between France and England, bloody feuds between Catholics and Huguenots in France. It would seem that the climate of the era was not conducive to the formation of clear and majestic forms of the High Renaissance in art. And indeed: the Gothic tension and feverishness in the Northern Renaissance do not disappear. But, with on the other hand, humanistic education is spreading and intensifying I am the attraction of Italian art. The fusion of Italian influences with original Gothic traditions is the originality of the Northern Renaissance style.

The main reason why the term "Renaissance" applies to the entire European culture of this period lies in the commonality of the internal tendencies of the cultural process. That is, in the widespread growth and development of bourgeois humanism, in the loosening of the feudal worldview, in the growing self-awareness of the individual.

The economic factor played a significant role in the formation of the German Renaissance: the development of mining, printing, and the textile industry. Increasingly deeper penetration into the economy of commodity-money relations, involvement in the pan-European market processes affected large masses of people and changed their consciousness.

For the formation of the Renaissance worldview in the Romanesque countries, in the south of Europe, the influence of the ancient heritage was of tremendous importance. It set ideals and models of a bright, life-affirming character. The influence of ancient culture for the Northern Renaissance is insignificant, it was perceived indirectly. Therefore, in most of its representatives, it is easier to detect traces of not completely obsolete Gothic than to find antique motifs. In Germany, fragmented into hundreds of tiny feudal states, there was a unifying principle: hatred for the Catholic Church, which imposed levies and burdensome regulations on the spiritual life of the country. Therefore, one of the main directions of the struggle for the “kingdom of God on earth” is the struggle with the papacy for the reformation of the church. The south of Europe will be affected by the reformation processes to a much lesser extent.

Martin Luther's translation of the Bible into German can be considered the true beginning of the Northern Renaissance. This work continued for twenty years, but individual fragments became known earlier. The Lutheran Bible makes an era, firstly, in the German language: it becomes the basis of a unified German language; secondly, it sets the precedent for the translation of the Bible into a modern literary language, and translations into English, French, and others will soon follow.

The ideas of Lutheranism unite the most progressive circles in Germany: such humanist thinkers as Philipp Melanchthon, the artists Dürer and Holbein, the priest and leader of the popular movement Thomas Münter are also involved in it.

Renaissance literature in Germany relied on the work of the Meistersingers. The most perfect examples of poetry of that time were presented by the successor of these folk traditions, Hans Sachs. Erasmus of Rotterdam became an outstanding prose writer of the Northern Renaissance. His best book The Praise of Folly was published in 1509.

Among the types of artistic activity, painting was in the lead - as in the Italian Renaissance. The first among the great masters of this period should be called Hieronymus Bosch. His work sums up the achievements of medieval painting and serves as a prologue to the Renaissance. In Bosch's paintings, written mostly on religious subjects, the combination of dark medieval fantasies and symbols with elements of folklore and accurate realistic details is striking. And even the most terrible allegories are written out with such a surprisingly folk flavor that they make a life-affirming impression. None of the subsequent masters of painting around the world will paint such fantastic images bordering on insanity, but the influence of H. Bosch in the 20th century will be felt in the work of the surrealists.

The largest master of the Northern Renaissance in fine arts was Albrecht Dürer. He left a colossal legacy: paintings, graphic works, articles, correspondence.

Dürer's work was influenced by Italian masters: he liked to visit Italy, especially Venice. However, the specificity of Albrecht Dürer's vision of the world is in the search for the most objective reflection of the world, Italian idealizing realism was alien to him, he sought to achieve complete authenticity from painting and drawing. This pathos is imbued with his self-portraits, especially in pencil in letters to his brother, and the portrait of his mother before her death can also be attributed here.

You can try to understand the depth of Dürer's graphics through the decoding of medieval symbols that he really does have. But it is necessary to look for clues to these bewitching images in the era of the Reformation. Perhaps the sheets of his engravings most clearly reflected the stamina of the spirit of the people of that time, their readiness to reject any temptations, their woeful fabrications about the woeful result of the war. This is what you think about when looking at his Horseman of the Apocalypse, Melancholia.

There is a lyrical beginning in Dürer's work. These include the most delicate in color painting “The Feast of Pink Wreaths”, the cycle of engravings “The Life of Mary”, which inspired Rilke's cycle of poems in the 19th century. In the 20th century, the composer Hindemith created a cycle of romances based on these verses.

The pinnacle of Albrecht Dürer's work was the grandiose image of the four apostles, a true hymn to man, one of the most striking expressions of Renaissance humanism.

Inherent from this era and the work of Lucas Cranach the Elder. His Madonnas and other biblical heroines are obvious townspeople and contemporaries of the artist. One of his best works is the innovatively written "Crucifixion". A sharply asymmetrical composition, unusual angles of traditional figures, rich color give the impression of confusion, foreboding of social upheavals. Mathis Niethard, also known as Grunewald (1470-75 - 1528), amazes with the richness and brightness of religious fantasies, ecstasy, inventive composition. Grunewald's main work is the Isenheim Altar. The image of Mary with the baby is inscribed in a multi-figured festive composition with angels playing musical instruments for them. In contrast to this light scene, the Crucifixion is written, gloomy and naturalistic. The image of Christ the commoner, who walked a lot barefoot, emaciated, close to agony, is associated with the participants in the peasant war.

Gais Holbein the Younger (1497-1543) can be considered one of the best portrait painters of this period. He owns portraits of Erasmus of Rotterdam and astronomer Nicholas Kratzer, Thomas More and Jane Seymour, interpreting the images of contemporaries as people full of dignity, wisdom, restrained spiritual strength. He also created wonderful illustrations for the Bible and "Praise of Stupidity", a series of engravings "Dance of Death".

A peculiar individuality was also noted in the work of the head of the Danube school of painting, Albrecht Altdorfer (1480-1538). He belongs to the priority in the formation of the landscape genre. However, his most interesting painting remains the Battle of Alexander with Darius (1529). The battle scene on Earth is echoed by the Sun, Moon and clouds competing in the sky. The picture is filled with many decorative details, exquisite in color, delightful in its pictorial skill. In addition, this is one of the first battle scenes painted in oil, so Altdorfer can be considered the founder of another pictorial genre.

The age of the Northern Renaissance was short-lived. The Thirty Years' War intervened in this process and delayed the development of German culture. But in history it has remained as an amazingly integral era, as a club of geniuses, masters of the word and painting, who communicate with each other, participate in a common struggle, travel, paint amazing portraits of each other, and are mutually inspired by ideas. The involvement of the peoples of the northern countries in the pan-European cultural process began at the time of the Northern Renaissance.

3. Netherlands.

A small country, including the territory of present-day Belgium and Holland, was destined to become the brightest center of European art in Italy in the 15th century. The Dutch cities, although they were not politically independent, had long been growing rich and growing stronger, conducting extensive trade, and then developing the manufacturing production of fabrics, carpets, and glass. major center international trade was ancient Bruges, the poetic city of canals; by the end of the 15th century, it died out, giving way to lively Antwerp.

The Gothic architecture of the Netherlands is not only temples, but even more town halls, city walls and towers, houses of merchants.

And craft guilds, shopping arcades, warehouses, and, finally, residential buildings of a characteristic, long-established type: with narrow facades and high triangular or stepped gables.

Since churches were built more of brick than of stone, church sculpture did not receive much development. Klaus Sluter and his students have remained a brilliant exception in the culture of the Netherlands. Its main artistic power in the Middle Ages manifested itself in something else - in miniature painting. In the 15th century, the miniature reached a high degree of perfection, as can be seen from the famous Book of Hours of the Duke of Berry, illustrated by the Limburg brothers.

The loving, diligent, poetic gaze at the world was inherited from the miniature by the great painting of the 15th century, begun by Jan van Eyck. Small pictures adorning manuscripts have grown into large paintings adorning the doors of altars. At the same time, new artistic qualities arose. Something appeared that could not be in miniature: the same intent, concentrated look at a person, at his face, into the depths of his eyes.

The Hermitage has a painting by a prominent Dutch master Rogier van der Weyden “St. Luke paints the Madonna" (the evangelist Luke was considered an artist and patron of the painters' workshop). It contains many compositions typical of the Dutch favorite: a panorama of the city and the canal, painted so small, tenderly and carefully, with two pensive human figures on the bridge. But the most remarkable thing is the face and hands of Luke, who paints the Madonna "from life." He has a special expression - the carefully and tremulously listening expression of a man who has gone completely into contemplation. This is how the old Netherlandish masters looked at nature.

Let's go back to Jan van Eyck. He started out as a miniaturist, working alongside his older brother Hubert. The van Eyck brothers were traditionally credited with the invention of technology. oil painting; this is inaccurate - the method of using vegetable oils as a binder was known before, but the van Eycks improved it and gave impetus to its distribution. Oil soon supplanted tempera.

Oil paints darken with age. The old paintings that we see in museums looked different when they appeared, much lighter and brighter. But the painting of the van Eycks has really unusual technical qualities: the paints do not dry out and retain their freshness for centuries. They almost glow, reminiscent of the radiance of stained glass windows.

The most celebrated work of the van Eycks, the great Ghent Altarpiece, was begun by Hubert, and after his death it was continued and completed in 1432 by Jan. The wings of the grandiose altar are painted in two tiers both inside and outside. On the outer sides there is an annunciation and kneeling figures of donors (customers): this is how the altar looked closed on weekdays. On holidays, the doors were thrown open, when opened, the altar became six times larger, and in front of the parishioners, in all the radiance of Van Eyck colors, a spectacle arose, which, in the totality of its scenes, should embody the idea of ​​the redemption of human sins and the coming enlightenment. At the top in the center is the deesis - God the Father on the throne with Mary and John the Baptist on the sides. These figures are larger than human growth. Then naked Adam and Eve in human growth and groups of musical and singing angels. In the lower tier there is a crowded scene of the worship of the Lamb, solved on a much smaller scale, very spatially, among a wide flowering landscape, and on the side wings there are processions of pilgrims. The plot of the worship of the Lamb is taken from the “Revelation of John”, which says that after the end of the sinful world, the city of God will descend to earth, in which there will be no night, but eternal light, and the river of life “as bright as crystal”, and the tree of life, every month fruitful, and the city is "pure gold, like transparent glass." The Lamb is a mystical symbol of the apotheosis that awaits the righteous. And, apparently, the artists tried to put into the paintings of the Ghent Altar all their love for the charms of the earth, for human faces, for herbs, trees, waters, in order to embody the golden dream of their eternity and incorruptibility.

Jan van Eyck was also an outstanding portrait painter. In the paired portrait of the Arnolfini spouses, which belongs to him, the image ordinary people, dressed in the then rather pretentious fashion, in an ordinary room with a chandelier, a canopy, a mirror and a lap dog, it seems to be some kind of wonderful sacrament. It is as if he worships the flame of a candle, and the blush of apples, and a convex mirror; he is in love with every feature of the long pale face of Arnolfini, who holds his meek wife by the hand as if performing a secret ceremony. Both people and objects - everything froze in solemn anticipation, in reverent seriousness; all things have a hidden meaning, hinting at the sanctity of the marital vow and the hearth.

Thus began the everyday painting of the burghers. This subtle scrupulousness, love of comfort, almost religious attachment to the world of things. But the further, the more prose came out and poetry receded. Never later was the life of the burghers depicted in such poetic tones of sacredness and dignity.

The early burghers of the Nordic countries were also not as "bourgeois limited" as their later descendants. True, the scope and versatility of the Italians are not characteristic of him, but even on a narrower scale of worldview, the burgher is not alien to a special kind of modest grandeur. After all, it was he, the burgher, who created the cities, he defended their freedom from the feudal lords, and he still had to defend it from foreign monarchs and the greedy Catholic Church. On the shoulders of the burghers lay great historical deeds that formed outstanding characters, who, in addition to increased respect for material values, also developed resilience, corporate cohesion, loyalty to duty and word, self-esteem. As Thomas Mann says, the burgher was "an average person in the highest sense of the term."

This definition does not fit the Italians of the Renaissance: they did not feel like average people, even in a high sense. Arnolfini, portrayed by Jan van Eyck, was an Italian living in the Netherlands; if a compatriot had painted it, the portrait would probably have turned out to be different in spirit. A deep interest in the individual, in her appearance and character - this brings together the artists of the Italian and northern Renaissance. But they are interested in it in different ways and see different things in it. The Dutch do not have a sense of titanism and omnipotence of the human person: they see its value in burgher integrity, in qualities, among which humility and piety, consciousness of one’s smallness in the face of the universe, are not the last, although even in this humility the dignity of the individual does not disappear, but even like it's underlined.

In the middle and in the second half of the 15th century, many excellent painters worked in the Netherlands: the already mentioned Rogier van der Weyden, Dirk Boats, Hugo van der Goes, Memling, Geertgen Toth Sint Jans. Their artistic individualities are quite distinctly distinguishable, although not with the same degree of individual style as that of the Italian Quattrocentists. They mainly painted altars and painted portraits, and painted easel paintings commissioned by wealthy citizens. Their compositions imbued with a meek, contemplative mood have a special charm. They loved the plots of Christmas and the worship of the baby, these plots are solved by them subtly and ingenuously. In “The Adoration of the Shepherds” by Hugo van der Goes, the baby is skinny and miserable, like any newborn child, those around him look at him, helpless and twisted, with deep spiritual tenderness, the Madonna is quiet, like a nun, does not raise her eyes, but one feels that she is full of modest the pride of motherhood. And outside the nursery, you can see the landscape of the Netherlands, wide, hilly, with winding roads, rare trees, towers, bridges.

There is a lot of touching here, but there is no sweetness: the Gothic angularity of the forms is noticeable, some of their rigidity. The faces of the shepherds in van der Goes are characteristic and ugly, as usual in the works of Gothic. Even angels are ugly.

Dutch artists rarely depict people with beautiful, regular faces and figures, and this also differs from Italian ones. The simple consideration that the Italians, direct descendants of the Romans, were generally more beautiful than the pale and flabby sons of the north, can, of course, be taken into account, but the main reason is still not this, but the difference in the general artistic concept. Italian humanism is imbued with the pathos of the great in man and a passion for classical forms, the Dutch poetize the “average man”, they have little to do with classical beauty and harmonious proportions.

The Dutch have a passion for detail. They are for them carriers of a secret meaning. A lily in a vase, a towel, a teapot, a book - all the details, apart from the direct ones, also carry a hidden meaning. Things are depicted with love and seem inspired.

Respect for oneself, for one's everyday life, for the world of things was refracted through a religious worldview. Such was the spirit of the Protestant reforms under which the Netherlandish Renaissance is taking place.

Less anthropomorphic perception compared to the Italians, the predominance of the pantheistic principle and direct continuity from the Gothic affect all components of the style of Netherlandish painting. Among the Italian Quattrocentists, any composition, no matter how full of details, gravitates towards more or less strict tectonics. Groups are built like a bas-relief, that is, the artist usually tries to place the main figures on a relatively narrow front area, in a clearly defined enclosed space; he balances them architectonically, they stand firmly on their feet: we can already find all these features in Giotto. The compositions of the Dutch are less closed and less tectonic. They are attracted by depth and distance, their sense of space is livelier, more airy than in Italian painting. The figures are more whimsical and unsteady, their tectonics is disturbed by fan-shaped divergent downwards, broken folds of robes. The Dutch love the play of lines, but they do not serve the sculptural tasks of constructing volume, but rather ornamental.

The Dutch do not have a distinct accentuation of the center of the composition, an increased emphasis on the main figures. The artist's attention is scattered by a variety of motives, everything seems tempting to him, and the world is diverse and interesting. Some scene in the background claims to be a separate plot composition.

Finally, there is also a type of composition where there is no center at all, and the space is filled with many equal groups and scenes. At the same time, the main characters sometimes they end up somewhere in the corner.

Similar compositions are found at the end of the 15th century with Hieronymus Bosch. Bosch is a remarkably idiosyncratic artist. Purely Dutch intentness and observation are combined with an unusually productive fantasy and very dark humor. One of his favorite stories is The Temptation of Saint Anthony, where the hermit is besieged by devils. Bosch populated his paintings with legions of small crawling, fearful creatures. It becomes absolutely creepy when you notice human body parts in these monsters. This whole Kunstkamera of outlandish demons is significantly different from the medieval chimeras: they were more majestic and far from being so sinister. The apotheosis of Bosch's demonology is his "Musical Hell", similar to a torture garden: naked people, mixed with monsters climbing on them from all sides, writhe in tormenting lust, they are crucified on the strings of some giant musical instruments, squeezed and sawed in mysterious devices , shoved into pits, swallowed.

The strange phantasmagoria of Bosch are born of the philosophical efforts of the mind. He stood on the threshold of the 16th century, and this was an era that made one painfully think. Bosch, apparently, was overcome by thoughts about the vitality and omnipresence of world evil, which, like a leech, sticks to all living things, about the eternal cycle of life and death, about the incomprehensible extravagance of nature, which sows larvae and germs of life everywhere - both on earth and underground, and in a rotten stagnant swamp. Bosch observed nature, perhaps sharper and more vigilantly than others, but did not find in it either harmony or perfection. Why is man, the crown of nature, doomed to death and decay, why is he weak and miserable, why does he torment himself and others, is constantly subjected to torment?

The very fact that Bosch asks such questions speaks of awakened inquisitiveness - a phenomenon that accompanies humanism. Humanism does not mean only glorification of everything human. It also means the desire to penetrate into the essence of things, to unravel the mysteries of the universe. In Bosch, this desire was painted in gloomy tones, but it was a symptom of the mental thirst that prompted Leonardo da Vinci to explore everything - beautiful and ugly. The powerful intellect of Leonardo perceived the world as a whole, felt unity in it. In Bosch's mind, the world was reflected fragmented, broken into thousands of fragments that enter into incomprehensible combinations.

But it is worth mentioning the romantic currents, that is, influenced by the Italian Cinquecento, they began to spread in the Netherlands in the 16th century. Their lack of originality is very noticeable. The image of "classical nudity", which was beautiful among the Italians, was definitely not given to the Netherlands and even looked somewhat comical, like Jan Gossaert's "Neptune and Amphitrite", with their magnificent swollen bodies. The Dutch also had their own provincial "mannerism".

Let us note the development of the genres of domestic and landscape easel paintings made by Dutch artists in the 16th century. Their development was facilitated by the fact that the widest circles, hating the papacy and the Catholic clergy, were increasingly turning away from Catholicism and demanding church reforms. And the reforms of Luther and Calvin included an element of iconoclasm; the interiors of Protestant churches were supposed to be completely simple, bare - nothing like the rich and spectacular decoration in Catholic churches. religious art greatly reduced in volume, ceased to be a cult.

Began to appear clean genre paintings with the image of merchants in shops, money changers in offices, peasants in the market, card players. household genre grew out of portrait, and landscape - from those landscape backgrounds that were so fond of the Dutch masters. The backgrounds grew, and there was only a step to a pure landscape.

However, everything redeems and concentrates in itself the colossal talent of Pieter Brueghel. He is in the highest degree possessed what is called national identity: all the remarkable features of his art date back to the original Dutch traditions. Like no one, Brueghel expressed the spirit of his time and its folk flavor. He is popular in everything: being undoubtedly an artist-thinker, he thinks aphoristically and metaphorically. The philosophy of life contained in his allegories is bitter, ironic, but also courageous. Bregel's favorite type of composition is a large space, as if seen from the top, so that people look small and scurry about in the valleys, nevertheless, everything is written in detail and clearly. The narrative is usually associated with folklore, Brueghel painted parable paintings.

Bruegel uses the type of spatial-landscape composition common among the Netherlands without emphasizing the main persons and events in such a way that a whole philosophy of life is revealed in it. The Fall of Icarus is especially interesting here. Brueghel's painting depicts a peaceful landscape on the seashore: a plowman is following a plow, a shepherd is tending sheep, a fisherman is sitting with a fishing rod, and ships are sailing on the sea. Where is Icarus and what does his fall have to do with it? You need to look closely to see in the right corner pitiful bare legs sticking out of the water. Icarus fell from the sky, but no one even noticed it. Ordinary life flows, as always. For a peasant, his arable land, for a shepherd, his flock is much more important than someone's ups and downs. The meaning of extraordinary events is not revealed soon, contemporaries do not notice it, immersed in everyday worries.

The creative activity of Pieter Bregeil did not last long, he died in 1569, in his forties, and did not live to see the events of the Dutch revolution. Shortly before his death, he painted the painting "The Blind". This is the most powerful, final chord of Bregueil's art, which can be imagined as a symphony permeated with a single theme. Loving his long-suffering homeland, the artist could not forgive his compatriots for one thing: passivity, deafness, blindness, immersion in vanity today and the inability to climb those mountain peaks that give insight into the whole, the one, the common.

Conclusion.

The theme of the Renaissance is rich and inexhaustible. Such a powerful movement determined the development of the entire European civilization for many years. We have made only an attempt to penetrate into the essence of the ongoing processes. For further study, we need to restore in more detail the psychological mood of the Renaissance man, read books of that time, go to art galleries.

Now, at the end of the 20th century, it may seem that all this is a matter of bygone days, antiquity covered with a thick layer of dust, not of research interest in our turbulent age, but without studying the roots, how will we understand what feeds the trunk, what keeps the crown on wind of change?

Leonardo da Vinci

Leonardo da Vinci (April 15, 1452, Vinci near Florence - May 2, 1519, Cloux Castle, near Amboise, Touraine, France), Italian painter, sculptor, architect, scientist, engineer.

Combining the development of new means of artistic language with theoretical generalizations, Leonardo da Vinci created an image of a person that meets the humanistic ideals of the High Renaissance. In the painting "The Last Supper" (1495-1497, in the refectory of the monastery of Santa Maria delle Grazie in Milan), a high ethical content is expressed in strict patterns of composition, a clear system of gestures and facial expressions of characters. The humanistic ideal of female beauty is embodied in the portrait of the Mona Lisa (La Gioconda, circa 1503). Numerous discoveries, projects, experimental research in the field of mathematics, natural sciences, mechanics. Defended the decisive importance of experience in the knowledge of nature ( notebooks and manuscripts, about 7 thousand sheets).

Leonardo was born into the family of a wealthy notary. He developed as a master, studying with Andrea del Verrocchio in 1467-1472. The methods of work in the Florentine workshop of that time, where the artist's work was closely associated with technical experiments, as well as acquaintance with the astronomer P. Toscanelli, contributed to the emergence of young Leonardo's scientific interests. In his early works (the head of an angel in Verrocchio's Baptism, after 1470, the Annunciation, circa 1474, both in the Uffizi, the Benois Madonna, circa 1478, the Hermitage) enriches the traditions of Quattrocento painting, emphasizing the smooth volume of forms with soft chiaroscuro, enlivening faces thin, barely perceptible smile. In The Adoration of the Magi (1481-82, unfinished; underpainting in the Uffizi), he turns a religious image into a mirror of various human emotions, developing innovative methods of drawing. Recording the results of countless observations in sketches, sketches and field studies (Italian pencil, silver pencil, sanguine, pen and other techniques), Leonardo achieves rare sharpness in the transmission of facial expressions (sometimes resorting to grotesque and caricature), and the structure and movements of the human body leads in perfect harmony with the dramaturgy of the composition.

In the service of the ruler of Milan, Lodovico Moro (since 1481), Leonardo acts as a military engineer, hydraulic engineer, and organizer of court festivities. For over 10 years he has been working on the monument to Francesco Sforza, father of Lodovico Moro; The life-size clay model of the monument, full of plastic power, has not been preserved (destroyed when Milan was taken by the French in 1500) and is known only from preparatory sketches.

This period accounts for the creative flowering of Leonardo the painter. In the Madonna in the Rocks (1483-94, Louvre; the second version - 1487-1511, National Gallery, London), the finest chiaroscuro (“sfumato”) beloved by the master appears as a new halo that replaces medieval halos: this is equally divine-human, and natural mystery, where the rocky grotto, reflecting the geological observations of Leonardo, plays no less dramatic role than the figures of saints in the foreground.

"The Last Supper"

In the refectory of the monastery of Santa Maria delle Grazie, Leonardo creates the painting "The Last Supper" (1495-97; due to the risky experiment that the master went for, using oil mixed with tempera for the fresco, the work has come down to us in a very damaged form). The high religious and ethical content of the image, which represents the stormy, contradictory reaction of Christ's disciples to his words about the coming betrayal, is expressed in clear mathematical patterns of the composition, imperiously subjugating not only the painted, but also the real architectural space. The clear stage logic of facial expressions and gestures, as well as the excitingly paradoxical, as always with Leonardo, combination of strict rationality with an inexplicable mystery made " last supper"one of the most significant works in the history of world art.

Being also engaged in architecture, Leonardo develops various versions of the "ideal city" and the central-domed temple. The following years the master spends in constant travel (Florence - 1500-02, 1503-06, 1507; Mantua and Venice - 1500; Milan - 1506, 1507-13; Rome - 1513-16). From 1517 he lived in France, where he was invited by King Francis I.

"Battle of Angyari". Gioconda (Portrait of Mona Lisa)

In Florence, Leonardo is working on a painting in the Palazzo Vecchio (“Battle of Anghiari”, 1503-1506; not finished and not preserved, known from copies from cardboard, as well as from a recently discovered sketch - a private collection, Japan), which stands at the origins of the battle genre in the art of modern times; the deadly fury of war is embodied here in the frenzied battle of horsemen.

In the most famous painting by Leonardo, the portrait of the Mona Lisa (the so-called "La Gioconda", circa 1503, Louvre), the image of a wealthy townswoman appears as a mysterious personification of nature as such, without losing a purely feminine cunning; The internal significance of the composition is given by the cosmically majestic and at the same time disturbingly alienated landscape, melting in a cold haze.

Later paintings

Leonardo's later works include: projects for a monument to Marshal Trivulzio (1508-1512), painting "Saint Anna with Mary and the Christ Child" (circa 1500-1507, Louvre). The latter sums up, as it were, his searches in the field of light-air perspective, tonal color (with a predominance of cool, greenish hues) and harmonic pyramidal composition; at the same time, this is harmony over the abyss, since a group of holy characters, soldered by family closeness, is represented on the edge of the abyss. Leonardo's last painting, "Saint John the Baptist" (circa 1515-1517, ibid.), is full of erotic ambiguity: the young Forerunner here does not look like a holy ascetic, but like a tempter full of sensual charm. In a series of drawings depicting a universal catastrophe (the cycle with the "Flood", Italian pencil, pen, circa 1514-1516, Royal Library, Windsor), reflections on the frailty and insignificance of man in front of the power of the elements are combined with rationalistic ones, anticipating the "vortex" cosmology of R. Descartes ideas about the cyclic nature of natural processes.

"Treatise on Painting"

The most important source for studying the views of Leonardo da Vinci are his notebooks and manuscripts (about 7 thousand sheets), written in colloquial Italian. The master himself did not leave a systematic presentation of his thoughts. The “Treatise on Painting”, prepared after the death of Leonardo by his student F. Melzi and which had a huge impact on the theory of art, consists of passages largely arbitrarily extracted from the context of his notes. For Leonardo himself, art and science were inextricably linked. Giving the palm to painting as the most intellectual, in his opinion, type of creativity in the “dispute of the arts”, the master understood it as a universal language (similar to mathematics in the field of sciences), which embodies the entire diversity of the universe through proportions, perspective and chiaroscuro. “Painting,” Leonardo writes, “is a science and the legitimate daughter of nature ..., a relative of God.” By studying nature, the perfect naturalist thereby comes to know the "divine mind" hidden under appearance nature. Involving in creative competition with this divine-intelligent principle, the artist thereby affirms his likeness to the supreme Creator. Since he "has first in his soul and then in his hands" "everything that exists in the universe," he too is "a kind of god."

Leonardo is a scientist. Technical projects

As a scientist and engineer, Leonardo da Vinci enriched almost all areas of knowledge of that time with insightful observations and conjectures, considering his notes and drawings as sketches for a giant natural-philosophical encyclopedia. He was prominent representative new, based on the experiment of natural science. Leonardo paid special attention to mechanics, calling it "the paradise of mathematical sciences" and seeing in it the key to the secrets of the universe; he tried to determine the coefficients of sliding friction, studied the resistance of materials, and was enthusiastically engaged in hydraulics. Numerous hydrotechnical experiments were expressed in innovative designs for canals and irrigation systems. The passion for modeling led Leonardo to amazing technical foresights, far ahead of his time: such are the sketches of projects for metallurgical furnaces and rolling mills, looms, printing, woodworking and other machines, a submarine and a tank, as well as the designs of aircraft and aircraft developed after a thorough study of bird flight. parachute.

Optics

The observations collected by Leonardo on the influence of transparent and translucent bodies on the color of objects, reflected in his painting, led to the establishment of the principles of aerial perspective in art. The universality of optical laws was associated for him with the idea of ​​the uniformity of the universe. He was close to creating a heliocentric system, considering the Earth "a point in the universe." He studied the structure of the human eye, speculating about the nature of binocular vision.

Anatomy, botany, paleontology

In anatomical studies, summarizing the results of autopsies of corpses, laid the foundations of modern scientific illustration in detailed drawings. Studying the functions of organs, he considered the body as a model of "natural mechanics". For the first time he described a number of bones and nerves, paid special attention to the problems of embryology and comparative anatomy, trying to introduce the experimental method into biology. Having approved botany as an independent discipline, he gave classic descriptions leaf arrangement, helio- and geotropism, root pressure and movement of plant sap. He was one of the founders of paleontology, believing that the fossils found on the tops of the mountains refute the notion of a "global flood".

Revealing the ideal of the Renaissance "universal man", Leonardo da Vinci was comprehended in the subsequent tradition as a person who most clearly outlined the range of creative quests of the era. In Russian literature, the portrait of Leonardo was created by D. S. Merezhkovsky in the novel "The Resurrected Gods" (1899-1900).

Paintings by Leonardo da Vinci:

“Virgin and child with baby John “Mona Lisa” 1503 by Baptist and St. Anna “

“ Head of a young woman "Madonna and Child"

“ The Last Supper ” 1495-1497

Rafael Santi

Raffaello Santi (1483-1520), Italian painter and architect. Representative of the High Renaissance. With classical clarity and sublime spirituality, he embodied the life-affirming ideals of the Renaissance. Early works ("Madonna Conestabile", ca. 1502-03) are imbued with grace, soft lyricism. He glorified the earthly existence of man, the harmony of spiritual and physical forces in the paintings of the stanzas (rooms) of the Vatican (1509-17), achieving an impeccable sense of proportion, rhythm, proportions, harmony of color, unity of figures and majestic architectural backgrounds. Numerous images of the Mother of God ("Sistine Madonna", c. 1513), artistic ensembles in the murals of the Villa Farnesina (1514-18) and the loggias of the Vatican (1519, with students). The portraits created an ideal image of a Renaissance man (B. Castiglione, 1514-15). Designed the Cathedral of St. Peter, built the Chigi Chapel of the Church of Santa Maria del Popolo (1512-20) in Rome.

RAFAEL (real name Raffaello Santi) (Raffaello Santi) (March 26 or 28, 1483, Urbino - April 6, 1520, Rome), Italian artist and architect. Son of the painter Giovanni Santi. According to Vasari, he studied with Perugino. First mentioned as an independent master in 1500. In 1504-08 he worked in Florence. At the end of 1508, at the invitation of Pope Julius II, he moved to Rome, where, along with Michelangelo, he took a leading position among the artists who worked at the court of Julius II and his successor Leo X.

Already in the early paintings, written before moving to Florence, the harmonious warehouse of talent inherent in Raphael, his ability to find an impeccable agreement of forms, rhythms, colors, movements, gestures, was affected - and in such small-format works, almost miniatures, as the Conestabile Madonna (c. 1502-03, Hermitage), The Dream of a Knight (c. 1504, National Gallery, London), The Three Graces (Condé Museum, Chantilly), Saint George (c. 1504, National Gallery, Washington) , and in the larger format "Betrothal of Mary" (1504, Brera, Milan).

Florentine period (1504-08)

The move played a huge role in the creative development of Raphael. Of paramount importance for him was familiarity with the method of Leonardo da Vinci. Following Leonardo, he began to work a lot from nature, studying anatomy, the mechanics of movements, complex postures and angles, looking for compact, rhythmically balanced compositional formulas. In the last Florentine works of Raphael (The Entombment, 1507, Borghese Gallery, Rome; St. Catherine of Alexandria, c. 1507-08, National Gallery, London), there is an interest in the complex formulas of dramatic agitated movement developed by Michelangelo.

The main theme of the painting of the Florentine period is the Madonna and Child, which is dedicated to at least 10 works. Among them, three paintings close in compositional solution stand out: “Madonna with a Goldfinch” (c. 1506-07, Uffizi), “Madonna in Greens” (1506, Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna), “Beautiful Gardener” (1507, Louvre). Varying the same motif in them, depicting a young mother against the backdrop of an idyllic landscape and little children playing at her feet - Christ and John the Baptist, he unites the figures with a stable, harmoniously balanced rhythm of the Composite Pyramid, beloved by the masters of the Renaissance.

Roman period (1509-20)

Having moved to Rome, the 26-year-old master received the position of "artist of the Apostolic See" and the commission to paint the front chambers of the Vatican Palace, from 1514 he supervised the construction of the Cathedral of St. Peter, works in the field of church and palace architecture, in 1515 he was appointed Commissioner for Antiquities, responsible for the study and protection of ancient monuments, archaeological excavations.

Frescoes in the Vatican Palace

The central place in the work of this period is occupied by the paintings of the ceremonial chambers of the Vatican Palace. The murals of Stanza della Senyatura (1509-11) are one of the most perfect creations of Raphael. Majestic multi-figure compositions on the walls (combining from 40 to 60 characters) of "Disputation" ("Dispute about the sacrament"), "Athenian school", "Parnassus", "Foundation of the canonical and civil law”and their corresponding four allegorical female figures on the vaults personify theology, philosophy, poetry and jurisprudence.

Without repeating a single figure and pose, not a single movement, Raphael weaves them together with a flexible, free, natural rhythm that flows from figure to figure, from one group to another.

In the nearby Station of Elidor (1512-14), in the wall paintings (“The Expulsion of Elidor from the Temple”, “The Miraculous Expulsion of the Apostle Peter from the Dungeon”, “Mass in Bolsena”, “Meeting of Pope Leo I with Attila”) and biblical scenes on the vaults the plot-narrative and dramatic beginning prevails, the pathetic excitement of movements, gestures, complex counterpoints grows, the contrasts of light and shadow intensify. In The Miraculous Exposition of the Apostle Peter from the Dungeon, Raphael, with an unusual for the artist of Central Italy, painterly subtlety conveys the complex effects of night lighting - a dazzling radiance surrounding an angel, the cold light of the moon, the reddish flame of torches and their reflections on the armor of the guards.

Among the best works of Raphael the muralist are also commissioned by the banker and philanthropist Agostino Chigi, the murals on the vaults of the Chigi chapel (c. 1513-14, Santa Maria della Pace, Rome) and the fresco “The Triumph of Galatea” full of pagan cheerfulness (c. 1514-15 , Villa Farnesina, Rome).

Made in 1515-16 cardboard tapestries with episodes from the history of the apostles Peter and Paul (Victoria and Albert Museum, London) are stylistically close to the murals of the Stanz, but they already show the first signs of the exhaustion of Raphael's classical style - features of cold perfection, passion for the spectacular beginning, showiness of poses, excess of gesticulation. To an even greater extent, this is characteristic of the frescoes of the Vatican Stanza del Incendio (1514-17), made according to the drawings of Raphael by his assistants Giulio Romano and J. F. Penny. Ease, grace, richness of imagination are distinguished by purely decorative paintings made by Raphael's assistants according to his drawings in the Psyche Hall of Villa Farnesina (c. 1515-16) and in the so-called. Loggias of Raphael of the Vatican Palace (1518-19).

Roman Madonnas

In the Roman period, Raphael turns to the image of the Madonna much less often, finding a new, deeper solution to it. In Madonna della Sedia (c. 1513, Pitti, Florence), a young mother dressed as a Roman commoner, little John the Baptist and Christ are bound together by a circular frame (tondo); Madonna seems to be trying to hide her son in her arms - a little Titan with an unchildishly serious look. A new, polyphonically complex interpretation of the image of the Madonna found its most complete expression in one of the most perfect creations of Raphael - the altar "Sistine Madonna" (c. 1513, Art Gallery, Dresden).

portraits

The first portraits belong to the Florentine period (Agnolo Doni, c. 1505, Pitti, Florence; Maddalena Strozzi, c. 1505, ibid; Donna Gravida, c. 1505, ibid.). However, only in Rome did Raphael overcome the dryness and some stiffness of his early portraits. Among the Roman works, the portrait of the humanist Baldassare Castiglione (c. 1514-15, Louvre) and the so-called. “Donna Velata”, possibly a model of the “Sistine Madonna” (c. 1516, Pitti, Florence), with their noble and harmonious structure of images, compositional balance, subtlety and richness of color scheme.

architectural works

Raphael left a noticeable mark on Italian architecture. Among his buildings is the small church of San Eligio degli Orefici (laid down c. 1509) with its austere interior, the Chigi chapel in the Church of Santa Maria del Popolo (laid down c. 1512) whose interior is an example of a unity of architectural design and decor, rare even for the Renaissance , designed by Raphael - murals, mosaics, sculptures, and the unfinished Villa Madama.

Raphael had a great influence on the subsequent development of Italian and European painting, becoming, along with the masters of antiquity, the highest example of artistic excellence.

Paintings by Raphael Santi:

"Nymph Galatea"

"Madonna and Child"

“Saint George fights the dragon”

“The Vision of the Prophet Ezerkiel” “Adam and Eve”

Michelangelo Buonarroti

Michelangelo Buonarroti (1475-1564), Italian sculptor, painter, architect, and poet. With the greatest force, he expressed the deeply human ideals of the High Renaissance, full of heroic pathos, as well as the tragic sense of the crisis of the humanistic worldview during the Late Renaissance. Monumentality, plasticity and drama of images, admiration for human beauty appeared already in early works (“Lamentation of Christ”, c. 1497-98; “David”, 1501-04; cardboard “Battle of Kashin”, 1504-06). The painting of the vault of the Sistine Chapel in the Vatican (1508-12), the statue of "Moses" (1515-16) confirm the physical and spiritual beauty of man, his limitless creative possibilities. Tragic notes, caused by the crisis of Renaissance ideals, sound in the ensemble of the New Sacristy of the Church of San Lorenzo in Florence (1520-34), in the fresco "The Last Judgment" (1536-41) on the altar wall of the Sistine Chapel, in the later versions of "Lamentation of Christ" ( c. 1550-55), etc. The plastic principle, the dynamic contrast of the masses dominate in the architecture of Michelangelo (the Laurentian library in Florence, 1523-34). From 1546 he supervised the construction of the Cathedral of St. Peter, the creation of the ensemble of the Capitol in Rome. The poetry of Michelangelo is distinguished by the depth of thought and high tragedy.

Michelangelo Buonarroti (1475, Caprese - 1564, Rome), Italian sculptor, painter, architect, poet, one of the leading masters of the High Renaissance.

Youth. Years of study

He received his early education at a Latin school in Florence. He studied painting with Ghirlandaio, sculpture with Bertoldo di Giovanni at the art school founded by Lorenzo Medici in the Medici Gardens. He copied the frescoes of Giotto and Masaccio, studied the sculpture of Donatello, and in 1494 in Bologna he became acquainted with the works of Jacopo della Quercia. In the house of Lorenzo, where Michelangelo lived for two years, he became acquainted with the philosophy of Neoplatonism, which later had a strong influence on his worldview and creativity. The attraction to the monumental enlargement of forms was already evident in his first works - the reliefs “Madonna at the Stairs” (c. 1491, Casa Buonarroti, Florence) and “Battle of the Centaurs” (c. 1492, ibid.).

First Roman period (1496-1501)

In Rome, Michelangelo continued his study of the Medici Gardens. antique sculpture, which became one of the sources of his rich plasticity. The antique statue of Bacchus (c. 1496, National Museum, Florence) and the sculptural group "Pieta" (c. 1498-99), which testify to the beginning of the creative maturity of the master, belong to the first Roman period.

Florentine period (1501-06). statue of david

Returning to Florence in 1501, Michelangelo received an order from the government of the republic to create a 5.5-meter statue of David (1501-04, Academy, Florence). Installed in the main square of Florence next to the town hall of the Palazzo Vecchio (now replaced by a copy), it was supposed to become a symbol of the freedom of the republic. Michelangelo depicted David not as a fragile teenager trampling on the severed head of Goliath, as the masters of the 15th century did, but as a beautiful, athletically built giant at the moment before the battle, full of confidence and formidable strength (contemporaries called her terribilita - awesome).

At the same time, in 1501-05, Michelangelo worked on another order from the government - cardboard for the fresco "Battle of Cascine", which, together with the painting by Leonardo da Vinci "The Battle of Anghiari", was supposed to decorate the hall of the Palazzo Vecchio. The murals were not carried out, but Michelangelo's sketch of cardboard has been preserved, foreshadowing the dynamics of poses and gestures of the painting of the Sistine ceiling.

Second Roman period (1505-16)

In 1505, Pope Julius II summoned Michelangelo to Rome, entrusting him with the work on his tombstone. Michelangelo's project provided for the creation, in contrast to the wall tombstones traditional for Italy of that time, a majestic, free-standing mausoleum, decorated with 40 statues larger than a human being. The rapid cooling of Julius II to this idea and the cessation of funding for the work caused a quarrel between the master and the pope and Michelangelo's defiant departure to Florence in March 1506. He returned to Rome only in 1508, having received an order from Julius II to paint the Sistine Chapel.

Frescoes in the Sistine Chapel

The frescoes of the Sistine Ceiling (1508-12) are the most grandiose of the realized plans of Michelangelo. Rejecting the project proposed to him with the figures of 12 apostles in the side parts of the vault and with the ornamental filling of its main part, Michelangelo developed his own program of murals, which still causes various interpretations. The painting of the huge vault covering the vast (40.93 x 13.41 m) papal chapel includes 9 large compositions in the mirror of the vault on the themes of the book of Genesis - from the Creation of the World to the Flood, 12 huge figures of sibyls and prophets in the side bands of the vault, the cycle "Ancestors of Christ" in the formwork and lunettes, 4 compositions in the corner sails on the themes of the miraculous deliverance of the Jewish people. Dozens of majestic characters inhabiting this grandiose universe, endowed with a titanic appearance and colossal spiritual energy, show an extraordinary wealth of the most complex gestures, poses, counterposts, and angles imbued with powerful movement.

Gravestone of Pope Julius II

After the death of Julius II (1513), Michelangelo again starts work on his tombstone, creates three statues in 1513-16 - “The Dying Slave”, “The Risen Slave” (both in the Louvre) and “Moses”. The original project, repeatedly revised by the heirs of Julius II, was not implemented. According to the sixth contract concluded with them, in 1545 in the Roman church of San Pietro in Vincoli, a two-tier wall tombstone was installed, which included "Moses" and 6 statues, made in the early 1540s. in the studio of Michelangelo.

Four unfinished statues of "Slaves" (c. 1520-36, Accademia, Florence), originally intended for a tombstone, give an idea of ​​Michelangelo's creative method. Unlike contemporary sculptors, he processed a block of marble not from all sides, but only from one side, as if extracting figures from the thickness of the stone; in his poems, he repeatedly says that the sculptor only releases the image originally hidden in stone. Presented in tense dramatic poses, the “Slaves” seem to be trying to escape from the stone mass that binds them.

Medici Chapel

In 1516, Pope Leo X of the Medici commissioned Michelangelo to develop a project for the facade of the Church of San Lorenzo in Florence, built in the 15th century. Brunelleschi. Michelangelo wanted to make the façade of this Medici parish church a "mirror of all Italy", but the work was stopped due to lack of funds. In 1520, Cardinal Giulio Medici, the future Pope Clement VII, commissioned Michelangelo to turn the New Sacristy of the Church of San Lorenzo into a grandiose tomb of the Medici family. Work on this project, interrupted by the uprising against the Medici of 1527-30 (Michelangelo was one of the leaders of the three-year defense of the besieged Florence), was not completed by the time Michelangelo left for Rome in 1534; the statues he made were installed only in 1546.

The Medici Chapel is a complex architectural and sculptural ensemble, the figurative content of which gave rise to various interpretations. The statues of the Dukes of Lorenzo and Giuliano Medici, sitting in shallow niches against the backdrop of an antiquity architectural decoration and dressed in the armor of Roman emperors, are devoid of portrait resemblance and, perhaps, symbolize Active Life and Contemplative Life. The graphically light outlines of the sarcophagus are contrasted by the plastic power of the huge statues of Day and Night, Morning and Evening, lying on the sloping covers of the sarcophagus in painfully uncomfortable poses, as if ready to slip off them. Michelangelo expressed the dramatic pathos of these images in a quatrain written by him as if on behalf of the Night:

It's sweet for me to sleep, and more - to be a stone,

When shame and crime are all around:

Not to feel, not to see - relief.

Shut up, friend, why wake me up? (Translated by A. Efros).

Laurenzian Library

During the years of work in Florence in 1520-34, the style of the Michelangelo architect was formed, which is distinguished by increased plasticity and picturesque richness. The staircase of the Laurentian library was boldly and unexpectedly solved (project c. 1523-34, carried out after Michelangelo's departure for Rome). The monumental marble staircase, almost completely filling the vast vestibule, starting right at the threshold of the reading room located on the second floor, flows out of the doorway in a narrow flight of steep steps and, rapidly expanding, forming three arms, descends just as steeply; the dynamic rhythm of the large marble steps, directed towards those ascending into the hall, is perceived as a kind of force that needs to be overcome.

Third Roman period. "Last Judgment"

Michelangelo's move to Rome in 1534 opens the last, dramatic period of his work, which coincided with the general crisis of the Florentine-Roman Renaissance. Michelangelo draws closer to the circle of the poetess Vittoria Colonna, the ideas of religious renewal that agitated the members of this circle left a deep imprint on his worldview of these years. In the colossal (17 x 13.3 m) fresco The Last Judgment (1536-41) on the altar wall of the Sistine Chapel, Michelangelo deviates from traditional iconography, depicting not the moment of the Judgment, when the righteous are already separated from the sinners, but its beginning: Christ punishing with a gesture of a raised hand brings down the perishing Universe before our eyes. If in the Sistine ceiling the titanic human figures were the source of movement, now they are carried away, like a whirlwind, by an external force that surpasses them; the characters lose their beauty, their titanic bodies seem to swell with tubercles of muscles that break the harmony of lines; movements full of desperation and gestures are sharp, disharmonious; carried away by the general movement, the righteous are indistinguishable from sinners.

According to Vasari, Pope Paul IV in the 1550s. was going to knock down the fresco, but instead the artist Daniele da Volterra was commissioned to "dress" the saints or cover their nakedness with loincloths (these entries were partially removed during the restoration, which ended in 1993).

Tragic pathos is also imbued with the last paintings by Michelangelo - the frescoes "The Crucifixion of the Apostle Peter" and "The Fall of Saul" (1542-50, Paolina Chapel, Vatican). In general, the late painting of Michelangelo had a decisive influence on the formation of mannerism.

late sculptures. Poetry

The dramatic complexity of figurative solutions and plastic language distinguishes the late sculptural works of Michelangelo: "Pieta with Nicodemus" (c. 1547-55, Florence Cathedral) and "Pieta Rondanini" (unfinished group, c. 1555-64, Castello Sforzesco).

In the last Roman period, most of the almost 200 poems of Michelangelo that have come down to us are written, differing philosophical depth thoughts and tense expressiveness of language.

Cathedral of St. Petra

In 1546 Michelangelo was appointed chief architect of St. Peter, the construction of which was started by Bramante, who managed to build by the time of his death (1514) four giant pillars and arches of the middle cross, as well as partially one of the naves. Under his successors - Peruzzi, Rafael, Sangallo, who partly departed from Bramante's plan, the construction hardly progressed. Michelangelo returned to the centric plan of Bramante, at the same time enlarging all forms and articulations, giving them plastic power. Michelangelo managed to finish during his lifetime eastern part the cathedral and the vestibule of a huge (42 m in diameter) dome erected after his death by Giacomo della Porta.

Capitol Ensemble

The second grandiose architectural project of Michelangelo was completed only in the 17th century. Capitol Ensemble. It includes the medieval palace of the Senators (town hall), rebuilt according to the project of Michelangelo, crowned with a turret, and two majestic palaces of the Conservatives with identical facades, united by the powerful rhythm of pilasters. The ancient equestrian statue of Marcus Aurelius, installed in the center of the square, and a wide staircase descending to the residential quarters of the city, completed this ensemble, which connected the new Rome with the grandiose ruins of the ancient Roman Forum located on the other side of the Capitoline Hill.

Funeral in Florence

Despite repeated invitations from Duke Cosimo de' Medici, Michelangelo refused to return to Florence. After his death, his body was secretly taken out of Rome and solemnly buried in the tomb of the famous Florentines - the church of Santa Croce.

Works Michelangelo Buonarroti:

“ David ”

“ Separation of light from darkness ”

"The Creation of the Sun and Moon"

The Renaissance is one of the most impressive pages in the history of world art. It covers about three centuries (XIV - XVI centuries). In comparison with the eras of the Ancient World (about 5000 thousand years), the Middle Ages (about 1000 years), the Renaissance seems to be a very short period of time. However, by the number of brilliant works of art, novelty and courage of the search for masters of that era artistic heritage The Renaissance is not inferior to the previous stages in the development of world art.

Italy was the birthplace of the Renaissance. Already in the XIV century, in the works of the great Italian humanist poet Francesco Petrarca (1304-1374), the concept of Rinascimento - Renaissance (in French "Renaissance") appeared.

During this time, the foundations of modern science were laid. high level reaches literature, which, with the invention of printing by the German Johannes Gutenberg, received previously unprecedented opportunities for distribution. At this time, Christopher Columbus, Copernicus make their discoveries, the great Italians Dante, Petrarch, the French Francois Rabelais, the author of the novel "Gargantua and Pantagruel", Michel Montaigne, the creator of the famous "Experiments" write their immortal works. Shakespeare's tragedies, "Don Quixote" by Cervantes, striking with the depth of penetration into the psychology of man, knowledge of his passions and aspirations, were written in the Renaissance.

The philosophical direction of humanism (from the Latin "humanus" - a person) becomes the ideological basis of the Renaissance culture. Man again becomes the "measure of all things." The motto of Renaissance art could be taken from the words embedded by the Italian humanist of the 15th century. Count Pico della Mirandola in his panegyric, in the mouth of God the Creator, addressing man: "I put you at the center of the world ..."

Unlike the Romanesque and Gothic culture, the medieval culture of the Renaissance was secular in nature, although the main circle of subjects remained connected with mythological and biblical themes. The era of the Renaissance opposed the worldview of the humanists, who affirmed the value of the human person, to church dogmas.

One of the foundations of Renaissance art is the new understanding of the heritage of antiquity.

The ideals of humanism are also reflected in architecture: buildings acquire a clear harmonious appearance, their proportions and scales correlate with a person.

The true founder of the fine arts of the High Renaissance was the brilliant Florentine Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519)

Leonardo's manuscripts testify that he was not only a great painter and sculptor, but also an architect, mechanic, engineer, botanist, and anatomist.

Being a multi-talented person, Leonardo da Vinci was interested in everything that surrounded him, writing down his impressions in a notebook that he always carried with him. "Surrendering to an unquenchable thirst for knowledge, I dream of comprehending the origin of numerous creatures of nature," he said about himself. Throughout his life, the artist considers the world with all its diversity of forms, as a creation of nature, which has its own "mind", calling on painters to be mediators between nature and art.