NORTHERN ART and EMOTIONAL IMPACT
Northern European art is perceived as a regional variation on Italian Renaissance themes. However, a different economy and social structure in the North provided fertile ground for religious change. This change resulted in art that was highly emotional and was created to evoke a response from the viewer.
Matthias Grünewald’s Isenheim Altarpiece was produced for the chapel of a hospital in Isenheim dedicated to St. Anthony Abbott, the patron saint of sufferers of skin diseases. The hospital specialized in the care of patients with illnesses including the plague, leprosy, and ergotism. Many believed the painting had the power to heal those who looked upon it.
Depending on the position of the multiple sets of wings, the images express themes of dire illness, miraculous healing, the pain suffered by Christ, and the promise of salvation. The work was displayed in a hospital where skin diseases were treated, and it is believed that the grotesquery of the crucifixion scene is meant to reflect on the patients’ conditions and create empathy within viewers as they imagine themselves as one of the patients.
Isenheim altarpiece. Matthias Grünewald. c. 1512–1516 C.E. Oil on wood.
At the center, the cruelty and violence of Christ’s death are conveyed, his body distorted by its own weight as it hangs from the cross. Wounds from the crown of thorns and the whips with which he was beaten cover his body. His flesh is a sickly green and contrasts with the dark red blood. Above the barren landscape, the sky is black and foreboding, further illustrating the sorrow and despair of Christ’s death as well as reflecting the cultural tradition of the grotesque in Germanic art.
The work is reminiscent of the Late Gothic devotional images like Röttgen Pietà, and viewers are to contemplate their own suffering, the suffering of others, and the suffering and agony of Christ’s death.
Nothing in the Isenheim altarpiece conveys the ideal form and rational space central to the art of Grünewald’s Italian contemporaries.
- Jesus is larger than the other figures, exemplifying hierarchical scale.
- He lacks proportional ratio—his arms and legs are long and distorted.
- A landscape is not present; it is barren and lacks perspective.
Andrea Mantegna’s San Zeno Triptych portrayal of the Crucifixion displays Jesus in a less emotional and grotesque light.
Crucifixion from the Predella of the San Zeno Altarpiece. Andrea Mantegna
- Jesus is the same size as the other figures; no hierarchical scale here.
- His body lacks many of the deathly features seen in the Isenheim altarpiece.
- Mantegna uses perspective to demonstrate the depth of the landscape, accenting this with smaller figures in the distance
Religious Reform
Martin Luther. Lucas Cranach the Elder. 1533 C.E.
Martin Luther’s call for reform of the Roman Catholic Church in 1517 C.E. led to bitter conflict. Despite constant social unrest, religious convictions remained prominent in art production as Catholic patrons continued to commission religious subjects to support Catholic theology. While some artists only created works that demonstrated their personal religious values, other artists worked for clients who adhered to the opposing faith.
Lucas Cranach the Elder was an artist who was closely associated with the Protestant Reformation and with Martin Luther. Cranach used prints on paper to promote Lutheran ideology, and the woodcut Allegory of Law and Grace gives visual expression to the doctrinal differences between Protestantism and Catholicism. The two beliefs are separated by a tree and displayed on each side of the work.
Allegory of Law and Grace
Left Side
Catholicism is represented by a symbolic representation of judgment day.
Jesus is returning with angels and saints at the top and raises his left hand in a gesture of damnation. To the left is a representation of Adam and Eve at the Tree of Life with a serpent, symbolic of the original sin. Below, a skeleton drives off a terrified sinner to a pit of flames and suffering people, representing hell. Moses stands to the side, holding the Ten Commandments, symbols of Old Testament law. This is significant as Luther claimed Catholicism was based on Old Testament law, and that individuals futilely strive to live a good and honorable life in order to attain salvation.
Right Side
Symbolic imagery emphasizes the importance of God’s grace as the source of redemption, the emphasis of Protestantism.
To the upper-left, there is an Old Testament scene of the Israelites and the bronze snake, a symbol of Jesus’s sacrifice on the cross. To the right, Jesus is being crucified, and God showers the sinner with streams of blood taking the form of a dove, symbolic of grace. Below, Jesus is seen leaving the tomb in the lower right corner, a symbol of the promise of salvation to all who believe in him. He is walking over a deceased beast, symbolic of Satan and Jesus’s triumph over him in the Second Coming.
Left Side Details
Jesus is returning with angels and saints at the top and raises his left hand in a gesture of damnation.
To the left is a representation of Adam and Eve at the Tree of Life with a serpent, symbolic of the original sin.
Below, a skeleton drives off a terrified sinner to a pit of flames and suffering people, representing hell.
Moses stands to the side, holding the Ten Commandments, symbols of Old Testament law.
Right Side Details
To the upper-left, there is an Old Testament scene of the Israelites and the bronze snake, a symbol of Jesus’s sacrifice on the cross.
To the right, Jesus is being crucified, and God showers the sinner with streams of blood taking the form of a dove, symbolic of grace.
Jesus is seen leaving the tomb in the lower right corner, a symbol of the promise of salvation to all who believe in him. He is walking over a deceased beast, symbolic of Satan and Jesus’s triumph over him in the Second Coming.
Religious Works—Not So Much
New centers of art production emerged, and the growing wealth of merchants and the emergence of a true middle class created a source of patronage different from the nobility and the church.
Herman, Paul and Jean de Limbourg, February, from Les Très Riches Heures du Duc de Berry, 1413-16, ink on vellum (Musée Condé, Chantilly)
This new market favored portraits, still life, genre paintings, and landscapes. These subjects conveyed many of the same moral and spiritual values of earlier religious paintings but avoided the dangers of idolatry condemned by Protestants as inherent in Catholic worship.
Pieter Bruegel the Elder was the patriarch of a renowned clan of painters. Two of his sons made their own marks in painting, other sons worked primarily as copyists, and his grandsons continued the family business.
Bruegel’s early works exhibited the influence of an older artist, Hieronymus Bosch. Engraved prints in the style of Bosch were in demand for their creative illustration of religious principles, and Bruegel provided designs for such works early in his career.
Hunters in the Snow is believed to belong to a group of paintings describing the months of the year. It is part of a monumental version of the seasonal moments shown in the Très Riches Heures by the Limbourg brothers.
Hunters in the Snow.
Most scholars see the series as six images, each devoted to two months. There are five known panels from the series, all identical in dimensions. It is unknown whether Bruegel painted Hunters in the Snow for a patron or for his own purposes. Scholars believe it to be a representation of the ideal country life (either what it was, or what it should be).
Context
The ideal life in the 16th century, is what we would consider ideal country life.
Bruegel’s somber colors are rich and evoke nature’s infinite variety. Bruegel includes mountains, valleys, trees, and even waterways (although they are frozen).
Although the landscape is cold and dormant, vegetation is still visible from beneath the snow, connecting to the cyclical nature of the calendar and inspiring hope that spring will come.
His composition moves the viewer’s eye, which alights first on the hunters in the foreground left. Like text on the page of a book, the image unfolds from left to right. The viewpoint is above the hill that overlooks the town, placing the observer on level with the crows that circle through the air and a bird’s eye view.
The details of the panorama become clear in sequence: the eaves of snow-covered roofs, the solitary pedestrian on the bridge, skaters, and finally jagged stone peaks in the distance. All is one in this cold, quiet world.
Humans are in harmony with the seasons as a pure spiritual balance.
Italian Renaissance
Leonardo da Vinci
Leonardo da Vinci painted the Last Supper for the refectory of the church of Santa Maria delle Grazie in Milan. The realistic and proportional portrayal of Jesus and the Disciples in narrative form and the use of perspective are evidence of Renaissance ideas.
Last Supper. Leonardo da Vinci. ca. 1494–1497 C.E. Fresco
Leonardo uses emotion to narrate the story of the Disciples’ reaction to Jesus’s news, including fear, doubt, protestation, rage, and love. Jesus is further humanized by the elimination of the halo that was common in Byzantine, medieval, and early Renaissance art. Light from the window behind Jesus’s head creates the suggestion of a halo. The absence of light to shade Judas’s face suggests deception. This contrasting of light and dark is known as chiaroscuro.
Andrea del Castagno
Andrea del Castagno, da Vinci’s Florentine contemporary, painted a fresco of the Last Supper in the church of Sant’Apollonia.
His portrayal features Judas on the opposite side of the table. Perspective is used to designate the length of the room; there is an obvious depth portrayed in the three-dimensional nature of the walls, and the placement of the table and figures on the end in front of the other figures enhance this depth.
The figures are detailed and naturalistic. The composition is balanced, with 5 Disciples on each side of Jesus and John, who is sleeping. Halos are present, in contrast to Leonardo’s Last Supper, but are presented in perspective.
Last Supper. Andrea del Castagno. Florence, Italy. 1445–1450 C.E. Fresco.
Tintoretto
Tintoretto, a Venetian Renaissance painter, used extreme perspective and chiaroscuro in his portrayal of the Last Supper. The figures are joined by angels and employ dramatic movements in narration. The table is viewed from above and to the left, instead of straight on, as in da Vinci’s Last Supper.
Foreshortening is seen as the figures in the foreground are larger than those in the back, and servants take up the front center of the work, emphasizing the different perspective. Jesus has a radiating halo around his head, reverting to Byzantine depictions, while the Disciples have a mild glow.
The Last Supper. Tintoretto. Venice, Italy. ca. 1592–1594 C.E. Oil and canvas.
Michelangelo
In style and personality, Leonardo and Michelangelo were at odds. While Leonardo was fascinated by all aspects of the natural world, Michelangelo scorned landscapes, perceiving the human body as the basis of narrative and composition.
As an integral part of Pope Julius II’s campaign to reassert the primacy of the papacy, he moved the papal seat to the Vatican, Constantine’s ancient complex, where St. Peter, the apostle and first pope, was buried. Pope Julius had Michelangelo repaint the ceiling in the Sistine Chapel in 1508 C.E.
The chapel was built by, and named for, Pope Sixtus IV, who was also Julius’s uncle. In “completing” a space created by a member of his family, Julius invoked the idea of dynasty, a notion reiterated by much of his patronage as pope. The Sistine Chapel was a semiprivate space for the pope to pray and celebrate Mass, and it was also where the conclave of the cardinals met to elect new popes.
Though its walls had already been decorated in the 15th century with frescoes by Botticelli.
Pietro Perugino, and others, the ceiling featured only stars against a blue background
Sistine Chapel ceiling and altar wall frescoes.
The ceiling now represents different aspects of the world before Christ—the history of the world from Creation to the Incarnation.
Ceiling
Adam
The Flood
The Flood narrates the biblical account of Noah and the Flood. Far in the background, the ark is floating on calm seas, but as the figures draw closer, the seas become more tumultuous, and several figures are shown attempting to escape death in the water by climbing to higher lands or boats.
The landscapes are extremely bare, evidence of Michelangelo’s disdain for painting landscapes. The tree to the left is bare, and there is no detail in the green land to the left. It appears as rocky outcrops. The figures are portrayed in a classical style, emphasizing musculature and mostly nude, but overlapping with each other in the scene.
Antiquity, it’s back.
The figural representations of the Delphic Sibyl and the Virgin Mary have similar idealistic and realistic portrayals, just like in the propagandistic representations of Caesar and Augustus.
Michelangelo’s Delphic Sibyl is a portrayal of a female seer from antiquity, one of a group who were rumored to have predicted the coming of Christ. Prophets and Sibyls are portrayed sitting on thrones, alternating male and female figures around the perimeter, all of whom prophesied the birth of Jesus.
It is notable that the Delphic Sibyl is a representation of the voice of Apollo, a Greek god. This Gentile representation symbolized that Jesus’s birth was not only for the Jewish people, but for all people in the world. The colors of her clothing, yellow, blue, white, and orange, are symbolic of the basic elements of life: earth, water, air, and fire.
Classical and Christian traditions are joined, as was common in High Renaissance works, but no perspective or emotional lighting is used. Michelangelo’s interest in the human body coincides here with humanist rhetoric and sermons given in the Sistine Chapel at the time, which exhorted both God and the created universe as worthy objects of praise.
Both Delphic Sibyl and the Flood are stark contrasts to Leonardo’s Virgin of the Rocks, in which there is a rich landscape and rocks. The figures are presented in a pyramidal grouping. Chiaroscuro reveals the figures, while the background is dark and mysterious. Leonardo employs atmospheric perspective to give the illusion of depth. The peacefulness of the scene in Virgin of the Rocks is very similar to the peacefulness portrayed in Delphic Sibyl, while it is in stark contrast to the chaos that occurs in the Flood.
Delphic Sibyl
Virgin of the Rocks. Leonardo da Vinci. Milan, Italy. ca. 1483 C.E. Oil on canvas.
Raphael
While Michelangelo was perched on the scaffolding in the Sistine Chapel, Raphael was painting the stanze in Pope Julius II’s private apartments. The Stanza della Segnatura, Room of the Signature, where the pope signed official documents, functioned as Julius’s private library, separate from the official Vatican Library. Appropriately for the library of a patron of intellectuals, Raphael covered each of its walls with an allegory of one of the four branches of knowledge: theology, poetry, law, and philosophy.
School of Athens
School of Athens. Raphael. 1509–1511 C.E. Fresco.
The School of Athens, the philosophy mural, is a fictional gathering of the greatest Ancient Greek philosophers within a vaulted marble hall.
Plato and Aristotle
On either side of the vanishing point are Plato and Aristotle. Metaphysician Plato gestures up toward the “ideal” world of the heavens and holds his text Timaeus, which addresses the relationship between heavenly and earthly bodies. Aristotle, whose moral philosophy derived from the observation of the material world, gestures down to the earth and holds his volume, Ethics, and had a great impact in shaping the early church.
Ancient Authors
Many of these ancient authors are portraits of Renaissance artists. It was common for artists as distant as the Gothic period to use contemporary faces to represent religious or ancient personages. Here the melding of artist and philosopher shows two things:
- It illustrates the shift in Renaissance thought, elevating art to an intellectual pursuit.
- It insinuates a triumph of the humanist desire to recapture the golden age of antiquity.
Heraclitus
Heraclitus, the melancholic figure leaning on a marble block, was not part of the original design. He bears the trademark broken nose and buckskin boots of Raphael’s rival, Michelangelo. When the scaffolding in the Sistine Chapel was temporarily taken down in 1510 C.E. and Raphael saw Michelangelo’s frescoes, he added his portrait to the School of Athens in Michelangelo’s own monumental style.
Raphael was known for his ability to imitate the styles of other artists, and this witty out-Michelangelo-ing of Michelangelo has been equally interpreted by scholars as an attempt at flattery and as a painterly thumb to the nose.
Mannerism—Not as Polite as You Thought
The works of High Renaissance artists like Michelangelo, Raphael, and Leonardo da Vinci served as a point of departure for the next generation of artists, the Mannerists, or Mannerism. Mannerists rebelled against the current cultural concept and idealistic classical portrayal and opted to present works as stylized, or mannered.
Mannerist works are stylized to appear exaggerated or distorted in comparison to the balanced works of the Renaissance. Such stylizations are interpreted as refined or developed formal elements undertaken for the sake of beauty or refinement itself. They have been related to the sophistication of European courts or seen as a reflection of the religious and social tensions and controversies of the period. Mannerists rebelled against the current cultural concept and distorted classical portrayal.
Entombment of Christ
Florentine artist Jacopo da Pontormo was one of the first Mannerists, whose work Entombment of Christ encapsulated spatial and anatomical distortions to create a weirdly visionary depiction.
Entombment of Christ works as part of a larger ensemble of images in the Capponi Chapel in the Church of Santa Felicita in Florence and is a depiction of Christ’s burial. Christ is the limp form to the left, carried by his grief-stricken followers to his tomb. Women comfort the Virgin Mary, in blue, who watches her son helplessly, her right arm reaching for him.
Entombment of Christ uses the characteristic Mannerist color palette of wild blue and pink, which stand in contrast to both the Renaissance color palatte of reds, golds, browns, and greens and the tortured expressions of the participants in the narrative.
The scene is a departure from previous depictions of the Entombment. The faces appear not only sorrowful at the events taking place but also psychologically unbalanced. Olive-green shadows create the eerie lighting of the scene.
The spatial setting and structure of the image are unclear, with some figures appearing to float. Mary’s garments envelop her like a cloud of fabric. The two bearers of Christ strike poses that are ungainly, highlighting both the strangeness of the scene and the painter’s facility in the handling of anatomy.
The overall composition of the work circulates around the center of the canvas instead of a clear, rational focal point.
The painting goes beyond the requirements of the Entombment narrative to include the painter’s own distinctive vision. The expression-filled faces, the garish coloring, the contorted figures, the disproportionate anatomy, and the lack of symmetry are all marks of Mannerist art. As compared to Italian Renaissance art, there is a lack of perspective and realism. Mannerists rejected Classicism’s perfect proportions as soulless, choosing instead to warp reality in search of emotional depth.
Mannerism is a distinct departure from previous styles. Think of the naturalism of figures, the colors used and if the work intended to convey emotion or inspire devotion.
Venetian—More Than Blinds
Florence developed a rivalry with Venice, and contemporary artists used two terms to distinguish their competing, respective styles: disegno and colorito.
Disegno
The principle of disegno refers to the Central Italian tendency to emphasize composition. The Florentines prided themselves on rational design, spatial construction, and on the “intellectual” nature of their art.
Colorito
Colorito refers to the Venetian penchant for subtle distinctions of color and light. Venetian paintings were often characterized as works of subtle poetic beauty, appealing to the eye and the senses.
The Venetian painter Tiziano Vecellio, commonly referred to as Titian, produced lyrical and poetic secular works, which he described as poesie or favole, poems or fables, often for patrons outside Venice. Titian preferred subjects of beautiful women and love in the mythological contexts that interested him.
Venus of Urbino. Titian. c. 1538 C.E. Oil on canvas.
Titian’s Venus of Urbino is set in a palace, emphasizing the subject’s wealth and decorum. Though the typical Venetian sky can be glimpsed through the background window, the painting is situated in the intimate indoor setting of the bedroom. Titian was innovative to place a Classical nude in this setting. This is a modern Italian setting, and Titian synthesized Classical and contemporary subjects, which had never been done before.
The woman gazes timidly at the viewer. Roses, traditionally symbols of true love and unabashed sexuality, drop softly from the bouquet in her right hand. Titian draws on the Knidos Aphrodite from Greek sculpture, but his Venus is devoid of the attributes the Classical goddess, such as humility; instead, she is unashamedly erotic.
Speculation
Speculation over whom Venus represents is dominant. Titian sometimes employed courtesans as models. The pair of marriage chests in the background and the dog at the end of the bed, symbolizing faithfulness, emphasize the position of the woman as a wife. However, the dog is asleep, possibly signifying infidelity. As the goddess of fertility as well as love, Venus was often painted in reclining images on the inner lids of marriage chests.
Though the painting was first owned by Guidobaldo II della Rovere, duke of Urbino, it is unknown if he commissioned the work or if it was originally intended to be connected to a wedding. Though it is not clear that the woman is supposed to be a portrait of the goddess Venus, brides as far back as antiquity had been linked to the goddess in terms of their shared traits of beauty, sexuality, and fertility. This enables the woman to be a Venus, though she may not be a depiction of the goddess.
Now, Back to Colorito and Disegno…
Venetian art was characterized by colorito, which had feminine connotations in contrast to the hard, analytical, and masculine style exemplified by the disegno.
It was appropriate to paint the beauty of a woman in a soft, feminine style, linked to pleasure, emotion, and sensuality. This sums up the quality of Titian’s work as a dual seduction of the viewer through both subject matter and style. This became the model of the reclining nude for later works like La Grande Odalisque and Olympia.
Mexica Redux
Cultural changes extended beyond Europe during the Renaissance. European exploration and conquests had significant impact on indigenous cultures of the Americas and the Pacific. This resulted in cross-cultural fertilization—European impact on indigenous art, and indigenous impact on European art
Frontispiece of the Codex Mendoza. Viceroyalty of New Spain. c. 1541–1542 C.E. Ink and color on paper
The Codex Mendoza was commissioned by the first Spanish viceroy of New Spain and narrated the history and customs of the Mexica Empire for Charles V of Spain in the 16th century C.E. Mexica scribes created the schematic representation of Tenochtitlán, but it was later stolen by French pirates who presented it to Francis I.
According to legend, Tenochtitlán’s location was chosen by the sun god Huitzilopochtli, who told the Mexica their wanderings would be over when they saw the mystical sign of an eagle resting on a prickly cactus and eating a snake. In the center of the Frontispiece of the Codex Mendoza, you can see the foundation myth of the city—an eagle, a cactus, and a snake.
As in some European maps of the time, which were centered on Jerusalem, the top of the image is east, not north. The small house at the top likely represents the Templo Mayor at the center of Tenochtitlán, as it was considered the center of the universe by the Mexica.
In the triangle to the right, there is a skull rack representing sacrificial victims whose bodies the priests threw down the temple’s steps after cutting out their hearts. Rulers sit with their name-glyphs floating behind them, representing the city’s legendary founders.
The border contains the hieroglyphs for 51 years in the Mexica calendar system. In the lower margin are two Mexica conquests, complete with captives. The depiction of captives as illustrative of power and success had been part of Mesoamerican iconography since the Olmecs. Stylistically, the Mexica inherited many elements from previous Mesoamerican cultures and were intent on continued learning from their past, which is indicated by their extensive archaeological excavations at the nearby ruins of Teotihuacán.
Turkey- Mimar Sinan
Mimar Sinan, who converted from Orthodox Christianity to Islam, designed a mosque with the goal of surpassing the greatest achievements of Byzantine architects. He was challenged by Hagia Sophia and set out to build a mosque higher and grander than Hagia Sophia. Four slender, pencil-shaped minarets set off the massive dome of the Mosque of Selim II, which surpasses the height of the dome of Hagia Sophia.
The Ottomans considered Sinan’s efforts a success and evidence that they had outshone the Christian emperors of Byzantium in architecture.
Plan for Mosque of Selim II.
Plan for Hagia Sophia.
Sinan designed a unique organization of the interior space. He recessed the mihrab into a deep, semicircular recess that permitted windows to light the space from three sides. This allowed the colored tiled panels on the lower walls to reflect the light. Sinan also designed the dome over an octagon-shaped area, formed by eight massive dome supports and four half-dome corners. This allows for a unified interior space, enhancing the function for large gatherings of worshipers.
Pope Julius II had similar goals in his renovations of St. Peter’s Basilica in the Vatican complex.
Rome once again became the center of spiritual and worldly power in the Catholic world, and the Vatican complex became the symbol of that power. Pope Paul V commissioned Carlo Maderno, with assistance from Michelangelo, to complete the church and provide it with a longer nave and ornate façade. The larger interior would accommodate more pilgrims. The mammoth façade, designed by Gian Lorenzo Bernini almost 100 years later, and colonnaded square were intended to awe visitors with the power and magnificence of the Catholic Church.
Façade of Saint Peter’s Basilica. Carlo Maderno. Vatican City, Rome. ca. 1606–1612 C.E.
Lesson Summary
Northern European art was highly emotional and created to evoke a response from the viewer. Religious convictions remained an important feature of art production of Catholic and Protestant patrons, but demand for secular artwork emerged with a new market for portraits, still lifes, genre paintings, and landscapes. Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, and Raphael created art and architecture that continued in Renaissance ideals. Their works influenced Mannerism, and Venetian artworks competed in style. Exploration and conquests had cross-cultural influence in art and architecture from the Indigenous Americans, the Pacific, and Europe.