Renaissance Week 3 Compiled by Amy

Donato di Niccolo di Betto Bardi Donatello Renaissance Italian Sculptor Florence Many Khan video Links included (circa 1386 – December 13, 1466 early Renaissance Italian sculptor from Florence. Donatello was the son of Niccolò di Betto Bardi, who was a member of the Florentine Wool Combers Guild, and was born in Florence, most likely in the year 1386. Donatello was educated in the house of the Martelli family.[1] He apparently received his early artistic training in a goldsmith's workshop, and then worked briefly in the studio of Lorenzo Ghiberti. a member of the Florentine Wool Combers Guild. This gave young Donatello status as the son of a craftsman and placed him on a path of working in the trades. Donatello was educated at the home of the Martellis, a wealthy and influential Florentine family of bankers and art patrons closely tied to the Medici family. It was here that Donatello probably first received artistic training from a local goldsmith. He learned metallurgy and the fabrication of metals and other substances. In 1403, he apprenticed with Florence metalsmith and sculptor Lorenzo Ghiberti. A few years later, Ghiberti was commissioned to create the bronze doors for the Baptistery of the Florence Cathedral, beating out rival artist Filippo Brunelleschi. Donatello assisted Ghiberti in creating the cathedral doors. There are accounts by some historians that Donatello and Brunelleschi struck up a friendship around 1407 and traveled to Rome to study classical art. Details of the trip are not well known, but it is believed that the two artists gained valuable knowledge excavating the ruins of classical Rome. The experience gave Donatello a deep understanding of ornamentation and classic forms, important knowledge that would eventually change the face of 15th-century Italian art. His association with Brunelleschi likely influenced him in the Gothic style that can be seen in much of Donatello’s early work. While undertaking study and excavations with Filippo Brunelleschi in Rome (1404–1407), work that gained the two men the reputation of treasure seekers, Donatello made a living by working at goldsmiths' shops. Their Roman sojourn was decisive for the entire development of Italian art in the 15th century, for it was during this period that Brunelleschi undertook his measurements of the Pantheon dome and of other Roman buildings. Brunelleschi's buildings and Donatello's sculptures are both considered supreme expressions of the spirit of this era in architecture and sculpture, and they exercised a potent influence upon the artists of the age.

Donatello’s David First Unsupported standing work of bronze First reestanding nude male sculpture since antiquity Shows David smiling His foot on Goliath’s head He is naked except for his laurel-topped hat and boots and the sword of Goliath Requested by the Medici Family Donatello's bronze statue of David (circa 1440s) is famous as the first unsupported standing work of bronze cast during the Renaissance, and the first freestanding nude male sculpture made since antiquity. It depicts David with an enigmatic smile, posed with his foot on Goliath's severed head just after defeating the giant. The youth is completely naked, apart from a laurel-topped hat and boots, bearing the sword of Goliath. This piece was requested by the Medici family to be placed in the center of the courtyard of the Medici Palace in Florence. This daring move showed that the Medici family thought that they could take ownership of David, a symbol of the city of Florence. Because this was such a scandalous idea at the time, Donatello put some shifts on the subject matter that could explain away the identity of David as "just another sculpture". Goliath's helmet has a feather protruding that can be seen as attached to David's foot, and thus characterized as Hermes, the Greek god. The David also has slight breasts which could classify him as a woman if seen from the side where his leg is blocking his testicles. The Medici were exiled from Florence in 1494, and the statue was moved to the courtyard of the Palazzo della Signoria (the marble David was already in the palazzo). It was moved to the Pitti Palace in the 17th century, to the Uffizi in 1777, and then finally, in 1865, to the Bargello museum, where it remains today.[8][9][10][11] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6kUUJJV_MNA

St. John the Evangelist Marble Statue of the seated St. John. Cathedral in Florence Moving toward a classical technique Accurately showing suffering, joy, sorrow and realistic body positions. Rapidly maturing in his art, Donatello soon began to develop a style all his own, with figures much more dramatic and emotional. Between 1411 and 1413, he sculpted the marble figure St. Mark, placed in an exterior niche of the Orsanmichele Church, which also served as the chapel of Florence’s powerful craft and trade guilds In 1415, Donatello completed the marble statue of a seated St. John the Evangelist for the cathedral in Florence. Both works show a decisive move away from the Gothic style and toward a more classical technique. By this time, Donatello was gaining a reputation for creating imposing, larger-than-life figures using innovative techniques and extraordinary skills. His style incorporated the new science of perspective, which allowed the sculptor to create figures that occupied measurable space. Before this time, European sculptors used a flat background upon which figures were placed. Donatello also drew heavily from reality for inspiration in his sculptures, accurately showing suffering, joy and sorrow in his figures’ faces and body positions.

Gatamelata Magdalene Penitent In 1443, Donatello was called to the city of Padua by the family of the famous mercenary Erasmo da Narni, who had died earlier that year. In 1450, Donatello completed a bronze statue called Gattamelata, showing Erasmo riding a horse in full battle dress, minus a helmet. This was the first equestrian statue cast in bronze since the Romans. The sculpture created some controversy, as most equestrian statues were reserved for rulers or kings, not mere warriors. This work became the prototype for other equestrian monuments created in Italy and Europe in the following centuries. Final Years By 1455, Donatello had returned to Florence and completed Magdalene Penitent, a statue of a gaunt-looking Mary Magdalene. Commissioned by the convent at Santa Maria di Cestello, the work was probably intended to provide comfort and inspiration to the repentant prostitutes at the convent. Carved of woodEarned a retirement allowance and was burired next to cosimo d’medici http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6dWHPHELCKU http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-UZuG3XpAd0

Filippo Brunelleschi Architect and Engineer during the Renaissance Linear Perspective developments Dome of the Florence Cathedral Architecture, mathematics, engineering, ship design. Filippo Brunelleschi (Italian: [fiˈlippo brunelˈleski]; 1377 – April 15, 1446) was one of the foremost architects and engineers of the Italian Renaissance. He is perhaps most famous for his development of linear perspective and for engineering the dome of the Florence Cathedral, but his accomplishments also include other architectural works, sculpture, mathematics, engineering and even ship design. His principal surviving works are to be found in Florence, Italy. Little is known about the early life of Brunelleschi, the only sources being Antonio Manetti and Giorgio Vasari.[2] According to these sources, Filippo's father was Brunellesco di Lippo, a lawyer, and his mother was Giuliana Spini. Filippo was the middle of their three children. The young Filippo was given a literary and mathematical education intended to enable him to follow in the footsteps of his father, a civil servant. Being artistically inclined, however, Filippo enrolled in the Arte della Seta, the silk merchants' Guild, which also included goldsmiths, metalworkers, and bronze workers. He became a master goldsmith in 1398. It was thus not a coincidence that his first important building commission, the Ospedale degli Innocenti, came from the guild to which he belonged.[3]

Brunelleschi on Linear Perspective In about 1413 a contemporary of Ghiberti, Filippo Brunelleschi, demonstrated the geometrical method of perspective, used today by artists, by painting the outlines of various Florentine buildings onto a mirror. When the building's outline was continued, he noticed that all of the lines converged on the horizon line. According to Vasari, he then set up a demonstration of his painting of the Baptistery in the incomplete doorway of the Duomo. He had the viewer look through a small hole on the back of the painting, facing the Baptistery. He would then set up a mirror, facing the viewer, which reflected his painting. To the viewer, the painting of the Baptistery and the Baptistery itself were nearly indistinguishable.[citation needed] Soon after, nearly every artist in Florence and in Italy used geometrical perspective in their paintings,[11] notably Masolino da Panicale and Donatello. Donatello started sculpting elaborate checkerboard floors into the simple manger portrayed in the birth of Christ. Although hardly historically accurate, these checkerboard floors obeyed the primary laws of geometrical perspective: the lines converged approximately to a vanishing point, and the rate at which the horizontal lines receded into the distance was graphically determined. This became an integral part of Quattrocento art. Melozzo da Forlì first used the technique of upward foreshortening (in Rome, Loreto, Forlì and others), and was celebrated for that. Not only was perspective a way of showing depth, it was also a new method of composing a painting. Paintings began to show a single, unified scene, rather than a combination of several. Melozzo's usage of upward foreshortening in his frescoes at Loreto Pietro Perugino's usage of perspective in this fresco at the Sistine Chapel (1481–82) helped bring the Renaissance to Rome. As shown by the quick proliferation of accurate perspective paintings in Florence, Brunelleschi likely understood (with help from his friend the mathematician Toscanelli),[12] but did not publish, the mathematics behind perspective. http://smarthistory.khanacademy.org/Brunelleschi.html

“Do not share your inventions with many persons; share them only men who understand and love science. If you disclose too much about your inventions and achievements you give away the fruit of your genius. “ “When listening to the inventor, many people belittle and deny his achievements, so that no one in honorable places will ever again listen to him. Then after some months or a year, these persons use the inventor's words in speech or writing or design.” Http://www.webexhibits.org/arrowintheeye/brunelleschi1.html According to Brunelleschi's biographer of the 1480s, Antonio di Tuccio Manetti, in order to constrain the viewer to place his eye at the center of projection, Brunelleschi had made a hole in the panel on which there was this painting; ... which hole was as small as a lentil on the painting side of the panel, and on the back it opened pyramidally, like a woman's straw hat, to the size of a ducat or a little more. And he wished the eye to be placed at the back, where it was large, by whoever had it to see, with the one hand bringing it close to the eye, and with the other holding a mirror opposite, so that there the painting came to be reflected back; ... which on being seen, ... it seemed as if the real thing was seen: I have had the painting in my hand and have seen it many times in these days, so I can give testimony. (Trans. by White, 1968, pp. 114-17) Figure 3.1 shows a reconstruction of the first panel and how it was held. Figure 3.2 shows a picture of the Baptistry from the location at which Brunelleschi depicted it. This demonstration illustrates that the projection method, Brunelleschi's peepshow (as Arnheim, 1978, called it) is an effective method for the creation of an illusion of depth.         Manetti and Vasari thought that Brunelleschi had gone beyond this brilliant demonstration; they claimed he had invented perspective. Here is Manetti's account: Thus in those days, he himself proposed and practiced what painters today call perspective; for it is part of that science, which is in effect to put down well and within reason the diminutions and enlargements which appear to the eyes of men from things far away or close at hand: buildings, plains and mountains and countrysides of every kind and in every part, the figures and other objects, in that measurement which corresponds to that distance away which they show themselves to be: and from him is born the rule, which is the basis of all that has been done of that kind from that day to this. (Trans. by White, 1967, p. 113)

Video on Brunelleschi’s Dome http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TQ8F_yPwqzA