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1、 1 TopicTopic 8 8 HARMONY ATTAINED Tuscany and Rome,Early Sixteenth Century 1.The beginning of the sixteenth century,the Cinquecento,is the most famous period of Italian art,one of the greatest periods of all time.This was the time of Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo,of Raphael and Titian,of Corre
2、ggio and Giorgione,of Durer and Holbein in the North,and of many other famous masters.One may well ask why it was that all these great masters were born in the same period,but such questions are more easily asked than answered.One cannot explain the existence of genius.It is better to enjoy it.What
3、we have to say,therefore,can never be a full explanation of the great period which is called the High Renaissance,but we can try to see what the conditions were which made this sudden efflorescence of genius possible.2.The pride of the cities,which vied with each other in securing the services of th
4、e greatest artists to beautify their buildings and to create works of lasting fame,was a great incentive to the masters to outdo each other.There were many small courts in Italy which were badly in need of honor and prestige.To erect magnificent buildings,to commission splendid tombs,to order great
5、cycles of frescoes,or dedicate a painting for the high altar of a famous church,was considered a sure way of perpetuating ones name and securing a worthy monument to ones earthly existence.As there were many centers competing for the services of the most renowned masters,the masters in turn could di
6、ctate their terms.In earlier times it was the prince who bestowed his favors on the artist.Now it almost came to pass that the roles were reversed,and that the artist granted a favor to a rich prince or potentate by accepting a commission from him.Thus,it came about that the artists could frequently
7、 choose the kind of commission which they liked,and that they no longer needed to accommodate their works to the whims and fancies of their employers.Whether or not this new power was an unmixed blessing for art in the long run is difficult to decide.But at first,at any rate,it had the effect of a l
8、iberation which released a tremendous amount of pent-up energy.At last,the artist was free.183.A Chapel of the High Renaissance:the Tempietto,Rome,S.Pictro in Montorio.Designed by br am ante,1502 2 3.Since the time of Brunelleschi the architect had to have some of the knowledge of a classical schola
9、r.But the true aspiration of the Renaissance architect was still to design a building irrespective of its use;simply for the beauty of its proportions,the spaciousness of its interior and the imposing grandeur of its ensemble.They craved for a perfect symmetry and regularity such as they could not a
10、chieve while concentrating on the practical requirements of an ordinary building.It was a memorable moment when one of them found a mighty patron willing to sacrifice tradition and expediency for the sake of the fame he would acquire by erecting a stately structure that would outshine the seven wond
11、ers of the world.Only in this way can we understand the decision of Pope Julius II in 1506 to pull down the venerable Basilica of St.Peter which stood at the place where,according to the legend,St.Peter lay buried and to have it built anew in a manner which defied the age-old traditions of church bu
12、ilding and the usages of Divine service.The man to whom he entrusted this task was Donato Bramante(1444-1514),an ardent champion of the new style.One of the few of his buildings which have survived intact shows how far Bramante had gone in absorbing the ideas and standards of classical architecture
13、without becoming a slavish imitator(Fig.183).But Bramantes plan for St.Peters was not destined to be carried out.By the time the building had progressed sufficiently,the idea of a circular church was abandoned.St.Peters,as we know it today,has little in common with the original plan,except its gigan
14、tic dimensions.4.The spirit of bold enterprise which made Bramantes plan for St.Peters possible is characteristic of the period of the High Renaissance,the period round about 1500 which produced so many of the worlds greatest artists.To these men nothing seemed impossible,and that may be the reason
15、why they did sometimes achieve the apparently impossible.Once more,it was Florence which gave birth to some of the leading minds of that great epoch.Since the days of Giotto round about 1300,and of Masaccio round about 1400,Florentine artists cultivated their tradition with special pride,and their e
16、xcellence was recognized by all people of taste.We shall see that nearly all the greatest artists grew out of such a firmly established tradition,and that is why we should not forget the humbler masters in whose workshops they learned the elements of their craft.5.Leonardo da Vinci(1452-1519),the ol
17、dest of these famous masters,was born in a Tuscan village.He was apprenticed to a leading Florentine workshop,that of the painter and sculptor Andrea del Verrocchio(1435-88).6.In a workshop capable of producing masterpieces,the young Leonardo could certainly learn many things.But Leonardo was more t
18、han a gifted boy.He was a genius whose powerful mind will always remain an object of wonder and admiration to ordinary mortals.We know something of the range 185 Leonardo DA Vinci:Anatomical Studies(larynx and leg).1510.Windsor Castle,Royal Library 3 and productivity of Leonardos mind because his pu
19、pils and admirers carefully preserved for us his sketches and notebooks,thousands of pages covered with writings and drawings,with excerpts from books Leonardo read,and drafts for books he intended to write.The more one reads of these papers,the less can one understand how one human being could have
20、 excelled in all these different fields of research and made important contributions to nearly all of them.Perhaps one of the reasons is that Leonardo was a Florentine artist and not a trained scholar.He thought that the artists business was to explore the visible world just as his predecessors had
21、done,only more thoroughly and with greater intensity and accuracy.He was not interested in the bookish knowledge of the scholars.Whenever he came across a problem,he did not consult the authorities but tried an experiment to solve it.There was nothing in nature which did not arouse his curiosity and
22、 challenge his ingenuity.He explored the secrets of the human body by dissecting more than thirty corpses.He was one of the first to probe into the mysteries of the growth of the child in the womb;he investigated the laws of waves and currents;he spent years in observing and analyzing the flight of
23、insects and birds,which was to help him to devise a flying machine which he was sure would one day become a reality.The forms of rocks and clouds,the effect of the atmosphere on the color of distant objects,the laws governing the growth of trees and plants,the harmony of sounds,all these were the ob
24、jects of his ceaseless research,which was to be the foundation of his art.7.His contemporaries looked upon Leonardo as a strange and rather uncanny being.He was admired as a great artist,and sought after as a splendid musician,but,for all that,few people can have had an inkling of the importance of
25、his ideas or the extent of his knowledge.The reason is that Leonardo never published his writings,and that very few can even have known of their existence.He was left-handed,and had taken to writing from right to left so that his notes can only be read in a mirror.It is possible that he was afraid o
26、f divulging his discoveries for fear that his opinions would be found heretical.But it is also possible that he undertook his researches and experiments simply because of his insatiable curiosity,and that,once he had solved a problem for himself,he was apt to lose interest because there were so many
27、 other mysteries still to be explored.8.Most of all,it is likely that Leonardo himself had no ambition to be considered a scientist.All this exploration of nature was to him first and foremost a means of gaining knowledge of the visible world,such as he would need for his art.He thought that by plac
28、ing it on scientific foundations he could transform his beloved art of painting from a humble craft into an honored and gentlemanly pursuit.It was the ambition of such men as Leonardo to show that painting was a Liberal Art,and that the manual labor involved in it was no more essential than was the
29、labor of writing in poetry.He would start on a painting and leave it unfinished,despite the urgent requests of the patron.Moreover,he obviously insisted that it was he himself who had to decide when a work of his was to be considered finished,and he refused to let it go out of his hands unless he wa
30、s satisfied with it.It is not surprising,therefore,that few of Leonardos works were ever completed,and that his contemporaries regretted the way in which this 4 outstanding genius seemed to fritter away his time,moving restlessly from Florence to Milan,from Milan to Florence and then to Rome,and fin
31、ally to the court of King Francis I in France,where he died in the year 1519,more admired than understood.9.By a singular misfortune,the few works which Leonardo did complete in his mature years have come down to us in a very bad state of preservation.Thus when we look at what remains of Leonardos f
32、amous wall-painting of the Last Supper(Fig.186)we must try to imagine how it may have appeared to the monks for whom it was painted.The painting covers one wall of an oblong hall that was used as a dining-room by the monks of the monastery of Santa Maria delle Grazie in Milan.How clear the light fel
33、l on to the table,and how it added roundness and solidity to the figures.There was nothing in this work that resembled older representations of the same theme.There was drama in it,and excitement.One wonders how long it took the first spectators to realize the consummate art by which all this dramat
34、ic movement was controlled.The twelve apostles seem to fall quite naturally into four groups of three,linked to each other by gestures and movements.There is so much order in this variety,and so much variety in this order,that one can never quite exhaust the harmonious interplay of movement and answ
35、ering movement.If one forgets for a moment what the scene represents,one can still enjoy the beautiful pattern formed by the figures.Beyond such technical matters as composition and draughtsmanship,we must admire Leonardos deep insight into the behavior and reactions of men,and the power of imaginat
36、ion which enabled him to put the scene before our eyes.And,even in its ruined state,The Last Supper remains one of the great miracles wrought by human genius.10.There is another work of Leonardos which is perhaps even more famous than The Last Supper.It is the portrait of a Florentine lady whose nam
37、e was Lisa,Mona Lisa(Fig.187).A fame as great as that of Leonardos Mona Lisa is not an unmixed blessing for a work of art.We become so used to 186.Leonardo da vinci:The Last Supper.Wall-painting in the Refectory of the Monastery of Sta Maria delle Grazie,Milan.Between 1495 and 1498 187.Leonardo da v
38、inci:Mona Lisa.About 1502.Paris,Louvre 5 seeing it on picture postcards,and even advertisements,that we find it difficult to see it with fresh eyes as the painting of a real man portraying a real person of flesh and blood.But it is worthwhile to forget what we know,or believe we know,about the pictu
39、re,and to look at it as if we were the first people ever to set eyes on it.What strikes us first is the amazing degree to which Lisa looks alive.She really seems to look at us and to have a mind of her own.Like a living being,she seems to change before our eyes and to look a little different every t
40、ime we come back to her.Sometimes she seems to mock at us,and then again,we seem to catch something like sadness in her smile.All this sounds rather mysterious,and so it is;that is the effect of every great work of art.Nevertheless,Leonardo certainly knew how he achieved this effect,and by what mean
41、s.That great observer of nature knew more about the way we use our eyes than anybody who had ever lived before him.He had clearly seen a problem which the conquest of nature had posed to the artistsa problem no less intricate than the one of combining correct drawing with a harmonious composition.Le
42、onardo found the true solution to the problem.The painter must leave the beholder something to guess.If the outlines are not quite so firmly drawn,if the form is left a little vague,as though disappearing into a shadow,this impression of dryness and stiffness will be avoided.This is Leonardos famous
43、 invention which the Italians call sfumatothe blurred outline and mellowed colors that allow one form to merge with another and always leave something to our imagination.11.If we now return to the Mona Lisa,we may understand something of its mysterious effect.We see that Leonardo has used the means
44、of his sfumato with the utmost deliberation.Everyone who has ever tried to draw or scribble a face knows that what we call its expression rests mainly in two features:the corners of the mouth,and the corners of the eyes.Now it is precisely these parts which Leonardo has left deliberately indistinct,
45、by letting them merge into a soft shadow.That is why we are never quite certain in what mood Mona Lisa is really looking at us.Her expression always seems just to elude us.It is not only vagueness,of course,which produces this effect.There is much more behind it.If we look carefully at the picture,w
46、e see that the two sides do not quite match.This is most obvious in the fantastic dream landscape in the background.The horizon on the left side seems to lie much lower than the one on the right.Consequently,when we focus the left side of the picture,the woman looks somehow taller or more erect than
47、 if we focus the right side.And her face,too,seems to change with this change of position,because,even here,the two sides do not quite match.Look at the way in which he modelled the hand,or the sleeves with their minute folds.Leonardo could be as painstaking as any of his forerunners in the patient
48、observation of nature.Only he was no longer merely the faithful servant of nature.Long ago,in the distant past,people had looked at portraits with awe,because they had thought that in preserving the likeness the artist could somehow preserve the soul of the person he portrayed.Now the great scientis
49、t,Leonardo,had made some of the dreams and fears of these first image-makers come true.He knew the spell which would infuse fife into the colors spread by his magic brush.6 12.The second great Florentine whose work makes Italian art of the sixteenth century(Cinquecento)so famous was Michelangelo Buo
50、narroti(1475-1564).Michelangelo was twenty-three years younger than Leonardo and survived him by forty-five years.In his long lifetime he witnessed a complete change in the position of the artist.To some degree it was he himself who brought about this change.In his youth Michelangelo was trained lik