Italian Art and Culture
Italian art and culture have been significantly affected by political and religious events. Two artistic eras, the Italian Renaissance and Italian Baroque, introduced monumental art to the world. Italian artists, architects and sculptors created masterpieces that laid the foundation for the future of Italian art and culture. They are important for the techniques they used and the statements that they made.
Other People Are Reading
-
Italian Renaissance Painting
-
According to the Web Gallery of Art, Masaccio was the first great painter of the Italian Renaissance. He was the first to use chiaroscuro (light and dark effects) in his fresco series for the Brancacci Chapel. His use of realistic details and classical treatments of his subjects, as in his fresco "Tribute Money," greatly influenced later artists, such as Michelangelo.
Italian Renaissance Sculpture
-
Donatello was the greatest sculptor of the early Renaissance, according to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Donatello's artwork shows characteristics of the Italian Renaissance by using contrapposto (a classical pose based on ancient Greek and Roman sculpture) when creating his statue "David." Made for the Medici family, it was the first freestanding nude since Roman times. Artists used the contrapposto pose with their figures to demonstrate a return to classical ideals during the Italian Renaissance.
-
Italian Renaissance Architecture
-
According to PBS, Filippo Brunelleschi was "the first modern engineer and a problem solver with unorthodox methods." He created the world's first self-supporting dome for Santa Maria del Fiore, the cathedral of Florence. During the construction, he invented the first hoist with a reverse gear to get the materials from the ground to the dome structure. He was also the first to demonstrate how to establish a "vanishing point" to obtain linear perspective (representing a three-dimensional plane on a piece of paper). The tomb of Brunelleschi lies in the crypt of the Florence cathedral today.
The Counter-Reformation and the Italian Baroque
-
The Italian Baroque was an artistic period that was primarily influenced by a significant religious event, the Counter-Reformation around the seventeenth century. The Counter-Reformation was the Roman Catholic resurgence of religious fervor that brought people back to the church in response to the Protestant Reformation. While the Counter-Reformation affected the religious subject matter of art in Italy, Northern European Protestants abolished religious art that they considered idolatry. The Counter-Reformation influenced Italian artists to continue to use religious subjects in art.
Italian Baroque Art
-
Two of the most important Italian Baroque artists include the sculptor Bernini and the painter Caravaggio. One characteristic of Baroque art is the use of the precise moment of dramatic action. Bernini uses this in his sculpture of "The Ecstasy of Saint Teresa" by portraying the instant that the angel strikes Saint Teresa with the dart of divine love. Other important Baroque characteristics are the "spotlight effect" and diagonal composition, which are prominent in "The Calling of Saint Matthew" by Caravaggio.
-
References
- Photo Credit italian flag image by smn from Fotolia.com
