General discussion on attitudes to Classical Antiquity in the Renaissance


Classical antiquity was a major influence on all branches of the art of the Italian Renaissance, as there was a revival of interest in the Ancient Greek and Roman civilizations. The Italians at the times were haunted by their splendid past. They admired the classical art and they were also firmly convinced that art had its own rules which had been discovered and applied in Ancient Greece and Rome and subsequently forgotten. These rules, after an interval of about 1000 years, were rediscovered and applied by the artists of the Renaissance. The ruins of Rome architecture allowed Quattrocento architects such as Brunelleschi and Alberti learnt how to use Roman arches and Greek orders to decorate and extend the simple Italian architecture of the time, with its basic flatwall structure. Renaissance artists who studied the ancient statues aimed at achieving a similar rendition of physical reality by using rediscovered techniques. For example, Renaissance sculptors would made use of perspective, nudes and equestrian statues as subject. 2. The effect interest in Classical Art had on artistic style.

Classical art brought about an idealisation of reality, which defined beauty as the sum of all parts and equated physical perfection with spiritual and intellectual worth. The Cinquecento set out with a new concept of human greatness and dignity. High Renaissance art reflected this elevation of human nature feeling of the significant and the noble. The artists included only what they saw as truly relevant. Mature models were preferred. The influence of antique statues are shown through the men’s heavily muscled body and women rounded torsos and board hips. Their physical actions are energetic and purposeful. Clothing was deceptively simple, with soft, heavy materials giving fullness and weight. When jewellery was worn, the pieces were usually massive - heavy chains and rings, large pendants and broaches, long ear-rings. If figures are dressed, they would be dress in timeless classical drapery. They displayed restraint, dignity and classical repose. 3. The influence of Classical Art on Michelangelo and Raphael.

Quattrocento artists imitated classical models. The artists of the High Renaissance went further and assimilated the classical ideas into their own style.

Influence on Michelangelo
Influence on Raphael







Michelangelo

Renaissance scholars based their conception of classical art on statues, particularly Greek ones and Roman copies of Greek originals. As a sculptor, Michelangelo had a particular affinity with classical art in this form. He was invited to study the works kept in Lorenzo de Medici sculpture garden at an early age. Painting, for him should imitate the roundness of sculptured forms, and architecture, too, must partake of the organic qualities of the human figure.
Michelangelo faith in the image of man as the supreme vehicle of expression gave him a sense of kinship with Classical sculpture closer than that of any other Renaissance prison of the soul * noble, surely, but a prison nevertheless. This dualism endows his figures with their extraordinary pathos, outwardly calm, they seem stirred by an overwhelming psychic energy that can find no true release in physical action. The unique qualities of Michelangelo’s art are fully presented in the David, which was done under the influence by the emotion-filled, muscular bodies of Hellenistic sculpture in Rome. Their heroic scale, their superhuman beauty and power, and the swelling volume of their forms became part of Michelangelo’s style, and through him part of Renaissance art in general. Michelangelo paintings style had a hard, sculptural quality and many of his painted figures were directly inspired by classical statues. For example, the Laocoon group (which was dug up in Rome in 1506). The piece made a tremendous impression upon Michelangelo, at the time it was unearthed. This is evidenced in his The Battle of Cascina, this cartoon shows that he used several variants of the poses in the Laocoon group. Many of Michelangelo later works seem to depend one way or another on his knowledge of the Laocoon.
For example, in Rebellious Slave turns his torso and shoulders to the left while deflecting his knee and head in the opposite direction while the Dying Slave twists the other way. These elegant contrapposto poses derive from the so-called younger son in the Laocoon group. Also, the face of the saint in the Conversion of Saul has resemblance to that of Laocoon.
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Raphael

Raphael responded readily to classical sculpture and to the architecture of ancient Rome. He synthesized their elements into his own style so that figures in his paintings became noble and monumental and classical architecture was used to provide suitable settings for such divine beginnings. Raphael absorbed the classical qualities of harmony, clarity and balance which were always after associated with him. Raphael was influenced by the classical art The Laocoon, this can be mostly evidenced in his work of Galatea. Raphael had shown his awareness of the works of Classical Antiquity, when he produced two small panel paintings with classical themes, The Dream of the Knight and The Three Graces (1504-5). Also, Raphael, in his design for the Parnassus, used a series of references to famous antique sculptures. Among these was the Laocoon group, the head of the poet Homer in the fresco is based on that of Laocoon himself, and the Greek sculpture The Sleeping Ariadne (shown in the pose of the Muse Calliope).
Raphael had a precocious talent right from the beginning and was an innate absorber of influences. Whatever he saw, he took possession of, always growing by what was taught to him. These allowed him to create an art at once lyric and dramatic, pictorially rich and sculpturally solid. The influence from the classical allowed him to present body and spirit, action and feeling with balanced harmoniously.

Art historians today emphasize his fundamental role in the complex cultural evolution of Renaissance ideals, successfully integrating Christianity and classicism in a perfect synthesis.
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