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Renaissance period of time. General information. General characteristics of the Renaissance

10.07.2020

Renaissance (Renaissance)

Renaissance (Renaissance), an era of intellectual and artistic flowering that began in Italy in the 14th century, peaking in the 16th century and having a significant impact on European culture. The term "Renaissance", which meant a return to the values \u200b\u200bof the ancient world (although interest in the Roman classics arose as early as the 12th century), appeared in the 15th century and received theoretical justification in the 16th century in the works of Vasari, dedicated to the work of famous painters, sculptors and architects. At this time, the idea of \u200b\u200bharmony prevailing in nature and of man as the crown of her creation was formed. Among the outstanding representatives of this era are the artist Alberti; architect, artist, scientist, poet and mathematician Leonardo da Vinci.

The architect Brunelleschi, using innovative Hellenistic (antique) traditions, created several buildings that were not inferior in beauty to the best antique examples. Very interesting are the works of Bramante, whom his contemporaries considered the most talented architect of the High Renaissance, and Palladio, who created large architectural ensembles, distinguished by the integrity of the artistic concept and a variety of compositional solutions. The theater buildings and decorations were based on the architectural work of Vitruvius (circa 15 BC) in accordance with the principles of the Roman theater. The playwrights followed strict classical canons. The auditorium, as a rule, resembled a horseshoe in shape; in front of it there was an elevation with a proscenium, separated from the main space by an arch. This was taken as the model of theatrical building for the entire Western world for the next five centuries.

Renaissance painters created an integral concept of the world with an inner unity, filled traditional religious subjects with earthly content (Nicola Pisano, late 14th century; Donatello, early 15th century). The realistic depiction of a person became the main goal of the early Renaissance artists, as evidenced by the works of Giotto and Masaccio. The invention of a method of conveying perspective has contributed to a more truthful representation of reality. One of the main themes of Renaissance paintings (Gilbert, Michelangelo) was the tragic irreconcilability of conflicts, the struggle and death of the hero.

Around 1425 Florence became the center of the Renaissance (Florentine art), but by the beginning of the 16th century (High Renaissance) Venice (Venetian art) and Rome took the leading place. The cultural centers were the courts of the Dukes of Mantua, Urbino and Ferrada. The main patrons of the arts were the Medici and the popes, especially Julius II and Leo X. The largest representatives of the "Northern Renaissance" were Durer, Cranach the Elder, Holbein. Northern artists mainly imitated the best Italian examples, and only a few, for example Jan van Scorel, managed to create their own style, which was distinguished by a special elegance and grace, later called Mannerism.

Renaissance artists:

Famous paintings by artists of the Renaissance (Renaissance)

The Renaissance era is usually divided into 4 stages:

Proto-Renaissance (2nd half of the XIII century - XIV century)

Early Renaissance (early 15th century - late 15th century)

High Renaissance (late 15th - first 20 years of the 16th century)

Late Renaissance (mid-16th - 90s of the 16th century) Revival [electronic resource]. // Wikipedia: the free encyclopedia: in Russian. // Access mode: http://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C2%EE%E7%F0%EE%E6%E4%E5%ED%E8%E5. Date of treatment 02/10/2013

Proto-Renaissance is closely associated with the Middle Ages, with Romanesque, Gothic traditions, this period was the preparation of the Renaissance. This period is divided into two sub-periods: before the death of Giotto di Bondone and after (1337). The most important discoveries, the brightest masters live and work in the first period. The second segment is associated with the plague epidemic that hit Italy.

At the end of the 13th century, the main temple structure, the Cathedral of Santa Maria del Fiore, was erected in Florence, the author was Arnolfo di Cambio, then the work was continued by Giotto, who designed the campaign for the Florence Cathedral.

The earliest of all the art of proto-Renaissance manifested itself in sculpture (Niccolò and Giovanni Pisano, Arnolfo di Cambio, Andrea Pisano). Painting is represented by two art schools: Florence (Cimabue, Giotto) and Siena (Duccio, Simone Martini).

Giotto became the central figure in painting. Renaissance artists considered him a reformer of painting. Giotto outlined the path along which its development went: filling religious forms with secular content, a gradual transition from flat images to three-dimensional and relief, an increase in realism. Giotto introduced the plastic volume of figures in painting, depicted the interior in painting.

The period of the so-called "Early Renaissance" in Italy covers the time from 1420 to 1500. During these eighty years, art has not yet completely abandoned the traditions of the recent past, but is trying to mix with them elements borrowed from classical antiquity. Only later, and only little by little, under the influence of more and more changing living conditions and culture, did the artists completely abandon the medieval foundations and boldly use the examples of ancient art, both in the general concept of their works and in their details.

While art in Italy was already resolutely following the path of imitation of classical antiquity, in other countries it kept the traditions of the Gothic style for a long time. North of the Alps, as well as in Spain, the Renaissance does not come until the end of the 15th century, and its early period lasts until about the middle of the next century

The third period of the Renaissance - the time of the most magnificent development of his style - is usually called the "High Renaissance".

It stretches in Italy from about 1500 to 1527.

At this time, the center of influence of Italian art from Florence moved to Rome, thanks to the accession to the papal throne of Julius II - an ambitious, brave and enterprising man who attracted the best Italian artists to his court, occupied them with numerous and important works and gave others an example of love for art.

Under this Pope and under his closest successors, Rome becomes, as it were, the new Athens of the times of Pericles: many monumental buildings are built in it, magnificent sculptural works are created, frescoes and paintings are painted, which are still considered pearls of painting; at the same time, all three branches of art harmoniously go hand in hand, helping one another and mutually acting on each other.

Antique is now studied more thoroughly, reproduced with greater rigor and consistency; serenity and dignity replace the playful beauty that was the aspiration of the preceding period; the reminiscences of the medieval disappear completely, and a completely classical imprint falls on all creations of art. But imitation of the ancients does not drown out their independence in artists, and they, with great resourcefulness and liveliness of imagination, freely rework and apply to business what they consider appropriate to borrow for themselves from ancient Greco-Roman art.

The work of three great Italian masters marks the pinnacle of the Renaissance: Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519), Michelangelo Buonarotti (1475-1564) and Raphael Santi (1483-1520).

The later Renaissance in Italy spans the period from the 1530s to the 1590s and 1620s. Some researchers attribute the 1630s to the Late Renaissance, but this position causes controversy among art critics and historians. The art and culture of this time are so diverse in their manifestations that it is possible to reduce them to one denominator only with a great deal of convention.

During this period, the Counter-Reformation triumphed in southern Europe, Mannerism developed in Florence, and the artistic traditions of Venice had their own logic of development.

She gave the world a strong-willed, intelligent person, the creator of her own destiny and herself. There have been significant changes in the mindset of people in comparison with the Middle Ages. First of all, secular motives in European culture intensified. Various spheres of the life of society - art, philosophy, literature, education - have become more and more independent and independent. An energetic, liberated person who dreams of realizing his personal earthly ideals, striving for independence in all spheres of his activity, trying to realize diverse interests, challenging established traditions and orders, became the main character of the era, a kind of cultural center.

Its name Revival (in French "Renaissance", in Italian "Renaissance") received with a light hand italian artist, architect and art historian Giorgio Vasari, who in his book "Biographies of Great Painters, Sculptors and Architects" designated the period of Italian art from 1250 to 1550 with this term. Thus, he wanted to emphasize the return of the cultural ideals of antiquity to society and define a new cultural the historical era that replaced the Middle Ages.

Preconditions and features of the Renaissance culture

The main prerequisite for the formation of a new type of culture was a new worldview, conditioned by significant changes in the life of many European countries. In Italy, and then in the Netherlands, Germany, France, England, trade developed rapidly, and along with it the first industrial enterprises - manufactories - acquired great importance. New living conditions naturally gave rise to new thinking, which was based on secular freethinking. The asceticism of medieval morality did not correspond to the real life practice of new social groups and strata that had come to the fore in public life. The features of rationalism, prudence, awareness of the role of a person's personal needs were increasingly manifested. A new morality has emerged, justifying the joys of worldly life, affirming the human right to earthly happiness, to free development and the manifestation of all natural inclinations. Strengthening secular sentiments, interest in the earthly deeds of man had a decisive influence on the emergence and formation of the culture of the Renaissance.

The birthplace of the Renaissance was Florence, which in the XIII century. was a city of wealthy merchants, owners of manufactures, a huge number of artisans, organized in workshops. In addition, the workshops of doctors, pharmacists, musicians, lawyers, lawyers, solicitors, and notaries were very numerous for that time. It was among the representatives of this class that circles of educated people began to form, who decided to study cultural heritage Ancient Greece and Ancient Rome... They turned to the artistic heritage of the ancient world, the works of the Greeks and Romans, who at one time created the image of a person who was not constrained by the dogmas of religion, beautiful in soul and body. Therefore, the new era in the development of European culture was called "Renaissance", reflecting the desire to return the samples and values \u200b\u200bof ancient culture in new historical conditions.

The revival of the ancient heritage began with the study of the Greek and Latin languages; later, Latin became the language of the Renaissance. The founders of the new cultural era - historians, philologists, librarians - studied old manuscripts and books, compiled collections of antiquities, restored forgotten works of Greek and Roman authors, and re-translated scientific texts distorted in the Middle Ages. These texts were not only monuments of another cultural era, but also "teachers" who helped them to discover themselves, to shape their personality.

Gradually, other monuments of the artistic culture of antiquity, primarily sculptural ones, fell into the circle of interests of these ascetics. At that time, in Florence, Rome, Ravenna, Naples, Venice, there were still quite a lot of Greek and Roman statues, painted vessels, architectural buildings. For the first time in a millennium of Christian rule, antique sculptures were not treated as pagan idols, but as works of art. Later, the ancient heritage was included in the education system, and a wide range of people became acquainted with literature, sculpture, philosophy. Poets and artists, imitating ancient authors, strove to revive ancient art. But, as often happens in culture, the desire for the revival of old principles and forms leads to the creation of a new one. Renaissance culture was not a simple return to antiquity. She developed it and interpreted it in a new way based on the changed historical conditions. Therefore, the culture of the Renaissance was the result of a synthesis of the old and the new. Renaissance culture was formed as denial, protest, rejection medieval culture... Dogmatism and scholasticism were denied, theology was deprived of its former authority. The attitude towards the church and the clergy became critical. Researchers agree that in no era in the history of European culture have so many anti-church writings and sayings been created as in the Renaissance.

However, the Renaissance was not a non-religious culture. Many best works this era were born in the mainstream of church art. Almost all the great masters of the Renaissance created frescoes, designed and painted cathedrals, referring to biblical characters and stories. Humanists re-translated and commented on the Bible and engaged in theological research. Therefore, we can talk about rethinking religion, and not about rejecting it. Man's comprehension of the world filled with divine beauty becomes one of the ideological tasks of this era. The world attracts a person, since he is spiritualized by God, but it is possible to cognize him only with the help of his own feelings. In this process of cognition, the human eye, according to cultural figures of that time, is the most faithful and reliable means. Therefore, in the era of the Italian Renaissance, there is a keen interest in visual perception, painting and other types of spatial art flourish, allowing you to more accurately and truly see and capture the divine beauty. In the Renaissance, artists more than others determined the content of the spiritual culture of their time, due to which it has a pronounced artistic character.

The formation of the Renaissance image of the world and the artistic style that implements it can be divided into several stages: preparatory, early, high, late and final. Each of them had a different look and was heterogeneous from the inside. At the same time, medieval styles still existed - late Gothic, Proto-Renaissance, Mannerism, etc. Taken together, they form a rich and varied palette of means of expressing the Renaissance worldview.

The art of the Renaissance strove for rationalism, a scientific view of things, imitation of nature. At this time, an exceptional interest in the harmony of nature arises. Imitation of her became the central principle of the Renaissance theory of art and implied adherence to the laws of nature, and not to the external appearance of objects and phenomena of the surrounding world. There was a contamination (a combination of two principles in one work) of the image of nature and creativity according to the laws of nature.

The embodiment of the beauty of man, who was considered as the highest creation of the natural world, acquired particular importance. Artists primarily paid attention to human bodily perfection. If the medieval consciousness considered the body as an outer shell, the focus of animal instincts, a source of sinfulness, then the Renaissance culture considered it the most important aesthetic value. After centuries of neglect of the flesh, interest in physical beauty is growing rapidly.

At this time, a significant role was assigned to the cult of female beauty. Many artists have tried to unravel the mystery of the charm of the fair sex. This was largely due to the revision of the position of women in real life. If in the Middle Ages her fate was inextricably linked with housekeeping, raising children, detachment from secular entertainment, then during the Renaissance, a woman's living space expanded significantly. The ideal of a relaxed, educated, emancipated lady, who shines in society, is fond of art, who knows how to be an interesting companion, is being formed. She strives to show her beauty by revealing her hair, neck, arms, wearing low-cut dresses, using cosmetics. The pier includes decoration of clothes with gold, silver embroidery, precious stones, lace. A beautiful, elegant, educated woman seeks to charm, to influence the world with her attractiveness, charm.

Unlike the Middle Ages, which created the ideal of a fragile woman with a slender body, a pale face, a serene look, humble, brought up in prayer, the Renaissance will give preference to physically strong damsels. At this time, curvy female forms are appreciated. The ideal of beauty, aesthetically attractive, was considered a pregnant woman, personifying a truly feminine principle, participation in the great mystery of procreation. The signs of male beauty were physical strength, internal energy, will, determination, the ability to achieve recognition, fame. The Renaissance era gave rise to a variety of estimates in the interpretation of the beautiful, based on the cult of human uniqueness.

All this led to an increase in the role of art in public life, which became the main type of spiritual activity during the Renaissance. For the people of that era, it became what religion was in the Middle Ages, and in modern times - science and technology. The public consciousness was dominated by the belief that work of fiction is able to most fully express the ideal of a harmoniously organized world, where a person takes the central place. All kinds of art were subordinated to this task to varying degrees.

The role of the artist is especially growing, who is being compared to the creator of the universe. Artists set themselves the goal of imitating nature, they do not believe that art is even higher than nature. Technical skill, professional independence, scholarship, an independent view of things and the ability to create a “living” work of art are increasingly appreciated in their work.

Along with the works of monumental painting and sculpture, which were directly associated with architectural structures, the works of easel art, which acquired an independent value, received more and more development. A system of genres began to take shape: along with the religious-mythological genre, which still occupied the main place, at first a few works of the historical, everyday and landscape genres appeared; the revived portrait genre is of great importance; a new type of art appears and will become widespread - engraving.

In that era, the dominant position of painting predetermined its influence on other arts. If in the Middle Ages it depended on the art of words, limiting its tasks to illustrating biblical texts, then the Renaissance changed places between painting and literature, making literary narration dependent on the image of the visible world in painting. Writers began to describe the world as one could see it.

Italian Renaissance art

The formation and development of the Renaissance culture was a long and uneven process. Italy became the birthplace of the Renaissance, where a new culture was born earlier than in other countries. The chronological framework covers the period from the second half of the XIII century. to the first half of the 16th century. inclusive. During this time, the art of the Italian Renaissance went through several stages of development. Among art critics, these stages are usually called by the name of the centuries: XIII century. called Duchento (literally - two hundredths), XIV century. - trecento (three hundredths), XV century. - Quattrocento (four hundredths), XVI century - cinquecento (five hundredths).

The first shoots of a new worldview and shifts in artistic creation appeared at the end of the XIII century, and at the beginning of the XIV century. they were replaced by a wave of Gothic art. These phenomena became a kind of "pre-revival" and received the name of the Proto-Renaissance. New phenomena in the culture of Italy were widely developed in the 15th century. This stage, designated as quattrocento, is also called the early Renaissance. Its full completeness and flourishing art culture It reached a revival by the end of the 15th - beginning of the 16th century. This period of the highest flowering, which lasted only 30-40 years, is called the High, or classic, Renaissance. In general, the Renaissance became obsolete in Italy in the 1530s, but the last 2/3 of the 16th century. it continues to exist in Venice. This period is usually called the late Renaissance.

Proto-Renaissance culture

Start new era associated with the work of the Florentine artist Giotto di Bondone. In the visual arts of the Proto-Renaissance, Giotto is a central figure, as the major painters of the Renaissance considered him a reformer of painting. Thanks to him, the laborious technique of mosaic was replaced by the technique of fresco, which was more in line with the requirements of painting, allowing more accurate transfer of the volume and density of the material than mosaic with its imperceptibility to matter, and faster to create multi-figure compositions.

Giotto was the first to implement the principle of imitating nature in painting. He began to draw living people from nature, which was not done either in Byzantium or in medieval Europe. If in the works of medieval art disembodied figures with ascetic stern faces barely touched the ground, then Giotto's figures appear voluminous, material. He achieved this effect thanks to light modeling, according to which the human eye perceives the light closer to it, the dark more distant. When working on the frescoes, the artist paid special attention to showing the state of mind of the characters.

The boundary between Ducento and Trecento (XIII-XIV centuries) turned out to be a turning point in the cultural life of Italy. In a certain sense, it crowns the Middle Ages and at the same time serves as the starting point of the Renaissance. During this period, poetry most fully expressed a new culture and a new sense of the world. It was in the literature that the gravitation towards the new, manifested in other value orientations, was most clearly indicated. The brightest, most talented exponents of new traditions were Dante, Franchsko Petrarca, Giovanni Boccaccio.

Dante Alighieri at the beginning of his poetry, he was closely associated with a new direction in Italian poetry, known as the school of the "new sweet style", in which love for women was idealized and identified with love for wisdom and virtue. His first works were lyric poems of love content, in which Dante acted as an imitator of the French courtly poets. The main character his literary creation was the young Florentine Beatrice, who died seven years after their meeting, but the poet carried his love for her throughout his life.

Dante entered the history of world culture as the author of the poem "The Divine Comedy". Initially, he called his grandiose epic a comedy, following the medieval tradition according to which any literary work with a bad start and a good ending. The epithet "Divine" was added to the name at the end of the XIV century. in order to emphasize the artistic value and poetic excellence of the work.

"The Divine Comedy" has a clear structure: three main parts - "Hell", "Purgatory", "Paradise", each of which consists of 33 songs, it was written by terzins - poetic forms in the form of three stanzas. The content of Dante's poem is associated with his theory of four meanings of poetic works - literal, allegorical, moral and analogous (i.e. higher).

The Divine Comedy poem is based on the traditional plot of the “visions” genre, when a person who is mired in his vices is helped by heavenly forces (most often in the guise of his guardian angel) to understand his unrighteousness, making it possible to see hell and heaven. A person falls into a lethargic sleep, during which his soul goes to the afterlife. Dante's plot looks like this: the savior of his soul is his long-dead beloved Beatrice, who sends the ancient poet Virgil to help Alighieri's soul, accompanying him on his journey through hell and purgatory. In paradise, he follows Beatrice herself, since the pagan Virgil has no right to be there.

Dante depicted hell as an underground funnel-shaped abyss, the slopes of which are surrounded by concentric ledges - “circles of hell”. Narrowing down, it reaches the center of the globe with an icy lake into which Lucifer is frozen. In the circles of hell sinners are punished; the more terrible their sin, the lower in the circle they are. During his journey, Dante goes through all nine circles of hell - from the first, where unbaptized babies and virtuous non-Christians are, to the ninth, where traitors are tormented, among whom we see Judas. Not all sinners disgust and censure Dante. So, in the interpretation of the love of Francesca and Paolo, the poet's sympathy is manifested, because love for him is not a condemned sin, but a feeling determined by the very nature of life.

Dante presented Purgatory as a huge cone-shaped mountain towering in the middle of the ocean in the southern hemisphere. In accordance with the teachings of Thomas Aquinas, purgatory is a place where the souls of sinners, who have not received forgiveness in earthly life, but also not burdened with mortal sins, before gaining access to heaven, burn in a cleansing fire. (Note that the cleansing fire of purgatory was perceived by some theologians as a symbol of pangs of conscience and repentance, by others as a real fire.) The period of stay of a sinner's soul in purgatory could be reduced by his relatives and friends who remained on earth by performing “good deeds” - prayers, masses, donations to the church.

Paradise, according to Dante, is a wonderful and mysterious area. This radiant abode of God is shaped like a round lake and is the heart of the Paradise rose. The blessed souls who find themselves there take the place corresponding to their exploits and glory.

Dante's great poem is a unique picture of the universe, nature and human existence. Although the world depicted in The Divine Comedy is fictional, it is in many ways similar to earthly pictures: hellish depths and lakes are like terrible sinkholes in the Alps, hellish vats are like the vats of the Venetian arsenal, where tar is boiled for caulking ships, a mountain of purgatory and forests on her are the same as the earthly mountains and forests, and the paradise gardens are like the fragrant gardens of Italy. To this day, The Divine Comedy remains an unsurpassed masterpiece of literature. Dante's powerful fantasy depicted such an unusually convincing world that many of his ingenuous contemporaries sincerely believed in the author's journey to the next world.

It falls - in Italy - at the beginning of the XIV century (everywhere in Europe - from the XV-XVI centuries) - the last quarter of the XVI centuries and in some cases - the first decades of the XVII century. A distinctive feature of the Renaissance is the secular nature of culture, its humanism and anthropocentrism (that is, interest, first of all, in a person and his activities). Interest in ancient culture flourishes, its "revival" takes place - and this is how the term appeared.

Term Revival already found among Italian humanists, for example, among Giorgio Vasari. IN modern meaning the term was coined by the 19th century French historian Jules Michelet. Currently, the term Revival has become a metaphor for cultural flourishing.

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general characteristics

The growth of city-republics led to an increase in the influence of estates that did not participate in feudal relations: artisans and artisans, merchants, bankers. All of them were alien to the hierarchical system of values \u200b\u200bcreated by medieval, in many respects church culture, and its ascetic, humble spirit. This led to the emergence of humanism - a social and philosophical movement that considered a person, his personality, his freedom, his active, creative activity as the highest value and a criterion for assessing social institutions.

Secular centers of science and art began to emerge in the cities, the activities of which were outside the control of the church. The new worldview turned to antiquity, seeing in it an example of humanistic, non-ascetic relations. The invention of book printing in the middle of the 15th century played a huge role in the spread of ancient heritage and new views throughout Europe.

Renaissance periods

Revival is divided into 4 stages:

  1. Proto-Renaissance (2nd half of the XIII century - XIV century)
  2. Early Renaissance (early 15th - late 15th century)
  3. High Renaissance (late 15th - first 20 years of the 16th century)
  4. Late Renaissance (mid XVI - 1590s)

Proto-renaissance

Proto-Renaissance is closely related to the Middle Ages, in fact, it appeared in the Late Middle Ages, with Byzantine, Romanesque and Gothic traditions, this period was the forerunner of the Renaissance. It is divided into two sub-periods: before the death of Giotto di Bondone and after (1337). The most important discoveries, the brightest masters live and work in the first period. The second segment is associated with the plague epidemic that hit Italy. At the end of the 13th century, the main temple structure, the Cathedral of Santa Maria del Fiore, was erected in Florence, the author was Arnolfo di Cambio, then the work was continued by Giotto, who designed the campaign for the Florence Cathedral.

First of all, the art of proto-Renaissance manifested itself in sculpture (Niccolo and Giovanni Pisano, Arnolfo di Cambio, Andrea Pisano). Painting is represented by two art schools: Florence (Cimabue, Giotto) and Siena (Duccio, Simone Martini). Giotto became the central figure in painting. Renaissance artists considered him a reformer of painting. Giotto outlined the path along which its development went: filling religious forms with secular content, a gradual transition from flat images to volumetric and embossed ones, an increase in realism, introduced the plastic volume of figures into painting, depicted the interior in painting.

Early renaissance

The period of the so-called "Early Renaissance" in Italy covers the time from 1500 to 1500. During these eighty years, art has not yet completely abandoned the traditions of the recent past (the Middle Ages), but is trying to mix with them elements borrowed from classical antiquity. Only later, and only little by little, under the influence of more and more changing conditions of life and culture, did the artists completely abandon the medieval foundations and boldly use the examples of ancient art, both in the general concept of their works and in their details.

While art in Italy was already resolutely following the path of imitation of classical antiquity, in other countries it kept the traditions of the Gothic style for a long time. North of the Alps, and also in Spain, the Renaissance does not come until the end of the 15th century, and its early period lasts until about the middle of the next century.

High Renaissance

The third period of the Renaissance - the time of the most magnificent development of his style - is usually called the "High Renaissance". It stretches across Italy from about 1527. At this time, the center of influence of Italian art from Florence moved to Rome, thanks to the accession to the papal throne of Julius II - an ambitious, courageous, enterprising man who attracted the best Italian artists to his court, occupied them with numerous and important works and gave others an example of love for art ... Under this Pope and under his closest successors, Rome becomes, as it were, the new Athens of the times of Pericles: many monumental buildings are built in it, magnificent sculptural works are created, frescoes and paintings are painted, which are still considered pearls of painting; at the same time, all three branches of art harmoniously go hand in hand, helping one another and mutually acting on each other. Antiquity is now studied more thoroughly, reproduced with greater rigor and consistency; serenity and dignity replace the playful beauty that was the aspiration of the preceding period; the reminiscences of the medieval disappear completely, and a completely classical imprint falls on all creations of art. But the imitation of the ancients does not drown out their independence in artists, and they, with great resourcefulness and liveliness of imagination, freely process and apply to business what they consider appropriate to borrow for themselves from ancient Greco-Roman art.

The work of three great Italian masters marks the pinnacle of the Renaissance: Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519), Michelangelo Buonarroti (1475-1564) and Raphael Santi (1483-1520).

Late Renaissance

The later Renaissance in Italy spans the period from the 1530s to 1590-1620s. The art and culture of this time are so diverse in their manifestations that it is possible to reduce them to one denominator only with a great deal of convention. For example, the Encyclopedia Britannica writes that "The Renaissance as an integral historical period ended with the fall of Rome in 1527." In southern Europe, the Counter-Reformation triumphed, which looked with apprehension at all free-thinking, including chanting human body and the resurrection of the ideals of antiquity as the cornerstones of the Renaissance ideology. In Florence, worldview contradictions and a general feeling of crisis resulted in the “nervous” art of contrived colors and broken lines - Mannerism. Mannerism only reached Parma, where Correggio worked, after the artist's death in 1534. The artistic traditions of Venice had their own logic of development; Until the end of the 1570s, Titian and Palladio worked there, whose work had little in common with the crisis phenomena in the art of Florence and Rome.

Northern Renaissance

The Italian Renaissance had practically no influence on other countries until after the city. After the city, the style spread throughout the continent, but many late Gothic influences persisted even before the onset of the Baroque era.

It is customary to distinguish the Renaissance period in the Netherlands, Germany and France as a separate stylistic trend, which has some differences from the Renaissance in Italy, and to call it the "Northern Renaissance".

The stylistic differences in painting are most noticeable: unlike Italy, the traditions and skills of Gothic art were preserved in painting for a long time, less attention was paid to the study of the ancient heritage and the knowledge of human anatomy.

Revival in England

The English Renaissance dates back to the sixteenth century. It is associated with the works of the writers William Shakespeare, Christopher Marlowe, Edmund Spencer, Thomas More, Francis Bacon, Sir Philip Sidney; artists and architects (such as Inigo Jones); composers such as Thomas Tallis, John Taverner and William Byrd.

Revival in Russia

The Renaissance trends that existed in Italy and Central Europe influenced Russia in many ways, although this influence was quite limited due to the large distances between Russia and the main European cultural centers on the one hand, and the strong attachment of Russian culture to its Orthodox traditions and Byzantine heritage on the other hand.

The science

In general, the pantheistic mysticism of the Renaissance prevailing in this era created an unfavorable ideological background for the development of scientific knowledge. The final formation of the scientific method and the subsequent Scientific Revolution of the XVII century. associated with the opposition to the Renaissance movement of the Reformation.

Philosophy

Renaissance philosophers

Literature

The true founder of the Renaissance in literature is considered to be the Italian poet Dante Alighieri (1265-1321), who truly revealed the essence of the people of that time in his work called "Comedy", which would later be called "Divine Comedy". With this name, the descendants showed their admiration for the grandiose creation of Dante. In the literature of the Renaissance, the humanistic ideals of the era, the glorification of a harmonious, free, creative, comprehensively developed personality, were most fully expressed. The love sonnets of Francesco Petrarca (1304-1374) opened the depth inner peace man, the wealth of his emotional life. In the XIV-XVI century, Italian literature flourished - the lyrics of Petrarch, the short stories of Giovanni Boccaccio (1313-1375), the political treatises of Niccolo Machiavelli (1469-1527), the poems of Ludovico Ariosto (1474-1533) and Torquato Tasso (1544-1595) put it forward among the "classical" (along with the ancient Greek and ancient Roman) literature for other countries.

The literature of the Renaissance was based on two traditions: folk poetry and "book" antique literature, therefore, the rational principle was often combined in it with poetic fiction, and comic genres became very popular. This was manifested in the most significant literary monuments of the era: "Decameron" by Boccaccio, "Don Quixote" by Cervantes, and "Gargantua and Pantagruela" by Francois Rabelais. The appearance of national literatures is associated with the Renaissance, in contrast to the literature of the Middle Ages, which was created mainly in Latin. Theater and drama became widespread. The most famous playwrights of this time were William Shakespeare (1564-1616, England) and Lope de Vega (1562-1635, Spain)

art

Renaissance painting is characterized by the artist's professional view of nature, the laws of anatomy, life perspective, the action of light and other identical natural phenomena.

Renaissance artists, working on paintings of traditional religious themes, began to use new artistic techniques: building a volumetric composition, using the landscape as an element of the plot in the background. This allowed them to make the images more realistic, vivid, which showed a sharp difference between their work from the previous iconographic tradition, which is replete with conventions in the image.

Architecture

The main thing that characterized this era is the return in architecture to the principles and forms of ancient, mainly Roman art. Particular importance in this direction is attached to symmetry, proportion, geometry and the order of the component parts, which is clearly evidenced by the surviving examples of Roman architecture. The complex proportion of medieval buildings is replaced by an orderly arrangement of columns, pilasters and lintels; asymmetric outlines are replaced by a semicircle of an arch, a hemisphere of a dome, a niche, and aedicula. Greatest contribution five masters contributed to the development of Renaissance architecture:

Music

During the Renaissance (Renaissance), professional music loses the character of a purely ecclesiastical art and is influenced by folk music, imbued with a new humanistic worldview. The art of vocal and vocal-instrumental polyphony reaches a high level in the works of the representatives of "Ars nova" ("New Art") in Italy and France of the XIV century, in the new polyphonic schools - English (XV century), Dutch (XV-XVI centuries). ), Roman, Venetian, French, German, Polish, Czech, etc. (XVI century).

Various genres of secular musical art appear - frottola and villanella in Italy, villancio in Spain, ballad in England, madrigal, which originated in Italy (Luca Marenzio, Jacob Arcadelt, Gesualdo da Venosa), but became widespread, French polyphonic song (Clement Jeannequin, Claude Lejeune). Secular humanistic aspirations also penetrate cult music - among the Franco-Flemish masters (Josquin Despres, Orlando di Lasso), in the art of the composers of the Venetian school (Andrea and Giovanni Gabrieli).

Notes

Literature

  • // Brockhaus and Efron Encyclopedic Dictionary: in 86 volumes (82 volumes and 4 additional). - SPb. , 1890-1907.
  • V. N. Pyasetsky Early Renaissance architectural forms in Italy. An overview of the architectural forms of the early Renaissance, together with historical information about them, indicating the reasons for their appearance in Italian art. Description of various details of the monuments of Italian architecture of the 15th century with drawings and drawings. With 142 drawings on ten separate sheets and 10 figures per text. - St. Petersburg: Edition of the editorial board of the "Builder" magazine. E. Evdokimov's printing house. Troitskaya st., No. 18. 1897 .-- 106 p.
  • Abramson Mary Lazarevna. From

1. General information

The Renaissance, or Renaissance, is a period in the cultural and historical development of the countries of Central Western and Northern Europe that replaced the Middle Ages. In the Middle Ages, the main prerequisites for the cultural take-off of the Renaissance, and the Renaissance itself became, in turn, a powerful impetus for the subsequent development of culture in the Age of Enlightenment. Despite the locality of the Renaissance, it had a global impact on the subsequent development of culture. Renaissance ideas spread unevenly in European countries, so in the Renaissance it is customary to single out several periods.

1.1. Prerequisites for Renaissance

Renaissance is primarily a phenomenon of urban culture. The emergence in the depths of the feudal system of new bourgeois economic relations is primarily associated with the city. The erosion of the class framework and class isolation, the accumulation of material wealth and the growth of the political influence of the townspeople, manifested in the emergence of city-republics, contributes to the formation of a new civic consciousness. A medieval city dweller is a person far from the aristocracy of the nobility and the asceticism of the church. He builds the material basis of his life thanks to his energy, hard work, business skills, knowledge. Therefore, in other people, he values \u200b\u200bthe same qualities. At the same time, the townspeople are, for the most part, literate people, who know how to appreciate beauty, striving for knowledge and beauty, it is precisely on their perception that wonderful works of art of the Renaissance are oriented. A peculiar impetus to the beginning of the Renaissance was the acquaintance of European peoples with the works of ancient culture. The term Renaissance itself was understood as an attempt to revive the high achievements of ancient culture, to imitate them, although in fact the results of the Renaissance turned out to be more significant. It is no coincidence that the first Renaissance ideas arose in Italy, on whose territory a significant number of ancient monuments have survived. Some of the ideas about the era of antiquity were obtained by the Italians, who were active in trade in the Mediterranean from Byzantium, where ancient art was not destroyed by the invasion of the barbarians until the 15th century. and developed dynamically.

1.2. Periodization of the Renaissance

1.2.1. Pan-European periodization

In the general European periodization of the Renaissance, three main periods are distinguished.

Early Renaissance (1420 to 1500) captures mainly the territory of Italy is characterized by the fact that at this time the actual Renaissance works are known only in Italy, in other countries they are still trying to combine traditional methods with new Renaissance trends, signs of Gothic art are noticeable in many works.

High Renaissance (1500 to 1580) the peak of the development of Renaissance art in Italy and the beginning of its decline, a powerful flowering of interest in antiquity and new technologies in art in European countries. Talented people from all over Europe strive to Rome as the capital of art.

Late Renaissance (1580-1650) the period when in Italy the ideas of the Renaissance, pressed by the church, fell into decay, but received a second wind in the countries of Northern Europe, where they received a new impulse and refracted in the works of Dutch, German, English artists, therefore this time is also called the Northern Renaissance. The art of the Northern Renaissance developed under the influence of the Reformation, therefore it is imbued with an anti-clerical spirit and attaches great importance to issues of faith. But unlike Italian art, which sought to embellish, idealize reality, it gravitated more towards reality. At the end of this period, a fascination with false picturesqueness, pretentiousness of forms and a haphazard arrangement of antique motifs appeared, the organicity, the spirit of Renaissance ideas was lost. These art trends are called mannerism,followed by the establishment of the Baroque style.

1.2.2. Italian periodization

The Renaissance era in Italy did not last long, it fits into the XIV-XVI centuries. In the development of Renaissance ideas and art, it is customary to distinguish the following periods:

Ducento (XIII century)this is how the name of the XIII century sounds in Italian, marked by the appearance of Renaissance signs in art, this period is also called the Proto-Renaissance.

Trecento (XIV century)italian name of the XIV century. for which Renaissance ideas manifested themselves, primarily in painting. An outstanding painter of this time was Giotto di Bondone (see: 3.1.) At the same time, thanks to the work of Dante, Petrarch, Boccaccio (see: 3.2.), There was a turn towards humanism in literature.

Quattrocento (XV century) -italian designation of the era of art of the 15th century, which is the peak, the flowering of the ideas of the revival in all areas of art, the time of life and work of Botticelli, Donatello, Brunelleschi, Masaccio, Bellini, etc.

Cinquecento (XVI century) Italian name for the period of the decline of the High Renaissance and the beginning of the Late Renaissance. Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, Rafael Santi and Titian, Veronese and Tintoretto who worked at that time made an invaluable contribution to the development of not only Italian, but also world culture.