Early Renaissance

1. Early Renaissance

2. Characteristics & Key terms of Renaissance Art • Classical Compositions & Themes • Dominance of Religious Themes • use of allegories: synthesis of pagan & religious themes • Chiaroscuro – contrasts between light & dark • linear & atmospheric perspective

3. Characteristic of Renaissance ArtContinued • Recognizable landscapes • free standing sculpture • Fresco • Tempera • Geometric designs (science & art united) • anatomic realism

4. Early Italian Paintings 1240s - 1300s

5. 1326Simone Martini

13. What is a Painting? • It is a layer of pigments applied to a surface • It is an arrangement of shapes and colors • It is a projection of the personality of the person who painted it • It is a statement of philosophy of the age that produced it • It can have any meaning beyond anything concerned with one person or only one period • It is a picture of something!

14. What is a Painting?

15. Four Questions To ask When Looking At A Painting • What purpose does this painting serve? • What can we learn about the society in which this was created? • How realistic is this painting? • What are the design elements of this painting?

16. Design Elements • form & composition • material & technique • Line • Color • Texture • Space • Perspective & foreshortening • Proportion & scale • It’s about geometry • Guiding the viewer's vision

17. Form & Composition • Form - objects shape and structure • Composition - how an artist organizes forms in an artwork by placing shapes on a flat surface or arranging forms in space

18. Material & Technique • Every material has its own potentialities and limitations • Technique: the personal and distinctive ways an artist handles material

19. Line • Artists make a line concrete by drawing it on a plane, a flat and two dimensional surface. It may be thin or thick or broken. • When a continuous line defines an object’s outer shape, it is called a contour line

20. Color • Paint pigments produce their individual colors by reflecting a segment of the clor spectrum whiling absorbing all the rest. • Green pigment subtracts or absorbs all the light in the spectrum except that seen as green, which it reflects to the eye.

21. Power of Color • Objects may be defines by color rather than line for special softer effects • Warm and cool colors: • Blue used in background for perspective & distance • Red - brings the object closer

23. Texture • Surface of the art work is important for impact • Actual vs.. represented textures • Collage - mixed media technique of mixing wood, newspaper, fabric with pigment

24. Space • Space-depicting a three dimensional object on a two dimension plane • Is the painting “crowded” or is the subject matter very close to the viewer? • What impact does this have on the viewer?

27. Perspective & Foreshortening • Creating the illusion of depth and space on a two dimensional surface

28. Proportion & Scale • Proportion: the relationships (in terms of size) of objects in the painting • Disproportion & Distortion deliberately used for expressive effects

29. It’s all about geometry • Most artist realize and utilize the power of geometric shapes to create their work.

30. Painters use their artistic techniques to guide your eye

31. Art is often representative of historical, cultural, and intellectual time periods • Egyptian • Humanism • Romanticism • World War I

32. Early Renaissance:15th Century Italian Painting

33. Decoding Renaissance Paintings

34. The Annunciation:Three Mysteries • Angelic Mission • Angelic Salutation • Angelic colloquy • Disquiet • Reflection • Inquiry • Submission • Merit

35. Angelic Mission • Angelic Salutation • Angelic colloquy • Disquiet • Reflection • Inquiry • Submission • Merit

36. #71

37. “Attributes” of Saints: Symbols & Color • St. Peter keys yellow & blue • St. Bartholomew knife light robe / gold patterns • St. John Evangelist quill red • St. Andrews cross green • St. Sebastian arrow • St. Jerome bible, church, lion red hat & robe

38. Movements of the Soul Recognized in Body Movements • Affirmation: lift arms gently , back of hand faces the beholder • Demonstration: opening plam of hand towards beholder or object • Grief: pressing the breast with the palm of the hand • Shame: covering eyes with fingers • Melancholy: resting chin on hand • Devotion: hold up your hands! • Secular gesture: indicate”invitation” Hundreds of symbols!!!!

39. Proportion

40. Sacred Geometry

41. Portrait of Luca Pacioliby Jacopo de’ Barbari(1495)

42. There are many interesting mathematical objects in the painting surrounding Pacioli. Hanging from the ceiling on the left is a beautiful glass polyhedron, called a rhombicuboctahedron. This is a polyhedron with 26 sides. It is one of the Archimedan solids. These are 3D shapes named after the Greek mathematician Archimedes who lived in the 3rd century B.C. If you look carefully you will see that the crystal rhombicuboctahedron is half filled with water.

43. The object suspended in the top left:It represents one of thirteen semi-regular solids also called the Archimedean solids. All the faces are regular polygons, but not all of the same kind. Later Kepler called this polyhedron a "rhombicuboctahedron". The object is made of glass plates and it is half filled with water. The painter has captured the reflections and refractions in an extraordinary way

44. On the table in front of Pacioli on the far right is another polyhedron, this time a simpler wooden dodecahedron. It is sitting on top of a book with a leather cover. On the green surface of the table is a pair of dividers, an ink pot, a cylindrical case for holding mathematical drawing instruments, and a folding set-square. All of these were standard tools used to do math.

45. In the painting Pacioli is shown as a teacher, teaching the basics of math. By his left hand is a copy of the "Elements of Geometry" by the mathematician Euclid. Euclid taught math in Alexandria in Egypt in the 4th century B.C. Euclid's "Elements" was the standard basic math book at the time when Pacioli was alive. In his right hand Pacioli is holding a chalk stick which he has used to draw a diagram on a small blackboard tablet on the table in order to explain some of Euclid's mathematical theories.

47. The Fibonacci Sequence • Leonardo Fibonacci was a Renaissance mathematician who generated a sequence of numbers that represent a "natural" order. The Fibonacci sequence is generated by adding the previous two numbers in the list together to form the next and so on and so on: 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, 55... The Fibonacci sequence can be found throughout nature. Look closely at a cauliflower and you'll see two spirals running in opposite directions. Count the number of florets in one of the spirals and you will find they follow the Fibonacci sequence.

48. Divide any number in the Fibonacci sequence by the number before it, and the answer is always close to 1.61803. This is known as the Golden Ratio. Ratios are pairs of numbers used to make comparisons. Ratios can be written in different ways: 1 to 1.61803 or 1:1.61803, both meaning the same thing: the Golden Ratio.

49. The Golden Rectangle is considered to be one of the most pleasing and beautiful shapes to look at, which is why many artists have used it in their work. The Golden Rectangle is a unique and a very important shape in mathematics. The Golden Rectangle appears in nature, music, and is also often used in art and architecture. The special property of the Golden Rectangle is that the ratio of its length to the width equals to approximately 1.618:

50. The golden ratio is approximately 1.6180339887. At least since the Renaissance, many artists and architects have proportioned their works to approximate the golden ratio especially in the form of the golden rectangle, in which the ratio of the longer side to the shorter is the golden ratioﾑbelieving this proportion to be aesthetically pleasing.