High Renaissance in Rome | Art History | Otis College of Art and Design

Welcome to a journey through the history of art. We will travel along a timeline from the caves to the 19th century. My name is Dr. Jean Ouellette. Let's begin by making the familiar unfamiliar. Looking for something called artistic freedom. The renaissance is a word meaning rebirth, signifying the return of classicism, the repressed other of medieval art. Linear and complex, un-corporeal and spiritual. The art forms of the Middle Ages was haunted by the tradition of classical beauty based on the flesh, bones, muscles of the nude body, male and female. And classicism could be found all over Europe in ruins and fragments waiting to be rediscovered. Portal sculptures in Rennes possessed the shadows of Greco-Roman art, the archaic smile, the turning, activated bodies engaged in a theatrical narrative. In painting, the body regains its third dimension and begins to exist in real space. The sadness of the shift from the spiritual to the material had been going on before Giotto broke from his master, Cimabue. The new interest in ancient Greco-Roman civilization and in classical learning certainly came from the client and the artist, for the master of the workshop could not take it upon himself to innovate without approval. Religious cycles and episodes became more and more active, filled with action, driven by a narrative. More importantly, the artist placed sacred people and spiritual events in the real world, going back to the roots of the New Testament. Ordinary people doing extraordinary things due to the power of their faith. The Renaissance artist in towns such as Florence or Rome would have learned clients absorbed in classical culture, seeking ways to combine ancient culture with religious beliefs. The Renaissance was driven by a select group of powerful clients and a group of artists, the cream of the crop, drawn to the center of classical revival and intellectual excitement. The artist had a new role to stylistically combine Christian iconography with classicism or to recreate a new version of purely pagan, totally classical art. In Rome, the popes were spearheading the Renaissance as collected classical sculptures being unearthed all over Rome during the years of urban renewal. A cultural space was opened for new artists and architects, innovators, and inventors. Undoubtedly, such men had existed before and would exist again, but they had not been allowed to fulfill their potential. In a newly open-minded society of Italy, Brunelleschi not only invented perspective, but he also, we, invented classical architecture. Leonardo da Vinci could flaunt his brilliance in the northern medium of oil paint, playing the new role of the genius dilettante, experimenting sometimes disastrously. A hundred years earlier, another man's creativity could have found such scope. Raphael was possibly the most conventional of the Renaissance artists. Like the architect Bramante, Raphael followed the medieval tradition of the workshop, but it was the artist Michelangelo who most aggressively pursued the new concept of the new Renaissance artist. In understanding Michelangelo, it is important to note the role of the artist in society had not changed. The role of the client and directing the commission had not changed. Art was mostly religious, sometimes purely secular for a government or a private client, and the client was the instigator and the artist was the implementer. Michelangelo changed the equation and asserted something we might call artistic freedom or the right of the artist to express himself and his vision. The contest of wills or egos between the pope and the artist began with the Sistine Chapel and ended with the head of the Catholic Church giving the artist permission to do what he wanted. The freedom given to Michelangelo was extraordinary, not just on the ceiling of the chapel but also on the west wall many years later. Educated in the garden school of the Medici prince and art patron Lorenzo de' Medici, Michelangelo was steeped in neoplatonism. Taking a rather mundane idea for the ceiling of the pope's private chapel, the artist was given permission by Julius II to expand the scope of the commission. The result was the story of creation, starting with God's division of light and darkness and ending with the flood. Working 60 feet above the chapel floor, Michelangelo dismissed most of his assistants and spent years painting a series of scenes and trompe l'oeil panels. Intriguingly, the painter included pagan characters who flanked the old testament actors. By the end of the renaissance, the reputation of the renaissance artist as a genius allowed Michelangelo to argue with the pope and hold his own. But this brief glimpse of artistic freedom would fade from view for after the death of Michelangelo, the world would change.