Northern Renaissance Masterpieces ｜ Hermitage Masterpieces).mp4

The High Renaissance in Italy lasted less than 30 years, yet this brief e-book marks one of the highest peaks of the human spirit and of artistic genius. The rebirth of Greek and Roman ideas was an age of new confidence in human capabilities. Artists were the leaders of this new age, and their genius was thought to be divinely inspired. Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, Raphael, and a glittering gallery of Venetian painters produced works of such miraculous originality that they were placed on a par with poets and philosophers. For centuries, their works would be the standard to which all others would be compared. A new faith in man, and in the power of his observation, led in turn to the search for the universal laws of nature and the scientific thought of Galileo, Kepler, and Newton. Leonardo da Vinci, the first master of the High Renaissance, lived from 1452 to 1519. He was really more than an artist, he was a scientist and thinker who personified the name Renaissance Man. His notebooks record an array of insights and inventions so numerous they could not hope to be realized in the scope of one lifetime. Madonna with a Flower was painted when he was only 26 in 1478. Like no other master before him, Leonardo shows the Virgin and Child in all their human spontaneity. Expressions emerge into the light from Leonardo's smoky sfumato haze. The Virgin's delighted smile is the smile of a woman, and the Child plays like any other baby. But for all their humanity, Leonardo's paintings always possess deep mystery, the sense of the unfathomable beyond our world. His sense of wonder led him into far-reaching investigations of botany, astronomy, geology, mechanics, and anatomy that would anticipate scientific discoveries by hundreds of years. Only about 15 paintings by Leonardo have survived to this day. This is his poetic Madonna Lita. The harmonious stability of the composition is typical, not only of Leonardo's work, but of Renaissance painting in general. He pioneered a technique known as sfumato, or smoke in Italian, the blending of light and shade in imperceptibly subtle gradations. Leonardo had a special affinity for birds. He paid owners to free them. The Madonna's sublime and gentle gaze focuses on the Christ Child. The Child's gaze focuses outward, drawing the spectator into the painting. Flora, the goddess of spring and flowers, is believed to be the work of Leonardo's pupil Francesco Melzi, but there are some who say the painting is by Leonardo himself. At 75, Leonardo died in Melzi's arms, leaving to him nearly 5,000 pages of sketches and notes. In them were plans for flying machines, bombs, a printing press, a telescope, along with drawings detailing human anatomy and the workings of the circulatory system. Centuries later, it was discovered that he had anticipated Galileo and Copernicus by suggesting that the sun does not move around the earth, and his mathematical investigations came close to defining Newton's first law of motion. But Leonardo's inventions and discoveries were theoretical. His unquenchable curiosity that led him from one incomplete project to the next caused patrons to regard him as fickle. They turned instead to the young Raphael, Leonardo's junior by 31 years. This is Raphael's Conestabile Madonna. His stable compositions based on the pyramid form are reminiscent of the master. He was only 19 when he painted this work. A few years later, he would be called to Rome by the Pope to paint the Vatican frescoes. Raphael's innovations in this work are his use of a brighter palette. He has taken the Madonna outdoors. But he also learned from Leonardo's work the technique of modeling faces from light and shade, as well as the use of a distant landscape as a backdrop for a painting. Even the frame is not a casual detail, but forms an integral whole with the painting. It was made according to Raphael's sketches. He was a painter of style and eloquence. He mastered the art of making the difficult look easy. Raphael was the luminary of the papal court, executing one after another successful commissions. Raphael's holy family depicts Mary and Joseph with the Christ child. This work was painted when he was 23. Scholars still consider it to be a mature work because it displays all the simplicity, clarity, and harmony that mark works of the High Renaissance. Raphael was quite financially successful. Part of this success can be traced to his highly social nature. Unlike Michelangelo, who worked completely alone, Raphael would eventually employ as many as 50 assistants to quickly complete large commissions such as the Vatican frescoes. He was a consummate ladies' man, so well liked that when he died suddenly at 37, the entire court was devastated. One of Raphael's pupils was Lorenzo Lorenzetti, who sculpted this work, Dead Boy on a Dolphin, after one of Raphael's drawings. The story behind this sculpture comes from classical legend. The dolphin, a pagan symbol of immortality, has ferried the dead boy ashore. In Christian times the image took on the symbolism of the resurrection of Christ. It was Lorenzetti who designed the sculpture for the tomb of Raphael, his teacher. It's not surprising that the great masters of the High Renaissance had a tremendous influence over the decorative arts in their own time. Their sense of beauty can be found in these maiolica household objects. Some are designed after paintings by the masters. The works reflect the Renaissance passion for mythological and historical stories from antique culture. For Italians, it was a connection with the dream of the revival of Rome's former greatness. The Laocoon, a man wrestling with a giant sea snake, is after a Greek Hellenistic statue discovered in Rome about 1510. These immense doors open to a room of frescoes by the pupils of Raphael. They were painted after Raphael's sketches. The room as a whole is the only reproduction of one of Raphael's loggias, designed for the Vatican Palace in Rome by the celebrated Renaissance architect Bramante. The frescoes were transferred to the Hermitage and installed as they would have originally been displayed. The scenes are from Homer's Iliad and Ovid's Metamorphoses, mostly depicting Venus, the goddess of love and beauty. In the High Renaissance, the spirit of antiquity hovered over painters' workshops. It was not a matter of copying ancient models, but a question of how to apply the influence of antiquity to the Renaissance Christian world. Lamentation by Sebastiano del Piombo tells the story of Christ's entombment. In Rome, Sebastiano was initially swept up into Raphael's circle. Later, he adopted the grandiose style of Michelangelo and turned into Raphael's competitor. Unlike earlier versions of this scene, the characters are profoundly heroic, full of humanity and emotion. It's a painting characteristic of the later years of the High Renaissance, when the classical balance and serenity of Leonardo and Raphael gave way to themes of man's courage and potential. The work is a triumphant requiem for a hero, beautiful in body and spirit. In this painting, we see the influence of the genius Michelangelo, who first introduced the theme of man's courage and heroism. To Michelangelo, art was the making of men, an act of divine creation. He said he liberated the figure from the marble that imprisons it. His crouching boy expresses man's strength, but also his weakness. His characters often struggle against adversity, but are unable to triumph. Emotion begins to re-enter art in this image of the penitent Mary Magdalene by an unknown artist. This trend toward emotion, action and heroism, which began roughly after the death of Raphael in 1520, was called mannerism. Artists like Jacopo Pontormo search for something beyond the harmony and balance of Raphael. In his Madonna and Child of 1521, you can see his departure from the humanistic values of Renaissance art. Faces are distorted, elongated to show emotion. Breaking from classicism, artists use their right as creators to manipulate objects and the human form for artistic effect. Seeking ever new avenues toward originality, balance was replaced with dissonance. The High Renaissance in Rome had ended. The values of the High Renaissance evolved in a different way in the cosmopolitan city of Venice. There, Giorgione, a contemporary of Raphael, was the first of the and then beheading the general of the invading Assyrian army, Holofernes. She will carry his severed head back to her people. The heavy sword rests in her tiny hand. It's a painting that expresses the triumph of good over evil. The smooth tranquility and delicate shading are typical of the lyrical Giorgione, who portrayed in classical restraint this daring deed. Colors sparkle with a gem-like quality. Giorgione's landscapes are misty and dreamy. His Madonna and Child in a Landscape was painted in 1504 when he was 26. Giorgione's life was not long. He died at 32, but he left a great number of followers and imitators. Only five to seven paintings are recognized as his works. The Flight into Egypt is an early work by the Venetian painter Titian. It may have been done when he was a student in Giorgione's workshop. Both painters are famous as unsurpassed colorists, but unlike his teacher Giorgione, Titian had a long career, over 60 years. He was tremendously successful and prolific, influencing generations of European painters. On his canvases, the real world appears in almost unbelievable variety. Lorenzo Lotto's Portrait of a Married Couple is a painting filled with symbols relating to marriage. The wife holds a small dog, a symbol of marital devotion. The man points to a weasel, an animal who turns his female mate out of a lair. But he holds a note with a Latin inscription that translates, man, never, presumably distinguishing man from beast. By the 16th century, sensuous nudes had become an accepted topic of art across Europe. The model for Portrait of a Woman, painted in about 1530, was one of Titian's favorites, perhaps even a lover. Usually the nude would be accompanied by some symbol indicating that she is a character from the Bible, or a mythological goddess essentially giving a reason for the nudity. But in this case, the artist offers no excuses whatsoever. Like the ancient Greeks and Romans, he creates beauty for its own sake. She keeps on only her hat and jewelry, and some provocative bravery, awaiting the inevitable. The Penitent Mary Magdalene by Titian is one of the pearls of the Hermitage collection. Mary Magdalene kneels outside of her cave, to which she has fled, to renounce earthly pleasures in devotion to God. The expressive beauty of the painting emphasizes the deep grief of the penitent sinner. Her book rests on a skull, a reminder of mortality. Her attribute is a bottle of oil with which she anointed Christ's feet. The work is in the tradition of paintings of hermit saints. Even so, it depicts sensuous and earthly beauty, the love of textures, and the play of light. Titian kept the painting in his home all his life. He liked it so well, he painted it three times. Once for himself, one for King Philip II of Spain, and one for a Venetian man. But this is the only version that survives to this day. Another Titian gem is the painting of the Greek myth of Danai. She was imprisoned in a tower by her father, the King of Argos. He had learned that her son would one day kill him. He appeared in a shower of gold and seduces her. It's a poetic vision of a distant world. As the aged artist's eyesight began to fail, his brushwork became loose and expressionistic. His palette darkened. Tormented, suffering figures were the new topic. Christ Bearing the Cross is the title of this work. His assistants began to report that Titian actually painted more with his fingers than with his brushes. He claimed to be impoverished and older than he actually was to tug at the heartstrings of his patrons. Because of this, no one really knows how old he was when he died in 1576. His Saint Sebastian dates from about 1570. Titian, the most famous of Venetian painters, had achieved such a mastery of color that he was now able to create works entirely with tones. Saint Sebastian, shot with arrows for his Christian faith, emerges as a model of spiritual strength, even at the moment of his death. In the final phase of the High Renaissance, artists returned to the first masters of the epoch for inspiration. The Melanese painter Cesare d'Assesto owes much to the influence of Leonardo in his Holy Family with Saint Catherine. Indeed, the work was once thought to be by Leonardo himself. Notice the smoky spumato of the face. And like Leonardo's work, the painting includes an ugly old man, Joseph, as a contrast to the beauty of the women. But the colors are much brighter, more characteristic of the influence of Venetian painting, and Venice is not far from Milan. Jacopo Tintoretto was a Venetian painter famous for his many figure compositions filled with passion and dramatic tension. This work represents the nativity of Saint John the Baptist. A true son of the humanist age, Tintoretto paints a busy scene of the care of a newly born child in an ordinary family. We are transported to the environment of a 16th century Venetian home. To guide his painting, Tintoretto made models of his compositions, peopled with tiny wax figures, and lit the model from various angles to study the effect of light on the composition. The motto on the wall of his studio read, The Drawing of Michelangelo and the Color of Titian. Along with Veronese, Tintoretto was considered the most successful of the Venetian painters in the generation following Titian. This is Veronese's The Conversion of Saul. The Roman Saul was thrown down to the ground and blinded by a sudden light as he rode toward Damascus to obtain permission to arrest Christians. Saul, why do you persecute me? God asked. A voice was heard by all, throwing the group into chaos. It's a painting of movement, anxiety, and asymmetry. Saul is about to be converted to the true faith, to become the Apostle Paul. Veronese is famous for his large pageant-like scenes full of color. He was known as one of the greatest decorative artists, often painting sumptuous works that glorify the material beauty of life. But in his religious works, he scrubbed his usual bright colors from his palette, using only the subdued tones of grief. Veronese painted his Lamentation in about 1578, 100 years after Leonardo painted Madonna with a Flower. Christ's body recedes dramatically into the canvas to rest in the arms of the mourners. Brightly lit faces spring from deep shadows. Only the beautiful clothes of the angels remind us of the world's gaiety. Veronese almost sculpts the forms with light. It is a painting for Greek colorists, even though the colors are not bright. The subtle variation of tones gives life to this work. The masters of the High Renaissance built on the discoveries of the Early Renaissance to drive art to the limits of beauty. They were seen as supermen, possessed with the rare power of divine creation. And for all time, the status of the artist was changed, seeking absolute truths about man and the universe. They reached new levels of harmony, balance, and technical virtuosity. Generations of artists have built on their achievements, adding new levels of expression, emotion, and drama.