Notes - Chapter 5 B1

Página 1

Art as strategy for religious communication

Spain, Catholic reformation

Religious art

Prestige

Court art

Patronage

El Greco’s ‘signature style’ - hybrid.

Incorporating the conventions of his training as an icon painter on the one hand and the pioneering approach of High Renaissance Venetian painters Titian (c.1485/90– 1576) and Tintoretto (1519– 94) on the other.

Crete, Italy, Spain - shifting geographical and cultural contexts

Chpt 8 El Greco

Social and institutional barriers re gender

Raphael’s Entombment of Christ commissioned by Atalante Baglioni.

Marchioness of Mantua Isabella d’Este (1474–1539)

Gender

Patronage

Social expectations

Chpt 7 Women

Savaronola's destructive reign

Iconography

Botticelli's flattery of patron

Express elevated cultural and intellectual status of the patron

Integral part of a Renaissance interior

Renaissance Florence - works of art designed for a private, elite and primarily domestic context

Chpt 6 Botticelli

Cultural Prestige

Kunstkammer - private art collection

Individual paintings on panel not highly valued

Elevated cultural identity

Magnificence

Chpt 5 Court art

Among these are the sociological approach to institutions of Norbert Elias, recent work on the Renaissance domestic interior, gender studies and the theme of cultural interaction and hybridity.

Part 2 explores the art of the period from a wider geographical, social, institutional and cultural perspective.

Revival of interest in the civilisations of ancient Greece and Rome, and the ‘rebirth’ or ‘ 'Renaissance’ of art associated with it.

Renaissance art has often been considered as originating in the particular cultural and intellectual context of fifteenth- century Florence.

Renaissance period, from around 1420 to 1600.

Power and cultural identity

Persuasive power - cultural character makes a statement about the ruler and his entourage, in terms of authority, military prowess,

status, wealth or cultivation and learning.

Prayer for Travellers - taken from Belle Heures, Paul, Hernan and Jean de Limbourg - court artists, gold leaf and

the expensive blue pigment ultramarine, glamour and luxury of courtly

life depicted, innovative composition, levels of skill and virtuosity a reflection

on the patrons sophistication.

Status of the artist - Paul signed? P in turret

Jean, Duc de Berry, Illuminated manuscript collector, super wealthy, intensive

and expensive craftsmanship

Main features associated with court art: valuable materials beyond

the economic reach of all but the very rich; artistic virtuosity, fostered by an enlightened patron and the security of court employment; and exceptional artistic status and recognition.

Belle Heures, Tres Riches Heures -private prayer books,

books of hours - de Limbourg brothers commissioned by Duc.

Illuminated Manuscripts:

Tres Riches Heures - lavish illuminated manuscript, de Limbourg brothers, contains scenes including the Duc's properties - emphasising the Duc's granduer, wealth and power. August scene

shows chateau of Étampes near Paris, distinctive

high tower must itself have constituted a visible geographical

landmark of aristocratic power and, through its architectural refinement, civilisation, labour of the month is personalised to advertise the possessions of the Duc, and

thus strongly contributes to the cultural statement about him. Prestige activity of

Hawking, aristocratic and sumptuous clothing on figures and horses. Nude bathers are

juxtaposed with the aristocracy. This miniature effectively reinforces both aristocratic power and social hierarchies by means of a luxurious manuscript. Epitomises court art.

Philip the Good, Duke of Burgundy - succeeded by the Habsbergs

ways in which the visual

arts might contribute to the image and authority of courts

Norbert Elias - Sociologist, courts had special code of conducts

Magnificence - concept

Material ostentation

created an aura of magnificence that served to identify the ruler as the

ultimate in wealth, power and glamour.

Nicomachean Ethics, the

ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle stressed the importance of ‘magnificence’

for wealthy rulers, which he defined as liberality of expenditure, not to show

off, but in order to achieve something noble and fitting,worthy of admiration.

Buildings and statues.

Ceremony - publicity of

the court lay not only in permanent buildings and statues but also in staged ceremonies and festivities that many might attend and more may hear of by

repute.

Court artists, lavishing

money on ephemera was inherent to courtly prestige

Feast of the Pheasant -Duke

of Burgundy, tapestries featuring Hercules and Jason -persuasive power in inspiring heroism.

Marriage in Bruges in 1468

of the English Margaret of York and Charles the Bold, son of Philip the Good, opulence, to establish the prestige of the court in the eyes of European

visitors.

Dynasty: central concern for ruling families, aristocratic lineage

Painted portraits were a way of documenting ancestry, dynastic records.

Rogier van der Weyden: House of Burgundy portrait painter

Durer: Maximillian I woodblock and paper prints, ancestral arch , evoking the prestige of ancient Roman emperors. Magnificence was clearly one of the motives for this arch, and the other, his dynastic claims.

Wide distribution of 700 sets of prints, publicity.

Margaret of Austria - Habsberg, Michael Sittow, portrait painter

Virtuous conduct: Elias - '‘taming and preserving the nobility', Ideals of noble conduct were promoted at court through medieval chivalric notions of the ideal knight, and the heroic exploits of ancient Greeks and Romans. The two were often conveniently fused in illuminated manuscripts and tapestries.

Hercules - classical theme fused with chivalry, used as propaganda, display of heroic behaviour.

Order of the Golden Fleece: military group dedicated to the crusades, gold collar indicated membership.

tapestries - portable and expensive, befitting of such a prestigious group.

Hercules Initiating the Olympic Games, displayed military prowess and power, inspire heroic behaviour.

Virtuous conduct, ‘cardinal’ virtues of prudence, justice, fortitude and temperance.

Etiquette: Book on court etiquette, Il libro del cortegiano (The Book of the Courtier) by Baldassare Castiglione. Painting aided judgement of other visual arts such as buildings, coins, cameos, table ware and s similar works of visual culture that constituted the treasured possessions of a court.

Nef - Salt cellar - In addition to its practical function, the salt cellar was the traditional marker of favour at court. The most highly favoured were placed ‘above the salt’; that is, they were seated between the salt cellar and the host at the head of the dinner table, while those who sat ‘below the salt’ and further removed from the host were less favoured. Associated with etiquette and social hierarchy.

Cellini's salt cellar: Its prestige lies in the kind of references that it makes. The small temple on the

other side, designed to hold the pepper, has the round headed arches, straight entablature and Ionic columns of classical architecture which by the 1540s was the new fashion at European courts.The pepper temple takes the form of an ancient Roman triumphal arch, examples of which, as we have seen, were erected to commemorate imperial military victories and hence were potentially flattering to Francis I. On its side is the tiny figure of Hercules with whom Francis, like Philip the Good, identified. Between the salt c container and the pepper temple, Cellini fashioned nude personifications of land and sea – their legs intertwined, Cellini explains, ‘just as some branches of the sea run into the land and the land juts into the sea’.47 Sea was represented by Neptune, mythological god of the sea, holding his attribute the trident and accompanied by seahorses. Land is the Roman earth goddess Tellus or Terra. The salt cellar was personalised to include the emblems of Francis: the elephant and salamander under Land, and fleurs-de-lis just visible on the cloth under Sea; it perhaps also alluded to Francis I’s own attempts to exploit the salt and pepper trade in order to augment French wealth.

Nude allegorical figures are copies of Michelangelo works, Cellini enhances not only his own credentials but also those of Francis himself. Through the salt cellar, Francis has Michelangelo in miniature. Elitist intellectual pretensions, dividing those who understood from those who did not.

Prestige Consumption: Norbert Elias - Magnificence and Prestige Consumption, closely allied. The private expenditure of accumulated wealth as an essential means of reinforcing status. Construct a social image.

Tapestry, embroidery, precious metalwork and illuminated manuscripts. All were arts of material as well as artistic value, and as such were appropriate expressions of the wealth and status of the highest echelons of society. Artistic virtuoso reflected well on the ruler/patron.

Wilton Diptych - panel painting, prestige, private devotion.

Cultivation: private room or suite of rooms dedicated to the contemplation of scholarly literature and esteemed art and artefacts, and to which only privileged guests were admitted. ‘closet’, ‘cabinet’, ‘study’ or ‘studiolo’.

Humanist writer and architect Leon Battista Alberti

Margaret of Austria: petit cabinet, private collection in a suite of rooms, with some works allowed to be seen by he public and some more private works for her own contemplation - bust of husband, Conrad Meit, Philibert of Savoy.

The formal collections of art and artefacts passed down was known as a Kunstkammer.

Kunstkammer: needed to contain antique and contemporary sculpture, medals and coins, paintings, phenomena of the natural world and the deliberate products of the ingenuity of man such as tools, utensils and other artefacts.

Exotic artefacts - artefacts from Africa or the New World were trophies of successful voyages of discovery, colonisation or missionary activity and their inclusion in the Kunstkammer reflected the expanding reach of sovereign power on the one hand, and the status of the Kunstkammer as a microcosm of the world on the other.

Jan van Eyck (active 1425–41), the court painter of Philip the Good of Burgundy and the Netherlands, prestige of the artist. The Virgin and Child with Chancellor Rolin

Titian - portrait of Charles, riding horse victoriously in battle.

Conclusion: the use of art for its persuasive potential, its rhetorical power and its capacity to create and convey cultural and social identity.

Most European courts relied for their prestige and magnificence on the Italian Renaissance style, firmly rooted in the ideal forms and mythological and allegorical references of ancient Rome.

Intro

Illuminated Manuscripts, Magnificence, Ceremony,

Dynasty, etiquette, Prestige consumption etc.