Instructions: This is a TWO PART assignment. This assignment must be done in APA format.
Each question must have a word minimum of at least 300 words each (not including the
references). NOTHING LESS THAN 300 words. Each question must have a minimum of at
least 3 scholarly references along with in-text citations each. Although this assignment is APA
format, it must also keep the question and answer format (see below).
Question and Answer format: Question: XYZ
Answer: XYZ
Reference: XYZ
Note: Please Put the number and question with each answer and end with each reference per
question (See format at the top). Answers might be based on chapter 8.
Book Reference: Kleiner, F.S. (2013). Gardner's Art through the Ages A Concise Western
History (3rd ed.). Cengage Learning
1. Contrast the styles of fifteenth-century Burgundian, Flemish and Italian painting. How
are they similar? Use examples to support your essay.
2. Compare and contrast the stylistic and thematic characteristics of Jan van Eych’s Ghent
Alterpiece and Masaccio’s Holy Trinity.
3. Examine the style of architecture and its influences in the High Renaissance.
4. Describe Dürer’s contributions to the Renaissance in the North and the continuation of
the northern style.
PART TWO
Write a 75 word response to each post. No reference is needed.
1. These are the five symbols I took from the formal picture. The single candle
burning in the left rear holder of the ornate chandelier and the mirror, in which the
viewer sees the entire room reflected, symbolize the all-seeing eye of God. The
small medallions set in the mirror frame show tiny scenes from the Passion of
Chris and represent God’s promise of Salvation for the figures reflected on the
mirror’s convex surface. The cast aside clogs indicate this event takes place on
holy ground. The little dog symbolizes fidelity. Van Eyck’s placement of the two
figures suggests conventional gender roles – the woman stands near the bed
and well into the room, whereas the man stands near the open window, symbolic
of the outside world (Kleimer, 2012). The meaning of each scenary is so amazing
from the viewpoint of the artist.
The Protestant Reformation was a religious movement that divided themselves
from the Roman Catholics. The artists in the Protestant countries used more
secular form of art like history painting, landscape, portraiture and still life.
Protestant theology centered on the individual relationship between the
worshiper and the divine, and accordingly, the Reformation artistic movement
focused on the individual’s personal relationship with God. (Wisse, 2002) Images
of Christ and scenes from the Passion became less frequent as did portrayals of
the saints and clergy. During the 16th century the Protestant church made it
inexpensive through art to provide drawings in books and published print to the
people. The Protestant Reformation wanted to destroy all religious icons,
imagery even the plain crosses. Art produced in the Protestant countries was
hugely reduced.
2. A painting with religious overtones yet purely secular, the Jan van Eych’s
Giovanni Arnifini and His Bride portrait has so many symbols. We start first with
clogs pictured thrown to the side. The mere presence indicates that whatever the
event was, it took place on ground that was considered holy. Continuing to
peruse the portrait fidelity is symbolized through the little dog in the picture. As
you look atop the bedpost you find a whisk broom hanging which symbolizes
domestic care. The all-seeing eye of God is signified by the candle burning in the
rear holder of the chandelier and mirror giving a view of entire room in the mirrors
reflection. Lastly, “the small medallions set into the mirror frame show tiny scenes
from the passion of Christ and represent God’s promise of salvation for the
figures reflected on the mirror’s convex surface” (Kleiner, 2013). The Protestant
Reformation gave rise to artists painting pictures that coincided with how they
view scripture. With the likes of Martin Luther and John Calvin, Christian views
on painting would drastically change. The people and stories portrayed were
more accurate and told the story of salvation through grace and not works. This
differs greatly from the beliefs that Catholics hold. Art that was previously done
would now be viewed as idolatry and not presented in churches. “The reasons for
the rejection of the visual were many and varied, often intertwined with those
ideas that inspired the Reformers at the outset, and reflective of the particular
religious and social context of the time” (Sparks, 2016). So now a widespread
change was now taking place and Christian art and architecture was changing.
The paintings were no longer to be viewed as something to treasure and idolize.
This would be seen in future paintings in its style and content.
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7-5 Royal Portal,
west facade, Chartres
Cathedral, Chartres,
France, ca. 1145–1155.
The sculptures of the Royal
Portal proclaim the majesty
and power of Christ. The
tympana depict, from left
to right, Christ’s ascension,
the second coming, and
Jesus in the lap of the
Virgin Mary.
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began around 1145. The west entrance or “Royal Portal”
(FIG. 7-5)—so named because of the figures of kings and
queens (FIG. 7-6) flanking its three doorways—constitutes theS
most complete surviving ensemble of Early Gothic sculpture.H
The iconographic program of the Royal Portal proclaims
A
the majesty and power of Christ. Christ’s ascension into
Heaven appears in the tympanum of the left doorway. TheN
second coming is the subject of the center tympanum, as atI
Moissac (FIG. 6-19). The tympanum in the right portal depicts Jesus in the lap of the Virgin Mary. Mary’s prominenceC
on the Chartres facade has no parallel in the sculpturalQ
programs of Romanesque church portals. At Chartres, the
U
Virgin (Notre Dame) assumed a central role, a position she
maintained throughout the Gothic period. As the MotherA
of the Savior, Mary stood compassionately between the last
judge and the horrors of Hell, interceding for all her faithful.
Worshipers in the later 12th and 13th centuries sang hymns8
to the Virgin and dedicated great cathedrals to her. Soldiers6
carried her image into battle on banners, and Mary’s name
0
joined Saint Denis’s as part of the French king’s battle cry.
The Virgin became the spiritual lady of chivalry, and the6
Christian knight dedicated his life to her. The severity of RoB
manesque themes stressing the last judgment yielded to the
gentleness of Gothic art, in which Mary is the kindly queenU
of Heaven.
Statues of Old Testament kings and queens (FIG. 7-6) occupy the jambs flanking each doorway of the Royal Portal.
They are the royal ancestors of Christ and, both figuratively
and literally, support the New Testament figures above the
doorways. They wear 12th-century clothes, and medieval
observers may have regarded them as images of the kings and
queens of France. (This was the motivation for vandalizing
7-6 Old Testament kings and queen, jamb statues, right side
of the central doorway of the Royal Portal, Chartres Cathedral,
Chartres, France, ca. 1145–1155.
The biblical kings and queens of the Royal Portal are the royal
ancestors of Christ. These Early Gothic jamb figures display the first
signs of a new naturalism in European sculpture.
France
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195
7-7 Notre-Dame
(looking northwest),
Paris, France, begun
1163; nave and
flying buttresses,
ca. 1180–1200;
remodeled after
1225.
Architects first used flying
buttresses on a grand
scale at the Cathedral
of Notre-Dame in Paris.
The buttresses countered
the outward thrust of the
nave vaults and held up
the towering nave walls.
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the comparable figures at Saint-Denis during the French
Revolution.) The figures stand rigidly upright with their elbows held close against their hips. The linear folds of their
garments—inherited from the Romanesque style, along with
the elongated proportions—generally echo the vertical lines
of the columns behind them. (In this respect, Gothic jamb
statues differ significantly from classical caryatids; FIG. 2-42.
The Gothic figures are attached to columns. The classical
statues replaced the columns.) Yet, within and despite this
architectural straitjacket, the statues display the first signs
of a new naturalism. Although technically high reliefs, the
kings and queens stand out from the plane of the wall. The
new naturalism—enhanced by painting, as was the norm for
medieval as well as ancient stone sculpture—is noticeable
particularly in the statues’ heads, where kindly human faces
replace the masklike features of most Romanesque figures.
The sculptors of the Royal Portal figures initiated an era of
artistic concern with personality and individuality.
Notre-Dame, Paris Because of the rapid urbanization of
Paris under Louis VI and his successors and the accompanying population boom, a new cathedral became a necessity.
Notre-Dame (FIG. 7-7) occupies a picturesque site on an island in the Seine River called the Île-de-la-Cité. The Gothic
church, which replaced an earlier timber-roofed basilica, has
a complicated building history. The choir and transept were
completed by 1182, the nave by about 1225, and the facade
not until about 1250 to 1260. The original nave elevation had
four stories, with a stained-glass oculus (small round window)
inserted between the vaulted tribune and clerestory typical
196
CH A PTER 7
S
of Norman Romanesque churches, such as Saint-Étienne
(FIG. 6-29) at Caen. As a result, windows filled two of the four
H
stories, further reducing the masonry area.
A To hold the much thinner—and taller—walls of NotreN in place, the unknown architect introduced exterior
Dame
arches
( flying buttresses) that spring from the lower roofs over
I
the aisles and ambulatory (FIG. 7-7) and counter the outward
C of the nave vaults. Gothic builders introduced flying
thrust
buttresses
as early as 1150 in a few smaller churches, but at
Q
Notre-Dame in Paris they circle a great urban cathedral. The
U
internal quadrant arches (FIG. 6-30, right) beneath the aisle
A at Durham Cathedral perform a similar function and
roofs
may be regarded as precedents for exposed Gothic flying buttresses. The combination of precisely positioned flying but8
tresses
and rib vaults with pointed arches was the ideal solution
to
the problem of constructing lofty naves with huge
6
windows. The flying buttresses, which function as extended
0
fingers holding up the walls, are key components of the distinctive
“look” of Gothic cathedrals (see “The Gothic Cathe6
dral,” page 197, and FIG. 7-8).
B
U
Chartres
after 1194 Churches burned frequently in the
Middle Ages, and the clergy often had to raise money unexpectedly for new building campaigns. In contrast to monastic churches, which usually were small and often could
be completed fairly quickly, the construction of urban cathedrals frequently extended over decades and sometimes over
centuries. The rebuilding of Chartres Cathedral (FIG. 7-1)
after the devastating fire of 1194 took a relatively short
27 years. Architectural historians generally consider the
Gothic and Late Medieval Europe
9781305211810, Gardner’s Art through the Ages: A Concise History of Western Art, Third Edition, Kleiner - © Cengage Learning All rights reserved No distribution allowed without express authorization
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the space corresponding to the exterior
strip of wall covered by the sloping timber
roof above the galleries. The new High
Gothic tripartite nave elevation consisted
of arcade, triforium, and clerestory with
greatly enlarged windows. The Chartres
windows are almost as tall as the main
arcade and consist of double lancets with
a single crowning oculus. The strategic
placement of flying buttresses made possible the construction of nave walls with
so many voids that heavy masonry played
merely a minor role.
Chartres Stained Glass Despite the
vastly increased size of its clerestory winH
dows, the Chartres nave (FIG. 7-9) is relatively
dark. This seeming contradiction is
I
the result of using light-muffling colored
G
glass for the windows. The purpose of
the Chartres windows was not to illumiG
nate the interior with bright sunlight but
S
to transform natural light into Suger’s
,
mystical lux nova (see “Stained-Glass
Windows,” page 199). Chartres Cathedral
retains almost the full complement of its
S
original stained glass. Although the windows have a dimming effect, they transH
form the character of the church’s inteA
rior in dramatic fashion. The immense
N
(approximately 43 feet in diameter) rose
window (circular stained-glass window)
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and tall lancets of the north transept
C 1194.
7-9 Interior of Chartres Cathedral (looking east), Chartres, France, begun
(FIG. 7-10) were the gift of Queen Blanche
of Castile around 1220. Yellow castles on a
Chartres Cathedral set the High Gothic standard with its four-part nave vaultsQ
and tripartite
elevation consisting of nave arcade, triforium, and clerestory with tall stained-glass windows.
red ground and yellow fleurs-de-lis (threeU
petaled iris flowers; the French monarA
chy’s floral emblem) on a blue ground fill
post-1194 Chartres Cathedral the first High Gothic building.
the eight narrow windows in the rose’s lower spandrels. The
At Chartres (FIG. 7-9), rectangular nave bays with four-part
iconography is also fitting for a queen. The enthroned Virgin
8
and Child appear in the roundel at the center of the rose,
vaults replaced the square bays with six-part vaults and the
which resembles a gem-studded book cover or cloisonné
alternate-support system used at Saint-Étienne (FIG. 6-29)
6
brooch. Around her are four doves of the Holy Spirit and
at Caen and in Early Gothic churches. The new system, in
0
eight angels. Twelve square panels contain images of Old
which a single square in each aisle (rather than two, as beTestament kings, including David and Solomon (at the 12
fore) flanks a single rectangular unit in the nave, became the
6
and 1 o’clock positions, respectively). These are the royal anHigh Gothic norm. The High Gothic nave vault covered only
B
cestors of Christ. Isaiah (11:1–3) had prophesized the Mesone bay and therefore could be braced more easily than its
U
siah would come from the family of the patriarch Jesse, faEarly Gothic predecessor, making taller naves more practical
ther of David. The genealogical “tree of Jesse” is a familiar
to build.
motif in medieval art. Below, in the lancets, are Saint Anne
The 1194 Chartres Cathedral was also the first church
and the baby Virgin. Flanking them are four of Christ’s Old
planned from its inception to have flying buttresses, another
Testament ancestors—Melchizedek, David, Solomon, and
key High Gothic feature. The flying buttresses enabled the
Aaron—echoing the royal genealogy of the rose, but at a
builders to eliminate the tribune above the aisle, which had
larger scale.
partially braced Romanesque and Early Gothic naves. TakThe rose and lancets change in hue and intensity with
ing its place was the triforium, the band of arcades between
the hours, turning solid architecture into a floating vision of
the clerestory and the nave arcade. The triforium occupies
198
CH A PTER 7
Gothic and Late Medieval Europe
9781305211810, Gardner’s Art through the Ages: A Concise History of Western Art, Third Edition, Kleiner - © Cengage Learning All rights reserved No distribution allowed without express authorization
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7-11 Saint Theodore, jamb
statue, left portal, Porch of
the Martyrs, south transept,
Chartres Cathedral, Chartres,
France, ca. 1230.
Although the statue of
Theodore is still attached to a
column, the setting no longer
determines its pose. The High
Gothic sculptor portrayed the
saint in a contrapposto stance,
as in classical statuary.
Chartres South Transept
The sculptures adorning
the portals of the two Chartres transepts erected after
the 1194 fire are also prime
examples of the new High
Gothic spirit. The Chartres
transept portals (FIG. 7-1)
project more forcefully from
the church than do the
Early Gothic portals of its
west facade (FIG. 7-5). Similarly, the statues of saints
on the portal jambs are
more independent from the
architectural framework.
Saint Theodore (FIG. 7-11),
placed in the Porch of the
Martyrs in the south transept around 1230, reveals
the great changes Gothic
sculpture had undergone
since the Royal Portal
statues (FIG. 7-6) of the mid-12th century. The High Gothic
sculptor portrayed Theodore as the ideal Christian knight,
clothing him in the cloak and chain-mail armor of 13thcentury Crusaders. The handsome, long-haired youth holds
his spear firmly in his right hand and rests his left hand
on his shield. He turns his head to the left and swings out
his hip to the right. The body’s resulting torsion and pronounced sway recall ancient Greek statuary, especially the
contrapposto stance of Polykleitos’s Spear Bearer (FIG. 2-35).
The changes that occurred in 13th-century Gothic sculpture echo the revolutionary developments in Greek sculpture
during the transition from the Archaic to the Classical style
(see Chapter 2) and could appropriately be described as a second “Classical revolution.”
Amiens Cathedral The builders of Chartres Cathedral
set a pattern many other Gothic architects followed, even
if they refined the details. Construction of Amiens Cathedral began in 1220, while work was still in progress at Chartres. The architects were ROBERT DE LUZARCHES, THOMAS DE
CORMONT, and R ENAUD DE CORMONT. The nave (FIG. 7-12) was
ready by 1236 and the radiating chapels by 1247, but work
200
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7-12 ROBERT DE LUZARCHES, THOMAS DE CORMONT, and RENAUD
CORMONT, interior of Amiens Cathedral (looking east), Amiens,
IDE
France, begun 1220.
C
The concept of a self-sustaining skeletal architecture reached full
maturity at Amiens Cathedral. The four-part vaults on pointed arches
Q
rise an astounding 144 feet above the nave floor.
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on the choir continued until almost 1270. The Amiens elevation derived from the High Gothic formula of Chartres
(FIG. 7-9), but Amiens Cathedral’s proportions are more slen8
der, and the number and complexity of the lancet windows in
both its clerestory and triforium are greater. The whole de6
sign reflects the builders’ confident use of the complete High
0
Gothic structural vocabulary: the rectangular-bay system,
the four-part rib vault, and a buttressing system that made
6
possible the almost complete dissolution of heavy masses
B
and thick weight-bearing walls. At Amiens, the concept of
U
a self-sustaining skeletal architecture reached full maturity.
The nave vaults of Chartres Cathedral rise to a height of
120 feet. Those at Amiens are 144 feet above the floor, reflecting the French Gothic obsession with constructing ever
taller cathedrals. At Amiens, the vault ribs converge to the
colonnettes and speed down the shell-like walls to the compound piers. Almost every part of the superstructure has its
corresponding element below. The overall effect is of effortless strength, of a buoyant lightness not normally associated with stone architecture. The light flooding in from the
Gothic and Late Medieval Europe
9781305211810, Gardner’s Art through the Ages: A Concise History of Western Art, Third Edition, Kleiner - © Cengage Learning All rights reserved No distribution allowed without express authorization
clerestory—and, in the choir, also from the triforium—makes
the vaults seem even more insubstantial. The effect recalls
another great building, one utterly different from Amiens but
where light also plays a defining role: Hagia Sophia (FIG. 4-12)
in Constantinople. At Amiens, the designers also reduced the
building’s physical mass by structural ingenuity and daring,
and light further dematerializes what remains. If Hagia Sophia is the perfect expression of Byzantine spirituality in architecture, Amiens, with its soaring vaults and giant windows
admitting divine colored light, is its Gothic counterpart.
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7-13 GAUCHER DE REIMS and BERNARD DE SOISSONS, west facade of
Reims Cathedral, Reims, France, ca. 1225–1290.
Reims Cathedral’s facade reveals High Gothic architects’ desire to
replace heavy masonry with intricately framed voids. Stained-glass
windows, not stone reliefs, fill the three tympana.
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Reims Cathedral Construction of Reims Cathedral
(FIG. 7-13) began only a few years after work commenced at
Amiens. Its west facade, designed by G AUCHER DE R EIMS and
BERNARD DE SOISSONS, displays the Gothic desire to reduce
sheer mass and replace it with intricately framed voids. The
builders punctured almost the entire stone skin of the building. The deep piercing of walls and towers left few areas for
decoration, but sculptors covered the remaining surfaces
with a network of colonnettes, arches, pinnacles, rosettes,
and other decorative stonework that visually screens and
nearly dissolves the structure’s solid core. Sculpture also extends to the areas above the portals, especially the band of
statues (the so-called kings’ gallery) running the full width of
the facade directly above the rose window. Especially striking is the treatment of the tympana over the doorways, where
stained-glass windows replaced the stone relief sculpture of
earlier facades. The contrast with Romanesque heavy masonry construction (FIG. 6-28) is extreme. No less noteworthy, however, is the rapid transformation of the Gothic facade
since Saint-Denis and Chartres (FIG. 7-1, top left).
Reims Cathedral is also a prime example of the High
Gothic style in sculpture. Four of the most prominent statues
(FIG. 7-14) represent the Annunciation and Visitation. They are
further testimony to the Virgin’s central role in Gothic iconography. The statues appear completely detached from
their architectural background because the sculptors shrank the supporting columns into insignificance. The columns in no way restrict the free and
easy movements of the full-bodied figures. Compare
the Reims jamb statues with those of the Chartres
Royal Portal (FIG. 7-6), where the background columns occupy a volume equal to that of the figures.
The Reims statues also vividly illustrate how
long it frequently took to complete the sculptured
ornamentation of a large Gothic cathedral. Sculptural projects of this magnitude normally required
decades to complete and entailed hiring many
sculptors often working in diverse styles. Art historians believe three different sculptors carved the
7-14 Annunciation and Visitation, jamb statues on the
right side of the central doorway of the west facade,
Reims Cathedral, Reims, France, ca. 1230–1255.
Several sculptors working in diverse styles carved the Reims
jamb statues, but all the figures resemble freestanding
statues with bodies and arms in motion. The biblical figures
converse through gestures.
France
9781305211810, Gardner’s Art through the Ages: A Concise History of Western Art, Third Edition, Kleiner - © Cengage Learning All rights reserved No distribution allowed without express authorization
201
plify the wall-dissolving High Gothic architectural style.
The architect of Sainte-Chapelle (FIG. 7-15) in Paris extended
this approach to an entire building. Louis IX (Saint Louis,
r. 1226–1270) built Sainte-Chapelle, joined to the royal palace, as a repository for the crown of thorns and other relics of Christ’s passion he had purchased in 1239. The
chapel is a masterpiece of the so-called Rayonnant (radiant)
style of the High Gothic age, which was the preferred style
of the royal Parisian court of Saint Louis. In Sainte-Chapelle,
6,450 square feet of stained glass make up more than threequarters of the structure. The supporting elements are hardly
more than large mullions, or vertical stone bars. The emphasis
is on the extreme slenderness of the architectural forms and
on linearity in general. Sainte-Chapelle’s enormous windows
filter the light and fill the interior with an unearthly rose-violet
atmosphere. Approximately 49 feet high and 15 feet wide,
H
they were the largest stained-glass windows up to their time.
IVirgin of Paris The “court style” of Sainte-Chapelle has
its
G pictorial parallel in the mannered elegance of the Reims
Gabriel statue (FIG. 7-14, left), but the style long outlived Saint
G
Louis. An example of the court style in Late Gothic sculpS
ture is the statue nicknamed the Virgin of Paris (FIG. 7-16)
,because of its location in the Parisian Cathedral of Notre-
7-15 Interior of the upper chapel (looking northeast), SainteChapelle, Paris, France, 1243–1248.
At Louis IX’s Sainte-Chapelle, the architect succeeded in dissolving the
walls to such an extent that 6,450 square feet of stained glass account
for more than three-quarters of the Rayonnant Gothic structure.
four statues in FIG. 7-14 at different times during the quarter
century from 1230 to 1255. The Visitation group (FIG. 7-14,
right) is the work of an artist who probably studied classical statuary. Reims was an ancient Roman city. The heads
of both Mary and Elizabeth resemble Roman portraits, and
the rich folds of the garments also recall ancient statuary.
The Gothic statues closely approximate the classical naturalistic style and feature contrapposto postures in which the
swaying of the hips is much more pronounced than in the
Chartres Saint Theodore (FIG. 7-11). (It is even more exaggerated in the elegant elongated body of the angel Gabriel
in the Annunciation group, FIG. 7-14, left.) The right legs of
the Visitation figures bend, and the knees press through the
rippling folds of the garments. The sculptor also set the figures’ arms in motion. Mary and Elizabeth turn their faces
toward each other, and they converse through gestures. In
the Reims Visitation group, the formerly isolated Gothic jamb
statues became actors in a biblical narrative.
Sainte-Chapelle, Paris The stained-glass windows inserted into the portal tympana of Reims Cathedral exem-
202
CH A PTER 7
Dame (FIG. 7-7). The sculptor portrayed Mary in an exaggerated S-curve posture. She is a worldly queen and wears
a heavy gem-encrusted
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crown. The princely Christ
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Child reaches toward his
young mother. The tender,
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anecdotal characterization
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of mother and son seen
I
here is a later manifestation of the humanization
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of the portrayal of religious
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figures in Gothic sculpture. Late Gothic statuary
U
is very different in tone
A
from the solemnity of most
High Gothic figures, just as
Late Classical Greek stat8
ues of the Olympian gods
6
(FIG. 2-48) differ from High
Classical depictions.
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7-16 Virgin and Child (Virgin
of Paris), Notre-Dame, Paris,
France, early 14th century.
Late Gothic sculpture is elegant
and mannered. Here, the
solemnity of Early and High
Gothic religious figures gave
way to a tender, anecdotal
portrayal of Mary and Jesus
as royal mother and son.
Gothic and Late Medieval Europe
9781305211810, Gardner’s Art through the Ages: A Concise History of Western Art, Third Edition, Kleiner - © Cengage Learning All rights reserved No distribution allowed without express authorization
Book Illumination and Luxury Arts
Paris’s claim as the intellectual center of Gothic Europe did
not rest solely on the stature of its university faculty and
on the reputation of its architects, masons, sculptors, and
stained-glass makers. The city was also a renowned center
for the production of fine books. Dante Alighieri (1265–1321),
the great Florentine poet, in fact, referred to Paris in his
Divine Comedy (ca. 1310–1320) as the city famed for the art of
illumination.4 During the Gothic period, bookmaking shifted
from monastic scriptoria shut off from the world to urban
workshops of professional artists. The owners of these forprofit secular businesses sold their products to the royal family, scholars, and prosperous merchants. The Parisian workshops were the forerunners of modern publishing houses.
God as Creator One of the finest examples of French
Gothic book illustration is the frontispiece (FIG. 7-17) of aH
moralized Bible produced in Paris during the 1220s. MoralizedI
Bibles are heavily illustrated, each page pairing paintings
of Old and New Testament episodes with explanations ofG
their moral significance. The page reproduced here doesG
S
,
not conform to this formula because it is the introduction
to all that follows. Above the illustration, the scribe wrote
(in French rather than Latin): “Here God creates heaven and
earth, the sun and moon, and all the elements.” The painter
depicted God in the process of creating the world, shaping
the universe with the aid of a compass. Within the perfect
circle already created are the spherical sun and moon and
the unformed matter that will become the earth once God
applies the same geometric principles to it. In contrast to the
biblical account of creation, in which God created the sun,
moon, and stars after the earth had been formed, and made
the world by sheer force of will and a simple “Let there be”
command, the Gothic artist portrayed God systematically
creating the universe by applying geometrical principles and
using some of the same tools mortal builders use.
Blanche of Castile Not surprisingly, most of the finest
Gothic books known today belonged to the French monarchy. One of these is a moralized Bible now in the Pierpont
Morgan Library that Blanche of Castile ordered during her
regency (1226–1234) for her teenage son. The dedication
page (FIG. 7-18) has a costly gold background and depicts
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1 in.
1 in.
7-18 Blanche of Castile, Louis IX, a monk, and a scribe,
7-17 God as Creator of the World, folio 1 verso of a moralized Bible,
from Paris, France, ca. 1220–1230. Ink, tempera, and gold leaf on
vellum, 1′ 1–12 ″ × 8 –14 ″. Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, Vienna.
dedication page (folio 8 recto) of a moralized Bible, from Paris,
France, 1226–1234. Ink, tempera, and gold leaf on vellum,
1′ 3″ × 10 –12 ″. Pierpont Morgan Library, New York.
Paris boasted renowned workshops for the production of illuminated
manuscripts. In this book, the artist portrayed God in the process of
creating the universe using a Gothic builder’s compass.
The dedication page of this royal book depicts Saint Louis, his mother
and French regent Blanche of Castile, a monk, and a lay scribe at work
on the paired illustrations of a moralized Bible.
France
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In 1269, the prior (deputy abbot) of the church of Saint Peter at Wimpfen-im-Tal in the German Rhineland hired “a
very experienced architect who had recently come from the
city of Paris” to rebuild his monastery church.6 The architect reconstructed the church opere francigeno (in the French
manner)—that is, in the opus modernum style of the Île-deFrance, which by the second half of the 13th century became
dominant throughout Europe. European architecture did
not, however, turn Gothic all at once or even uniformly. Almost everywhere, patrons and builders modified the Parisian
court style according to local preferences.
Salisbury Cathedral Salisbury Cathedral (FIG. 7-20) embodies the essential characteristics of English Gothic architecture. Begun in 1220, the English church is contemporaneous to the cathedrals of Amiens and Reims, but theH
differences between the French and English buildings areI
striking. Although Salisbury’s facade has lancet windows
G
and blind arcades with pointed arches and statuary, it reveals
a very different sensibility. The English architect did notG
seek to match the soaring height of the Amiens and ReimsS
(FIG. 7-13) facades or try to make the facade correspond to
the three-part division of the interior (nave and aisles). Instead, the Salisbury facade is a squat screen in front of the
nave, wider than the building behind it. Different, too, is the
emphasis on the great crossing tower (added about 1320 to
1330), which dominates the silhouette. Salisbury’s height is
modest compared with that of Amiens and Reims. Because
height is not a decisive factor in the English building, the architect used the flying buttress sparingly. In short, the English builders adopted some of the superficial motifs of French
Gothic architecture but did not embrace its structural logic
or emphasis on height.
Salisbury’s interior (FIG. 7-21), although Gothic in its
three-story elevation, pointed arches, four-part rib vaults,
compound piers, and triforium tracery, conspicuously departs from the French Gothic style of Amiens (FIG. 7-12). The
pier colonnettes stop at the springing of the nave arches and
do not connect with the vault ribs. Instead, the vault ribs rise
from corbels in the triforium, producing a strong horizontal
emphasis. Underscoring this horizontality is the rich color
,
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7-20 Aerial view of Salisbury Cathedral (looking northeast),
Salisbury, England, 1220–1258; west facade completed 1265; spire
ca. 1320–1330.
7-21 Interior of Salisbury Cathedral (looking east), Salisbury,
Exhibiting the distinctive regional features of English Gothic architecture, Salisbury Cathedral has a squat facade that is wider than the
building behind it. The architects used flying buttresses sparingly.
Salisbury Cathedral’s interior also differs from contemporaneous
French Gothic designs in the strong horizontal emphasis of its threestory elevation and the use of dark Purbeck marble for moldings.
England, 1220–1258.
England
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205
ing from the ceiling. The chapel represents the dissolution of structural Gothic into decorative fancy. The
architects released the French Gothic style’s original
lines from their function and multiplied them into the
uninhibited architectural virtuosity and theatrics of
the English Perpendicular style.
H O LY R O M A N E M P I R E
The architecture of the Holy Roman Empire remained
conservatively Romanesque well into the 13th century.
In many German churches, the only Gothic feature
was the rib vault, buttressed solely by the heavy masonry of the walls. By mid-century, though, the French
Gothic style began to make a profound influence.
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7-22 ROBERT and WILLIAM VERTUE, fan vaults of the chapel of Henry VII,
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Westminster Abbey, London, England, 1503–1519.
Two hallmarks of the Perpendicular style of English Late Gothic architecture C
are the multiplication of vault ribs and the use of fan vaults with lacelike tracery
Q
pendants resembling stalactites.
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contrast between the light stone of the walls and vaults and
the dark marble (from the Isle of Purbeck in southeastern
England) used for the triforium moldings and corbels, compound pier responds, and other details.
Chapel of Henry VII English Gothic architecture found
its native language in the elaboration of architectural pattern
for its own sake. The pier, wall, and vault elements, still relatively simple at Salisbury, became increasingly complex and
decorative in the 14th century and later. In the early-16thcentury chapel of Henry VII adjoining Westminster Abbey
in London, the so-called Perpendicular style of late English
Gothic is on display. The style takes its name from the pronounced verticality of its decorative details, in contrast to the
horizontal emphasis of Salisbury and Early English Gothic.
In Henry’s chapel, ROBERT and WILLIAM VERTUE multiplied
the vault ribs (FIG. 7-22) and pulled them into uniquely English fan vaults (vaults with radiating ribs forming a fanlike
pattern) with large hanging pendants resembling stalactites.
Intricate tracery recalling lace overwhelms the cones hang206
CH A PTER 7
Cologne Cathedral Begun in 1248 under the direction of GERHARD OF COLOGNE, Cologne Cathedral was
not completed until more than 600 years later. It is the
largest cathedral in northern Europe and boasts a giant
(422-foot-long) nave (FIG. 7-23) with two aisles on each
side. The 150-foot-high 14th-century choir is a skillful
variation of the Amiens Cathedral choir (FIG. 7-12) design, with double lancets in the triforium and tall, slender single windows in the clerestory above and choir
arcade below. The Cologne choir expresses the Gothic
quest for height even more emphatically than do many
French Gothic buildings.
Strasbourg Cathedral As did French Gothic architects, French sculptors also often set the standard for
their counterparts in other countries. In the German
Rhineland, work began in 1176 on a new cathedral for
Strasbourg in present-day France. The apse, choir, and
transepts were in place by around 1240. Stylistically,
these sections of Strasbourg Cathedral are Romanesque. But the reliefs of the two south-transept portals
are fully Gothic and reflect developments in contemporaneous French sculpture.
The left tympanum (FIG. 7-24) presents Death of the Virgin.
A comparison of the Strasbourg Mary on her deathbed with
8
the Mary of the Reims Visitation group (FIG. 7-14, right) shows
the stylistic kinship of the Strasbourg and Reims masters.
6
The 12 apostles gather around the Virgin, forming an arc of
0
mourners well suited to the semicircular frame. At the center, Christ receives his mother’s soul (the doll-like figure he
6
holds in his left hand). Mary Magdalene, wringing her hands
B
in grief, crouches beside the deathbed. The sorrowing figures
U
express emotion in varying degrees of intensity, from serene
resignation to gesturing agitation. The sculptor organized
the group by dramatic pose and gesture and by the rippling
flow of deeply incised drapery that passes among them like a
rhythmic electric pulse. The sculptor’s objective was to imbue
the sacred figures with human emotions and to stir emotional
responses in observers. In Gothic France, as already noted,
art became increasingly humanized and natural. In the Holy
Roman Empire, artists carried this humanizing trend even
further by emphasizing passionate drama.
Gothic and Late Medieval Europe
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7-23 GERHARD OF COLOGNE, interior of Cologne Cathedral (lookingH
east), Cologne, Germany. Choir completed 1322.
Cologne Cathedral’s nave is 422 feet long. The 150-foot-high choir, a taller
A variation on the Amiens Cathedral choir (FIG. 7-12), is a prime example
of Gothic architects’ quest for height.
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7-24 Death of the Virgin, tympanum of the left doorway of the south transept, Strasbourg Cathedral, Strasbourg,
France, ca. 1230.
Stylistically akin to the Visitation group (FIG. 7-14, right) of Reims Cathedral, the figures in Strasbourg’s south-transept
tympanum express profound sorrow through dramatic poses and gestures.
Holy Roman Empire
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207
of the Naumburg statues. Two of the figures (FIG. 7-25) stand
out from the group because of their exceptional quality. They
represent the margrave (German military governor) Ekkehard II of Meissen and his wife, Uta. The statues are attached
to columns and stand beneath architectural canopies, following the pattern of French Gothic portal statuary, but they
project from the architecture more forcefully and move more
freely than contemporaneous French jamb figures. Their location indoors accounts for the preservation of much of the
original paint. Ekkehard and Uta give modern viewers an excellent idea of the appearance of the portal sculptures of medieval churches before exposure to sun and rain for centuries.
The period costumes and the individualized features
and personalities of the margrave and his wife give the impression they posed for their portraits, although the subjects
lived well before the Naumburg Master’s time. Ekkehard, the
H
intense
knight, contrasts with the beautiful and aloof Uta.
With
a
wonderfully
graceful gesture, she draws the collar of
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her cloak partly across her face while she gathers up a soft
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fold of drapery with a jeweled, delicate hand. The sculptor
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1 ft.
7-25 NAUMBURG MASTER, Ekkehard and Uta, statues in the west
choir, Naumburg Cathedral, Naumburg, Germany, ca. 1249–1255.
Painted limestone, Ekkehard 6′ 2″ high.
The period costumes and individualized features of these donor
portraits give the impression Ekkehard and Uta posed for their statues,
but they lived long before the Naumburg Master’s time.
Naumburg Cathedral The Strasbourg style, with its feverish emotionalism, was particularly appropriate for narrating dramatic events in relief. The sculptor entrusted with
the decoration of the west choir of Naumburg Cathedral—
the NAUMBURG M ASTER—faced a very different challenge. The
commission was to carve statues of the 12 benefactors of the
original 11th-century church. The vivid gestures and agitated
faces of the Strasbourg portal contrast with the quiet solemnity
208
CH A PTER 7
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7-26 Röttgen Pietà, from the Rhineland, Germany, ca. 1300–1325.
Painted wood, 2′ 10 –12 ″ high. Rheinisches Landemuseum, Bonn.
This statuette of the Virgin grieving over her son’s distorted dead body
in her lap reflects the increased interest in the 13th and 14th centuries
in Jesus’s suffering and his mother’s grief.
Gothic and Late Medieval Europe
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1 ft.
subtly revealed the shape of Uta’s right arm beneath her
cloak and rendered the fall of drapery folds with an accuracy
suggesting the sculptor used a living model. The two statues are arresting images of real people, even if they bear the
names of aristocrats the artist never met. By the mid-13th
century, in the Holy Roman Empire life-size images of secular personages had found their way into churches.
Röttgen Pietà The confident Naumburg portraits stand in
marked contrast to a haunting 14th-century German painted
wood statuette (FIG. 7-26) of the Virgin Mary holding the dead
Christ in her lap. This Pietà (Italian, “pity” or “compassion”)
reflects the increased interest during the 13th and 14th centuries in humanizing biblical figures and in the suffering of
Jesus and grief of his mother and followers. This expressed
emotionalism accompanied the shift toward representation
of the human body in motion. As the figures of the churchH
portals began to twist on their columns, then move withinI
their niches, and then stand independently, their details beG
came more outwardly related to the human audience as indicators of recognizable human emotions.
G
The sculptor of the Röttgen Pietà (named after a collecS
tor) portrayed Christ as a stunted, distorted human wreck,
stiffened in death and covered with streams of blood gushing,
from a huge wound. The Virgin, who cradles him as if he
were a child in her lap, is the very image of maternal anguish,
her oversized face twisted in an expression of unbearableS
grief. This statue expresses nothing of the serenity of earlierH
Gothic depictions of Mary (FIG. 7-5, right tympanum). Nor
A
does it have anything in common with the aloof, iconic images of the Theotokos with the infant Jesus in her lap com-N
mon in Byzantine art (FIG. 4-19). Here the artist forcibly con-I
fronts the devout with an appalling icon of agony, death, and
sorrow. The work calls out to the horrified believer, “What isC
your suffering compared to this?”
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Nowhere is the regional diversity of late medieval art and architecture more evident than in Italy. In fact, art historians
debate whether the art of Italy between 1200 and 1400 is the8
last phase of medieval art or the beginning of the rebirth,6
or Renaissance, of Greco-Roman naturalism, the dawn of a
0
new artistic age when artists broke away from medieval conventions and consciously revived the classical style. Both of6
these characterizations have merit.
B
A revived interest in classical cultures—indeed, the veneration of classical antiquity as a model—was central to theU
notion of a renaissance in Italy. Indeed, the belief the Renaissance represented the restoration of the glorious past of
Greece and Rome gave rise to the concept of the “Middle
Ages” as the era falling between antiquity and the Renaissance. This notion of artistic rebirth is the root of Vasari’s
condescending labeling of medieval art as “Gothic.”
A significant development in 14th-century Italy was the
blossoming of a vernacular (commonly spoken) literature,
which dramatically affected Italy’s intellectual and cultural
life. Latin remained the official language of Church liturgy
and state documents. However, the creation of an Italian vernacular literature was one important sign that the essentially
religious view of the world dominating medieval Europe was
about to change dramatically. Although religion continued
to occupy a primary position in the lives of Europeans, a
growing concern with the natural world, the individual, and
humanity’s worldly existence characterized the Renaissance
period—the 14th through the 16th centuries (see Chapters 8
and 9).
Humanism Fundamental to the development of the Italian
Renaissance was humanism. Humanism was more a code of
civil conduct, a theory of education, and a scholarly discipline than a philosophical system. As their name suggests,
the Italian humanists were concerned chiefly with human
values and interests as distinct from—but not opposed to—
religion’s otherworldly values. Humanists pointed to classical
cultures as particularly praiseworthy. This enthusiasm for
antiquity involved study of Latin literature and a conscious
emulation of what proponents believed were the Roman civic
virtues. These included self-sacrificing service to the state,
participation in government, defense of state institutions (especially the administration of justice), and stoic indifference
to personal misfortune in the performance of duty. Classical
cultures provided humanists with a model for living in this
world, a model primarily of human focus derived not from
an authoritative and traditional religious dogma but from
reason.
Sculpture and Painting
The Renaissance humanists quickly developed a keen interest in classical art as well as literature. Although the Visitation
statues of Reims Cathedral (FIG. 7-14) show a familiarity with
Roman statuary in 13th-century France, the emulation of
Greco-Roman art was, not surprisingly, far more common in
Italy, where Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II (r. 1220–1250)
had been king of Sicily since 1197. Frederick’s nostalgia for
Rome’s past grandeur fostered a revival of Roman sculpture
in Sicily and southern Italy not unlike the neoclassical renewal Charlemagne encouraged in Germany and France four
centuries earlier (see Chapter 6).
Nicola Pisano The sculptor known as NICOLA PISANO (Nicola of Pisa, active ca. 1258–1278) received his early training
in southern Italy. After Frederick’s death in 1250, Nicola
traveled northward and eventually settled in Pisa. Then at
the height of its political and economic power, the maritime
city was a magnet for artists seeking lucrative commissions.
Nicola specialized in carving marble reliefs and ornamentation for large pulpits (raised platforms from which priests lead
church services), completing the first in 1260 for Pisa’s baptistery (FIG. 6-27, left). Some elements of the pulpit’s design
carried on medieval traditions, but Nicola also incorporated
classical elements. The large, bushy capitals are a Gothic
Italy
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209
7-27 NICOLA PISANO, Annunciation,
Nativity, and Adoration of the Shepherds,
relief panel on the baptistery pulpit,
Pisa, Italy, 1259–1260. Marble,
2′ 10″ × 3′ 9″.
Classical sculpture inspired the faces,
beards, coiffures, and draperies, as
well as the bulk and weight of Nicola’s
figures. The Nativity Madonna resembles
lid figures on Roman sarcophagi.
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variation of the Corinthian capital. The arches are round,
as in Roman architecture, rather than pointed, as in Gothic
buildings north of the Alps. Also, each of the large rectangular relief panels resembles the sculptured front of a Roman
sarcophagus (FIG. 3-48).
One of these panels (FIG. 7-27) depicts scenes from the
infancy cycle of Christ (see “The Life of Jesus in Art,” Chapter 4, pages 130–131), including Annunciation (top left), Nativity
(center and lower half ), and Adoration of the Shepherds (top right).
The Virgin reclines in the manner of lid figures on Etruscan
(FIG. 3-4) and Roman sarcophagi, and the face types, beards,
coiffures, and draperies, as well as the bulk and weight of the
figures, reveal the influence of classical relief sculpture. Art
historians have even been able to pinpoint the models for
some of the pulpit figures on Roman sarcophagi in Pisa.
Cimabue Late-13th-century Italian painting also differs
sharply from the elegant court style popular north of the
Alps. Byzantine style dominated Italian painting throughout
the Middle Ages. The Italo-Byzantine style, or maniera greca
(Greek style), still characterizes the art of Cenni di Pepo,
called CIMABUE (“Bull’s Head”; ca. 1240–1302). Madonna Enthroned with Angels and Prophets (FIG. 7-28) is perhaps Cimabue’s finest work. In this enormous (nearly 13 feet tall) panel
painted for the church of the Holy Trinity in Florence, the
heritage of Byzantine icon painting (FIGS. 4-19 and 4-26) is
apparent in the careful structure and symmetry, the poses of
the figures, the gold lines of Mary’s garments, and the gold
background. However, Cimabue constructed a deeper space
for the Madonna and the surrounding figures to inhabit than
was common in Byzantine painting, and he convincingly depicted the throne as receding into space. The overlapping
210
CH A PTER 7
bodies of the angels reinforce the sense of depth, as do the
half-length prophets who look outward or upward from beS
neath the massive throne.
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Giotto Critics from Giorgio Vasari to the present day have
A
regarded GIOTTO DI BONDONE (ca. 1266–1337) as the first
N
Renaissance painter. A pioneer in pursuing a naturalistic apIproach to representation based on observation, he made a
much more radical break with the maniera greca than did
C
Cimabue, whom Vasari identified as Giotto’s teacher. Scholars still debate the sources of Giotto’s style, although one
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formative influence must have been Cimabue. Late mediU
eval mural painting in Rome, French Gothic sculpture, and
A
ancient Roman sculpture and painting must also have impressed the young Giotto. Yet no mere synthesis of these varied sources could have produced the significant shift in ar8
tistic approach that has led some scholars to describe Giotto
as the father of Western pictorial art. Renowned in his own
6
day, his reputation has never faltered. Regardless of the other
0
influences on his artistic style, his true teacher was nature—
the world of visible things.
6
B Giotto’s revolution in painting did not consist only of
displacing the Byzantine style, establishing painting as a maU
jor art form for the next seven centuries, and restoring the
naturalistic approach the ancients developed and medieval
artists largely abandoned. He also inaugurated a method of
pictorial expression based on observation and initiated an
age that might be called “early scientific.” By stressing the
preeminence of sight for gaining knowledge of the world,
Giotto and his successors contributed to the foundation of
empirical science. They recognized the visual world must be
observed before it can be analyzed and understood. Praised
Gothic and Late Medieval Europe
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Santa Trinità, Florence, Italy, ca. 1280–1290. Tempera and gold
leaf on wood, 12′ 7″ × 7′ 4″. Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence.
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Cimabue was a master of the Italo-Byzantine style. Here, the heritage
of Byzantine icon painting is apparent, but Cimabue rendered the
Madonna’s massive throne as receding into space.
8
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in his own and later times for his fidelity to nature, Giotto
was more than a mere imitator of it. He revealed nature while6
observing it and divining its visible order. In fact, he showed
B
his generation a new way of seeing. With Giotto, Western
artists turned resolutely toward the visible world as theirU
source of knowledge of nature.
Madonna Enthroned On nearly the same great scale as
Cimabue’s enthroned Madonna (FIG. 7-28) is Giotto’s altarpiece (FIG. 7-29) depicting the same subject. Giotto’s Madonna
rests within her Gothic throne with the unshakable stability of an ancient marble goddess. Giotto replaced Cimabue’s slender Virgin, fragile beneath the thin ripplings of her
1 ft.
7-29 GIOTTO DI BONDONE, Madonna Enthroned, from the Church
of the Ognissanti, Florence, Italy, ca. 1310. Tempera and gold leaf
on wood, 10′ 8″ × 6′ 8″. Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence.
Giotto displaced the Byzantine style in Italian painting and revived
classical naturalism. His figures have substance, dimensionality, and
bulk, and give the illusion they could throw shadows.
drapery, with a weighty, queenly mother. He even showed
Mary’s breasts pressing through the thin fabric of her white
undergarment. Gold highlights have disappeared from her
heavy robe. Giotto aimed instead to construct a figure with
substance, dimensionality, and bulk—qualities suppressed
in favor of a spiritual immateriality in Byzantine and ItaloByzantine art. Works painted in the new style portray statuesque figures projecting into the light and giving the illusion
they could throw shadows. Giotto’s Madonna Enthroned marks
the end of medieval painting in Italy and the beginning of a
new naturalistic approach to art.
Arena Chapel Projecting onto a flat surface the illusion
of solid bodies moving through space presents a double
challenge. Constructing the illusion of a weighty, threedimensional body also requires constructing the illusion of a
Italy
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211
space sufficiently ample to contain that body.
In his fresco cycles (see “Fresco Painting,”
page 213), Giotto constantly strove to reconcile these two aspects of illusionistic painting. His murals in the Arena Chapel (Cappella Scrovegni; FIG. 7-30) at Padua show his
art at its finest. A banker, Enrico Scrovegni,
built the chapel on a site adjacent to his palace in the hope it would expiate the moneylender’s sin of usury. Consecrated in 1305,
the chapel takes its name from an ancient
Roman arena (amphitheater) nearby. Some
scholars have suggested that Giotto himself
may have been the architect because its design so perfectly suits its interior decoration.
The rectangular barrel-vaulted hall
H
has only six windows, all in the south wall
(FIG. 7-30, left), leaving the other walls as alI
most unbroken and well-illuminated surfaces
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for painting. In 38 framed scenes, Giotto presented one of the most impressive and comG
plete Christian pictorial cycles ever rendered.
S
The narrative unfolds on the north and south
,
walls in three zones, reading from top to bottom: at the top, incidents from the lives of the
Virgin and her parents, Joachim and Anna;
S
in the middle, the life and mission of Christ;
and in the lowest zone, his passion, crucifixH
ion, and resurrection. Below, imitation marble
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veneer—reminiscent of ancient Roman wall
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decoration (FIG. 3-40)—alternates with personified Virtues and Vices painted in grisaille
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(monochrome grays, often used for modeling
C
in paintings) to resemble sculpture. The cli7-30
G
IOTTO
DI
B
ONDONE
mactic event of the cycle of human salvation,
Q , interior of the Arena Chapel (Cappella Scrovegni;
looking
west),
Padua,
Italy, 1305–1306.
the Last Judgment, covers most of the west wall
U
The frescoes Giotto painted in the Arena Chapel show his art at its finest. In 38 framed
above the chapel’s entrance.
the complete cycle of the life of Jesus, culminating in the Last
Subtly scaled to the chapel’s space (only panels, he presentedA
Judgment on the entrance wall.
about half life-size), Giotto’s stately and
slow-moving actors present their dramas
8
convincingly and with great restraint. Lamand John to the philosophical resignation of the two disciples
entation (FIG. 7-31) illustrates particularly well the revolution6
at the right and the mute sorrow of the two hooded mourners
ary nature of Giotto’s art. In the presence of boldly foreshort0
in the foreground. Painters before Giotto rarely attempted,
ened angels darting about in hysterical grief, a congregation
let alone achieved, this combination of naturalistic represenmourns over the dead savior just before his entombment.
6
tation, compositional complexity, and emotional resonance.
Mary cradles her son’s body, while Mary Magdalene looks
B
The formal design of the Lamentation fresco—the way
solemnly at the wounds in Christ’s feet and John the EvanU
Giotto grouped the figures within the constructed space—is
gelist throws his arms back dramatically. Giotto arranged a
worth close study. Each group has its own definition, and
shallow stage for the figures, bounded by a thick diagonal
each contributes to the rhythmic order of the composition.
rock incline defining a horizontal ledge in the foreground.
The strong diagonal of the rocky ledge, with its single dead
Though narrow, the ledge provides firm visual support for
tree (the tree of knowledge of good and evil, which withthe figures, and the steep slope leads the viewer’s eye toward
ered after Adam and Eve’s original sin), concentrates the
the picture’s dramatic focal point at the lower left. The figviewer’s attention on the heads of Christ and his mother,
ures are sculpturesque, and their postures and gestures conwhich Giotto positioned dynamically off center. The masvey a broad spectrum of grief, ranging from Mary’s almost
sive bulk of the seated mourner in the painting’s left corner
fierce despair to the passionate outbursts of Mary Magdalene
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Duccio The Republics of Siena and Florence were the two
most powerful city-states in 14th-century Italy, home to
wealthy bankers and merchants. The Sienese were particularly proud of their defeat of the Florentines at the battle
of Monteperti in 1260 and believed the Virgin Mary had
brought them victory. To honor the Virgin, in 1308 the
Sienese commissioned DUCCIO DI BUONINSEGNA (active ca.
1278–1318) to paint an immense altarpiece for Siena Cathedral—the Maestà (Virgin Enthroned in Majesty). He and his assistants completed the ambitious work in 1311. As originally
executed, the altarpiece consisted of a seven-foot-high center panel (FIG. 7-32), surmounted by seven pinnacles above,
7-32 DUCCIO DI
BUONINSEGNA, Virgin and
Child Enthroned with Saints,
principal panel of the
Maestà altar piece, from
Siena Cathedral, Siena,
Italy, 1308–1311. Tempera
and gold leaf on wood,
7′ × 13′. Museo dell’Opera
del Duomo, Siena.
Duccio derived the formality
and symmetry of his
composition from Byzantine
painting, but relaxed the
rigidity and frontality of the
figures, softened the drapery,
and individualized the faces.
and a predella, or raised shelf, of panels at the base, altogether
some 13 feet high.
The main panel on the front side of the altarpiece represents the Virgin enthroned in majesty as queen of Heaven
amid choruses of angels and saints. Duccio derived the
composition’s formality and symmetry, along with the figures and facial types of the principal angels and saints, from
Byzantine tradition. But the artist relaxed the strict frontality
and rigidity of the figures. They turn to one another in quiet
conversation. Further, Duccio individualized the faces of the
four saints kneeling in the foreground, who perform their
ceremonial gestures without stiffness. Similarly, Duccio
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7-33 DUCCIO DI BUONINSEGNA, Life of Jesus, 14 panels from the back of the Maestà altarpiece, from Siena Cathedral, Siena, Italy,
1308–1311. Tempera and gold leaf on wood, 7′ × 13′. Museo dell’Opera del Duomo, Siena.
On the back of the Maestà altarpiece, Duccio presented Christ’s passion in 24 scenes on 14 panels, beginning with Entry into Jerusalem, at the
lower left, through Noli me tangere, at the top right.
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softened the usual Byzantine hard body outlines and drapery
patterning. The folds of the garments, particularly those of
the female saints at both ends of the panel, fall and curve
loosely. This is a feature familiar in French Gothic works
(FIG. 7-19) and is a mark of the artistic dialogue between Italy
and northern Europe in the 14th century.
Despite these changes revealing Duccio’s interest in the
new naturalism, he respected the age-old requirement that
as an altarpiece the Maestà would be the focus of worship in
Siena’s largest and most important church. As such, Duccio
knew the Maestà should be an object holy in itself—a work of
splendor to the eyes, precious in its message and its materials. Duccio thus recognized how the function of the altarpiece limited experimentation in depicting narrative action
and producing illusionistic effects (such as Giotto’s) by modeling forms and adjusting their placement in pictorial space.
Instead, the queen of Heaven panel is a miracle of color com-H
position and texture manipulation, unfortunately not fullyI
revealed in photographs. Close inspection of the original reG
veals what the Sienese artist learned from other sources. In
the 13th and 14th centuries, Italy was the distribution cen-G
ter for the great silk trade from China and the Middle East.
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After processing in city-states such as Lucca and Florence,
the Italians exported the precious fabric throughout Europe,
to satisfy an immense market for sumptuous dress. People
throughout Europe prized fabrics from China, Byzantium,
and the Islamic world. In the Maestà, Duccio created the glis-S
tening and shimmering effects of textiles, adapting the mo-H
tifs and design patterns of exotic materials. Complementing
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the luxurious fabrics and the (lost) gilded wood frame are
the halos of the holy figures, which feature tooled decorativeN
designs in gold leaf (punchwork).
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1 ft.
In contrast to the main panel, the back (FIG. 7-33) of
the altarpiece presents an extensive series of narrative panels of different sizes and shapes, beginning with Annunciation and culminating with Christ’s Resurrection. The section
reproduced here, consisting of 24 scenes in 14 panels, relates Christ’s passion. In these scenes, Duccio allowed himself greater latitude for experimentation than in the Maestà
panel. The bodies are not the flat frontal shapes of ItaloByzantine art. Duccio imbued them with mass, modeled
them with a range of tonalities from light to dark, and arranged their draperies around them convincingly. Even more
novel and striking is the way the figures seem to react to
events. Through posture, gesture, and even facial expression, they display a variety of emotions. Duccio’s protagonists are actors in a religious drama the artist interpreted in
terms of thoroughly human actions and reactions. In this
passion cycle, Duccio took a decisive step toward the humanization of religious subject matter.
Simone Martini Duccio’s successors in Siena included his
pupil SIMONE M ARTINI (ca. 1285–1344), who may have assisted
in painting the Maestà. Martini was a close friend of the poet
and scholar Francesco Petrarch (1304–1374), who praised the
Sienese painter highly for his portrait of “Laura” (the woman
to whom Petrarch dedicated his sonnets). Martini worked
for the French kings in Naples and Sicily and, in his last
years, produced paintings for the papal court, which in the
14th century was at Avignon, where he came in contact with
French painters. By adapting the insubstantial but luxuriant
patterns of the Gothic style to Sienese art and, in turn, by acquainting French painters with the Sienese style, Martini was
instrumental in creating the so-called International style. This
new style swept Europe during the late
14th and early 15th centuries because
it appealed to the aristocratic taste for
brilliant colors, lavish costumes, intricate ornamentation, and themes involving splendid processions.
Martini’s Annunciation altarpiece
(FIG. 7-34) features elegant shapes and
radiant color, flowing, fluttering line,
7-34 SIMONE MARTINI and LIPPO MEMMI
(?), Annunciation altarpiece, from Siena
Cathedral, Siena, Italy, 1333 (frame
reconstructed in the 19th century).
Tempera and gold leaf on wood; center
panel, 10′ 1″ × 8′ 8 –34 ″. Galleria degli Uffizi,
Florence.
A pupil of Duccio, Martini was instrumental
in the creation of the International style. Its
hallmarks are elegant shapes, radiant color,
flowing line, and weightless figures in golden,
spaceless settings.
Italy
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215
and weightless figures in a spaceless setting—all hallmarks
of the artist’s style. The complex etiquette of the European
chivalric courts probably dictated the presentation. Gabriel
has just alighted, the breeze of his passage lifting his mantle,
his iridescent wings still beating. The gold of his sumptuous gown signals he has descended from Heaven. The Virgin, putting down her book of devotions, shrinks demurely
from the angel’s reverent genuflection—an appropriate act
in the presence of royalty. Mary draws about her the deep
blue, golden-hemmed mantle, colors befitting the queen
of Heaven. Despite Mary’s modesty and diffidence and the
tremendous import of Gabriel’s message, the scene subordinates drama to court ritual, and structural experimentation
to surface splendor. The intricate tracery of the richly tooled
French Gothic-inspired frame and the elaborate punchwork
haloes enhance the tactile magnificence of the painting.
Simone Martini and his student and assistant, LIPPO
M EMMI (active ca. 1317–1350), signed the altarpiece and dated
it (1333). The latter’s contribution to Annunciation is still a
matter of debate, but most art historians believe he painted
the two lateral saints. These figures, which are reminiscent
of the jamb statues of Gothic church portals, have greater
solidity and lack the linear elegance of Martini’s central pair.
Given the nature of medieval and Renaissance workshop
practices, it is often difficult to distinguish the master’s hand
from those of his assistants, especially if the master corrected or redid part of the pupil’s work.
Ambrogio Lorenzetti Another of Duccio’s students,
A MBROGIO L ORENZETTI (active 1319–1348), contributed significantly to the general experiments in pictorial realism
taking place in 14th-century Italy. In a vast fresco program
he executed for the Sala della Pace (Hall of Peace; FIG. 7-35)
of Siena’s Palazzo Pubblico (“public palace,” or city hall),
Lorenzetti both elaborated in spectacular fashion the advances in illusionistic representation made by other Italian
painters and gave visual form to Sienese civic concerns. The
subjects of Lorenzetti’s murals are Allegory of Good Government, Bad Government and the Effects of Bad Government in the
City, and Effects of Good Government in the City and in the Country. The turbulent politics of the Italian cities—the violent
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party struggles, the overthrow and reinstatement of governIments—called for solemn reminders of fair and just administration, and the city hall was the perfect place to display
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these allegorical paintings. Indeed, the leaders of the Sienese
government who commissioned this fresco series had underG
taken the “ordering and reformation of the whole city and
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countryside of Siena.”
, In Effects of Good Government in the City and in the Country
(FIG. 7-35, right), Lorenzetti depicted the urban and rural
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7-35 AMBROGIO LORENZETTI, Effects of Good Government in the City and in the Country, north (left) and east (right) walls of the Sala della Pace,
Palazzo Pubblico, Siena, Italy, 1338–1339. Fresco, north wall 25′ 3″ wide, east wall 46′ wide.
In the Hall of Peace of Siena’s city hall, Ambrogio Lorenzetti painted an illusionistic panorama of the bustling city. The fresco served as an allegory
of good government in the Sienese republic.
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7-36 LORENZO MAITANI, Orvieto Cathedral
(looking northeast), Orvieto, Italy, begun
1310.
The pointed gables over the doorways, the rose
window, and the large pinnacles derive from French
Gothic architecture, but the facade of Orvieto
Cathedral masks a traditional timber-roofed
basilica.
first appearances of landscape in Western
art since antiquity.
Architecture
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effects of good government. One section of the fresco is aA
panoramic view of Siena, with its palaces, markets, towers,
churches, streets, and walls. The city’s traffic moves peacefully, guild members ply their trades and crafts, and radiant8
maidens, clustered hand in hand, perform a graceful circling6
dance. Dancers were regular features of festive springtime
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rituals. Here, their presence also serves as a metaphor for
a peaceful commonwealth. The artist fondly observed the6
life of his city, and its architecture gave him an opportuB
nity to apply Sienese painters’ rapidly growing knowledge of
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perspective.
In the Peaceful Country section of the fresco, Lorenzetti
presented a bird’s-eye view of the undulating Tuscan countryside, with its villas, castles, plowed farmlands, and peasants going about their seasonal occupations. An allegorical
figure of Security hovers above the landscape, unfurling a
scroll promising safety to all who live under the rule of law.
Although the mural is an allegory, Lorenzetti’s particularized view of the Sienese countryside represents one of the
The picture of Siena in the Sala della Pace
frescoes could not be confused with a view
of a French, German, or English city of the
14th century. Italian architects stood apart
from developments north of the Alps.
Orvieto Cathedral The west facade of
Orvieto Cathedral (FIG. 7-36) is typical of
late medieval architecture in Italy. Designed
in the early 14th century by the Sienese architect LORENZO M AITANI, the Orvieto facade demonstrates the appeal of the French
Gothic architectural vocabulary in Italy.
Characteristically French are the pointed
gables over the three doorways, the rose
window and statues in niches in the upper
zone, and in the four large pinnacles dividing the facade into three bays. The outer
pinnacles serve as miniature substitutes for
the tall northern European west-front towers. Maitani’s facade, however, is a Gothic
overlay masking a marble-revetted basilican
structure in the Tuscan Romanesque tradition, as the three-quarter view of the cathedral in FIG. 7-36
reveals. The Orvieto facade resembles a great altar screen,
its single plane covered with carefully placed carved and
painted decoration. In principle, Orvieto belongs with Pisa
Cathedral (FIG. 6-27) and other Italian buildings, rather than
with Reims Cathedral (FIG. 7-13). Inside, Orvieto Cathedral
has a timber-roofed nave with a two-story elevation (columnar arcade with round arches and a clerestory) in the Early
Christian manner.
Florence Cathedral In the 14th century, the historian
Giovanni Villani (ca. 1270–1348) described Florence as “the
daughter and the creature of Rome,” suggesting a preeminence inherited from the Roman Empire. Florentines were
fiercely proud of what they perceived as their economic and
cultural superiority. Florence controlled the textile industry
in Italy, and the republic’s gold florin was the standard coin of
exchange everywhere in Europe.
Florentines translated their pride in their predominance
into landmark buildings, such as the cathedral of Santa
Italy
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217
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7-37 ARNOLFO DI CAMBIO and others, aerial view of Santa Maria del Fiore
Florence, Italy, begun 1296. Campanile designed by GIOTTO DI BONDONEC
, 1334.
The Florentine Duomo’s marble revetment carries on the Tuscan Romanesque architectural tradition, linking this basilican church more closely
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to Early Christian Italy than to Gothic France.
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Maria del Fiore (FIG. 7-37). A RNOLFO DI CAMBIO (ca. 1245–1302)
began work on the cathedral (Duomo in Italian) in 1296. Intended as the “most beautiful and honorable church in Tuscany,” the Duomo reveals the competitiveness Florentines
felt with such cities as Siena and Pisa (FIG. 6-27). Church authorities planned for the cathedral to hold the city’s entire
population, and although its capacity is only about 30,000
(Florence’s population at the time was slightly less than
100,000), the building seemed so large even the noted architect Leon Battista Alberti (see Chapter 8) commented that it
seemed to cover “all of Tuscany with its shade.” The vast gulf
separating this low, longitudinal basilican church with its
Tuscan-style marble-revetted walls from its towering transalpine counterparts is strikingly evident in a comparison
between the Italian church and Reims Cathedral (FIG. 7-13),
completed several years before work began in Florence.
218
CH A PTER 7
Giotto di Bondone designed the Duomo’s campanile in
1334. In keeping with Italian tradition (FIG. 6-27), the bell
8
tower stands apart from the church. In fact, it is essentially
self-sufficient and could stand anywhere else in the city
6
without looking out of place. The same cannot be said of
0
Gothic towers. They are essential elements of the structures
behind them, and it would be unthinkable to detach one of
6
them and place it somewhere else. In contrast, not only could
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Giotto’s tower be removed from the building without adverse
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effects, but also each of the parts—cleanly separated from
one another by continuous moldings—seems capable of existing independently as an object of considerable aesthetic
appeal. This compartmentalization is reminiscent of the
Romanesque style, but it also forecasts the ideals of Renaissance architecture, discussed in Chapter 8.
Gothic and Late Medieval Europe
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the Bold (r. 1364–1404), married the daughter of the count of
Flanders, and acquired territory in the Netherlands. Thereafter, the major source of Burgundian wealth and power was
Bruges, the city that made Burgundy a dangerous rival of
royal France. Bruges initially derived its wealth from the wool
trade but soon expanded into banking, becoming the financial clearinghouse for all of northern Europe. Indeed, Bruges
so dominated Flanders that the duke of Burgundy eventually
chose to make the city his capital and moved his court there
from Dijon. Due to the expanded territory and the prosperity
of the duchy of Burgundy, Philip the Bold and his successors
were probably the most powerful northern European rulers
during the first three-quarters of the 15th century. Although
cousins of the French kings, they usually supported England
(on which they relied for the raw materials used in their wool
industry) during the Hundred Years’ War and, at times, controlled much of northern France, including Paris, the seat ofH
the French monarchy. At the height of Burgundian power,I
the reigning duke’s lands stretched from the Rhône River to
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the North Sea.
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Chartreuse de Champmol Philip the Bold was among the
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greatest art patrons in northern Europe. His largest artistic
enterprise was the building of the Chartreuse de Champ-,
mol, near Dijon. A chartreuse (“charter house” in English) is
a Carthusian monastery. The Carthusian order, founded in
the late 11th century by Saint Bruno at Chartreuse in south-S
eastern France, consisted of monks who devoted their livesH
to solitary living and prayer. Inspired by Saint-Denis, the
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burial site of the kings of France (see Chapter 7), Philip intended the Dijon chartreuse to become a ducal mausoleumN
and serve both as a means of securing salvation in perpetuityI
for the Burgundian dukes and as a dynastic symbol of BurC
gundian power.
For the Champmol cloister, Philip the Bold’s head sculp-Q
tor, CLAUS SLUTER (active ca. 1380–1406) of Haarlem (NetherU
lands), designed a large sculptural fountain located in a well
that provided water for the monastery, but water probably didA
not spout from the fountain because the Carthusian commitment to silence and prayer would have precluded anything that produced sound. Sluter’s Well of Moses (FIG. 8-2)8
features statues of Moses and five other prophets (David,6
Daniel, Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Zachariah) surrounding a base
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that once supported a Crucifixion group. The Carthusians
called the Well of Moses a fons vitae, a fountain of everlasting6
life. The blood of the crucified Christ symbolically flowed
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down over the grieving angels and Old Testament prophets,
spilling into the well below, washing over Christ’s propheticU
predecessors and redeeming anyone who would drink water
from the well.
Although the six prophets recall the jamb statues
(FIG. 7-14) of Gothic portals, they are much more realistically
rendered. Sluter’s intense observation of natural appearance
enabled him to sculpt the figures with portraitlike features
and to differentiate textures from coarse drapery to smooth
flesh and silky hair. Originally, paint, much of which has
flaked off, further augmented the naturalism of the figures.
1 ft.
8-2 CLAUS SLUTER, Well of Moses, Chartreuse de Champmol,
Dijon, France, 1395–1406. Limestone, painted and gilded by
JEAN MALOUEL, Moses 6′ high.
The Well of Moses, a symbolic fountain of life made for the duke of
Burgundy, originally supported a Crucifixion group. Sluter’s figures
recall French Gothic jamb statues but are far more realistic.
(The painter was JEAN M ALOUEL [ca. 1365–1415], another
Netherlandish master.) This fascination with the specific and
tangible in the visible world became one of the chief characteristics of 15th-century Flemish art.
Robert Campin One of the earliest Flemish masters—and
one of the first to use the new medium of oil painting (see
“Tempera and Oil Painting,” page 224)—was the M ASTER OF
FLÉMALLE, whom many scholars identify as ROBERT CAMPIN
(ca. 1378–1444) of Tournai. Although traditional scholarship
credited Jan van Eyck (discussed next) with the invention of
oil painting, another Flemish painter, Melchior Broederlam
(active ca. 1387–1409), used oil-based pigments in the 1390s.
Flemish painters built up their pictures by superimposing
translucent paint layers over a carefully planned drawing
made on a panel prepared with a white ground. With the oil
medium, Flemish painters could create richer colors than
previously possible, giving their paintings an intense tonality, the illusion of glowing light, and enamel-like surfaces.
These traits differed significantly from the high-keyed color,
sharp light, and rather matte (dull) surfaces of tempera. The
brilliant and versatile oil medium suited perfectly the formal
intentions of 15th-century Flemish painters, who aimed for
Burgundy and Flanders
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223
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separating the sacred from the secular became virtually impossible and undesirable. Moreover, the presentation in religious
art of familiar settings and objects no doubt strengthened the
direct bond the patron or viewer felt with biblical figures.
The Mérode Altarpiece is a small triptych (three-paneled
painting) in which the center panel represents the popular
Annunciation theme (as prophesied in Isaiah 7:14). The archangel Gabriel approaches Mary, who sits reading in a well-kept
Flemish home. The view through the window in the right wing
and the depicted accessories, furniture, and utensils confirm
the locale as Flanders. However, the objects represented are
not merely decorative. They also function as religious symbols.
The book, extinguished candle, and lilies on the table, the
copper basin in the corner niche, the towels, fire screen, and
bench all symbolize the Virgin’s purity and her divine mission.
In the right panel, Joseph, apparently unaware of Gabriel’s arrival, has constructed a mousetrap, symbolic ofH
the theological concept that Christ is bait set in the trap ofI
the world to catch the Devil. The ax, saw, and rod Campin
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painted in the foreground of Joseph’s workshop not only
are tools of the carpenter’s trade but also are mentioned inG
Isaiah 10:15. In the left panel, the closed garden is symbolic
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of Mary’s purity, and the flowers Campin included relate to
,
Mary’s virtues, especially humility.
The altarpiece’s donor, Peter Inghelbrecht, a wealthy
merchant, and his wife, Margarete Scrynmakers, kneel in
the garden and witness the momentous event through anS
open door. Donor portraits—portraits of the individual(s) whoH
commissioned (or “donated”) the work—became very popuA
lar in the 15th century. In this instance, in addition to asking
to be represented in their altarpiece, the Inghelbrechts prob-N
ably specified the subject. Inghelbrecht means “angel bringer,”I
a reference to the Annunciation theme of the central panel.
Scrynmakers means “cabinet- or shrine-makers,” referring toC
the workshop scene in the right panel.
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1 ft.
8-4 HUBERT and JAN VAN EYCK, Ghent Altarpiece (closed), Saint Bavo
Cathedral, Ghent, Belgium, completed 1432. Oil on wood,
11′ 5″ × 7′ 6″.
Monumental painted altarpieces were popular in Flemish churches.
Artists decorated both the interiors and exteriors of these polyptychs,
which often, as here, included donor portraits.
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Jan van Eyck The first Netherlandish painter to achieve
international fame was JAN VAN EYCK (ca. 1390–1441), whoA
in 1425 became Philip the Good’s court painter. In 1432,
he moved his studio to Bruges, where the duke maintained
his official residence. That same year he completed the8
Ghent Altarpiece (FIGS. 8-4 and 8-5)—which his older brother6
HUBERT VAN EYCK (ca. 1366–1426) had begun—for the church
0
originally dedicated to John the Baptist (since 1540, Saint
Bavo Cathedral) in Ghent. One of the most characteris-6
tic art forms in 15th-century Flanders was the monumenB
tal freestanding altarpiece, and the Ghent Altarpiece is one of
the largest. Placed behind the altar, these imposing worksU
served as backdrops for the Mass. Given their function, it is
not surprising that many altarpieces depict scenes directly
related to Christ’s sacrifice. Flemish altarpieces most often
took the form of polyptychs—hinged multipaneled paintings
or relief panels. The hinges enabled the clergy to close the
polyptych’s side wings over the center panel(s). Artists decorated both the exterior and interior of the altarpieces. This
multi-image format provided the opportunity to construct
narratives through a sequence of images, somewhat as in
manuscript illustration. Although concrete information is
lacking about when the clergy opened and closed these altarpieces, the wings probably remained closed on regular days
and open on Sundays and feast days. On this schedule, viewers could have seen both the interior and exterior—diverse
imagery at various times according to the liturgical calendar.
Jodocus Vyd, diplomat-retainer of Philip the Good, and
his wife, Isabel Borluut, commissioned the Ghent Altarpiece.
Vyd’s largesse contributed to his appointment as burgomeister (chief magistrate) of Ghent shortly after the unveiling
of the work. Two of the exterior panels (FIG. 8-4) depict the
donors. The husband and wife, painted in illusionistically
rendered niches, kneel with their hands clasped in prayer.
They gaze piously at illusionistic stone sculptures of Ghent’s
patron saints, John the Baptist and John the Evangelist. The
Annunciation appears on the upper register, with a careful
representation of a Flemish town outside the painted window of the center panel. In the uppermost arched panels, van
Burgundy and Flanders
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8-5 HUBERT and JAN VAN EYCK, Ghent Altarpiece (open), Saint Bavo Cathedral, Ghent, Belgium, completed 1432. Oil on wood, 11′ 5″ × 15′ 1″.
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In this sumptuous painting of salvation from the original sin of Adam and Eve (shown on the wings), God the Father presides in majesty between
the Virgin Mary and John the Baptist.
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Eyck depicted the Old Testament prophets Zachariah and
feet bears the inscription “On his head, life without death.
Micah, along with sibyls, Greco-Roman mythological female
prophets whose writings the Church interpreted as prophesies of Christ.
When open (FIG. 8-5), the altarpiece reveals a sumptuous,
superbly colored painting of humanity’s redemption through
Christ. In the upper register, God the Father—wearing the
pope’s triple tiara, with a worldly crown at his feet, and resplendent in a deep-scarlet mantle—presides in majesty. To
God’s right is the Virgin, represented as the queen of Heaven,
with a crown of 12 stars upon her head. John the Baptist sits
to God’s left. To either side is a choir of angels, with an angel playing an organ on the right. Adam and Eve appear in
the far panels. The inscriptions in the arches above Mary
and John the Baptist extol the Virgin’s virtue and purity and
John the Baptist’s greatness as the forerunner of Christ. The
inscription above the Lord’s head translates as “This is God,
all-powerful in his divine majesty; of all the best, by the gentleness of his goodness; the most liberal giver, because of his
infinite generosity.” The step behind the crown at the Lord’s
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On his brow, youth without age. On his right, joy without
sadness. On his left, security without fear.” The entire altar8
piece amplifies the central theme of salvation. Even though
humans, symbolized by Adam and Eve, are sinful, they will
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be saved because God, in his infinite love, will sacrifice his
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own son for this purpose.
6 The panels of the lower register extend the symbolism
of the upper. In the center panel, the community of saints
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comes from the four corners of the earth through an opuU
lent, flower-spangled landscape. They proceed toward the altar of the lamb and the octagonal fountain of life. The lamb
symbolizes the sacrificed Son of God, whose heart bleeds
into a chalice, while into the fountain spills the “pure river
of water of life, clear as crystal, proceeding out of the throne
of God and of the Lamb” (Rev. 22:1). On the right, the 12
apostles and a group of martyrs in red robes advance. On the
left appear prophets. In the right background come the virgin martyrs, and in the left background the holy confessors
approach. On the lower wings, hermits, pilgrims, knights,
The Early Renaissance in Europe
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1 ft.
and judges approach from left and right. They symbolize
the four cardinal virtues: Temperance, Prudence, Fortitude,
and Justice, respectively. The altarpiece celebrates the whole
Christian cycle from the fall to the redemption, presenting
the Church triumphant in heavenly Jerusalem.
Van Eyck used oil paints to render the entire altarpiece
in a shimmering splendor of color that defies reproduction.
No small detail escaped the painter. With pristine specificity,
he revealed the beauty of the most insignificant object as if
it were a work of piety as much as a work of art. He depicted
the soft texture of hair, the glitter of gold in the heavy brocades, the luster of pearls, and the flashing of gems, all with
loving fidelity to appearance.
Giovanni Arnolfini Both the Mérode Altarpiece and the Ghent
Altarpiece include painted portraits of their donors. These
paintings marked a significant revival of portraiture, a genreH
that had languished since antiquity. A purely secular por-I
trait, but one with religious overtones, is Jan van Eyck’s oil
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painting Giovanni Arnolfini and His Wife (FIG. 8-6). Van Eyck
depicted the Lucca financier (who had established himselfG
in Bruges as an agent of the Medici family) and his second
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wife, whose name is not known, in their home, a setting that
is simultaneously mundane and charged with the spiritual.,
As in the Mérode Altarpiece, almost every object carries meaning. The cast-aside clogs indicate this event takes place on
holy ground. The little dog symbolizes fidelity. Behind theS
couple, the curtains of the marriage bed have been opened.H
The bedpost’s finial (crowning ornament) is a tiny statue of
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Saint Margaret, patron saint of childbirth. (The bride is not
yet pregnant, although the fashionable costume she wearsN
makes her appear so.) From the finial hangs a whisk broom,I
symbolic of domestic care. The oranges on the chest below
the window may refer to fertility. The single candle burn-C
ing in the left rear holder of the ornate chandelier and theQ
mirror, in which the viewer sees the entire room reflected,
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symbolize the all-seeing eye of God. The small medallions
set into the mirror frame show tiny scenes from the passionA
of Christ and represent God’s promise of salvation for the
figures reflected on the mirror’s convex surface. Viewers of
the period would have been familiar with many of the objects8
included in the painting because of traditional Flemish cus-6
toms. Husbands presented brides with clogs, and the soli0
tary lit candle in the chandelier was part of Flemish marriage
practices. Van Eyck’s placement of the two figures suggests6
conventional gender roles—the woman stands near the bed
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and well into the room, whereas the man stands near the
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open window, symbolic of the outside world.
Van Eyck enhanced the documentary nature of this
scene by exquisitely painting each object. He carefully distinguished textures and depicted the light from the window
on the left reflecting off various surfaces. He also augmented
the scene’s credibility by including the convex mirror (complete with its spatial distortion, brilliantly recorded), because
viewers can see not only the principals, Arnolfini and his
wife, but also two persons who look into the room through
the door. One of these must be the artist himself, as the
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8-6 JAN VAN EYCK, Giovanni Arnolfini and His Wife, 1434. Oil on
wood, 2′ 9″ × 1′ 10 –12 ″. National Gallery, London.
Van Eyck played a major role in establishing portraiture as an important
Flemish art form. In this portrait of an Italian financier and his wife, he
also portrayed himself in the mirror.
florid inscription above the mirror—Johannes de Eyck fuit hic
(“Jan van Eyck was here”)—announces he was present. The
picture’s purpose, then, would have been to record and sanctify this marriage. Most scholars now reject this traditional
reading, however, and it has been suggested that Arnolfini is
conferring legal privileges on his wife to conduct business
in his absence. In either case, the artist functions as a witness. The self-portrait of van Eyck in the mirror also underscores the painter’s self-consciousness as a professional
artist whose role deserves to be recorded and remembered.
Van Eyck and his contemporaries established portraiture
as a major art form. Great patrons embraced the opportunity
to have their likenesses painted. They wanted to memorialize themselves in their dynastic lines and to establish their
identities, ranks, and stations with images far more concrete
than heraldic coats of arms. Portraits also served to represent
state officials at events they could not attend. Sometimes,
royalty, nobility, and the very rich would send artists to paint
the likeness of a prospective bride or groom. When young
King Charles VI (r. 1380–1422) of France sought a bride, he
dispatched a painter to three different royal courts to make
portraits of the candidates.
Burgundy and Flanders
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8-7 ROGIER VAN DER WEYDEN, Deposition, center panel of a triptych
A from Notre-Dame hors-les-murs, Louvain,
Belgium, ca. 1435. Oil on wood, 7′ 2 –″ × 8′ 7 –″. Museo del Prado, Madrid.
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Deposition resembles a relief carving in which the biblical figures act out a drama of passionate sorrow as if on a shallow
theatrical stage. The painting makes an unforgettable emotionalIimpact.
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reflect the belief that Mary suffered the same pain at the cruRogier van der Weyden A painter whose fame riQ
cifixion as her son. Few painters have equaled Rogier in the
valed that of Jan van Eyck was ROGIER VAN DER WEYDEN
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rendering of passionate sorrow as it vibrates through a figure
(ca. 1400–1464), who was an assistant in the workshop of
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or distorts a tear-stained face. His depiction of the agony of
Robert Campin when van Eyck received the commission for
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the Ghent Altarpiece. Rogier quickly became renowned for his
dynamic compositions stressing human action and drama.
He concentrated on Christian themes such as Deposition
(FIG. 8-7) and other passion episodes that elicited powerful
emotions, moving observers deeply by vividly portraying the
suffering of Christ.
Deposition is the center panel of a triptych commissioned
by the archers’ guild of Louvain. Rogier acknowledged his
patrons by incorporating the crossbow (the guild’s symbol)
into the decorative tracery in the corners. Instead of creating a deep landscape setting, as van Eyck might have, Rogier compressed the figures and action onto a shallow stage
with a golden back wall. The painting, with the artist’s crisp
drawing and precise modeling of forms, resembles a stratified
relief carving. A series of lateral undulating movements gives
the group a compositional unity, a formal cohesion Rogier
strengthened by depicting the desolating anguish many of
the figures share. The similar poses of Christ and his mother
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loss in Deposition is among the most authentic in religious art
and creates an immediate and unforgettable emotional effect
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on the viewer.
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Saint Luke Slightly later in date is Rogier’s Saint Luke
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Drawing the Virgin (FIG. 8-8), probably painted for the Guild
of
6 Saint Luke, the artists’ guild in Brussels. The panel depicts the patron saint of painters drawing the Virgin Mary
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using a silverpoint (a sharp stylus that creates a fine line). The
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theme paid tribute to the profession of painting in Flanders
by drawing attention to the venerable history of the painter’s
craft. Many scholars believe Rogier’s Saint Luke is a selfportrait, identifying the Flemish painter with the first Christian artist and underscoring the holy nature of painting. Rogier shared with Campin and van Eyck the aim of recording every detail of the scene with loving fidelity to optical
appearance, seen here in the rich fabrics, floor pattern, and
the landscape visible through the window. Also, as his older
The Early Renaissance in Europe
9781305211810, Gardner’s Art through the Ages: A Concise History of Western Art, Third Edition, Kleiner - © Cengage Learning All rights reserved No distribution allowed without express authorization
8-8 ROGIER VAN DER WEYDEN, Saint Luke Drawing
the Virgin, ca. 1435–1440. Oil and tempera
on wood, 4′ 6 –18 ″ × 3′ 7 –58 ″. Museum of Fine
Arts, Boston (gift of Mr. and Mrs. Henry Lee
Higginson).
Probably commissioned by the painters’ guild in
Brussels, this panel honors the first Christian artist
and the profession of painting. Saint Luke may be a
self-portrait of Rogier van der Weyden.
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