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- quadrature
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A type of illusionistic decoration in
which architectural elements are painted on walls and/or ceilings in
such a way that they appear to be an extension of the real
architecture of a room into an imaginary space. It was common in
Roman art, was revived by Mantegna in the 15th century, and reached
its peaks of elaboration in Baroque Italy. The greatest of all
exponents of quadratura was probably Pozzo, in whose celebrated
ceiling in S. Ignazio, Rome, architecture and figures surge towards
the heavens with breathtaking bravura. Unlike Pozzo, many artists
relied on specialists called quadraturisti to paint the
architectural settings for their figures (see Guercino and Tiepolo,
for example).
- quatrefoil
-
decorative motif in Gothic art
consisting of four lobes or sections of circles of the same size.
- Quattrocento (It. "four hundred")
-
The 15th century in Italian art. The
term is often used of the new style of art that was characteristic
of the Early Renaissance, in particular works by Masaccio,
Brunelleschi, Donatello, Botticelli, Fra Angelico and others. It was
preceded by the Trecento and followed by the Cinquecento.
R
- Reformed churches
-
Churches that rejected the authority
of the Pope from the 16th century. In 16th century Europe, the two
main denominations were the Lutherans and the Calvinists, with the
Anglican Church developing in England.
- relic (Lat. relicquiae, "remains")
-
a part of the body of a saint, or
some item connected with a saint, the object of particular
veneration.
- relief (Lat. relevare, "to raise")
-
A sculptural work in which all or
part projects from the flat surface. There are three basic forms:
low relief (bas-relief, basso rilievo), in which figures project
less than half their depth from the background; medium relief (mezzo-rilievo),
in which figures are seen half round; and high relief (alto rilievo),
in which figures are almost detached from their background.
- religious orders and congregations
-
An order is a body of men or women
bound by solemn vows and following a rule of life, e.g. the great
orders of monks, hermits, canons regular, friars and nuns, or the
Jesuits. A congregation may be either a subsection of an order, or a
body of persons bound by simple vows and generally having a looser
structure than an order. Among the old orders there was both fusion
and fission. Among the contemplative orders, originally autonomous
houses tended to group themselves into congregations, presided over
by chapters general. A major stimulus to such reform movements was
concern for mutual defence against the abuse of commendams, i.e. the
grant of abbacies 'in trust' to non-resident outsiders to the order.
At the same time, there was dissidence and fractionalization in
almost all of the old orders and congregations, the great issue of
contention being the strict observance.
The Benedictines, who had no overall
organization originally, were mostly grouped into congregations by
the 16th century. The Silvestrines, Celestines and Olivetines were
old congregations. That of S. Giustina, Padua, which was to become
the main Italian one, developed from 1419 under the leadership of
the Venetian Lodovico Barbo. He was particularly concerned to
develop sacred studies and eventually there were certain designated
houses of study for the entire congregation, the most notable being
S. Benedetto, Mantua. In 1504, having absorbed St Benedict's
original monastery, it became the Cassinese congregation. The
Camaldolese were an offshoot of the Benedictines. Founded by St
Romuald c. 1012, they followed a distinctive eremetical rule of
life, rather on the model of Eastern monasticism, with hermitages
linked to matrix monasteries. In the second decade of the 16th
century Paolo Giustiniani led a movement for a revival of the strict
eremetical ideal; hence the formation of the Monte Corona
congregation.
Canons Regular of St Augustine follow
a rule and are basically monks; they are to be distinguished from
secular canons who serve cathedral and collegiate churches. Two
major congregations arose from reform movements in the 15th century:
that of S. Salvatore, Bologna (1419), and the Lateran one (1446)
which grew from S. Maria di Fregonaia, Lucca. A body genuinely
monastic and contemplative in spirit, although technically of
secular canons, was the congregation of S. Giorgio in Alga, Venice
(1404), whose foundation is especially associated with Gabriel
Condulmer (later Eugenius IV) and S. Lorenzo Giustiniani, the great
patriarch of Venice. The Hermits of St Augustine and the Carmelites
were originally contemplative eremetical orders which turned to the
active life of friars. The Hermits of St Jerome (Hieronymites or
Gerolimini) appeared from the 15th century and included the Fiesole
and Lombard congregations and that of Pietro Gambacorta of Pisa.
The Friars Minor (Franciscans) had
been split after their founder's death by disputes between the
Spirituals, with their ideology of an absolute apostolic poverty,
and their more institutionalized brethren, the Conventuals. After
the repression of the Spirituals, the great dispute in the order was
primarily a legalistic one: the division was between the Conventuals,
whose friaries were corporate property-owners; and the generally
moderate Observants; whose friaries were technically non-property
owning, their resources being in the hands of trustees. 'The
Observance' did not necessarily designate a very straitened rule of
life but in the 15th century a strict movement of the Observance
developed whose leading figures were S. Bernardino of Siena, S.
Giovanni da Capestrano and Giacomo della Marca. In 1517, the bull 'Ite
vos' of Leo X instituted the Great Division between Friars Minor
(Conventual) and Friars Minor of the Observance; various groups were
fused in the latter body, which was given precedence over the
Conventuals. The Conventuals, however, continued to hold the order's
great basilicas. The same bull provided for special friaries within
the Observance for those dedicated to a very strict interpretation
of the Rule. Failure to implement this clause caused a splinter
movement of zealot groups which finally coalesced into the Capuchins
and the Reformed (canonically recognized in 1528 and 1532
respectively). The Order of Preachers (Dominicans) underwent similar
if less serious crises over the issue of poverty and a body of the
strict observance was established in the late 14th century; however,
the Dominicans were substantially reunited under the generalate of
the great Tommaso di Vio da Gaeta (1508-18). Other orders of Friars
were the Minims, founded by S. Francesco da Paola in 1454 on the
primitive Franciscan model, and the Servites following the
Augustinian rule.
The 16th century produced the Jesuits
(founded in 1541) and several rather small congregations of clerks
regular, who had many of the marks of secular clergy but who lived a
common life. Generally they were devoted to pastoral and welfare
work. The first, the Theatines, founded by Giampietro Caraffa (later
Paul IV) and the Vicentine aristocrat S. Gaetano da Thiene, emerged
from the Roman Oratory of Divine Love in 1524. The Somaschi were
founded at Somasca near Bergamo in 1532 by S. Gerolamo Aemiliani, a
Venetian noble castellan turned evangelist; this congregation
specialized in the upbringing of orphan boys. The Barnabites were
founded at Milan by S. Antonio Maria Zaccaria in 1533, while the
Congregation of the Oratory was founded in Rome in the 1560s by S.
Filippo Neri. One of the few significant innovations among the
female orders were the Ursulines, an offshoot of the Brescian
Confraternity of Divine Love, founded in 1535 by S. Angela Merici.
S. Angela's intention was that they should be a congregation of
unenclosed women dedicated to the active life in charitable and
educational work; however, the ecclesiastical authorities forced the
Ursulines into the mould of an enclosed contemplative order. While
the friars basically remained attached to scholastic philosophy and
theology, certain sections of contemplative orders were
distinguished for humanist studies and related forms of religious
scholarship; most notably the Cassinese Benedictine congregation,
the Lateran Canons (especially of the Badia Fiesolana) and the
Camaldolese, who included Ambrogio Traversari in Florence and a
group of scholars at S. Michele in Isola, Venice.
- Religious Peace of Nuremberg
-
A temporary settlement of Germany's
religious conflicts agreed in 1532 between Emperor Charles V and
those German princes who supported the Reformed Churches. Though it
merely postponed the final settlement of the issue until the next
diet, the settlement was in effect a formal recognition of
Lutheranism.
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A French label
given to an Italian cultural movement and to its repercussions
elsewhere; also, on the assumption that chronological slices of
human mass experience can usefully be described in terms of a
dominant intellectual and creative manner, a historical period. For
Italy the period is popularly accepted as running from the second
generation of the 14th century to the second or third generation of
the 16th century. Though there is something inherently ridiculous
about describing a period of 250 years as one of rebirth, there is
some justification for seeing a unity within it, if only in terms of
the chronological self-awareness of contemporaries.
For Petrarch
the challenge to understand and celebrate the achievements of
ancient Rome led him to scorn the intervening centuries which had
neglected them; he saw them as an age of intellectual sleep, of
'darkness', and his own as potentially one of light, of an energetic
revival of interest in, and competition with, too long forgotten
glories. Thanks to his fame not only as a scholar but also as a poet
and a voluminous correspondent, this sense of living in an age of
new possibilities was rapidly shared by others who worked within the
intellectual framework which came to be known as Humanism. Perhaps
the sense of living in a new mental atmosphere can be compared to
the exhilaration that followed the realization that Marxist analysis
could be used to look afresh at the significance of intellectual and
creative, as well as political, life. The humanistic enthusiasm
lasted so long, however, because its core of energy, the historical
reality of antiquity, was so vast and potent, because it was
uncontroversial (save when an assassin borrowed the aura of Brutus,
or a paganizing faddist mocked Christianity), and because the
scholarly excitement about the need to imitate the achievements of
the Roman (and, increasingly, Greek) past was sustained by evidence
from contemporary art and literature that it could be done. Even
when the Wars of Italy had inflicted grievous humiliations on
Italian pride, Vasari could still see a process of restored vigour
in the arts, which had begun early in the 14th century, as only
coming near its close with the death of Michelangelo in 1564.
Vasari's Lives
became a textbook of European repute. It was his contention that he
was describing what followed from the rinascita or rebirth of the
arts that launched the word on its increasingly inclusive career.
For long, however, it was a 'renaissance' of this or that, of arts,
of scholarship, of letters. Not until the publication in 1855 of the
volume in Jules Michelet's Histoire de France entitled 'La
Renaissance' was the label attached to a period and all that
happened in it; not until the appearance of Jacob Burckhardt's still
seminal Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy in 1860 was it
ineluctably identified in particular with Italy and more generally
with a phase of human development thought to be markedly different
in kind from what went before and what came after.
Thereafter,
'Renaissance' became a mercurial term: not just a label for a period
or a movement but a concept, a concept redolent (in spite of
Burckhardt's precautions) of Individualism, All-Roundness, even
Amoralism; man had escaped from the medieval thought-dungeon, and
the world (and its expanding physical and mental horizons) was his
oyster; culture was linked to personality and behaviour; the
Renaissance became both the scene and the work of Renaissance Man.
To a northern European world (whence the alertest scholars and
popularizers came), morally confined by Protestantism and social
decorum, 'Renaissance' became a symbol of ways of conduct and
thought that were either to be castigated (John Ruskin, whose The
stones of Venice of 1851-53 had anticipated the art-morality
connection) or envied (John Addington Symonds's avidly nostalgic
Renaissance in Italy, 1875-86).
A term that had
become so liable to subjective interpretation was bound to attract
criticism. During this century it has been challenged chiefly on the
following points. (1) There is no such thing as a self-sufficient
historical period. Much that was characteristic of the Middle Ages
flowed into and through the Renaissance. Much that was
characteristic of the Renaissance flowed on until the age of
experimental science, of industrialization, mobilized nationalism,
and mass media. (2) Renaissance art and literature did not develop
so consistently that they can be seen in one broad Vasarian sweep.
There was an early, a 'high' and a late stage (all variously dated)
in terms of artistic and literary aims and style. (3) There is not a
true, let alone a uniform, congruence between, 'culture' and
'history' during the period; 'Renaissance' culture came late to
Venice, later still to Genoa, both thriving centres of political and
commercial activity. (4) To define a period in terms of a cultural
élite is to divert attention unacceptably from the fortunes of the
population as a whole.
Though thus
challenged, mocked (the 'so-called Renaissance'), aped (the
'Carolingian' or 'Ottonian' renaissance, etc.) and genially debased
('the renaissance of the mini-skirt'), the term retains most of its
glamour and much of its usefulness. It is surely not by chance that
'rebirth' rather than the 18th century and early 19th century
'revival' (of arts, letters, etc.) was the term chosen, because it
applies to a society the resonance of a personal, spiritual and
perhaps psychological aspiration: the new start, the previous record
- with all its shabbiness - erased. It is for this additional,
subjective reason a term to be used with caution. The challenges are
to be accepted, however, gratefully, as having led to an enormous
extension of knowledge and sensitivity.
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Repoussoir is
means of achieving perspective or spatial contrasts by the use of
illusionistic devices such as the placement of a large figure or
object in the immediate foreground of a painting to increase the
illusion of depth in the rest of the picture. Caravaggio had become
famous for his paintings of ordinary people or even religious
subjects in repoussoir compositions. Repoussoir figures appear
frequently in Dutch figure painting where they function as a major
force in establishing the spatial depth that is characteristic of
painting of the seventeenth-century. Landscapists too learned to
exploit the dramatic effect of repoussoir to enliven their
renderings of the flat uneventful Dutch countryside.
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Ornamental
panel behind an altar and, in the more limited sense, the shelf
behind an altar on which are placed the crucifix, candlesticks, and
other liturgical objects. The panel is usually made of wood or
stone, though sometimes of metal, and is decorated with paintings,
statues, or mosaics depicting the Crucifixion or a similar subject.
Although frequently forming part of the architectural structure of
the church, especially in the High Gothic period, retables can be
detached and, sometimes, as in the case of the famous retable by
Hubert and Jan van Eyck, "The Adoration of the Lamb" (1432,
Cathedral of Saint-Bavon, Ghent), consist merely of a painting.
Probably the most well-known retable is that in the Basilica of St
Mark in Venice, which is one of the most remarkable examples in
existence of the craft of the jeweler and goldsmith. Originally
commissioned in 976, the St. Mark's retable was enlarged and
enriched in the 13th century. With the development of freestanding
altars, retables have become extinct.
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In painting,
the impression that an object is three-dimensional, that it stands
out from its background fully rounded.
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A style of design,
painting, and architecture dominating the 18th century, often
considered the last stage of the Baroque. Developing in the Paris
townhouses of the French aristocracy at the turn of the 18th
century, Rococo was elegant and ornately decorative, its mood
lighthearted and witry. Louis XV furniture, richly decorated with
organic forms, is a typical product. Leading exponents of the Rococo
sryle included the French painter Antoine Watteau (1684-1721) and
Jean-Honoré Fragonard (1732-1806), and the German architect Johann
Balthasar Neumann (1687-1753). Rococo gave way to Neo-classicism.
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Style of art and
architecture prevailing throughout most of Europe in the 11th and
12th centuries, the first style to achieve such international
currency. The dominant art of the Middle Ages was architecture, and
'Romanesque', like 'Gothic', is primarily an architectural term that
has been extended to the other arts of the period. As the name
suggests, it indicates a derivation from Roman art, and sometimes
Romanesque is used to cover all the developments from Roman
architecture in the period from the collapse of the Roman Empire
until the flowering of the Gothic roughly AD 500-1200. More usually,
however, it is applied to a distinctive style that emerged, almost
simultaneously, in several countries - France, Germany, Italy, Spain
- in the 11th century. It is characterized most obviously by a new
massiveness of scale, reflecting the greater political and economic
stability that followed a period when Christian civilization seemed
in danger of extinction. Romanesque painting and sculpture are
generally strongly stylized, with little of the naturalism and
humanistic warmth of classical or later Gothic art. The forms of
nature are freely translated into linear and sculptural designs
which are sometimes majestically calm and severe and at others are
agitated by a visionary excitement that can become almost delirious.
Because of its expressionistic distortion of natural form,
Romanesque art, as with other great non-naturalistic styles of the
past, has had to wait for the revolution in sensibility brought
about by the development of modern art in order to be widely
appreciated.
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Name used to
describe Northern artists of the early 16th century whose style was
influenced by Italian Renaissance painting, usually as a result of a
visit to Italy. Mabuse, B. van Orley, M. van Heemskerk, Q. Massys
and M. van Reymerswaele are important Romanists.
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A term loosely
applied to literary and artistic movements of the late 18th and 19th
centuries. Resulting in part from the libertarian and egalitarian
ideals of the French Revolution, the romantic movements had in
common only a revolt against the prescribed rules of classicism. The
basic aims of romanticism were various: a return to nature and to
belief in the goodness of humanity; the rediscovery of the artist as
a supremely individual creator; the development of nationalistic
pride; and the exaltation of the senses and emotions over reason and
intellect. In addition, romanticism was a philosophical revolt
against rationalism.
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School of
Italian painting of importance from the mid-15th to the late 19th
centuries. Both Michelangelo and Raphael worked in Rome, making it
the centre of the High Renaissance; in the 17th century it was the
centre of the Baroque movement represented by Bernini and Pietro da
Cortona. From the 17th century the presence of classical remains
drew artists from all over Europe including Poussin, Claude,
Piranesi, Pannini and Mengs.
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A small
architectural ornament consisting of a disc on which there is a
carved or molded a circular, stylized design representing an open
rose.
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Any of the artists
and critics who championed the sovereignty of colour over design and
drawing in the "quarrel" of colour versus drawing that broke out in
the French Royal Academy of Painting and Sculpture in Paris in 1671
(see also Poussinist). The dispute raged for many years before the
Rubenists emerged victorious. The aim of painting, they maintained,
is to deceive the eye by creating an imitation of life or of nature
and by manipulating colour. The colourists pointed to the art of
Peter Paul Rubens (whence their name) as one in which nature and not
the imitation of Classical art predominated.
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Any red-earth
pigment, such as red ochre.
S
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Climax of the
papal-Imperial struggle and a turning point in the history of Italy,
the Sack of Rome resulted from Clement VII's adhesion to the League
of Cognac (1526). Imperial troops under the Duke of Bourbon left
Milan and joined an army of mainly Lutheran landsknechts (January
1527). The Duke of Bourbon marched on Rome, hoping to force Clement
to abandon the League and to provide money for the pay of the
Imperial army. A truce made by the Pope and Lannoy failed to halt
this advance, and Rome was attacked and taken on 6 May, the Duke of
Bourbon being killed at the first assault. Clement escaped into
Castel S. Angelo but for a week Rome itself was subjected to a
sacking of a peculiarly brutal nature. Although the army was then
brought back under some kind of control, it continued to occupy Rome
until February 1528, when it finally left the city it had devastated,
gutted, and impoverished.
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A representation of
the Virgin and Child attended by saints. There is seldom a literal
conversation depicted, though as the theme developed the interaction
between the participants - expressed through gesture, glance and
movement - greatly increased. The saints depicted are usually the
saint the church or altar is dedicated to, local saints, or those
chosen by the patron who commissioned the work.
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A dramatic form that
flourished particularly in Quattrocento Tuscany, supported by lay
confraternities. Written primarily in ottava rima, the sacra
rappresentazione was staged in an open space with luoghi deputati,
multiple sets used in succession. Subjects were nominally sacred,
from the Old and New Testaments, pious legend and hagiography, but
the injection of realistic vignette and detail from contemporary
local life or of romantic elaboration was considerable. There were
no limits on time; a single rappresentazione or festa could begin
with the Creation and end with the Final Judgment, and available
techniques of elaborate scenery made such subjects desirable. Many
compositions were anonymous, but others were the work of well-known
figures, among them Feo Belcari (1410-84), author of La
rappresentazione di Abram ed Isac (1449), and Lorenzo de' Medici,
whose Rappresentazione dei SS. Giovanni e Paolo (1491) was performed
by the children of the Compagnia del Vangelista. The
rappresentazioni were often printed in the Cinquecento and continued
to be performed on municipal occasions, but eventually they became
fare only for monasteries and convents.
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The interpretation and
number of the sacraments vary among the Roman Catholic, Orthodox,
Eastern independent, and Protestant churches. The Roman Church has
fixed the number of sacraments at seven: baptism, confirmation, the
Eucharist, penance, holy orders, matrimony, and anointing of the
sick. In the early church the number of sacraments varied, sometimes
including as many as 10 or 12. The theology of the Orthodox Church,
under the influence of the Roman Catholic Church, fixed the number
of sacraments at seven. The classical Protestant churches (i.e.,
Lutheran, Anglican, and Reformed) have accepted only two sacraments
- i.e., baptism and the Eucharist, though Luther allowed that
penance was a valid part of sacramental theology.
The New Testament
mentions a series of "holy acts" that are not, strictly speaking,
sacraments. Though the Roman Catholic Church recognizes a difference
between such "holy acts," which are called sacramentals, and
sacraments, the Orthodox Church does not, in principle, make such
strict distinctions. Thus, though baptism and the Eucharist have
been established as sacraments of the church, foot washing, which in
the Gospel According to John, chapter 13, replaces the Lord's
Supper, was not maintained as a sacrament. It is still practiced on
special occasions, such as on Holy Thursday in the Roman Catholic
Church and as a rite prior to the observance of the Lord's Supper,
as in the Church of the Brethren. The "holy acts" of the Orthodox
Church are symbolically connected to its most important mysteries.
Hence, baptism consists of a triple immersion that is connected with
a triple renunciation of Satan that the candidates say and act out
symbolically prior to the immersions. Candidates first face west,
which is the symbolic direction of the Antichrist, spit three times
to symbolize their renunciation of Satan, and then face east, the
symbolic direction of Christ, the sun of righteousness. Immediately
following baptism, chrismation (anointing with consecrated oil)
takes place, and the baptized believers receive the "seal of the
gift of the Holy Spirit."
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Exasperated by the
overriding of their privileges by papal governors, and hit by the
rise in price of provisions after two disastrous harvests, the
Perugians seized on Pope Paul III's order of 1540, that the price of
salt should be increased, as an excuse to revolt. They were still
seeking aid, notably from Florence and in Germany, when a papal army
forced the city to surrender and swear allegiance to the legate sent
to govern it. The chief focus of discontent, the area containing the
houses of the old ruling family, the Bentivoglio, was buried under a
new fortress, the Rocca Paolina, designed by Antonio da Sangallo the
Younger.
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Red chalk with a
rownish tinge, used for drawing.
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During the Middle
Ages, the Arabs or Muslims, particularly those who fought against
the Christian Crusades.
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A coffin or tomb, made
of stone, wood or terracotta, and sometimes (especially among the
Greeks and Romans) carved with inscriptions and reliefs.
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In Greek mythology,
human-like woodland deities with the ears, legs and horns of a goat.
Often depicted as the attendant of the Bacchus, the god of wine.
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A real or painted
niche which has a semi-circular conch in the form of a shell.
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This generic term
covers several different anti-dogmatic tendencies in ancient and
modern philosophy. The founder of the school is traditionally
considered to be Pyrrho of Elis (c. 360 - c. 270 BC), whose
writings, along with all the other original works of the formulators
of the tradition, are lost. Information about the movement is
contained in later writings such as Cicero's Academica (c. 45 BC),
Diogenes Laertius' Life of Pyrrho (3rd century AD), and especially
the works of Sextus Empiricus (c. 160 - c. 210 AD). The central
thesis of the Sceptics is that certitude is impossible, owing to the
many obstacles preventing valid empirical knowledge, in particular
the absence of a criterion by which to distinguish truth from
falsity. Rather than establishing a system of positive philosophy,
the Sceptics emphasized the critical and negative nature of
philosophy in questioning what was taken as legitimate knowledge by
dogmatic schools such as Platonism and Stoicism.
Little known in the
Middle Ages, the Sceptical position was revived in the Renaissance
when the writings of Diogenes Laertius and Sextus Empiricus once
again became available. Gianfrancesco Pico della Mirandola was the
first Renaissance writer to utilize Sceptical arguments in a
systematic way: his lead was followed by Francisco Sanches
(1552-1623 ), Michel de Montaigne (1533-92), and many others. The
publication of Latin (1562, 1569) and Greek (162I) editions of
Sextus Empiricus was important for later diffusion.
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A fraternal
organization founded in 1623 by a group of Netherlandish artists
living in Rome for social intercourse and mutual assistance. Its
members called themselves Bentvueghels or 'birds of a flock' and
they had individual Bentnames - for example Pieter van Laer, one of
the early leaders, was called Bamboccio. In 1720 the Schildersbent
was dissolved and prohibited by papal decree because of its
rowdiness and drunkenness.
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It began 20 September
1378 when a majority of the cardinals, having declared their
election of the Neapolitan Bartolomeo Prignano (Urban VI) 5 months
previously to be invalid because of the undue pressure exerted by
the Roman mob, elected the Frenchman Robert of Geneva (Clement VII).
Although the schism was caused by acute personal differences between
Urban and the cardinals, most of whom, being Frenchmen, were deeply
unhappy over the return of the Papacy from Avignon to Rome,
Christendom divided along political lines once the double election
had taken place, with France and her allies Aragon, Castile and
Scotland supporting Clement, while England, the Emperor and most
other princes remained loyal to Urban.
Most of the Italian
states stood behind Urban but in Naples Queen Giovanna I of Anjou
provoked a popular and baronial revolt by sheltering Clement, and
for the next 20 years the kingdom was contested between, on one
side, Charles III of Durazzo (d. 1386) and his son Ladislas, who
recognized the Roman pope, and, on the other, Louis I (d. 1384) and
Louis II of Anjou, who had the support of the Avignon pope. In
northern Italy, the scene was dominated by the expansionist policies
of Giangaleazzo Visconti of Milan until his death in 1402; from time
to time both he and his opponents, the Florentines, flirted with the
Avignon popes in the hope of obtaining French support, but with
little effect.
Meanwhile the temporal
power of the Roman popes survived despite Urban's gift for
quarrelling with all his allies, and was considerably built up by
his able successor Boniface IX (1389-1404). However, on his death
the Roman papacy fell under the domination of King Ladislas of
Naples, who drove north through Rome to threaten central Italy,
causing the Florentines and most of the other Italian states to
throw their weight behind a group of cardinals from both camps who
met at Pisa and elected a third pope, Alexander V, in June 1409. It
was the continued pressure of Ladislas that finally compelled
Alexander's successor Baldassare Cossa (John XXIII) to summon the
Council of Constance (1414-18}. This Council healed the Schism by
deposing both John and the Avignon pope Benedict XIII and accepting
the resignation of the Roman pope, thus leaving the way open for the
election in 1417 of Martin V (1417-31), who set about the task of
restoring the shattered power and prestige of the Holy See. The
39-year schism killed the supranational papacy of the Middle Ages,
for; while devout Christians agonized, practical politicians (often
the same people) seized the chance to extend their jurisdiction at
the Church's expense. As a result, the Renaissance popes were much
more dependent on their Italian resources, and therefore far more
purely Italian princes, than their medieval predecessors.
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The term is
ambivalent. It describes the characteristic method of instruction
and exposition used in medieval schools and universities: the posing
of a case (quaestio), arguing (disputatio) and settling it
(sententia). It also describes the subject matter that was
particularly shaped by this method: philosophy, with its strong
connection with Christian theology and its dependence on
Aristotelian texts and commentaries, and theology, with its
assumption that spiritual truths can be seized with the tools of
formal logic. 'Scholasticism' has thus become almost synonymous with
medieval thought. As such, it can appear the antithesis of
Renaissance thought, especially as writers like Petrarch and Valla
poured scorn on both the methods and the content of medieval
scholarship.
None the
less, in spite of Valla's insistence (in his Encomion S. Thomae of
1457) that theologians should eschew dialectic and listen anew to
the sources of spiritual understanding, the gospels and the early
Greek and Roman Fathers, scholastic method maintained its vitality
in the areas where continuity with medieval practice was strongest,
theology itself and 'Aristotelian' philosophy. Medieval scholars,
moreover, notably Aquinas, were quoted with admiration even by
neo-Platonic philosophers. It was because the central concerns of
humanism - moral philosophy, textual scholarship, history and
rhetoric - were different from those of medieval, university-based
study, and were less suited to a dialectical form of exposition,
that scholasticism was left, as it were, on one side. But to ignore
its presence is to exaggerate the difference between the new
learning and the old.
-
Term applied
to a technique of mural painting in which the colours are applied to
dry plaster, rather than wet plaster as in fresco. The colours were
either tempera or pigments ground in lime-water; if lime-water was
used, the plaster had to be damped before painting, a method
described by Theophilus and popular in northern Europe and in Spain.
In Italian Renaissance art the finishing touches to a true fresco
would often be painted a secco, as it is easier to add details in
this way; because the secco technique is much less permanent, such
passages have frequently flaked off with time. Thus in Giotto's
Betrayal in the Arena Chapel, Padua, the details of many of the
soldiers' weapons are now missing. (See also: fresco.)
-
In Jewish,
Christian, and Islamic literature, celestial being variously
described as having two or three pairs of wings and serving as a
throne guardian of God. Often called the burning ones, seraphim in
the Old Testament appear in the Temple vision of the prophet Isaiah
as six-winged creatures praising God. In Christian angelology the
seraphim are the highest-ranking celestial beings in the hierarchy
of angels. In art the four-winged cherubim are painted blue
(symbolizing the sky) and the six-winged seraphim red (symbolizing
fire).
-
A technique,
largely developed by Leonardo da Vinci, in which the transitions
from light to dark are so gradual they are almost imperceptible;
sfumato softens lines and creates a soft-focus effect.
-
In antiquity,
women who could prophesy. The many Sibylline prophecies were kept in
Rome and consulted by the Senate. In Christian legend, Sibyls
foretold the Birth, Passion and Resurrection of Christ, just as the
male prophets of the Bible did. Originally, in the period of
classical antiquity, there was only one Sibyl; the number gradually
rose to ten. In early Christianity it was further raised to 12, in
analogy to the 12 prophets of the Old Testament.
-
from the late
Middle Ages, the governing body of some of the Italian city states,
usually presided over by individual families.
-
metal pencil
made of copper, brass, or bronze with a silver tip fused to it.
Silverpoint drawing must be done on a specially prepared surface.
Silverpoint was already in use as a drawing instrument in the 14th
century, and the delicate, light-gray lines produced by the silver
tip, which were all identical in thickness, made it a particularly
popular artistic tool throughout the course of the 15th
century.
-
the earliest
works in linear book printing which were produced between 1400 and
1550 as single sheets with black lines in high relief. They first
appear in alpine monasteries, were at first used to spread
information of all sorts and were later used as leaflets and visual
polemics.
-
The
preparatory drawing for a fresco drawn on the wall where the
painting is to appear; the red chalk used to make such a drawing.
-
A name given
to the style found principally in Germany (where it is called Weiche
Stil), at the end of the 14th and beginning of the 15th centuries.
It is very closely related to International Gothic, and, as the name
implies, is characterized by soft and gentle rhythms, especially in
the flow of drapery, and by a sweet and playful sentiment. The
principal subject is the Madonna playing with the Christ Child and
these are sometimes called Schöne Madonnen - 'Beautiful Madonnas'.
Sculpture and the earliest woodcuts show the style even more clearly
than painting.
-
Perspective in
which people and objects are seen from below and shown with extreme
foreshortening.
-
(1) The
triangular space between two arches in an arcade. (2) The curved
surface between two ribs meeting at an angle in a vault.
-
This word,
pronounced as French, is used in both English and German to describe
the figures and animals which animate a picture intended essentially
as a landscape or veduta; in other words, figures which are not
really essential and could be added by another painter. In the
highly specialized world of the Dutch painters of the 17th century
this was very often the case, so that a landscape painter like
Wynants rarely did his own staffage; whereas Canaletto or Guardi
always did.
-
The suite of
rooms in the Vatican decorated by Raphael.
-
The five
Crucifixion wounds of Christ (pierced feet, hands and side) which
appear miraculously on the body of a saint. One of the most familiar
examples in Renaissance art is the stigmatization of St. Francis of
Assisi.
-
A type of light,
malleable plaster made from dehydrated lime (calcium carbonate)
mixed with powdered marble and glue and sometimes reinforced with
hair. It is used for sculpture and architectural decoration, both
external and internal. In a looser sense, the term is applied to a
plaster coating applied to the exterior of buildings, but stucco is
a different substance from plaster (which is calcium sulphate).
Stucco in the more restricted sense has been known to virtually
every civilization. In Europe it was exploited most fully from the
16th century to the 18th century, notable exponents being the
artists of the School of Fontainebleau and Giacomo Serpotta. By
adding large quantities of glue and colour to the stucco mixture
stuccatori were able to produce a material that could take a high
polish and assume the appearance of marble. Indeed, sometimes it is
difficult to distinguish from real marble without touching it (stucco
feels warmer).
-
A room in a
Renaissance palace in which the rich or powerful could retire to
study their rare books and contemplate their works of art. The
studiolo became a symbol of a person's humanist learning and
artistic refinement. Among the best known are those of Duke Federico
da Montefeltro in Urbino, and Isabella D'Este in Mantua.
-
Term that came into
general use in the 18th century to denote a new aesthetic concept
that was held to be distinct from the beautiful and the Picturesque
and was associated with ideas of awe and vastness. The outstanding
work on the concept of the Sublime in English was Edmund Burke's A
Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of our Ideas of the Sublime
and Beautiful (1757). This book was one of the first to realize (in
contrast with the emphasis on clarity and precision during the Age
of Enlightenment) the power of suggestiveness to stimulate
imagination. The cult of the Sublime had varied expressions in the
visual arts, notably the taste for the 'savage' landscapes of
Salvator Rosa and the popularity among painters of subjects from
Homer, John Milton, and Ossian (the legendary Gaelic warrior and
bard, whose verses - actually fabrications - were published in the
1760s to great acclaim). The vogue for the Sublime, with that for
the Picturesque, helped shape the attitudes that led to Romanticism.
-
Historically, the
supremacy of the English king over the English Church, i.e. the king
not the Pope is acknowledged as the supreme head of the Church of
England. Established legally by the Act of Supremacy in 1534.
T
- tapestry (in Italian Renaissance)
-
As historical climatologists have not
shown that Renaissance Italian winters and springs were warmer than
they are now, it is puzzling that Italy did not fabricate tapestries
to decorate and draught-proof the stony rooms of its palaces until
1545, when Cosimo I set up a manufactory in Florence. To hardiness
or stinginess (tapestry was by far the most expensive form of wall
decoration) we owe the existence of such secular frescoed decorative
schemes as the labours of the months in the castle at Trent (c.
1407), the Arthurian scenes of Pisanello and the courtly ones of
Mantegna in the Ducal Palace of Mantua, the delicious calendar
fantasies of Cossa and others in the Palazzo Schifanoia in Ferrara -
and, doubtless, many others that await liberation from whitewash or
later panelling. These are all in situations where northern patrons
would have used tapestries.
These were imported, chiefly from
Flanders, into Italy. The influence of their hunting and ceremonial
scenes in particular registered on Italian 'gothic' painting or
illumination and stained glass, and in literature. But the Italians
did not make them. The most famous of all 'Italian' tapestries,
those for the Sistine Chapel designed by Raphael, were made in
Brussels from the full-scale coloured patterns, or cartoons, now in
the Victoria and Albert Museum, London. Nor is it clear whether
imported tapestries were used habitually or simply to add grandeur
to special occasions. Even when Cosimo's manufactory was in being,
and working from designs by court artists of the calibre of Bronzino,
Salviati and Allori, his own headquarters, the Palace of the
Signoria (now the Palazzo Vecchio), was being decorated with
frescoes. The subject is underexplored.
- tempera (Lat. temperare, "to mix in due
proportion")
-
A method of painting in which the
pigments are mixed with an emulsion of water and egg yolks or whole
eggs (sometimes glue or milk). Tempera was widely used in Italian
art in the 14th and 15th centuries, both for panel painting and
fresco, then being replaced by oil paint. Tempera colors are bright
and translucent, though because the paint dried very quickly there
is little time to blend them, graduated tones being created by
adding lighter or darker dots or lines of color to an area of dried
paint.
-
A style of
painting especially associated with the Italian painter Caravaggio
and his followers in which most of the figures are engulfed in
shadow but some are dramatically illuminated by a concentrated beam
of light usually from an identifiable source.
-
Unglazed fired
clay. It is used for architectural features and ornaments, vessels,
and sculptures.
-
artistic term
denoting a particular angle from which the human face is depicted.
Depending on how far the head is turned away from a fully frontal
angle en face, the picture is described as three-quarter face
(in which a good deal of the face can be seen), quarter face, and
profile.
-
A circular
painting or relief sculpture. The tondo derives from classical
medallions and was used in the Renaissance as a compositional device
for creating an ideal visual harmony. It was particularly popular in
Florence and was often used for depictions of the Madonna and Child.
-
The craft of
cutting bushes and trees into decorative shapes, usually those of
animals or geometrical forms. triumphal arch, in the architecture of
ancient Rome, a large and usually free-standing ceremonial archway
built to celebrate a military victory. Often decorated with
architectural features and relief sculptures, they usually consisted
of a large archway flanked by two smaller ones. The triumphal
archway was revived during the Renaissance, though usually as a
feature of a building rather than as an independent structure. In
Renaissance painting they appear as allusion to classical antiquity.
-
In literature,
figure of speech; in art, widely used form, model, theme or motif.
-
the geometrical
architectural ornamentation which is used in Gothic architecture to
subdivide the upper parts of the arches belonging to large windows,
and later to subdivide gable ends, walls, and other surfaces.
-
A monumental
column erected in Rome in 113 AD to commemorate the deeds of Emperor
Trajan. Around its entire length is carved a continuous spiral band
of low relief sculptures depicting Trajan's exploits.
-
in Christianity,
the term used for the existence of one God in three persons: the
Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.
-
A painting in
three sections, usually an altarpiece, consisting of a central panel
and two outer panels, or wings. In many medieval triptychs the two
outer wings were hinged so that could be closed over the center
panel. Early triptychs were often portable.
-
With growing
interest from the early 14th century in the history of ancient Rome
came a fascination with the city's conquests, the wars by which they
were won - and the ceremony which marked their success: the victor's
triumph. The knowledge that the privilege of being commemorated by
one of these enormous and costly processions of warriors, loot and
prisoners was given sparingly, only to the sole commander of a major
victory over a foreign army of whom at least 5000 were slain, added
to the glamour of the triumph. Its centrepiece was the chariot of
the victor himself. Dante gave one to Beatrice in Purgatorio XXIX:
'Rome upon Africanus ne'er conferred / Nor on Augustus's self, a car
so brave'. But it was tentatively with the relief carvings on the
Triumphal Arch (1452-66) at Castelnuovo in Naples commemorating
Alfonso the Magnanimous, and finally with Mantegna's superb Triumph
of Caesar cartoons (Hampton Court), that the visual reconstruction
of a Roman triumph became complete.
Meanwhile, in an
age which did not like the idea of large numbers of victory-flushed
soldiers parading through its streets, the military triumph became
sublimated, as it were, into a number of less controversial forms.
This was largely under the influence of Petrarch's 'Trionfi' - poems
describing the processions commemorating the triumphs of love,
chastity, death; fame, time and eternity. Disseminated soon after
his death, they soon appeared in illuminated manuscripts, and the
triumph scene became a popular one for woodcuts, decorated marriage
chests and other paintings, most beautifully of all on the backs of
Piero della Francesca's portraits of Federigo da Montefeltro and his
wife, Battista Sforza. Other 'triumphs' were invented: of the
seasons, of virtues and of the arts. Nor was the theme allowed to be
simply a profane one. Just before his death Savonarola published his
'Triumph of the Cross', in which the reader was invited to imagine
'a four-wheeled chariot on which is seated Christ as Conqueror.'
Before it go the apostles, patriarchs and prophets, beside it the
army of martyrs, behind it, after 'a countless number of virgins, of
both sexes', come the prisoners: 'the serried ranks of the enemies
of the Church of Christ.' This aspect of the theme was magnificently
realized in Titian's great woodcut 'The Triumph of the Faith'.
-
In the
architecture of ancient Rome, a large and usually free-standing
ceremonial archway built to celebrate a military victory. Often
decorated with architectural features and relief sculptures, they
usually consisted of a large archway flanked by two smaller ones.
The triumphal archway was revived during the Renaissance, though
usually as a feature of a building rather than as an independent
structure. In Renaissance painting they appear as allusion to
classical antiquity.
-
A type of
painting which, through various naturalistic devices, creates the
illusion that the objects depicted are actually there in front of
us. Dating from classical times, tromp l'oeil was revived in the
15th century and became a distinctive feature of 17th-century Dutch
painting.
-
An obscure Welsh
family, first recorded in 1232, that seized the English throne in
1485 by defeating the Yorkist king Richard III at the Battle of
Bosworth. Lancastrian Henry VII was its first crowned
representative, marrying Richard's niece Elizabeth of York and thus
symbolically ending the dynastic wars of the Roses. The Tudor
dynasty lasted until 1603 (death of Elizabeth I). Tudor is also the
name of a transitional Late Gothic building style during the reigns
of the two Henrys. It incorporates Renaissance features.
-
A thick, viscous
black ink.
-
In classical
architecture, the triangular area enclosed by a pediment, often
decorated with sculptures. In medieval architecture, the
semi-circular area over a a door's lintel, enclosed by an arch,
often decorated with sculptures or mosaics.
-
A system of
classification. In Christian thought, the drawing of parallels
between the Old Testament and the New. Typological studies were
based on the assumption that Old Testament figures and events
prefigured those in the New, e.g. the story of Jonah and the whale
prefigured Christ's death and resurrection. Such typological links
were frequently used in both medieval and Renaissance art.
-
Assassination of
rulers (often in church, where they were most accessible, and often
by cadets of their family) had long played an important part in the
Italian political process. From the end of the 14th century these
deeds came frequently to be gilded by biblical and classical
references: to the precedents of Brutus (condenmed by Dante as an
arch-traitor, then raised by such republican enthusiasts as
Michclangelo to heroic stature), Judith, killer of Holofernes, and
David, slayer of Goliath. So the killing of Galeazzo Maria Sforza
(1476) was carried out by three Milanesi patricians inspired in part
by the teachings of the humanist Cola Montano, while the Pazzi
conspiracy in Florence was seen by Alamanno Rinuccini as an
emulation of ancient glory. Intellectuals who combined a taste for
violence with a classicizing republicanism featured largely too in
the plots of Stefano Porcari against Nicholas V (1453), of the Roman
Academy against Paul II (1468), and of Pietro Paolo Boscoli against
the Medici in 1513.
U
- uomo universale (It.)
-
The Renaissance "universal man", a
many-talented man with a broad-ranging knowledge of both the arts
and the sciences.
-
Principally a group
of three Dutch painters - Dirck van Baburen (c. 1590-1624), Gerrit
van Honthorst (1590-1656), and Hendrik Terbrugghen (1588-1629) - who
went to Rome and fell fully under the pervasive influence of
Caravaggio's art before returning to Utrecht. Although none of them
ever actually met Caravaggio (d. 1610), each had access to his
paintings, knew his former patrons, and was influenced by the work
of his follower Bartholomeo Manfredi (1580-1620/21), especially his
half-length figural groups, which were boldly derived from
Caravaggio and occasionally passed off as the deceased master's
works.
Back in the
Netherlands the "Caravaggisti" were eager to demonstrate what they
had learned. Their subjects are frequently religious ones, but
brothel scenes and pictures in sets, such as five works devoted to
the senses, were popular with them also. The numerous candles,
lanterns, and other sources of artificial light are characteristic
and further underscore the indebtedness to Caravaggio.
Although Honthorst
enjoyed the widest reputation at the time, painting at both the
Dutch and English courts, Terbrugghen is generally regarded as the
most talented and versatile of the group.
V
- vanishing point
-
In perspective, the point on the
horizon at which sets of lines representing parallel lines will
converge.
- vanitas (Lat. "emptiness")
-
A painting (or element in painting)
that acts as a reminder of the inevitabiliry of death, and the
pointlessness of earthly ambitions and achievements. Common vanitas-symbols
include skulls, guttering candles, hour-glasses and clocks,
overturned vessels, and even flowers (which will soon fade). The
vanitas theme became popular during the Baroque, with the vanitas
still life flourishing in Dutch art.
- varietà (It. "variety")
-
In Renaissance art theory, a work's
richness of subject matter. Also varietas (Lat.).
- vault
-
A roof or ceiling whose structure is
based on the arch. There are a wide range of forms, including the
barrel (or tunnel) vault, formed by a continuous semi-circular arch;
the groin vault, formed when two barrel vaults intersect; and the
rib vault, consistong of a framework of diagonal ribs supporting
interlocking arches. The development of the various forms was of
great structural and aesthetic importance in the development of
church architecture during the Middle Ages.
- veduta (Italian for view)
-
a primarily topographical
representation of a town or landscape that is depicted in such a
life-like manner that the location can be identified.
- Vespers (Lat. vesper, "evening")
-
Prayers said in the evening; the
church service at which these prayers are said. The Marian Vespers
are prayers and meditations relating to the Virgin Mary.
- Via Crucis
-
The Way of the Cross. The route taken
by Christ in the Passion on the way to Golgotha. The route is marked
by the 14 Stations of the Cross.
- Vices and Virtues
-
In the medieval and Renaissance
Christianity there were seven principal virtues and seven principal
vices, a classification that brought together both ideals of both
Christianity and classical Antiquity. Personifications of both
appear in medieval and Renaissance art. The seven Vices (also known
as the seven Deadly Sins) were: Pride, Covetousness, Lust, Anger,
Envy, Gluttony, and Sloth. The seven Virtues were: Faith, Hope,
Charity, Fortitude, Temperance, Prudence, and Justice.
- vimperga
-
Of German origin, "not exposed to
winds". Gothic decorative attic over doors and windows. Attics with
tracery in the shape of isosceles triangles are decorated with
crockets and cornices, and wooden towers are decorated with finials
at the top.
- virtù
-
The Italian word commonly means
'virtue' in the sense of Hamlet's admonition to his mother, 'Assume
a virtue, if you have it not', but during the Renaissance it
increasingly carried the force of Edmund Burke's 'I have in general
no very exalted opinion of the virtue of paper government', in which
the word signifies efficacy, actual or latent. Under the influence
of the classical 'virtus', 'excellence' (with a strongly virile
connotation), virtù could be used, as it most frequently was by
Machiavelli, for example, to convey an inherently gifted activism
especially in statecraft or military affairs; to possess virtù was a
character trait distinguishing the energetic, even reckless (but not
feckless) man from his conventionally virtuous counterpart,
rendering him less vulnerable to the quirks of Fortuna.
- vita, pl. vite (Lat. "life")
-
An account of someone's life and
work, a biography. The best-known writer of the vita in the
Renaissance was Vasari, whose Le vite de'più eccellenti pittori,
scultori e architetti italiani ("Lives of the Most Eminent Italian
Painters, Sculptors and Architects"), published in 1550 and 1568,
provides detailed accounts of the lives of many of the most
important artists of the Renaissance.
- Vitruvius Pollio, Marcus (1st cent. AD)
-
Roman architect whose ten books of
architecture formed the basis of Renaissance architectural theory.
- volute
-
A spiral scroll found particularly on
(Ionic) capitals and gables, as a transition between horizontal and
vertical elements.
- votive painting/image
-
A picture or panel donated because of
a sacred promise, usually when a prayer for good fortune, protection
from harm, or recovery from illness has been made.
W
-
In spite of the
endemic warfare which characterized Italy from the 14th century to
the Peace of Lodi in 1454, and the occasional wars thereafter (e.g.
those of Volterera, 1472, of the Papacy and Naples against Florence,
1478-80, and of Ferrara, 1482-84), by general consensus the Wars of
Italy are held to be those that began in 1494 with Charles VIII'S
invasion of the peninsula, came virtually to an end with the
Habsburg-Valois treaties of Barcelona and Cambrai in 1529, and were
finally concluded with the European settlement of Cateau-Cambresis
in 1559.
The wars from 1494 do,
in fact, fall into a different category from those that preceded
them. Campaign followed campaign on a scale and with an
unremittingness sharply different from those which had interrupted
the post-Lodi peacefulness. Though foreign intervention in Italian
affairs was certainly no novelty, the peninsula had never before
been seen so consistently by dynastic contenders as both prize and
arena. No previous series of combats had produced such lasting
effects: the subjection of Milan and Naples to direct Spanish rule
and the ossification of politics until the arrival in 1796 of a new
Charles VIII in the person of Napoleon Bonaparte. The wars were also
recognized as different in kind from their predecessors by those who
lived through them: 'before. 1494' and 'after 1494' became phrases
charged with nostalgic regret for, and appalled recognition of, the
demoted status of the previously quarrelsome but in the main
independent comity of peninsular powers. And because the wars forced
the rest of western Europe into new alliances and a novel diplomatic
closeness, they were from the 18th century until comparatively
recently seen as marking the turn from medieval to recognizably
modern political times.
The wars, then, were
caused by foreign intervention. In these terms they can be
chronicled with some brevity. After crossing the Alps in 1494
Charles VIII conquered the kingdom of Naples and retired in 1495,
leaving the kingdom garrisoned. The garrisons were attacked later in
the same year by Spanish troops under Gonzalo de Cordoba, sent by
King Ferdinand II of Aragon (who was also King of Sicily). With this
assistance Naples was restored to its native Aragonese dynasty. In
1499 the new King of France, Louis XII, assumed the title Duke of
Milan (inherited through his grandfather's marriage to a Visconti)
and occupied the duchy, taking over Genoa later in the same year. In
1501 a joint Franco-Spanish expedition reconquered the kingdom of
Naples. The allies then fell out and fought one another. By January
1504 Spain controlled the whole southern kingdom, leaving France in
control of Milan and Genoa in the north. A third foreign power, the
German Habsburg Emperor Maximilian I entered the arena in 1508 with
an abortive invasion of the Veronese-Vicentino. He countered the
rebuff by joining the allies of the anti-Venetian League of Cambrai:
France and Aragon assisted by Pope Julius II and the rulers of
Mantua and Ferrara. In 1509 their victory at Agnadello led to the
occupation of the whole of the Venetian terraferma apart from
Treviso.
The eastward extension
of French power gained by this victory (won by a mainly French army)
drove Julius and Ferdinand to turn against Louis and in 1512 the
French - now also under pressure from a fourth foreign power
interesting itself in Italian territory, the Swiss - were forced to
evacuate their possessions in Lombardy. Louis's last invasion of the
Milanese was turned back in 1513 at the battle of Novara and the
duchy was restored to its native dynasty, the Sforza, in the person
of Massimiliano; he ruled, however, under the supervision of Milan's
real masters, the Swiss. In 1515, with a new French king, Francis I,
came a new invasion and a successful one: the Swiss were defeated at
Marignano and Massimiliano ceded his title to Francis. To confirm
his monopoly of foreign intervention in the north Francis persuaded
Maximilian I to withdraw his garrisons from Venetian territory, thus
aiding the Republic to complete the recovery of its terraferma.
With the spirit of the
Swiss broken, the death of Ferdinand in 1516 and of Maximilian I in
1519 appeared to betoken an era of stability for a peninsula that on
the whole took Spanish rule in the south and French in the
north-west for granted. However, on Maximilian's death his grandson
Charles, who had already become King of Spain in succession to
Ferdinand, was elected Emperor as Charles V; Genoa and Milan formed
an obvious land bridge between his Spanish and German lands, and a
base for communications and troop movements thence to his other
hereditary possessions in Burgundy and the Netherlands. Equally, it
was clear to Francis I that his Italian territories were no longer a
luxury, but strategically essential were his land frontier not to be
encircled all the way from Provence to Artois. Spanish, German and
French interests were now all centred on one area of Italy and a new
phase of the wars began.
Between 1521 and 1523
the French were expelled from Genoa and the whole of the Milanese. A
French counter-attack late in 1523, followed by a fresh invasion in
1524 under Francis himself, led, after many changes of fortune, to
the battle of Pavia in 1525; not only were the French defeated, but
Francis himself was sent as a prisoner to Spain, and released in
1526 only on condition that he surrender all claims to Italian
territory. But by now political words were the most fragile of
bonds. Francis allied himself by the Treaty of Cognac to Pope
Clement VII, previously a supporter of Charles but, like Julius II
in 1510, dismayed by the consequences of what he had encouraged, and
the Milanese once more became a theatre of war. In 1527, moreover,
the contagion spread, partly by mischance - as when the main
Imperial army, feebly led and underpaid, put loot above strategy and
proceeded to the Sack of Rome, and partly by design - as when, in a
reversion to the policy of Charles VIII, a French army marched to
Naples, having forced the Imperial garrison out of Genoa on the way
and secured the city's navy, under Andrea Doria, as an ally. In July
1528 it was Doria who broke what had become a Franco-Imperial
stalemate by going over to the side of the Emperor and calling off
the fleet from its blockade of Naples, thus forcing the French to
withdraw from the siege of a city now open to Spanish
reinforcements.
By 1529, defeated in
Naples and winded in Milan, Francis at last allowed his ministers to
throw in the sponge. The Treaty of Barcelona, supplemented by that
of Cambrai, confirmed the Spanish title to Naples and the cessation
of French pretensions to Milan, which was restored (though the
Imperial leading strings were clearly visible) to the Sforza
claimant, now Francesco II. Thereafter, though Charles took over the
direct government of Milan through his son Philip on Francesco's
death in 1535, and Francis I in revenge occupied Savoy and most of
Piedmont in the following year, direct foreign intervention in Italy
was limited to the localized War of Siena. In 1552 the Sienese
expelled the garrison Charles maintained there as watchdog over his
communications between Naples and Milan, and called on French
support. As an ally of Charles, but really on his own account,
Cosimo I, Duke of Florence, took the city after a campaign that
lasted from 1554 to 1555. But in the Treaty of Cateau-Cambrésis of
1559, by which France yet again, and now finally, renounced Italian
interests, Cosimo was forced to grant Charles the right to maintain
garrisons in Siena's strategic dependencies, Orbetello, Talamone and
Porto Ercole.
The Wars of Italy,
though caused by foreign interventions, involved and were shaped by
the invitations, self-interested groupings and mutual treacheries of
the Italian powers themselves. At the beginning, Charles VIII was
encouraged by the Duke of Milan, Lodovico Sforza, jealous of the
apparently expanding diplomatic influence of Naples, as well as by
exiles and malcontents (including the future Julius II) who thought
that a violent tap on the peninsular kaleidoscope might provide
space for their own ambitions. And the 1529 Treaty of Cambrai did
not put an end to the local repercussions of the Franco Imperial
conflict. France's ally Venice only withdrew from the kingdom of
Naples after the subsequent (December 1529) settlement negotiated at
Bologna. It was not until August 1530 that the Last Florentine
Republic gave in to the siege by the Imperialist army supporting the
exiled Medici. The changes of heart and loyalty on the part of
Julius II in 1510 and Clement VII in 1526 are but illustrations of
the weaving and reweaving of alliances that determined the
individual fortunes of the Italian states within the interventionist
framework: no précis can combine them.
A final point may,
however, be made. Whatever the economic and psychological strain
produced in individual states by their involvement, and the
consequential changes in their constitutions or masters, no overall
correlation between the Wars and the culture of Italy can be made.
The battles were fought in the countryside and peasants were the
chief sufferers from the campaigns. Sieges of great cities were few,
and, save in the cases of Naples in 1527-28 and Florence in 1529-30,
short. No planned military occasion had so grievious effect as did
the Sack of Rome, which aborted the city's cultural life for a
decade.
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Conflict between Pope
Gregory XI and an Italian coalition headed by Florence, which
resulted in the return of the papacy from Avignon to Rome. In 1375,
provoked by the aggressiveness of the Pope's legates in Italy,
Florence incited a widespread revolt in the Papal States. The Pope
retaliated by excommunicating the Florentines (March 1376), but
their war council, the Otto di Guerra (popularly known as the Eight
Saints), continued to defy him. In 1377 Gregory sent an army under
Cardinal Robert of Geneva to ravage the areas in revolt, while he
himself returned to Italy to secure his possession of Rome. Thus
ended the papacy's 70-year stay in France. The war ended with a
compromise peace concluded at Tivoli in July 1378.
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Pigment ground
in gum, usually gum arabic, and applied with brush and water to a
painting surface, usually paper; the term also denotes a work of art
executed in this medium. The pigment is ordinarily transparent but
can be made opaque by mixing with a whiting and in this form is
known as body colour, or gouache; it can also be mixed with casein,
a phosphoprotein of milk.
Watercolour
compares in range and variety with any other painting method.
Transparent watercolour allows for a freshness and luminosity in its
washes and for a deft calligraphic brushwork that makes it a most
alluring medium. There is one basic difference between transparent
watercolour and all other heavy painting mediums - its transparency.
The oil painter can paint one opaque colour over another until he
has achieved his desired result. The whites are created with opaque
white. The watercolourist's approach is the opposite. In essence,
instead of building up he leaves out. The white paper creates the
whites. The darkest accents may be placed on the paper with the
pigment as it comes out of the tube or with very little water mixed
with it. Otherwise the colours are diluted with water. The more
water in the wash, the more the paper affects the colours; for
example, vermilion, a warm red, will gradually turn into a cool pink
as it is thinned with more water.
The dry-brush
technique - the use of the brush containing pigment but little water,
dragged over the rough surface of the paper - creates various
granular effects similar to those of crayon drawing. Whole
compositions can be made in this way. This technique also may be
used over dull washes to enliven them.
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A comprehensive world
view, a philosophy of life.
-
German word, "Western
work of art". Central space at the Western façade of medieval
cathedrals vaulted on the ground floor, pompous on the floor above.
It was intended to have a variety of functions, but it was
associated with the emperor or aristocrats: it served as a chapel,
gallery, treasury or a place where justice was administered.
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craftsmen who carved
the work into the wood block according to the design drawn on it.
While they are not usually identified by name in the early period
and are difficult to distinguish from the artist producing the
design, they were responsible for the artistic quality of the print.
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A print made from a
wood block. The design is drawn on a smooth block of wood and then
cut out, leaving the design standing up in relief the design to be
printed. The person who carved the woodcut often worked to a design
by another artist.
X
- X-ray photos
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X-ray photos are used to examine the
undersurfaces of a painting. They allow scholars to see what changes
were made during the original painting or by other hands, usually
restorers, during its subsequent history.
Y
-
no article
Z
- zoomorphic ornament
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Ornament, usually linear, based on
stylization of various animal forms.
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