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The last day pf the A-Z challenge – I have mixed feelings about it. Relief that I made it, letdown at not having amazing blogs to visit every single day. Many, many thanks to all of you who stopped by and thanks to all the wonderful bloggers I met and chatted with during April. I feel like I have a whole new circle of friends, and I look forward to following all of you in the future! 0 0

Do click on the artwork to see it’s beauty! Whew, here we are with Z, and I couldn’t find a renaissance artist with a name beginning with Z.  So I give you instead one of the best: EL Greco! El Greco (1541 –1614) was born Doménikos Theotokópoulos and was a painter, sculptor and architect of the Spanish Renaissance. El Greco (the Greek) was his nickname. He was born in Crete, which was at that time part of the Republic of Venice and he trained as an icon painter. Dormition of the Virgin is one of his paintings during this period, and it combines post-Byzantine and Italian mannerist styles with iconographic elements. He was a master painter in Crete before moving to Venice at age 26. While El Greco was in Italy, he opened his own workshop and studied painters of the Renaissance movement in art in Venice and Rome, where he moved in 1570. There he learned perspective and the staging of narratives, the use of atmospheric light and also the elements of Mannerism: extreme perspective, the twisting and turning of the figures and tempestuous gestures. He was a disciple and student of Titian, Tintoretto, and Veronese, one of the few artists who substantially altered his style and invented new interpretations of traditional religious themes. His View of Mount Sinai is a good example of the change in his style during this time. See also his Portrait of Klovio, which I showed you earlier under K.   By the time El Greco arrived in Rome, both Michelangelo and Raphael were dead, but their influence remained strong. El Greco did not like Michelangelo’s painting, but he couldn’t resist his influence, which can be seen in a later El Greco works, such as the Allegory of the Holy League (Adoration of the Name of Jesus). It was apparently painted for Phillip II. The figures of the King, Pope, Doge and Don Juan of Austria are depicted at the bottom, with the figure of Don Juan inspired by Michelangelo. The jaws of hell and purgatory are also represented in El Greco’s unique way. His Purification of the Temple shows elements of Raphael. In 1577, El Greco migrated to Spain, first to Madrid, then to Toledo, where he lived until his death and were he produced his mature works. He signed a contract for a group of paintings for the Church of Santo Domingo and by 1579 had completed nine paintings, including The Trinity and Assumption of the Virgin, which established his reputation. He also managed to obtain two commissions from Phillip II: Allegory of the Holy League and Martyrdom of St. Maurice. However, the king didn’t like these paintings and gave El Greco no further commissions. In 1586 he was obtained the commission for The Burial of the count of Orgaz, probably his best-known work, in which he portrays a supernatural event occurring at the Count’s funeral. His trademark exaggerated Mannerist figures are evident as well as tiered composition. Each horizontal half of the painting is so composed that it could be an independent painting. Between 1597 to 1607 El Greco several major commissions for a variety of religious institutions. An example is the painting of St. Ildefonso for the Hospital de la Caridad and The Virgin of the Immaculate Conception. In this painting, which is one of El Greco’s so-called ‘visions,’ pace, proportion, gravity, anatomical accuracy, light, day and night, logic— have been abandoned to transport the viewer into a state of spiritual ecstasy. Legal disputes contributed to the economic difficulties consuming El Greco toward the end of his life. In 1608, he received his last major commission, for the Hospital of Saint John the Baptist in Toledo. This painting is one of my favorites, perhaps because of the wistful look on the face of the Saint. The attenuated figure, the agitated movement of the sky and the scintillating light on the landscape is characteristic of El Greco at that time. During the course of the execution of a commission for the Hospital Tavera, El Greco fell seriously ill and died a month later in 1614, he died. He was 73.   0 0

Don’t forget to click on the artwork! There were no Renaissance artists whose names began with Y, so I thought I would tell you about Vasari, whose name has come up some many times in the telling of the lives of the other artists. Giorgio Vasari (1511 –1574) was an Italian painter, architect, writer -historian, and you have been introduced to him as the author of  Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects, the book that founded art history.   He was born in Arezzo, Tuscany, and as a child became the pupil of Guglielmo de Marcillat, a painter of stained glass. He was sent to Florence when he was 16, where he joined the workshop of Andrea del Sarto, a renowned painter during the late Renaissance and early Mannerist period. Vasari was befriended by Michelangelo, who would have a strong impact on his painting style. Vasari was a Mannerist, that is, his paintings were notable for their intellectual sophistication as well as its artificial (as opposed to naturalistic) qualities. Mannerism favors tension and instability in contrast to the balance and beauty of earlier Renaissance paintings.   Some of his earliest work were frescoes for the hall of the chancery in Palazzo della Cancelleria in Rome, depicting scenes from the life of Pope Paul III. Note the disproportionate bodies, some with extensive elongation, and the tension in the scene. Vasari was consistently supported by the Medici family in both Florence and Rome, and many of his paintings still exist. The most important of his frescoes are considered to be those on the wall and ceiling of the Palazzo Vecchio in Florence, beginning in 1555, and the Last Judgment inside the vast cupola of the Duomo, begun by Vasari and finished by others after his death. Vasari’s paintings have often been criticized as being facile, superficial, and lacking a sense of color, and he is now regarded more highly as an architect than as a painter. His best-known buildings are the Uffizi in Florence, built for Cosimo I de’ Medici, and the church, monastery, and palace created for the Cavalieri di San Stefano in Pisa.   Despite his architecture and paintings, Vasari’s real fame derives from his massive book, Lives of the Most Eminent Painters, Sculptors and Architects, which was dedicated to Cosimo de’Medici. In it, Vasari offers his own critique of Western Art: the excellence of the art of classical antiquity was followed by a decline of quality during the Dark Ages, which was in turn reversed by a renaissance of the arts in Tuscany in the 14th century. It included a lengthy series of artist biographies. The work has a consistent bias in favor of Florentine artists and tends to attribute to them all the developments in Renaissance art. Vasari’s biographies are interspersed with amusing gossip, frequently of dubious veracity. Vasari enjoyed high repute during his lifetime and amassed a considerable fortune. He died in Florence in June of 1574.   0 0

Do click on the artwork to see it’s beauty! To paraphrase Monty Python, now for something really different! I did not find an X for my Renaissance artists, but I did find an artist living in China at the time of the Italian Renaissance, and he piqued my interest. Xuande was an Emperor of China who also happened to be a talented artist. His real name is Zhu Zhanji (1399-1436) and he was the eldest son of the Hongxi Emperor; Xuande’s father had been educated by Confusions tutors and had ordered the capital be moved back to Nanjing from Beijing. It is not surprising that Xuande himself was fond of poetry, literature and art, but he preferred Beijing over Nanjing as his residence and ruled from there. One of his notable accomplishments is that he permitted Zheng He, well known as a great Chinese explorer since the publication of Biography of Our Homeland’s Great Navigator, Zheng He, to lead the last of his maritime expeditions to the Indian Ocean. The Chinese at that time had invaded Annam, the country known now as Vietnam, but the Chinese garrisons suffered heavy losses at the hands of the Ammanese (70,000 men alone in 1427), so the Chinese forces withdrew and Xuande eventually recognized the independence of Annam. He also battled with the Mongols to the north, but during his reign, China’s diplomatic relations with Japan improved and relations with Korea were generally good (with the exception of resentment on the part of the Koreans for having to send virgins to the Ming court’s harem!). This emperor reformed the rules governing military conscription and the treatment of deserters. The huge tax burdens had caused many to leave their farms in the past forty years were changed in 1430, when the Xuande Emperor ordered tax reductions on all imperial lands and sent out representative to coordinate provincial administration and exercise civilian control over the military. Xuande fought natural calamities, safeguarded the borders and patronized the arts. So by all measures the Xuande Emporer was a good ruler. His ten years as Emperor were for the most part peaceful and are considered the Ming Dynasty’s Golden Age In the Emperor’s Approach, Xuande is traveling through the Countryside, in all the luxury in to which the emperor was entitled. Elephants were kept in the imperial elephant stables until around 1900. Here, the large number  of horsemen suggests the emperor was on a longer journey in the countryside. The Xuande Emperor was known as an accomplished painter, particularly skilled at painting animals. Some of his art work is preserved in the National Palace Museum in China. I have also included two scenes from his life painted by court artists. . The Emperor also sponsored improvements in the manufacturing of ceramics, which led to the world famous Ming porcelain.   Xuande Emperor died of illness at age 36, after ruling only ten years. 0 0

Don’t forget to click on the artwork! Rogier van der Weyden (1399 or 1400 –1464) or Roger de la Pasture was an early northern or Flemish painter, considered in talent to be just below Jan van Eyk, but highly successful and internationally famous during his lifetime. His work, that which has survived, consists mainly of triptychs with religious themes, altarpieces, and commissioned portraits, both single and diptych (double). His paintings are recognized for their rich, warm colors, emotional expression, and naturalism. Due to the loss of archives and the devastating effects of World War II bombings, discovering biographical information about van der Weyden has been a challenge. Add to that the fact that many of his most important works were destroyed during the late 17th century. So it is only recently that a fuller picture of this painter has been created. Van der Weyden was born in what is now Belgium) in 1399 or 1400, and he married around 1426. He studied painting under Robert Campin, now usually identified as the first great master of Flemish and Early Netherlandish painting. It seems that van der Weyden soon outshone his master and moved to Brussels (1435), where he quickly established his reputation for his technical skill in the use of line and color. He was made the town painter of Brussels in 1436, changing his name from the French to the Dutch style. Madonna and Child and Madonna and Child with St. Catherine and the Visitation are thought to be early works completed by van der Weyden after he left Campin’s workshop. Other have argued these works should be attributed to younger members of van der Weyden’s new workshop since they lack the ‘geometric harmony’ of his later work. Compare these with his Descent from the Cross done in 1435, in oil on oak panel. This is considered to be his masterpiece in terms of its line, color and emotional expression and made him one of the most sought after and influential artists in northern Europe. As a result, he received commissions from Phillip the Good, Netherlandish nobility and foreign princes, and for while exceeded van Eyk in popularity. Van der Weyden worked from life models and although his observations were sharp, he had a tendency to idealize facial features and create statuesque figures. In his later years, he seemed to develop a disregard for accuracy in figure representation, producing works with figures pitched at different scales and sometimes bent in impossible ways. The Miraflores Altarpiece is a good example. This triptych represents, from right to left, the birth, death and resurrection of Jesus, with Mary as the focus in both wings. It is notable for its use of whites, reds and blues, and pronounced use of line: see the line of Christ’s body in the central panel. Van der Weyden was preoccupied by commissioned portraiture towards the end of his life and is highly regarded for his evocations of character. In Portrait of the Lady, a small oil on oak panel painting around 1460, the composition is built from the geometric shapes forming the woman’s veil, neckline, face, and arms, and by the fall of the light that illuminates her face and headdress. The woman’s reserved demeanor conveys humility; note her fragile physique, lowered eyes and tightly grasped fingers. I am including van der Weyden’s portrait of Philip the Good, one of his patrons. He did not try to capture particular characteristics of his model, but instead tried to create an ideal image, flattering the sitter, an approach which made van der Weyden very popular as a portraitist. Note his treatment of the sitter’s hands, which he almost always painted joined together, so as not to distract from their faces. He also often enlarged the eyes, defined the contours of the face, and gave a much stronger jaw than the subject may have had. Van der Weyden died on 18 June 1464 at Brussels, and was buried in the Cathedral of St. Gudulphe. My favorite portrait is that of St. Ivo or Man Reading, which I find livelier than his other paintings. St. Ivo was a lawyer and worked on behalf of the poor. The painting is very much in van der Weyden’s style, but the drawing of the hands and the foreshortening of the face indicate that at least some of the painting was done by members of his workshop. 0 0

Remember to click on the artwork! Andrea del Verrochio (1435-1488) or Andrea di Michele di Francesco de’ Cioni, was an Italian painter, sculptor and goldsmith with an important workshop in Florence and is ranked second only to Donatello of the Italian sculptors of the early Renaissance. He is also known for the fact that among his pupils was Leonardo da Vinci. There is not much extant information about Verrochio’s life. His father worked as a tile and brick mason before becoming a tax collector. Verrochio He never married but had to support his brothers and sisters and their children. It is know that he was trained as a goldsmith with Giuliano Verrocchi, whose last name he apparently took as his own. Various biographies state that he and Sandro Boticelli worked together in the studio of the early Renaissance master Fra Filippo Lipi in Prato, a city near Florence, where Lippi was executing a series of murals for the cathedral. His own first paintings date possibly from the mid-1460s. The only surviving painting documented as Verrocchio’s, an altarpiece of the Madonna and Child with Saints in the Medici Chapel of the Pistoia cathedral, was apparently not completed by the master himself because its style is inconsistent with that of the Baptism of Christ. This work was attributed to Verrocchio by the Renaissance historian Giorgio Vasari in his Lives of the Painters. Interestingly, the picture was later substantially reworked by none other than Leonardo da Vinci, who painted the angel on the left, much of the landscape and the body of Christ. The Virgin and Child with Two Angels (1467-69) appears to have been painted entirely by Verocchio. The wall enclosing the Virgin and Child represents the ‘hortus conclusus’ or enclosed garden of the Old Testament. The motif of angels holding the Christ Child up to the Virgin may derive from a famous earlier work by Fra Filippo Lippi. Another later composition on the same theme was executed by Verrocchio but with significant input from an assistant , Lorenzo di Credi, as the difference between the two paintings clearly illustrates. Verrocchio’s most important works were done in the last two decades of his life, with the patronage of Piero de’ Medici and his son Lorenzo, of Florence. It began after the death of Donatello, a Medici favorite, in 1466. His earliest surviving example of sculpture is the small, famous bronze statue of David. This David contrasts sharply with the ambiguity and sensuousness of Donatello’s which was nude and vulnerable. Elegantly clothed, Verrocchio’s David carries a small sword in one hand and is confidently posed with this other hand on his hip. A second bronze figure, the Putto (Cupid) with Dolphin, is important for its spiral design, which allows the viewer to move around the sculpture, seeing something unique from all sides and giving it movement. In 1479, the Republic of Venice announced a competition for a statue of the Condottiero Colleoni, a former Captain General of the Republic. Verrocchio won the competition, and the equestrian statue of Colleoni is universally accepted as a masterpiece. Both man and horse are equally fine but together are inseparable parts of the sculpture. Verrocchio likely never saw Colleoni in life, so the statue is not really the portrait of the man; it is considered an idea of a strong military commander bursting with power and energy. Perhaps the most important work Verrocchio’s work in Florence was a bronze group of Christ and St. Thomas (1483), executed for the Or San Michele; it is remarkable for its technical perfection, composition of the figures, and the subtle emotion of the subject. Verrocchio died in 1488 in Venice, where he had recently opened a new workshop; he left the Florentine workshop in charge of Lorenzo di Credi, his favorite student. I think my favorite piece by Verrocchio is not his David, which is certainly compelling, but a painting called Tobias and the Angel, a small painting on panel of Tobias setting out on his journey with the Archangel Raphael, carrying the fish with which he was to heal his father’s blindness. Rumor has it that the model for the handsome young man is none other than a juvenile Leonardo, who, as an apprentice, may have had a hand in executing this tempera on poplar wood.     0 0

Jemima Pett pens lovely haikus on her blog, and I started writing some to send back to her. This one is spontaneous, in response to this: Weeping cherry tree Petals falling like pink snow Beauty gone too soon 0 0

Don’t forget to click on the artwork so you can see the beauty!   Paolo di Dono (1397 –1475) was called Paolo Uccello, a nickname from his love of painting birds. He was a painter and mathematician notable for his pioneering work on visual perspective. Vasari wrote in Lives of the Painters that Uccello was obsessed and would stay up all night trying to grasp the exact vanishing point in a painting. In his lifetime, he was a busy artist, and the unfortunate aspect of his story is that much of his work has been lost. Uccello was apprenticed to Ghiberti and was one of the assistants engaged in preparing the first of bronze gates (the so-called Golden Doors) made for the Baptistery of Florence. It was also around this time that Paolo began his lifelong friendship with Donatello. In 1415, he joined the official painter’s guild of Florence and by the mid-1420’s had left Ghiberti’s workshop. It is not know why he left the studio of Ghiberti, but by 1424 he was earning his own living as a painter. In that year he painted episodes from the Old Testament for the Green Cloister of Santa Maria Novella in Florence, in green and reddish colors. The frescoes were badly damaged due to the exposure to weather for centuries but have been restored. These frescoes illustrate his artistic maturity. He painted in a lively manner in natural colors, and he began to acquire a reputation for painting landscapes. He continued with scenes from the story of Noah and the Flood. Ucello worked in the late Gothic, proto-Renaissance tradition, emphasizing color, pageantry and decorative effects. Some of his best surviving work, illustrating these characteristics, are paintings representing the battle of San Romano, fought on June 1st 1432, outside Florence, between the troops of Florence and those of Siena.   These were painted in egg tempera with walnut and linseed oil on a poplar panel and depict war as a bright, glorious game. The pattern of broken lances on the ground suggests a tournament rather than a battle, and the beauty of the Tuscan countryside, from the fruit and flowers to the bright livery of the horses and the seemingly empty armor make this battle a chivalrous exercise. He also executed major fresco commissions, one of which is the colossal equestrian figure of Sir John Hawkwood, intended to imitate a stone statue seen aloft, but instead a relief standing out from the wall of the Florence Cathedral. The fresco is an important example of art because it manipulates perspective for the sake of an illusion. There was considerable politics involved in its commission because of its honoring of a foreign soldier of fortune, albeit one with a long and distinguished military career, with its implication of the potential rewards of serving Florence to other such soldiers. By 1469, he was old and ailing and related that he could no longer work, lonesome and largely forgotten. And yet he executed my favorite of his paintings, Saint George and the Dragon, which I find rather whimsical, around 1470. It shows a scene from the famous story of this Saint, in which George is spearing the beast, while on the left the princess is using her belt as a leash for the dragon. In the sky, there is a gathering storm, the eye of which lines up with Saint George’s lance, suggesting the intervention of a divine power and emphasizing the angle to establish a three-dimensional space. The odd patches of grass are said to illustrate Uccello’s obsessive concern with linear perspective and his creation of decorative patterns. His last known work is thought to be The Hunt, also painted around 1470. He died at the age of 78 in December of 1475 at the hospital of Florence, and was buried in his father’s tomb in the Florentine church of Santo Spirito. 0 0

Don’t forget to click on the paintings!   Tintoretto’s (1518-1594) real name was Jacopo Comin or Jacopo Robusti, and he was the eldest of 21 children. His father was a dyer, or tintore, hence the nickname of Tintoretto or Little Dyer. Most of his paintings are large and narrative, characterized by muscular figures, bold gestures, and dramatic lighting; they combine aspects of two artists by whom Tintoretto was deeply influenced: Titian and his use of color and Michaelangelo and his energetic forms. He is occasionally described as a Mannerist, someone who painted idealized human forms with urban and courtly sophistication and with dramatic use of perspective. The family originated from Lombardy, then part of the Republic of Venice. It is thought that his father took him to Titian’s studio for training, but the style of his immature works indicate he studied with someone else. He was apparently with Titian for only ten days before he was sent him home, ostensibly because his drawings exhibited so much independence that Titian thought he would never be proper pupil. By 1539 he was working independently and spent most of his life in Venice, only leaving the city once to visit Mantua in 1580. Most of his work has survived in the churches or other buildings for which it was painted. One of his earliest works in The Presentation of the Virgin in the Temple, with lovely subdued color and notable perspective, but it is in is The Miracle of the Slave that his mature style can first be see. Note the drama of the scene and the robustness of the figures. This is one of four pictures on the life of St. Mark commissioned for the Scuola di San Marco that established his reputation. Tintoretto made small wax models which he arranged on a stage to test the effects of light, shade and composition. This method explains the repetition in his works of the same figures seen from different angles. See the Temptation of Adam and Danaë.       Off and on between 1565 and 1588, Tintoretto produced a large number of paintings for the walls and ceilings of the School of St. Rocco in Venice, and the school and its church contain fifty-two memorable paintings. Scenes from the life of Christ adorn the upper hall (see the view of the Upper Hall) and scenes from the life of the Virgin, the lower hall. The Adoration of the Magi is one of these. Notable as he matured is that his paintings demonstrate eccentric viewpoints, extreme foreshortening and flamboyant choreography. See the Martyrdom of Saint Paul. After fires destroyed parts of the Doge’s Palace in 1574 and 1577, Tintoretto was one of the principal artists commissioned to renew the interior; the Mystic Marriage of St. Catherine is one of his paintings there. For the mainhall in the Palace, he painted the gigantic Paradise, the crowning production of his life and reputed to be the largest painting ever done upon canvas (74 x 30 feet). It is colossal in scale, powerful and completely reckless of ordinary standards of the day in its method and conception. After the completion of the Paradise Tintoretto never undertook any other work of importance. In May of 1594, he was seized with severe stomach pains and he died on May 31. He was buried in the church of the Madonna dell’Orto by the side of his daughter Marietta. Tintoretto had very few pupils but great influence on Venetian painting; the artist who most successfully absorbed the energy and intensity of his work was El Greco. 0 0

Click on the images to see them close up and in their glory!   Luca Signorelli (c. 1445 –1523) was an Italian Renaissance painter whose talent was his draughtsman-like quality and his execution of foreshortening. He was born in Cortona, Tuscany, and is considered to be a member of the Tuscan School of painting, even though he worked extensively in Umbria and Rome. His mother’s brother was the great-great grandfather of Georgio Vasari, who wrote the Lives of the Painters, and it is from Vasari that we know almost all the important facts of his career. Vasari wrote that Signorelli was apprenticed to Piero della Francesca, a famous painter of the early Renaissance, whose work was characterized by its humanism, its use of geometric forms and its perspective. It is thought Signorelli was also influenced in his early days by Pollaiuolo, whose work shows both classical influences and an interest in human anatomy; reportedly, Pollaiuolo carried out dissections to improve his knowledge of the subject. In 1472 Signorelli was painting at Città di Castello, city and commune in Umbria, and he presented Lorenzo de’ Medici with a picture, probably the School of Pan. He painted the same subject on the wall of the Petrucci palace in Siena; the principal figure is Pan himself, with a man reclining on the ground and two listening shepherds. He also painted the sacred, in some frescoes commissioned by Pope Sixtus IV for the shrine of Loreto (see the Conversion of Paul and Doubting Thomas), and a single fresco in the Sistine Chapel, the Testament and Death of Moses, although most of it has been attributed to Bartolomeo della Gatta, Florentine painter, illuminator and monk of a Benedictine order. Signorelli returned to his native Cortona in 1484, where he was held in great regard, first as an elected burgher and then as one of the judges of the designs for the façade of the Florence cathedral.  He continued paint frescoes, eight in a series of the life of St. Benedict in a monastery in Siena; these have been badly damaged over time. His massive frescoes of the Last Judgment (1499–1503) in the Orvieto Cathedral are considered his masterpiece. Note in The Elect and the Damned the similarity to the anatomical representations of Pollaiuolo . In the Last Judgment he painted his own portrait (see above), revealing much of his character.   Signorelli went as a delegate from Cortona to Florence and then Rome, where he executed some frescoes for Julius II. These were destroyed to make room for the paintings of Raphael!   He had no further commissions from Rome but returned to Cortona, where he worked almost to the day of his death at the age of eighty-two in 1523. 0 0