Allegory of Good Government

Allegory of Good Government Wikipedia Creative Commons

Pietro and Ambrogio Lorenzetti were Sienese brothers who extended the side of Duccio's  art that was concerned with rendering solidity of form and emotional depth. Together they helped introduce humanism into Sienese art, their influences coming from the sculptures of Pisano and also by contemporary work in Florence by Giotto. In 1338 Ambrogio was commissioned to paint a fresco cycle for the walls of the city's Sala Della Pace in the Palazzo Pubblico. This room was behind the wall of the Great Council Chamber, where the city's government held their meetings. The series consists of six different scenes: Allegory of Good Government, Allegory of Bad Government, Effects of Bad Government in the City, Effects of Good Government in the City and Effects of Good Government in the Country. In the fresco cycle Lorenzetti expresses the idea that the cause of peace lays not only from the effects of good government, but also from the citizens acting in accordance with the worldly and stellar force that governs them.

Peace Creative Commons

Since this room was the council chamber of Siena's chief magistrates and it is not surprising to find as the subject an allegory on the theme of good and bad government. The most striking fresco to me is the Allegory of Good Government. The composition is made up of three horizontal bands. In the foreground the twenty-four members of the Sienese magistrates line up in front of Concord. Above them on a higher platform sit the representations of Good Government. Enthroned, in the center of the platform sits Wisdom holding up an orb and scepter, symbolizing temporal power. He confers with the he virtues of Good Government who are represented by six crowned, stately female figures: Peace, Fortitude and Prudence on the left, Magnanimity, Temperance and Justice on the right. Justice is repeated again on the far left as she dispenses rewards of aid and punishment. My favorite figure in the piece is that of Peace. The figure illustrates the Ambrogio’s fascination with Roman art as her form is modeled after a Roman sarcophagus. Peace’s languid figure reclines unlike the severe frontality of many of the other figures. Overall this cycle was groundbreaking for the time and in some parts the beginnings of an understanding of one-point perspective can be seen.

Vasari: Ghiberti

Gates of Paradise Photo by Madeline

Vasari’s commentary added a touch of humanism to the work for not only are they a beautiful set of doors, but they have a backstory, a time and a place where they were created. Instead of creating simple doors, expected and unassuming, Ghiberti created doors that have gone down in history, doors that are still being studied to this day. I believe that this is in part due to his passion. Ghiberti put all of his effort and time into the competition, bringing in townspeople and travelers in order to hear their opinions, carefully constructing the mold, and tediously polishing the bronze.  When the other competitors saw the care that he had put into his rendering of the Sacrifice of Isaac, namely Donatello and Filippo Brunelleschi, they knew that he should get the commission, for ‘both the public good and the private interest would be best served in this way.’

We elevate these artists to the status of ‘genius,’ we believe that they are masters and these pieces that have become famous works of art, were easy for them. In reality, they had trial and error. When Ghiberti first began on the doors, the casting did not turn out well and instead of losing his courage, he quickly recast. The Calimala who had subsidized the competition were so impressed with his work that they commissioned him for another, ones that would become what we know now as the Gates of Paradise.

Gates of Paradise Photo by Madeline

The Gates of Paradise, which open onto the paradiso of Santa Maria del Fiore, were the culmination of years of studying the statues of the ancient Romans. He divided the doors into ten panels; five on each side and onto these incorporated forty different scenes. This is truly a triumph for the complexity and planning that would have gone into this would have been extensive. The complexity is furthered by the development of linear perspective throughout each panel. This not only creates a sense of depth on the picture plane but also acts as an extension of the viewer’s space.  Even Michelangelo stood mesmerized by his doors, saying “They are so beautiful that they would be do nicely at the entrance to Paradise.” understanding of not only the human form, but of landscape and scale are what impress me most about Ghiberti. To be quite honest, I had studied the doors prior to this class, and was extremely excited to see them in person, but honestly had no idea how beautiful they were in person. Standing in front of them and taking in the sheer size of each panel, of the doors as a whole, was one of those moments where you almost want to be pinched because you cannot believe that you are they, that you are experiencing this for yourself. 

Annunciation with St. Margaret and St. Ansanus

Annunciation Wikipedia Creative Commons

In Giorgio Vasari’s The Lives of Artists, the author describes the importance of everlasting fame over riches. For the happiest men are those who are not only inclined to the arts but who happen to live in the time of a famous writer from whom, in return for a small piece of art may on occasion receive, through his writings, the reward of eternal honor and fame. This everlasting fame in the form of writing is imperative for artists that work in the field of design, “for their works, being executed upon surfaces within a field of color, cannot possess the eternal duration that bronze casting and marble objects bring to sculptor or buildings to architects.”

Words out of Archangel Gabriel

It is therefore Simone Martini’s greatest fortune that he was alive in the time of Petrarch, and who, in exchange for a painting of his love, immortalized Martini in two sonnets. For according to Vasari, Petrarch’s sonnets have immortalized the artist more than all of his works did. Nevertheless, Martini was a ‘good painter’, an apprentice of Giotto who learned his master’s style and made a name for himself in the court of the pope.

Virgin Mary

One of Martini’s greatest works, and one that is greatly overlooked by Vasari is the Annunciation with St. Margaret and St. Ansanus, completed in 1333. Vasari does not go into much detail about the specifics of the work but speaks of Martini’s collaboration with his brother Lippo Martini on the piece. The panel is a wooden triptych, adorned with many Gothic elements and rich with gold leaf. The large central panel depicts the annunciation when the Archangel Gabriel delivers the message to the Virgin Mary. Martini takes this literally: he has words flowing from the angel's mouth to Mary. Gabriel is carrying an olive branch, an international symbol of peace, and pointing to the white dove flying overhead, a symbol of the Holy Spirit. To the left of the central panel is Ansanus, patron saint of Siena and to the right St. Giulitta. The use of realistic elements such as the book, vase, crown, and, above all, of the perspective of the pavement are a substantial detachment from the one dimensionality typical of Greco-Byzantine art. Another large departure from Byzantine art is the perspective of the figures. Whereas Byzantine figures were usually depicted front facing, in this scene Mary is actually turning away, thereby capturing a moment rather than a set up scene. It was this talent that earned him the commission to paint Petrarch in Avignon after which his fame was made. 

Giotto's Badia Polyptych

Regarded as the first Renaissance painter, Giotto di Bondone adopted the naturalistic approach in his paintings, abandoning the Greco-Byzantine style that his predecessors had so commonly utilized.

Badia Polyptych Wikipedia Creative Commons

Some of Giotto’s first paintings were in the chapel of the high altar in the Badia of Florence, its crowning glory being his Badia Polyptych completed in 1302. The work is composed of five ancona-shaped, tempura panels each housing a different religious figure. The center frame portrays the bust of the Virgin Mary with the Child grasping at her neckline. The other figures from the left, are Saints Nicholas of Bari, John the Evangelist, Pieter and Benedict, each identified not only by their iconography but also, by the convenient titles that hover over their halos. Unlike those by Cimabue and Duccio, Giotto's figures are not stylized or elongated and do not follow set Byzantine models. Although parts of the painting harken back to Byzantine influence such as the heavily gilded frame and backgrounds, overall the work is a large step forward in terms of an increasingly realistic approach to rendering figures.

Depth is created in the transition from light to dark, a technique that would later be called, chiaroscuro and is used heavily throughout the piece, most notably in the folds of the rich fabrics clothing the saints such as St. Peters red stole. Overall this piece is truly remarkable for its time and marks the beginning of the transition from the proto-renaissance art of the duecento to the composed and naturalistic works of the high renaissance. 

Nature Itself

Il Duomo Madeline Cox

Giorgio Vasari created the discipline of art history, as we know it today. Not only has his work dominated the visual imagination of subsequent generations but also it has added to our knowledge of the Renaissance as a whole. His division of the Renaissance artists into three phases of an evolutionary process allows for us to wrap our head around the development of art during that period. The first was a rebirth of art after the demise of classical civilization brought about due to the plundering and fall of Rome and other great empires. For not only did the barbarians lead to the fall of Rome but also the fall of the most excellent artisans there were. The only art left was architecture but it had been depleted to something that was purely functionary, not beautiful and detailed like the art of the Etruscans and ancient Greeks. The Christian religion aided this demise by demolishing churches and the ancient pagan religion. The problem was not that they were trying to spread their beliefs but that they felt that they had to annihilate ancient structures and relics in order to do so. Artists such as Cimabue and Giotto revived the classical style and furthered it by adding more sophisticated techniques and increased artistic skill. This led into the second phase in which these ideals were built upon further as rigorous rules of painting, sculpture and architecture were formed and carried out by Ghiberti, Brunelleschi, Donatello, and Masaccio. Their work led to the third phase dominated by the ‘genius’ of Michelangelo, Raphael, and Leonardo.

One of the most interesting subjects he writes about is his identification of God as the ultimate creator. For it is God that created the first image of man from our mass of earth, sculpted him from nature itself. It is God who is the Divine Architect of Time and Nature, who adds and subtracts from his materials just as artists do today. No matter how much Vasari elevates an artist, they will never be the ultimate creator, God.