Renaissance (Renaissance). Italy. XV-XVI centuries. Early capitalism. The country is ruled by rich bankers. They are interested in art and science.
The rich and powerful gather around them the talented and wise. Poets, philosophers, artists and sculptors have daily conversations with their patrons. At some point, it seemed that people were ruled by wise men, as Plato wanted.
We remembered the ancient Romans and Greeks. They also built a society of free citizens, where the main value is people (not counting slaves, of course).
Renaissance is not just copying the art of ancient civilizations. This is a mixture. Mythology and Christianity. Realism of nature and sincerity of images. Beauty physical and spiritual.
It was just a flash. The High Renaissance period is approximately 30 years! From the 1490s to 1527 From the beginning of the heyday of Leonardo's creativity. Before the sack of Rome.
The mirage of an ideal world quickly faded. Italy turned out to be too fragile. She was soon enslaved by another dictator.
However, these 30 years determined the main features of European painting for 500 years to come! Up to .
Realism of the image. Anthropocentrism (when the center of the world is Man). Linear perspective. Oil paints. Portrait. Scenery…
Incredibly, during these 30 years several brilliant masters worked at once. At other times they are born once every 1000 years.
Leonardo, Michelangelo, Raphael and Titian are the titans of the Renaissance. But we cannot fail to mention their two predecessors: Giotto and Masaccio. Without which there would be no Renaissance.
1. Giotto (1267-1337)
Paolo Uccello. Giotto da Bondogni. Fragment of the painting “Five Masters of the Florentine Renaissance.” Beginning of the 16th century. . XIV century. Proto-Renaissance. Its main character is Giotto. This is a master who single-handedly revolutionized art. 200 years before the High Renaissance. If it were not for him, the era of which humanity is so proud would hardly have come.
Before Giotto there were icons and frescoes. They were created according to Byzantine canons. Faces instead of faces. Flat figures. Failure to comply with proportions. Instead of a landscape there is a golden background. Like, for example, on this icon.
Guido da Siena. Adoration of the Magi. 1275-1280 Altenburg, Lindenau Museum, Germany. And suddenly frescoes by Giotto appear. They have voluminous figures. Faces of noble people. Old and young. Sad. Mournful. Surprised. Different.
Frescoes by Giotto in the Church of Scrovegni in Padua (1302-1305). Left: Lamentation of Christ. Middle: Kiss of Judas (fragment). Right: Annunciation of St. Anne (Mother Mary), fragment.
Giotto's main work is the cycle of his frescoes in the Scrovegni Chapel in Padua. When this church opened to parishioners, crowds of people poured into it. They had never seen anything like this.
After all, Giotto did something unprecedented. He translated biblical stories into simple, understandable language. And they have become much more accessible to ordinary people.
Giotto. Adoration of the Magi. 1303-1305 Fresco in the Scrovegni Chapel in Padua, Italy. This is precisely what will be characteristic of many masters of the Renaissance. Laconic images. Lively emotions of the characters. Realism.
Read more about the master's frescoes in the article.
Giotto was admired. But his innovation was not developed further. The fashion for international gothic came to Italy.
Only after 100 years will a worthy successor to Giotto appear.
2. Masaccio (1401-1428)
Masaccio. Self-portrait (fragment of the fresco “St. Peter on the pulpit”). 1425-1427 Brancacci Chapel in the Church of Santa Maria del Carmine, Florence, Italy. Beginning of the 15th century. The so-called Early Renaissance. Another innovator is entering the scene.
Masaccio was the first artist to use linear perspective. It was designed by his friend, the architect Brunelleschi. Now the depicted world has become similar to the real one. Toy architecture is a thing of the past.
Masaccio. Saint Peter heals with his shadow. 1425-1427 Brancacci Chapel in the Church of Santa Maria del Carmine, Florence, Italy. He adopted Giotto's realism. However, unlike his predecessor, he already knew anatomy well.
Instead of blocky characters, Giotto has beautifully built people. Just like the ancient Greeks.
Masaccio. Baptism of neophytes. 1426-1427 Brancacci Chapel, Church of Santa Maria del Carmine in Florence, Italy. 
Masaccio. Expulsion from Paradise. 1426-1427 Fresco in the Brancacci Chapel, Church of Santa Maria del Carmine, Florence, Italy. Masaccio did not live long life. He died, like his father, unexpectedly. At 27 years old.
However, he had many followers. Masters of subsequent generations went to the Brancacci Chapel to study from his frescoes.
Thus, Masaccio’s innovation was taken up by all the great artists of the High Renaissance.
3. Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519)
Leonardo da Vinci. Self-portrait. 1512 Royal Library in Turin, Italy. Leonardo da Vinci is one of the titans of the Renaissance. He had a tremendous influence on the development of painting.
It was da Vinci who raised the status of the artist himself. Thanks to him, representatives of this profession are no longer just artisans. These are creators and aristocrats of the spirit.
Leonardo made a breakthrough primarily in portrait painting.
He believed that nothing should distract from the main image. The gaze should not wander from one detail to another. This is how his famous portraits appeared. Laconic. Harmonious.
Leonardo da Vinci. Lady with an ermine. 1489-1490 Czertoryski Museum, Krakow. Leonardo's main innovation is that he found a way to make images... alive.
Before him, characters in portraits looked like mannequins. The lines were clear. All details are carefully drawn. The painted drawing could not possibly be alive.
Leonardo invented the sfumato method. He shaded the lines. Made the transition from light to shadow very soft. His characters seem to be covered with a barely perceptible haze. The characters came to life.
. 1503-1519 Louvre, Paris. Sfumato will be included in the active vocabulary of all great artists of the future.
There is often an opinion that Leonardo, of course, is a genius, but did not know how to complete anything. And I often didn’t finish paintings. And many of his projects remained on paper (in 24 volumes, by the way). And in general he was thrown either into medicine or into music. At one time I was even interested in the art of serving.
However, think for yourself. 19 paintings - and he - greatest artist of all times and peoples. And someone doesn’t even come close in terms of greatness, yet he painted 6,000 canvases in his life. It is obvious who has the higher efficiency.
Read about the master's most famous painting in the article.
4. Michelangelo (1475-1564)
Daniele da Volterra. Michelangelo (fragment). 1544 Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Michelangelo considered himself a sculptor. But there was universal master. Like his other Renaissance colleagues. Therefore, his pictorial heritage is no less grandiose.
He is recognizable primarily by his physically developed characters. He portrayed a perfect man in whom physical beauty means spiritual beauty.
That’s why all his heroes are so muscular and resilient. Even women and old people.
Michelangelo. Fragments of the fresco “The Last Judgment” in the Sistine Chapel, Vatican.
Michelangelo often painted the character naked. And then he added clothes on top. So that the body is as sculpted as possible.
He painted the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel alone. Although these are several hundred figures! He didn’t even allow anyone to rub paint. Yes, he was unsociable. He had a tough and quarrelsome character. But most of all he was dissatisfied with... himself.
Michelangelo. Fragment of the fresco “The Creation of Adam”. 1511 Sistine Chapel, Vatican. Michelangelo lived a long life. Survived the decline of the Renaissance. For him it was a personal tragedy. His later works are full of sadness and sorrow.
In general, Michelangelo’s creative path is unique. His early works are a celebration of the human hero. Free and courageous. In the best traditions of Ancient Greece. What's his name David?
In the last years of life these are tragic images. Intentionally rough-hewn stone. It’s as if we are looking at monuments to the victims of 20th century fascism. Look at his Pietà.
Michelangelo's sculptures at the Academy of Fine Arts in Florence. Left: David. 1504 Right: Palestrina's Pietà. 1555
How is this possible? One artist in one life went through all stages of art from the Renaissance to the 20th century. What should subsequent generations do? Go your own way. Realizing that the bar is set very high.
5. Raphael (1483-1520)
. 1506 Uffizi Gallery, Florence, Italy. Raphael was never forgotten. His genius was always recognized: both during life and after death.
His characters are endowed with sensual, lyrical beauty. It is his who is rightfully considered the most beautiful female images ever created. External beauty reflects the spiritual beauty of the heroines. Their meekness. Their sacrifice.
Raphael. . 1513 Old Masters Gallery, Dresden, Germany. Fyodor Dostoevsky said the famous words “Beauty will save the world” about. This was his favorite painting.
However, sensual images are not Raphael’s only strong point. He thought through the compositions of his paintings very carefully. He was an unsurpassed architect in painting. Moreover, he always found the simplest and most harmonious solution in organizing space. It seems that it cannot be any other way.
Raphael. Athens School. 1509-1511 Fresco in the Stanzas of the Apostolic Palace, Vatican. Raphael lived only 37 years. He died suddenly. From a caught cold and medical error. But his legacy is difficult to overestimate. Many artists idolized this master. And they multiplied his sensual images in thousands of their canvases..
Titian was an unsurpassed colorist. He also experimented a lot with composition. In general, he was a daring innovator.
Everyone loved him for such brilliance of his talent. Called “the king of painters and the painter of kings.”
Speaking about Titian, I want to put an exclamation point after every sentence. After all, it was he who brought dynamics to painting. Pathos. Enthusiasm. Bright color. Shine of colors.
Titian. Ascension of Mary. 1515-1518 Church of Santa Maria Gloriosi dei Frari, Venice. Towards the end of his life he developed an unusual writing technique. The strokes are fast and thick. I applied the paint either with a brush or with my fingers. This makes the images even more alive and breathing. And the plots are even more dynamic and dramatic.
Titian. Tarquin and Lucretia. 1571 Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, England. Does this remind you of anything? Of course, this is technology. And technology artists of the 19th century centuries: Barbizonians and. Titian, like Michelangelo, would go through 500 years of painting in one lifetime. That's why he's a genius.
Read about the master's famous masterpiece in the article.
Renaissance artists are the owners of great knowledge. To leave such a legacy, there was a lot to learn. In the field of history, astrology, physics and so on.
Therefore, every image of them makes us think. Why is this depicted? What is the encrypted message here?
They were almost never wrong. Because they thoroughly thought through their future work. We used all our knowledge.
They were more than artists. They were philosophers. They explained the world to us through painting.
That is why they will always be deeply interesting to us.
The Italian Renaissance (Italian Renaissance) is designated as a period of major cultural change in Europe, between the 14th and 16th centuries. It was from this era that a constellation of famous Italian artists emerged, who admired and showed the whole world the beauty of nature and the human body. So, let's look at the 10 most famous masters of the Italian Renaissance.
1. Rafael Santi
Rafael Santi (known to all of us as Raphael) was born in Urbino to Giovanni Santi, a court painter. The young Raphael began his studies at court, where he was inspired by the works of great artists such as Andrea Mantegna and Piero della Francesca. Raphael was also a student of Pietro Perugino, and his early works reflect the influence of his Italian Renaissance teacher. In the period 1500 and 1508, Raphael worked in central Italy, and was famous for his images of Madonnas and portraits. In 1508, Pope Julius II asked him to decorate the papal rooms in the Vatican, where he performed his best works, such as the School of Athens in the Stanza della Segnatura.
"Santi"
2. Leonardo da Vinci
The works of Leonardo da Vinci are often considered to embody humanistic ideals during the Italian Renaissance. Leonardo da Vinci was a master of various art forms, however, he became famous for his paintings. Leonardo was the illegitimate child of a Florentine notary and a peasant woman. The young man formed his own style while studying in the workshop of the Florentine painter Andrea del Verrocchio. Unfortunately, only 15 of his paintings are available today, among them the Mona Lisa and the Last Supper, two of his most recognizable and imitated works.
3. Michelangelo
Like his contemporary, Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo was a master of various artistic fields, the most important, of course, was painting. The Vatican's Sistine Chapel contains the most impressive frescoes in the history of Western art: images illustrating nine scenes from the Book of Genesis on the ceiling, and the Last Judgment on the altar wall, both by the artist. Michelangelo completed the frescoes on the ceiling of the chapel in approximately four years, the composition covers more than 500 square meters and includes at least 300 images. This extraordinary work of art undoubtedly influenced many Baroque decorative artists for many years to come.
4. Sandro Botticelli
Another painter belonging to the famous Florentine school is Sandro Botticelli. Little is known about his youth; it is clear that he was a student of Fra Filippo Lippi, and was inspired by the monumental paintings of Masaccio. Early Renaissance master Botticelli's exquisite painting of the Madonna and Child, as well as his altar wall paintings, life-size paintings became famous during his lifetime. He is primarily known for two works depicting mythological scenes - "The Birth of Venus" and "Spring" - both paintings are housed in the Uffizi Gallery in Florence.
5. Titian
Tiziano Vecellio, known as Titian, was the greatest Venetian artist of the 16th century. Titian is famous, first of all, for his ability to use colors and their shades - he equally mastered the skill of drawing portraits, landscapes, mythological scenes and religious themes. As a teenager, he worked with prominent Venetian artists such as Giorgione and Giovanni Bellini. He also painted for royal families throughout Europe, including King Philip II of Spain. During his career, Titian painted portraits of many of the leading figures of his time, from Pope Paul III to Holy Roman Emperor Charles V.
"Self-portrait". National Prado Museum
6. Tintoretto
Jacopo Robusti (Comin), known by his nickname Tintoretto (his father was a dyer, or tintore in Italian), is next on the list of leading Italian painters of the Renaissance. He combined the use of Titian's color and the dynamics of Michelangelo's forms. His work is characterized by large-scale subjects, such as his work The Last Supper. The picture is characterized by ingenuity, spectacular lighting - the play of light and shadow and the use of gestures and body movements in dynamics. Because of his passion for his work and his impulsiveness in drawing, Tintoretto earned another nickname: II Furious.
"Self-Portrait"
7. Masaccio
Masaccio left an indelible mark on the world of painting, although his life was short - he died at the age of 26. Born in 1401, he made significant contributions to painting thanks to his skill in creating dynamic images and movements, as well as his scientific approach to perspective. In fact, he is considered by many to be the first great painter of the Italian Renaissance and an innovator of the modern era of painting. Masaccio's work was influenced by the works of the sculptor Donatello and the architect Brunelleschi. Unfortunately, in our time only four works have survived, the authorship of which does not raise questions, while other works were written in collaboration with other artists
8. Domenico Ghirlandaio
Domenico Ghirlandaio was the head of a large and productive workshop in Florence, which also included his two brothers. Many later famous artists spent time in his studio, among them Michelangelo. The Early Renaissance painter became famous for his detailed subjects, which often included leading figures of the time, such as his chronicling of contemporary Florentine society. The most significant commissions he received were from Pope Sixtus IV, who summoned him to Rome to paint the Sistine Chapel.
"The Calling of the First Apostles"
9. Andrea del Verrocchio
You may have noticed that Andrea del Verrocchio has already been mentioned on our list. He had a huge influence on successful painters of the Italian Renaissance. Among his students were the aforementioned Botticelli, Ghirlandaio and even Leonardo da Vinci. Its patrons were the influential Medici family, representatives of the Venetian state and the Municipal Council of Pistoia. The versatile artist has produced many sculptures. There is only one known artistic creation signed by Verrocchio: the altar wall in the Cathedral of Pistoia. Despite this, many other paintings are attributed to his workshop.
"The Baptism of Christ"
10. Giovanni Bellini
Born into a family of artists, along with his father Jacopo and brother Gentile, Giovanni Bellini completely changed painting in the Venetian region. By using pure colors and soft transitions, Bellini was able to create rich shades and highlighted shading. These innovations in color had a profound influence on other painters such as Titian. Bellini added disguised symbolism to many of his works, which is usually attributed to the Northern Renaissance.
"Madonna of the Meadow"
N.A. Belousova
The art of the 18th century (settecento in Italian) represented the final stage of the centuries-long evolution of the great classical art of Italy. This is the time of pan-European popularity of Italian artists. St. Petersburg, Madrid, Paris, London, Vienna, Warsaw - there was not a single European capital where Italian masters were not invited, where, fulfilling orders from the royal courts and nobility, they did not work as architects and sculptors, fresco painters or theater decorators, landscape or portrait painters.
It would be wrong to explain such a wide resonance of Italian artistic culture in this period by the fact that its masters embarked on the path of fundamentally new artistic discoveries, as was the case in the Renaissance and in the 17th century. Rather, we can say that Italian masters were sometimes inferior in terms of the historical perspective of their achievements to artists from other countries, for example France and England. Moreover, Italian architects and painters were more closely associated with character than artists of other national schools. imaginative thinking and the language of forms of the masters of the previous, 17th century. The pan-European success of the Italians was facilitated, first of all, by the extremely high general level of their art, which had absorbed the centuries-old fruitful traditions of the great previous eras, then by the uniformly high development of all types of plastic arts and the presence in Italy large number gifted masters.
The most valuable achievements of Italian art of the 18th century. are associated not only with architecture and monumental and decorative painting, where decisive role played by such a great master as Tiepolo, but also with various genres easel painting(primarily with architectural landscape), with theatrical and decorative art and graphics. In addition to its ideologically substantive aspects and its vivid and imaginative reflection of the era, its main advantages lay in its exceptionally high artistic quality and virtuoso painting skill, thanks to which the prestige of the brilliant Italian maestry remained extremely high.
One of the reasons for the wide distribution of Italian craftsmen throughout Europe was also that they could not fully find application for themselves in their homeland. Exhausted by wars, Italy turned from the end of the 17th to the beginning of the 18th century. not only to a politically fragmented, but also to an almost ruined country. Its southern part was subject to the Spanish Bourbons; Tuscany was ruled by members of the House of Habsburg, Lombardy was in the hands of Austria. The feudal order that dominated the lands owned by the clergy and aristocracy, rising prices, low wages of workers employed in manufactures - all caused discontent and unrest among the masses, resulting in unorganized uprisings of the poor, which could not succeed in the conditions of the country's subjugation to foreigners and due to its economic backwardness. Only the Venetian Republic and the Papal States with its capital Rome retained their state independence. It was Venice and Rome that played the most prominent role in the spiritual and artistic life of Italy in the 18th century.
Although in comparison with the brilliant heyday of the 17th century, Italian architecture of the 18th century shows a certain decline, it still gave many interesting solutions. Even in the difficult economic conditions of this century, the Italians retained their characteristic passion for the construction of huge, majestic structures, as well as the monumental language of architectural forms. And yet, in the splendor of individual famous monuments of this time, one senses rather a kind of inertia of the former grandiose scale of construction activity, rather than an organic correspondence to the conditions of reality. This dependence on the past, expressed more strongly in Italy than in many other national art schools in Europe, was reflected here, in particular, in the predominant role of the Baroque style, which very slowly retreated before the sprouts of new classicist architecture.
A close, essentially inextricable connection with the architecture of the 17th century. especially noticeable in the monuments of Rome. Roman architects of the first half of the 18th century. retained the large urban planning scale of their thinking. They used economic opportunities that were more modest than before to create individual large structures that worthily completed a number of well-known architectural complexes and ensembles.
In the 18th century, the facades of two famous early Christian basilicas in Rome were erected - San Giovanni in Laterano (1736) and Santa Maria Maggiore (1734-1750), which occupy a dominant position in the architecture of the adjacent areas. The builder of the facade of the Lateran basilica, Alessandro Galilei (1691-1736), chose the façade of the Roman Cathedral of St. Peter, created by Carlo Maderna. But, unlike the latter, he gave a more artistic solution to a similar topic. In its two-story facade with huge rectangular and arched openings and a colossal order of half-columns and pilasters, greater than Maderna’s, the severity and clarity of massive architectural forms is more sharply shaded by the restless movement of the huge statues crowning the facade. The external appearance of the Church of Sita Maria Maggiore, the facade of which was built according to the design of Ferdinando Fuga (1699-1781), testifies to the lightening and calming of Baroque architectural forms. Fuga was also the builder of the elegant Palazzo del Consulta (1737), an example of Roman palace architecture of the 18th century. Finally, the façade of the Church of Santa Croce in Gerusalemme provides an example of a highly individual solution to a Baroque church façade in an aspect that has fascinated many Italian architects since the time of the Gesù.
In Roman architecture of this time one can also find an example of a square, which is like a kind of open vestibule in front of a church building. This is the very small Piazza Sant'Ignazio, where, in contrast to the curvilinear outlines of the surrounding brick facades, the whimsical elegance of its forms, which are closer to Rococo than to Baroque, the impressive stone mass of the facade of the Church of Sant'Ignazio, built in the previous century, stands out effectively.
Among the most spectacular monuments in Rome is the famous Spanish Steps, built by the architects Alessandro Specchi (1668-1729) and Francesco de Sanctis (c. 1623-1740). The principle of a picturesque terraced composition, developed by Baroque architects when creating palace and park ensembles, was used here for the first time in urban development. Divided along a steep slope, a wide staircase unites into a coherent ensemble the Piazza di Spagna located at the foot of the hill with the highways passing through the square located at the top of this hill in front of the two-tower facade of the church of San Trinita dei Monti. A grandiose cascade of steps, sometimes merging into a single swift stream, sometimes branching into separate marches that run from top to bottom along a complex curvilinear channel, is distinguished by its exceptional picturesqueness and richness of spatial aspects.
The decorative tendencies of the late Baroque triumph in the famous Trevi Fountain (1732-1762), created by the architects Niccolò Salvi (c. 1697-1751). The pompous facade of the Palazzo Poli is used here as a backdrop for a huge wall fountain and is perceived as a kind of architectural decoration, inextricably linked with sculpture and rapidly cascading water streams.
One of the most interesting buildings in the southern regions of Italy should be named the royal palace in Caserta near Naples, built by Luigi Vanvitelli (1700-1773). This multi-storey building, grandiose in scale, is in plan a gigantic square with cross-shaped buildings intersecting inside it, which form four large courtyards. At the intersection of the buildings there is a colossal two-tiered vestibule in which huge galleries and majestic grand staircases coming from different sides converge.
Architecture developed in more historically promising forms in the northern regions of Italy - in Piedmont and Lombardy, where progressive trends were more clearly revealed in the economy and culture. The largest architect here was Filippo Yuvara (1676-1736), a native of Sicily, who worked in Turin, Rome and other cities and ended his career in Spain. Yuvara is the author of many different buildings, but in general the evolution of his work follows from lush, compositionally complex structures to greater simplicity, restraint and clarity of architectural language. His early style is represented by the facade of the Palazzo Madama in Turin (1718-1720). There is more ease and freedom in the so-called hunting castle of Stupinigi near Turin (1729-1734) - a huge country palace, extremely complex and whimsical in its plan (which is attributed to the French architect Beaufran). The strongly elongated low wings of the palace contrast with the high central building placed at their intersection, crowned with a fancy dome, above which the figure of a deer rises. Another famous building of Yuvara - the unusually impressive monastery and church of Superga in Turin (1716-1731) located on a high hill - in its form foreshadows a turn to classicism.
In its completed forms, classicism is most clearly expressed in the work of the Milanese architect Giuseppe Piermarini (1734-1808), of whose many buildings the most famous is the Teatro della Scala in Milan (1778). This is one of the first in European architecture theater buildings, designed for a huge number of spectators (its hall accommodates over three and a half thousand people), which then became a model for many opera houses of modern times in its architectural and technical qualities.
Since the 1680s The Venetian Republic, exhausted by wars, having lost its dominance in the Mediterranean in the fight against the Turks, began to lose its possessions in the East one after another, and its economic decline became obvious and inevitable. In addition, the aristocracy and rigidity of the forms of the state apparatus gave rise to acute social contradictions and repeated attempts on the part of the bourgeois-democratic part of Venetian society to change this regime through radical projects for its reconstruction. But although these attempts did not have significant success, one should not think that Venice has completely exhausted its capabilities. Here the new bourgeoisie grew stronger, a layer of intelligentsia grew, due to which the culture of the Venetian settechento was imbued with complex and contradictory phenomena. A particularly striking example in this regard is not so much painting as the literature and drama of that time.
Venice has preserved its unique splendor of life, which in the 18th century. It even acquired a kind of feverish character. Holidays, carnivals, masquerades, when all classes in the city were equalized and under the mask it was impossible to distinguish a patrician from a plebeian, continued almost throughout the year and attracted crowds of travelers to Venice, among whom were kings, representatives of the nobility, musicians, artists, actors, writers and just adventurers.
Along with Paris, Venice set the tone in the literary, theatrical and musical life of the 18th century. As in the 16th century, it remained an important center of book printing. There were seventeen drama and opera theaters, music academies, and four women’s orphanages—“conservatories”—turned into excellent music and vocal schools. With its musical triumphs, Venice surpassed Naples and Rome, creating unsurpassed schools of organ and violin playing, flooding the international music world of that time. Outstanding composers and musicians lived and worked here. The theaters of Venice were crowded, church services, where monastery choirs and nun soloists sang, were attended like theaters. In Venice and Naples, along with the dramatic theater, realistic comic opera also developed, reflecting urban life and morals. Outstanding Master In this genre, Galuppi was close in the spirit of his work to the greatest playwright of the 18th century. Carlo Goldoni, with whose name a new stage in the history of European theater was associated.
Goldoni radically transformed the comedy of masks, pouring new content into it, giving it a new stage design, developing two main dramatic genres: comedy of manners from bourgeois-noble life and comedy from folk life. Despite the fact that Goldoni acted as an enemy of the aristocracy, his plays enjoyed enormous success in Venice for a time, until he was ousted from the Venetian stage by his ideological opponent - the playwright and poet, the impoverished Venetian Count Carlo Gozzi. The latter again turned in his theatrical romantic plays (“fiabah”) - “The Love for Three Oranges”, “Princess Turandot”, “King Deer” - to the heritage of improvisational comedy of masks. However, the main role in the development of Italian drama belonged not to them, but to the comedies of Goldoni, whose realistic work was associated with new educational ideas.
The theatrical art of Venice was also reflected in the nature of its architecture and especially decorative painting. The development of the latter was to a large extent associated with a huge demand for magnificent theatrical and decorative paintings of churches and especially palaces not only among the Venetian nobility, but also outside Italy. But along with this direction, a number of other genres also developed in Venetian painting: the everyday genre, the city landscape, the portrait. Like Galuppi's operas and Goldoni's comedies, they reflected the everyday life and holidays of Venetian life.
The connecting link between the art of the 17th and 18th centuries in Venice is the work of Sebastiano Ricci (1659-1734). The author of numerous monumental and easel compositions, he relied heavily on the traditions of Paolo Veronese, as exemplified by such works as “Madonna and Child with Saints” (1708; Venice, Church of San Giorgio Maggiore) and “The Magnanimity of Scipio” ( Parma, university), even in iconographic terms dating back to the 16th century. Although he paid tribute to the official pathos of the Baroque, his creations have more liveliness and attractiveness than most Italian painters of this movement. Temperamental painting style, bright colors combined with the increased theatricality of his images made him popular not only in Venice, but also abroad, in particular in England, where he worked with his nephew and student, the landscape painter Marco Ricci (1679-1729).
The latter usually painted landscapes in compositions by Sebastiano Ricci, and such a joint work of both masters was the large painting “The Allegorical Tomb of the Duke of Devonpng” (Birmingham, Barberra Institute), reminiscent of a lush backstage theatrical set. The landscape works of Marco Ricci himself are compositions that are romantic in mood, executed in a broad painterly manner; in them one can discern some features of commonality with the landscapes of Salvator Rosa and Magnasco.
The initial stage of Venetian painting of the 18th century. presents the work of Giovanni Battista Piazzetta (1683-1754). He studied with the Bolognese painter Giuseppe Maria Crespi, adopting his lively, unique style of painting with extensive use of chiaroscuro. The fresh and strong influence of Caravaggio's realism was also reflected in his paintings. Piazzetta is restrained and refined in its palette, which is dominated by deep, sometimes as if blazing from within, colors - chestnut red, brown, black, white and gray. In his altarpiece in the Gesuati Church in Venice - “St. Vincent, Hyacinth and Lorenzo Bertrando” (c. 1730), with three figures of saints located along an upward diagonal - the black, white and gray tunics of his characters form a color scheme that is striking in its harmony and subtle monochrome.
Other compositions on religious themes - “St. Jacob Led to Execution” and the ceiling in the Venetian church of San Giovanni e Paolo (1725-1727) were also executed by the artist in a broad pictorial manner. Piazzetta is an artist of a transitional time; the pathos of his paintings on religious subjects and at the same time full-blooded realism and vitality of the images, deep chiaroscuro, spirituality and mobility of the entire pictorial fabric, rich hot colors, and sometimes exquisite color combinations - all this partly brings his art closer to that direction of the Italian school of the 17th century. , which was presented by Fetty, Liss and Strozzi.
Piazzetta painted many genre paintings, but the everyday element is poorly expressed in them, their images are invariably shrouded in a romantic haze and fanned with a subtle poetic feeling. Even such a purely genre interpretation of the biblical plot, as, for example, in his “Rebekah at the Well” (Milan, Brera), acquires a lyrical-romantic connotation in Piazzetta. Reclining in fear on the edge of the stone pool, clutching a shiny copper jug to her chest, Rebekah looks with fear at Abraham's servant, who offers her a string of pearls. His shadowed figure in a chestnut brown robe contrasts with the shining gold, golden pink and white tones that form the colorful silhouette of Rebekah's figure. The heads of cows, dogs and camels cut off by the frame on the left side of the picture, the picturesque figures of peasant women behind Rebekah (one of them with a shepherd’s crook) add a pastoral touch to the picture.
Piazzetta’s most famous genre compositions include “The Fortune Teller” (Venice, Accademia). He also owns a number of portraits.
Piazzetta's creativity, however, is not limited to his paintings. He is the author of magnificent drawings, including preparatory sketches and finished compositions, executed in pencil and chalk. Most of them are female and male heads, depicted either from the front, sometimes in profile or three-quarter turns, interpreted in a three-dimensional chiaroscuro manner, striking in the extraordinary vitality and instant accuracy of the captured appearance (“Man in a Round Cap”, “Flag Bearer and Drummer”, Venice, Accademia, see illustrations).
The grand scale of the monumental decorative arts Settecento is associated primarily with the name of Giovanni Battista Tiepolo (1696-1770), whose style was formed under the influence of his teacher Piazzetta and Sebastiano Ricci. Enjoying enormous fame during his lifetime, Tiepolo worked not only in Italy, but in Germany and Spain. His compositions also decorated royal palaces and estates in Russia in the 18th century. Using the best traditions of decorative painting of the Renaissance and the 17th century, Tiepolo extremely strengthened the theatrical and entertainment side of his work, combining it with a living perception of reality. Without ever losing its sensation, Tiepolo combined a keen sense of real phenomena with those principles of convention that are characteristic of monumental and decorative painting. These interpenetrating principles determined the originality of his artistic language. However, the features of life's truth in the depiction of individual events and characters were not combined in Tiepolo's work with an in-depth psychological disclosure of artistic images, which in general led to a certain repetition of individual techniques and constituted a limited side of his art.
The artist's fertility was inexhaustible; his brilliant creative activity lasted more than half a century. Tiepolo's brushes include a huge number of frescoes, altarpieces, easel paintings, and many drawings; he was also one of the most remarkable etching masters.
An example of the early period of activity of Tiepolo, who began working around 1716, is the frescoes in the Venetian church of the Scalzi -
"Apotheosis of St. Teresa" (1720-1725), where he first introduced his new spatial and decorative solutions, a number of easel paintings on mythological themes (among them the large canvas "The Rape of the Sabine Women", c. 1720; Hermitage) and especially ten huge decorative panels painted by the artist to decorate the palace of the Venetian patrician Dolfino (c. 1725).
Five paintings from this series - “The Triumph of the Emperor”, “Mucius Scaevola in the Camp of Porsenna”, “Coriolanus under the Walls of Rome” and others - are in the Hermitage collection. The strong and expressive rendering of heroic subjects, the plastic, vitally convincing interpretation of the figures, the spatial pictorial composition built on bright colorful contrasts with the use of light and shadow effects testify to Tiepolo's early maturing skill.
The frescoes in the archbishop's palace in Udine date back to 1726, painted mainly on biblical themes. Thirty-year-old Tiepolo appears in them as an experienced artist with remarkable coloristic skill, as exemplified by “The Appearance of the Angel to Sarah,” “The Appearance of Three Angels to Abraham,” and especially the fresco “The Sacrifice of Abraham”; in the poses and gestures of the biblical characters they resemble a magnificent performance.
Turning to easel painting, Tiepolo creates no less impressive decorative compositions, such as the one painted in the late 1730s. a large three-part painting for the Church of San Alvise in Venice - “The Way to Calvary”, “The Flagellation of Christ” and “The Crowning with Thorns”, where bright and brilliant colors are replaced by gloomy and deep colors, the composition becomes more spatial and dynamic, and the vital convincingness of his images is expressed even more stronger than in the frescoes.
The brilliant flowering of Tiepolo’s decorative talent began in the early 1740s, when he painted a number of mythological paintings, among them “The Triumph of Amphitrite” (Dresden) - a sea goddess serenely reclining on a chariot in the shape of a shell, which horses and sea deities are rapidly rushing across turquoise green waves. In the overall exquisite color scheme, Amphitrite’s red cloak, stretched by the wind like a sail, stands out as a bright spot.
In the 1740-1750s. Tiepolo creates one after another wonderful decorative cycles, altarpieces and small easel paintings. The families of the Venetian patricians, as well as monasteries and churches, compete with each other in their desire to possess the works of his brush.
The artist transformed dizzyingly high church lampshades into bottomless heavenly spaces with swirling clouds, where light-winged angels and saints hovered over the heads of worshipers. Religious and mythological subjects were replaced by magnificent festivities, marriages, feasts and triumphs. In his compositions, the artist achieved amazing effects of “daylight” lighting by combining white tones with pale blue and gray undertones, and deep spatial pauses separating architectural forms and flows of human figures from each other created a feeling of airy lightness and weightlessness. The subtle, gentle harmony of his colors, a vibrant sense of color, the dynamism of compositions, inexhaustible pictorial imagination, the bold solution of the most complex long-term problems - all this amazed Tiepolo’s contemporaries to the same extent as it surprises us now.
Between 1740-1743 he painted huge plafond compositions for the Venetian churches of Gesuati, degli Scalzi, Scuola del Carmine and others. It is worth dwelling on the painting of the church of degli Scalzi - the largest in size and most majestic fresco, executed in these years by Tiepolo together with the artist Mengozzi Colonna, who was a quadraturist, that is, a painter who performed ornamental parts and architectural painting in Tiepolo's compositions. The interior decoration of the church, built by Longhena in the 17th century, was distinguished by purely baroque splendor, completed with a magnificent Tiepolo lampshade with a huge composition “Transfer of the Madonna's House to Loreto” (this lampshade was destroyed in 1918). The ceiling painting, as if continuing the actual architectural decoration of the church walls, framed a huge fresco, built on the comparison of light plans of varying intensity and depth, which created the illusion of an endless celestial space illuminated by light. The image unfolded almost parallel to the plane of the ceiling, and not into its depth, as decorators did in the 17th century. By placing the main scene of the Transference not in the center of the ceiling, but at its edge and leaving the rest of the space almost empty, Tiepolo achieves the complete illusion of the rapid aerial flight of a mass of human figures. Some of the figures are separated from the central scene and placed against the background of the fresco frame, such as the figure representing heresy and falling headfirst towards the viewer. With these effects, the artist seems to connect the heavenly scene with the real interior of the church. Such picturesque optical illusions corresponded to the nature of Venetian worship of the 18th century, which was a kind of ceremonial church performance, imbued with secular rather than religious sentiments.
The remarkable frescoes of Tiepolo in the Venetian Palazzo Labia date back to the time after 1745, where the artist came closest to the decorative principles of Veronese. Two frescoes located on opposite walls of the Great Hall depict “The Feast of Anthony and Cleopatra” and “The Meeting of Anthony and Cleopatra”. The ceiling features a number of allegorical figures.
Entering the spacious ballroom of Palazzo Labia, the viewer loses the sense of real architectural space, because its limits are expanded by the picturesque decoration, which turned the walls of the Venetian palazzo into a luxurious theatrical spectacle. Tiepolo skillfully used the wall space between two doors and two windows above them, thus combining real architecture with illusory architecture. In the “Feast” scene, the steps on which the dwarf is depicted with his back to the viewer lead to a wide marble terrace with a Corinthian-style colonnade and choir, under the shadow of which the Egyptian queen and the Roman general feast. Cleopatra, wanting to prove to Antony her contempt for wealth, throws a priceless pearl into a glass of vinegar, where it should dissolve without a trace. The relationship of human figures with the perspective construction of the scene is conveyed flawlessly. The composition, saturated with light and air, is built along two intersecting diagonals, leading the viewer’s gaze into depth; the viewer seems to be invited to step onto the terrace and take part in the feast. It is interesting that the middle of the fresco is not filled with figures; the artist gives here an effective spatial pause.
As much as this fresco is filled with calm, all the figures in “The Meeting of Anthony and Cleopatra” are engulfed in movement. Without pursuing the goal of being faithful to historical truth, Tiepolo turns his heroes rather into actors, dressed in the Venetian fashion of the 16th century. These episodes from the history of Antony and Cleopatra provided such grateful material for Tiepolo's creative imagination that he left many versions of them in his monumental and easel canvases. These are “The Feast of Anthony and Cleopatra” in the museums of Melbourne, Stockholm and London, “The Meeting of Anthony and Cleopatra” in Edinburgh and Paris.
In the 50-60s, Tiepolo's painting skills reached enormous heights. Its color becomes unusually refined and acquires delicate shades of cream, gold, pale gray, pink and lilac.
His frescoes in the bishop's palace in Würzburg date back to this period (see Art of Germany). Working there for three years, between 1751 -1753, Tiepolo created magnificent decorative paintings, completely consistent with the architectural design of the palace. Their pompous theatrical character corresponds to the fantastic and somewhat pretentious architectural and sculptural decoration of the imperial hall. The ceiling depicts Apollo on a chariot, racing Beatrice of Burgundy through the clouds to her fiancé Frederick Barbarossa. A similar motif was encountered more than once among decorators of the 17th century. (in Guercino, Luca Giordano and others), but nowhere did he achieve such spatial coverage, such radiant bottomlessness of the atmosphere, such brilliance in conveying the movement of soaring figures.
Above the cornice of the short wall of the hall, skillfully using lighting, Tiepolo places a fresco depicting the wedding of Barbarossa. In a complex interior composition with motifs in the spirit of Veronese, he presents a crowded wedding ceremony, painted in sonorous and joyful colors - blue-blue, crimson, yellow, green, silver-gray.
In addition to these frescoes, Tiepolo painted a huge, about 650 sq. m, a ceiling above the palace staircase, where Olympus was depicted. He seemed to “break through” the undivided surface of the ceiling, turning it into a boundless heavenly space. Having placed Apollo among the rushing clouds, he depicted personifications along the cornice around the walls different parts light - Europe in the form of a woman surrounded by allegorical figures of the sciences and arts (individual characters were given a portrait character; among them he depicted himself, his son Giovanni Domenico and assistants), America, Asia and Africa with images of animals and peculiar architectural motifs. This lampshade is also one of the pinnacles of decorative art of the 18th century.
Upon returning to Venice, Tiepolo, who was at the zenith of his fame, became president of the Venice Academy of Painting and led its activities for two years.
The best creations of Tiepolo's decorative genius include his frescoes in Vicenza in the Villa Valmarana, dating back to 1757, where the artist worked with students and his son Giovanni Domenico Tiepolo (1727-1804). In the paintings of this villa, where Tiepolo turns to new decorative solutions, his style acquires special sophistication and splendor. The artist now builds his compositions parallel to the plane of the wall, returning again to the traditions of Veronese. The wall plane turns into an antique peristyle, through the columns of which a view of the beautiful landscape opens. Large spatial pauses between figures, an abundance of light, white, lemon yellow, pale pink, soft purple, light brown, emerald green tones of his palette give the picturesque ensemble of Villa Valmarana a clear and joyful character, imbued with a brightly vital feeling of the images of ancient and Renaissance poetry.
The frescoes in the main hall of the villa - the so-called Palazzo - depict the scene, the “Sacrifice of Iphigenia” and related episodes. The other three halls were painted with frescoes on themes borrowed from Homer's Iliad, Virgil's Aeneid and the Renaissance poems - Ariosto's Roland Furious and Torquato Tasso's Jerusalem Liberated. In all these scenes there is a lot of movement, lightness, grace and emotionality, suggested by the drama of the literary subjects chosen by Tiepolo.
It is interesting that the great German poet Goethe, having visited this villa, immediately noted the presence of two styles in it - “refined” and “natural”. The latter is especially expressed in the work of Giovanni Domenico Tiepolo, who in 1757 painted a number of rooms in the “Guest House” (the so-called Forestiera) adjacent to the villa. For a long time, the works of father and son Tiepolo went under the same name; Now the features of the creative appearance of the young Tiepolo were more clearly defined. Thus, in his frescoes of the Villa Valmarana, the genre and everyday principle is more strongly expressed, in contrast to the style of his father. Such are his paintings “Peasant Lunch” or “Peasants on Rest” with wide landscape backgrounds or the beautiful “Winter Landscape” depicting two magnificently dressed Venetian women. On other walls, carnival episodes are presented, serving as a vivid illustration of the mores of Venetian life in the 18th century. Tiepolo the Younger also painted genre paintings in the Palazzo Rezzonico in Venice. However, some of his genre works are considered to have been performed together with his father. His best achievements include a series of brilliantly technical etchings, each sheet of which depicts an episode of the flight of Joseph and Mary with the baby to Egypt.
Giovanni Battista Tiepolo himself is also known as a portrait painter. His portraits of Antonio Riccobono (c. 1745; Rovigo, Accademia Concordi), Giovanni Querini (c. 1749; Venice, Querini-Stampaglia Museum) are very bright and expressive in character.
Around 1759 Tiepolo painted a large altarpiece of “St. Tekla saves the city of Este from the plague” (Cathedral in Este), created in a different coloristic key than his secular compositions. Deep dark tones emphasize the dramatic tension of this scene, the images of which were created under the influence of the great Venetian painter of the 16th century. Tintoretto.
Tiepolo spent the last years of his life in Madrid, commissioned by the Spanish King Charles III to paint the ceiling lamps of his palace. A huge fresco "Triumphs of the Spanish Monarchy" (1764-1766) is painted on the ceiling of the throne room. As in Würzburg, the ceiling is transformed into a heavenly space, framed by figurative compositions representing the Spanish colonies and provinces. However, it is executed in a more flat manner than the earlier decorative cycles.
A special area of Tiepolo's creativity consists of his drawings, brilliant in their artistry. Executed with sanguine or feather with a wash, they are distinguished by the generality of their forms, intense dynamics and - despite the sketchy fluency of the graphic manner - great dramatic expressiveness. They often serve as preparatory sketches for individual parts of his larger compositions; sometimes they have independent significance. His drawings of men's heads, rendered with unusual plasticity, are marked by a sense of life's truth and rare observation. He also has sharp and expressive caricatures of the clergy, Venetian dandies, and characters from the Comedy of Masks.
Using the etching technique, Tiepolo executed various mythological, allegorical and romantic scenes, the meaning of which is almost impossible to reveal. They contain images of astrologers, people in oriental robes, gypsies, and warriors. Distinguished by their extremely picturesque chiaroscuro style, these etchings had a certain influence on the graphics of the largest Spanish painter turn of the 18th-19th centuries. Francisco Goya.
Bound by his time, Tiepolo could not rise in his work to that high measure of humanity, depth and integrity that was characteristic of the great masters of the Renaissance. The appearance of many of his heroes is based on life observations, as exemplified by a number of his female characters - Cleopatra, Armida, Amphitrite - almost always going back to the same real prototype - the daughter of a Venetian gondolier Christina, but not distinguished by genuine internal significance. The meaningful side of his bright and festive art is embodied not so much in the expressiveness of individual images and characters, but in the entire complex of pictorial and plastic motifs, in their amazing richness and sophistication.
Tiepolo's painting was not properly appreciated in the 19th century, since it was far from the artistic problems that were being solved in the art of that century. Only later did Tiepolo take his rightful place in the history of art as one of the brilliant masters of the 18th century, who created his own style and pictorial and decorative system, which completed the centuries-long evolution of monumental painting of classical artistic eras.
For Italian painting of the 18th century. It was characterized by its division into genres. The everyday genre, landscape, and portrait became widespread in it, and the artists each specialized in their own form of art. Thus, the Venetian artist Pietro Longhi (1702-1785) chose as his specialty the depiction of small gallant scenes, visits, masquerades, concerts, gambling houses, dance lessons, folk entertainment, charlatans, and rare animals. Not always correct in design, sometimes quite elementary in color scheme, small in size, Longhi’s paintings - “Dance Lesson” (Venice, Accademia), “Behind the Toilet” (Venice, Palazzo Rezzonico), “Rhinoceros” (ibid.) - were used significant success. His narrative painting, which Goldoni called the sister of his muse, brought to us the peculiar and poetic spirit of the “age of the mask”, carefree street life, intrigue, frivolity and entertainment, characteristic of Venice of this time.
The Italian portrait was represented by a number of masters, of whom the most significant was Giuseppe Ghislandi, who was then called (after becoming a monk) Fra Galgario (1655-1743). A native of Bergamo, he worked for a long time in Venice, where he studied the works of Giorgione, Titian and Veronese. His brushes include numerous, mainly male portraits, which combine the external representativeness and methods of psychological characterization inherent in Baroque portraits with the grace, grace and elegance characteristic of the 18th century. A remarkable colorist who had mastered the best traditions of Venetian painting, Ghislandi depicted nobles posing for him in wigs, huge triangular hats and rich camisoles embroidered with gold, using bright crimson, purple, green and yellow tones in his painting. But he never obscured with this pomp the realistic essence of the portrait image. Each of his portraits is deeply individual, be it a male portrait, where the model is very clearly depicted - a gentleman with an arrogant face, full sensual lips and a large nose (Milan, Poldi-Pezzoli Museum), or an elegant full-length portrait of Count Vialetti, or a self-portrait painted in dark “Rembrandt” colors, or a charming portrait of a boy (1732; Hermitage).
Alessandro Longhi (1733-1813) - son of Pietro Longhi - is known mainly as a portrait painter. Giving his models a ceremonial, festive look, he strives to characterize them through the furnishings surrounding them. This is the portrait of the famous composer Domenico Cimarosa (Vienna, Liechtenstein Gallery). He is depicted in a lush satin cloak, with the score in his hands, turning towards the viewer an arrogant and handsome, but devoid of deep expressiveness, young face, framed by a white wig. Next to him on the table is a viola d'Amour, a violin, a flute, a horn and an inkwell with a feather. The portrait of Goldoni (Venice, Correr Museum) is written in the same spirit: the famous playwright is depicted in full dress, surrounded by the attributes of his profession.
The Venetian artist Rosalba Carriera (1675-1757) began her career as a miniaturist, but gained wide fame for her numerous portraits painted in pastels. Her coloring was distinguished by great tenderness and some faded tones, which was explained by the specificity of the pastel technique. All her life she painted portraits and poetic allegories. Without pursuing the goal of achieving complete resemblance, she extremely flattered her models, sometimes giving them a sentimental and aristocratic character, thanks to which she enjoyed enormous success among the European nobility of the 18th century. and was elected a member of the French and Venetian Academies.
But the most significant phenomenon among the various genres of Venetian painting of the 18th century was the city landscape, the so-called veduta (that is, view), which combined elements of an architectural painting and the landscape itself.
Venetian landscape painting was primarily perspective painting, reproducing real motifs of the city landscape. However, each of the Vedutists had their own artistic language and their own pictorial vision, therefore, despite a certain repetition and borrowing of motifs from each other, they were never boring and the same. In love with the beauty of Venice, they became its true biographers and portraitists, conveying the subtle poetic charm of its appearance, capturing in countless paintings, drawings and engravings squares, canals dotted with gondolas, embankments, palaces, festive festivities and poor neighborhoods.
The origins of the Venetian vedata should be sought in the painting of the 15th century, in the works of Gentile Bellini and Vittore Carpaccio, but then the city landscape did not play an independent role and served the artist only as a backdrop for festive chronicles and narrative compositions.
At the beginning of the 18th century. Luca Carlevaris creates a type of Venetian cityscape, which, however, in comparison with the works of subsequent Vedutistas, had a rather primitive character. A true master in this field was Antonio Canale, nicknamed Canaletto (1697-1768).
The son and student of the theater artist Bernardo Canale, Antonio left Venice for Rome and there became acquainted with the work of Roman landscape painters and theater decorators, mainly the Panninis and the Bibbiena family. His style developed very early and did not undergo any pronounced changes along the way of its development. Already in Cayaletto’s early work, “Scuola del Carita” (1726), the principles of his artistic perception. There is little movement in his cityscapes, there is nothing illusory, changeable or impermanent in them, nevertheless they are very spatial; colorful tones form plans of varying intensity, softened in their contrast by chiaroscuro. Canaletto paints views of lagoons, marble Venetian palaces, stone lace of arcades and loggias, rusty-red and grayish-pink walls of houses reflected in the rich green or bluish water of the canals, along which gondolas decorated with gold glide and scurry fishing boats, and the embankments are crowded with people, idle nobles in white wigs, monks in cassocks, foreigners and working people can be seen. With precise, almost directorial calculation, Canaletto groups small genre mise-en-scenes; in them he is life-like, sometimes even prosaic, and extremely meticulous in conveying details.
“The Grand Canal in Venice” (Florence, Uffizi), “The Square in Front of the Church of San Giovanni e Paolo in Venice” (Dresden), “The Stonemason’s Court” (1729-1730; London, National Gallery) are among Canaletto’s best works. Of his paintings located in Soviet museums, one should name “Reception of the French Embassy in Venice” (Hermitage) and “Departure of the Doge for Betrothal to the Adriatic Sea” (A. S. Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts).
Having gained wide popularity since the 30s. as an artist who has no equal in his genre, Canaletto was invited to London in 1746, where, on orders from English patrons, he painted a number of city landscapes in which his color, deprived of bright and plastic chiaroscuro lighting, loses its former sonority and diversity, becoming more subdued and local. These are “View of Whitehall”, “City of London under the arch of Westminster Bridge”, “Feast on the Thames” and a number of others.
In addition to painting, Canaletto paid great attention to engraving, which between 1740-1750. received brilliant development in Venice. Almost all Venetian landscape painters - Marco Ricci, Luca Carlevaris, Canaletto, Bellotto - were major masters of etching. What was sometimes lacking in Canaletto’s large canvases - movement, the spirituality of the entire pictorial fabric - fully appeared in his etchings, imbued with a real poetic feeling. Using a masterful linear technique in them, achieving deep and soft light-and-shadow transitions through thin parallel shading of varying intensity, Canaletto at the same time made the paper “work,” interrupting slightly wavy horizontal strokes with light verticals or shading light areas with them. Both the heavens and the clouds floating on them, as if driven by a light breeze, and the water and trees come to life in his engravings. Quick and bold contours, fluent strokes give vital authenticity and reality to his “Port of Dolo” - a small square on the shore of a water basin, along which a young couple moves - a gentleman in a wig and camisole, leading a lady in a magnificent dress by the arm, involuntarily evoking viewer romantic images Manon Lescaut and the Chevalier des Grieux from the story of Abbot Prevost.
Bernardo Bellotto (1720-1780) - nephew and student of Canaletto - was also one of the outstanding vedutistas of the 18th century. The clear perspective distribution of plans, the extremely high, almost photographic accuracy in the reproduction of nature, the somewhat smoothed surface of his paintings give them a certain lifelessness, caused to a certain extent by the fact that Bellotto widely used the reflections of a camera obscura in his works. His city vedutes are not distinguished by the breadth of artistic generalization; they have little mood, movement, or airiness, but they are of great artistic and documentary value. In addition to Italy, from 1746 to 1766 he worked at the courts in Vienna and Dresden, and from 1768 he was a court painter in Poland, where he created many views of Warsaw. Judging by the thoroughness of the depicted details, it can be assumed that these vedutes give a more or less correct idea of the architecture, city landscape and life of that time.
Venetian Settecento painting sparkled with another name - Francesco Guardi (1712-1793), an excellent artist who brought the great coloristic traditions of Venetian painting almost to the 19th century.
He was a student of his older brother, Giovanni Antonio Guardi (1698/99-1760), a gifted painter, in whose workshop he worked for almost half of his life. Senior Guardi, who created several altar paintings: “The Death of St. Joseph" (Berlin); "Madonna and Child and Saints" (church in Vigo d'Anaunia), obviously, with the participation of his younger brother, in his own way came into contact with Sebastiano Ricci and Piazzetta.
The early works of Francesco Guardi include several altar paintings - “The Crucifixion” (Venice, private collection), “Lamentation” (Munich). However, the most significant work of this period is the oil painting of the organ in the Church of Arcangelo Raffaele in Venice depicting scenes from the life of Tobias (c. 1753). A number of plot and compositional motifs for this painting were borrowed by the artist from other Italian painters, but the bold and unusual coloristic solution turns it into a completely original work. Distant, like shimmering landscapes, shimmering luminous pink, purple, red, lemon, golden-orange, gray and blue tones, fragility and vibration of shadows, whimsical, almost capricious colorful comparisons distinguish her pictorial structure. Among all the Venetian masters, Guardi most of all shows a penchant for conveying the air environment, subtle atmospheric changes, the light play of sunlight, the humid Wursian air of lagoons, painted in the finest shades of color. With light, as if trembling strokes of the brush, Guardi not only sculpted the form, but also achieved extraordinary mobility and spirituality of the entire pictorial surface of the picture as a whole.
The painting “Alexander in front of the body of Darius” (Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts), which is a free copy of a painting by an Italian painter of the 17th century, dates back to the same years. Langetti. It is difficult to imagine a more non-classical interpretation of the ancient plot. However, Guardi’s bravura picturesqueness and the genuine whirlwind of his light blue, red, dark brown, greenish colorful spots do not obscure the clear compositional structure of the picture in the form of an ellipse, which is intersected by the diagonally located body of Darius - the semantic center of the composition.
But the most important side of Guardi's work is associated with the development of landscape painting, when he, from the 1740s. under the influence of Marieschi and Canaletto, whose drawings he copied for a long time, he began to work in the field of architectural landscape. Following Canaletto, Guardi at the same time sought to overcome the linear-perspective construction of his guide.
In 1763, on the occasion of the beginning of the reign of the new Doge Alvise IV Mocenigo, marked by a number of brilliant festivities, Guardi painted twelve large Venetian vedas, almost exactly using Canaletto's compositions engraved by Brustolon for his paintings. Such borrowings, as we see, were encountered in Guardi’s painting practice more than once, but this did not reduce the dignity of his paintings; Guardi's airy-colored interpretation transformed the dryly authentic vedutes into images of Venice, full of awe, movement and life.
Guardi was great master drawing. His main technique is pen drawings, sometimes highlighted with watercolors. In them he looked primarily for movement and instantaneous impression. The earlier drawings are marked by rocaille motifs, the lines are rounded, whimsical and flexible, the movement is exaggerated, in the later ones much greater generalization appears; washes with ink and bistrom give them an incomparable picturesqueness. Many of them are made directly from life - they capture the running clouds, the movement of water, the sliding of gondolas, their incorrect reflections, the temperamental and bold turns of the figures. Buildings, staircases, loggias, colonnades are outlined in unfinished, bravura, abrupt strokes crossing each other. Both the airy grace of Venetian architecture and its constructiveness were conveyed by the artist with an amazing sense of line, at once intermittent and generalized.
The most characteristic artistic techniques of Guardi in his painting include free variations on the same favorite theme, the so-called capriccio. He finds more and more new motives for his constant “model”, he paints Venice, which he has not left all his life, at different hours of the day, discovering more and more colorful nuances, giving his landscapes either a romantic look, or coloring them in the sad tones of lyrical reflection .
In the 1770s, Guardi reached the pinnacle of his skill. With thin and free strokes, he paints squares, canals, streets, dilapidated buildings, outskirts and poor quarters of Venice, its secluded courtyards, deserted lagoons, quiet alleys, unexpectedly ending in a wide shaded arch, from the arch of which, like a giant transparent drop, hangs a glass lantern, as if melting in the pink evening air (“City View”; Hermitage). Essentially, Guardi transformed the type of decorative stage vedata? which dominated Venetian painting in the mid-18th century, into a landscape of the most subtle lyrical sound, imbued with deeply personal experience.
By 1782 there are two large series of “Celebrations”, performed by Guardi according to official orders. The first of them consisted of four canvases dedicated to the stay of Pope Pius VI in the Venetian Republic, the second was painted in honor of the visit of the heir to the Russian throne, Grand Duke Pavel Petrovich, to Venice and included five paintings. Four of them have survived - “Ball at the Teatro San Benedetto” (Paris), “Gala Concert” (Munich), “Banquet” (Paris), “Feast in St. Mark" (Venice).
“Gala Concert” is one of the artist’s most brilliant works. This picture captures that elusive thing that was especially inherent in Guardi's mastery - the spirit of the gallant celebration of the 18th century is conveyed. Here the music itself seems audible, flying from the light bows of a female violin orchestra. In the soft flickering of candles illuminating the high ballroom, warm air seems to sway in waves; Luxurious ladies' toilets flash in blue, red, yellow, brown, silver-gray tones, painted in a whirlwind of trembling, luminous colorful strokes. With light strokes of the brush, Guardi outlines faces, wigs and hats, sometimes with transparent or impasto spots, denoting figures.
In 1784, Guardi, fulfilling the official order of the procurator of the republic, painted the painting “The Rise of a Balloon in Venice” (Berlin), depicting an event that was unusual for that time. Using a familiar motif, Guardi places in the foreground a shadowed stone canopy, under which curious spectators crowd, and framed by columns, a pinkish cloudy sky with a swinging hot air balloon can be seen.
In their later works Guardi came to the greatest generalization and laconicism of pictorial means. In one of the artist’s last excellent paintings, “The Venetian Lagoon” (c. 1790; Milan, Poldi Pezzoli Museum), executed in a restrained color scheme, but rich in shades of color, nothing is depicted except a deserted bay with several gondolas and flowing humid air, in which the outlines of churches and palaces visible in the distance seem to melt.
Modest, devoid of external effect, small paintings by Guardi were not sufficiently appreciated in their time and remained in the shadows next to the works of Tiepolo, full of brilliance and splendor. Only many decades later was the true significance of his works revealed, which are not only outstanding monuments of the Settecento, but also harbingers of many achievements of realistic landscape in the art of the 19th century.
Simultaneously with the Venetian school, which occupied a leading position in the art of the Settecento, other schools in Italy also developed.
The largest representative of the Neapolitan school was Francesco Solimena (1657-1747), whose style was associated with late Baroque painting of the 17th century. Having been influenced by Lanfranco, Luca Giordano, Pietro da Cortona and Preti, Solimena worked mainly in the field of decorative painting, frescoing Neapolitan churches (San Paolo Maggiore, San Domenco Maggiore, Gesu Nuovo). His brushes also include altar images, paintings on religious and allegorical themes and portraits.
Solimena's spectacular painting style with its dark brown spots contrasting with yellow and lilac tones and strokes of red, his dynamic compositions at the same time bear the imprint of a peculiar chill as in the depiction of characters whose impulses are devoid of the passionate pathos that distinguished the images of the Baroque masters the previous century, and in color, where a general lilac-gray tone slips through.
Among his students, Giuseppe Bonito (1707-1789) should be noted. Working at first in the spirit of Solimena, Bonito later moved away from it towards the everyday genre, but could not completely break with the principles of the decorative style. The subjects of his paintings, bright but somewhat cold in color, are mainly carnival scenes.
In the first half of the 18th century. among various artistic directions In Italy, a clearly defined genre, democratic in content, arose. This is a direction that researchers have given the name pittura della realita (painting real world), united many masters who turned to the image everyday life and who chose various everyday and common scenes as subjects for their paintings. At the same time as Bonito, the Neapolitan Gasparo Traversi worked (worked between 1732 and 1769) - a bright and interesting artist, influenced by the art of Caravaggio. It is distinguished by sharp chiaroscuro, relief sculpting of the form, lively, sharp composition, and temperamental turns of the figures. Among his best works belong to “The Wounded” (Venice, Brass collection), “Secret Letter” (Naples, Capodimonte Museum), “Drawing Lesson” (Vienna).
We also find masters of this trend in Lombardy, including Bergamo and Brescia. Among them are Giacomo Francesco Chipper, or Todeschini, obviously German by origin, but who worked all his life in Italy, and Lcopo Ceruti (worked in the second quarter of the 18th century). The first is the author of numerous genre paintings of unequal quality, depicting shoemakers, musicians, card players, and women at work. Jacopo Ceruti was the most outstanding representative of this trend. The characters in his paintings are almost always working people. Among his best works refers to the “Laundress” - a young woman washing clothes in a stone pool; her face with huge sad eyes is turned to the viewer (Brescia, Pinacoteca). “Beggar Negro”, “Young Man with a Pipe”, “Woman Weaving a Basket” - all these images, conveyed with lively observation, are distinguished by great strength and a sense of artistic truth. Among other Lombard painters, one can name Francesco Londio, who worked in Milan. In Rome in the first half of the 18th century. Antonio Amorosi, the author of scenes from the life of the common people, stands out.
In general, however, the development of this trend in Italy was short-lived - its democratic tendencies did not find the proper response and support in the social and artistic environment of that time.
The artistic life of Rome was in its own way no less intense than in Venice. From the beginning of the 18th century, Rome became a genuine international artistic center, where not only people of art, but scientists, archaeologists, major historians and writers of that time flocked.
Excavations Ancient Rome, Herculaneum, Pompeii, and the temples of Paestum in Southern Italy opened before the eyes of the people of that time the treasures of ancient art, which became available for viewing. Filled with the spirit of romantic discoveries and surprises, Italy irresistibly attracted young artists of all countries and nationalities, for whom a trip to Rome became a cherished dream, and receiving the Rome Prize was the highest award after years of apprenticeship spent within the walls of academies. A very significant role in introducing the history of ancient art was played by the works of the famous German art historian Winckelmann, a passionate enthusiast of ancient culture, an eyewitness to the great archaeological discoveries, to the description of which he devoted a number of his works. The most general of them was his book “History of the Art of Antiquity” (1764), where for the first time the general course of development of Greek art was traced, the character of which Winckelmann defined by the concepts of “noble simplicity and calm grandeur.” Despite a number of errors and incorrect assessments of the social and ideological essence of Greek art, an idea of which Winckelmann could get mainly from Roman copies of Greek originals, his book was a true discovery for people of the 18th century.
It is therefore not surprising that the Italian artists of the Roman school could not ignore ancient motifs in their work. One of them was Pompeo Batoni (1708-1787), who wrote a number of compositions on mythological and religious subjects, distinguished by some sweetness of images and cold coloring - “Thetis gives Achilles to be raised by Chiron” (1771), “Hercules at the Crossroads” (1765) (both - Hermitage), “Penitent Magdalene” (Dresden, Art Gallery).
The French Academy also played a major role in the artistic life of Rome, gathering around itself young painters, whose artistic activity was more lively and fruitful than the lifeless, artificially programmatic creativity of the Roman neoclassicists, led by the German painter Raphael Mengs. Among the French masters who worked in Rome were the painters Vienne, Hubert Robert, Fragonard, Subleira, David, the sculptor Pajou, the architect Soufflot and a number of others. In addition, there was a colony of German artists. Many of the French masters developed motifs of the classical landscape, already in the 17th century. represented by the largest French painters who lived in Italy - Poussin and Claude Lorrain. In this genre, along with the French, the Venetian Francesco Zuccarelli (1702-1788), the author of idyllic landscapes, worked in this genre, as well as a representative of the Roman school, the famous “ruin painter” Giovanni Paolo Pannini (1697-1764), who depicted not only Roman vedutes, but also various outstanding events of their time, as well as the interiors of churches.
The majestic ruins of the Colosseum, dilapidated colonnades in Pompeii and Paestum, mausoleums, obelisks, reliefs, statues gave boundless scope to the artistic imagination and attracted painters, draftsmen and engravers, who performed free compositions based on ancient motifs, combined with depictions of scenes from everyday life. “Rome, even when destroyed, teaches,” Hubert Robert wrote in one of his paintings. These landscapes enjoyed enormous success among the Roman and French nobility and, like the Venetian vedutes, became widespread in 18th-century art.
But the most outstanding phenomenon in the field of this genre was the work of the famous master of architectural drawing, archaeologist and engraver Giovanni Battista Piranesi (1720-1778), who inspired entire generations of artists and architects with his architectural fantasies. A Venetian by birth, he lived almost his entire life in Rome, where he was drawn by “an irresistible desire to study and see those famous cities where so many great things were done, and to paint their monuments - witnesses of the great past,” as his biographer writes.
Deeply passionate about studying the architectural heritage of Italy, Piranesi also became acquainted with the work of the large and extensive family of theatrical architects and decorators Bibbien - natives of Bologna, but who worked, following the example of most Settecentist masters, in addition to Italy in various European cities - Bayreuth, Vienna, Prague and others. Their treatises and teachings on perspective illusionism, as well as the decorative works of Andrea Pozzo,
The Pannini brothers of Valeriani had a great influence on him. In the works of Piranesi, the style of the late Roman Baroque almost closely merges with the style of the emerging classicism. Interest in theatrical and decorative compositions contributed to the rooting of foreshortening and perspective perception of space and deep contrasting chiaroscuro in his works.
One of his early works, published in 1745 and 1760, is a suite of fourteen large engravings “Dungeons” (“Carceri”) depicting endless multi-story vaulted rooms crossed by beams, staircases, galleries, drawbridges, where in the contrasts of darkness and light, blocks, levers, ropes, wheels, chains hanging from the ceilings are intricately interspersed with fragments of antique columns, friezes and bas-reliefs. These fantastic compositions, probably inspired by modern theater sets by Piranesi, are distinguished by their immense scale, but nevertheless clearly outlined in their details, architecturally crystallized space.
Piranesi's architectural talent could not actively express itself in the actual construction of Italy at that time. "U modern architect there is no other choice but to express one’s own ideas with drawings alone,” wrote Piranesi, creating his “imaginary architecture” in separate etching series. His main cycles are dedicated to the majestic buildings of ancient Greece and Rome.
Not striving for an accurate archaeological reconstruction of the monuments of ancient architecture, Piranesi, in addition to free interpretation, surrounded them with a special romantic aura, which caused sharp reproaches and attacks on him from contemporary scientists and archaeologists. His etchings are rather memorial monuments to the great past of Rome, which he worshiped with undying passion.
In 1747, Piranesi released a series of etchings “Views of Rome”, in which he achieves an extraordinary monumentality of the architectural image thanks to the maximum approach of the depicted buildings to the foreground, shown, moreover, from a very low point of view. Small figures of people seem small and insignificant compared to the huge columns and arches. Always working using the etching technique, Piranesi softened the contours with deep black-velvet shadows, giving an extraordinary picturesqueness to all his compositions. In his depictions of Roman bridges, he especially emphasizes the power of ancient Roman buildings, conveying their proud grandeur. The same mood permeates the etching “Castle of St. Angel in Rome."
The monumental four-volume suite “Roman Antiquities,” published in 1756, is distinguished by its amazing breadth of material coverage. Piranesi’s most remarkable creations include his last suite of etchings with views of the ancient Greek temple of Poseidon in Paestum. Piranesi's engraving needle works wonders here, giving these compositions the deepest picturesque thanks to the harmonious distribution of light and soft black-velvet shadows. What is even more striking here is the variety of points of view: giant colonnades appear before the viewer from different angles, distant plans seem to be buried in soft and warm air, the foreground, free and light, devoid of any clutter previously characteristic of Piranesi, is successfully filled with staffage - under the shadow of dilapidated columns Artists have settled down and antiquity lovers are wandering around. After Piranesi’s death, some of the unfinished engravings of this cycle were completed by his son Francesco (c. 1758/59-1810), who adopted his father’s graphic style.
The artistic results achieved by the masters of the Roman school in the 18th century were generally less significant than the achievements of Venice. But her main merit was the promotion of the ideas of ancient art. And they, in turn, having received a new social focus, saturated with deep content and high civic pathos, served as a powerful stimulus for the creativity of the leading European masters of the eve new era, opening with the French bourgeois revolution of 1789.
PAINTING OF ITALY
In Italy, where the Catholic reaction finally triumphed in the 17th century, Baroque art was formed very early, flourished and became the dominant movement.
The painting of this time was characterized by spectacular decorative compositions, ceremonial portraits depicting arrogant nobles and ladies with a proud posture, drowning in luxurious clothes and jewelry.
Instead of a line, preference was given to a picturesque spot, mass, and light and shadow contrasts, with the help of which the form was created. Baroque violated the principles of dividing space into plans, the principles of direct linear perspective to enhance depth, the illusion of going into infinity.
The origin of Baroque painting in Italy is associated with the work of the Carracci brothers, the founders of one of the first art schools in Italy - the “Academy of those on the right path” (1585), the so-called Bologna Academy - a workshop in which novice masters were trained according to a special program.
Annibale Carracci (1560-1609) was the most talented of the three Carracci brothers. His work clearly shows the principles of the Bologna Academy, which set as its main task the revival of monumental art and the traditions of the Renaissance during its heyday, which Carracci’s contemporaries revered as an example of unattainable perfection and a kind of artistic “absolute”. Therefore, Carracci perceives the masterpieces of his great predecessors more as a source from which one can draw aesthetic solutions found by the titans of the Renaissance, and not as a starting point for his own creative quests. The plastically beautiful, the ideal is not for him the “highest degree” of the real, but only an obligatory artistic norm - art is thus opposed to reality, in which the master does not find a new fundamental ideal. Hence the conventionality and abstractness of his images and pictorial solutions.
At the same time, the art of the Carracci brothers and Bolognese academicism turned out to be perfectly suitable for being put into service official ideology It is not without reason that their work quickly received recognition in the highest (state and Catholic) spheres.
Annibale Carracci's largest work in the field of monumental painting is the painting of the gallery of the Palazzo Farnese in Rome with frescoes telling about the life of the gods - based on scenes from the "Metamorphoses" of the ancient Roman poet Ovid (1597-1604, done together with his brother and assistants).
The painting consists of individual panels gravitating towards a central large composition depicting “The Triumph of Bacchus and Ariadne”, which introduces an element of dynamics into the pictorial ensemble. The naked male figures placed between these panels imitate sculpture, while at the same time being the protagonists of the paintings. The result was an impressive large-scale work, spectacular in appearance, but not unified by any meaningful idea, without which the monumental ensembles of the Renaissance were unthinkable. In the future, these principles embodied by Carracci - the desire for dynamic composition, illusionistic effects and self-sufficient decorativeness - will be characteristic of all monumental painting of the 17th century.
Annibale Carracci wants to fill the motifs taken from the art of the Renaissance with lively, modern content. He calls for studying nature; in the early period of his creativity, he even turns to genre painting. But, from the master’s point of view, nature itself is too rough and imperfect, so on the canvas it should appear already transformed, ennobled in accordance with the norms of classical art. Therefore, specific life motives could exist in the composition only as a separate fragment designed to enliven the scene. For example, in the painting “The Bean Eater” (1580s), one can feel the artist’s ironic attitude towards what is happening: he emphasizes the spiritual primitiveness of the peasant greedily eating beans; images of figures and objects are deliberately simplified. Others are in the same spirit genre paintings young painter: “The Butcher’s Shop”, “Self-Portrait with Father”, “Hunting” (all 1580s) - adj., fig. 1.
Many of Annibale Carracci's paintings have religious themes. But the cold perfection of forms leaves little room for the manifestation of feelings in them. Only in rare cases does an artist create works of a different kind. This is the “Lamentation of Christ” (c. 1605). The Bible tells how holy worshipers of Christ came to worship at his tomb, but found it empty. From an angel sitting on the edge of the sarcophagus, they learned about his miraculous resurrection and were happy and shocked by this miracle. But the imagery and emotion of the ancient text do not find much response in Carracci; he could only contrast the light, flowing clothes of the angel with the massive and static figures of the women. The coloring of the picture is also quite ordinary, but at the same time it is distinguished by its strength and intensity.
A special group consists of his works on mythological themes, which reflected his passion for the masters of the Venetian school. In these paintings, glorifying the joy of love, the beauty of the naked female body, Annibale reveals himself as a wonderful colorist, lively and poetic artist.
Among the best works of Annibale Carracci are his landscape works. Carracci and his students created, based on the traditions of the Venetian landscape of the 16th century, a type of so-called classical, or heroic, landscape. The artist also transformed nature in an artificially sublime spirit, but without external pathos. His works marked the beginning of one of the most fruitful trends in the development of landscape painting of this era (“Flight into Egypt”, ca. 1603), which then found its continuation and development in the work of masters of subsequent generations, in particular Poussin.
Michelangelo Caravaggio (1573-1610). The most significant Italian painter of this period was Michelangelo Caravaggio, who can be considered one of the greatest masters of the 17th century.
The artist's name comes from the name of the town in northern Italy in which he was born. From the age of eleven he already worked as an apprentice to one of the Milanese painters, and in 1590 he left for Rome, which by the end of the 17th century had become the artistic center of all of Europe. It was here that Caravaggio achieved his most significant success and fame.
Unlike most of his contemporaries, who perceived only a more or less familiar set of aesthetic values, Caravaggio managed to abandon the traditions of the past and create his own, deeply individual style. This was partly the result of his negative reaction to the artistic cliches of the time.
Never belonged to a certain art school, already in his early works he contrasted the individual expressiveness of the model, simple everyday motives with the idealization of images and the allegorical interpretation of the plot characteristic of the art of mannerism and academicism (“Little sick Bacchus", "Young man with a basket of fruits", both - 1593).
Although at first glance it may seem that he departed from the artistic canons of the Renaissance, moreover, he overthrew them, in reality the pathos of his realistic art was their internal continuation, which laid the foundations of realism of the 17th century. This is clearly evidenced by his own statements. “Every picture, no matter what it depicts, and no matter who it was painted,” asserted Caravaggio, “is no good if all its parts are not executed from life; Nothing could be preferred to this mentor.” This statement by Caravaggio, with his characteristic straightforwardness and categoricalness, embodies the entire program of his art.
The artist made a great contribution to the development of the everyday genre (“Rounders,” 1596; “Boy Bitten by a Lizard,” 1594). The heroes of most of Caravaggio’s works are people from the people. He found them in the motley crowd of the street, in cheap taverns and in noisy city squares, brought them to his workshop as models, preferring precisely this method of work to studying antique statues– this is evidenced by the first biographer of the artist D. Bellori. His favorite characters are soldiers, card players, fortune tellers, musicians (“Fortune Teller”, “Lute Player” (both 1596); “Musicians”, 1593) - adj., fig. 2. It is they who “inhabit” Caravaggio’s genre paintings, in which he asserts not just the right to exist, but also artistic significance private household motive. If in his early works Caravaggio’s painting, for all its plasticity and substantive persuasiveness, was still somewhat rough, then later he gets rid of this shortcoming. The artist’s mature works are monumental canvases with exceptional dramatic power (“The Calling of the Apostle Matthew” and “The Martyrdom of the Apostle Matthew” (both 1599-1600); “Entombment”, “Death of Mary” (both ca. 1605-1606 )). These works, although close in style to his earlier ones genre scenes, but already filled with special internal drama.
Caravaggio's painting style during this period was based on powerful contrasts of light and shadow, expressive simplicity of gestures, energetic sculpting of volumes, richness of color - techniques that create emotional tension, emphasizing the acute affectation of feelings. Usually the artist depicts several figures, taken in close-up, close to the viewer and painted with all plasticity, materiality and visible authenticity. The environment, everyday interiors and still life begin to play a large role in his works. This is how, for example, in the painting “The Calling of Matthew” the master shows the emergence of the sublime and spiritual into the world of “low” everyday life.
The plot of the work is based on the story from the Gospel about how Christ called the tax collector Matthew, despised by everyone, to become his disciple and follower. The characters are depicted sitting at a table in an uncomfortable, empty room, and the characters are presented in life-size, dressed in modern costumes. Christ and the Apostle Peter unexpectedly entering the room evoke a variety of reactions from those gathered - from amazement to wariness. The stream of light entering the dark room from above rhythmically organizes what is happening, highlighting and connecting its main elements (the face of Matthew, the hand and profile of Christ). By snatching figures from the darkness and sharply juxtaposing bright light and deep shadow, the painter gives a feeling of internal tension and dramatic excitement. The scene is dominated by the elements of feelings and human passions. To create an emotional atmosphere, Caravaggio masterfully uses rich color. Unfortunately, Caravaggio’s harsh realism was not understood by many of his contemporaries, adherents of “high art.” After all, even when creating works on mythological and religious themes (the most famous of them is “Rest on the Flight into Egypt”, 1597), he invariably remained faithful to the realistic principles of his everyday painting, therefore even the most traditional biblical subjects received a completely different intimate psychological interpretation different from the traditional one. And the appeal to nature, which he made the direct object of depiction of his works, and the truthfulness of its interpretation caused many attacks on the artist from the clergy and officials.
However, among artists XVII There was, perhaps, not a single century of any significance that would not, in one way or another, have experienced the powerful influence of Caravaggio’s art. True, most of the master’s followers, who were called Caravaggists, diligently copied only his external techniques, and above all, his famous contrasting chiaroscuro, intensity and materiality of painting.
Peter Paul Rubens, Diego Velazquez, Jusepe de Ribera, Rembrandt van Rijn, Georges de La Tour and many other famous artists went through the stage of fascination with Caravaggism. It is impossible to imagine the further development of realism in the 17th century without the revolution that Michelangelo Caravaggio made in European painting.
Alessandro Magnasco (1667-1749). His work is associated with the romantic movement in Italian art of the 17th century.
The future artist was born in Genoa. He studied first with his father, then, after his death, in Milan with one of the local masters, who taught him the technical techniques of Venetian painting and taught him the art of portraiture. Subsequently, Magnasco worked for many years in Milan, Genoa, Florence, and only in his declining years, in 1735, did he finally return to his hometown.
This talented but extremely controversial artist was endowed with an extremely bright personality. Magnasco’s work defies any classification: sometimes deeply religious, sometimes blasphemous; in his works he showed himself either as an ordinary decorator or as a painter with a tremulous soul. His art is imbued with heightened emotionality, on the verge of mysticism and exaltation.
The nature of the artist's early works, completed during his stay in Milan, was determined by the traditions of the Genoese school of painting, which gravitated towards the pastoral. But already such works of his as several “Bacchanalia”, “Bandits’ Rest” (all from the 1710s) - depicting restless human figures against the backdrop of majestic ancient ruins - carry a completely different emotional charge than the serene pastorals of his predecessors. They are made in dark colors, with choppy, dynamic strokes, indicating the perception of the world in a dramatic aspect (add., Fig. 3).
The artist’s attention is drawn to everything unusual - scenes of the Inquisition tribunals, torture, which he could observe in Milan under Spanish rule (“Torture Chamber”), a sermon in a synagogue (“Synagogue”, late 1710s-1720s), nomadic life gypsies (“Gypsy Meal”), etc.
Magnasco’s favorite subjects are various episodes from monastic life (“Funeral of a Monk”, “Nuns’ Meal”, both from the 1720s), cells of hermits and alchemists, ruins of buildings and night landscapes with figures of gypsies, beggars, wandering musicians, etc. Quite real characters his works - bandits, fishermen, hermits, gypsies, comedians, soldiers, washerwomen ("Landscape with Washerwomen", 1720s) - act in a fantastic environment. They are depicted against the background of gloomy ruins, a raging sea, a wild forest, and harsh gorges. Magnasco paints their figures as exaggeratedly elongated, as if writhing and in constant, continuous movement; their elongated curved silhouettes are subordinated to the nervous rhythm of the brushstroke. The paintings are permeated with a tragic feeling of human insignificance in the face of the blind forces of nature and the harshness of social reality.
The same disturbing dynamics distinguishes his landscape sketches, with their emphasized subjectivity and emotionality, pushing into the background the transfer of real pictures of nature (“Seascape”, 1730s; “ Mountain landscape", 1720s). In some later works The master's influence is noticeably influenced by the landscapes of the Italian Salvatore Rosa and the engravings of the French Mannerist artist Jacques Callot. This difficult-to-distinguish facet of reality and the bizarre world created by the imagination of the artist, who acutely felt all the tragic and joyful events of the surrounding reality happening around him, will always be present in his works, giving them the character of either a parable or an everyday scene.
Magnasco's expressive painting style in some ways anticipated the creative quests of 18th-century artists. He paints with fluent, rapid strokes, using restless chiaroscuro, giving rise to restless lighting effects, which gives his paintings a deliberate sketchiness, and sometimes even decorativeness. At the same time, the coloring of his works is devoid of colorful multicolor; usually the master is limited to a gloomy grayish-brown or greenish palette, although in its own way quite refined and refined. Recognized during his lifetime and forgotten by his descendants, this unique artist regained popularity only at the beginning of the 20th century, when he was seen as a forerunner of impressionism and even expressionism.
Giuseppe Maria Crespi (1665-1747), a native of Bologna, began his painting career by diligently copying paintings and frescoes by famous masters, including his fellow countrymen the Carracci brothers. Later, he traveled around northern Italy, becoming acquainted with the work of the High Renaissance masters, mainly Venetian (Titian and Veronese).
By the beginning of the 18th century. Crespi is already quite famous, in particular, for his altar images. But the main work of the early period of his work is the monumental painting of lampshades of the Palazzo Count Pepoli (1691-1692) in Bologna, the mythological characters of which (gods, heroes, nymphs) in his interpretation look extremely earthly, animated and convincing, in contrast to the traditional abstract images of the Baroque .
Crespi worked in various genres. He painted on mythological, religious and everyday subjects, created portraits and still lifes, and brought a new and sincere vision of the contemporary world to each of these traditional genres. The artist’s commitment to nature and an accurate representation of the surrounding reality came into irreconcilable conflict with the decrepit traditions of Bolognese academicism, which by this time had become a brake on the development of art. Therefore, a constant struggle against the conventions of academic painting for the triumph of realistic art runs like a red thread through all of his work.
In the early 1700s. Crespi moves from mythological scenes to depicting scenes from peasant life, treating them first in the spirit of pastoralism, and then giving them the increasingly convincing character of everyday painting. One of the first among the masters XVIII century he began to depict everyday life ordinary people– laundresses, dishwashers, cooks, as well as episodes from peasant life.
The desire to give his paintings greater authenticity forces him to turn to Caravaggio’s “funeral” light technique - sharp illumination of part of the dark space of the interior, thanks to which the figures acquire plastic clarity. The simplicity and sincerity of the narrative are complemented by the introduction of folk items into the interior depiction, which are always painted by Crespi with great pictorial skill (“Scene in the Cellar”; “Peasant Family”).
The highest achievement of everyday painting of that time were his canvases “Fair in Poggio a Caiano” (c. 1708) and “Fair” (c. 1709) depicting crowded folk scenes.
They showed the artist’s interest in the graphics of Jacques Callot, as well as his close acquaintance with the work of the Dutch masters of genre painting of the 17th century. But Crespi’s images of peasants lack Callot’s irony, and he is not as skilled at characterizing the environment as the Dutch genre painters did. The figures and objects in the foreground are drawn in more detail than the others - this is reminiscent of Magnasco’s style. However, the creations of the Genoese painter, executed in a bravura manner, always contain an element of fantasy. Crespi strove for a detailed and accurate story about a colorful and cheerful scene. Clearly distributing light and shadow, he endows his figures with vital specificity, gradually overcoming the traditions of the pastoral genre.
The most significant work of the mature master was a series of seven paintings “Seven Sacraments” (1710s) - the highest achievement of Baroque painting of the early 18th century (add., Fig. 4). These are completely new works in spirit, which marked a departure from the traditional abstract interpretation of religious scenes.
All paintings (“Confession”, “Baptism”, “Marriage”, “Communion”, “Priesthood”, “Confirmation”, “Unction”) are painted in Rembrandt’s warm reddish-brown tonality. The use of harsh lighting adds a certain emotional note to the narrative of the sacraments. The artist’s color palette is rather monochrome, but at the same time surprisingly rich. various shades and tints of colors, united by a soft, sometimes as if glowing from within chiaroscuro. This gives all the depicted episodes a touch of mysterious intimacy of what is happening and at the same time emphasizes Crespi’s plan, who strives to tell about the most significant stages of existence for every person of that time, which are presented in the form of scenes from reality, acquiring the character of a kind of parable. Moreover, this story is distinguished not by the didactics characteristic of the Baroque, but by secular edification.
Almost everything that was written by the master after this presents a picture of the gradual fading of his talent. Increasingly, he uses familiar cliches, compositional schemes, and academic poses in his paintings, which he previously avoided. It is not surprising that soon after his death Crespi's work was quickly forgotten.
As a bright and original master, he was discovered only in the twentieth century. But in terms of its quality, depth and emotional richness, Crespi’s painting, which completes the art of the 17th century, in its best manifestations is second, perhaps, only to Caravaggio, with whose work Italian art of this era began so brilliantly and innovatively.
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From Jun's book. Loneliness of the sun author Savitskaya SvetlanaPainting and graphics To learn to draw, you must first learn to see. Anyone can draw; both a camera and mobile phone, but, as is believed in painting, the “artist’s face” is difficult to achieve. Juna left her mark in painting. Her paintings
From the book History of Art of the 17th Century author Khammatova V.V.PAINTING OF SPAIN Art of Spain, like all spanish culture in general, was distinguished by significant originality, which consists in the fact that the Renaissance in this country, having barely reached the stage of high prosperity, immediately entered a period of decline and crisis, which were
From the author's bookPAINTING OF FLANDERS Flemish art in some sense can be called a unique phenomenon. Never before in history has such a small country in area, which was also in such a dependent position, created such an original and significant country in its own right.
From the author's bookPAINTING OF THE NETHERLANDS The Dutch revolution turned Holland, in the words of K. Marx, “into an exemplary capitalist country of the seventeenth century.” Conquest of national independence, destruction of feudal remnants, rapid development of productive forces and trade
From the author's bookPAINTING OF FRANCE France occupied a special place among the leading European countries in the field of artistic creativity in the 17th century. In the division of labor among national schools of European painting in solving genre, thematic, spiritual and formal problems, the share of France