In the Renaissance, Florentine artists rediscovered the beauty of the natural world. The Uffizi Gallery shows this beauty in all its three-dimensional, realistic glory, capturing the optimistic spirt of the Renaissance.
The Uffizi has the best collection of Italian Renaissance paintings anywhere. It’s here that you find the essential masterpieces of the Renaissance: Botticelli’s Birth of Venus… a Madonna by Michelangelo… the Venus de’ Medici statue… and the first known brushstrokes by 14-year-old Leonardo da Vinci. What makes the Uffizi especially instructive is that it’s laid out in roughly chronological order. Walking through here is like watching the Renaissance blossom before our eyes. You’ll see the evolution of art from flat and solemn to three-dimensional and lively, with all the human drama. Any visit culminates with the holy trinity of Renaissance painters: Leonardo, Michelangelo, and Raphael. They captured the sheet beauty of the movement called the Renaissance.
Last point before jumping in… the Uffizi is crowded. Look at the picture above… and this was a quiet morning. So be sure to book an advance reservation.
Top Floor: I’d start on the top floor… which means you are going to climb up four long flights of the monumental staircase to the top floor. There is an elevator… but get the exercise! Let’s start in medieval times:
Giotto – Madonna and Child – Mary and baby Jesus sit on a throne in a golden never-never land symbolizing heaven. It’s as if medieval Christians couldn’t imagine holy people inhabiting our dreary material world. It took Renaissance painters to bring Mary down to Earth and give her human realism. For the Florentines, “realism” meant “three-dimensionality.” They saw the beauty of God in nature and in the human body. They used math and science to capture the natural world on Canvas as realistically as possible.
Giotto’s Madonna and Child is just one altarpiece in this room.
All these Madonna and Child’s were painted within a few decades of each other around the year 1300 – show baby steps in the march to realism. Duccio’s piece is the most medieval and two dimensional. There’s no background. The angels are just stacked one on top of the other, floating in a golden atmosphere. Mary’s throne is crudely drawn – notice that the left side is at a three-quarters angle while the right is practically straight on. Mary herself is a wispy cardboard-cutout figure that seems to float just above the throne. Nice try, Duccio, but not exactly realistic.
The work of Cimabue is an improvement, mixing the iconic Byzantine style with budding Italian realism. The large throne creates an illusion of depth. Mary’s foot actually sticks out over the lip of the throne. Still, the angels are stacked totem pole-style, like heavenly bookends.
Now go back and look at the Giotto Madonna. Giotto uses realism to make his theological points. He creates a space and fills it. Like a set designer, he builds a three-dimensional “stage” – the canopied throne – then peoples it with real beings. The throne has angles in front, prophets behind, an da canopy over the top, clearly defining its three dimensions. The steps leading up to it lead from our space to Mary’s, making the scene an extension of our world. But the real triumph here is Mary herself – big and monumental, like a Roman statue. Beneath her robe, she ha a real live body, with knees and breasts that stick out. This three-dimensionality was revolutionary in its day, giving us a sneak peek at the Renaissance a century before it began.
Simone Martini – The Annunciation (1333) –
In this late-medieval work, the artist boils things down to just the basic figures needed to get the message across; the angels appears to sternly announce to Mary that she’ll be the mother of Jesus. In the center is a vase of lilies, a symbol of Mary’s purity. Above is the Holy Spirit, as a dove, about to descend on her. If the symbols aren’t enough to get the message across. Simone Martini has spelled it right out for us in Latin: “Ave Gratia Plena… Hail, favored on, the Lord is with you.” Mary doesn’t look exactly as pleased as punch.
This is not a three-dimensional work. The point was not to recreate reality but to teach religion, especially to the illiterate masses. This isn’t a beautiful Mary or even a real Mary. She’s a generic woman without distinctive features. We know she’s pure – not from her face, but only because of the halo and because of the symbolic flowers. Before the Renaissance, artists didn’t care about realism or about the beauty of individual people.
Notice how many of the paintings above have the same medieval features: religious subjects, gold backgrounds, two-dimensional, and with meticulous detail. Though these paintings lack photographic realism, they’re certainly impressive. They create a solemn, spiritual atmosphere that was made to order for the churches they graced.
Gentile da Fabriano – The Adoration of the Magi (1423) – Look at the incredible detail – the Three Kings’ costumes, the fine horses, and the cow in the cave. The panel is filled from top to bottom with realistic details, but it’s far from realistic. While the Magi worship Jesus in the foreground, the scene showing their return trip home dangles over their heads in the so-called “background.”
This is a textbook example of the International Gothic style popular with Europe’s aristocrats in the early 1400s. It features well-dressed setting. The religious subject is just an excuse to paint secular luxuries like brocade-pattern clothing and jewelry. And the scene’s background and foreground are compressed together to create an overall design that’ pleasing to the eye.
Such exquisite detail work raises an interesting question: was Renaissance three-dimensionality truly an improvement over Gothic, or just a different style?
Paolo Uccello – The Battle of San Romano: This large painting – ten feet wide – captures the decisive moment when Florence rose to prominence in Italy. It’s a battle between Florence and its arch-rival Siena. Horses rear and knights tumble to the ground as the Florence forces charge in from the left with their lances and crossbows. At the peak of the battle, the Florence captain – the guy on the red horse – drives his lance straight into Siena’s general – the guy on the the white horse. The knight falls backward, and the Sienese forces are routed in chaos.
This painting also captures the decisive moment when Early Renaissance painters first achieved victory in their long battle to master 3-D. The key to achieving realism was to create the illusion of three-dimensionality on a two-dimensional canvas. In this painting, Paolo Uccello challenged himself with every possible problem. And this colorful battle scene is not so much a piece of art as an exercise in linear perspective.
Notice how the broken lances to the left set up a kind of 3-D “grid”. Then Uccello places this crowded scene onto that grid. Closer objects, like the horses, are bigger than objects farther away. The fallen horses and soldiers are experimenting in “foreshortening.” Take the fallen gray horse in the center. Uccello had to paint his hooves, which are closer to us, nearly as big as his head, which is farther away, in order to create the illusion of distance. Some of the figures are definitely A-plus material, like the gray horse. The white horse at the far right that’s walking away is also well-done. But some are more like B-minus work. But some are more like B-minus work. The kicking red horse’s legs look like ham hocks at this angle. And look at the fallen soldier in the bottom right corner. If this man stood up, he’d be the size of a child.
Some of it looks more like D-minus “Are you on drugs?” work. Like the farmland in the background. It’s supposed to be way in the distance, but the way the hedges converge make it look like it’s right behind the cluster of soldiers.
And the farmland looks really steep.
Artists like Uccello did make great strides in painting – this was way back in the 1400s. In fact it’s said that Uccello almost literally went crazy trying to master the three dimensions. I guess he got so wrapped up in it he kind of lost… perspective.
Fra Filippo Lippi – Madonna and Child with Two Angels – Mentally compare this Mary with the generic female in Simone Martini’s Annunciation. We don’t need the wispy halo over her head to tell us she’s holy – she radiates sweetness and light from her divine face. Heavenly beauty is expressed by a physically beautiful woman.
Fra (or “Brother”) Lippi, an orphan raised as a monk, lived a less-than-monkish life. He lived with a nun who bore him two children. He spent his entire life searching for the perfect Virgin. Through his studio passed the prettiest girls in Florence, many of whom decorate the walls here in this room.
Lippi painted idealized beauty, but his models were real flesh-and-blood human beings. You could look through all the thousands of paintings from the Middle Ages and not find anything so human as the mischievous face of one of Lippi’s little angel boys.
Piero della Francesca – Portraits of Federico da Montefeltro and Battista Sforza – In medieval times, only saints and angels were worthy of being painted. But in the humanistic Renaissance, even less-than-holy folk like this couple had their features preserved for posterity.
Federico, in the red fez, was a champion of the budding Renaissance. His wife, Battista, spoke several languages, and bore seven children before the age of 25.
Do the math and let that sink in…
Their friends described the loving couple as being like “two bodies sharing one soul.” Now they’re two masterpieces in one frame, gazing into each other’s eyes for eternity.
By the way, the usual way to do a double-portrait like this was to put the man on the left. But Federico’s right side was definitely not his best – he lost his right eye and the bridge of his nose in a tournament. Nevertheless, Renaissance artists discovered the beauty in ordinary people and painted them, literally, warts and all.
Antonio Pollaiuolo – The Labors of Hercules (1475) – Hercules gets a workout in these two small panels showing the human form at odd angles. He raises a club to battle the monstrous Hydra and picks Antaeus off th eground like a Renaissance WWF champ. The poses are the wildest imaginable, to show how each muscle twists and tightens. While Uccello worked on perspective, Pollaiuolo studied anatomy. In medieval times, dissection of corpses was a sin and a crime (the two were one back then). Dissecting was considered a desecration of the human body, the temple of God. But Pollaiuolo was willing to sell his soul to the devil for artistic knowledge. He dissected.
Early Renaissance artists struggled to conquer reality. It’s now time to see the fruits of their labor: the flowering of the Florentine Renaissance.
It’s Botticelli time. 🙂
This room is full of remarkable paintings – big, beautifully-composed, and full of interesting details. The subject matter is a harmonious blend of Christian and classical, Madonnas and goddesses, saints and contemporary Florentines. These large-scale paintings reflect the prosperity and sophistication of Renaissance Florence at its peak. Think about the optimistic generation that produced such works of beauty.
The city of Florence, around 1480, was a Firenz-y of activity.
There was a can-do spirit of optimism in the air, led by prosperous merchants and bankers and a strong middle class. The government was reasonably democratic, and Florentines saw themselves as citizens of a strong Republic – like ancient Rome. Their civic pride showed in the public monuments and artworks they built. Man was leaving the protection of the church to stand on his own two feet.
Lorenzo de’ Medici, head of the powerful Medici banking family, epitomized this new humanistic spirit. Strong, decisive, handsome, poetic, athletic, sensitive, charismatic, intelligent, brave, clean, and reverent, Lorenzo was a true Renaissance Man. He deserved the nickname he went by – the Magnificent. He gathered the best and brightest of Florence of evenings of wine and discussions of great ideas. Their thoughts, writings, paintings, and taste in clothes set trends all over Europe.
One of this circle was the painter Sandro Botticelli. Another was a teenager named Michelangelo Buonarroti. in that heady time, it seemed that anything was possible for Lorenzo and his circle of artists, thinkers, and bon vivants. They felt as though the beauty of the world around them was a reflection of the God who created it. Michelangelo – who grew up to be a sculptor, painter, and architect – was also a poet, and he summed up their belief that pure beauty was the path to spiritual enlightenment:
“My eyes love things that are fair,
and my soul for salvation cries.
But neither will to Heaven rise
unless the sight of Beauty lifts them there.”
Sandro Botticelli – Allegory of Spring (1478) – It’s springtime in a citrus grove. The winds of spring blow in (that’s “Mr. Blue,” on the right), causing the woman on the right to sprout flowers from her lips as she morphs into Flora, or Springtime – she walks by, spreading flowers from her dress. At the left are Mercury and the Three Graces, dancing a delicate maypole dance. The Graces may be symbolic of the three forms of love – love of beauty, love of people, and sexual love, suggested by the raised intertwined fingers. In the center stands Venus, the Greek goddess of love. Above her flies a blindfolded Cupid, happily shooting his arrows of low without worrying who they’ll hit.
This is the Renaissance in its first bloom, its “springtime” of innocence. Madonna is out, Venus is in. Adam and Eve hiding their nakedness are out, glorious flesh is in. This is a return to a pre-Christian pagan world of classical Greece, where things of the flesh are not sinful. But this is certainly no orgy – just fresh-faced innocence and playfulness.
Venus – as the goddess of earthly love – is patterned after the Christian Mary, the saint of divine love. In La Primavera, Venus is even framed by a kind of “halo” made of leaves. She wears the same tender expression of a church altarpiece and presides over a scene of pure love.
But La Primavera was secular: not painted for a church. It adorned a Medici pleasure villa. it was soon joined by an even more sensual Botticelli painting. In that one, Venus would cast off her robes completely for a full-frontal celebration of earthly love.
Botticelli – The Birth of Venus – This is one of the masterpieces of Western Art. Many tourists like to call it “Venus on the Half-Shell.”
This work was revolutionary. It was the first large-scale painting of a naked woman in a thousand years. It seemed to sum up the growing secular culture of Renaissance Florence.
According to legend, Venus – the goddess of love and beauty – was born from the foam of a wave. Botticelli depicts her as like a fragile newborn, still only half awake. Blown by the god of wind – that’s “Mr. Blue” on the left – Venus floats ashore on a scallop shell. There, her maid waits to dress her in a rich robe fit for a goddess.
Botticelli does everything possible to please the eye. His pastel colors make the world itself seem fresh and newly born. He was trained as a goldsmith, so he mixed real gold into the paints. This adds a special radiance to the details. You can see it in person in Venus’ hair… the scallop shell… the wind’s wings… and even the sun-sparkled grass.
The god of wind sets the whole scene in motion. Everything ripples like the wind: Venus’ flowing hair, the waves on the water, the swirling robes, and the jagged shoreline.
Mrs. Wind has to hold on tight to her man, as their bodies, wings, and clothes intertwine. In the center of all that wavy motion stands the still, translucent form of Venus, looking like she’s etched in glass.
Botticelli painted this after a trip to Rome, where he was inspired by the ancient statues he saw there. He gave Venus the same S-curve body and modestly-placed hands as classical Venuses. But as realistic as Venus may seem on first glance, in fact, Botticelli tweaked realism to amp up the beauty. Frankly, the anatomy is impossible. Venus’ neck is too long and she stands off-kilter. Venus’ maid even seems to float above the ground.
With the Birth of Venus, Botticelli was creating a more ethereal beauty. It’s a perfectly lit world, where no one casts a shadow. The bodies curve, the faces are idealized, and their gestures exude grace.
Venus’ nakedness is not so much erotic as innocent. Botticelli thought that physical beauty was a way of appreciating God. Remember Michelangelo’s poem:
Souls will never ascent to heaven”… until the sight of Beauty lifts them there.”
Venus’ beauty could arouse and uplift the soul, giving a spiritual longing for heavenly things.
Gaze one more time into the eyes of Venus. She’s deep in thought… but about what? Around her, flowers tumble in the slowest of slow motions, suspended like musical notes, caught at the peak of their brief life. Venus’ expression has a tinge of melancholy, as if knowing how quickly beauty fades and how innocence will not last forever.
Botticelli – La Calunnia, or The Calumny of Appelles (1495). The springtime of Florence’s Renaissance had to end. Lorenzo died young. The economy faltered. Into town rode a charismatic monk named Savonarola, preaching medieval hellfire and damnation for those who embraced the “pagan” Renaissance spirit. “Down, down!” he roared. “Down with all gold and decoration. Down where the body is food for the worms!” Savonarola presided over huge bonfires in front of the Palazzo Vecchio, where the people threw their fine clothes, jewelry, pagan books… and even paintings.
This painting, Slander, spells the end of the Florentine Renaissance. The setting is classic Renaissance architecture, but look what’s taking place beneath those stately arches. These aren’t proud Renaissance men and women but a ragtag, medieval-looking bunch, a court of thieves in an abandoned hall of justice. The accusations fly, everyone is condemned. The naked man pleads for mercy, but the hooded black figure, the symbol of his execution, turns away. The figure of Trust – naked Truth, who looks like she’s straight out of the Birth of Venus – looks up to heavn as if feeling the Renaissance slipping away. She asks, “Why have you let this happen to us?” The classical statues in their niches look on in disbelief.
Botticelli himself came under Savonarola’s spell. He burned some of his own paintings and changed his tune. His last paintings were darker, more somber, and pessimistic of humanity.
Eventually, after threatening even the pope, Savonarola’s overplayed his hand. He himself was ultimately arrested, accused, and burned on the main square in Florence.
With the death of Savonarola and the exile of the Medici, the Renaissance entered a new phase. The movement that had been born in Florence was now spreading elsewhere. All across Italy, people were rediscovering the ancient world, excavating 2,000-year-old Roman sites, and reveling in the enlightened objects they found there.
If the Renaissance was the foundation of the modern world, the foundation of the Renaissance was classical sculpture. Sculptors, painters, and poets alike turned for inspiration to ancient Greek and Roman works like these in this room. They show off the ancient mastery of human anatomy – the epitome of balance, 3-D, and idealized beauty. The Tribune Room features several well-known statues. Let’s start with the goddess of love.
Does Venus’ pose look familiar? It doesn’t take an art scholar to see the Botticelli’s Birth of Venus has the same position of the arms, the same S-curved body, and the same lifting of the right leg. Renaissance artists were clearly inspired by works done by the ancients 1,500 years before. This Venus is a Roman-era copy of the lost original, possibly by the great Greek sculptor Praxiteles. The Venus de’ Medici is balanced, harmonious, and serene, reflecting Greece’s “Golden Age,” when balance was admired in every aspect of life.
Perhaps more than any other work of art, this statues has been the epitome of both ideal beauty and sexuality. France’s Louis XIV had a bronze copy made. Napoleon stole her away to Paris for himself. In the 18th an d19th centuries, when sex was though to be “dirty,” the libido of cultured aristocrats was channeled into a love of pure beauty. Wealthy sons and daughters of Europe’s aristocrats made the pilgrimage to the Uffizi to complete their classical education… this is where they swooned in ecstasy before the cold beauty of this goddess of love.
These statues are some of the finest survivors from ancient times. The room is pretty impressive itself, with its eight-sided, marble floor, and dazzling dome.
This fine Tribune Room was a showroom, or a “cabinet of wonders,” back when this building still functioned as the Medici offices. The room is filled with family portraits; it’s a holistic statement that symbolically links the Medici family with the four basic elements; air (represented by the weathervane overhead in the center of the domed ceiling.
water (that’s from the inlaid mother of pearl), the fire of the red walls, and earth, represented by the inlaid stone floor.
In the 16-and 1700s, this room and its art were famous, and the values of the Florentine Renaissance that it featured spread throughout Europe.
This is Doriforo, or “spear carrier.” This is a high-quality Roman statue. It was patterned after a famous Greek original by the great Golden-Age sculptor Polykleitos. Doriforo’s proportions are considered absolutely perfect. His pose is contrapposto – putting his weight on one leg while slightly lifting the other one. That pose inspired countless later works.
This purple statue is now just a fragment – headless and without limbs. But this was the Roman “she-wolf,” or Lupa. Done around the year 120, it was sculpted when the Roman Empire was at its peak. It’s carved in porphyry stone, which was extremely rare, quarried only in Egypt, and the royal color of the Caesars – purple.
The she-wolf was the animal that raised Rome’s legendary founders and became the city’s symbol. Her image was reproduced throughout the Roman Empireon coins, medallions, and on statues like this one. fast-forward a thousand years, and you had Renaissance Florentines marveling at it, as well. They were amazed at the ancient Romans’ ability to create such lifelike, three-dimensional works. They learned to reproduce them in stone… and then they learned to paint them on a two-dimensional surface.
This collection was begun by the Medici family, who loved all things Classical. They displayed their collection in the garden of their home. These ancient statues inspired Florence’s great painters – Botticelli, Donatello, Leonardo, Michelangelo… the men who invented the Renaissance as we know it.
This might be the best view of the Arno river and Ponte Vecchio (or “Old Bridge”). We can also see the red-tilted roof of the Vasari Corridor, the so-called “secret” passageway stretching half a mile from the Palazzo Vecchio, and Uffizi, over the Ponte Vecchio, and up to the Pitti Palace on the other side of the river. This was a private walkway, wallpapered with great art, for the Medici family’s commute from home to work.
The pleasure of this view is the sort of pleasure that Renaissance painters wanted you to get from their paintings. For them, a canvas was a window you looked through to see the wide world. Their paintings recreate the natural perspective: distant objects – such as bridges – were dimmer and higher up on the canvas. Closer objects are clearer and lower.
My tour of the Uffizi culminates in the three greatest Renaissance artists – all of whose styles were forged right here in Florence. First we’ll see Leonardo da Vinci, who combined artistic skills with the mind of a scientist to create timeless beauty. Michelangelo Buonarroti took the Florentine style and popularized it throughout Italy. And Raphael combined the techniques of both Leonardo and Michelangelo to take the High Renaissance to its peak.
Leonardo da Vinci – The Annunciation (1475) – This room has rare works from when Leonardo was a young man living and working here in Florence. He was part of the enlightened Medici circle. He soaked up the Renaissance atmosphere, studying both art and science. These were the years when he developed the style that would propel him to his famous works, works like Mona Lisa and the Last Supper.
The Annunciation was Leonardo’s first major work – when he was just twenty years old – but it already shows the elements of his trademark style.
In the Annunciation, the angel Gabriel has walked up to Mary, and now kneels on one knee like an ambassador, saluting her. See how relaxed his other hand is, draped over his knee. Mary, who’s been reading, looks up with a gesture of surprise and curiosity.
Leonardo constructs a beautifully landscaped “stage” and puts his characters in it. Look at the bricks on the right wall. If you extended lines from them, the lines would all converge at the center of the painting, the distant blue mountain. Same with the edge of the marble table behind them. Subconsciously, this subtle touch creates a feeling of balance, order, and spaciousness.
Think back to Simone Martini’s Annunciation to realize how much more natural, relaxed, and realistic Leonardo’s version of this same scene is. He’s taken a miraculous event – and angel appearing out of the blue – and presented it in a very human way.
Nothing is forced or sterile. Leonardo seamlessly blends realistic figures, a natural setting, and mathematical perfection. Like a Renaissance architect (which Leonardo also was), he carefully composed the scene into a geometrical pattern that reflects the order seen in nature.
Leonardo da Vinci – Adoration of the Magi (1482) – This Adoration scene is a complex work, with lots going on. There’s the Magi themselves. The poor kings are absolutely stupefied by Mary and the Christ-child. It’s like they’re afraid of the baby, scurrying like chimps around a fire. Then there’s the background: with all the crowds, battling horsemen, and start ruins, this work is as agitated as the Annunciation is calm.
It gives us an idea of Leonardo’s range.
Leonardo was pioneering a new era of painting, showing not just the outer features but the inner personality.
This early work shows Leonardo working out his signature style: First, even though the work seems restless, it’s geometrically composed. In the center is Leonardo’s trademark pyramid, with Mary’s head at the peak. The bottom corners are formed by the two kneeling figures at her feet. This pyramid is enclosed by a half-circle – formed by the hillside and the surrounding crowd.
Another Leonardo specialty: baby Jesus interacts playfully wiht one of hte Magi. That’s something Leonardo pioneered and later artists copied.
In the background is a standard Leonardo fantasy landscape of ruins, mysterious figures, and a distant horizon.
And there’s one final feature so typical of Leonardo – it’s unfinished.
It has only the undercoat and the outlines Leonardo never got around to adding the main colors. Part of this was because Leonardo was often pioneering new-fangled techniques that were still untested and sometimes didn’t work. This Adoration was done in oil-based paint, not the more common egg-yolk base called tempera. Leonardo worked meticulously, adding layer upon layer of paint to get the subtle expressions just right. He was more interested in his own creative challenges – getting those right – rather than pleasing his employer. If something more interesting came up, he might turn to the new project that caught his eye, leaving the old work unfinished… like this one. That’s what makes this Adoration, even if it’s faded, such a rare treasure, with a timeless beauty that still radiates. It’s a glimpse of Leonardo’s creative genius at work.
Do you see the guy on the far right of the painting – the one looking away from the Madonna? That’s none other than a self-portrait of Leonardo himself. He was nearly 30, and his was his last work before leaving Florence. He’d go on to make his mark in Milan and in France, with major works like the Virgin on the Rocks and his Last Supper.
One of Leonardo’s greatest contributions to art was to create realistic people with probing psychological insight.
The Baptism of Christ – Andrea del Verrocchio (1475) – Verrocchio was yount Leonardo’s art teacher. As Verrocchio painted his Baptism scene, he allowed his apprentice to do a small part. Little Leo painted the kneeling angel – the one farthest to the left.
When Leonardo painted this, he was only 14 years old. Legend has it that when his teacher Verrocchio saw that some kid had painted an angel better than he ever would… he hung up his brush for good.
The three paintings here give a quick snapshot of Leonardo’s evolving style. The Baptism shows how Leonardo started with an intuitive sense of capturing realistic human figures. The Annunciation applies geometry to a natural scene. And the Adoration adds more layers of complexity, new techniques, and psychological insight.
As a scientist, architect, engineer, musician, and painter, Leonardo revolutionized what we think of when we think of art. He was the epitome of the highest compliment an artist of his day could receive – a true Renaissance Man.
Remember, Michelangelo and Leonardo knew each other, though they apparently didn’t get along too well. They even faced off in a kind of Renaissance smackdown, when they were both hired to paint large murals for the big palace on Florence’s main square, the Palazzo Vecchio. Unfortunately, neither one finished.
It was a small world. Imagine – Michelangelo, Leonardo, Raphael, all working in Florence.
Michelangelo Buonarroti – The Holy Family (1506) – This Holy Family is the only completed easel painting by Michelangelo. Michelangelo made his mark on history in several fields. He was the sculptor of David, the painter of the Sistine Chapel, the architect of St. Peter’s Basilica, and he was even well-known as a poet. This painting – The Holy Family – shows Michelangelo as he was making the transition from famous sculptor – he’d just finished David – to budding painter.
Florentine painters were called “sculptors with brushes,” and this shows why. Instead of a painting, it’s more like three clusters of statues with some clothes painted on.
The main subject is the Holy Family – Mary, Joseph, and baby Jesus – and in the background are two groups of nudes looking like classical statues. The background represents the old pagan world, while Jesus in the foreground is the new age of Christianity. The figure of young John the Baptist on the right is the link between the two.
This is a “peasant” Mary, with a plain face and sunburned arms. Michelangelo shows her from a very unflattering angle – we’re looking right up her nostrils. But Michelangelo himself was an ugly man, and he was among the first artists to recognize the honest beauty in everyday people.
Michelangelo painted this for a well-known Florentine businessman named Agnolo Doni. It was to celebrate Doni’s wedding, so this Holy Family may have symbolized the happy family the newlyweds hoped they’d create.
Michelangelo was a Florentine – in fact, he was like an adopted son of the Medici – but much of his greatest work was done in Rome as part of the Pope’s face-lift of the city. In his Holy Family, we see some of the techniques he used on the Sistine Chapel ceiling that revolutionized painting – monumental figures with rippling muscles, posed at dramatic angles, and bright, clashing colors. Michelangelos’ colors are all the more apparent since both this work and the Sistine Chapel have recently been cleaned. These techniques add in an element of dramatic tension that was lacking in the more graceful work of Leonardo and Botticelli. By the way, Michelangelo designed, but didn’t carve, the elaborate frame.
Raphael – Madonna of the Goldfinch – The painting shows Mary, dressed in red and blue, with two naked little kids standing at her feet.
Raphael brings Mary and bambino down from heaven and into the real world of trees, water, and sky. He gives baby Jesus (on the right) and John the Baptist a bird to play with, adding a human touch. It’s a tender scene painted with warm colors and a hazy background that matches the golden skin of the children.
Raphael perfected his craft in Florence, following the graceful style of Leonardo. In typical Leonardo fashion, this group of Mary, John the Baptist, and Jesus is arranged in the shape of a pyramid, with Mary’s head as the peak.
The two halves of the painting balance perfectly. Draw a line down the middle, through Mary’s nose and right down through her knee. John the Baptist on the left is balanced by Jesus on the right. Even the trees in the background balance each other out, left and right. These things aren’t immediately noticeable, but they help create the subconscious feelings of balance and order that reinforce the atmosphere of maternal security in this domestic scene – it’s pure Renaissance.
Here is a Florentine power couple. In fact, it’s the very people Michelangelo painted his Holy Family for – the notoriously frugal Agnolo Doni and his fabulously rich new bride, Maddalena Strozzi. They wear the rich clothes and jewelry befitting a wealthy textile merchant and his noble wife. Raphael borrowed Leonardo’s technique of turning his subjects slightly at a three-quarter angle.
Kind of like Leonardo’s Mona Lisa. His subjects rest casually on their elbows… Maddalena even has Mona Lisa’s folded hands.
Raphael also borrowed from Michelangelo, giving this couple a sculptural solidity and more gritty realism. Raphael became the most sought-after painter of his day. Even today, Raphael is considered both the culmination and conclusion of the Renaissance. Teh realism, balance, and humanism we associate with the Renaissance are all found in Raphael’s work. He combined the grace of Leonardo with the power of Michelangelo. And when Raphael died in 1520, the High Renaissance ended as well.
The Statue of Laocoon – The statue of a man and his sons comes from the Trojan War. The Greeks have sent the Trojan horse full of soldiers, as a trick to get into the city. Laocoon, the high priest of Troy, tries to warn his people. But the Greek gods wanted the Greeks to win. So they sent serpents to kill him and his sons. The sculptor catches the scene at its most dramatic moment – when Laocoon is struggling to survive, but he’s realizing the snakes are just too much for them. Look at his face: his agonized expression clearly says, “I and my people are doomed.”
This remarkable statue plays a role in Michelangelo’s evolution as a sculptor. It was sculpted in ancient times, and became one of hte most famous statues of antiquity. But for centuries, it was lost to history. Then, it was unearthed in 1506. One of the first people to see it was Michelangelo. It inspired him to amp up his figures with more motion and more emotion.
In a larger sense, this statue is a reminder of what the Florentine Renaissance was all about . The Renaissance was the “rebirth” of the ancient world – its optimism, enthusiasm for learning, and art that was realistic and beautiful.