Italian Gothic Painting: Siena and Florence Schools
Italian-Gothic style, the Italian Primitives
– Two schools of Italian painters relevance to France in their work will lead and which will set the guidelines to be followed by the Gothic painting from the late thirteenth century to the mid-fourteenth of Siena School and the School of Florence.
– General features of the style:
+ In Italy remains the leading role of the frescoes.
+ Wealth color, deep blue, deep reds, yellows, pinks that are not natural and are adapted to the psychology of the characters. Moderate use of the golden hues of the Gothic features.
+ Naturalism in the representation of three-dimensional space by means of shading, which broke with spot colors inherited from Gothic stained glass.
+ The development of a real urban and rural landscapes where figures overlap.
+ Naturalism also in the expression of feeling, moods through gesture, the attitude that seeks to approach the soul of the character.
+ This concern for mankind and the environment is related to the Franciscan religious Christianity open to nature.
+ Main feature of Siena School is the sweetness and elegance and the pursuit of pure beauty concentrated. Also note the monumentality of the figures, which will have human proportions, the main feature of Florence School.
A) School of Florence
Cimabue
– Cimabue is generally regarded as one of the founders of modern art and is believed to be master of Giotto.
He is considered the initiator of the movement starting from the maniera greca (Byzantine) would lead to naturalism that culminated in the Renaissance. Proof of the innovative nature of his work is provided by the mention of it makes Dante’s Divine Comedy: Cimabue thought to be the first painting, but now Giotto has the primacy to the extent that it has obscured the fame of the former.
+ Maestá or Lady of the Angels: basic work to understand the stylistic change that occurred in Florentine painting of the late thirteenth century, preserves the compositional elements symmetrical and iconography of Byzantine models, but looking at the same time a third dimension you get with the perspective gained the throne and the contrast of light and shadow that give volume to the figures, also tries to break the hieratic giving a more human to the figures, which manifests itself in facial expressions.
+ Crucifixion, which highlights the dramatic expression of pain, the Crucified.
Giotto
– We know, from the chronicles of his contemporaries, the great revolution brought a new conception of art, which can be considered as a precursor to the innovations that will change the course of Western painting in the Renaissance.
– Giotto is the great initiator of the three-dimensional space in European painting in his works, which are characterized by the obvious observation of nature, the flat, symbolic figures of Byzantine art give way to other models and individualized perspective and chose the visual language of sculptors to give volume and weight to their figures.
+ Virgin on the Throne: the composition and the golden background suggest a Gothic design of Byzantine origin, but the naturalism and monumentality of the Virgin show the very personal stamp of Giotto.
+ Frescos on the life of St. Francis of Assisi Church: fully naturalistic charge volume figures and scenes with excerpts from the saint’s life perspective, providing in depth at various levels in a landscape and architectural framework.
+ Frescoes of the Scrovegni Chapel in Padua, dedicated to Jesus Christ, the Virgin and San Joaquin and Santa Ana; most perfect are considered the greatest exponent of the artistic maturity of Giotto, who has found his true style.
+ Frescoes in the Basilica of Santa Croce in Florence: they represent the most advanced of its kind, in which human figures are grouped into dynamic poses that reflect movement.
B) Siena School
Duccio
– Duccio was the founder of the Siena school of painting. His works, religious, are characterized by the sensitivity of the drawing, the ability of the composition, quality decorative and greater emotional intensity than the Byzantine model that followed.
+ Great Maestà: large altarpiece painted on both sides, the front shows the Virgin enthroned and surrounded by a large number of angels, saints and apostles, slightly naturalists.
+ Madonna Rucellai: This is an altarpiece depicting the Virgin seated on the throne with the Child Jesus, with a golden background of Byzantine tradition and flanked by kneeling angels.
Simone Martini
– Simone Martini was the other great master of the Sienese school. It must have been formed in the circle of Duccio, but developed a very personal style of his master and added a great interest in the effects of perspective, which reflects current trends in the period. Decorativism made use of line and color, as in the French Gothic miniatures, Linear, and was a creative genius compositions delicate, elegant and friendly, imbued with harmony and refinement.
+ Condottiere Fogliano Guidoriccio of the Communal Palace of Siena: A great equestrian portrait in which he underlines the great and solitary figure on a background condottiere landscape.
+ Fresh from the life of St. Martin in the Basilica of Assisi, with scenes and tales of the saint’s life, highly detailed, full color in their figures perfectly delineated, as background items, the ubiquitous line painter.
+ The Annunciation, considered one of the best achievements of the Sienese school, this book is a testament to the persistence among the painters of Siena in a trend toward bright colors, gold funds and the value of the line, which although it is far from the Byzantine formula, part of the medieval spirit of idealization of the shapes and poetization the sacred subject.
Lorenzetti brothers
– The brothers Lorenzetti, Pietro and Ambrogio, show a mixture of influences from Duccio and Giotto painted figures characterized by its size but also elegance and grace and clearly moving Sienese. They were also responsible for introducing a painting in Siena and much more bourgeois manners.
+ Madonna and Child, by Pietro Lorenzetti, who creates distinctive types of virgin then followed by other Italian painters: a thick, quiet, gentle, round face, full mouth and narrow eyes and turned upward, another thin, emaciated intense and expressive.
+ Fresh with Allegories of Good and Bad Government in Siena’s communal palace: from Ambrogio Lorenzetti, more naturalistic, concerned about the manners, the details of daily life and studies in perspective, in this work is the real star the medieval city, first in painting, in relation to the figures say that there are elegant, long and winding as the Sienese, but solid and thick as Florentine.