The Renaissance: what it is and what are its characteristics

It is possibly one of the best-known artistic periods in the history of art. The Renaissance is world famous, especially through its most important artists. Names like Brunelleschi, Botticelli, Raphael, Leonardo or Michelangelo are probably among the most pronounced among those interested in universal art.

Do we really know what the Renaissance represented, beyond the clichés that have been dragging on for centuries? In this article we will try to delve into the reality of this movement that was not only artistic, but also philosophical and social.

What is the Renaissance?

As with most nomenclatures, the word "Renaissance" did not come into use until several centuries after the time to which it refers. Specific, It was the French writer Honoré de Balzac who, in 1829, first introduced the term in his novel The Bal de Sceau. Balzac refers to the culture that began in Italy in the fourteenth century and that takes classical models as a guide. Years later, the historian Jules Michelet consecrated the term "Renaissance" in his work the renaissance (1855).

We can understand the “Renaissance” as the cultural movement that began in Italy (and, specifically, in Florence) through beginning of the 15th century and expanded until the end of the 16th, and which supposes a recovery of the models of the Antiquity. However, it is important to note that these classical models had been around throughout the Middle Ages. What makes the Renaissance “different” is the full awareness that its artists had of living a renovatio, that is, the “awakening” of these ancient models.

In general, Renaissance intellectuals and artists see themselves as the revivers of “true art”, which they considered lost during the long centuries of medieval "lethargy". Giorgio Vasari, one of the most important theorists of the 16th century, considers the art of the Middle Ages as the "infancy" of art, while the Quattrocento (that is, the Italian fifteenth century) would represent his "youth", the first taking of awareness. Finally, the Cinquecento (16th century) would be the maturity of art, with such important names as Leonardo, Michelangelo and Raphael.

But... Was the Renaissance an authentic recovery of this ancient art? We have already commented that, in the Middle Ages, the classics were not forgotten. Not only in the philosophical field, where we find a strong presence of Plato (for example, in the school of Chartres) and Aristotle (in the thought of Saint Thomas Aquinas), but also in the arts plastic.

Indeed, in medieval sculpture and architecture we find motifs taken from Antiquity, that are living testimony that in no way did the Middle Ages represent a break with the times classical. However, Renaissance intellectuals and artists felt that way. Not in vain, Vasari called the art of the medieval centuries "monstrous and barbaric", a concept that, by the way, remained valid until well into the 19th century.

So, the Renaissance supposes an "awakening" in a double sense. First, because, as we have already mentioned, they were the first to be aware of converting this classic renovation in a radical break with the medieval tradition, equal or more radical than what the Middle Ages had been towards the time classical; Second, because, effectively, the transition from a theocentric society to a humanist society takes place, a fact that, de facto, supposes the true break with the Middle Ages.

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The “break” with tradition

The rupture that the Renaissance was aware of living cannot strictly be considered as such. First of all, because we have already seen that during the Middle Ages the classics were not forgotten. And, secondly, and this is no less important, because during the Renaissance they continued to use medieval resources, such as the typology of some buildings, the iconography and some of the procedures technicians.

For all these reasons, we can conclude that the Renaissance was by no means the radical break that the Renaissanceists themselves considered. In fact, the historian Johan Huizinga maintains, in his work Autumn of the Middle Ages, that the last medieval centuries represented the preparation of the Renaissance stage, and in no way signified its antithesis. And, for his part, the art historian Erwin Panofsky already spoke of various “renaissances”. So we understand that what has been called the “Renaissance” is nothing more than another of the great traps of enlightened European historiography, the same one that labeled the ten centuries that followed the fall of the Roman Empire of “Middle Ages”.

In any case, there is a series of factors that configure a clear context in which this "rupture" is located. We have already commented that at the end of the fourteenth century there was a transition from a theocentric society to a humanist thought. The gradual decline of the rural world, already begun in the middle of the Middle Ages, as well as the consequent rise of cities, contribute in a fundamental way to expedite this change of mindset.

The new social group that emerges in the cities, the bourgeoisie, is going to play a fundamental role in this entire process.either. Urban merchants and bankers make up a powerful oligarchy that controls the cities and acts, at the same time, as powerful patrons. Thus, from the fourteenth century, artists will be under the protection of these important figures, and it is Through this conjunction of forces, some of the most important works of art of the history. It is only necessary to mention the powerful Medici family, in Florence.

Thus, if the Renaissance represents a true break with the immediately preceding world, it is in the concept of the artist and the relationship that he maintains with his clients. The artist continued to be an instrument in the hands of his patrons, but they use his protégés with a clear purpose of differentiation and political propaganda. Each powerful man is awarded a style that represents him: the Sforza in Milan, Julius II in Rome, the Medici in Florence. In addition, the collecting of works of art also becomes a symbol of status and power.

On the other hand, the medieval mechanical trade of artists dissolves into a much more intellectual conception of art and its processes. Treatises on art, such as Leon Battista Alberti's famous De Pictura (1435), help enormously to consider the artist as much more than a mere craftsman, assuming that he needs some intellectual qualities to develop his work. As a consequence of this new consideration, artists begin to portray themselves in their works and begin to sign them.

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A new figurative language: perspective

The changes that occurred during the Renaissance were, rather than plastic, philosophical-literary. Through a revaluation of ancient philosophy, the basis for the creation of a new formal system is established., which manifests itself, later, in various artistic trends. The models of Antiquity are imposed as the only mirror in which the men of the Renaissance look at themselves and seek their aesthetic ideal.

But where to look for old models in painting? Because, just as sculptors and architects have examples to draw inspiration from, the same is not the case with painting. In the fifteenth century Pompeii and Herculaneum had not yet been discovered, which made it extremely difficult to the task of finding pictorial models from Antiquity on which to base the new language figurative. To this end helped the discovery, in 1480, of the Domus Aurea of ​​Nero, in Rome, whose frescoes helped to establish, albeit belatedly, some pictorial models that would serve as models for painters renaissance.

An example of this are the "grotesques", pictorial ornaments based on plant decorations, human figures and fantastic animals, among others, which decorated the walls of Nero's palace. However, the eccentricity of these decorations earned them sharp criticism from treatise writers such as Giorgio Vasari.

It was precisely Vasari who laid the foundations of what he considered the "good painting" that, basically, had to be based on harmony and proportion and, above all, on a correct perspective. It is probably this last concept that most concerned Renaissance artists; to achieve, as Alberti said, a "window" through which a section of space could be glimpsed. In Italy, perspective in pictorial representations had been achieved around 1422: the frescoes in the Brancacci Chapel, by Masaccio, are good proof of this.

The Italians of the Quattrocento managed to master perspective by moving away from the plurality of points of view that the Trecento painters had used. Instead, they made possible that “window” that Alberti spoke of through the exact mathematical perspective, which makes all the lines of the composition converge on a single vanishing point. In this undertaking, the contribution of the architect Filippo Brunelleschi was crucial. However, it is no less true that, in Flanders, the Flemish primitives arrived at an equally valid solution by a different process.

Flemish painting from the 15th century, including Jan van Eyck and Roger van der Weyden, represented as radical a change from Gothic forms as Renaissance painting was in Italy. In the case of the Flemings, perspective was achieved through a careful and absolutely empirical observation of reality.

The flamenco result was so surprising and unique that his style spread throughout Europe, to the point that territories such as England, Austria or the Iberian Peninsula took Flemish models as a reference, more than the Renaissance ones that emerged from Italy. The artists of the Italian Quattrocento themselves deeply admired these innovators from Flanders, and there are many artistic exchanges that take place between the two European latitudes. Suffice it to say that Bartolommeo Fazio, a 15th-century humanist from Genoa, says of Jan van Eyck that he is "the leading painter of our age."

It all started in Florence

If there is any place that comes to mind when we talk about the Renaissance, it is, of course, Florence.. It is in this city where humanism develops, a cultural current and thought that vindicates the capacity of the human being to know himself and the world that surrounds him. But let's put ourselves in context.

In 1402, the Milanese troops led by Gian Galeazzo Visconti advance towards Florence and threaten the peace and prosperity that had reigned in the Florentine Republic for years. The attack on Milan is repeated in the 20s of the 15th century; a second threat that is only stopped thanks to the alliance between Florence and the city of Venice (1425). These continuous military claims only revive republican values, which the Florentines brandish against what was considered a princely dictatorship. Patrons and artists thus began to search for a plastic language that reflected these republican ideals.

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Ghiberti and Masaccio, the great plastic renovators

In 1401, a contest was held in Florence to find an artist to make the second doors of its Baptistery. The winner was Lorenzo Ghiberti; His first work in the Baptistery, although it is considered the "manifesto" of Renaissance art, still retains a lot of influence from the forms of the so-called International Gothic. It will not be until Ghiberti's second work on the Baptistery (the third doors, made between 1425 and 1452), when it will be appreciated, this time without a doubt, the resounding appearance of a new plastic language which, among other solutions, includes the introduction of perspective by regulating the scales of the figures represented.

If Ghiberti's work for the Baptistery represents an innovation in sculpture, that of Masaccio (1401-1427) is in the field of painting. The frescoes that the artist created for the Brancacci Chapel, in the Florentine church of Santa Maria del Carmine, represent a true revolution. Among them, the magnificent The tribute to Caesar, whose realism and forcefulness of his figures must have meant a true revelation for his contemporaries. In the same way, the daring architectural perspective that contains his fresco The Trinity, in Santa Maria Novella, seems to open a hole in the wall of the church. It is the “window” that Alberti speaks of; Masaccio has finally made it a reality.

Brunelleschi and the impossible dome

Since the mid-14th century, the Florentines wanted to provide their cathedral with a dome that would make it the largest in Christendom.. However, the magnitude of the project had frozen the anxieties of the architects: no less than 43 meters in diameter had to be saved, measures practically equal to those of the Pantheon in Rome. No one, since then, had ever managed to raise such a dome.

Work finally began in 1420, the Commission being seduced by Brunelleschi's daring plan, which sought to raise the colossal structure without the help of scaffolding or falsework (from the base of the dome, it would be raised using strips horizontal). The project lasted 16 years (a ridiculous time if we take into account the magnitude of the company). In 1436, and according to Alberti's own words, the dome of Florence "covered all of Tuscany with its shadow". Since the Pantheon, that is, since Roman times, nothing like it had been achieved. Brunelleschi's dome is a true landmark in Renaissance architecture.

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The other Renaissance centers

Florence was the undisputed center from which humanism and the new Renaissance language radiated, but there were other Italian centers that took these ideas and made them their own, in order to create a own version. Let's see them below.

Rimini, led by Segismundo Malatesta, he used the new artistic expression as the basis of his official propaganda. The renaissance of the Malatesta court was essentially based on the chivalrous spirit and knowledge of the classics. One of the examples of the Renaissance in Rimini is the church of San Francesco, by Leon Battista Alberti. In addition, Malatesta also attracted the painter Piero della Francesca to his court.

Venice was a city with a great oriental load behind it, which since the Middle Ages represented the point of confluence between the European and Byzantine worlds. As such, the Venetian Renaissance still takes Byzantine models and fuses them with a Roman architectural and decorative vocabulary.

For his part, Federico de Montefeltro designs an immense program to attract talent to his court in Urbino, among which is the distinguished Piero della Francesca, whose portraits of the Duke and Duchess of Urbino in strict profile, emulating Roman coins, is famous enough. In general, the iconography combines Christian and mythological elements, something otherwise common in Renaissance art.

Finally, in Mantua, Ludovico Gonzaga draws on his taste for classical antiquity to reform the city. For this, it counts, among others, with Leon Battista Alberti (Church of San Andrés) and Andrea Mantegna (frescoes in the chamber of the spouses). The consideration of artists in the Renaissance implies that they have a much higher status than they had in previous centuries. Thus, Mantegna ordered the construction of his palace in Mantua, which follows the typical models of Renaissance architecture and whose geometry follows the precepts of the Roman architect Vitruvio, the reference of the architectural writer of the epoch.