Art of Renaissance Florence by Scott Nethersole

(London: Laurence King Publishing, 2019), 210

Apparently the art of Renaissance Florence is quite good and significant—you just can't let on that you think it's that great, or at least any greater than art from Iran or west Africa"1. I can't wait to see it!

While writing this...
My 6 year old son: "Hey Daddy, what are you doing?"
Me: "Just reading about Renaissance art from Florence."
Son: "Isn't the Renaissance really good art?"

Notes


Contents


Introduction: The Myth of Florence

  • "Even after 500 years, sculptors and their critics were still looking to Renaissance Florence as a standard against which to judge good art." (9)
  • "Florence established a universal standard. It witnessed one of the most remarkable periods of cultural, artistic and intellectual blossoming. Florence saw the birth of the Renaissance and not only delivered this epoch-shifting movement, but also nurtured its early development. Within its walls, the shape of European civilization was altered permanently, as the path to an enlightened future was paved with the ideas of the past." (10)
  • Lots of talk about "exaggerated generalizations" (11) and "Western Imperialism and all its attendant problems" (12), but "this book advances in the conviction that something important did happen in Florence in the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries" (12), but the author hedges by saying: "I make no claims for their universality" (12).

Chapter 1: Symbols, Saints, and Heroes

  • Florence "was always much more enthusiastic for liberty than other cities" and had a government consisting of nine citizens chosen by lot every two months (15)
  • Florentine symbols include: fleurs-de-lys (liberty sing Charles of Anjou), Lions (military strength and control of surrounding land)
  • Florentine patron saints include: John the Baptist, St. Zenobius (337-417) the first bishop
  • "The cathedral was consecrated in 1436 by Pope Eugenius IV, on the feast of the Annunciation (25 March), which was also the beginning of the Florentine year. It was dedicated to Santa Maria del Fiore, Saint Mary of the Flower. The Roman city was known as 'Florentia, a name that derives from the Latin verb to flower' or the genitive 'flowering, from which the archaic Italian name 'Fiorenza originated. The modern name for the city, 'Firenze, developed sub-sequently. 'Florence in English descends from French, but has the same root." (21)
  • Florentines turned to the statesmen and heroes of ancient Rome for examples of upstanding conduct in public life. (23)
  • Florence identified with David and Hercules because of its republicanism and need to be defended from external threat. (24)
  • Beauty in Florence was seen as "a marker of accomplishment and an indicator of self-worth. We should wonder at the beauty of the Sala dei Gigli, and ponder the republican politics and propagandistic maneuvering that created it, but we should also remember that it was ultimately based on an ideology and forms of exploitation that we now find abhorrent. The Renaissance had a darker side." (27)

Chapter 2: Telling Tales: The Story of Florentine Art

  • The story of Florentine art is told along the lines of Giorgio Vasari (1550/1568), who describes the progressive rebirth, youth, and maturity of art (30-33), but many other story lines are possible.
  • Masaccio mastered foreshortening and linear perspective, which was developed by Brunelleschi. Ghiberti and Donatello achieved the "greatest progress".
  • Leonardo da Vinci "changed the course of art", which culminated in Michelangelo and Raphael.

Chapter 3: Writing about Art

  • Ghiberti, Manetti, and Alberti were artist-writers who took the first steps toward theorizing art and giving it a language.
  • "Ghiberti perceived a cyclical structure to human culture, as Petrarch had done before him, and he was the first to apply it to the history of art." (49)

Chapter 4: Guilds, Confraternities, and Competition

  • Vasari: "In those times, the competition between my contemporaries and companions, many of whom have since become most excellent in our art, was also of great help to me." (65)
  • "Guilds regulated quality, working conditions, and membership of their profession...Guilds were the basic organizational unit for most local economies long into the sixteenth century." (66)
  • Guilds in Florence were different in that guild membership was required for entry into government. (66)
  • Florentine guilds did not represent a single trade or craft as in other cities because they were limited to 21 in number for political representation, and artisans could join more than one guild, resulting in relative freedom of artists to work amongst different materials. (68)
  • Guilds also served as courts to adjudicate disputes, and provided for the spiritual and social welfare of their members. (69-71)
  • Guilds in Florence were politically significant but did not inhibit capitalism as in other European cities. The even encouraged competition that spurred stylistic innovation. (73)

Chapter 5: Patronage Networks

  • Patrons vied for rights to decorate important chapels in important churches, and the familial and political alliances largely determined who was able to sponsor art in different locations.

Chapter 6: The Patronage of Women

  • Talks about female oppression during the renaissance while showing a bunch of painting of the Visitation—perhaps should focus more on Mary as the patroness of the arts.

Chapter 7: Style I: Perspectives on Space

  • "The discovery of linear perspective is held up as one of the most significant artistic developments of the Florentine Renaissance." (123)
  • Problems of Perspective: "The discovery of linear perspective, and the establishment of rules for its practice, was nothing short of revolutionary. Its impact on Western art cannot be underestimated. Both Brunelleschi and Alberti tried to mimic in paint what was seen by the eye, and that was no small achievement. But their success has given rise to an assumption that good art is that which most closely approximates the world as it is revealed to the eye, not the mind, as if our perception of the world were determined solely by the optical functioning of the eye, unmediated by the brain." (133)
  • "The strict adherence to geometrical principles in Ghibertis architecture has resulted in a building whose receding flank appears exaggerated, and a circular market that billows outwards hyperbolically. Van Eyck's room for the Arnolfini might be 'incorrect mathematically, but his subtle adjustments, whether conscious or not, have resulted in a space that is visually credible. His process of spatial interpretation is akin to that performed by our brain when it receives visual information from our eyes." (137)
    • But won't our brain adjust a painting in the same way it adjusts reality...?

Chapter 8: Style II: A Turn to Nature or a Return to the Antique?

  • The Renaissance was a return to ancient forms, and Florentine sculptors had collections of ancient sculpture. Yet there was rather little ancient architecture, apart for some sarcophagi mentioned in the Decameron (141)
  • Unrealistic expectations of beauty are not new, nature was idealized by Renaissance artists: "Alberti explained how nature and the ideal were reconciled. In De pictura, he described how the ancient painter Zeuxis went about preparing a panel for the temple of Lucina at Croton as an example to painters of his own time: 'Because he believed that all the things he desired to achieve beauty not only could not be found by his own intuition, but were not to be discovered even in Nature in one body alone, he chose from all the youth of the city five outstandingly beautiful girls, so that he might represent in his painting whatever feature of feminine beauty was most praiseworthy in each of them.'" (151)

Chapter 9: Modes of Viewing: Sacred and Secular Art

  • Idolatry and the Perils of Illusionism: "The Old Testament explicitly outlaws the worship of images: Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven images... Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them' (Ex-20). The prohibition was against the worship of images or idols as if they were gods themselves, a practice known as idolatry. The relationship of the Abrahamic religions with images has always been complex, especially since the Western Church largely condoned them before the Reformation. In Renaissance Florence, sacred images were still justified in much that same way as they had been defended by Pope Gregory the Great at the beginning of the seventh century. In a letter written to Serenus, Bishop of Marseilles, whom he reproached for having destroyed a work of art, Gregory pointed out that 'What Scripture is to the educated, images are to the ignorant, who see through them what they must accept; they read in them what they cannot read in books. His insights were codified at the Council of Nicaea in 787. Centuries later they were developed into a complex theology of images by Thomas Aquinas (ca. 1225-1274), and repeated by his fellow Dominican and Archbishop of Florence, Antoninus Pierozzi, in the mid fifteenth century. For both Thomas and Antoninus, images must instruct, for they were to be the books of the illiterate. They should also recall sacred history, bringing the examples of Christ, the Virgin and the saints into the minds of the faithful. And, if used properly, they should direct emotion to the proper contemplation of God. Sacred images must therefore be didactic and memorable, and inspire devotion." (166)
  • Fra Lippi often introduces an odd object in his otherwise very realistic paintings to avoid the mistake of falling into idolatry in thinking the painting is the thing itself rather than a representation. (172)
  • Travel-Florence: Visit San Marco to see Fra Angelico's frescoes, including the passion in Cell 27 (174-177)

Chapter 10: Medium and Material

  • "The appearance of printing, whether of text or image, during the period was nothing short of revolutionary. The point is often made and cannot be emphasized enough." (185)
  • The chapel tomb of Jamie of Lusitania, a 25 year old Portuguese cardinal, illustrates a variety of materials and media (196)

Conclusion: A Self-Conscious Art

  • He sure apologizes for praising Florence, and qualifies that praise in every way possible:
  • "Yet to do so would contravene the spirit of this book. It would assert, once again, that anyone wanting to know about the history of art really should know something about Florence. Such is not my intention. My aim has been to attend to local conditions of production and to put them in the context of the patronal and institutional structures of Florentine society. It has been to suggest that there were sometimes forces at play that might not sit comfortably with our ideas of a civilized and tolerant society." (208)
  • Florence was not basking in the glow of a golden age during the Renaissance (even if it was partially responsible for the creation of that myth in the first place). The problem has remained, however, of how to assess this local tradition in a book that aspires to provide an overview. How do we understand Florence's position in global art history without making imperialistic claims for its pre-eminence? I have, consequently, sought to place its stylistic innovations within a broader context, if only to make them strange again; I have attempted to expose how the process of writing about art in the city came to present its artistic achievements as exceptional; and I have tried to show the extent to which its art was indebted to developments elsewhere. (2-8)
  • "I began this book by saying that bold claims have been made for the art of Renaissance Florence and that they have provoked a backlash. I will end it by making some of my own, in the full knowledge that they are subjective and partial. I believe passionately that we still have much to learn from Florence. The fact that it gave rise to a literature on art, that stylistic innovations were accompanied by complex thinking about the nature of mimesis and representation, and that such a strong emphasis was placed on visual stimuli as the source of knowledge, must suggest that it remains worthy of study, at least to those engaged by art history."
  • "The art of Renaissance Florence was not any better than that resulting form similar movements of outstanding artistic achievement elsewhere nor are the structures for writing about Florentine art superior to those deployed in the study of art from other parts of the wrold. But to acknowledge these facts is not to deny that something exceptional did happen in the city on the Arno sometime between the early fifteenth century and the beginning of the sixteenth." (208-209)

Topic: Travel-Florence, Art

Source

Created: 2024-09-27-Fri
Updated: 2025-03-20-Thu

  1. "It is not difficult to see, then, how the nineteenth- and twentieth-century celebration of Florence, and of the Renaissance more generally, has come to be associated with Western Imperialism and all its attendant problems. Why do we keep returning to the art of Renaissance Florence, when culture – just as developed, instructive and worthy of sustained study – flourished in contemporary Isfahan in present-day Iran, or in Benin in west Africa?" (12) ↩