Sculpture from italy

Piece of the Vatican, work of the Renaissance of Michelangelo Buonarroti.

The Renaissance sculpture is understood as a process of recovery of the classic Antiquity sculpture. The sculptors found in the artistic remains and in the discoveries of deposits of that past period the perfect inspiration for their works. They also inspired nature. In this context we must take into account the exception of the Flemish artists in the north of Europe, who in addition to overcoming the figurative style of the Gothic promoted an Italian Renaissance, especially in the painting section.

Virgin of the long neck (1534-1540), Parmigianino.

The term Mannerism is the historiographic denomination of the period and artistic style that is conventionally situated in the central and final decades of the 16th century (in the 16th century).Cinquecent, in Italian), as the last part of the Renaissance (i.e. a Low Renaissance). Its characterization is problematic, since it was initially defined as the imitation of the way of the great masters of the High Renaissance (for example, Tintoretto himself intended to draw as Michelangelo and color as Titian), later it was understood as a reaction against the ideal of classicist beauty and a labyrintic complication both in the formal (line serpentine, anamorphosis, exaggeration of movements, shorings, textures, paddling, alteration of order in the architectural elements) as in the conceptual (forcing the decorum and the hierarchical balance, a "violation of the figure"), which prefigures the characteristic "excess" of the Baroque. On the other hand, Mannerism is also identified with an intellectualized and elitist art, opposed to the Baroque, which will be a sensory and popular art. Considered as a mere extension of the creative genius of the great geniuses of the High Renaissance (Leonardo, Rafael, Miguel Angel, Titian) by their epigones (like the leonardeschi), Mannerism was generally underestimated by the criticism and historiography of art as an extravagant, decadent and degenerative style; an erotic refinement and a "artificent affection" whose elegance and degenerativeness graziawas not fully appreciated until its revaluation in the centuryXX.which began to see positively even his condition of self-reference of art itself.

Pestsäule (column of the Peste) commemorative of the Great Plague of Vienna of 1679, Matthias Rauchmüller

Superior of the church of San Carlos Borromeo (Vienna). La Apotheosis center is of Alberto Camesina, and the stucco pieces of Ferdinand Maxmilián Brokoff (1725)

Baroque sculpture is the historiographic denomination of the sculptural productions of the Baroque era (from the beginning of the centuryXVII mid-centuryXVIII).

Its general characteristics are:

• Naturalism, that is, representation of nature as it is, without idealizing it.
• Integration in architecture, which provides dramatic intensity.
• The compositional schemes free of geometry and the balanced proportion proper to the sculpture of the full Renaissance. Baroque sculpture seeks movement; it is dynamically projected outward with complex tension lines, especially helical or serpentine, and multiplicity of planes and views. This instability is manifested in the concern of characters and scenes, in the breadth and ampulosity of clothing, in the contrast of textures and surfaces, sometimes in the inclusion of different materials, all of which produces strong light and visual effects.
• Representation of the nude in its pure state, as a frozen action, achieved through asymmetric composition, where diagonals predominate and serpentine, the biased and oblique poses, the short and the diffuse and intermittent contours that direct the work towards the spectator with great expressivity.
• Despite the Baroque's identification with a "art of the Counter-Reformation", suitable to the feeling of popular devotion, baroque sculpture, even in Catholic countries, had a great plurality of themes (religious, funeral, mythological, portraits, etc.).
• The main manifestation is the statuery, used for the ornamentation of interior and exterior spaces of the buildings, as well as the open spaces, both private (gardens) and public (places). The sources were a sculptural type that settled very well with the baroque style. Particularly in Spain, they had an extraordinary development the imagery and the altarpieces.

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  Gian Lorenzo Bernini, Truth discovered by Time (1645)

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  Statue of the Baroque Garden of Grossedlitz

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  Rio Nilo in the Fontana dei Quattro Fiumi, Bernini

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  Oratorio del Rosario de Santa Cita, Giacomo Serpotta

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  Equestrian statue of Philip IVby Pietro Tacca

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  Magdalena penitent (1644), by Pedro de Mena

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  Angel of the shrine of Matosinho, Aleijadinho

Other features. Common features of baroque architecture:

• He maintained the symmetry of Renaissance architecture.
• Torcid columns, often only decorative and not supportive as in ancient Greece and Rome.
• Curved lines abound more than straight lines.
• Highly ornamented decoration details.
• Sensation of movement in forms.
• Towers and domes or domes.
• Abundance of windows.
• Structured buildings in large ships
• Optical illusions
• Integration of architecture and painting
• Interiors decorated with magnificent frescoes in skyscrapers and walls.

Psych revived by the kiss of love Antonio Canova.

• Also in the neoclassical sculpture weighed the memory of the past, very present if we consider the great number of pieces that the excavations were bringing to light, in addition to the collections that had been formed throughout the centuries.

Neoclassical sculptures were made in most cases in white marble, without polychrome, since it was thus thought that they were ancient sculptures, predominating in them the noble simplicity and the serene beauty that Winckelmann had found in the Greek statuery. In this same sense the theories of Gotthold Ephraim Lessing (1729-1781) had been that in his book Laocoonte, or the limits of painting and poetry (1766) had tried to establish an aesthetic law of a universal character that could guide artists; their conceptions about moderation in expressions and in the plasma of feelings are rules that will adopt the neoclassical model.

Thus, the sculptors of the end of the centuryXVIII and beginnings XIX, they will create works in which there will prevail a simplicity and purity of lines that will deviate them from the curvy taste of the Baroque. In all of them the nude has a remarkable presence, as a desire to surround the works of a certain timelessness. The Greek and Roman models, the themes taken from classical mythology and allegories over the civic virtues filled the reliefs of the buildings, the frontons of the porches and the monuments, such as triumphal arches or commemorative columns.

The portrait also occupied an important place in neoclassical sculpture; Antonio Canova (1757-1822) represented Napoleon as Mars (1810, Milan) and his sister Pauline as Venus Victrix (1807, Rome) taking the models of the classic gods. However others preferred an idealized yet realistic portrait that would capture the feeling of the portrayed, such as Jean-Antoine Houdon (1741-1828) with his Old Voltaire (Hermitage Museum) or the beautiful bust of the Empress Josefina (1806, Malmaison Castle) by Joseph Chinard (1756-1813).