Sculpture from italy
History
Etruscan sculpture
Etruscan sculptures are mainly in terracotta or bronze. They modeled the figures of the dead, who appeared reclining on the sarcophagi. With the Etruscan sculpture the realistic portrait appeared, coming out of the idealism of Greek art.
It bears some resemblance to early Greek sculpture and some Mesopotamian influence.
The main works of this period are the Chimera of Arezzo, the Capitoline Wolf, the Apollo of Veii among others.
Roman sculpture
Republic and Empire
Roman sculpture did not have its own style until after a certain time.
Their first influences were the Etruscans. Later, as Roman territory increased and conquests progressed, large amounts of Greek sculpture found their way to Rome as spoils of war, and Greek sculptors also arrived. They made thousands of copies of these sculptures that would adorn Roman gardens and public buildings. From the Etruscans they inherited the realism of the wax images they made of their deceased, from the Greeks idealism. From the Republican era, the portraits of Julius Caesar, Cicero and Pompey stand out. Greek idealism can be seen in works from the beginning of the empire (1st century BC) such as the Augustus of Prima Porta, or the portraits of Caligula and Tiberius.
Later, the time of the Flavians and during the military anarchy of the s. III AD, the trend more typical of realism predominated. During the reign of the Antonines, portraiture tended towards baroque style. Proof of this are the portraits of Commodus, Antonio Pío and the equestrian statue of Marco Aurelio.
Reliefs were also sculpted in Rome, the influences were the same, realism being a more popular trend and idealism more aristocratic. In the reliefs, Roman artists made use of pictorial resources such as perspectives and anecdotal details. The clearest influence of Greece can be seen in the reliefs of the Ara Pacis of Augustus, this idealistic trend was lost over time, although it is maintained in Trajan's Column or the Arch of Titus, but it is weaker in Marco's Column Aurelio in that its reliefs represent the horror of war.
Byzantine sculpture
The most outstanding works of Byzantine sculpture are the ornamental work on the capitals with facing plant and animal motifs, such as those of San Vital de Ravenna or the sarcophagi of the same city, in which the themes of the Good Shepherd.
But the capital works of Byzantine sculpture are the small works, diptychs and boxes carved in ivory, highlighting the Barberini diptych, Louvre Museum, from the 5th century, or the famous Chair of Bishop Maximian, in Ravenna, carved towards the year 533 on ivory plates with meticulous work.
Wikimedia Commons hosts a multimedia category Roman sculpture.
Middle Ages
Romanesque
During the Romanesque, in the rest of Europe, sculpture was subordinated to architecture, being a simple ornamentation, mainly on the doors of churches and cathedrals. But in most of the Italian territory, the sculptural decoration did not exist, in particular Italian Romanesque art more importance was given to color, so the decoration of the façades was not sculpted but rather painted or used different marbles. colors. But in general the Italian Romanesque, like the Gothic, was more classicist than in the rest of Europe.
- Wikimedia Commons hosts a multimedia category Romanesque sculpture.
Gothic
Italian Gothic sculpture develops mainly in Tuscany and the north of the peninsula. These are the places where Nicola Pisano sculpted the reliefs on the pulpit of the baptistery of the Pisa Cathedral and the Siena Cathedral. Nicola Pisano had a markedly classicist tendency that practically anticipated the Renaissance. On the other hand, his son Giovanni is more influenced by the international current, taking characteristics of the French and German Gothic.
Finally, with Lorenzo Ghiberti, the Gothic ended, preserving certain features of Gothic sculpture, although returning in a certain way to classicism, which would lead to the Renaissance.
- Wikimedia Commons hosts a multimedia category Gothic sculpture.
Renaissance
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.
The rebirth of antiquity with the abandonment of the medieval, which for Giorgio Vasari «had been a world of godos», and the recognition of the classics with all its variants and nuances was an almost exclusively developed phenomenon in Italy. The art of the Renaissance was able to interpret Nature and translate it freely and with knowledge into a great multitude of masterpieces.Mannerism
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.
Mannerism is considered subjective and unstable. Artists are carried away by their tastes, away from the truth, tending to unreality and abstraction. In sculpture above all, the serpentine line or figure is preferred, in which the figures are arranged in an ascending helical sense. When the main elements of the Renaissance began to enter into crisis, mannerism meant a progressive abandonment of the proportion of the figures, of the spatial perspective, of the use of clear and defined lines and of the measured and sweet expressions of the Renaissance characters. The concept of man it meant a know-how, and also without trying too hard to do it. A sophistication, so to speak, because it is an exclusive art of the court.Baroque
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.
Gian Lorenzo Bernini, Truth discovered by Time (1645)
Statue of the Baroque Garden of Grossedlitz
Rio Nilo in the Fontana dei Quattro Fiumi, Bernini
![Oratorio del Rosario de Santa Cita,[18] Giacomo Serpotta](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/b/be/Oratorio_di_Santa_Cita.JPG/240px-Oratorio_di_Santa_Cita.JPG)
Oratorio del Rosario de Santa Cita, Giacomo Serpotta
Equestrian statue of Philip IVby Pietro Tacca
Magdalena penitent (1644), by Pedro de Mena
Angel of the shrine of Matosinho, Aleijadinho
![Oratorio del Rosario de Santa Cita,[18] Giacomo Serpotta](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archivo:Oratorio_di_Santa_Cita.JPG)
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.
Neoclassicism
- 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).
Antonio Canova (1757-1822) and Bertel Thorvaldsen (1770-1844) summarize the different tendencies of neoclassical sculpture. As Canova arrives in Classicism from a baroque formation and configures a style of great rational simplicity, the Danish Thorvaldsen more directly followed the theories of Winckelmann to get a voluntarily distant and cold style that owes much to the Greek statueria. His Jason or Mars and Love reflect that fidelity to the Greek model.List of Italian sculptors in alphabetical order
- Gian Lorenzo Bernini
- Michelangelo Buonarotti
- Cellini
- Leonardo da Vinci
- Donatello
- Lorenzo Ghiberti
- Giambologna
- Paolo di Giovanni
- Amedeo Modigliani
- Antonio del Pollaiolo
- Giovanni della Robbia
- Luca della Robbia
- Andrea Verrocchio
Bibliography and references
- ^ a b c d e f h History of art. Vicens Vives. 2008. ISBN 978-84-316-4590-8.
- ^ a b c d Great universal encyclopedia of Spass. 2004. ISBN 84-670-1327-3 (full work).
- ^ a b c d e f h Encyclopedic Dictionary Larousse. 1983. ISBN 84-7551-004-3 (full work).
- ↑ Castelfranchi Vegas, Liana (1996), p. 43.
- ↑ Sureda, Joan, (1988) p. 10.
- ↑ Sureda, Joan (1988), p. 13.
- ↑ The title of the work of one of the most important definers of Mannerism as a cultural movement, the historian of the culture Gustav Hoc Renéke, Die Welt Labyrinth. Manier und Manie in der europäischen Kunst. Beiträge zur Ikonographie und Formgeschichte der europäischen Kunst von 1520 bis 1650 und der Gegenwart. Rowohlt ("The world as a labyrinth. Manage and mania in European art. Contribution to the iconography and history of forms in European art from 1520 to 1650 and the present day"), Hamburg, 1957. Hommage à Gustav René Hocke. Die Welt Labyrinth. Viersen 1989, S. 16. Source cited in:Gustav René Hocke
- ↑ Baselitz, Kuspit and others, cited by Ruy Boyne, Subject, Society and Culture, pg. 89
- ↑ At the moment the excess link leads to a disambiguation, in which you can choose to follow articles related to the concept, such as the classic concept of hybris or the literary concept of hyperbole (which has been chosen to include in this article, and where the exaggeration link is also redirected at the moment). However, the concept is of great importance to the aesthetics, theory and history of art, as well as more general implications. Duttmann, AG; Phillips, J Philosophy of Exaggeration (Continuum Studies in Continental Philosophy) (2007). Source cited in:Exaggeration.
- ↑ Juan Haro and others, History of ArtVicens-Vives.
- ↑ Georges Bataille: "rotism touches the very essence of mannerism" (The tears of Eros, pg. 95).
- ↑ Ernst Robert Curtius, quoted in Antonio Alatorre, The Erotic Dream in the Spanish Poetry of the Golden Ages, 2003.
- ↑ "Vasari is right with the manierist interpretation of the concept of grazia (intraducible -see grace-) when characterized as an indefinable element dependent on the instinctive judgment of the eye. The correct proportion produces beauty, but not grazia. La Beautiful man, for his part, breeds a grazia which, simply, cannot be measured. It also depends on ease in execution. The artist must be diestro and spontaneous, as the artist grazia can be destroyed by excessive study... like the sprezzatura of Castiglione, the grazia Vasari can't learn. The ease does not ensure graziait stimulates the freedom and daring of disegno. La Beautiful man It is, therefore, elegant and sweet, with a sense of funny deformation and casual virtuosity." (Rika, op. cit., pg. 21 (Mannerist Theory section - The visual arts).
- ↑ Mark Franko, Dance as Text: Ideologies of the Baroque Body, pg. 191.
- ↑ "Arteespaña".
- ↑ "Manierism."
- ↑ Zendralli, source quoted in Alberto Camesina
- ↑ Sacco, source quoted in it:Oratorio del Rosario di Santa Cita