The Renaissance in Italy
The Gothic period has been treated in later chapters on France and
England, as it is its development in these countries which most affects us,
but the Renaissance in Italy stands alone. So great was its strength that it
could supply both inspiration and leaders to other countries, and still
remain preeminent.
It was in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries that this great classical
revival in Italy came, this re-birth of a true sense of beauty which is
called the Renaissance. It was an age of wonders, of great artistic
creations, and was one of the great epochs of the world, one of the turning
points of human existence. It covered so large a field and was so many-sided
that only careful study can give a full realization of the giants of
intellect and power who made its greatness, and who left behind them work
that shows the very quintessence of genius.
Italy, stirring slightly in the fourteenth century, woke and rose to her
greatest heights in the fifteenth and sixteenth. The whole people responded
to the new joy of life, the love of learning, the expression of beauty in
all its forms. All notes were struck,—gay, graceful, beautiful, grave,
cruel, dignified, reverential, magnificent, but all with an exuberance of
life and power that gave to Italian art its great place in human culture.
The great names of the period speak for themselves,—Michelangelo, Raphael,
Botticelli, Titian, Leonardo da Vinci, Andrea del Sarto, Machiavelli,
Benvenuto Cellini, and a host of others.
An exquisite and true Renaissance feeling is shown in the pilasters.
The inspiration of the Renaissance came largely from the later Greek
schools of art and literature, Alexandria and Rhodes and the colonies in
Sicily and Italy, rather than ancient Greece. It was also the influence
which came to ancient Rome at its most luxurious period. The importance of
the taking of Alexandria and Constantinople in 1453 must not be
underestimated, as it drove scholars from the great libraries of the East
carrying their manuscripts to the nobles and priests and merchant princes of
Italy who thus became enthusiastic patrons of learning and art. This later
type of Greek art lacked the austerity of the ancient type, and to the
models full of joy and beauty and suffering, the Italians of the Renaissance
added the touch of their own temperament and made them theirs in the
glowing, rich and astounding way which has never been equaled and probably
never will be. Perfection of line and beauty was not sufficient, the soul
with its capacity for joy and suffering, "the soul with all its maladies" as
Pater says, had become a factor. The impression made upon Michelangelo by
seeing the Laocoön disinterred is vividly described by Longfellow—
"Long, long years ago,
Standing one morning near the Baths of Titus,
I saw the statue of Laocöon
Rise from its grave of centuries like a ghost
Writhing in pain; and as it tore away
The knotted serpents from its limbs, I heard,
Or seemed to hear, the cry of agony
From its white parted lips. And still I marvel
At the three Rhodian artists, by whose hands
This miracle was wrought. Yet he beholds
Far nobler works who looks upon the ruins
Of temples in the Forum here in Rome.
If God should give me power in my old age
To build for him a temple half as grand
As those were in their glory, I should count
My age more excellent than youth itself,
And all that I have hitherto accomplished
As only vanity."
The Italian Renaissance is still
inspiring the world. In the two doorways the use of pilasters and frieze,
and the pedimented and round over-door motifs are typical of the period.
"It was an age productive in personalities, many-sided, centralized,
complete. Artists and philosophers and those whom the action of the world
had elevated and made keen, breathed a common air and caught light and heat
from each other's thoughts. It is this unity of spirit which gives unity to
all the various products of the Renaissance, and it is to this intimate
alliance with mind, this participation in the best thoughts which that age
produced, that the art of Italy in the fifteenth century owes much of its
grave dignity and influence."
Walter Pater: "Studies in the Renaissance."
It is to this unity of the arts we owe the fact that the art of
beautifying the home took its proper place. During the Middle Ages the
Church had absorbed the greater part of the best man had to give, and home
life was rather a hit or miss affair, the house was a fortress, the family
possessions so few that they could be packed into chests and easily moved.
During the Renaissance the home ideal grew, and, although the Church still
claimed the best, home life began to have comforts and beauties never
dreamed of before. The walls glowed with color, tapestries and velvets added
their beauties, and the noble proportions of the marble halls made a rich
background for the elaborately carved furniture.
The doors of Italian palaces were usually inlaid with woods of light
shade, and the soft, golden tone given by the process was in beautiful, but
not too strong, contrast with the marble architrave of the doorway, which in
the fifteenth century was carved in low relief combined with disks of
colored marble, sliced, by the way, from Roman temple pillars. Later as the
classic taste became stronger the carving gave place to a plain architrave
and the over-door took the form of a pediment.
Mantels were of marble, large, beautifully carved, with the fireplace
sunk into the thickness of the wall. The overmantel usually had a carved
panel, but later, during the sixteenth century, this was sometimes replaced
by a picture. The windows of the Renaissance were a part of the decoration
of the room, and curtains were not used in our modern manner, but served
only to keep out the draughts. In those days the better the house the
simpler the curtains. There were many kinds of ceilings used, marble, carved
wood, stucco, and painting. They were elaborate and beautiful, and always
gave the impression of being perfectly supported on the well-proportioned
cornice and walls. The floors were usually of marble. Many of the houses
kept to the plan of mediæval exteriors, great expanses of plain walls with
few openings on the outsides, but as they were built around open courts, the
interiors with their colonnades and open spaces showed the change the
Renaissance had brought. The Riccardi Palace in Florence and the Palazzo
della Cancelleria in Rome, are examples of this early type. The second phase
was represented by the great Bramante, whose theory of restraining
decoration and emphasizing the structure of the building has had such
important influence. One of his successors was Andrea Palladio, whose work
made such a deep impression on Inigo Jones. The Library of St. Mark's at
Venice is a beautiful example of this part. The third phase was entirely
dominated by Michelangelo.
The furniture, to be in keeping with buildings of this kind, was large
and richly carved. Chairs, seats, chests, cabinets, tables, and beds, were
the chief pieces used, but they were not plentiful at all in our sense of
the word. The chairs and benches had cushions to soften the hard wooden
seats. The stuffs of the time were most beautiful Genoese velvet, cloth of
gold, tapestries, and wonderful embroideries, all lending their color to the
gorgeous picture. The carved marriage chest, or cassone, is one of the
pieces of Renaissance furniture which has most often descended to our own
day, for such chests formed a very important part of the furnishing in every
household, and being large and heavy, were not so easily broken as chairs
and tables. Beds were huge, and were architectural in form, a base and roof
supported on four columns. The classical orders were used, touched with the
spirit of the time, and the fluted columns rose from acanthus leaves set in
an urn supported on lion's feet. The tester and cornice gave scope for
carving and the panels of the tester usually had the lovely scrolls so
characteristic of the period. The headboard was often carved with a
coat-of-arms and the curtains hung from inside the cornice.
Grotesques were largely used in ornament. The name is derived from
grottoes, as the Roman tombs being excavated at the time were called, and
were in imitation of the paintings found on their walls, and while they were
fantastic, the word then had no unkindly humorous meaning as now. Scrolls,
dolphins, birds, beasts, the human figure, flowers, everything was called
into use for carving and painting by genius of the artisans of the
Renaissance. They loved their work and felt the beauty and meaning of every
line they made, and so it came about that when, in the course of years, they
traveled to neighboring countries, they spread the influence of this great
period, and it is most interesting to see how on the Italian foundation each
country built her own distinctive style.
Like all great movements the Renaissance had its beginning, its splendid
climax, and its decline.
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