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| Madonna of the Red Cherubs by Giovanni Bellini |
After lunch, the class spent the afternoon in Venice at the Accademia, an art museum. The museum had lots of Byzantine and Renaissance artwork, including Madonna of the Red Cherubs by Giovanni Bellini and The Tempest by Giorgione, which are two Renaissance pieces we discussed in class.
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| The Tempest by Giorgione |
Polittico Lion con l’Annunciazione by Lorenzo Veneziano is a really good example of Byzantine art. The entire painting is dripping with anagogic space. The folds in the clothes help make the painting slightly more realistic, but the figures are still two dimensional and they don’t have realistic expressions. The painting is so large that I couldn’t get a full picture of it, so the picture shown is only part of the painting.
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| Polittico Lion con l'Annunciazione by Lorenzo Veneziano |
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| Trittico della Nativita by Jacopo, Gentile, and Giovanni Bellini |
The transition from Byzantine to Renaissance is shown by Trittico della Natività by Jacopo, Gentile, and Giovanni Bellini. The top, left, and right panels all have Byzantine gold backgrounds, but in the middle panel there is a scene behind the subjects of the painting. The artists keep the halos and paint angels in the sky, so they still create some anagogic space, but it is much less than on the other panels. The middle panel looks almost out of place compared to the other three because of the contrast between the backgrounds.
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| Madonna col Bambino by Tiziano Vecellio |
Because religion was so important before and during the Renaissance, many of the paintings in the Accademia were of the Madonna and Child. A lot of them are very similar; some of them are even a little uncomfortable because some artists couldn’t paint realistic children. My favorite Madonna and Child is by Tiziano Vecellio. There’s no anagogic space, which is a nice change, and it’s just Mary and Jesus. Mary looks like a mother in the painting instead of someone uncomfortably holding a baby, and Jesus looks like a child instead of a small adult.
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| Polittico dell'Apocalisse by Jacobello Alberegno |
Byzantine art is obviously much less realistic than Renaissance art, but it isn’t because Byzantine artists tried and failed to create realistic pieces. “[James] studies how Byzantines reacted to color, concluding that their perceptions were fundamentally different from ours. Like ancient authors, Byzantine writers emphasized saturation and especially brightness, as opposed to the modern appreciation of hue” (Nelson, p. 146). The way of thinking was so different before the Renaissance that realism wasn’t desired. People looked for symbolism and bold eye-catching art, not art that reflected their lives. Byzantine art makes a lot more sense when seen through this lens; it may occasionally seem a little creepy to modern viewers, but it effectively communicates its intended message.
After we finished at the Academia, the class got on a train to Florence. On the train, I could sometimes see cars driving near the tracks. I didn’t realize that I missed them while I was in Venice, but it was strangely comforting to see a car.
When the class arrived in Florence we had the evening to ourselves, so I went with a group to find dinner. It was interesting to see the differences in transportation between Florence and Venice, which are both two very old cities. Florence and Venice have dealt with their historical layout differently because the layouts themselves are very different. There aren’t canals in Florence, so there aren’t any boats or vaporettos. The streets in Florence are wider than in Venice, which makes it possible to have cars, but there isn’t much room left for pedestrians. Walking around Florence is kind of challenging. The roads are really narrow, there aren’t real sidewalks, and the drivers act like pedestrians do not have the right of way. Some streets are closed to vehicular traffic, so that was similar to Venice, but overall Florence seems like a very different city.
Sources
Nelson, Robert. Visuality Before and Beyond the Renaissance. Cambridge University Press, 2000.
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