AP Art History Chapter 20 Notes PDF

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Gardner's Art through the Ages Chapter 20 Lecture, Patricia Morchel...

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Chapter Intro - Mérode Altarpiece - ROBERT CAMPIN (MASTER OF FLÉMALLE) - Oil on wood - The Annunciation theme, as prophesied in Isaiah 7:14, occupies the Mérode triptych’s central panel - Donor portraits: A portrait of the individual(s) who commissioned (donated) a religious work, for example, an altarpiece, as evidence of devotion Northern Europe in the 15th Century - Feudalism: The medieval political, social, and economic system held together by the relationship between landholding liege lords and the vassals who were granted tenure of a portion of their land and in turn swore allegiance to the liege lord - In response to the financial requirements of trade, new credit and exchange systems created an economic network of enterprising European cities - In 1460, Flemish entrepreneurs established the first international commercial stock exchange in Antwer Burgundy and Flanders - 1385-1425 - Claus Sluter carves life-size statues of biblical figures with portrait like features for Philip the Bold, duke of Burgundy - 1425-1450 - Robert Campin, Jan van Eyck, and Rogier van der Weyden popularize the use of oil paints in Flanders to record the exact surface appearance of objects, fabrics, faces, and landscapes - 1450-1475 - The second generation of Flemish master painters— Petrus Christus, Dirk Bouts, and Hugo van der Goes— continue to use oil paints for altarpieces featuring naturalis representations of religious themes - 1475-1500 - In Flanders, Hans Memling specializes in portraiture and paintings of the Madonna and Child Chartreuse de Champmol - Chartreuse: A Carthusian monastery - Monastery: A group of buildings in which monks live together, set apart from the secular community of a town - Mausoleum: A monumental tomb. The name derives from the mid-fourth-century bce tomb of Mausolos at Halikarnassos, one of the Seven Wonders of the ancient world - Well of Moses - CLAUS SLUTER

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Limestone The Well of Moses, a symbolic fountain of life made for the duke of Burgundy, originally supported a Crucifixion group - Sluter’s figures recall French Gothic jamb statues but are far more realistic - Fons vitae: Latin, “fountain of life.” A symbolic fountain of everlasting life - Mystery plays: A dramatic enactment of the holy mysteries of the Christian faith performed at church portals and in city squares - Retable de Champmol - MELCHIOR BROEDERLAM - This early example of oil painting attempts to represent the three-dimensional world on a two-dimensional surface, but the gold background and flat halos recall medieval pictorial conventions - Eucharist: In Christianity, the partaking of the bread and wine, which believers hold to be either Christ himself or symbolic of him - Polyptychs: An altarpiece composed of more than three sections - Rotunda: The circular area under a dome; also a domed round building - Stylistically, Broederlam’s panels are a mixture of three-dimensional rendition of the landscape and buildings with a solid gold background and flat golden halos for the holy figures, regardless of the positions of their heads Jan van Eyck - Oil paints: A painting technique using oil based pigments that rose to prominence in northern Europe in the 15thcentury and is now the standard medium for painting on canvas - Oil paints facilitated the exactitude in rendering details so characteristic of northern European painting - With the oil medium, artists could create richer colors than previously possible, giving their paintings an intense tonality, the illusion of glowing light, and enamel-like surfaces - These traits differed significantly from the high-keyed color, sharp light, and rather matte (dull) surface of tempera - Ghent Altarpiece - HUBERT and JAN VAN EYCK - Saint Bavo Cathedral - Oil on Wood - Monumental painted altarpieces were popular in Flemish churches - Artists decorated both the interiors and exteriors of these polyptychs, which often, as here, included donor portraits - Sfumato: Italian, “smoky.” A smoke like haziness that subtly soft ens outlines in painting; particularly applied to the paintings of Leonardo da Vinci and Correggio - DIptych: A two-paneled painting or altarpiece - Finial: A crowning ornament - Giovanni Arnolfini and His Wife

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JAN VAN EYCK Oil on wood Van Eyck played a major role in establishing portraiture as an important Flemish art form - In this portrait of an Italian financier and his wife, he also portrayed himself in the mirror - Van Eyck’s placement of the two figures suggests conventional gender roles—the woman stands near the bed and well into the room, whereas the man stands near the open window, symbolic of the outside world - Man in a Red Turban - Oil on wood - Man in a Red Turban is the first known Western painted portrait in a thousand years in which the sitter looks directly at the viewer - The inscribed frame suggests it is a self-portrait - The level, composed gaze, directed from a true three-quarter head pose, must have impressed observers deeply - The painter created the illusion that from whatever angle a viewer observes the face, the eyes return that gaze Rogier Van Der Weyden - Pieta: A painted or sculpted representation of the Virgin Mary mourning over the body of the dead Christ - Deposition - ROGIER VAN DER WEYDEN - Center Panel of a Triptych from Notre-Dame Hors-les-murs - Deposition resembles a relief carving in which the biblical figures act out a drama of passionate sorrow as if on a shallow theatrical stage - The painting makes an unforgettable emotional impression - Rogier acknowledged the patrons of this large painting by incorporating the crossbow (the guild’s symbol) into the decorative tracery in the corners - Silverpoint: A stylus made of silver, used in drawing in the 14thand 15thcenturies because of the fine line it produced and the sharp point it maintained - Saint Luke Drawing the Virgin - ROGIER VAN DER WEYDEN - Oil and Tempera on Wood - Probably commissioned by the painters’ guild in Brussels, this painting honors the first Christian artist and the profession of painting - Saint Luke may be a self-portrait of Rogier van der Weyden Later Flemish Painters - A Goldsmith in His Shop - PETRUS CHRISTUS - Oil on wood

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Once thought to depict Eligius, the patron saint of goldsmiths, Christus’s painting, made for the Bruges goldsmiths guild, is more likely a generic scene of a couple shopping for a wedding ring Perspective: A method of presenting an illusion of the three-dimensional world on a two dimensional surface. Linear: all parallel lines or surface edges converge on one, two, or three vanishing points located with reference to the eye level of the viewer (the horizon line of the picture), and associated objects are rendered smaller the far ther from the viewer they are intended to seem Atmospheric: or aerial perspective, creates the illusion of distance by the greater diminution of color intensity, the shift in color toward an almost neutral blue, and the blurring of contours as the intended distance between eye and object increases Orthogonals: A line imagined to be behind and perpendicular to the picture plane; the orthogonals in a painting appear to recede toward a vanishing point on the horizon Last Supper - DIRK BOUTS - Panel of the Altarpiece of the Holy Sacrament, Saint Peter’s - Oil on Wood - One of the earliest Northern European paintings to employ Renaissance linear perspective, this Last Supper includes four servants in Flemish attire—portraits of the altarpiece’s patrons Prefigurations: In Early Christian art, the depiction of Old Testament persons and events as prophetic forerunners of Christ and New Testament events Portinari Altarpiece - Hugo Van Der Goes - Tempera and Oil on Wood - This altarpiece is a rare instance of the awarding of a major commission in Italy to a Flemish painter. The Florentines admired Hugo’s realistic details and brilliant portrayal of human character Mystic marriage: A spiritual marriage of a woman with Christ Virgin with Saints and Angels - HANS MEMLING - Center Panel of the Saint John Altarpiece - Oil on Wood - Memling specialized in images of the Madonna - His Saint John Altarpiece exudes an opulence that results from the sparkling and luminous colors and the realistic depiction of rich tapestries and brocades Diptych of Martin Van Nieuwenhove - HANS MEMLING - Oil on Wood - In this diptych the Virgin and Child pay a visit to the home of 23-year-old Martin

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van Nieuwenhove A round convex mirror reflects the three figures and unites the two halves of the diptych spatially

France - In contrast to the prosperity and peace Flanders enjoyed during the 15th century, in France the Hundred Years’ War crippled economic enterprise and prevented political stability - The anarchy of war and the weakness of the kings gave rise to a group of duchies, each with significant power and the resources to commission major artworks. Manuscript Painting - During the 15th century, French artists built on the achievements of Gothic painters and produced exquisitely refined illuminated manuscripts - The most innovative early-15th-century manuscript illuminators were the three LIMBOURG BROTHERS—POL, HERMAN, and JEAN—from Nijmegen in the Netherlands - Breviary: A Christian religious book of selected daily prayers and Psalms - Psalters: A book containing the Psalms - Matins: In Christianity, early morning prayers - Compline: The last prayer of the day in a Book of Hours - January - from Les Très Riches Heures Du Duc De Berry - LIMBOURG BROTHERS - Colors and Ink on Vellum - The sumptuous pictures in Les Très Riches Heures depict characteristic activities of each month - The prominence of genre subjects reflects the increasing integration of religious and secular art - October - from Les Très Riches Heures Du Duc De Berry - LIMBOURG BROTHERS - Colors and Ink on Vellum - The Limbourg brothers expanded the illusionistic capabilities of manuscript painting with their care in rendering architectural details and convincing depiction of cast shadows - Lunette: A semicircular area (with the flat side down) in a wall over a door, niche, or window; also, a painting or relief with a semicircular frame - Genre: A style or category of art Panel Painting - Melun Diptych - JEAN FOUQUET

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Oil on wood Fouquet’s meticulous representation of a pious kneeling donor with a standing patron saint recalls Flemish painting, as do the three-quarter stances and the realism of the portraits In its original diptych form (the two panels are now in different museums), the viewer would follow the gaze of Chevalier and Saint Stephen over to the right panel, which depicts the Virgin Mary and Christ Child in a most unusual way—with marblelike flesh Cherubs: A chubby winged child angel

Holy Roman Empire - Because the Holy Roman Empire (whose core was Germany) did not participate in the drawn-out saga of the Hundred Years’ War, its economy remained stable and prosperous - Wealthy merchants and clergy became the primary German patrons during the 15th century Panel Painting - Some artists followed developments in Flemish painting, and large-scale altarpieces featuring naturalistically painted biblical themes were familiar sights in the Holy Roman Empire - Miraculous Draught of Fish - Exterior Wing of Altarpiece of Saint Peter - KONRAD WITZ - Oil on Wood - Konrad Witz set this biblical story on Lake Geneva - The painting is one of the first 15th-century works depicting a specific locale and is noteworthy for the painter’s skill in rendering water effects - The painting is particularly significant because of the landscape’s prominence - Witz showed precocious skill in the study of water effects—the sky glaze on the slowly moving lake surface, the mirrored reflections of the figures in the boat, and the transparency of the shallow water in the foreground Sculpture - In contrast to Flanders, where painted altarpieces were the norm, in the Holy Roman Empire many of the leading 15th-century artists specialized in carving large wooden retables - Death and Assumption of the Virgin - Altar of the Virgin Mary, Church of Saint Mary - VEIT STOSS - Painted and Gilded Wood - In this huge sculptured and painted altarpiece, Stoss used every figural and ornamental element from the vocabulary of Gothic art to heighten the emotion and to glorify the sacred event - Assumption of the Virgin

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Center Panel of Creglingen Altar Piece TILMAN RIEMENSCHNEIDER Riemenschneider specialized in carving large wood retables His works feature intricate Gothic tracery and religious figures whose bodies are almost lost within their swirling garments

Graphic Arts - A new age blossomed in the 15th century with a sudden technological advance that had widespread effects—the invention by Johannes Gutenberg (ca. 1400–1468) of moveable type around 1450 and the development of the printing press - Woodcut: A wooden block on the surface of which those parts not intended to print are cut away to a slight depth, leaving the design raised; also, the printed impression made with such a block - Radeburga Page from the Nuremberg Chronicle - MICHAEL WOLGEMUT and Shop - Woodcut - The Nuremberg Chronicle is an early example of woodcut illustrations in printed books - The more than 650 pictures include detailed views of towns, but they are generic rather than specific portrayals - The blunt, simple lines of the woodcut technique give a detailed perspective of the city, its harbor and shipping, its walls and towers, its churches and municipal buildings, and the baronial castle on the hil - Despite the numerous architectural structures, historians cannot determine whether this illustration represents the artist’s accurate depiction of the city or is the product of a fanciful imagination - Engraving: The process of incising a design in hard material, oft en a metal plate (usually copper); also, the print or impression made from such a plate - Saint Anthony Tormented by Demons - Engraving - MARTIN SCHONGAUER - Schongauer was the most skilled of the early masters of metal engraving - By using a burin to incise lines in a copper plate, he was able to create a marvelous variety of tonal values and textures - The use of cross-hatching (sets of engraved lines at right angles) to describe forms, which Schongauer probably developed, became standard among German graphic artists - The Italians preferred parallel hatching and rarely adopted cross-hatching - Print: An artwork on paper, usually produced in multiple impressions - Edition: A set of impressions taken from a single print surface - Intaglio: A graphic technique in which the design is incised, or scratched, on a metal plate, either manually (engraving, drypoint) or chemically (etching). The incised lines of the design take the ink, making this the reverse of the woodcut technique

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Drypoint: An engraving in which the design, instead of being cut into the plate with a burin, is scratched into the surface with a hard steel “pencil.” Etching: A kind of engraving in which the design is incised in a layer of wax or varnish on a metal plate. The parts of the plate left exposed are then etched (slightly eaten away) by the acid in which the plate is immersed aft er incising...