Raphael's “School of Athens” covers one wall of the Stanza (a room in the pope's private quarters in the Vatican). He used the actual arch in the wall to frame the painting. Three painted arches serve as a background for the ancient Greek philosophers and scientists in the front of the scene. In the center, beneath the arches, stand Plato and Aristotle, the leading philosophers. Raphael grouped the main representatives of the schools of Greek philosophy and science in casual but carefully organized arrangements. The scene expresses the sense of clarity, space, and proportion for which Raphael became famous.
Mickelangelo worked as a sculptor until the pope ordered him to decorate the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel in the Vatican. "The Creation of Adam" is one frexo from the chapel ceiling. It shows God moving on a cloud among many angels. He extends a figures toward Adam raises his arm to receive the spark of life. Michelangelo's human figures are more sculptural and solidlooking than Raphael's. Raphael's figures seem happier and more graceful, but not so herac and powerful as Mickelangelo's.
Venetian painting. Venice ranked second only to Rome as a center of Italian art during the 1500's. Venice was a commercial city that handled much of the trade between Europe and the East. Venetian painters showed the influence of Eastern art in their fascination with color. Their works also show a trend away from interest in the hard outline and sculptural and heroic figures found in the paintings of Florence and Rome. Venetian painters tried to please and relax the viewers rather than inspire them to noble deeds. Giorgione, Titian and Tintoretto were the most famous. They all were neasters of oil painting.
The texture of the paint itself interested some Venetian artists more than the subject matter. These painters brushed on their paint in thick strokes. Sometimes they seem almost to have painted their pictures in sweeping brushstrokes. These pictures are often full of motion and action, and invite the viewer to an imaginary world where he can relax in the presence of beautiful women and lovely nature.
The Counter Reformation, the Roman Catholic Church's response to the Protestant Reformation, and the rise of nationalism in many European countries helped bring about a major painting style - baroque, Baroque and a related style, rococo, dominated European painting during the 1600's and 1700's. The Reformation forced the Roman Catholic Church to organize against Protestantism. Church officials wanted to use art in order to spread Catholic ideas and teachings. The church told artists that they should create religious paintings that would be realistic and easy to understand and - most importantly - would inspire religious emotional reactions in viewers. These qualities formed the basic of the baroque painting style.
Peter Paul Rubens of Flanders was one of the greatest of the painters who adopted the baroque style. He skillfully combined realism and classical style. Rubens was also influenced by the Venetian technique of painting in thick oils.
The “Elevation of the Cross” shows Rubens' baroque style. This painting is a highly emotional religious scene. Several half-naked bodies strain to lift Jesus into the cross as spectators look on in sorrow and fear. Rubens intensified the feeling of action and struggle by drawing his composition in diagonal lines. He further heightened the picture's lights appeal by painting the highlights in thick masses of pigment and the dark colors in semitransparent brownish glazes. The painting shows Rubens' remarkable ability in drawing the studio and employed many assistants, of whom Anton Van Dyck was the most famous. Diego Velkazquez, who painted at the Spanish court, was another master of baroque. Both Van Dyck and Velazquez gained their greatest fame as portrait painters. Their portraits showed rulers in aristocratic poses. Such portraits were intended to display the vertues and dignity of the rulers. This type of elegant portrait is called a state portrait, and became popular during the 1600's. Anyhow, Velazquez' portraits seem more like personal pictures from a family album than paintings advertising the rulers.
Dutch painting. By the late 1600's, the Netherlands had become one of the world's major commercial and colonial powers. As the country gained wealth, the Dutch people became interested in luxury goods, including works of art. They liked almost any subject that
reminded them of their own comfortable middle-class lives. Dutch painters developed a distinct style during the baroque period. Many Dutch artists specialized in painting specific subjects, such as domestic scenes or tavern scenes. Painting that deals with such ordinary, everyday subjects is called genre painting.
Jan Vermeer probably ranks as the greatest Dutch genre painter of the 1600's. Vermeer and other Dutch genre artists painted small pictures, most of which had smooth, glazed surfaces. Vermeer, a master of painting interior scenes, usually portrayed women working at quiet household tasks. His art is particularly noted for its treatment of sunlight as it floods into a room or falls on objects.
Rococo was a painting style that developed out of baroque. Rococo artists gave their paintings the decorative quality of baroque. But they painted most of their pictures on a smaller scale than did the baroque painters. Much baroque painting was energetic and heroic. Rococo painting communicated a sense of relaxation. It also was light-hearted and had none of the seriousness of baroque painting. Antone Watteau and Honore Fragonard are the most famous rococo artists.
Neo-classicism was a movement in painting which reflected political changes in Europe. The French Revolution, which began in 1789, stressed the virtues of Roman civilization. These virtues included discipline and high moral principles. Neo-classical artists helped educate the French people in the goals of the new government. They painted inspirational scenes from Roman history to create a feeling of patriotism. They are Jacques Louis David and Jean Auguste Dominique of France.
Romanticism was a reaction against the neo-classical emphasis on balanced, orderly pictures. Romantic paintings expressed the imagination and emotions of the artists. The painters replaced the clean, bright colors and harmonious compositors of neo-classicism with scenes of violent activity dramatized by vigorous brushstrokes, rich colors, and deep shadows.
Two English painters - John Constable and Joseph M. W. Turner -made important contributions to romanticism. Constable was a master of landscape painting. He developed a style of rough brushstrokes, and broken color to catch the effected of lights in the air, trees bent in the wind, and pond surfaces moved by a breeze. In his works he tried to capture in oil paintings the fresh quality of water color sketches.
Turner was increasingly concerned with the effects of color. In his late works color became one dazzling swirl of paint on the canvas. The influence of Constable and Turner appeared during the late 1800"s in the works of the French impressionists.
Realism. As neo-classicism and romanticism declined , a new movement - realism - developed in France. Guctave Courbet became the first great master of realistic painting. Courbet painted landscapes, but his vision of nature was not so idealized as that of other painters. He recorded the world around him so sharply that many of his works were considered social protests. In one painting, for example, he portrayed an old man and a youth in the agonizing work of breaking rocks with hammers. The artist implied that something is wrong with a society that allows people to spend their lives at such labor. The neo-classicists called Courbet's paintings low and vulgar. But Courbet's works helped change the course of art. The paintings were based on the artist's honest. Unsentimental observations of life around him. From Courbet's time to the present day, many painters have adopted his approach.
The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood was an English art and literary movement founded in 1848. The leading painters of the movement were William Holman Hunt, Sir John Everett, Millais, and Dante Gabriel Rossetti. The Pre-Raphaelite painters stood apart from the major art movements of their century. They wanted to return to what they believed was the purity and innocence of painting before Raphael. Most Pre-Raphaelite art has a strong moral message through religious paintings.
Edward Manet was a French artist who revolutionized painting in the mid-1800's. He developed a new approach to art. He believed that painting do not have to express messages or portray emotions. Manet was chiefly interested in painting beautiful pictures. To him, beauty resulted from a combination of brushstrokes, colors, patterns, and tones. Since Manet's time, most painters have emphasized the picture itself, rather than its storytelling function. His "Luncheon on the Grass" illustrates lack of concern for story.
Impressionism was developed by a group of French painters who did their major work between about 1870 and 1910. The impressionists included Claude Manet, Pierre Auguste Renoir, and Edgar Degas. Like Manet, the impressionists, they chose to paint scenes from everyday life, including buildings, landscapes, people, and scenes of city traffic. Most of the people in their pictures were ordinary middle-class city dwellers -like the painters themselves.
The impressionists developed a revolutionary painting style. They based it on the fact that nature changes continually. Leaves move in the wind, light transforms the appearance of object, reflections alter color and form. As the viewer moves, the perspective of what is seen changes. The impressionists tried to create painting that capture ever - changing reality at a particular moment - much as a camera does.
Postimpressionism described a group of artists who attempted in various ways to extend the visual language of painting beyond impressionism. The most influential postimpressionists were Paul Cezanne, Paul Gauguin, and Vincent van Gogh. All were French except van Gogh, who was Dutch . Unlike the impressionists, who emphasized light, Cezanne stressed form and mass. The distortion in his pictures add force to the composition and give the subject an appearance of permanence and strength. Gauguin's pictures are highly decorative. Gauguin's pictures are highly decorative. Gauguin stressed flat color, strong patterns, unshaded shapes, and curved lines. He constantly searched for purity and simplicity in life. His search led him to the South Seas, where he settled on the island of Tahiti. Like Gauguin, van Gogh wanted to express his innermost feelings through his art. He believed he could achieve this goal through the use of brilliant color and violent brushstrokes. He applied his oil colors directly from the tube. without mixing them. The result was an art of passionate intensity. Artists of the 1900's have continued the search for new approaches to painting that characterized the work of the impressionists and postimpressionists. Many art movements appeared during the 1900's. Each lasted only a few years but added to the richness and variety of modern art. They are fauvism, cubism, futurism, expressionism, dadaism, surrealism, etc. As time passed, painters of the 1900's increasingly emphasized purely visual impact rather than recognizable subject matter or storytelling.
Some art critics say that too much of today's painting is concerned only with originality and novelty. These critics agree that artists should discard traditions that no longer meet their needs. But they point out that most great advances in style and technique were achieved because artists believed they needed new methods to express beliefs or ideas. Sometimes artists strive only to create original painting styles. But originality for its own sake becomes boring unless the painting has qualities that help it remain significant and interesting after its novelty has worn off.