2015 Renaissance Art

The work is dedicated to the early stage in the mythologization of Leonardo da Vinci’s “Gioconda” associated with Théophile Gautier, Jules Michelet and Walter Pater who construct the very influential myth on the portrait of Mona Lisa in the middle of the 19th century.
One of the founders of the new approach to the portrait interpretation is T. Gautier who transforms the topos of “fidelity to Nature”, known from Vasari. He is no more interested in the “lifelikeness” per se. For Gautier, this concept is closely connected with the feeling of “vague anxiety” and the “intoxicating”, almost “hypnotic” effect of the portrait.
This transformation of the topos of “fidelity to Nature” in the work of Gautier should be linked with the interest in enigmatic, characteristic of Romanticism and with the widespread gothic romance in the 19th century literature, where the motif of “lifelikeness” is perceived as a sign of portrait’s potential ability to become “living”.
The perception of “Gioconda” as a “fatal portrait” was developed in the works of J. Michelet. Well known for his interest in the theme of evil, Michelet celebrates “magical”, “Faustian”, even “demonic” inspiration of Leonardo’s paintings. The suggestion of something sinister and hypnotic in Leonardo’s pictures is Michelet’s most significant contribution to the myth which was growing up around Leo­nardo in the 19th century.
Initiated by J. Michelet and by the French romantics, mythologization of “Gioconda” was finished in the W.  Pater’s “Renaissance”. His interpretation of the portrait as a universal work of art, the embodiment of human experience refers to the ideas of rebirth, death and revival, which are key points in his conception of the “eternal Renaissance”. In the Pater’s text, “Gioconda” obtains status of a universal “icon” of Modern period, which exists regardless of time and space.

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Three as yet unpublished Latin epigrams by an unknown Italian poet of the early to mid-16th century named Giovan Francesco Fabri celebrate Michelangelo as a marble sculptor. In particular one of them praises his statue of a youth nicknamed Ligdamus. The only possible identification of this work in Michelangelo’s extant oeuvre is with his Hermitage statue, a view which has been taken up by Sergej Androsov (Ermitage Italia — Museo statale Ermitage, La scultura italiana dal XIV al XVI secolo. Catalogo della collezione, Milan, Skira, 2008, p. 66) on the basis of the information I passed on to him after the Roman conference (2002) where I delivered a paper on this subject (its proceedings have never been published). This finding would definitely fix the wavering attribution of the statue and remove the work from its alleged context in the funeral monument for Pope Julius II, hinting to a private destination instead, possibly in relation to the ambience of Pope Julius III when still a Cardinal. This would also help explain its diminutive size, obviously unfit for the decoration of the upper storey of a huge funeral monument.
Since 2002 I have gathered some new information on Fabri and his poetical work, and discovered a few facts about his biography. This sheds further light on the intellectual circle of Michelangelo’s admirers in Northern Italy in the late thirties to late fourties of the 16th century. It has got a lot to do with revived humanism, lay values and homosexual relations, disguised as alliances on religious issues. Giovan Francesco Fabri seems to be very much part of it all. His death as a young man, as well as his somewhat embarassing connections, may well explain the long puzzling silence on him and his oeuvre (including his poems on Michelangelo) in terms of damnatio memoriae.

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The Medici Chapel (or the New Sacristy) of the Florentine Church of San Lorenzo (1520–1534) is one of the greatest masterpieces of Michelangelo Buonarroti (1475–1564) and of the Renaissance art as a whole. At the same time, it is one of the most enigmatic and polysemantic works of the Renaissance. The abundance of concepts of “decoding” of the New Sacristy’s imagery proposed by researchers does not exhaust the depth of its content, and leaves space for new interpretations.
The report focuses on the analysis of the semantic structure of the Medici Chapel. During the reconstruction of the completeness of Michelangelo’s design the author examines architectural, sculptural and pictorial elements, both implemented and not implemented, from which the ensemble of the Medici Chapel was drawn.
Michelangelo’s masterpiece is considered in connection with the views of Plato, Dante and Savonarola (with a focus on the last two names). The author proposes a new look at the range of ideas. According to him, the concept of the chapel is largely determined by the idea of the Last Judgment. In the new interpretation of the ensemble crucial role is played by the sculptures of four Hours of Day. Master reinterpreted the cyclical nature of these images, relating them to the Apocalypse and the idea of posthumous retribution.

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Ferrara is known as one of the most important artistic centres of the Renaissance. Its history is close to the destiny of the House of Este, which ruled in the city during the whole period of Renaissance.
Duke Ercole II d’Este, like his predecessors, patronized arts, yet still there is no study focused on his patronage. By the way, the bright period of his rule (1534–1559) still remains practically unexplored compared to the other d’Este. The main reason for it is that the age of Ercole II d’Este is out of the so-called “Golden age” of Ferrara (the second half of the 15th — the first quarter of the 16th century), which attracts the bulk of scholars’ attention. The time from the year 1534 to 1598 is considered as the period of its gradual decline as an artistic center, and after the death of Ercole II’s son, Alfonso II d’Este, Ferrara came under the authority of Papacy.
The patronage of the last Duke of Ferrara, Alfonso II d’Este, is studied by historians of art as an autonome problem, still the patronage of Ercole II is only mentioned, but not analyzed just in general researches on Este family patronage.
In fact, the cultural life of Ferrara during the reign of Ercole II was very rich and intense. Although Ferrara ceased to be an independent center of the visual arts, it retained its status as one of the leading centers of literature, theatre, and music.
The report analyzes the patronage of Ercole II d’Este and gives a general description of the culture of Ferrara during his rule.

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The era of transition from the Middle Ages to the Renaissance is rightly recognized as a period of innovative artistic solutions in French art and is characterized by an unprecedented intensification of political and diplomatic art relations. Diplomacy is a science and at the same time an art to settle the inter-state relations. At the turn of the Middle Ages and Early Modernity new institutional features and the typical trends in the theory and practice of the French Renaissance art were clearly identified. This period is recognized as transformational — the picturesque achievements of the previous period are subjected to reinterpretation, artistic processes are intensified and institutionalized in new establishments and schools of painting (A. Quarton, N. Froment, B. d’Eyck, J. Hey, J. Fouquet etc.).
The article also focuses on the following aspects: foreign institutional factor of French Renaissance art model; value and institutional art orientations of the French Renaissance period; new forms of political and diplomatic organization and art institutionalization during the French Renaissance period, the conceptual bases of institutionalization and the classification of the humanities; new forms and tools of the humanities in France; forms and methods of treatment of the historical experience studia humanitatis in scientific or educational establishments. Institutionalization and implementation of new models of relations between art, science and society as a constant of Early Modern Period occurs exactly during the Renaissance in France.
Thus, at the turn of the Middle Ages and Early Modern period the French art passes its institutional path and reveals new artistic and institutional forms with distinctive national characteristics under the influence of the multiplicity of stylistic trends and external influences (so-called institutional model of French Renaissance art). Renaissance trends firstly found their institutional consolidation in the garden art and architecture, while retaining special features, balanced dualism and fluctuation in painting and sculpture.

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The gallery of the Western European painting, which belonged to the Berlin merchant Gotzkowsky and moved to the collection of Empress Catherine II in 1764, is the oldest one in the Hermitage today.
Today many paintings from Gotzkowsky’s collection are still in the Hermitage, but some of them have been dispersed to different museums of the world.
The collection consisted of 317 paintings by Western European artists of the 15th–18th centuries of various schools. Among them the Renaissance’s masterpieces are the most remarkable.
The sale inventory of Gotzkowsky brought to Catherine II included the works of the great masters of the European Renaissance: Raphael, Titian, Veronese, Tintoretto, Holbein. Today part of attributions is not confirmed. Scholars changed the authorship and the school attribution for some of the paintings.
The report presents a step-by-step research into the masterpieces. The author has determined the whole list of paintings that previosly belonged to this collection.
Today the paintings from the first Hermitage collection are found in more than 25 collections of the world. The report provides the survey of these works and gives examples of revised attributions. For instance, Gotzkowsky sold one item as a work by Veronese, but today its authorship is altered.
We believe it’s vital to study the Gotzkowsky’s collection taking into account the present views on the attribution of the Renaissance art and the determination of the original provenance of the works kept in modern museums.

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The Claeissens family of painters in Bruges is apparently well known and studied, thanks mainly to a few extant paintings signed by Pieter Claeissens the Elder (1499/1500–1576) and his younger sons Antoon (1541/1542–1613) and Pieter the Younger (c. 1542–1623). Nonetheless, despite the fact that name of the eldest son, Gillis, recurs fairly frequently and his career seems to be more successful than those of his brothers, the absence of signed paintings has complicated attributions.
In 2009, Brecht Dewilde found and published a commission by Claeis van de Kerchove in 1576 to Gillis Claeissens for an epitaph triptych, of which the two side panels are conserved in the Budapest Museum under the name of Pieter Claeissens the Elder. Based on these panels, even while noting the similarity in style between Gillis and his brothers, Dewilde attributed a few more paintings to Gillis which until then had been considered to belong to other two. Not until the appearance of a “Portrait of an Unknown Gentleman from the 16th century German School” on the Paris art market it became possible to discover the full extent of Gillis’ talent and stylistic originality as a portraitist.
Study of this painting perfectly illustrates both the necessity of moving out of the narrow framework of pure stylistic analysis and the difficulties in attributing northern Renaissance portraits. An art historian should set aside neither the sitter’s identity nor the dating of attire and materials such as the support and pictorial layers. No matter how fragmental this information may sometimes seem, these are the elements which make it easier to attribute Renaissance portraits with certainty, to reconstitute the corpus of each portraitist’s studio, and to reveal later replicas and fakes.

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Many researches have recently reconsidered Renaissance French Art. A general methodological tendency has quickly emerged. It is aimed to focus on the concept of “foyer”, i.e. artistic centers and their particularities (Troyes, Nancy, Lyon). On that direction, an exhibition and a symposium Tours 1500, that took place in 2012 (Tours, CESR), reconsidered art in the Loire Valley, birthplace of the French Renaissance, and defined new problems.
At the very beginning of the 16th century, Loire Valley was a French royal court residence and then a center of high level artistic production (painting, sculpture, jewelry, tapestry, illuminated manuscripts). Around 1900, the young discipline of art history focused on this “regional school of artistic production” and defined specific ways for studying it. Such fundamental studies as that of Paul Vitry on Michel Colombe (Paris, 1901), and the 1904 exhibition on French Primitives, as well as many subsequent studies determined two main prospects for study: firstly, monographic analysis of the works of important artists such as Jean Fouquet, Michel Colombe or Jean Bourdichon; secondly, the definition of notions like “school of Loire Valley” or “art de la détente”. Recent historiography has reconsidered the subject and proposed new lines of reflexion. The more dynamic and opened notion of “foyer” has replaced the notion of “regional artistic school” and the anonymous corpus or those of the major Masters have been reevaluated (Michel Colombe, Jean Poyer, Master of Claude of France — Eloi
Tassart?).
The Centre des Études Supérieures de la Renaissance is an actual actor of this revival through two programs of research. ARVIVA inventories, analyses and evaluates figurative arts in the Loire Valley in a large period from 1470 to 1600. Sculpture 3D proposes to reconsider key masterpieces with the help of augmented reality in order to place new digital tools in service of scientific analysis. The first results of these programs are manifold. The enlarged period of study allows us to better understand the evolution of the artistic production. Moreover, deeper archival researches reveal relationship of ar­tists and patrons, and draw interactive social network in Tours around 1500.
In this respect, the paper focuses on particular examples: Tours as capital of luxury, parishes as the center of microhistory of the social network, and recently discovered works of art and masterpieces lately reconsidered.

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The continuous development of art and the evolution of aesthetics in Spain of the 15th century induce increasing interest of the art historians.
“The Sky of Salamanca” was painted on the University of Salamanca’s library ceiling during the last quarter of the 15th century. Fernando Gallego was a master of retablo and the fresco technique was highly unusual in Spain at that time. The astrological theme seemed to be pagan for medieval Europe, but quite common for the art of the Renaissance. However, astronomy and astrology played an important role in Spain during the centuries of the Reconquista, so the semantics of astrological images wasn’t forgotten. The creation of this fresco became an outstanding event of the artistic live of Salamanca.
This study analyzes the history of the fresco, its iconographical origins and cultural environment of the time of its creation.

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The paper is focuced on main theoretical and artistic problems of Renaissance in Iberian region and how these problems are linked to the evolution of polychrome sculpture of the16th — or even — 17th centuries. The analysis of that object is very important for the correct understanding of phenomena in Spanish and Portuguese art of the 15th–16th centuries. Furthermore, the problems of understanding appear when we question the existence of renaissance tendencies in Iberian peninsula.
This branch of Renaissance is very complicated concept which needs special attention. For example, Iberian art of the 17th century is based on progressive influences of the 16th century. We can be sure that the expansion of knowledge of anatomy may be explained by renaissance tendencies, other­wise it’s impossible to imagine such a specific naturalistic Baroque art as polychrome sculpture as well as the Sevillian painting.
Analyzing the art of Modern Age in Spain and Portugal we turn to the epoch of 15th–16th centuries. The style of the epoch has both Renaissance and Gothic elements. But the region which gave birth to these Renaissance tendencies on the Iberian peninsula, is hard to determine. Also considering the radical changes in economic life of Spain and Portugal, studying art of that period makes the researcher turn to the history of international relations. So it is possible to conclude that Renaissance tendencies came here from Northern Europe, that’s why Spanish and Portuguese art bears the imprint of such an original phenomenon as Northern Renaissance.
However, many international artists — Italian, French, German etc. — worked on Iberian peninsula. For investigating that period it’s necessary to research the works of such masters as Juan de Juni, Pompeo Leoni, and also Juan de Castillo, Diego de Siloe, Alonso Berruguete. The artworks of these sculptores and architects are rich material for analysis and reflections on the evolution of national art in Spain and Portugal, on concept of the form, and on spectator’s perception. This article attempts to analyze this matter.

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