2015 Renaissance Art

The desacralization of the post-Iconoclastic art (after 1566) seems to receive enough attention from scholars (here we should mention D. Freedberg, K. Jonckheere, L. P. Wandel), while the changes in representations of the scenes from the Holy Scripture of the first half of 16th century are relatively little-studied, though through these changes one could explain the scale and intensity of Icono­clastic Fury in the Netherlands. Therefore, it is not without interest to consider the ways of desacralization of religious imagery in the period that precedes Iconoclastic uprising — that of the first half of 16th century.
The “Last supper”, which is not frequently encountered in the Netherlandish painting in times of the “Flemish Primitives”, is experiencing its peak of popularity during the 16th century due to different factors of artistic as well as of ideological character. Influence of the Italian Renaissance, the fast spread of Reformation, which had as one of the key issues the essence and meaning of the Last Supper, — both contributed to the iconographic innovations in Dutch representations of this subject.
Obviously, it is the relative iconographic freedom (depicting the Last Supper the masters were less limited than in case of the Crucifixion), as well as the “Bilderfrage”, arisen by Reformation, that favoured the penetration of desacralization traits to the religious imagery.
We have followed the ways of desacralization relying on the examples of the “Last Supper” representations in the paintings of masters from the Northern Netherlands (J. van Ostsaanen, Amsterdam Master of Death of Mary), as well as in those of the South Netherlands (P. Coecke van Aelst, P. Pourbus the Elder, etc). We also draw on examples of decorative and applied arts representing the same subject as the traits of desacralization in their iconographical program were even more evident than in easel painting.

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The vanitas theme played a prominent role in the culture of German Renaissance and underwent different interpretations. One of them was the idea of the power of chance in the man’s fortune. On the other hand, vanitas was interpreted as the idea of life brevity, which resulted in an attempt to commemorate the person, using biographical genre in literature and portraits in fine art.
The official art of Maximilian I is often researched in relation to the emperor’s political ambitions without paying due attention to the vanitas theme. Taking into account the importance of this subject for German Renaissance culture we attempt to discuss this works in frames of vanitas theme.
Court humanist C. Celtis and artist A. Dürer, who worked for Maximilian I, underlined that literature and fine art could preserve the memory of a person after his or her death. The idea of creating an art project to commemorate the life of Maximilian can be understood as reflection of vanitas theme. Portraits of Maximilian, preserving his face after his or her death, carry inscriptions common to ancient Roman epitaphs. Memory of Maximilian’s acts was preserved in autobiographical stories “Theuerdank” (1517) and “Weisskunig” (ca. 1510–1519) and woodcut series “Triumphal carriage” (1516–1519) and “Arch of Honor” (1515). The authors payed attention to Maximilian himself as well as to his relatives, many of whom were dead by the time of woodcuts creation. In the official art of Maximilian I there are two different ways of representing dead people: showing them dead (burial sculptures) or alive as if emphasizing their eternity.
The idea of fortune, another reflection of vanitas theme, was also reflected in official art of Maximilian I: in design of “Arch of Honor” and in illustrations to the poem “Theuerdank”.

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The noble Stroganov family was the most passionate admirer of the Renaissance art in the history of Russian collecting.
The first owner of the vast Western European collection is A. S. Stroganoff who founded it in the 1750s, and published the first catalogue of the collection in 1793. The catalogue was organized according to school attribution and contained 87 canvases. In 1800 it included the descriptions of 116 paintings, and 16 of them were the creations of the Renaissance masters with Andrea del Sarto, Bronzino, Correggio, Carracci among them.
S. G. Stroganoff succeeded not only in making the excellent collection of the Early Renaissance works but also in passing down his interest to his children.
The collection of P. S. Stroganoff included “Adoration of the Christ Child” by Lippi, “Descent from the Cross” by Cima da Conegliano, also the works of Palma the Younger, Sebastiano del Piombo, D. Maineri. Today about 100 canvases are in Tambov Picture Gallery.
In a prominent Roman private gallery of G. S. Stroganoff (who lived in Rome since 1878) there were such masterpieces as “The Virgin and Child” by Pintoricchio, “The Virgin” by Duccio, reliquary with painting of Beato Angelico, “Virgin” by Simone Martini, “St. Andrew” by Domenichino and many others, and only 5 from them were given to the Hermitage in 1911, according to the last will of the owner.
The sale of Stroganoff’s collection, initiated by the Soviet government, was held in Berlin in 1931.
Careful study of the databases of the Getty Institute, the Kress Foundation, the Fondazione Zeri and the catalogues of the leading auction houses helped us to find the “lost” masterpieces of the former Stroganoff’s collection.
Stroganoffs’ collecting of the Renaissance works provoked the wave of interest in this period of art in the circles of the Russian nobility in the 19th–20th centuries. Today the masterpieces of this collection remain an inherent part of many Russian museums.

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The report focuses on the heritage of an outstanding scholar of the Leningrad school of art history of the 20th century — T. P. Znamerovskaya. The aim of this work is to identify the key issues of the Italian Renaissance art which the researcher investigated. The study of this issue allows us to extend our knowledge of the ways of development of the Russian history of art in the 20th century.
The basis for the study are the author’s published articles and monographs, as well as the materials from her personal archive housed in the Central State Archive of Literature and Arts, St. Petersburg, including T. P. Znamerovskaya’s unpublished works such as “Genius’s harmony”, “„Cheerful freethinking“ of Renaissance”, “K. Marx and F. Engels on realism in art (to the question of nature and boundaries of realism)” and others. The author’s correspondence with Russian researchers (V. N. Lazarev, J. B. Vipper, M. V. Alpatov, A. S. Samoilo) and foreign experts is of particular interest.
The range of issues examined by T. P. Znamerovskaya in her studies is diverse. The particular attention is paid to theoretical understanding of Renaissance culture and art. First of all, it is the ideological origins of the Renaissance, its philosophical foundations, and social base of the Italian art of this period (the question of folk origins).
The question about which part of society was the bearer of the Renaissance worldview was relevant in the 1950s–1960s and was discussed in the theory of art and literary criticism. In parallel, the author raises the question of the lower boundary of the Renaissance, and challenges the conventional idea for the Soviet art criticism about realism as a creative method of the Italian Renaissance masters.

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One of vital issues of contemporary art history is approach to a vast amount of texts the disciplinary archive consists of. These texts determine the knowledge and thus frame the interpretation of art mostly in a hidden way. However, it is important to understand who is actually ‘speaking’ while expressing the opinion on this or another historic art object or period. That’s why in recent decades the search for a content(s) and genealogy(s) of the disciplinary discourse has been under scrutiny. Referring to the disciplinary discourse of art history, I mean a well established and accepted set of rules, which among other things prescribes how and what art is, the relations between the artist, art and the world/society, and how and why these change. Therefore the discourse should be understood as a practice which systematically shapes the objects it discusses.
My paper addresses the writings on local Renaissance in Estonia during the 19th and 20th centuries. Discussing the Renaissance in Estonia has been part of once ‘burning’ issue in European art historiography, the problem of the ‘Northern Renaissance’. In the 19th century the Baltic-German amateur art historians started to construct the list of local valuable Renaissance objects; making of the canon of objects was continued in the 1920s and 1930s by academic researchers. During the Soviet period in Estonia the Renaissance was re-written according to the Marxist-Leninist discourses of historical materialism and realism. This period, in fact, had two stages: the Stalinist and the Thaw stage.
My aim is to take a critical look at the political, ideological and cultural constraints that were framing art history writing during different periods, examine how they were intertwined and interacted with acknowledged disciplinary methods, and finally shaped the art historical interpretations of Renaissance. Based on texts and concerning objects, I will try to demonstrate what kind of social, cultural and aesthetic values were attributed to the Renaissance art and architecture, and, thus, what kind of image of the Renaissance these texts conveyed to the reader.

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