A Post-Raphael World (and more talk about "The Last Judgement")

And what a sad world that must have been. But it was still a world where work had to be done, and Michelangelo still had his own life to live and art to make for himself. He received a commission to pain the Last Judgement fresco, and his return to Rome and his innovative work on this piece were certainly signs that Rome was revitalizing and once again becoming a cultural hub.

I want to talk a little bit about how the Last Judgement was a departure from the previous Renaissance fare we see at the time, and how Michelangelo's beliefs about religion come into effect in this fresco in particular.

We see Michelangelo depart from tradition radically in his portrayal of figures. Instead of having a diverse group of bodies, in both age and race, we see them perfected, young and similar, in adherence to Paul's concept of the glorified body. We see St. Bartholomew (who was flayed as an act of martyrdom) portrayed with a face different than the one he holds in his left hand.

So why would St. Bartholomew not be revived and made whole and also be given his same face? 

Well, according to St. Paul, all who have died at the second coming are to be granted a new and perfect body, something idealized and better than the mortal flesh that came before. this notion of a new body being granted is particularly interesting because a lot of scholars think the discarded flesh (yeah, I know, it's gross.) is actually a self portrait of Michelangelo himself. So, why a sack of flesh for a self portrait? I'm glad you asked, reader! This was apparently his was of saying that he wasn't going to have to spend eternity in his own wrinkly old man's body. He would instead be given a beautiful, ideal body to spend eternity in. And to an artist like Michelangelo, to whom the personification of idealized and beautiful bodies was already so important, it was crucial to portray this in painting. 

Another fascinating thing we see him doing with this fresco in particular is eliminating the picture plane, and compartmentalizing the figures in front of it instead. By limiting the draperies and clothing of the figures, we are forced instead to contemplate the wall behind them instead. Why else would there be such restraint and coordination among the hues in the painting? By painting the walls without boundaries (something we see frequently in other large fresco works; see the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, which utilizes painted columns and architectural elements to block off different sections)

 the need to create a cohesive piece by other means arose. By having the hues match and the figures arranged just so, we get a sense of different areas during the Rapture, with Jesus and the Virgin right in the center. It's fascinating to think how revolutionary this was, and how it translates as a compartmentalized space despite the lack of substantial dividers within the fresco. 

REPOST: The Last Judgement as Merciful Heresy

Well, I saved one version of this and posted it, until Blogspot told me it didn't actually save and thus did not exist. So here we go for round two!

the Last Judgement. This thing sparked effing riots when it was revealed to the public in 1541 for the first time. And why shouldn't it? Take a look at the piece:

It's bloody gorgeous. A huge, elaborate fresco detailing, in case we hadn't picked up on the content of it by now, Judgement Day. Souls rising to heaven, being condemned and dragged to Hell, with Christ and the Madonna central to it all. Also, note how masterful the foreshortening of every single limb is in this. His friends and critiques all marveled at how spectacular the foreshortening was.

All this praise aside, one group disliked the masterpiece; the Catholic Orthodoxy. Where, they roared, were the classical, non heretical depictions of Christ and the Last Judgement? Why was Christ so...normal looking, why was the virgin mother so timorous, and why were all the cherubs and souls so naked? Blasphemy, they cried, and the work of Michelangelo was suddenly in danger.

His friends and admirers, those knowledgable in the ways of the arts, step up to protect him.  This was nothing but another classical interpretation if the source material! Citing Matthew 25:41 as a source, they claimed this was clearly a depiction of his righteous anger whilst Judgement Day whirled on around Him. And most scholars agree with them now. Except there's another school of thought on this fresco, one which I think really has some merit to it. 

This is the belief that his supporters and friends and benefactors, those who knew of Michelangelo's intent behind the work, skewed the public and the churches' understanding of it to protect it. A few examples of this:

1. Many of the bodies we see being drawn up to heaven for the Rapture are, well, gross. Some of them are decomposing, some are just bones, some have body language that reads as plain miserable. And all of them, the church argued are too corporeal and human looking, when the soul was clearly something more than that. Now, I would argue that it was the personification of bodies being made solid and non corruptable that made him depict them as solid, fleshy things as opposed to transparent souls. Another interesting point here, when referring to the gross souls still waiting for their turn at redemption are being over-emphasized and picked to pieces. This is something critics do with a lot of his work, I think; they tend to focus quite a bit on the morbid, and ignore things like the soul in his fresco drawn upward by two rosaries, literally carried to Heaven by the power of prayer. The hope and tenderness is still there, but nobody takes not of it. 

On Leonardo and Michelangelo

Apparently I've been publishing these readings out of order. Whoops. Well, anyways, Today we're gonna discuss The works and thoughts of Michelangelo and Leonardo, and differentiate a bit between their artistic trains of thought. Ready?
First, Leonardo. Our textbook renaissance man. He put a lot of value on scientific observation and experimentation, as documented in his journals.

Pictured: Not a ninja turtle.

 He was highly opposed to any train of scientific thought not rooted in experimentation; he despised speculation. This was also visible in his paintings; painting was science to him, because of how deeply rooted it was in mathematical perspectives and a focus on the study and observation of nature. To Leonardo, observation in art was something that had to occur in each stage of painting, and painting itself was, for Leo, an art to be exalted over sculpture. He considered sculpture limited in that it could not depict color, or arial perspective, or luminous forms. This is something we see echoed in his notes; nowhere in his journals is the exactness of his observations more apparent than when he looks at light, shade, and aerial perspective (things he claims raises painting on a pedestal above sculpture, remember. This'll apply to Michelangelo later). Leonardo is a complete innovator when it comes to aerial perspective; he was one of the first to notice that shadows cast on a white surface were blue, for example, or that hills in a background tend to get less distinct. We wouldn't see this kind of attention to aerial perspective until the 1900's, when the Impressionists started fiddling with it again.

So, we have Leonardo and his exact examinations of nature and how that applies to painting. SO what about Michelangelo?
Michelangelo had a great belief in the fundamental beauty of nature. We see him blend theology and Pagan philosophy pretty well in his depictions on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, but the motivations behind his sculptural figures are not reason and experimentation, as they are for Leonardo. Instead, Michelangelo is driven ferociously by a love of religion and Neoplatonism (which is a school of philosophy heavily influenced by the teachings of Plato).

That's not to say that Michelangelo put no stock in scientific observation or experimentation at all; he knew quite a bit about perspective, and studied human anatomy very carefully. He and Leonard differ in that Michelangelo did not bother to reproduce nature exactly. He pursued the beautiful, not the exact, which is something that is readily obvious his depictions of the sibyls among the Sistine ceiling. We see him distorting poses of figures to make them appear more beautiful, and his stylized figures often gesticulate and bend a little more dramatically than they would in real life. It is by means of imagination that Michelangelo perceives beauty and perfection, not strictly through scientific observation.

Titian and the Venus of Urbino

Granted, I don't know much about Titian, other than how to pronounce his name. But his impact of relationships between patron and painter and his deep understanding of hue and chroma when painting sets him apart as one of the masters of the Renaissance.

The reading this week focused quite a bit on Titian's painting style and how progressive it was, so bear with me while I articulately recap and share my thoughts on everything. 

One of the really cool things about Titian was his working relationships with his patrons at the time. Titian, often at the request of his patrons, was allowed to choose his own subject matter when painting, and was allowed to present these works as commissions. This was an astounding level of freedom at the time, when painters were commonly stuck in business transactions where the subject matter of their art was chosen for this. This was an unprecedented amount of artistic freedom, and we really wouldn't see it again until modern times. 

Now, on to Titian's paintings themselves. This dude is totally a pro. Here, don't just take my word for it. check out the Venus of Urbino;

She's gorgeous, and a completely new kind of nude than what was previously seen in painting. This is one of the first times we see a nude like this in such an intimate setting, (something I believe we don't really see pushed and played with again until the Impressionists, with their sassy, human, almost vulgar nudes.).We see Titian playing with the conventions of the time, putting her in a contextualized, intimate bedroom setting, with the model herself displaying less modesty than most nude goddesses of the time. Her face is turned to us, staring at us pointedly instead of turned in profile. Is neat and it's in your face, and it's also very, very bright and colorful, which is another thing we see Titian do frequently. Titian likes to contrast bright, amorphous forms of free-flowing color with very bright, precise forms and then placing them right next to each other. As is pretty common at the time, we see a very idealized form of beauty, with her very pale skin and long slender limbs and neck.
This idealized form of beauty brings us to the next point in the reading, namely the misogyny that this and other nudes may or may not represent. And honestly, I'm...not sure how I feel about that. "Not every culture distinguishes the erotic from the pornographic," as Fidlen states, but I really don't see the Venus of Urbino as a pornographic representation. Titian's nudes have an undeniable air of class and grace, despite the whole "laying there naked whilst giving you the eye" thing, and while there's certainly an erotic subtext, I wouldn't necessarily argue it as a pornographic one. At least not one that was meant to be deliberately pornographic.