THE RENAISSANCEIs it possible to define the Renaissance without using clichés? The “springtime of the modern world” inevitably illustrated by reproductions of Botticelli’s Primavera allegory has so perpetuated the myth of the “happy moment” and the “delicate dawn” that they still have their power to fascinate us. We still dream of mornings in Florence. We still want to believe in “that enchanting moment” when, as Hippolyte Tame says, “man discovered the poetry of real things for the first time.” And we know that Walter Pater put the golden age of Florence, the time of Lorenzo the Magnificent, on the same plane as the age of Pericles.
Historians have rectified these idyllic interpretations which suggested a parallel with the Garden of Eden. We forget all too readily that this so—called happy moment was actually a period of confusion and tumult. A divided West, victim of endless wars and internecine strife, was exhausted and reeling from the aggressive Turkish drive against which it had organized no resistance. Pius II’s exhortations at Mantua in i459 had no effect on the Christian princes, who were indifferent to the peregrinations of the Palaeologus emperor.
The truth is that self-interest won the day over faith and morals. The fall of Constantinople in 1453 mainly affected commercial strategies. Political pragmatism, the theory of which was a Renaissance product, led Venetians, Genoese and Florentines to do business with the Ottomans. And artists were quick to seize their opportunities, too. Gentile Bellini painted a magnificent portrait of Mehmet II whom Bertoldo di Giovanni glorified with a celebrated medal.
Italy undoubtedly benefited by the disarray of an impoverished West whose squabbles and dissensions she financed, if we may put it that way. But in spite of her wealth, due to her mastery of banking techniques, she was not spared in her turn. Civil wars, clashes between clans and families, class and caste struggles against a background of the long-standing hatred of Guelph for Ghibelline, moulded everyday life. The history of Italian cities was marked by conspiracies and assassinations. And although the example of classical struggles against dictatorship fed the exaltation of “tyrant killers”—and justified their exactions the “republican” ideal disappeared. There were good reasons why Pius II, as Burckhardt tells us, “cast an envious eye on the ‘fortunate’ imperial towns of Germany where existence was not poisoned by all kinds of confiscations and the violent actions of authorities and factions.” And Garin reminds us that Leonardo Bruni was working on the writings of Plato “while the shock of civil war shook the walls of solemn palaces.”
The Renaissance was a happy age only in the realm of culture. Perhaps in compensation, a new image of man was framed and confirmed a new audacious definition of his place in a universe of which he was no longer the plaything, but, in the words of Pico della Mirandola, the centre. Man, “that wonderful and beautiful thing,” created in the image of his God, became master of his own destiny. A new awareness of time and space appeared in every human discipline and activity that led scholars to revise accepted ideas and outmoded knowledge. Humanism was primarily a wide-ranging and profound critical review of the imago mundi. Andre Chastel has rightly remarked on the “great desire to see the world” of an age which in every field was busy reorganizing space and reorienting the facts which made it possible to grasp, apprehend, measure and order it. Perhaps it was the discovery of nature and the human body, and their celebration, more than the imitation of antiquity, that characterized the art of the period. The plastic arts, architecture, painting and sculpture, are the strongest evidence of this need for new representations of the world in accordance with a visual order which would finally allow man to understand and organize it.
Executed in limestone and gilded polychrome terracotta, the Tabernacle of the Annunciation in Santa Croce made Donatello famous, or so Vasari tells us. In actual fact this work is usually dated to the I430S. By placing it at the beginning of the artist’s career, Vasari clearly recognized its novelty, which was the product of Donatello’s thematic and formal invention. As in the Tabernacle of the Sacrament in St. Peter’s and the Cantoria, Donatello manipulated motifs all’antica with a light touch, combining them as his fancy dictated, without attempting a slavish imitation of the architectural features he had seen (whether he studied them or not) in Rome. Here Donatello parted company with Brunelleschi and Michelozzo. The emphasis laid on the terracotta cornice ornamented with embracing putti holding festoons and the masks supporting the capitals anticipated the workshops’ subsequent craze for bizarre constructions and surprising, enigmatic and complicated decorative repertories. Here Donatello juxtaposed the components of the new culture or rather integrated sacred history with the exciting order of a regenerative antiquity by demonstrating his ability to surpass it.
The polychromy, the gilding and the various techniques employed emphasize the “pictorial” quality of this work which established the new basic features of the expressive mise en scene of the representation of the Annunciation. Vasari clearly grasped the stylistic qualities of the Tabernacle of the Annunciation. He praised the drapery, the modelling and an important factor according to his theory of the arts the design. Lastly, his description paid tribute to the concentration and dramatic intensity which Donatello achieved by the “narrative” accuracy of the attitudes and gestures of the Virgin Mary and the angel. Here sculpture vies with painting. It makes the impalpable palpable and restores to us “by means of the gestures and movements of the limbs,” as Leonardo required of the art of painting, “the state of mind of the personage,” in other words the movements of his soul.
Historians have rectified these idyllic interpretations which suggested a parallel with the Garden of Eden. We forget all too readily that this so—called happy moment was actually a period of confusion and tumult. A divided West, victim of endless wars and internecine strife, was exhausted and reeling from the aggressive Turkish drive against which it had organized no resistance. Pius II’s exhortations at Mantua in i459 had no effect on the Christian princes, who were indifferent to the peregrinations of the Palaeologus emperor.
The truth is that self-interest won the day over faith and morals. The fall of Constantinople in 1453 mainly affected commercial strategies. Political pragmatism, the theory of which was a Renaissance product, led Venetians, Genoese and Florentines to do business with the Ottomans. And artists were quick to seize their opportunities, too. Gentile Bellini painted a magnificent portrait of Mehmet II whom Bertoldo di Giovanni glorified with a celebrated medal.
Italy undoubtedly benefited by the disarray of an impoverished West whose squabbles and dissensions she financed, if we may put it that way. But in spite of her wealth, due to her mastery of banking techniques, she was not spared in her turn. Civil wars, clashes between clans and families, class and caste struggles against a background of the long-standing hatred of Guelph for Ghibelline, moulded everyday life. The history of Italian cities was marked by conspiracies and assassinations. And although the example of classical struggles against dictatorship fed the exaltation of “tyrant killers”—and justified their exactions the “republican” ideal disappeared. There were good reasons why Pius II, as Burckhardt tells us, “cast an envious eye on the ‘fortunate’ imperial towns of Germany where existence was not poisoned by all kinds of confiscations and the violent actions of authorities and factions.” And Garin reminds us that Leonardo Bruni was working on the writings of Plato “while the shock of civil war shook the walls of solemn palaces.”
The Renaissance was a happy age only in the realm of culture. Perhaps in compensation, a new image of man was framed and confirmed a new audacious definition of his place in a universe of which he was no longer the plaything, but, in the words of Pico della Mirandola, the centre. Man, “that wonderful and beautiful thing,” created in the image of his God, became master of his own destiny. A new awareness of time and space appeared in every human discipline and activity that led scholars to revise accepted ideas and outmoded knowledge. Humanism was primarily a wide-ranging and profound critical review of the imago mundi. Andre Chastel has rightly remarked on the “great desire to see the world” of an age which in every field was busy reorganizing space and reorienting the facts which made it possible to grasp, apprehend, measure and order it. Perhaps it was the discovery of nature and the human body, and their celebration, more than the imitation of antiquity, that characterized the art of the period. The plastic arts, architecture, painting and sculpture, are the strongest evidence of this need for new representations of the world in accordance with a visual order which would finally allow man to understand and organize it.
Executed in limestone and gilded polychrome terracotta, the Tabernacle of the Annunciation in Santa Croce made Donatello famous, or so Vasari tells us. In actual fact this work is usually dated to the I430S. By placing it at the beginning of the artist’s career, Vasari clearly recognized its novelty, which was the product of Donatello’s thematic and formal invention. As in the Tabernacle of the Sacrament in St. Peter’s and the Cantoria, Donatello manipulated motifs all’antica with a light touch, combining them as his fancy dictated, without attempting a slavish imitation of the architectural features he had seen (whether he studied them or not) in Rome. Here Donatello parted company with Brunelleschi and Michelozzo. The emphasis laid on the terracotta cornice ornamented with embracing putti holding festoons and the masks supporting the capitals anticipated the workshops’ subsequent craze for bizarre constructions and surprising, enigmatic and complicated decorative repertories. Here Donatello juxtaposed the components of the new culture or rather integrated sacred history with the exciting order of a regenerative antiquity by demonstrating his ability to surpass it.
The polychromy, the gilding and the various techniques employed emphasize the “pictorial” quality of this work which established the new basic features of the expressive mise en scene of the representation of the Annunciation. Vasari clearly grasped the stylistic qualities of the Tabernacle of the Annunciation. He praised the drapery, the modelling and an important factor according to his theory of the arts the design. Lastly, his description paid tribute to the concentration and dramatic intensity which Donatello achieved by the “narrative” accuracy of the attitudes and gestures of the Virgin Mary and the angel. Here sculpture vies with painting. It makes the impalpable palpable and restores to us “by means of the gestures and movements of the limbs,” as Leonardo required of the art of painting, “the state of mind of the personage,” in other words the movements of his soul.
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