N.A. Belousova

The art of the 18th century (settecento in Italian) represented the final stage of the centuries-old evolution of the great classical art of Italy. This is the time of all-European popularity of Italian artists. Petersburg, Madrid, Paris, London, Vienna, Warsaw - there was not a single European capital where Italian masters were not invited, wherever they, fulfilling orders from royal courts and nobility, did not work as architects and sculptors, frescoes or theater decorators, landscape painters or portrait painters.

It would be wrong to explain such a wide resonance of Italian artistic culture in this period by the fact that its masters embarked on the path of fundamentally new artistic discoveries, as was the case in the Renaissance and in the 17th century. Rather, it can be said that the Italian masters were sometimes inferior in terms of the historical perspective of their achievements to the artists of other countries, such as France and England. Moreover, Italian architects and painters were more closely connected than the artists of other national schools with the nature of figurative thinking and the language of forms of the masters of the previous, 17th century. The all-European success of the Italians was promoted first of all by the extremely high general level of their art, which absorbed the centuries-old fruitful traditions of the great previous eras, then by the evenly high development of all types of plastic arts and the presence in Italy of a large number of gifted masters.

The most valuable achievements of Italian art of the 18th century. are associated not only with architecture and monumental and decorative painting, where such a great master as Tiepolo played a decisive role, but also with various genres of easel painting (primarily with architectural landscape), with theatrical and decorative art and with graphics. In addition to the ideological content aspects, a vivid and figurative reflection of the era, its main advantages were its exceptionally high artistic quality, virtuoso painting skills, thanks to which the prestige of the brilliant Italian maestro remained extremely high.

One of the reasons for the wide distribution of Italian masters throughout Europe was also the fact that they could not fully find a use for themselves in their homeland. Exhausted by wars, Italy turned from the end of the 17th to the beginning of the 18th century. not only to a politically fragmented, but also to an almost ruined country. Its southern part was subject to the Spanish Bourbons; Tuscany was ruled by members of the House of Habsburg, Lombardy was in the hands of Austria. The feudal system that dominated the lands that belonged to the clergy and the aristocracy, rising prices, low wages for workers employed in manufactories - all caused discontent and unrest among the masses, which resulted in unorganized uprisings of the poor, which could not be successful in the conditions of subjugation of the country to foreigners and because of its economic backwardness. Only the Republic of Venice and the Papal States with its capital Rome retained their state independence. It was Venice and Rome that played the most prominent role in the spiritual and artistic life of Italy in the 18th century.

Although, in comparison with the brilliant heyday of the 17th century, Italian architecture of the 18th century shows a certain decline, it nevertheless provided many interesting solutions. Even in the difficult economic conditions of this century, the Italians retained their passion for the erection of huge majestic structures, as well as the monumental language of architectural forms, so characteristic of them. And yet, in the brilliance of individual illustrious monuments of this time, one feels rather a kind of inertia of the former grandiose scope of construction activity, rather than an organic correspondence to the conditions of reality. This dependence on the past, more pronounced in Italy than in many other national art schools in Europe, was reflected here, in particular, in the predominant role of the Baroque style, which very slowly receded before the sprouts of a new classicist architecture.

Close, in essence, inseparable connection with the architecture of the 17th century. especially noticeable in the monuments of Rome. Roman architects of the first half of the 18th century. retained a large urban scale of their thinking. More modest than before, economic opportunities were used by them to create separate large structures that adequately completed a number of well-known architectural complexes and ensembles.

In the 18th century, the facades of two famous early Christian basilicas in Rome, San Giovanni in Laterano (1736) and Santa Maria Maggiore (1734-1750), were erected, which dominate the architecture of the adjacent areas. The builder of the facade of the Lateran Basilica, Alessandro Galilei (1691-1736), chose the facade of the Roman Cathedral of St. Peter, created by Carlo Maderna. But, unlike the latter, he gave a more artistic solution to a similar theme. In its two-story facade with huge rectangular and arched openings and a colossal order of semi-columns and pilasters, the severity and clarity of massive architectural forms are more severe than those of Maderna, sharply set off by the restless movement of the huge statues crowning the facade. The external appearance of the Church of Site Maria Maggiore, whose facade was erected according to the project of Ferdinando Fuga (1699-1781), testifies to the relief and calming of baroque architectural forms. Fugue was also the builder of the elegant Palazzo del Consulta (1737) - an example of Roman palace architecture of the 18th century. Finally, the façade of the Church of Santa Croce in Gerusalemme provides an example of a strikingly individual solution of the Baroque church façade in an aspect that has fascinated many Italian architects since the time of the Gesu.

In the Roman architecture of this time, one can also find an example of a square, which is, as it were, a kind of open vestibule in front of a church building. Such is the very small square of Sant'Ignazio, where, in contrast to the curvilinear outlines of the brick facades surrounding it, the whimsical elegance of its forms, which are closer to Rococo than to Baroque, the impressive stone massif of the facade of the Church of Sant'Ignazio, built in the previous century, stands out spectacularly.

Among the most breathtaking monuments in Rome is the famous Spanish Steps, built by the architects Alessandro Specchi (1668-1729) and Francesco de Sanctis (c. 1623-1740). The principle of picturesque terrace composition, developed by baroque architects when creating palace and park ensembles, was used here for the first time in the conditions of urban development. Broken along a steep slope, a wide staircase combines the Piazza di Spagna located at the foot of the hill with highways passing through the square located on the top of this hill in front of the two-towered facade of the Church of San Trinita dei Monti. The grandiose cascade of steps, either merging into a single swift stream, or branching into separate marches that run from top to bottom along a complex curvilinear channel, is distinguished by exceptional picturesqueness and a wealth of spatial aspects.

Late Baroque decorative trends triumph in the famous Trevi Fountain (1732-1762), designed by the architect Niccolò Salvi (c. 1697-1751). The pompous façade of the Palazzo Poli is used here as a background for a huge wall fountain and is perceived as a kind of architectural decoration, inextricably linked with sculpture and violently rushing water streams.

As one of the most interesting buildings in the southern regions of Italy, the royal palace at Caserta near Naples, built by Luigi Vanvitelli (1700-1773), must be named. This multi-storey building, grandiose in its scale, is in plan a giant square with buildings crosswise intersecting inside it, which form four large courtyards. At the intersection of the buildings there is a colossal two-tier vestibule in which huge galleries coming from different sides and majestic front stairs converge.

In more historically promising forms, architecture developed in the northern regions of Italy - in Piedmont and Lombardy, where progressive trends are more clearly detected in the economy and culture. The largest architect here was Filippo Yuvara (1676-1736), a native of Sicily, who worked in Turin, Rome and other cities and ended his career in Spain. Yuvara is the author of many diverse buildings, but in general, the evolution of his work follows from magnificent compositionally complex structures to greater simplicity, restraint and clarity of the architectural language. His early style is represented by the facade of the Palazzo Madama in Turin (1718-1720). More ease and freedom in the so-called hunting castle of Stupinigi near Turin (1729-1734) - a huge country palace, extremely complex and whimsical in its plan (which is attributed to the French architect Beaufran). The strongly elongated low wings of the palace contrast with the high central building set at their intersection, crowned with a bizarre dome, above which the figure of a deer rises. Another well-known building of Yuvara - the monastery and church of Superga in Turin (1716-1731), unusually spectacularly located on a high hill - heralds a turn to classicism in its forms.

In its finished forms, classicism is most clearly expressed in the work of the Milanese architect Giuseppe Piermarini (1734-1808), of whose many buildings the most famous is the Scala Theater in Milan (1778). This is one of the first theater buildings in European architecture designed for a huge number of spectators (its hall can accommodate over three and a half thousand people), which later became a model for many modern opera houses in terms of its architectural and technical qualities.

From the 1680s The Venetian Republic, exhausted by wars, having lost its dominance in the Mediterranean in the struggle with the Turks, began to lose its possessions in the East one by one, and its economic decline became obvious and inevitable. In addition, the aristocratization and stiffness of the forms of the state apparatus gave rise to sharp social contradictions and repeated attempts on the part of the bourgeois-democratic part of the Venetian society to change this regime through radical projects for its reorganization. But although these attempts did not have significant success, one should not think that Venice has completely exhausted its possibilities. Here the new bourgeoisie grew stronger, a layer of intelligentsia grew up, due to which the culture of the Venetian Settecento was imbued with complex and contradictory phenomena. A particularly striking example in this regard is not so much painting as literature and dramaturgy of that time.

Venice has retained its own special brilliance of life, which in the 18th century. even acquired a feverish character. Holidays, carnivals, masquerades, when all classes in the city were equalized and under the mask it was impossible to distinguish a patrician from a plebeian, continued almost throughout the year and attracted crowds of travelers to Venice, among which were kings, representatives of the nobility, musicians, artists, artists, writers and just adventurers.

Along with Paris, Venice set the tone for the literary, theatrical and musical life of the 18th century. As in the 16th century, so now it remained an important center of book printing. There were seventeen drama and opera theatres, music academies, four women's orphanages - "conservatories", turned into excellent musical and vocal schools. With its musical triumphs, Venice surpassed Naples and Rome, creating unsurpassed schools of organ and violin playing, flooding the international musical world of that time with its amazing singers. Outstanding composers and musicians lived and worked here. The theaters of Venice were overcrowded, church services, where the monastery choirs and nuns sang, were visited as theaters. In Venice and Naples, along with the dramatic theater, the realistic comic opera, which reflected urban life and customs, also developed. The outstanding master of this genre, Galuppi, was close in the spirit of his work to the greatest playwright of the 18th century. Carlo Goldoni, whose name was associated with a new stage in the history of the European theater.

Goldoni radically transformed the comedy of masks, infusing new content into it, giving it a new stage design, developing two main dramatic genres: a comedy of manners from bourgeois noble life and a comedy from folk life. Despite the fact that Goldoni acted as an enemy of the aristocracy, his plays were at one time a huge success in Venice, until he was ousted from the Venetian stage by his ideological opponent, the playwright and poet, the impoverished Venetian Count Carlo Gozzi. The latter again turned in his theatrical-romantic plays ("fiabah") - "The Love for Three Oranges", "Princess Turandot", "King Deer" - to the legacy of the improvised comedy of masks. However, the main role in the development of Italian dramaturgy belonged not to them, but to Goldoni's comedies, whose realistic work was associated with new educational ideas.

The theatrical art of Venice was also reflected in the nature of its architecture and especially decorative painting. The development of the latter was to a large extent associated with a huge demand for magnificent theatrical and decorative paintings of churches and especially palaces, not only among the Venetian nobility, but also outside Italy. But along with this direction in Venetian painting, a number of other genres also developed: the everyday genre, the urban landscape, and the portrait. Like Galuppi's operas and Goldoni's comedies, they reflected the everyday life and holidays of Venetian life.

The link between the art of the 17th and 18th centuries in Venice is the work of Sebastiano Ricci (1659-1734). The author of numerous monumental and easel compositions, he largely relied on the traditions of Paolo Veronese, as exemplified by his works such as Madonna and Child with Saints (1708; Venice, Church of San George Maggiore) and Scipio's Generosity ( Parma, university), even iconographically dating back to the 16th century. Although he paid tribute to the official pathos of the Baroque, there is more liveliness and attractiveness in his creations than most Italian painters of this direction. His temperamental painting style, bright colors, combined with increased theatricality of images, made him popular not only in Venice, but also abroad, in particular in England, where he worked with his nephew and student, the landscape painter Marco Ricci (1679-1729).

The latter usually painted landscapes in the compositions of Sebastiano Ricci, and such a joint work of both masters was a large painting “The Allegorical Tomb of the Duke of Devonpngr” (Birmingham, Barberra Institute), reminiscent of a magnificent backstage theatrical scenery. The landscape works of Marco Ricci himself are compositions, romantic in mood, executed in a broad pictorial manner; in them one can catch some features of commonality with the landscapes of Salvator Rosa and Magnasco.

The initial stage of Venetian painting of the 18th century. represents the work of Giovanni Battista Piazzetta (1683-1754). He studied with the Bolognese painter Giuseppe Maria Crespi, adopting his lively original style of painting with extensive use of chiaroscuro. The fresh and strong influence of Caravaggio's realism was also reflected in his paintings. Piazzetta is restrained and refined in his palette, which is dominated by deep, sometimes as if glowing from within, colors - chestnut red, brown, black, white and gray. In his altarpiece in the Gesuati Church in Venice - "St. Vincent, Hyacinth and Lorenzo Bertrando ”(c. 1730), with three figures of saints arranged in an ascending diagonal - the black, white and gray chitons of his characters form a color scheme that is striking in its harmony and subtle monochrome.

Other compositions on religious themes - “St. Jacob led to execution” and the plafond in the Venetian church of San Giovanni e Paolo (1725-1727) are also executed by the artist in a broad pictorial manner. Piazzetta is an artist of the transitional period; the pathos of his paintings on religious subjects and at the same time full-blooded realism and vitality of images, deep chiaroscuro, spirituality and mobility of the entire pictorial fabric, juicy hot colors, and sometimes exquisite color combinations - all this partly brings his art closer to that direction of the Italian school of the 17th century. , which was presented by Fetti, Liss and Strozzi.

Many genre paintings belong to the brush of Piazzetta, however, the everyday beginning is poorly expressed in them, their images are invariably shrouded in a romantic haze and fanned with a subtle poetic feeling. Even such a purely genre interpretation of the biblical story, as, for example, in his "Rebecca at the Well" (Milan, Brera), acquires a lyrical-romantic connotation from Piazzetta. Leaning back in fear on the edge of the stone pool, clutching a shiny copper jug ​​to her chest, Rebekah looks with fear at the servant of Abraham, who offers her a pearl thread. His shaded chestnut-brown figure contrasts with the radiant gold, golden pink, and white tones that form the colorful silhouette of Rebekah's figure. Cut off by the frame of the heads of cows, a dog and a camel on the left side of the picture, the picturesque figures of peasant women behind Rebekah (one of them with a shepherd's staff) bring a touch of pastoral to the picture.

The most famous genre compositions of Piazzetta include "The Fortune Teller" (Venice, Academy). He also owns a number of portraits.

The work of Piazzetta, however, is not limited to his paintings. He is the author of magnificent drawings, among which there are preparatory sketches and finished compositions made in pencil and chalk. Most of them are female and male heads, depicted either in front, then in profile or three-quarter turns, interpreted in a three-dimensional chiaroscuro manner, striking in the extraordinary vitality and instantaneous accuracy of the captured image (“Man in a round cap”, “Standard-bearer and drummer”, Venice, Academy, see illustrations).

The grand scale of the monumental and decorative art of the Settecento is associated primarily with the name of Giovanni Battista Tiepolo (1696-1770), whose style was formed under the influence of his teacher Piazzetta and Sebastiano Ricci. Enjoying great lifetime fame, Tiepolo worked not only in Italy, but in Germany and Spain. His compositions also adorned the royal palaces and estates in Russia in the 18th century. Using the best traditions of decorative painting of the Renaissance and the 17th century, Tiepolo greatly strengthened the theatrical and spectacular side in his work, while combining it with a lively perception of reality. Never losing its feeling, Tiepolo combined a keen sense of real phenomena with those principles of conventionality that are characteristic of monumental and decorative painting. These interpenetrating principles determined the originality of his artistic language. However, the features of life's truth in the depiction of individual events and characters did not combine in Tiepolo's work with an in-depth psychological disclosure of artistic images, which generally led to a certain repetition of individual techniques and constituted a limited side of his art.

The artist's fertility was inexhaustible; his brilliant creative activity lasted more than half a century. Tiepolo's brush belongs to a huge number of frescoes, altarpieces, easel paintings, many drawings; he was also one of the most remarkable masters of etching.

An example of the early period of Tiepolo's activity, which began to work around 1716, is the frescoes in the Venetian church of degli Scalzi -

"Apotheosis of St. Teresa (1720-1725), where he introduces his new spatial and decorative solutions for the first time, a number of easel paintings on mythological themes (among them the large canvas The Rape of the Sabine Women, c. 1720; Hermitage) and especially ten huge decorative panels painted by the artist to decorate the palace of the Venetian patrician Dolfino (c. 1725).

Five canvases from this series - The Triumph of the Emperor, Muzzio Scaevola in the Camp of Porsenna, Coriolanus under the Walls of Rome and others - are in the Hermitage collection. The strong and expressive transmission of heroic subjects, the plastic, vitally convincing interpretation of the figures, the spatial pictorial composition, built on bright colorful contrasts with the use of light and shade effects, testify to the early ripening skill of Tiepolo.

By 1726, there are frescoes in the archbishop's palace in Udine, painted mainly on biblical themes. The thirty-year-old Tiepolo already appears in them as an experienced artist with remarkable coloristic skill, as exemplified by the “Appearance of the Angel to Sarah”, “The Appearance of Three Angels to Abraham” and especially the fresco “Sacrifice of Abraham”; by the postures and gestures of biblical characters, they resemble a magnificent performance.

Turning to easel painting, Tiepolo creates no less impressive decorative compositions, such as the one painted in the late 1730s. a large three-part painting for the Church of San Alvise in Venice - "The Way to Calvary", "The Flagellation of Christ" and "The Crowning with Thorns", where bright and brilliant colors are replaced by gloomy and deep color, the composition becomes more spatial and dynamic, and the vitality of his images is expressed even more stronger than in frescoes.

The brilliant flowering of Tiepolo's decorative talent comes from the beginning of the 1740s, when he painted a number of mythological paintings, among them "The Triumph of Amphitrite" (Dresden) - the sea goddess, serenely reclining on a chariot in the shape of a shell, which horses and sea deities swiftly rush along turquoise green waves. In the general exquisite colorful range, Amphitrite's red cloak stretched by the wind, like a sail, stands out as a bright spot.

In the 1740-1750s. Tiepolo creates, one after another, wonderful decorative cycles, altarpieces and small easel paintings. The families of the Venetian patricians, as well as monasteries and churches, compete with each other in an effort to possess the works of his brush.

The artist turned the dizzyingly high church plafonds into bottomless heavenly spaces with swirling clouds, where light-winged angels and saints hovered over the heads of those praying. Religious and mythological subjects were replaced by magnificent festivities, marriages, feasts and triumphs. In his compositions, the artist achieved amazing effects of “daylight” lighting by combining white tones with pale blue and gray undertones, and deep spatial pauses separating architectural forms and streams of human figures from each other created a feeling of airy lightness and weightlessness. The subtle, delicate harmony of his colors, the vivid sense of color, the dynamism of compositions, the inexhaustible pictorial imagination, the bold solution of the most complex long-term tasks - all this amazed Tiepolo's contemporaries to the same extent that it surprises us now.

Between 1740-1743 he painted huge plafond compositions for the Venetian churches of the Gesuati, degli Scalzi, Scuola del Carmine and others. It is worth stopping at the mural of the church degli Scalzi - the most grandiose in size and the most majestic fresco, executed during these years by Tiepolo together with the artist Mengozzi Colonna, who was a quadraturist, that is, a painter who performed ornamental parts and architectural painting in Tiepolo's compositions. The interior of the church, built by Longena in the 17th century, was distinguished by pure baroque splendor, equally completed by the magnificent Tiepolo ceiling with a huge composition "Transfer of the Madonna's House in Loreto" (this ceiling was destroyed in 1918). The ceiling painting, as if continuing the real architectural decoration of the church walls, framed a huge fresco built on a comparison of light plans of different intensity and depth, which created the illusion of an endless heavenly space illuminated by light. The image unfolded almost parallel to the plane of the ceiling, and not in its depth, as decorators of the 17th century did. By placing the main scene of the "Transfer" not in the center of the ceiling, but at its edge and leaving the rest of the space almost empty, Tiepolo achieves the complete illusion of a swift air flight of a mass of human figures. Some of the figures are separated from the central scene and placed against the background of the frame of the fresco, such as, for example, the figure personifying heresy and falling headfirst into the viewer. With these effects, the artist, as it were, connects the heavenly scene with the real interior of the church. Such pictorial illusions corresponded to the character of the 18th century Venetian worship service, which was a kind of ceremonial church performance, imbued with more secular than religious moods.

By the time after 1745, Tiepolo's remarkable frescoes in the Venetian Palazzo Labia belong, where the artist comes into closest contact with the decorative principles of Veronese. Two frescoes, located on opposite walls of the Great Hall, depict "The Feast of Anthony and Cleopatra" and "The Meeting of Anthony and Cleopatra". The ceiling features a series of allegorical figures.

Entering the spacious ballroom of the Palazzo Labia, the viewer loses the feeling of a real architectural space, because its limits are pushed apart by a picturesque scenery that turned the walls of the Venetian palazzo into a luxurious theatrical spectacle. Tiepolo skillfully used the space of the wall between the two doors and the two windows above them, thus combining real architecture with an illusory one. In the Feast scene, the steps, on which a dwarf is depicted with his back to the viewer, lead to a wide marble terrace with a Corinthian-style colonnade and choirs, under the canopy of which an Egyptian queen and a Roman commander are feasting. Cleopatra, wanting to prove to Antony her contempt for wealth, throws a priceless pearl into a glass of vinegar, where it should dissolve without a trace. The correlation of human figures with the perspective construction of the scene is conveyed flawlessly. The composition, saturated with light and air, is built along two intersecting diagonals, leading the viewer's gaze into the depths; the viewer is as if invited to enter the terrace and take part in the feast. It is interesting that the middle of the fresco is not filled with figures - the artist here gives an effective spatial pause.

As far as this fresco is filled with calm, so all the figures in the “Meeting of Anthony and Cleopatra” are covered in movement. Not pursuing the goal of being faithful to historical truth, Tiepolo turns his heroes rather into actors, dressed moreover in the Venetian fashion of the 16th century. These episodes from the history of Antony and Cleopatra were such grateful material for Tiepolo's creative imagination that he left many variants of them in his monumental and easel canvases. These are the "Feast of Anthony and Cleopatra" in the museums of Melbourne, Stockholm and London, "Meeting of Anthony and Cleopatra" in Edinburgh and Paris.

In the 1950s and 1960s, Tiepolo's painting skill reached a great height. Its color becomes extraordinarily refined and takes on delicate shades of cream, gold, pale gray, pink and lilac.

His frescoes in the episcopal palace in Würzburg belong to this period (see Art of Germany). Working there for three years, between 1751-1753, Tiepolo creates magnificent decorative paintings, fully coordinating them with the architectural design of the palace. Their pompous theatrical character corresponds to the fantastic and somewhat pretentious architectural and sculptural decoration of the imperial hall. The ceiling depicts Apollo in a chariot, racing through the clouds to Beatrice of Burgundy to her fiancé Frederick Barbarossa. A similar motif was encountered more than once among decorators of the 17th century. (with Guercino, Luca Giordano and others), but nowhere did he achieve such spatial coverage, such a radiant bottomlessness of the atmosphere, such brilliance in conveying the movement of soaring figures.

Above the cornice of the short wall of the hall, skillfully using lighting, Tiepolo places a fresco depicting the marriage of Barbarossa. In a complex interior composition with motifs in the spirit of Veronese, he presents a crowded wedding ceremony, painted in sonorous and joyful colors - blue-blue, crimson, yellow, green, silver-gray.

In addition to these frescoes, Tiepolo painted a huge, about 650 sq. m, the ceiling above the palace stairs, where he depicted Olympus. He seemed to “break through” the undivided surface of the ceiling through and through, turning it into a boundless heavenly space. Having placed Apollo among the rushing clouds, he depicted personifications of different parts of the world along the cornice around the walls - Europe in the form of a woman surrounded by allegorical figures of the sciences and arts (individual characters were given a portrait character; among them he depicted himself, his son Giovanni Domenico and assistants), America, Asia and Africa with images of animals and peculiar architectural motifs. This plafond is also one of the pinnacles of the decorative arts of the 18th century.

Upon returning to Venice, Tiepolo, who was at the zenith of his fame, becomes president of the Venice Academy of Painting and directs its activities for two years.

The best creations of the decorative genius of Tiepolo are his frescoes in Vicenza in the Villa Valmarana, dating back to 1757, where the artist worked with his students and his son Giovanni Domenico Tiepolo (1727-1804). In the murals of this villa, where Tiepolo turns to new decorative solutions, his style acquires a special refinement and splendor. The artist now builds his compositions parallel to the plane of the wall, returning again to the traditions of Veronese. The wall plane turns into an antique peristyle, through the columns of which a view of a beautiful landscape opens up. Large spatial pauses between the figures, an abundance of light, white, lemon yellow, pale pink, pale purple, light brown, emerald green tones of his palette give the picturesque ensemble of Villa Valmarana a clear and joyful character, imbued with a vividly vital sense of the images of ancient and Renaissance poetry.

The frescoes of the main hall of the villa - the so-called Palazzo - capture the scene, the "Sacrifice of Iphigenia" and related episodes. Three other rooms were frescoed with themes borrowed from Homer's Iliad, Virgil's Aeneid and Renaissance poems - Ariosto's Furious Roland and Torquato Tasso's Jerusalem Delivered. In all these scenes there is a lot of movement, lightness, grace and emotionality, prompted by the drama of literary subjects chosen by Tiepolo.

Interestingly, the great German poet Goethe, visiting this villa, immediately noted the presence of two styles in it - “refined” and “natural”. The latter is especially expressed in the work of Giovanni Domenico Tiepolo, who in 1757 painted a number of rooms in the Guest House adjacent to the villa (the so-called Forestieri). For a long time, the work of father and son Tiepolo went under the same name; now the features of the creative image of the young Tiepolo were more clearly defined. So, in his frescoes of the Villa Valmarana, the genre-domestic principle is more pronounced, in contrast to the style of his father. Such are his paintings “Peasant Lunch” or “Peasants on Vacation” with wide landscape backgrounds or a beautiful “Winter Landscape” depicting two magnificently dressed Venetians. On the other walls are carnival episodes that serve as a vivid illustration of the mores of Venetian life in the 18th century. Tiepolo the Younger also owns genre paintings in the Palazzo Rezzonico in Venice. However, some of his genre works are considered to be performed jointly with his father. His best achievements include a series of etchings, brilliant in technique, each sheet of which depicts an episode of the flight of Joseph and Mary with the baby to Egypt.

Giovanni Battista Tiepolo himself is also known as a portrait painter. His portraits of Antonio Riccobono (c. 1745; Rovigo, Concordi Academy), Giovanni Querini (c. 1749; Venice, Querini-Stampaglia Museum) are very bright and expressive in characterization.

Around 1759, Tiepolo painted a large altarpiece “St. Thekla saves the city of Este from the plague ”(Cathedral in Este), created in a different coloristic key than his secular compositions. Deep darkish tones emphasize the dramatic intensity of this scene, the images of which were created under the influence of the great Venetian painter of the 16th century. Tintoretto.

Tiepolo spends the last years of his life in Madrid, commissioned by the Spanish king Charles III, painting the ceiling of his palace. The huge fresco "The Triumphs of the Spanish Monarchy" (1764-1766) is painted on the ceiling of the throne room. As in Würzburg, the plafond is transformed into a heavenly space, framed by figured compositions representing the Spanish colonies and provinces. However, it is executed in a more flat manner than the early decorative cycles.

A special area of ​​​​Tiepolo's work is his drawings, brilliant in their artistry. Executed in sanguine or pen with a wash, they are distinguished by the generalization of their forms, intense dynamics and - for all the sketchy fluency of the graphic manner - great dramatic expressiveness. Often they serve as preparatory sketches for individual parts of his large compositions, sometimes they have an independent meaning. His drawings of male heads, conveyed in an unusually plastic way, are marked by a sense of truth in life and rare powers of observation. He also has sharp and expressive caricatures of the clergy, of the Venetian dandies, of the characters in the comedy of masks.

In the technique of etching, Tiepolo performed various mythological, allegorical and romantic scenes, the meaning of which is almost indecipherable. They contain images of astrologers, people in oriental robes, gypsies, and warriors. Distinguished by an extremely picturesque chiaroscuro manner, these etchings had a certain influence on the graphics of the largest Spanish painter of the turn of the 18th and 19th centuries. Francisco Goya.

Bound by his time, Tiepolo could not rise in his work to that high measure of humanity, depth and integrity that was characteristic of the great masters of the Renaissance. The appearance of many of his heroes is based on life observations, an example of which is a number of his female characters - Cleopatra, Armida, Amphitrite - almost always ascending to the same real prototype - the daughter of the Venetian gondolier Christina, but not distinguished by genuine inner significance. The content side of his bright and festive art is embodied not so much in the expressiveness of individual images and characters, but in the whole complex of pictorial and plastic motifs, in their amazing richness and sophistication.

Tiepolo's painting was not properly appreciated in the 19th century, since it was far from the artistic tasks that were solved in the art of this century. Only later did Tiepolo take a worthy place in the history of art as one of the brilliant masters of the 18th century, who created his own style and painting and decorative system, which completed the centuries-old evolution of monumental painting of classical artistic eras.

For Italian painting of the 18th century. was characterized by its division into genres. The everyday genre, landscape, portrait were widely spread in it, and the artists each specialized in their own form of art. Thus, the Venetian artist Pietro Longhi (1702-1785) chose as his specialty the depiction of small gallant scenes, visits, masquerades, concerts, gambling houses, dance lessons, folk entertainment, charlatans, and rare animals. Not always correct in drawing, sometimes quite elementary in color, small-sized paintings by Longhi - "Dance Lesson" (Venice, Academy), "Behind the Toilet" (Venice, Palazzo Rezzonico), "Rhinoceros" (ibid.) - used significant success. His narrative painting, which Goldoni called the sister of his muse, conveyed to us the peculiar and poetic spirit of the “age of the mask”, carefree street life, intrigue, frivolity and entertainment, characteristic of Venice of this time.

The Italian portrait was presented by a number of masters, of which the most significant was Giuseppe Ghislandi, then called (after becoming a monk) Fra Galgario (1655-1743). A native of Bergamo, he worked for a long time in Venice, where he studied the work of Giorgione, Titian and Veronese. Numerous, mostly male portraits belong to his brush, which combine the external representativeness and methods of psychological characterization inherent in Baroque portraits with the grace, grace and elegance characteristic of the 18th century. A remarkable colorist who mastered the best traditions of Venetian painting, Gislandi depicted nobles posing for him in wigs, huge triangular hats and rich camisoles embroidered with gold, using bright crimson, purple, green and yellow tones in his painting. But he never obscured this splendor of the realistic essence of the portrait image. Each of his portraits is deeply individual, whether it is a male portrait, where a model is very clearly depicted - a cavalier with an haughty face, full sensual lips and a large nose (Milan, Poldi Pezzoli Museum), or an elegant full-length portrait of Count Vialetti, or a self-portrait painted in dark “Rembrandtian” colors, or a charming portrait of a boy (1732; Hermitage).

Alessandro Longhi (1733-1813) - son of Pietro Longhi - known mainly as a portrait painter. Giving his models a ceremonial, festive appearance, he seeks to characterize them through the surrounding furnishings. Such is the portrait of the famous composer Domenico Cimarosa (Vienna, Liechtenstein Gallery). He is depicted in a magnificent satin cloak, with a score in his hands, turning to the viewer an arrogant and beautiful, but devoid of deep expressiveness young face, framed by a white wig. Next to him on the table is a viola d "amour, a violin, a flute, a horn and an inkwell with a pen. The portrait of Goldoni (Venice, Correr Museum) is written in the same spirit: the famous playwright is depicted in full dress, surrounded by the attributes of his profession.

The Venetian artist Rosalba Carriera (1675-1757) began her career as a miniature painter, but became widely known for her numerous pastel portraits. Her coloring was distinguished by great tenderness and some fading of tones, which was explained by the specificity of the pastel technique. All her life she painted portraits and poetic allegories. Not pursuing goals to achieve complete similarity, she extremely flattered her models, sometimes giving them a sentimental-aristocratic character, thanks to which she enjoyed great success among the European nobility of the 18th century. and was elected a member of the French and Venetian Academies.

But the most significant phenomenon among the various genres of Venetian painting of the 18th century was the urban landscape, the so-called veduta (that is, the view), which combined elements of the architectural picture and the landscape itself.

Venetian landscape painting was primarily a perspective painting, reproducing the real motifs of the urban landscape. However, each of the vedutists had their own artistic language and their own pictorial vision, therefore, despite the well-known repetition and borrowing of motifs from each other, they were never boring and the same. In love with the beauty of Venice, they became her true biographers and portrait painters, conveying the subtle poetic charm of her appearance, capturing squares, canals dotted with gondolas, embankments, palaces, festive festivities and poor quarters in countless paintings, drawings and engravings.

The origins of the Venetian veduta should be sought in the painting of the 15th century, in the works of Gentile Bellini and Vittore Carpaccio, but then the urban landscape did not play an independent role and served the artist only as a background for festive chronicles and narrative compositions.

At the beginning of the 18th century Luca Carlevaris creates a type of Venetian urban landscape, which, however, in comparison with the works of subsequent vedutists, had a rather primitive character. The true master in this field was Antonio Canale, nicknamed Canaletto (1697-1768).

The son and student of the theater artist Bernardo Canale, Antonio left Venice for Rome and got acquainted there with the work of Roman landscape painters and theater decorators, mainly Pannini and the Bibbiena family. His style was formed very early and did not undergo any pronounced changes along the way of its development. Already in Caialetto's early work, Scuola del Carita (1726), the principles of his artistic perception were clearly expressed. There is little movement in his urban landscapes, there is nothing illusory, changeable and impermanent in them, nevertheless they are very spatial; colorful tones form plans of varying intensity, softened in their contrast by chiaroscuro. Canaletto paints views of lagoons, marble Venetian palaces, stone lace of arcades and loggias, rusty-red and grayish-pink walls of houses reflected in the rich green or bluish water of canals along which gondolas decorated with gold gliding and fishing boats scurry, and people crowd on the embankments , one can see idle nobles in white wigs, monks in cassocks, foreigners and working people. With precise, almost directorial calculation, Canaletto groups small genre scenes; in them he is vitally reliable, sometimes even prosaic and extremely scrupulous in conveying details.

The Grand Canal in Venice (Florence, Uffizi), The Square in front of the Church of San Giovanni e Paolo in Venice (Dresden), The Stonemason's Yard (1729-1730; London, National Gallery) are among the best works of Canaletto. Of his paintings in Soviet museums, one should mention Reception of the French Embassy in Venice (Hermitage) and Departure of the Doge for Betrothal to the Adriatic Sea (A. S. Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts).

Having gained wide popularity since the 30s. as an artist who knows no equal in his genre, Canaletto was invited to London in 1746, where, by order of English patrons, he painted a number of urban landscapes in which his color, devoid of bright and plastic light and shade lighting, loses its former sonority and diversity, becoming more subdued and localized. Such are “View of Whitehall”, “City of London under the arch of Westminster Bridge”, “Feast on the Thames” and a number of others.

In addition to painting, Canaletto paid great attention to engraving, which between 1740-1750. received a brilliant development in Venice. Almost all Venetian landscape painters - Marco Ricci, Luca Carlevaris, Canaletto, Bellotto - were great masters of etching. What was sometimes lacking in Canaletto's large canvases - movement, the spirituality of the entire pictorial fabric - fully appeared in his etchings, imbued with a real poetic feeling. Using a masterful linear technique in them, achieving deep and soft chiaroscuro transitions through thin parallel hatching of varying intensity, Canaletto at the same time made the paper “work”, interrupting slightly wavy horizontal strokes with light verticals or shading light places with them. And the heavens, and the clouds floating on them, as if driven by a light breeze, and the water, and the trees come to life in his engravings. Quick and bold contours, cursory strokes give life authenticity and reality to his "Porto in Dolo" - a small square on the shore of a water basin, along which a young couple moves - a gentleman in a wig and a camisole, leading a lady in a magnificent toilet by the arm, involuntarily evoking the viewer romantic images of Manon Lescaut and the Chevalier de Grieux from the story of the Abbé Prevost.

Bernardo Bellotto (1720-1780) - nephew and student of Canaletto - was also one of the prominent vedutists of the 18th century. A clear perspective distribution of plans, an extremely high, almost photographic accuracy in the reproduction of nature, a somewhat smoothed surface of his paintings give them a certain lifelessness, caused to a certain extent by the fact that Bellotto widely used camera obscura reflections in his works. His city vedues are not distinguished by the breadth of artistic generalization, they have little mood, movement, airiness, but they are of great artistic and documentary value. In addition to Italy, from 1746 to 1766 he worked at the courts in Vienna and Dresden, and from 1768 he was a court painter in Poland, where he created many views of Warsaw. By the thoroughness of the depicted details, one can assume that these vedutas give a more or less correct idea of ​​the architecture, urban landscape and life of that time.

Venetian settecento painting sparkled with yet another name - Francesco Guardi (1712-1793), an excellent artist who brought the great coloristic traditions of Venetian painting almost to the 19th century.

He was a student of his older brother, Giovanni Antonio Guardi (1698/99-1760), a gifted painter, in whose studio he worked for almost half of his life. Senior Guardi, who created several altarpieces: “Death of St. Joseph" (Berlin); "Madonna and Child with Saints" (the church in Vigo d'Anaunia), obviously with the participation of his younger brother, in his manner came into contact with Sebastiano Ricci and Piazzetta.

The early works of Francesco Guardi include several altarpieces - "Crucifixion" (Venice, private collection), "Lamentation" (Munich). However, the most significant work of this period is the oil painting of the organ in the church of Arcangelo Raphaele in Venice depicting scenes from the life of Tobias (c. 1753). A number of plot and compositional motifs for this painting were borrowed by the artist from other Italian painters, but a bold and unusual coloristic decision turns it into a completely original work. Distant, like shimmering landscapes, play of luminous pink, purple, red, lemon, golden-orange, gray and blue tones, fragility and vibration of shadows, whimsical, almost capricious color comparisons distinguish her picturesque structure. Among all the Venetian masters, Guardi most of all shows a penchant for conveying the air environment, subtle atmospheric changes, the light play of sunlight, the moist Vürs air of the lagoons, painted in the finest color shades. With light, as if fluttering strokes of the brush, Guardi not only sculpted the form, but also achieved extraordinary mobility and spirituality of the entire pictorial surface of the picture as a whole.

The painting “Alexander in front of the body of Darius” (The Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts) belongs to the same years, which is a free copy from a painting by an Italian painter of the 17th century. Langetti. It is difficult to imagine a more non-classical interpretation of the ancient story. However, the bravura picturesqueness of Guardi and the genuine whirlwind of his light blue, red, dark brown, greenish colorful spots do not obscure the clear compositional construction of the picture in the form of an ellipse, which is intersected by the diagonally located body of Darius - the semantic center of the composition.

But the most important side of Guardi's work is connected with the development of landscape painting, when he began to paint from the 1740s. under the influence of Marieschi and Canaletto, whose drawings he copied for a long time, he began to work in the field of architectural landscape. Following Canaletto, Guardi at the same time sought to overcome the linear-perspective construction of his lead.

In 1763, on the occasion of the beginning of the reign of the new Doge Alvise IV Mocenigo, marked by a series of brilliant festivities, Guardi painted twelve large Venetian leads, almost exactly using Canaletto's compositions engraved by Brustolon for his paintings. Such borrowings, as we can see, occurred repeatedly in Guardi's painting practice, but this did not diminish the dignity of his paintings; The airy-color interpretation of Guardi transformed the dryish-reliable leads into images of Venice, full of awe, movement and life.

Guardi was a great master of drawing. His main technique is pen drawings, sometimes tinted with watercolors. In them, he looked primarily for movement and instantaneous impressions. The earlier drawings are marked by rocaille motifs, the lines are rounded, whimsical and flexible, the movement is exaggerated, in the later ones a much greater generalization appears; ink wash and bistre give them incomparable picturesqueness. Many of them are made directly from nature - they capture running clouds, the movement of water, the sliding of gondolas, their incorrect reflections, temperamental and bold turns of figures. Buildings, stairs, loggias, colonnades are marked with unfinished, bravura, abrupt strokes crossing each other. And the airy elegance of Venetian architecture and its constructiveness were conveyed by the artist with an amazing sense of line, both intermittent and generalized.

The most characteristic artistic techniques of Guardi in his painting are free variations on the same favorite theme, the so-called capriccios. He finds more and more motives for his constant “model”, he paints Venice, which he has not left all his life, at different hours of the day, discovering new colorful nuances, giving his landscapes either a romantic look or painting them in sad tones of lyrical meditation. .

In the 1770s, Guardi reached the pinnacle of his craft. With thin and free strokes, he paints squares, canals, streets, dilapidated buildings, the outskirts and poor quarters of Venice, its secluded courtyards, deserted lagoons, quiet alleys, unexpectedly ending in a wide shaded arch, from the vault of which, like a giant transparent drop, a glass lantern hangs, as if melting in the pinkish evening air (“Urban View”; Hermitage Museum). In essence, did Guardi transform the type of decorative stage veduta? which dominated the Venetian painting of the mid-18th century, into a landscape of the finest lyrical sound, imbued with a deeply personal experience.

By 1782, there are two large series of "Celebrations" performed by Guardi on official orders. The first of them consisted of four paintings dedicated to the stay of Pope Pius VI in the Venetian Republic, the second was written in honor of the visit of the heir to the Russian throne, Grand Duke Pavel Petrovich to Venice and included five paintings. Four of them have survived - "Ball at the San Benedetto Theater" (Paris), "Gala Concert" (Munich), "Banquet" (Paris), "Feast on St. Mark (Venice).

"The Gala Concert" is one of the most brilliant works of the artist. This picture captures that elusive thing that was especially inherent in the skill of Guardi - the spirit of the gallant festivity of the 18th century is conveyed. Here the music itself seems to be audible, flying from the light bows of a violin women's orchestra. In the soft flickering of candles illuminating the high ballroom, warm air seems to sway in waves; blue, red, yellow, brown, silver-gray tones flash luxurious ladies' toilets, written in a whirlwind of fluttering luminous colorful strokes. With light strokes of the brush, Guardi outlines faces, wigs and hats, then with transparent, then with pasty spots he marks figures.

In 1784, Guardi, fulfilling the official order of the procurator of the republic, paints the painting “The Rise of the Balloon in Venice” (Berlin), depicting an event unusual for that time. Using a familiar motif, Guardi places in the foreground a shaded stone canopy, under which curious spectators crowd, and in the frame of the columns one can see a pinkish cloudy sky with a swinging balloon.

In his later works, Guardi came to the greatest generalization and conciseness of pictorial means. In one of the last excellent paintings of the artist, "The Venetian Lagoon" (c. 1790; Milan, Museo Poldi Pezzoli), executed in a restrained in colors, but rich in shades of colors, nothing is depicted except a deserted bay with several gondolas and flowing humid air, in which the outlines of churches and palaces visible in the distance seem to melt.

Modest, devoid of external effect, small paintings by Guardi were not sufficiently appreciated in their time and remained in the shade next to Tiepolo's works full of brilliance and splendor. It was not until many decades later that the true significance of his works was revealed, which are not only outstanding monuments of the Settecento, but also the forerunners of many achievements of the realistic landscape in the art of the 19th century.

Simultaneously with the Venetian school, which occupied a leading position in the art of settechento, other schools of Italy also developed.

The most prominent representative of the Neapolitan school was Francesco Solimena (1657-1747), in his style associated with the late Baroque painting of the 17th century. Having experienced the influence of Lanfranco, Luca Giordano, Pietro da Cortona and Preti, Solimena worked mainly in the field of decorative painting, frescoing the Neapolitan churches (San Paolo Maggiore, San Domennco Maggiore, Gesu Nuovo). Altar images, paintings on religious and allegorical themes and portraits also belong to his brush.

The spectacular painting style of Solimena with its dark brown spots, contrasting with yellow and lilac tones and strokes of red, his dynamic compositions at the same time bear the imprint of a kind of chill as in the depiction of characters, the impulses of which are devoid of the passionate pathos that distinguished the images of the Baroque masters. of the previous century, and in coloring, where a general lilac-gray tone slips.

Among his students, Giuseppe Bonito (1707-1789) should be noted. Working at first in the spirit of Solimena, Bonito later moved away from him towards the domestic genre, but could not completely break with the principles of the decorative style. The subjects of his paintings, bright, but somewhat cold in color, are mainly carnival scenes.

In the first half of the 18th century among the various artistic trends in Italy, a clearly defined genre, democratic in content, arose. This direction, which received the name pittura della realita (painting of the real world) from researchers, united many masters who turned to the depiction of everyday life and chose various everyday and common folk scenes as the plots of their paintings. Simultaneously with Bonito, the Neapolitan Gasparo Traversi worked (worked between 1732 and 1769), a bright and interesting artist who was influenced by the art of Caravaggio. It is distinguished by sharp chiaroscuro, relief molding of form, lively, sharp composition, temperamental turns of figures. Among his best works are "Wounded" (Venice, Brass collection), "Secret Letter" (Naples, Capodimonte Museum), "Drawing Lesson" (Vienna).

We also find masters of this direction in Lombardy, including Bergamo and Brescia. Among them are Giacomo Francesco Chipper, or Todeschini, obviously a German by origin, but who worked all his life in Italy, and Lkopo Ceruti (worked in the second quarter of the 18th century). The first is the author of numerous genre paintings of uneven quality depicting shoemakers, musicians, card players, women at work. Jacopo Ceruti was the most prominent representative of this trend. The characters in his paintings are almost always working people. Among his best works is "Laundress", a young woman washing clothes in a stone pool; her face with huge sad eyes is turned to the viewer (Brescia, Pinacoteca). "The Beggar Negro", "Young Man with a Pipe", "Woman Weaving a Basket" - all these images, conveyed with lively observation, are distinguished by great strength and a sense of artistic truth. Of the other Lombard painters, Francesco Londonio, who worked in Milan, can be mentioned. in Rome in the first half of the 18th century. stands out Antonio Amorosi, the author of scenes from the life of the common people.

In general, however, the development of this trend in Italy was short-lived - its democratic tendencies did not find the proper response and support in the social and artistic environment of that time.

The artistic life of Rome was in its own way no less eventful than in Venice. Since the beginning of the 18th century, Rome has become a true international art center, where not only people of art flocked, but also scientists, archaeologists, leading historians and writers of that time.

The excavations of Ancient Rome, Herculaneum, Pompeii, the temples of Paestum in southern Italy opened before the eyes of the people of that time the treasures of ancient art, which became available for viewing. Covered in the spirit of romantic discoveries and surprises, Italy irresistibly attracted young artists of all countries and nationalities, for whom a trip to Rome became a cherished dream, and receiving the Rome Prize was the highest award after years of apprenticeship spent within the walls of the academies. A very significant role in getting acquainted with the history of ancient art was played by the works of the famous German art historian Winckelmann, a passionate enthusiast of ancient culture, an eyewitness to the great archaeological discoveries, to the description of which he devoted a number of his works. The most generalizing of these was his book The History of the Art of Antiquity (1764), where for the first time the general course of development of Greek art was traced, the nature of which Winckelmann defined in terms of "noble simplicity and calm grandeur." Despite a number of errors and incorrect assessments of the social and ideological essence of Greek art, which Winckelmann could get an idea of ​​​​mainly from Roman copies of Greek originals, his book was a genuine discovery for people of the 18th century.

Therefore, it was not surprising that the Italian artists of the Roman school could not pass by ancient motifs in their work. One of them was Pompeo Batoni (1708-1787), who wrote a number of compositions on mythological and religious subjects, which were distinguished by some sugary images and cold coloring - “Thetis gives Achilles to be raised by Chiron” (1771), “Hercules at the Crossroads” (1765) (both - the Hermitage), "The Penitent Magdalene" (Dresden, Art Gallery).

The French Academy also played an important role in the artistic life of Rome, gathering around itself young painters whose artistic activity was more lively and fruitful than the lifeless, artificially programmatic work of the Roman neoclassicists, led by the German painter Raphael Mengs. Of the French masters, the painters Vien, Hubert Robert, Fragonard, Subleira, David, the sculptor Pajou, the architect Souflot and a number of others worked in Rome. In addition, there was a colony of German artists. Many of the French masters developed the motifs of the classical landscape, already in the 17th century. represented by the largest French painters who lived in Italy - Poussin and Claude Lorrain. The Venetian Francesco Zuccarelli (1702-1788), the author of idyllic landscapes, and also a representative of the Roman school, the famous "ruin painter" Giovanni Paolo Pannini (1697-1764), who depicted not only Roman vedutes, but also various outstanding events of their time, as well as the interiors of churches.

The majestic ruins of the Colosseum, the dilapidated colonnades in Pompeii and Paestum, mausoleums, obelisks, reliefs, statues gave unlimited scope for artistic imagination and attracted painters, draughtsmen and engravers who performed free compositions based on ancient motifs, combined with the depiction of scenes from everyday life. “Rome, even when destroyed, teaches,” Hubert Robert wrote on one of his paintings. These landscapes were a huge success among the Roman and French nobility and, like the Venetian vedats, were widely used in the art of the 18th century.

But the most outstanding phenomenon in the field of this genre was the work of the famous master of architectural drawing, archaeologist and engraver Giovanni Battista Piranesi (1720-1778), who inspired entire generations of artists and architects with his architectural fantasies. A Venetian by birth, he lived almost all his life in Rome, where he was drawn by "an irresistible desire to study and see those famous cities where so many great things were done, and to draw their monuments - witnesses of a great past," writes his biographer.

Deeply fascinated by the study of the architectural heritage of Italy, Piranesi also got acquainted with the work of a large and extensive family of theater architects and decorators Bibbiena - natives of Bologna, but who worked following the example of most Settechnist masters in addition to Italy in various European cities - Bayreuth, Vienna, Prague and others. Their treatises and teachings on perspective illusionism, as well as the decorative works of Andrea Pozzo,

Pannini, the Valeriani brothers, had a great influence on him. In the works of Piranesi, the style of the late Roman baroque almost closely merges with the style of the emerging classicism. Interest in theatrical and decorative compositions contributed to the rooting in his works of foreshortening and perspective perception of space and deep contrasting chiaroscuro.

One of his early works, published in 1745 and 1760, is a suite of fourteen large engravings "Dungeons" ("Carceri") depicting endless multi-storey vaulted rooms, crossed by beams, stairs, galleries, drawbridges, where in contrasts of darkness and light blocks hanging from the ceilings, levers, ropes, wheels, chains interspersed in a bizarre way with fragments of ancient columns, friezes and bas-reliefs. These fantastic compositions, probably inspired by contemporary Piranesi theatrical scenery, are distinguished by an immense in scope, but nevertheless clearly outlined in their details, an architecturally crystallized space.

The architectural talent of Piranesi could not actively express itself in the real construction of Italy at that time. “The modern architect has no choice but to express his own ideas with drawings alone,” Piranesi wrote, creating his “imaginary architecture” in separate etching series. Its main cycles are devoted to the majestic buildings of ancient Greece and Rome.

Not striving for an accurate archaeological reconstruction of the monuments of ancient architecture, Piranesi, in addition to free interpretation, surrounded them with a special romantic halo, which caused sharp reproaches and attacks on him from contemporary scientists and archaeologists. His etchings are rather memorial monuments to the great past of Rome, which he worshiped with unquenchable passion.

In 1747, Piranesi produced a series of etchings “Views of Rome”, in which he achieved an extraordinary monumentality of the architectural image due to the maximum approximation of the depicted buildings to the foreground, shown, moreover, from a very low point of view. Small figures of people seem small and insignificant in comparison with huge columns and arches. Always working in the technique of etching, Piranesi softened the contours with deep black-velvet shadows, giving extraordinary picturesqueness to all his compositions. In the images of Roman bridges, he especially emphasizes the power of ancient Roman buildings, conveying their proud grandeur. The etching “Castle of St. Angel in Rome.

The monumental four-volume suite “Roman Antiquities”, published in 1756, is strikingly wide in scope of material. Piranesi’s most remarkable creations include his last suite of etchings with views of the ancient Greek temple of Poseidon in Paestum. The engraving needle of Piranesi works wonders here, giving these compositions the deepest picturesqueness thanks to the harmonious distribution of light and soft black-velvet shadows. The variety of points of view is even more striking here: the giant colonnades appear before the viewer from different angles, distant plans seem to be buried in soft and warm air, the foreground, free and light, devoid of any clutter that was characteristic of Piranesi before, is successfully filled with staffing - under the shade of dilapidated columns artists settled down and lovers of antiquity roam. Part of the unfinished engravings of this cycle after the death of Piranesi was completed by his son Francesco (c. 1758 / 59-1810), who adopted the graphic style of his father.

The artistic results achieved by the masters of the Roman school in the 18th century were on the whole less significant than the achievements of Venice. But her main merit was to promote the ideas of ancient art. And they, in turn, having received a new social sharpness, saturated with deep content and high civic pathos, served as a powerful stimulus for the work of advanced European masters on the eve of a new era, opening with the French bourgeois revolution of 1789.

The Italian Renaissance (Italian Renaissance) is marked by a period of major cultural change in Europe, in the period from the XIV - XVI centuries. It was from this era that a constellation of famous Italian artists emerged who admired and showed the whole world the beauty of nature and the human body. So, let's look at the 10 most famous masters of the Italian Renaissance.

1. Raphael Santi

Rafael Santi (known to all of us as Raphael) was born in Urbino to Giovanni Santi, a court painter. The young Raphael began his studies at the court, where he was inspired by the works of great artists such as Andrea Mantegna and Piero della Francesca. Raphael was also a student of Pietro Perugino, and his early work reflects the influence of his Italian Renaissance teacher. In the period 1500 and 1508 Raphael worked in central Italy, and was known for Madonnas and portraits. In 1508 he was approached by Pope Julius II to decorate the papal rooms in the Vatican, where he completed his finest work, such as the "School of Athens" in the Stanza della Senyatura.

"Santi"

2. Leonardo da Vinci

The works of Leonardo da Vinci are often considered the epitome of humanistic ideals during the Italian Renaissance. Leonardo da Vinci was a master of various forms of art, however, he gained fame through his paintings. Leonardo was the illegitimate child of a Florentine notary and a peasant woman. The young man formed his style while studying in the workshop of the Florentine painter Andrea del Verrocchio. Unfortunately, only 15 of his paintings are available today, among them "Mona Lisa" and "The Last Supper" - two of the most recognizable and imitated works.

3. Michelangelo

Like his contemporary, Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo was a master of various artistic fields, the most important, of course, was painting. The Sistine Chapel of the Vatican houses the most impressive frescoes in the history of Western art: images illustrating nine scenes from the Book of Genesis on the ceiling, and the Last Judgment on the wall of the altar, belonging to the artist's brush. Michelangelo completed the frescoes on the ceiling of the chapel in about four years, the composition covers more than 500 square meters and includes at least 300 images. This extraordinary piece of art undoubtedly influenced many Baroque decorators over the next few years.

4. Sandro Botticelli

Another painter belonging to the famous Florentine school is Sandro Botticelli. Little is known about his youth, it is obvious that he was a student of Fra Filippo Lippi, and was inspired by the monumental paintings of Masaccio. An elegant painting of the Madonna and Child by the early Renaissance master Botticelli, as well as his paintings on the altar walls, life-size paintings became famous during his lifetime. He is best known for two works depicting mythological scenes - "The Birth of Venus" and "Spring" - both paintings are housed in the Uffizi Gallery in Florence.

5. Titian

Tiziano Vecellio, known as Titian, was the greatest Venetian painter of the 16th century. Titian is famous, above all, for his ability to use colors and their shades - he equally mastered the skill of painting portraits, landscapes, mythological subjects and religious themes. As a teenager, he worked with prominent Venetian artists such as Giorgione and Giovanni Bellini. He also painted for royalty throughout Europe, including King Philip II of Spain. During his career, Titian painted portraits of many of the foremost personalities of his time, from Pope Paul III to Holy Roman Emperor Charles V.

"Self-portrait". National Prado Museum

6. Tintoretto

Jacopo Robusti (Comyn), known to everyone by the nickname Tintoretto (his father was a dyer or tintore in Italian), is next on the list of the leading Italian painters of the Renaissance. He combined the use of Titian's coloring and the dynamics of Michelangelo's forms. His work is characterized by large-scale subjects, such as his work "The Last Supper". The picture is characterized by ingenuity, spectacular lighting - the play of light and shadow and the use of gestures and body movements in dynamics. Because of his passion for work and impulsiveness of drawing, Tintoretto earned another nickname: II Furious.

"Self-portrait"

7. Masaccio

Masaccio left an indelible mark on the world of painting, although his life was short - he died at 26 years old. Born in 1401, he made a significant contribution to painting through his ability to create dynamic images and movements, as well as his scientific approach to perspective. In fact, he is considered by many to be the first great painter of the Italian Renaissance and an innovator of the modern era of painting. The work of Masaccio was influenced by the works of the sculptor Donatello and the architect Brunelleschi. Unfortunately, only four works have survived in our time, the authorship of which does not raise questions, while other works were written in collaboration with other artists.

8. Domenico Ghirlandaio

Domenico Ghirlandaio was the head of a large and productive workshop in Florence, which also included his two brothers. Many later famous artists spent time in his studio, among them Michelangelo. The early renaissance painter became known for his detailed subjects, which often included leading figures of the day, such as chronicling contemporary Florentine society. The most significant commissions were received by him from Pope Sixtus IV, who summoned him to Rome to paint the Sistine Chapel.

"The Call of the First Apostles"

9. Andrea del Verrocchio

You may have noticed that Andrea del Verrocchio was already mentioned on our list. He had a huge influence on the successful painters of the Italian Renaissance. Among his students were the aforementioned Botticelli, Ghirlandaio and even Leonardo da Vinci. His patrons were the influential Medici family, representatives of the Venetian state and the Municipal Council of Pistoia. The versatile artist has produced quite a few sculptures. There is only one known piece of art signed by Verrocchio: the altar wall in Pistoia Cathedral. Despite this, many other paintings are attributed to his workshop.

"Baptism of Christ"

10. Giovanni Bellini

Born into a family of artists, along with his father Jacopo and brother Gentile, Giovanni Bellini completely changed painting in the Venetian region. By using pure colors and soft transitions, Bellini was able to create rich hues and prominent shading. These coloring innovations had a profound effect on other painters such as Titian. Bellini added a disguised symbolism to many of his works, which is usually attributed to the Northern Renaissance.

"Madonna in the Meadow"

Renaissance (Renaissance). Italy. XV-XVI centuries. early capitalism. The country is ruled by wealthy bankers. They are interested in art and science.

The rich and powerful gather the talented and wise around them. Poets, philosophers, painters and sculptors have daily conversations with their patrons. At some point, it seemed that the people were ruled by sages, as Plato wanted.

Remember the ancient Romans and Greeks. They also built a society of free citizens, where the main value is a person (not counting slaves, of course).

The Renaissance is not just copying the art of ancient civilizations. This is a mixture. Mythology and Christianity. Realism of nature and sincerity of images. Beauty physical and spiritual.

It was just a flash. The period of the High Renaissance is about 30 years! From the 1490s to 1527 From the beginning of the flowering of Leonardo's creativity. Before the sack of Rome.

The mirage of an ideal world quickly faded. Italy was too fragile. She was soon enslaved by another dictator.

However, these 30 years determined the main features of European painting for 500 years ahead! Up to .

Image realism. Anthropocentrism (when the center of the world is Man). Linear perspective. Oil paints. Portrait. Scenery…

Incredibly, in these 30 years, several brilliant masters worked at once. At other times they are born one in 1000 years.

Leonardo, Michelangelo, Raphael and Titian are the titans of the Renaissance. But it is impossible not to mention their two predecessors: Giotto and Masaccio. Without which there would be no Renaissance.

1. Giotto (1267-1337)

Paolo Uccello. Giotto da Bondogni. Fragment of the painting “Five Masters of the Florentine Renaissance”. Beginning of the 16th century. .

XIV century. Proto-Renaissance. Its main character is Giotto. This is a master who single-handedly revolutionized art. 200 years before the High Renaissance. If not for him, the era that humanity is so proud of would hardly have come.

Before Giotto there were icons and frescoes. They were created according to the Byzantine canons. Faces instead of faces. flat figures. Proportional mismatch. Instead of a landscape - a golden background. As, for example, on this icon.

Guido da Siena. Adoration of the Magi. 1275-1280 Altenburg, Lindenau Museum, Germany.

And suddenly Giotto's frescoes appear. They have big figures. Faces of noble people. Old and young. Sad. Mournful. Surprised. Different.

Frescoes by Giotto in the Scrovegni Church in Padua (1302-1305). Left: Lamentation of Christ. Middle: Kiss of Judas (detail). Right: Annunciation of St. Anne (Mary's mother), fragment.

The main creation of Giotto is a cycle of his frescoes in the Scrovegni Chapel in Padua. When this church opened to parishioners, crowds of people poured into it. They have never seen this.

After all, Giotto did something unprecedented. He translated the biblical stories into a simple, understandable language. And they have become much more accessible to ordinary people.

Giotto. Adoration of the Magi. 1303-1305 Fresco in the Scrovegni Chapel in Padua, Italy.

This is what will be characteristic of many masters of the Renaissance. Laconism of images. Live emotions of the characters. Realism.

Read more about the frescoes of the master in the article.

Giotto was admired. But his innovation was not further developed. The fashion for international gothic came to Italy.

Only after 100 years will a worthy successor to Giotto appear.

2. Masaccio (1401-1428)

Masaccio. Self-portrait (fragment of the fresco “Saint Peter in the pulpit”). 1425-1427 The Brancacci Chapel in Santa Maria del Carmine, Florence, Italy.

Beginning of the 15th century. The so-called Early Renaissance. Another innovator enters the scene.

Masaccio was the first artist to use linear perspective. It was designed by his friend, the architect Brunelleschi. Now the depicted world has become similar to the real one. Toy architecture is a thing of the past.

Masaccio. Saint Peter heals with his shadow. 1425-1427 The Brancacci Chapel in Santa Maria del Carmine, Florence, Italy.

He adopted the realism of Giotto. However, unlike his predecessor, he already knew anatomy well.

Instead of blocky characters, Giotto is beautifully built people. Just like the ancient Greeks.

Masaccio. Baptism of neophytes. 1426-1427 Brancacci Chapel, Church of Santa Maria del Carmine in Florence, Italy.
Masaccio. Exile from Paradise. 1426-1427 Fresco in the Brancacci Chapel, Santa Maria del Carmine, Florence, Italy.

Masaccio lived a short life. He died, like his father, unexpectedly. At 27 years old.

However, he had many followers. Masters of the following generations went to the Brancacci Chapel to learn from his frescoes.

So the innovation of Masaccio was picked up by all the great artists of the High Renaissance.

3. Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519)

Leonardo da Vinci. Self-portrait. 1512 Royal Library in Turin, Italy.

Leonardo da Vinci is one of the titans of the Renaissance. He greatly influenced the development of painting.

It was da Vinci who raised the status of the artist himself. Thanks to him, representatives of this profession are no longer just artisans. These are the creators and aristocrats of the spirit.

Leonardo made a breakthrough primarily in portraiture.

He believed that nothing should distract from the main image. The eye should not wander from one detail to another. This is how his famous portraits appeared. Concise. Harmonious.

Leonardo da Vinci. Lady with an ermine. 1489-1490 Chertoryski Museum, Krakow.

The main innovation of Leonardo is that he found a way to make images ... alive.

Before him, the characters in the portraits looked like mannequins. The lines were clear. All details are carefully drawn. A painted drawing could not possibly be alive.

Leonardo invented the sfumato method. He blurred the lines. Made the transition from light to shadow very soft. His characters seem to be covered in a barely perceptible haze. The characters came to life.

. 1503-1519 Louvre, Paris.

Sfumato will enter the active vocabulary of all the great artists of the future.

Often there is an opinion that Leonardo, of course, a genius, but did not know how to bring anything to the end. And he often didn't finish painting. And many of his projects remained on paper (by the way, in 24 volumes). In general, he was thrown into medicine, then into music. Even the art of serving at one time was fond of.

However, think for yourself. 19 paintings - and he is the greatest artist of all times and peoples. And someone is not even close to greatness, while writing 6,000 canvases in a lifetime. Obviously, who has a higher efficiency.

Read about the most famous painting of the master in the article.

4. Michelangelo (1475-1564)

Daniele da Volterra. Michelangelo (detail). 1544 Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.

Michelangelo considered himself a sculptor. But he was a universal master. Like his other Renaissance colleagues. Therefore, his pictorial heritage is no less grandiose.

He is recognizable primarily by physically developed characters. He depicted a perfect man in whom physical beauty means spiritual beauty.

Therefore, all his characters are so muscular, hardy. Even women and old people.

Michelangelo. Fragments of the Last Judgment fresco in the Sistine Chapel, Vatican.

Often Michelangelo painted the character naked. And then I added clothes on top. To make the body as embossed as possible.

He painted the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel alone. Although this is a few hundred figures! He didn't even let anyone rub the paint. Yes, he was unsociable. He had a tough and quarrelsome personality. But most of all, he was dissatisfied with ... himself.

Michelangelo. Fragment of the fresco "Creation of Adam". 1511 Sistine Chapel, Vatican.

Michelangelo lived a long life. Survived the decline of the Renaissance. For him it was a personal tragedy. His later works are full of sadness and sorrow.

In general, the creative path of Michelangelo is unique. His early works are the praise of the human hero. Free and courageous. In the best traditions of Ancient Greece. Like his David.

In the last years of life - these are tragic images. A deliberately rough-hewn stone. As if before us are monuments to the victims of fascism of the 20th century. Look at his "Pieta".

Sculptures by Michelangelo at the Academy of Fine Arts in Florence. Left: David. 1504 Right: Pieta of Palestrina. 1555

How is this possible? One artist went through all the stages of art from the Renaissance to the 20th century in one lifetime. What will the next generations do? Go your own way. Knowing that the bar has been set very high.

5. Raphael (1483-1520)

. 1506 Uffizi Gallery, Florence, Italy.

Raphael has never been forgotten. His genius was always recognized: both during life and after death.

His characters are endowed with sensual, lyrical beauty. It is he who is rightfully considered the most beautiful female images ever created. External beauty reflects the spiritual beauty of the heroines. Their meekness. Their sacrifice.

Raphael. . 1513 Old Masters Gallery, Dresden, Germany.

The famous words “Beauty will save the world” Fyodor Dostoevsky said precisely about. It was his favorite picture.

However, sensual images are not the only strong point of Raphael. He thought very carefully about the composition of his paintings. He was an unsurpassed architect in painting. Moreover, he always found the simplest and most harmonious solution in the organization of space. It seems that it cannot be otherwise.

Raphael. Athens school. 1509-1511 Fresco in the rooms of the Apostolic Palace, Vatican.

Rafael lived only 37 years. He died suddenly. From caught colds and medical errors. But his legacy cannot be overestimated. Many artists idolized this master. And they multiplied his sensual images in thousands of their canvases..

Titian was an unsurpassed colorist. He also experimented a lot with composition. In general, he was a daring innovator.

For such a brilliance of talent, everyone loved him. Called "the king of painters and the painter of kings."

Speaking of Titian, I want to put an exclamation point after each sentence. After all, it was he who brought dynamics to painting. Pathos. Enthusiasm. Bright color. Shine of colors.

Titian. Ascension of Mary. 1515-1518 Church of Santa Maria Gloriosi dei Frari, Venice.

Towards the end of his life, he developed an unusual writing technique. The strokes are fast and thick. The paint was applied either with a brush or with fingers. From this - the images are even more alive, breathing. And the plots are even more dynamic and dramatic.

Titian. Tarquinius and Lucretia. 1571 Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, England.

Doesn't this remind you of anything? Of course, it's a technique. And the technique of artists of the XIX century: Barbizon and. Titian, like Michelangelo, will go through 500 years of painting in one lifetime. That's why he's a genius.

Read about the famous masterpiece of the master in the article.

Renaissance artists are the owners of great knowledge. To leave such a legacy, it was necessary to study a lot. In the field of history, astrology, physics and so on.

Therefore, each of their images makes us think. Why is it shown? What is the encrypted message here?

They are almost never wrong. Because they thoroughly thought out their future work. They used all the baggage of their knowledge.

They were more than artists. They were philosophers. They explained the world to us through painting.

That is why they will always be deeply interesting to us.

In contact with

Published: August 30, 2014

Italian art and painting

The history of Italian art is the art of Italy itself in time and space. After the Etruscan civilization, and especially after the Roman Republic and Empire, which dominated this part of the world for many centuries, Italy took center stage in European art during the Renaissance. Italy also showed European artistic dominance in the 16th and 17th centuries thanks to artistic direction of the baroque. She re-established her strong presence on the international art scene from the middle of the 19th century through movements such as the Macchiaioli, Futurism, Metaphysics, Novecento, Spatialism, Arte Povera and Transavantgarde.

Italian art has influenced some major trends over the centuries and has produced many great artists, including painters and sculptors. Today, Italy occupies an important place on the international art scene, hosting several major art galleries, museums and exhibitions; significant art centers of this country include its capital - Rome, as well as Florence, Venice, Milan, Naples, Turin and other cities.

Triumph of Galatea by Raphael

Etruscan art

Etruscan bronze figures and terracotta funerary reliefs are examples of the powerful traditions of Central Italy, which had waned by the time Rome began building its empire in the peninsula. The Etruscan paintings that have survived to our time are mainly wall frescoes from burials, mainly from Tarquinia. It is the most important example of pre-Roman fine art in Italy known to scholars.

The frescoes are painted over fresh plaster, so that when the plaster dries, the painting becomes part of the plaster and an integral part of the wall, helping it to survive so well (and indeed, almost all surviving Etruscan and Roman painting is represented only by frescoes). Colors were created from stones and minerals of different colors, which were ground and mixed with each other, small brushes were made from animal hair (even the best brushes were made from ox hair). From the middle of the 4th century BC. the use of chiaroscuro to depict depth and volume began. Sometimes scenes from everyday life are depicted, but most often they are traditional mythological scenes. The concept of proportion does not appear in any of the surviving frescoes, and we often find images of animals or people with some disproportionate body parts. One of the most famous Etruscan frescoes is the painting of the Tomb of the Lionesses in Tarquinia.

Roman art

Rome under Emperor Constantine, photo: Campus Martius, public domain

The Etruscans were responsible for the construction of Rome's early monumental buildings. Roman temples and houses repeated Etruscan models with great accuracy. Elements of Etruscan influence on Roman temples included the podium and emphasis on the façade, to the detriment of the other three sides of the building. Large Etruscan houses were clustered around a central hall in much the same way that Roman large city houses were later built around an atrium. The influence of Etruscan architecture gradually waned during the Republic due to influences (especially Greek ones) from other parts of the world. The very architecture of the Etruscans came under the influence of the Greeks, so when the Romans adopted Greek styles, they did not become alien to their culture. During the time of the republic, there was probably a constant development of architectural trends mainly from the Hellenistic world, but after the fall of Syracuse in 211 BC. Greek works of art poured into Rome. In the 2nd century BC, the flow of these works and, more importantly, Greek masters, continued to flow to Rome, having a decisive influence on the development of Roman architecture. By the end of the Republic, when Vitruvius wrote his scholarly work on architecture, Greek theory of architecture and examples of architectural work prevailed over everything else.

As the empire expanded, Roman architecture spread to large areas, it was used in the creation of both public buildings and some large private buildings. In many areas, elements of style, especially decoration, were influenced by local tastes, but the architecture remained recognizably Roman. Styles of local architecture have been influenced to varying degrees by Roman architecture, and in many regions Roman and local elements are found combined in the same building.

By the 1st century AD, Rome had become the largest and most developed city in the entire world. The ancient Romans came up with new technologies to improve the sanitation systems of the city, roads and buildings. They developed a system of aqueducts that brought fresh water to the city through pipes, and built sewers that removed the waste of the city. The richest Romans lived in large houses with gardens. Most of the population, however, lived in tenements made of stone, concrete, or limestone. The Romans developed new technologies and used materials such as volcanic soil from Pozzuoli, a village near Naples, to make their cement stronger and more durable. This cement allowed them to build large concrete apartment buildings called insuls.

Statue known as "August from Prima Port" licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported

Wall paintings adorned the homes of the rich. The paintings often depicted garden landscapes, events from Greek and Roman mythology, historical scenes or scenes from everyday life. The Romans decorated their floors with mosaics - designs or patterns created from small colored tiles. Richly colored paintings and mosaics helped make the rooms of Roman houses visually larger and brighter, as well as flaunt the wealth of the owner.

In the Christian era of the late empire, in 350-500. AD, wall paintings, mosaic ceiling and floor decorations, and funerary sculptures flourished, while full-sized sculpture for a circular view and pictorial panels gradually disappeared, most likely for religious reasons. When Constantine moved the capital of the empire to Byzantium (renamed Constantinople), Roman art began to be influenced by oriental influences, giving birth to the Byzantine style of the late empire. When Rome was ravaged in the 5th century, artisans moved to and found work in the Eastern capital. Almost 10,000 workers and artisans worked on the creation of the Church of Hagia Sophia in Constantinople, this was the final chord of Roman art under Emperor Justinian I, who also ordered the creation of the famous mosaics of Ravenna.

medieval art

Throughout the Middle Ages, Italian art mainly included architectural decorations (frescoes and mosaics). Byzantine art in Italy was highly formal and refined decoration, with standardized calligraphy and striking use of color and gold. Until the 13th century, art in Italy was almost entirely regional, influenced by external European and Eastern currents. After approx. 1250, the art of various regions developed common characteristics, so there was a certain unity and deep originality.

Byzantine art

After the fall of its western capital, the Roman Empire lasted another 1,000 years under the leadership of Constantinople. Byzantine masters were involved in important projects throughout Italy, and Byzantine styles in painting can be seen as far back as the 14th century.

gothic art

The Gothic period marks the transition from medieval art to the Renaissance, characterized by styles and attitudes that developed under the influence of the Dominican and Franciscan monastic orders founded by Saint Dominic and Saint Francis of Assisi respectively.

It was a time of religious disputes within the church. The Franciscan and Dominican orders were founded as an attempt to resolve these disputes and bring the Catholic Church back to basics. The early years of the Franciscans are especially remembered for the mercy of Saint Francis, and the Dominicans are remembered as the order most responsible for the rise of the Inquisition.

Gothic architecture originated in northern Europe and spread south into Italy.

Renaissance art

In the Middle Ages, painters and sculptors tried to give their work a religious character. They wanted the audience to focus on the deep religious meaning of their paintings and sculptures. But the artists and sculptors of the Renaissance, like the writers of this era, sought to depict people and nature realistically. Medieval architects designed huge cathedrals in order to emphasize the greatness of God and humble the human spirit. Renaissance architects designed buildings whose proportions were based on those of the human body, and whose decorations imitated ancient patterns.

Art of the 1300s and early 1400s

In the early 1300s, the Florentine artist Giotto became the first artist to depict nature realistically. He created magnificent frescoes (painting on wet plaster) for churches in Assisi, Florence, Padua and Rome. Giotto made an attempt to create realistic figures showing real emotions. He portrayed many of his characters in real-life settings.

A remarkable group of Florentine architects, painters and sculptors created their work in the early 1400s. Among them were the painter Masaccio, the sculptor Donatello and the architect Filippo Brunelleschi.

The best work of Masaccio was a series of frescoes, which he created around 1427 in the Brancacci chapel of the church of Santa Maria del Carmine in Florence. These frescoes realistically show biblical scenes of emotional intensity. In these works, Masaccio used Brunelleschi's system to create linear perspective.

Donatello in his sculptures tried to depict the dignity of the human body with realistic and often dramatic details. His masterpieces include three statues of the biblical hero David. In a version completed in the 1430s, Donatello's David is depicted as a graceful, naked youth, shown moments after he had slain the giant Goliath. The work, which is about 5 feet (1.5 meters) tall, was the first large free-standing nude sculpture created in Western art since antiquity.

Brunelleschi was the first Renaissance architect to revive the ancient Roman style of architecture. In his projects, he used arches, columns and other elements of classical architecture. One of his most famous buildings is the beautifully and harmoniously built Pazzi Chapel in Florence. This chapel, begun in 1442 and completed around 1465, was one of the first buildings built in the new Renaissance style. Brunelleschi was also the first Renaissance painter to master linear perspective, a mathematical system by which artists could show space and depth on a flat surface.

Art of the late 1400s and early 1500s

Outstanding representatives of the art of the late 1400s and early 1500s were three masters. They were Michelangelo, Raphael and Leonardo da Vinci.

Michelangelo was an outstanding painter, architect and poet. In addition, he has been called the greatest sculptor in history. Michelangelo was a master in depicting the human body. For example, his famous statue of the leader of the Israeli people Moses (1516) makes an extraordinary impression of physical and spiritual power. These qualities are also evident in the biblical and classical frescoes that Michelangelo painted on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel in the Vatican. These frescoes, painted from 1508 to 1512, are among the greatest works of art of the Renaissance.

"David" by Michelangelo

Palazzo Pitti

Gallery of the Academy of Fine Arts

National Bargello Museum

National Museum of San Marco

National Archaeological Museum of Florence

Opera del Duomo Museum

Palazzo Vecchio

Orsanmichele Museum

Gem processing workshop

Palazzo Rosso

Palazzo Bianco

Palazzo Reale

Pinacoteca Brera

Poldi Pezzoli Museum

Sforza Castle

Pinacoteca Ambrosiana

National Archaeological Museum of Naples

City Museum of Padua

G. Palermo

Palazzo Abatellis

National Gallery of Parma

Magnani-Rocca Foundation

G. Perugia

National Museum of Umbria

National Museum of San Matteo

Municipal Museum of Prato

Museum of the Cathedral

G. Reggio di Calabria

National Museum of Magna Graecia

Capitoline Museums

Center of Montemartini

National Roman Museum

Doria Pamphili Gallery

Palazzo Barberini

Palazzo Corsini

National Etruscan Museum

Castel Sant'Angelo (Castel Sant'Angelo)

Spada Gallery

National Pinakothek of Siena

Palazzo Publico

Siena Cathedral Museum (Museum of Duomo Works)

Sabauda Gallery

Palazzo Reale (Royal Palace)

Palazzo Madama

G. Urbino

National Gallery of the Marche

G. Venice

Academy Gallery

Ka "d" Oro

Scuola San Rocco

Scuola di San Giorgio degli Schiavoni

Some gems of Italian art

"The Tempest" Giorgione

The State Hermitage, together with the City Museums of Pavia, is holding the largest retrospective of Italian painting of the century before last, including more than seventy works

State Hermitage, 19 November 2011 - 22 January 2012
Armorial Hall of the Winter Palace

As part of the Year of Italy in Russia and Russia in Italy, the Armorial Hall of the Winter Palace hosts the exhibition “Italian Painting of the 19th Century. From Neoclassicism to Symbolism”, organized by the State Hermitage together with the City Museums of Pavia. The exposition is the largest retrospective of Italian painting of the century before last and includes more than seventy works, half of which come from the collection of the 19th century Art Gallery of the City Museums of Pavia. In addition, the exhibition includes works from the Gallery of Modern Art in Florence, Milan, Turin, Genoa. It is difficult to overestimate the significance of the exhibition, since the period under review is practically unknown to the Russian audience (the Hermitage collection contains a little over sixty paintings by Italian artists Ottocento).

Using the best examples of 19th century painting as an example, the exhibition demonstrates the entire range of styles and trends in which Italian artists worked: classicism, romanticism, historicism, macchiaioli, symbolism.

The main features of Italian classicism were laid down in the work of Antonio Canova. The Lombard artist Andrea Appiani turned to the type of sublimely idyllic paintings on mythological themes, an example of which is the painting Juno Dressed by the Graces. The same ancient canon of sublime harmony is in the canvases "Paris" and "Hebe" by Gaspare Landi. The heroic branch of neoclassicism is represented by the once popular painting “Death of Caesar” by Vincenzo Camuccini.

Turning to episodes and heroes of national history, mostly already described in literature, is characteristic of most of the painting of the 19th century, starting with romanticism. The main artist of this direction is Francesco Hayets. In the painting “The Reconciliation of Otto II with his mother Adelaide of Burgundy,” he reproduced a significant but little-known event in Italian medieval history. In "Venus Playing with Doves" he embodied the features of the famous ballerina Carlotta Chabert, in "The Secret Denunciation" he showed a Venetian, beautiful and cruel.

Romantic artists willingly depicted outstanding people, rebel heroes in moments of glory or fall. Examples of such works: "Galileo before the Inquisition" by Christiano Banti, "Christopher Columbus on his return from America (Christopher Columbus in chains)" by Lorenzo Delleani, "Lord Byron on the Greek Shores" by Giacomo Trecourt.

Romantics revive interest in the "younger" genres of painting - the image of the interiors of buildings and city views (lead). In the canvas "Church of Santa Maria della Salute in Venice" Ippolito Caffi experiments with visual perception and lighting effects.

The search for romantics continued in the 1860s Tuscan macchiaioli: Giovanni Fattori, Silvestro Lega, Telemaco Signorini, Giuseppe Abbati, Odorado Borrani, Vincenzo Cabianca. The artists proposed a stylistic manner, replacing the traditional chiaroscuro with a contrasting combination of spots (“macchia”). Using the new technique, macchiaioli presented genre scenes of everyday life: "Singing stornello" and "Betrothed, or the Bride and Groom" by Silvestro Legi, "Rendezvous in the Forest" by Telemaco Signorini. The landscape in the paintings “Rotonda of the Palmieri Baths” by Giovanni Fattori and “View of Castiglioncello” by Giuseppe Abbati is interesting because the artists worked en plein air to create it.

The tendencies of symbolism are clearly expressed in Giorgio Kinerca's triptych "The Riddle of Man": the artist avoids a clear characterization of the characters, preferring to fascinate the viewer with esoteric symbols and a general magnetic atmosphere.

In the last decades of the 19th century, European artists experimented with new means of expression. In Italy, Angelo Morbelli develops a technique of separate stroke (divisionism), an example of which is a painting on a social theme “For 80 centesimo!”. Giuseppe Pelizza da Volpedo was also a divisionist, who symbolically embodied the ideals of high humanism in the painting "Round Dance".

Exhibition “Italian painting of the 19th century. From Neoclassicism to Symbolism” is a response to the large exhibition “Leonardeschi from Foppa to Giampetrino: Paintings from the Hermitage and the Municipal Museums of Pavia” opened in March 2011 at the Castello Visconteo, which included twenty-two canvases from the Hermitage collection.

The exhibition curator on behalf of the State Hermitage is Natalia Borisovna Demina, a researcher at the Department of Western European Fine Arts, and on behalf of the City Museums of Pavia - Susanna Zatti, director of the City Museums of Pavia.

By the opening of the exhibition, a scientific catalog was published in Russian and Italian (Schira publishing house, Milan-Geneva), with articles by Fernando Mazzocchi, professor at the University of Milan, Francesca Porreco, curator of the Municipal Museums of Pavia and Suzanna Zatti.

Attention! All materials of the site and database of auction results of the site, including illustrated reference information about works sold at auctions, are intended for use solely in accordance with Art. 1274 of the Civil Code of the Russian Federation. Use for commercial purposes or in violation of the rules established by the Civil Code of the Russian Federation is not allowed. the site is not responsible for the content of materials submitted by third parties. In case of violation of the rights of third parties, the site administration reserves the right to remove them from the site and from the database based on the request of the authorized body.

• 31.01.2020 The starting price of each lot of this auction does not depend on its estimate and is exactly $100
• 30.01.2020 Marron has been collecting his collection for more than 20 years, it consists of 850 works of art, tentatively estimated at $450 million.
• 30.01.2020 The status of the sculpture from the Getty Museum in December 2019 was changed to "the work of an unknown artist"
• 29.01.2020 The course had to be canceled after complaints that it focused too much on European "white history of art" and the study of male artists.
• 29.01.2020 The organizers of the most comprehensive retrospective of Salvador Dali's work offer the public two hundred works of the artist and a rich educational program

• 31.01.2020 The total revenue amounted to almost 2.5 million rubles. Buyers - from Moscow to Magadan
• 24.01.2020 More than 50% of the lots of the catalog went under the hammer, buyers - from Perm to Minsk
• 23.01.2020 The catalog contains thirty lots: eleven paintings, fifteen sheets of original and one - printed graphics, one work in mixed media, one porcelain plate and one photo album
• 20.01.2020 The catalog of the first art and fine arts auction in 2020 consisted of 547 lots - paintings and graphics, glass, porcelain, ceramics, silver, enamel, jewelry, etc.
• 17.01.2020 A little less than half of all catalog lots went into new hands. Among buyers - Moscow, Odintsovo, Minsk and Perm

• 31.01.2020 In the history of the subject of conversation, something may seem naive, the other - to find application in the practice of market participants. One thing is certain: in any profession, the knowledge of every successful person must be based on the successes and mistakes of his predecessors.
• 03.12.2019 The main figures of the three main auctions of the “Russian week”, and a little about how our forecasts came true
• 03.12.2019 This year the Salon was held at a new venue, in Gostiny Dvor, and a month later than usual
• 28.11.2019 A visit to the artist's studio is an event that can potentially change the life of both the owner of the studio and his guest. Not exactly a business meeting, but certainly not an ordinary friendly visit. Following a few simple rules will help you avoid getting into trouble in this situation.
• 26.11.2019 For the fourth time, at the suggestion of the VKhNRTS named after Academician I. E. Grabar, we publish a fake expert opinion, allegedly issued by the experts of the Center. Be carefull!
• 17.12.2019 The exhibition, which opens on December 19 in the main building of the museum, at 25 Petrovka, is an attempt to take a fresh look at the vast museum collection of Russian art: 20 well-known figures from various professional fields became the curators of the project
• 12.12.2019 April 6, 2020 marks the 500th anniversary of the death of one of the greatest artists of the Renaissance. In anticipation of large-scale events that will take place next year, the Berlin Art Gallery opens an exhibition of Madonnas by Raphael Santi