Renaissance Attitudes Works of Art Differ From Those of the Present Day - Assignment Example

How do Renaissance attitudes to collecting, cataloguing and displaying works of art differ from those of the present day? Are there any lessons to bedrawn from? Any schoolboy worth his salt knows that the word Renaissance means rebirth. Indeed it was not the rebirth of just art or architecture as many people seem to think, but it encompasses the whole range of factors that go to make up human endeavor in all its diverse aspects. Renaissance period refers to a time when the mode of thought itself changed as it has been never changed before in the whole of human history. New information was being garnered everyday by scientists and scholars: theories hitherto held heretical were being pursued in a mood of exhilaration and hope and those held inviolable were cut to smithereens. The basic precept of renaissance was humanism and “--a recognition of the basic value of human beings as individuals, not simply as souls on their way to eternity.” (Italy during the Renaissance). It was not many years since Giordano was burned at the stake for accepting scientific notions that were in conflict with the view held by the Church. But the thirst for knowledge could not be suppressed forever and it was not long before the ideas of the time spread all over Italy and Europe. During the period, Italy was comprised of many city-states in the ancient Greek manner. Control of these cities was in the hands of certain families. They wanted to increase their power like all men in power do. Popes and emperors also joined the fray and all that they were interested in was the attainment of ultimate power. In those times, the cities were prosperous as never before. Trade and commerce flourished and the coffers were filled to overflowing. All that surplus cash was translated into impressive mansions and palaces for the super rich who vied with each other to build abodes that were the ultimate in luxury. These, by the way, were also the patrons of the great artists, architects and artisans of the time. Of course there were many players in this arena and foremost among them was the Medici family of Florence. Many of the buildings that they built and the varied forms of art that they funded are still in evidence today as mute witnesses to this glorious but bygone era and we can but marvel at them. When Cosimo de Medici came to power in the early fifteenth century, he extended his powers over Tuscany also. But it was his son Lorenzo the Magnificent who made Florence very prosperous and this great city became a rallying point for the new movement. Within a short period they patronized such illustrious artists as Brunelleschi, Da Vinci, Donatello and Michelangelo. Two of the Medicis became popes using the influence of these great personages. The magnificent Uffizi gallery is the crowning achievement of these great patrons of art. Cappelle Medicee, the final resting place of the Medicis contained a tomb designed by no less a person than the inimitable Michelangelo. Many edifices in Florence are examples of some of the finest architectural beauty in Italy. As if to add to all this magnificence, some of them also housed in their well appointed salons, paintings and sculpture that were typical of the period. A prime example of this is the Santa Croce, which contains the works of Donatello and Rossellino. After Florence we turn to Milan and do so, we are struck by that epitome of Renaissance architecture the Sforzesco Castle. Bramante who designed the basic layout for the St.Peter’s basilica in Rome also designed a courtyard of this castle. The convent Santa Maria delle Grazie where Da Vinci painted The Last Supper was also the product of his genius. Then there is The Bagatti Valsecchi Museum founded by Barons Fausto and Giuseppe Bagatti Valsecchi. In Venice, the city of The Doges, famous for its Canalettos, is also home to the same kind of treasures as Florence contained. Such luminaries as Titian, Rafael lived and painted their masterpieces within its confines. And Tintoretto whom Jean Paul Sartre called ‘A mole in the sun’ astounded his patrons by providing finished work when he was asked only for sketches, thereby killing all competition. It happened both in the Doge’s palace with his painting of Battle of Lepanto and in the central oval of the ceiling at the Scuola San Rocco. When great artists like Cagliari and Robusti were only asked to bring sketches his art was already in place, executed to perfection. And as a finale he gave away both works gratis to the respective patrons so that they could not turn him down and commission another artist to do the work. But the Saint Peter’s Basilica at the Vatican astounds us with its superb aesthetics and vast scale. The premises are also home to masterpieces of the art of that epoch. The statues of angels from the master sculptor Bernini adorn the Castle SantAngelo. And how to describe The Sistine Chapel where Michelangelo really let himself go with the ‘creation’ of God’s creation? Another city worth mentioning only because at the Galleria Sabauda, Boticelli’s great work Birth of Venus, no less beautiful than Aphrodite herself, hangs sedately. While waxing lyrical about the treasures of the Renaissance era, what motivated the players in the field to patronize great art and artists? To a great extent the Roman Catholic Church was the patron of arts in general. Ironically, Renaissance was a movement that ran contrary to the precepts of The Holy Sea. Consequently, there was a change of emphasis in art from purely glorifying the divine, to the distinctly humanistic attitude of the movement. But this did not detract in any way from the business of creating fine art at all. On the contrary, many of the prominent artists like Da Vinci, Michelangelo and Donatello produced religious paintings in plenty. All over Italy, the walls and ceilings of churches and chapels themselves became canvases for these great artists to ply their trade. So in a manner of speaking, the church patronized art to continue glorifying the divine but with a humanistic touch. May be that was why a priest made an unfair comment about one of the frescoes painted on a ceiling of the Sistine Chapel by Michelangelo, that the work belonged more to a wine shop than to a church. The great artist promptly depicted the priest as one of the damned in that painting. Now in the 15th Century, not only the church but private persons also began to try a hand at patronizing art. They too continued the practice of the priests by commissioning religious themes at first, but later branched out to patronize secular art also. Soon this trend was copied throughout the length and breadth of Italy. Painters decorated panels, plates and walls with events taken from literary sources that are mostly allegorical and mythological in nature. Works of Boccaccio and Petrarch were hot favorites. Another offshoot of this was the art of making portraits, which was more personal in nature. Those wealthy patrons wanted perpetual fame and glory and what better way for this than commissioning great artists to draw their portraits. Botticelli and Mantegna drew portraits of political leaders in such a way that their individual characteristics were tinged with royal glamour. Florentine art flourished due to the patronage and monetary support of the rich citizens and also by the church with the result that it gave men of art a fine livelihood. Under the circumstances we can safely surmise that during the period under review, collecting art was a means of self-glorification and thereby to flaunt one’s newly gotten riches for the whole world to see. Tastefully designed mansions, palaces and galleria became the external extensions of one’s own psyche that was brimming with the desire for universal recognition, approval and appreciation. These structures designed by the greatest artists of the times were also objects d’art in themselves like the vast treasures they housed within their well-designed confines. So the attitudes behind collecting works of art whether it is painting, sculpture, works of architecture or objects of fine craftsmanship were the same for all those were engaged in it. They wanted approbation, admiration and most important of all had allusions to posterity and through it immortality. As to cataloguing the pieces of art, only the simplest procedures were used as far as we know. Frames with ornate gilt borders were crowded on the walls with hardly any space in between. This left no room for labels, so there were not any. There was only a number accorded to the painting which was keyed to a checklist, containing the title of the work and the name of the artist. May be a fat ledger adorned the curator’s desk with the same details reflected in a larger format. Display of the paintings was done according to the nature of the pieces. From the times of the Renaissance to the beginning of the 20th century paintings were housed in halls called ‘salons.’ They were secured in ornate gilt frames and hung on the walls in a particular pattern. The bigger pieces occupied the center of the walls with the smaller ones crowded around them like satellites. Frescoes occupied large wall spaces and ceilings. Large pieces of sculpture were kept in courtyards, plazas and along corridors and the smaller ones found their way inside the palazzos and churches. These salons were lit solely by skylights; but by the late nineteenth century gas lights came to be used especially in most of the commercial art galleries so that they could to stay open even after dark. However, this artificial lighting had as disadvantage that it left some of the paintings either under-lit or overlit. There was also the chance of one painting being dominated by a bigger or more brightly colored one hanging close to it. In these days, styles of painting have changed so much that the way of exhibiting them also have changed accordiningly. Some museums have developed their own unique mode of display. For instance The Museum of Louvre in Paris and The Metropolitan Musuenof Art in New York exhibited their wares in chronologial order beginning with Greek art to the more modern Impressionistic paintings of the much later period. Art connnosieurs have also changed but not on the same scale. A cubist painting must have sent waves of confusion in an art afficonado of a few centuires ago and the significance of modern art would have completely escaped him. As mentioned before, the old way of hanging frames on the wall gave way to what is now called the ‘white cube’ style brought into vogue by the Musuem of Modern Art. The main characteristics of the cube style are white painted walls and neutral lighting. The walls are almost empty compared to the ‘salon’ period and paintings centered along the average eye level with small labels set alongside each. Now the viewer is conscious of each work as a whole as his attention is focused on a single frame at a time. In this way he comes to think of each “of art as a self-contained aesthetic object, implicitly suggesting that each is a masterwork.” (Kenneth John Myers). There were many causes for this transformation from the ‘salon’ style to ‘the white cube’ style. In the former case, paintings were crowded together on walls indiscriminately. No particular system was followed with the result that it was a case of missing the trees for the wood. In the white cube mode, each painting became an individual entity, separate from all others, giving the viewer the impression that each is a self-contained work of art. “This assumes that art objects should be valued neither for their accuracy neither as representations nor for their ability to teach moral lessons but solely for the success with which their elements are organized into a coherent, and therefore beautiful, whole.” (K. J. Myers) Thus a work of art became something distinct in the beholder’s mind as well as on the wall. Collecting art involves many factors that escape the uninitiated. Whether you are a private collector, owner of a gallery or the curator of a museum, you have to accept the responsibility as guardians of the treasures that are entrusted to your keeping. You have to keep yourself up to date with the work of the artists with whose creations you deal in. You have to document every piece for the purpose of insurance. Also you have to take decisions on those works of art on a long time basis. But for all these troubles you will also reap rich rewards. And “soon, you will discover that surrounding yourself with art can enrich not only your visual experiences, but instill a sense of vitality to your life and uplift your soul.” (Want to Start Collecting Art? Easy Steps To Get You Started. 1998). Works of art should be catalogued for easy reference. With the advent of computers it is no more a daunting task as it used to be. Compiling a database on artists and their works is a long term investment as well. Cataloging records provide security in terms of information and other relevant data. It is useful in identifying the existence of files, and in helping control the material if it should be shared and circulated around. It facilitates identifying files using cross-indexes. In this connection The Museum of Modern Art in New York devised an excellent system of cataloging artist files by trying to make available suitable levels of cataloging information. Each artist is indexed using his name, the catalogue number of his work, and its position on the wall or any space where it is displayed. As most often happens they confronted a problem here too. It concerned what is euphemistically termed ‘ephemeral material.’ The term denotes documentation that is not found elsewhere because they pertain to obscure artists or the early works of established ones. It seems that this material is not generally catalogued at all. In spite of all this development, a unified system of cataloguing artists is yet to come into existence. Talking about ‘attitudes’, there seems to be an attitude problem with the present art world which “is intimidating, confusing, and incredibly self-important.” (The Attitude Problem of the Contemporary Art World. 1976). As you step into art any gallery you are overwhelmed by the elegant atmosphere. And if you are unlucky enough to seek more information about a particular artist whose work happens to interest you, you are either given a copy of a recent press release filled with a lot of meaningless jargon or made to feel like a fool for having asked the question in the first place. There is something ironical about the whole art business, which is surprisingly very small considering the issues involved. In any business, great emphasis is laid on marketing the product and sales folk stand by, ready to mete out their sales pitch using their glib tongues, all out to ‘make a sale.’ The stock phrase “May I help you?” is nowhere in evidence as far as an art gallery is concerned. If you are interested in a work of art and want to buy it you are often dealt words of discouragement in a flippant manner. Even artists are no exception to the rule. The fashion magazine Vogue recently reported the experience of a lady who happened to approach an artist with a view to buy one of his paintings. And he is said to have replied that the work in question was passé and asked her to buy one of his new canvasses instead which was more in tune with the times. Yet another ironical but curious twist to the scenario is the fact that art gallery personnel do not necessarily have any idea about the wares they put on sale. Many of the persons who collect art do not do so for the love of art but to seem sophisticated and able to follow the gobbledygook gallery assistants usually dish out to unsuspecting customers. Some even buy it as investment like they buy stocks. This fact is brought home rather graphically in the opening chapter of Irving Stone’s masterpiece The Lust for Life, a novel based on the life and work of Vincent Van Gogh. When we come to the modern times the attitudes are the same, but not so glaringly exhibitionistic as in the old times, but subtle, sophisticated and very much technology oriented. Apart from this, the modern ‘collector’ experiences all the compulsions that urged the Medicis and the Doges to ‘collect’ also. Ancient or modern, many of them just want to feel important. And “This has to do with a large part of the ego-driven, self-important aspect of the art world.” (The Attitude Problem of the Contemporary Art World. 1976). In conclusion it is pertinent to state that basically there is not much difference in the attitude to collecting, cataloguing and exhibiting during the golden age of Renaissance and those of the present era. The collectors of the bygone era and that of the present alike are persuaded by a thirst to collect beautiful as well as precious objects. A rudimentary kind of cataloguing did exist in the former period, which was not at all sufficient to the compulsions of the day. Fortunately the increasing use of computers has certainly coped with the problem to a great extent. But it is in the realm of exhibiting works of art that we have progressed to a very high degree. Museum has mushroomed everywhere some privately owned but open to the public and yet others state funded and operated a kind of art bureaucracy. One must say that a criminal element also have crept into this hallowed field, something that men of Renaissance could never accept even in their wildest imaginations. Objects of art are being robbed on an international scale and disappear underground to the dungeon galleries of those who want to collect them at any cost and quite unwilling to share with the world at large. We often read about these thefts in the newspapers and television and are not much concerned about them because such objects do not affect the lives of most of us in any way. But when we realize that civilizations are exemplified by the quality of their respective works of art. They are the embodiments of the particular civilization that produced them in the first place and as such as important as the civilizations themselves. As mentioned elsewhere institutions like the Musee du Louvre categorize their exhibits on national levels. They belong to the whole world, universal, catholic and something that fill us with pride for our common legacy as members of the specie of homo sapiens, the culmination of biological evolution. No one has the right to take these works of art from our midst through hook or crook or with the power of wealth and shut us out from enjoying the beauty of these creations. One cannot enumerate these ‘private collections’ but it is a shameful fact that they do exist and continue to proliferate, with never of hope of dissuading them from their heinous practice. We hope that some organization like the Interpol will be established to investigate these thefts and punish the offenders, an art police’ if you please. Works Cited Italy during the Renaissance. ThinkQuest. http://library.thinkquest.org/2838/renais.htm (accessed May 19, 2007). Want to Start Collecting Art? Easy Steps To Get You Started. (1998). Advice on Art. Sylvia White. http://www.artadvice.com/advice/article16.php (accessed May 19, 2007). The Attitude Problem of the Contemporary Art World. (1976). Kathryn Markel. FINE ARTS EST. The Art Lady.com. http://www.markelfinearts.com/ArtladyMonica/attitude.htm (accessed May 19, 2007). Museums: Collections: Historic Periods: Renaissance. World Wide Arts Resources. absolutearts.com. http://wwar.com/categories/Museums/Collections/Historic_Periods/Renaissance/ (accessed May 19, 2007). Donatello (ca. 1386 – 1466). (2007). Time Line of Art History. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/dona/hd_dona.htm (accessed May 19, 2007). Renaissance Art and Architecture. (2005). The Columbia Encyclopedia. Sixth Edition. Bartleby.com. http://www.bartleby.com/65/re/Renaisart.html (accessed May 19, 2007). Florentine Art and Architecture. (1997). Renaissance. Focus on Florence. http://www.learner.org/exhibits/renaissance/florence_sub2.html (accessed May 19, 2007). Uffizi Gallery. Polo. http://www.polomuseale.firenze.it/english/musei/uffizi/ (accessed May 19, 2007). The Medicis. (1999). The Renaissance. Browse the World MrDowling.com. http://www.mrdowling.com/704-medici.html (accessed May 19, 2007). Donatello. The Cantoria (Singer’s Gallery). Web Gallery of Art. http://www.wga.hu/frames-e.html?/html/d/donatell/2_mature/cantoria/index.html (accessed May 19, 2007). Read More