High Renaissance Painting Analysis Term Papers Examples

Vasari praises the flame-haired Florentine artist known as Rosso Fiorentino due to his courage and expertise in draftsmanship, graceful in manner, and sublime in the highest flights of imagination. The intimate exhibition at the Morgan Library & Museum called Fantasy and Invention is one of the artist Florentine drawing in the sixteenth century that offer the justification for her excellence in high renaissance painting. The artist is a pioneer in the art style called Mannerism while his critiques failed to recognize his contributions they gained credence during the modern years.
Rosso’s painting in other museums such as Walters Art Museum in Baltimore and Metropolitan Museum where there is a display of smatterings of drawings and letters of other Italian masters in the Morgan collection. A fine introduction of the eccentricities of Florentine Mannerism is the altarpiece in Volterra that is famous for its quirkiest styles. That artist Giovanni Battista di Jacopo di Guaspare was born in Florence in 1494. His nickname was the redhead from Florence as he is an accomplished artist with diverse abilities a distinct way of observing the world. Rosso had a weird and sensational career that takes him from his native land to Rome and the French court of Francis I. He had a high-strung and mischievous character such as keeping a pet monkey that stole grapes from the neighbor’s farm. He often quarreled with his colleagues who blacklisted him. There is a notion that he committed suicide by drinking poison after making false accusations of theft against his friend.
The artistic context of Rosso was the era of Mannerism preceded by High Renaissance. Vasari is an influential art historian that recognizes the contribution of Rosso as he holds Fiorentino in high regard.
Rosso composition have intrigues combined with passivity depicted in Joseph’s adoring gaze and aggression as displayed in St. John laying a chubby hand on Madonna’s stomach. The figures contain unresolved faces, dark pools for eyes, and smeary mouths. Vasari observes that Rosso’s custom to use oil sketches to give a sort of savage and hopeless air to the faces. He would complete the painting by sweetening the expressions by bringing them to a proper form. Rosso’s contemporary Jacopo da Pontormo has a similar way of working as he uses red chalk in the study of three nudes that presently hung at the Holy Family. The muscles have fine details while the facial appear hopeless since they only have mere dots. Both artists learn draftsmanship at the Florence studio of Andrea Del Sarto a school associated with High Renaissance. Andrea’s drawing of a standing man betrays mannerist inclinations that have sauciness to the figure’s pose, foreshortened elbow, and obsession with a cloak draped over the shoulder. The Florentine artists during that time contend with Rosso drawings of dividing heads a technique employed also by Michelangelo. The artist bust of a woman that has an elaborate coiffure with coyly flirtatious figure, with braided hairdo, and half-smiling beneath his head is a form of early Mannerism incarnate. In all Rosso’s paintings the Fantasy and Invention provides a quick primer with its wonderful style and a fleeting glimpse of sublime flights of imagination as perceived by Vasari.

Virgin& Child

Rosso Fiorentino’s Virgin& Child, St. Elizabeth, John Baptist, & Angles is a Florentine painting during Renaissance. The painting has a complex composition signed and dated 1523. The picture has crude, imitation wooden frame that belongs to the nineteenth-century restoration. Rosso produces the painting in his native city that bears unusual content and refined style. The patronage and iconography of the altarpiece bears a serious pattern of architecture and painting with sympathy for a range of styles. Vasari says that, Rosso owned Virgin and Child that he later passes to Ottaviano de Medici. The painting that uses an oil-based canvas as the medium identifies a saint, Virgin Mary, and two Angels while the principal subject of the altarpiece was subsequently changed to the Betrothal of the Virgin. The style of the painting is mannerist developed through a complex and fascinating relationship with the use of color during High Renaissance (Rosso and Jacopo 178). A careful examination of the changing use of color by Rosso indicates the relationship in the use of color between High Renaissance and Mannerist painters. Rosso’s picture is an example of an altarpiece drawn from a single episode of a narrative that provides a clear focus of devotion. In Florence, the picture denote cycles devoted to the life of the virgin. Rosso painting has a rich subject that consists of portrait and gesturing figures. From a compositional point of view, Rosso painting departs from traditional elements of a Marian fresco cycle. The high priest looks at Joseph to stress the role of the husband. Through a hand gesture, the priest urges Joseph to place the ring on the Virgin’s finger. Rosso’s fresco has affinity in the use of color where they part ways in formal and compositional differences. The Rosso’s figures look as if they project forward carefully articulated range of value.
Patricia Rubin in the article “The Art of Color in Florentine Painting of the Early Sixteenth Century” gives an account of the altarpiece of the life of Rosso through Vasari. Vasari elaborates that Rosso had the habit of sketching figures with cruel and desperate airs that he softened in the completion stages (Rubin 17). According to Vasari artists during that, time criticized Rosso’s work that they considered as a failure. An executor of a testament Leonardo Buonafe was in charge to commission altarpieces. He gave credence to Rosso competitors such as Ridolfo that received many florins than Rosso. Vasari observes that Buonafe pretended not to see Rosso’s sketch submerged in the final work. His manner of observation was open to reconstruction as taste and expectation precipitated conflict on talent and temperament to the artist contrary opinion (Rubin 22). One of the ways of contrast of opinion comes from Rosso’s express way of painting. Conflict erupted as Rosso completed the work in accordance to the standard of the able master as he borrowed it as a contractual clause. His idea of good and mastery is evident in some way at variance with others (Rosso and Jacopo 176). The comparison of Rosso’s painting his saints with dragon in Filipino Lippi’s fresco paint the cast wall of the Strozzi chapel in Santa Maria Novella in 1495. The dragon had killed three people and poisoned many from its breath. Filipino painted the demon with freedom and rapidity in a manner to prefigure Rosso. Rosso speed of execution relates to extreme limited time allowed with strict penalty. In the event Rosso could not deliver the painting in time, the commissioner of altarpieces, Buonafe could select another artist to undertake the task. Filippino had an upper hand in comparison to Rosso as he had worked on and off Strozzi chapel for a long period. The sketchiness of both artists describes the facture, boldness, and prontezza. Rosso source of inspiration was Donatello that accords him a comprehensive correspondence of technique and intended effect. The terms of appreciation and statements of intention supplied to compare a powerful metaphorical base.
Rosso is a Florentine expatriate that lives in Rome in the 1520s. His remarkable drawing of a nude woman that concentrates on distinguishing bodily attributes without idealizing on them. The materiality of the body has the emphasis of strange pathos in a way to depart from superhumanly heroic bodies in the drawings of Michelangelo to display Rosso’s painting as mature. Rosso informs that if Michelangelo had doubts on his divine ability he would have become an impersonator of divinity (Rosso and Jacopo 176). Rosso’s work is full of intrigues since it provokes reflection of the artist own work to conceive its relation to Michelangelo.
Michelangelo emerges in the era of Florentine culture that preoccupies with analogies between human and creative work of God. Most of the artists grapple with two modalities of an image to transcend the limitations of the visible and the material. Image manifests divine authority and an authentic object of devotional attention. Vasari says that Michelangelo plays a role of epitomizing the conception of divine artist to the extent that he appears the distinction between the two modalities. Vasari asserts that Michelangelo embodies conquest of human art other than living the life of an ideal Christian. Similarly, Michelangelo appears to have divine ability to make lifeless figures appear alive. The artist godlike status precipitated attacks and criticism from other artists that said he was corrupt and irreligious. Vasari attempted to redeem the artist divinity during the Florence era. At the time, Rosso borrowed a lot of artistic expressions from Michelangelo where he circulated his eccentric tendencies to other artists.
The word divine in the sixteenth century had many non literal applications. The artists that applied the word to Michelangelo drew attention to the word primary connotations. Vasari establishes Michelangelo superhuman character through a systematic analogy with the sublime figures he produces.
Rosso while in Florence and then in Rome has suffered controversies just like his predecessor Michelangelo. Rosso dissatisfied patrons react due to astonishing excesses of the artist or his endowment to the saints that have cruel and desperate airs. Once he fails a major commission in Rome, the artist produces designs for prints that appear to resort a language of parody that directs against classical tradition and art reputation of Michelangelo. Rosso evokes Michelangelo in equal measure to de contextualize responses to the ancient sculpture portrayed in the Sistine ceiling. Rosso print has obsession invention to represent erotic madness. It is an extreme depiction of the predicament that vastly exaggerates portrayal of loss, sensual confusion, and blindness. Rosso’s image raises the specter of death and reanimation with sinister insulations of Michelangelo. Florence is at the centre of the artistic pursuit of anatomical knowledge, an area of expertise that increasingly identifies as the province of the artists.
David Franklin paints Rosso as an artist that defies stylistic definition. He does not seem to fit any particular slot while people term him as Tuscan Mannerist. He is born in exactly the same year as Pontormo, eleven years after Raphael, nineteen years after Michelangelo, and forty two years following Leonardo. Rosso does not depict much dependence on the earlier artists since he is independent and has a cranky mode (David 23). He establishes own compositions on religious topics in shallow spatial arenas that throw down the gauntlet at convectional practice. The most bewildering aspect of art is the level of finish and the condition of surface of the pictures. Most of his paintings appear incomplete in the application of a substantial coat of varnish or a final layer that disappears to leave a unique impression as part of the imagery. Rosso appear as a great artist than an artist that produces great paintings. Rosso borrows an outline of his picture from the old-fashioned Deposition (David 24). Everything appears different such as the proportions, movement, visual appeal, and psychology that appear incomplete. The book addresses the entire life of Rosso Fiorentino, a career marked by frequent travel and criticism from the commissions until he departs for France in 1530. The author of the book does not intend to take sides in the ongoing debate that entails the artist’s role in the era of Mannerism. The author explores particular works of art in historical context. Rosso career is fruitful in other provinces in comparison to Florence or Rome. The artist manages to produce some of his most inventive paintings in obscure places. Rosso tends to ignore Franklin focus on the patrons and the artistic traditions. The original style of Rosso seems not to satisfy the contemporary taste and expectation. Rosso includes cadaverous figures in his religious compositions such as the Virgin and Child, Saint Anne, and Saint John. Rosso concentrates on synthesizing form and content in a personal way especially the religious topic. The author employs exceptional flight of imagination such as the Christian elements symbolizing Immaculate Virgin together with nude pagan deities.
James Beck’s Italian Renaissance Painting approach to the subject in his study negates a set of ordering principles that suggest his objective is out Vasari. The author believes that three generations are responsible in forging Italian Renaissance (Beck 12). The book provides three sections that parallel the traditional ages of man that include infancy, youth, and adulthood. Beck stresses on generations as a heuristic device while the notion of generation is flexible. The author combines Fra Angelico and Piero della Francesca in the First Generation. The artists born more than twenty years apart are arbitrarily placed together as a generation. Each generation has another division of lyrical and monumental currents to streamline inflicts on the convectional sequence of stylistic casualty. According to Beck cross fertilization movement endures in the Florentine era especially in 1410 (Beck 14). The existence of regional schools in that era enables artists to travel into the province of a different school to alter their style to fulfill the expectations of the patrons. For instance, Leonardo moves to Milan leading to Milanese school of Leonardoesque painters. A stylistic category encompasses the taste of a particular patron during a certain period enforced upon the artists. The term provisional interferes with the generational model of historic change. Beck deletes the usefulness of iconographic studies since they are less useful in the establishment of broad stylistic framework that enables the study of art. Beck makes a remarkable statement that political, economic, and cultural conditions are shared by all the members of a generation. Beck casts a bipartite generational scheme in concrete iconography that appears erased while they impinge on a priori scheme. Vasari suggests that the history of Renaissance painting evinces the underlying ordering principle in the kind of organic metaphor, individual ambition, and local patriotism. Any contemporary attempt to describe civilization of Renaissance has to stress on the provincial nature to get the categories straight. The apparent capacity of Renaissance art to transcend the context unravels identity to the historical challenge to depict diversity in art.

Work Cited

"Allegory of Salvation with the Virgin and Christ Child, St. Elizabeth, the Young St. John the Baptist and Two Angels."Allegory of Salvation with the Virgin and Christ Child, St. Elizabeth, the Young St. John the Baptist and Two Angels.N.p., n.d. Web. 25 Feb. 2015.
Beck, James H. "Italian Renaissance Painting."N.p., n.d. Web. 25 Feb. 2015.
David, Franklin. "Rosso in Italy : The Italian Career of RossoFiorentino."COAST, the CSULB Library Catalog. N.p., n.d. Web. 25 Feb. 2015.
Rubin, Patricia. "The art of colour in Florentine painting of the early sixteenth century: RossoFiorentino and Jacopo Pontormo." Art History 14, (June 1991): 175-191. Art Full Text (H.W. Wilson), EBSCOhost (accessed February 25, 2015).