In the previous article we followed the amazing journey of the history of painting, starting from antiquity and penetrating the atmosphere of cultural splendor of Florence. Today we will continue our exploration by delving into the exciting pages of the evolution of painting and examining how artistic movements, materials and techniques have evolved over time.
Time, like magic, creates and destroys, but the art of painting, like an unshakable testimony of time, continues to flow through the centuries, leaving an indelible mark on the canvas and in the hearts of those who deeply appreciate beauty. Let's go together on a new exciting journey through artistic spaces and find out how painting continued to flourish and change its forms under the influence of time and technological changes.
From Origins to Masterpieces: A Brief Introduction to the History of Painting
The culmination of Renaissance painting occurred in the 16th century. At the same time, the center of art and culture moved from Florence to Rome. Under Pope Sixtus IV and his successor, Julius II, the city of Rome was gloriously and richly decorated by Renaissance artists. Some of the most ambitious projects of this period were begun during the papacy of Julius II. Julius commissioned the great sculptor and painter Michelangelo (1475-1564) to paint the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel and carve a sculpture for the Pope's tomb. Julius also invited the painter Raphael (1483-1520) to help decorate the Vatican. With his assistants, Raphael painted four rooms of the Pope's apartments in the Vatican Palace.
Michelangelo, a Florentine by birth, developed a monumental style of painting. The figures in his painting are so strong and voluminous that they look like sculptures. The Sistine ceiling, which took Michelangelo 4 years to complete, consists of hundreds of human figures from the Old Testament. To complete this grandiose fresco, Michelangelo had to lie on his back on scaffolding. The pensive face of Jeremiah among the prophets that surround the ceiling is considered by some experts to be a self-portrait of Michelangelo.
Raphael came to Florence from Urbino while still a very young man. In Florence he absorbed the ideas of Leonardo and Michelangelo. By the time Raphael went to Rome to work at the Vatican, his style had become one of the greatest in beauty of execution. He was especially fond of his beautiful portraits of the Madonna and Child. They have been reproduced by the thousands and can be seen everywhere. His Madonna del Granduca is successful due to its simplicity. Timeless in its peace and purity, it is as attractive to us as it was to the Italians of Raphael's era.
Venice
Venice was the main northern Italian city of the Renaissance. It was visited by artists from Flanders and other regions who knew about Flemish experiments with oil paint. This stimulated the early use of oil technology in the Italian city. The Venetians learned to paint on tightly stretched canvas, rather than on the wood panels commonly used in Florence.
Giovanni Bellini (1430-1515) was the greatest Venetian artist of the 15th century. He was also one of the first Italian artists to use oil on canvas. Giorgione (1478-1151) and Titian (1488-1515), who is the most famous of all Venetian artists, were apprentices in Bellini's studio.
A master of oil painting, Titian painted huge canvases in warm, rich colors. In his mature paintings he sacrificed detail to create stunning effects, such as in the Madonna of Pesaro. He used large brushes to make large strokes. His colors are especially rich because he patiently created glazes of contrasting colors. Typically, glazes were applied to a brown tempered surface, which gave the painting a uniform tone.
Another great Venetian artist of the 16th century was Tintoretto (1518-1594). Unlike Titian, he usually worked directly on canvas without preliminary sketches or outlines. He often distorted his forms (twisted them) for the sake of composition and drama of the plot. His technique, which includes broad brushstrokes and dramatic contrasts of light and dark, appears very modern.
The artist Kyriakos Theotokopoulos (1541-1614) was known as El Greco ("The Greek"). Born on the island of Crete, which was occupied by the Venetian army, El Greco was trained by Italian artists. As a young man, he went to study in Venice. The combined influence of Byzantine art, which he saw around him in Crete, and Italian Renaissance art, made El Greco's work outstanding.
In his paintings he distorted natural forms and used even stranger, more unearthly colors than Tintoretto, whom he admired. Later, El Greco moved to Spain, where the darkness of Spanish art influenced his work. In his dramatic vision of Toledo, a storm rages over the deadly silence of the city. Cool blues, greens and blue-white hues spread a chill over the landscape.
Renaissance in Flanders and Germany
The golden age of painting in Flanders (now part of Belgium and northern France) was the 15th century, the time of van Eyck. In the 16th century, many Flemish artists imitated Italian Renaissance artists. However, some Flemings continued the Flemish tradition of realism. Then genre painting spread - scenes from everyday life, which were sometimes charming and sometimes fantastic. Hieronymus Bosch (1450-1515), who preceded the genre painters, had an unusually vivid imagination. He came up with all sorts of strange, grotesque creatures for The Temptation of St. Anthony." Pieter Bruegel the Elder (1525-1569) also worked in the Flemish tradition, but added perspective and other Renaissance characteristics to his genre scenes.
Albrecht Dürer (1471-1528), Hans Holbein the Younger (1497-1543) and Lucas Cranach the Elder (1472-1553) were three of the most important German artists of the 16th century. They did much to soften the grim realism of early German painting. Dürer visited Italy at least once, where he was impressed by the paintings of Giovanni Bellini and other northern Italians. Through this experience he instilled in German painting a knowledge of perspective, a sense of color and light, and a new understanding of composition. Holbein absorbed even more Italian achievements. His sensitive drawing and ability to select only the most important details made him a master portraitist.
Baroque painting
The 17th century is known in art as the Baroque period. In Italy, the artists Caravaggio (1571-1610) and Annibale Carracci (1560-1609) represented two contrasting points of view. Caravaggio (real name Michelangelo Merisi) always drew inspiration directly from the realities of life. One of his main concerns was to copy nature as closely as possible without glorifying it in any way. Carracci, on the other hand, followed the Renaissance ideal of beauty. He studied ancient sculpture and the works of Michelangelo, Raphael and Titian. Caravaggio's style admired many artists, especially the Spaniard Ribera and the young Velazquez. Carracci inspired Nicolas Poussin (1594-1665), a famous French painter of the 17th century.
Spain
Diego Velazquez (1599-1660), court painter to King Philip IV of Spain, was one of the greatest of all Spanish artists. A fan of Titian's work, he was a master at using rich, harmonious color. No artist could better create the illusion of rich tissue or human skin. Prosper's Portrait of the Little Prince Philip shows this skill.
Flanders
The paintings of the Flemish artist Peter Paul Rubens (1577-1640) represent the embodiment of the full-color Baroque style. They are bursting with energy, color and light. Rubens broke with the Flemish tradition of painting small paintings. His canvases are huge, filled with human figures. He received more orders for large paintings than he could handle. Therefore, he often drew only a small color sketch. His assistants then transferred the sketch onto a large canvas and completed the painting under the direction of Rubens.
Holland
The achievements of the Dutch painter Rembrandt (1606-1669) are among the most outstanding in history. He had a wonderful gift for accurately capturing and conveying human emotions. Like Titian, he worked for a long time to create multi-layered paintings. Earth colors - yellow ochre, brown and brown-red - were his favorites. His paintings are made mainly in dark colors. The importance of dark multi-layered parts makes his technique unusual. The emphasis is conveyed by bright lighting in relatively light areas.
Jan Vermeer (1632-1675) was one of a group of Dutch artists who painted modest scenes of everyday life. He was a master at painting any texture - satin, Persian carpets, bread crusts, metal. The overall impression of Vermeer's interior is that of a sunny, cheerful room filled with iconic household objects.
Harmony of styles and greatness of the brush: Illumination of Painting in the 18th century
In the 18th century, Venice produced several fine artists. The most famous was Giovanni Battista Tiepolo (1696-1770). He decorated the interiors of palaces and other buildings with grand, colorful frescoes depicting scenes of wealth. Francesco Guardi (1712-1793) was very skilled with the brush, and with just a few spots of color he could conjure up the idea of a tiny figure in a boat. The spectacular views of Antonio Canaletto (1697-1768) celebrated the past glories of Venice.
France: Rococo style
In France, a taste for pastel colors and intricate decoration led to the development of the Rococo style in the early 18th century. Jean Antoine Watteau (1684-1721), court painter to King Louis XV, and later François Boucher (1703-1770) and Jean Honoré Fragonard (1732-1806) were associated with Rococo trends. Watteau wrote dreamy visions, a life in which everything is fun. The style is based on picnics in parks and forest parties, where cheerful gentlemen and elegant ladies have fun in nature.
Other 18th-century artists depicted scenes of ordinary middle-class life. Like the Dutch Vermeer, Jean Baptiste Simeon Chardin (1699-1779) appreciated simple domestic subjects and still lifes. His colors are sober and calm compared to Watteau.
England
In the 18th century, the British first developed a separate school of painting. The core consisted mainly of portrait painters, influenced by the Venetian Renaissance artists. Sir Joshua Reynolds (1723-1792) and Thomas Gainsborough (1727-1788) are the most famous. Reynolds, who traveled to Italy, followed the ideals of Renaissance painting. His portraits, while charming and moving, are not particularly interesting in color or texture. Gainsborough, on the other hand, had a talent for brilliance. The surfaces of his paintings glow with radiant color.
The Age of Romanticism and Realism: 19th Century Painting in an Essay on Time
The 19th century is sometimes seen as the period during which modern art began to take shape. One of the important reasons for the so-called revolution in art at this time was the invention of the camera, which forced artists to reconsider the purpose of painting.
A more important development was the widespread use of pre-made paints. Until the 19th century, most artists or their assistants made their own paints by grinding pigment. Early commercial paints were inferior to hand paints. Artists in the late 19th century discovered that the dark blues and browns of earlier paintings faded to black or gray within a few years. They began using pure colors again to preserve their work, and sometimes because they were trying to reflect sunlight more accurately in street scenes.
Spain: Goya
Francisco Goya (1746-1828) was the first great Spanish artist to emerge since the 17th century. As the favorite artist of the Spanish court, he made many portraits of the royal family. The royal characters are equipped with elegant clothes and fine jewelry, but on some of their faces, all that is reflected is vanity and greed. In addition to portraits, Goya painted dramatic scenes such as the Third of May 1808. This painting depicts the execution of a group of Spanish rebels by French soldiers. Bold contrasts of light and dark and gloomy colors, laced with splashes of red, evoke a grim horror of the spectacle.
Although France was a great center of art in the 1800s, English landscape artists John Constable (1776-1837) and Joseph Mallord William Turner (1775-1851) made valuable contributions to 19th-century painting. Both were interested in painting light and air, two aspects of nature that 19th century artists explored fully. The constable used a method known as division, or broken color. He used contrasting colors over the main background color. He often used a palette knife to apply color tightly. The painting "Hay Wain" made him famous after being shown in Paris in 1824. This is a simple village haymaking scene. Clouds drift over meadows covered with patches of sunlight. Turner's paintings are more dramatic than those of Constable, who painted majestic natural landmarks - storms, seascapes, flaming sunsets, high mountains. Often, a golden haze partially obscures the objects in his paintings, making them appear to float in endless space.
France
The period of Napoleon's reign and the French Revolution marked the emergence of two opposing trends in French art - classicism and romanticism. Jacques Louis David (1748-1825) and Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres (1780-1867) were inspired by ancient Greek and Roman art and the Renaissance. They emphasized detail and used color to create solid shapes. As a favorite artist of the revolutionary government, David often painted historical events of the period. In his portraits, such as Madame Recamier, he strove to achieve classical simplicity.
Théodore Guéricault (1791-1824) and the romantic Eugene Delacroix (1798-1863) rebelled against David's style. For Delacroix, color was the most important element in painting and he had no patience for imitating classical statues. Instead, he admired Ruben and the Venetians. He chose colorful, exotic themes for his paintings, which sparkle with light and are full of movement.
Barbizon artists were also part of the general Romantic movement, which lasted from about 1820 to 1850. They worked near the village of Barbizon on the edge of the Fontainebleau forest. They found inspiration in nature and completed the paintings in their studios.
Other artists experimented with everyday, ordinary objects. The landscapes of Jean Baptiste Camille Corot (1796-1875) reflect his love of nature, and his studies of the human body show a kind of balanced calm. Gustave Courbet (1819-1877) called himself a realist because he depicted the world as he saw it - even its harsh, unpleasant side. He limited his palette to just a few dark colors. Edouard Manet (1832-1883) also took the basis for his subjects from the surrounding world. People were shocked by his colorful contrasts and unusual techniques. The surfaces of his paintings often have a flat, patterned texture of brush strokes. Manet's methods of applying the effects of light to form influenced young artists, especially the Impressionists.
Working in the 1870s and 1880s, a group of artists known as the Impressionists wanted to depict nature exactly as it was. They went much further than Constable, Turner and Manet in studying the effects of light in color. Some of them developed scientific theories of color. Claude Monet (1840-1926) often painted the same view at different times of day to show how it changed under different light conditions. Whatever the subject, his paintings are made up of hundreds of tiny brushstrokes placed next to each other, often in contrasting colors. At a distance, the strokes blend to create the impression of solid shapes. Pierre Auguste Renoir (1841-1919) used impressionist techniques to capture the celebration of Parisian life. In his Dance at the Moulin de la Galette, people in brightly colored clothes crowded together and danced merrily. Renoir painted the entire painting with small strokes. The dots and strokes of paint create a texture on the surface of the painting that gives it a distinct look. Crowds of people seem to dissolve in sunlight and shimmering color.
From Impressionism to Abstraction: 20th Century Painting in the Color of Innovation
A number of artists soon became dissatisfied with Impressionism. Artists such as Paul Cézanne (1839-1906) felt that Impressionism did not describe the solidity of forms in nature. Cézanne loved painting still lifes because they allowed him to focus on the shape of fruit or other objects and their arrangement. The subjects of his still lifes look solid because he reduced them to simple geometric shapes. His technique of placing splashes of paint and short strokes of rich color side by side shows that he learned a lot from the Impressionists.
Vincent Van Gogh (1853-90) and Paul Gauguin (1848-1903) responded to the realism of the Impressionists. Unlike the Impressionists, who said they viewed nature objectively, Van Gogh cared little about accuracy. He often distorted objects to express his thoughts more creatively. He used impressionistic principles to place contrasting colors next to each other. Sometimes he squeezed paint from tubes directly onto the canvas, as in “Yellow Corn Field.”
Gauguin did not care for the mottled color of the Impressionists. He applied color fluidly in large, flat areas, which he separated from each other with lines or dark edges. Colorful tropical peoples provided much of his subject matter.
Cezanne's method of creating space using simple geometric shapes was developed by Pablo Picasso (1881-1973), Georges Braque (1882-1963) and others. Their style became known as Cubism. Cubists painted objects as if they could be seen from several angles at once, or as if they had been disassembled and reassembled on a flat canvas. Often the objects turned out to be unlike anything existing in nature. Sometimes Cubists cut out figures from fabric, cardboard, wallpaper, or other materials and pasted them onto canvas to make a collage. Textures were also varied by adding sand or other substances to the paint.
From the exceptional, elegant realism of the 18th century to the explosion of creativity and diversity in the 20th century, the history of painting is a fascinating guide to the aesthetic metamorphoses that took place in the arts. In the 18th century, artists embodied harmony and symmetry, and their brushes created the surroundings of a majestic, classical era.
With the advent of the 19th century, the art of painting transformed, becoming more emotional and realistic. The era of Romanticism and Realism brought with it new trends, elevating the themes of human emotionality and natural beauty. These changes in artistic expression were emphasized by careful study of chiaroscuro and detail.
The 20th century brought major changes in the understanding of art. From Impressionism and Fauvism to the expressive forms of Abstract Art, artists have dared to break away from tradition, creating works that evoke new emotions and perceptions in the viewer. Technological innovations in this century have also provided artists with new means and forms of expression, leading up to the digital age of art.
In this light, the period from the 18th to the 20th century represents a kaleidoscope of creativity, diversity and reinterpretation of the art of painting. It not only reflects the evolution of artistic styles, but also highlights the influence of cultural, social and technological changes on artistic expression in different eras.