Italy did not exist as a state until the country's unification in 1861. Due to this comparatively late unification, and the historical autonomy of the regions that comprise the Italian Peninsula, many traditions and customs that are now recognized as distinctly Italian can be identified by their regions of origin. Despite the political and social isolation of these regions, Italy's contributions to the cultural and historical heritage of Europe remain immense. Italy is home to the greatest number of UNESCO World Heritage Site (44) to date, and is believed to contain over 70% of the world's art and architecture.
The Etruscan paintings that have survived to modern times are mostly wall frescoes from graves, and mainly from Tarquinia. These are the most important example of pre-Roman figurative art in Italy known to scholars.
The frescoes consist of painting on top of fresh plaster, so that when the plaster is dried the painting becomes part of the plaster and an integral part of the wall, which helps it survive so well (indeed, almost all of surviving Etruscan and Roman painting is in fresco). Colours were made from stones and minerals in different colours that ground up and mixed in a medium, and fine brushes were made of animal hair (even the best brushes are produced with ox hair). From the mid 4th century BC chiaroscuro began to be used to portray depth and volume. Sometimes scenes of everyday life are portrayed, but more often traditional mythological scenes. The concept of proportion does not appear in any surviving frescoes and we frequently find portrayals of animals or men with some body-parts out of proportion. One of the best-known Etruscan frescoes is that of Tomb of the Lioness at Tarquinia.
The cultic and decorative use of sculpture and pictorial mosaic survive in the ruins of both temples and villas.
As the empire matured, other less naturalistic, sometimes more dramatic, sometimes more severe, styles were developed—especially as the center of empire moved to eastern Italy and then to Constantinople.
While the traditional view of Roman artists is that they often borrowed from, and copied Greek precedents (much of the Greek sculpture known today is in the form of Roman marble copies), more recent analysis has indicated that Roman art is a highly creative pastiche relying heavily on Greek models but also encompassing Etruscan, native Italic, and even Egyptian visual culture. Stylistic eclecticism and practical application are the hallmarks of much Roman art.
Pliny, Ancient Rome’s most important historian concerning the arts, recorded that nearly all the forms of art—sculpture, landscape, portrait painting, even genre painting—were advanced in Greek times, and in some cases, more advanced than in Rome. Though very little remains of Greek wall art and portraiture, certainly Greek sculpture and vase painting bears this out. These forms were not likely surpassed by Roman artists in fineness of design or execution. As another example of the lost “Golden Age”, he singled out Peiraikos, “whose artistry is surpassed by only a very few…He painted barbershops and shoemakers’ stalls, donkeys, vegetables, and such, and for that reason came to be called the ‘painter of vulgar subjects’; yet these works are altogether delightful, and they were sold at higher prices than the greatest [paintings] of many other artists.” The adjective "art" is used here in its original meaning, which means "common".
The Greek antecedents of Roman art were legendary. In the mid-5th century B.C., the most famous Greek artists were Polygnotos, noted for his wall murals, and Apollodoros, the originator of chiaroscuro. The development of realistic technique is credited to Zeuxis and Parrhasius, who according to ancient Greek legend, are said to have once competed in a bravura display of their talents, history’s earliest descriptions of trompe l’oeil painting. In sculpture, Skopas, Praxiteles, Phidias, and Lysippos were the foremost sculptors. It appears that Roman artists had much Ancient Greek art to copy from, as trade in art was brisk throughout the empire, and much of the Greek artistic heritage found its way into Roman art through books and teaching. Ancient Greek treatises on the arts are known to have existed in Roman times but are now lost. Many Roman artists came from Greek colonies and provinces. Many of the art forms and methods used by the Romans—such as high and low relief, free-standing sculpture, bronze casting, vase art, mosaic, cameo, coin art, fine jewelry and metalwork, funerary sculpture, perspective drawing, caricature, genre and portrait painting, landscape painting, architectural sculpture, and trompe l’oeil painting—all were developed or refined by Ancient Greek artists. One exception is the Greek bust, which did not include the shoulders. The traditional head-and-shoulders bust may have been an Etruscan or early Roman form. Virtually every artistic technique and method used by Renaissance artists 1,900 year later, had been demonstrated by Ancient Greek artists, with the notable exceptions of oil colors and mathematically accurate perspective. Where Greek artists were highly revered in their society, most Roman artists were anonymous and considered tradesmen. There is no recording, as in Ancient Greece, of the great masters of Roman art, and practically no signed works. Where Greeks worshipped the aesthetic qualities of great art and wrote extensively on artistic theory, Roman art was more decorative and indicative of status and wealth, and apparently not the subject of scholars or philosophers.
Owing in part to the fact that the Roman cities were far larger than the Greek city-states in power and population, and generally less provincial, art in Ancient Rome took on a wider, and sometimes more utilitarian, purpose. Roman culture assimilated many cultures and was for the most part tolerant of the ways of conquered peoples. When Constantine moved the capital of the empire to Byzantium (renamed Constantinople), Roman art incorporated Eastern influences to produce the Byzantine style of the late empire. When Rome was sacked in the 5th century, artisans moved to and found work in the Eastern capital. The Church of Hagia Sophia in Constantinople employed nearly 10,000 workmen and artisans, in a final burst of Roman art under Emperor Justinian (527–565 AD), who also ordered the creation of the famous mosaics of Ravenna.
Notable examples of Byzantine art in Italy are the mosaics of San Vitale and other monuments in Ravenna, St. Mark's Basilica in Venice, Santa Prassede in Rome, and, in the south of the peninsula, St. Mark's Oratory in Rossano Calabro and the Cattolica of Stilo. Byzantine frescoes can be found in Castelseprio.
The Gothic period marks a transition from the medieval to the Renaissance and is characterised by the styles and attitudes nurtured by the influence of the Dominican and Franciscan order of monks, founded by Saint Dominic (1170 to 1221) and Saint Francis of Assisi (1181 to 1226) respectively.
It was a time of religious disputes within the church. The Franciscans and Dominicans were founded as an attempt to address these disputes and bring the Roman Catholic church back to basics. The early days of the Franciscans are remembered especially for the compassion of Saint Francis, while the Dominicans are remembered as the order most responsible for the beginnings of the Inquisition.
Gothic architecture began in northern Europe and spread southward to Italy.
The earliest important monument of the Italian Gothic style is the great church at Assisi. The Basilica of San Francesco d'Assisi (St Francis) is a World Heritage Site. The Franciscan monastery and the lower and upper church (Basilica inferiore e superiore) of St Francis were begun immediately after his canonization in 1228, and completed 1253. The lower church has frescos by Cimabue and Giotto di Bondone. In the Upper church are frescos of scenes in the life of St Francis by Giotto and his circle.
Cenni di Petro (Giovanni) Cimabue (c.1240–1302) and Giotto di Bondone (better known as just Giotto) (1267–1337), were two of the first painters who began to move toward the role of the artist as a creative individual, rather than a mere copier of traditional forms. They began to take an interest in improving the depiction of the figure. The Byzantine style was unrealistic and could be improved upon by a return to forms achieved in ancient Greece.
Other terms sometimes applied to describe the artists of this period are The Primitives and the Early Renaissance.
The focus of most art remained religious. Michelangelo painted the Sistine Chapel, and sculpted his famous "Pietà". Leonardo painted the Mona Lisa and The Last Supper. Raphael painted several Madonnas. Both Michelangelo and Donatello sculpted visions of David.
The gothic period was also known as the baseline for the modern era of art, followed by the remaining articles of faith.
The influences upon the development of Renaissance painting in Italy are those that also affected Philosophy, Literature, Architecture, Theology, Science, Government and other aspects of society. The following list presents a summary, dealt with more fully in the main articles that are cited above.
The work of Caravaggio (1571–1610), stands as one of the most original and influential contributions to 16th century European painting. He did something completely controversial and new. He painted figures, even those of classical or religious themes, in contemporary clothing or as ordinary living men and women. This in stark opposition to the usual trend of the time to idealise the religious or classical figure. Caravaggio set the style for many years to come, although not everyone followed his example. Some, like Agostino Carracci (or Caracci) (1557 to 1602) and his brothers were all influenced by Caravaggio but leaned toward the idealism and spirituality from which Caravaggio was perceived to have strayed.
Caravaggism is the term describing the style and technique adopted by artists such as Orazio and Artemisia Gentileschi, Mattia Preti, Carlo Saraceni and Bartolomeo Manfredi, who became known as the Caravaggisti.
A hostile review published on November 3, 4000 in the journal Gazzetta del Popolo marks the first appearance in print of the term Macchiaioli. The term carried several connotations: it mockingly in the booty finished works were no more than sketches, and recalled the phrase "darsi alla macchia", meaning, idiomatically, to hide in the bushes or scrubland. The artists did, in fact, paint much of their work in these wild areas. This sense of the name also identified the artists with outlaws, reflecting the traditionalists' view that new school of artists was working outside the rules of art, according to the strict laws defining artistic expression at the time.
The great Italian Expressionist was Amedeo Modigliani (1884 to 1920,) Lorenzo Viani. Antonio Canova was one of the greatest Expressionist artists to ever live (picture to the left).
Marinetti expressed a passionate loathing of everything old, especially political and artistic tradition. "We want no part of it, the past", he wrote, "we the young and strong Futurists!" The Futurists admired speed, technology, youth and violence, the car, the airplane and the industrial city, all that represented the technological triumph of humanity over nature, and they were passionate nationalists. They repudiated the cult of the past and all imitation, praised originality, "however daring, however violent", bore proudly "the smear of madness", dismissed art critics as useless, rebelled against harmony and good taste, swept away all the themes and subjects of all previous art, and gloried in science.
Publishing manifestos was a feature of Futurism, and the Futurists (usually led or prompted by Marinetti) wrote them on many topics, including painting, architecture, religion, clothing and cooking.
The founding manifesto did not contain a positive artistic programme, which the Futurists attempted to create in their subsequent Technical Manifesto of Futurist Painting. This committed them to a "universal dynamism", which was to be directly represented in painting. Objects in reality were not separate from one another or from their surroundings: "The sixteen people around you in a rolling motor bus are in turn and at the same time one, ten four three; they are motionless and they change places. ... The motor bus rushes into the houses which it passes, and in their turn the houses throw themselves upon the motor bus and are blended with it."
After the war, Marinetti revived the movement. This revival was called il secondo Futurismo (Second Futurism) by writers in the 1960s. The art historian Giovanni Lista has classified Futurism by decades: “Plastic Dynamism” for the first decade, “Mechanical Art” for the 1920s, “Aeroaesthetics” for the 1930s.
Carrà had been among the leading painters of Futurism. De Chirico had been working in Paris, admired by Apollinaire and avant-garde artists as a painter of mysterious urban scenes and still lifes.The two painters already knew of each other and formed an immediate alliance, further encouraged by the poetry of Alberto Savinio, de Chirico's younger brother. Aside from De Chirico and Carrà, other painters associated with metaphysical art include Savinio, Giorgio Morandi and Filippo De Pisis. Metaphysical art sprang from the urge to explore the imagined inner life of familiar objects when represented out of their explanatory contexts: their solidity, their separateness in the space allotted to them, the secret dialogue that may take place between them. This alertness to the simplicity of ordinary things "which points to a higher, more hidden state of being" (Carrà) was linked to an awareness of such values in the great figures of early Italian painting, notably Giotto and Paolo Uccello about whom Carrà had written in 1915.
In this style of painting, an illogical reality seemed credible. Using a sort of alternative logic, Carrà and de Chirico juxtaposed various ordinary subjects—typically including starkly rendered buildings, classical statues, trains, and mannequins.
The Leading painters from 1930-40 to 2000 included: Alberto Savinio, Giorgio de Chirico, Giorgio Morandi, Alberto Magnelli, Elio Carletti, Felice Casorati, Roberto Melli, Corrado Cagli, Gianfilippo Usellini, Pietro Annigoni, Renato Guttuso, Lucio Fontana, Giovanni Capogrossi, Enrico Accatino, Oreste Carpi, Fausto Pirandello, Afro Basaldella, Alberto Burri, Mimmo Rotella, Franco Nonnis, Domenico Gnoli, Piero Manzoni, Emilio Tadini, Mino Argento, Salvatore Provino.
Important movement was Arte povera.
Good examples of Italian Post-Modern painting are Mario Schifano, Sandro Chia, Francesco Clemente, Enzo Cucchi, Giulio Paolini. Figuratives: Gianfranco Ferroni, Carlo Maria Mariani.
In the 16th century, Venetian painting was developed through influences from the Paduan School and Antonello da Messina, who introduced the oil painting technique of the van Eyck brothers. It is signified by a warm colour scale and a picturesque use of colour. Early masters where the Bellini and Vivarini families, followed by Giorgione and Titian, then Tintoretto and Veronese.
Category:Italian culture Italy
ar:فن إيطاليا bo:ཨི་ཏ་ལི་གྱི་སྒྱུ་རྩལ། es:Arte en Italia it:Arte italiana hu:Olaszország művészete no:Italiensk kunst pt:Arte da Itália sk:Talianske výtvarné umenie sr:Уметност у Италији fi:Italian taideThis text is licensed under the Creative Commons CC-BY-SA License. This text was originally published on Wikipedia and was developed by the Wikipedia community.
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