Early Renaissance Sculpture in Florence.........................................

Lecture 11

Now we have to remind ourselves that the Renaissance was born in Italy

in part because that was the center of the Roman Empire, where the

most complete and impressive physical remains of the ancient artistic

achievement were to be found, and because the major patronage of

Renaissance art came from the Roman Catholic Church, also centered

in Italy.

W

e begin this lecture by exploring the reasons that sculpture,
rather than painting, led to the development of the Renaissance
style. Roman architectural innovations, including the use of
the arch, provided the model for Romanesque architects, and Romanesque
architecture provided the starting point for Gothic architecture. Relief
sculpture decorating marble sarcophagi provided models for ¿ gure poses
and for style and technique.

Christianity assimilated much of the Roman tradition, and because Rome
was home to the papacy, Christian art included constant references to and
borrowings from Roman art. Charlemagne borrowed the ground plan of San
Vitale in Ravenna for use in Aachen because of its imperial and religious
associations. Manuscript illuminators searching for a model for the imaginary
portraits of the four evangelists seized upon the Greco-Roman portraits of
Classical authors.

The Renaissance was born in Italy in part because that was the center of
the Roman Empire, where the most complete and impressive physical
remains of the ancient artistic achievement were found. Also, the major
patronage of Renaissance art came from the Roman Catholic Church, also
centered in Italy. Thus, early-15th-century sculpture was bound to reÀ ect
Roman sculpture. Early Renaissance sculpture often was used to decorate
architecture, as Roman sculpture had been in antiquity (e.g., relief carvings
on friezes). Because early-15th-century artists were trying to portray the
human ¿ gure in space and because sculpture is three-dimensional, it was
logical that sculpture took the lead and that painting soon followed.