Which Renaissance Artist

Some of art history's greatest minds lived and worked during the Renaissance. Which were honored by Lorenzo Valla, Pierre-Paul Prud'hon, Paul Cezanne, or Joshua Reynolds?

The Renaissance represents an intellectual and artistic revival, inspired by a renewed interest in Classical literature and art, that took place in Italy in the 14th through 16th centuries and saw, among other advances, the development of naturalism and perspective in painting.

Which painter was described as:

1. The glory, the mirror, the ornament of painters (by Lorenzo Valla)?

Fra Angelico

Fra Angelico (ca.1395-1455) was an Italian Early Renaissance painter and illuminator as well as a Dominican friar. He began his career as a journeyman illuminator in the then-flourishing manuscript industry. His last major commissions were monumental religious frescoes. That his style developed from the detailed, calligraphic type of miniature painting used in illuminated manuscripts to the type of modeling used to show form in large-scale tempera paintings and frescoes is a testament to his artistic skills. His paintings project innovations for his time like naturalism in his depiction of the saints, tenderness in his paintings of madonna and child, and spatial depth in his portrayal of arches and monasteries. Today his magnificent frescoes survive in The Chapel of Pope Nicholas at the Vatican and in the convent of San Marco – a Medici-sponsored church – in Florence.

Lorenzo Valla, a learned man of the time and confidante to Pope Nicolas V, referring to the Renaissance, said that “the liberal arts are now being reawakened and revived,” and he counted Fra Angelico as one of the main reasons for the reawakening of the visual arts. In addition, English critic John Ruskin called Fra Angelico “not an artist properly so-called but an inspired saint.” And George Vasari in Lives of the Artists refered to Fra Angelico as a simple and most holy man and popularized the use of the name Angelico for him (“Brother Giovanni the Angelic One”). In his lifetime, Fra Angelico, who was baptized Guido di Pietro, was known as Fra Beato Angelico, or “The Blessed Angelic One,” because of his faith and his innocence. In 1982 Pope John Paul II beatified Fra Angelico as the “patron of painters,” making his “Il Beato” title official.

2. The father, the prince, and the first of all painters (by Pierre-Paul Prud’hon)?

Leonardo da Vinci

Leonardo (1452-1519) is the founding father of theRenaissance style. He exercised an enormous influence on the art world. His attitudes toward art helped establish ideals of naturalistic representation and expression that dominated Western art and ateliers for the next 400 years. What make Leonardo’s work unique are his innovations in layering paint in a technique known as “sfumato,” his detailed knowledge of anatomy, botany and geology, his interest in facial expressions and the ways that humans register emotions. All these qualities come together in his most famous works: Mona Lisa, The Last Supper, and The Virgin of the Rocks.

Pierre-Paul Prud’hon, an 18th-century French Neoclassical and Romantic artist best known for his allegorical paintings, did some careful looking at the work of the masters during a study trip to Rome. He very much admired Leonardo’s use of sfumato and tried to copy it in his own work. One can see Leonardo’s influence in Prud’hon’s "The Union of Love and Friendship" (1793).

3. The strongest of all the Venetians (by Paul Cezanne)?

Jacopo Tintoretto

Tintoretto, born Jacopo Robusti, (1518-1594) was one of the greatest of the Venetian Renaissance painters. He wanted to learn painting from Titian but was not much encouraged in this effort by the older, established artist. Thereafter he taught himself. He lived frugally, collecting casts, reliefs, and wax or clay models to use in practicing his draftsmanship. His ambition for himself can be discerned from the inscription he allegedly hung in his studio pronouncing his work to have “Michelangelo's design and Titian's color.” None of his frescoes have survived, but his many church paintings attest to his high degree of skill. His most stupendous achievement is “Paradise,” created for the Scuola della Misericordia in the Doge’s Palace, most likely the largest painting ever done on canvas (74ft. x 30ft.). The subject matter consists of over 500 figures; the work was extremely well-received by all Venice for its imaginative and inspired subject matter.

Cezanne, himself known as the Painter’s Painter, paid tribute to Tintoretto by referring to him as “The Painter” and held him in the highest regard because his work was so dynamic.

4. The Homer of painting (by Joshua Reynolds)?

Michelangelo

Michelangelo (1568-1646), born in Tuscany, is the most famous of the great Florentine artists of the Renaissance. Along with his rival and fellow Italian Leonardo da Vinci, he is the epitome of a “Renaissance man,” excelling in many disciplines beyond the arts: he was a sculptor, painter, architect, inventor, and scientist. Michelangelo also created two of the most influential frescoes in the history of Western art: the scenes from Genesis on the ceiling and The Last Judgment on the wall of the Sistine Chapel in Rome.

Joshua Reynolds was an 18th-century English portraitist who possessed a great reverence for the Old Masters. He was founder and the first president of the Royal Academy of Arts in London. In 1759 he wrote three short essays on art criticism in Dr. Samuel Johnson’s The Idler, and in Letter 79 considered Michelangelo to have “the sublimest style” and to be “the Homer of painting,” claiming that such a painter of genius would never stoop to the drudgery of simply imitating nature but would, in “grand style,” focus on portraying great ideas.

Sources:

Bailey, Colin J. The Art Quiz Book: 2000+ Questions on Painters and Paintings. Station Press: Scotland, 1995.

Grove Dictionary of Art. Oxford University Press, 2006.

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