The Intellectual Life of the Early Renaissance Artist

Ames-Lewis, Francis

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Description: The Intellectual Life of the Early Renaissance Artist

BOOKThe Intellectual Life of the Early Renaissance Artist

Francis Ames-Lewis

https://doi.org/10.37862/aaeportal.00147

Stable URL: https://aaeportal.com/?id=-13895

At the beginning of the fifteenth century, painters and sculptors were seldom regarded as more than artisans and craftsmen, but within little more than a hundred years they had risen to the status of “artist.” This book explores how early Renaissance artists gained recognition for the intellectual foundations of their activities and achieved artistic autonomy from enlightened patrons. A leading authority on Renaissance art, Francis Ames-Lewis traces the ways in which the social and intellectual concerns of painters and sculptors brought about the acceptance of their work as a liberal art, alongside other arts like poetry. He charts the development of the idea of the artist as a creative genius with a distinct identity and individuality.

Ames-Lewis examines the various ways that Renaissance artists like Mantegna, Leonardo da Vinci, Raphael, and Dürer, as well as many other less well known painters and sculptors, pressed for intellectual independence. By writing treatises, biographies, poetry, and other literary works, by seeking contacts with humanists and literary men, and by investigating the arts of the classical past, Renaissance artists honed their social graces and broadened their intellectual horizons. They also experienced a growing creative confidence and self-awareness that was expressed in novel self-portraits, works created solely to demonstrate pictorial skills, and monuments to commemorate themselves after death.

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Author

Francis Ames-Lewis

PublisherYale University Press

Print publication date April 2000 (in print)

Print ISBN 9780300083040

EISBN 9780300220476

Illustrations 153

Print Status in print

Publisher (in print)

WorldCat

Google Books

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List of illustrations

Feast of the Rose Garlands, detail
Portrait of Giovanna degli Albizzi Tornabuoni
Ulysses and Iro
Medal of Emperor John VIII Palaeologus, obverse and reverse
Portrait of Giovanna degli Albizzi Tornabuoni, detail
Ghent Altarpiece (Adoration of the Mystic Lamb), detail
Letter of 26 June 1425, detail of handwriting
Seated Boy Drawing
Letter of 26 August 1484 to Lorenzo "the Magnificient" de' Medici, detail of handwriting
Nativity
Sinopia for the Marriage of Isaac and Rebecca
Young Knight in a Landscape
St John the Evangelist
Lybian Sybil
Decorative motif
Creation of the World
Entombment
Battle of the Nudes
Adam and Eve
Abduction of the Sabine Women
Apollo Belvedere
Seated Boy Drawing
Studies of nude and draped figures
Studies of drapery
Study of drapery
Study for the drapery of the Virgin in a "Visitation"
Fluting Marsyas
Study of a nude man seen from front, side, and back
Studies of casts of feet
The "Academy" of Baccio Bandinelli
House of Mantegna, groundplan
Portrait of a Young Man (Self-portrait?)
Weisskönig in a Painter's Workshop
Bust of Faustina the Elder
Letto di Policleto, replica
Belvedere Torso
Drawings after an "Adonis" sarcophagus (Codex Wolfegg, fols 34v–35r)
Self-Portrait from the Tomb of Andrea Mantegna
Cenotaph of Filippo Brunelleschi
Floor tomb of Fra Angelico
Cenotaph of Fra Filippo Lippi
Tomb of Hans Stethaimer
Tomb of the Pollaiuolo brothers
Tomb of Andrea Bregno
Risen Christ
Virgin and Child with SS Peter, Paul, Lawrence, and Francis
Chapel of St John the Baptist, view of interior decorations
Tomb of Raphael
Emperor Maximian, detail of frieze
Medal of Francesco I da Carrara, obverse and reverse
Medal of Francesco Novello da Carrara, obverse and reverse
Sketch of "Diva Faustina" and other studies, detail
Medallion of Emperor Nero, obverse and reverse
Medallion of Empress Faustina, obverse and reverse
Medallion of Constantine
Four Roman Tombs
St James before Herod Agrippa
Drawings after classical sculpture (Codex Vallardi, 2397v)
Study after the Quirinal Horsetamers
Study after a Trajanic relief
Study after a torso of Venus
Marcus Aurelius
Study after the Marcus Aurelius
Study after a Trajanic relief
Agony in the Garden, detail: townscape
Emperors Claudius and Nero
Codex Escurialensis: Decorative grotesques (fol. 58)
Studies after the Domus Aurea decorations
Studies after the Domus Aurea decorations
Apollo Belvedere
Bust of Marcus Aurelius
Marsyas
Muse of Philiskos
Belvedere Torso
Jupiter (fragment)
Study after "Jupiter" and detail (Codex Wolfegg, fol. 46v)
Study after "Jupiter" and detail (Codex Wolfegg, fol. 46v)
Study of Roman ruins
Christ among the Doctors
Story of Isaac
The Ascension with Christ Giving the Keys to St Peter
Judith and Dido
St Sebastian, detail
Introduction of the Cult of Cybele in Rome
Forge of Vulcan
Portrait of a Woman: La Schiavona
The Pastoral Concert
Title page of Gozzoli sketchbook
Sonnet and self-portrait sketch
Portrait of a Poet
Discovery of Honey
Battle of Love and Chastity
Marriage of Alexander and Roxana
Virgin and Child with Angels
Virgin and Child (central panel of polyptych), detail
Birth of Venus
Venus Rising from the Sea (Venus Anadyomene)
Calumny of Apelles
Calumny of Apelles
Calumny of Apelles
Triumph of Galatea
Feast of the Gods
Worship of Venus
Worship of Venus
Hunt of Meleager
Bacchanal of the Andrians
Annunciation, detail: self-portrait
Self-portrait
Self-portrait, detail
Assumption of the Virgin, detail: St Thaddeus
Portrait of the Artist as David
Journey of the Magi, detail of self-portrait
Self-portrait
Self-portrait
Self-portrait in a Convex Mirror
Portrait of Giovanni(?) Arnolfini and His Wife, detail
Self-portrait, detail
Portrait of a Man (Self Portrait?)
Self-portrait, detail
The Artist and His Wife
The Painter and his Wife
Self-portrait at the Age of Thirteen
Self-portrait as a Goldsmith
Self-portrait with Eryngium
Self-portrait medal
Adoration of the Magi
Adoration of the Magi, detail
Self-portrait bust
Self-portrait with Federigo da Montefeltro
Self-portrait medal, obverse and reverse
Self-Portrait
Self-portrait with Workshop Assistants
Self-portrait medal, obverse and reverse
Self-portrait medal, obverse and reverse
Expulsion of Joachim, detail
Self-portrait
Self-portrait
Self-portrait
St Sebastian
Flagellation
Jesus among the Doctors
Vision of St. Eustace
Adam and Eve
Melencolia I
St. Jerome in His Study
Flagellation
Battle of the Sea Gods
Massacre of the Innocents
Eleven Nude Figures
A Prisoner Led Before a Judge
Triumphal Procession of Bacchus
Saint Jerome in His Study
St George

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Contents

Francis Ames-Lewis

The Intellectual Life of the Early Renaissance Artist

Table of Contents

Author

Francis Ames-Lewis

PublisherYale University Press

https://doi.org/10.37862/aaeportal.00147.001

Stable URL: https://aaeportal.com/?id=-13896

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Preface

Francis Ames-Lewis

The Intellectual Life of the Early Renaissance Artist

Early on in my academic career I tended to encourage in my students the view that early Renaissance painters and sculptors were essentially artisans in outlook. Painters were apprenticed, I suggested, and experienced in the craft practices commended by Cennino Cennini in his Craftsman’s Handbook. They had little time or inclination to engage with ideas that circulated in the world beyond the confines of their workshops. Indeed, the need, in Leon Battista Alberti’s view, for painters to be …

Author

Francis Ames-Lewis

PublisherYale University Press

https://doi.org/10.37862/aaeportal.00147.002

Stable URL: https://aaeportal.com/?id=-13897

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1. Introduction

Francis Ames-Lewis

The Intellectual Life of the Early Renaissance Artist

By the time that Baldassare Castiglione wrote this passage in his celebrated Book of the Courtier (Il cortigiano), perhaps as the book reached completion around 1516–18, painters and sculptors had become skillful in many fields of intellectual life. Indeed, the point had been reached when painting and sculpture could justifiably be numbered with the ‘liberal arts’ and no longer graded merely as ‘mechanical arts’. Castiglione’s close friend Raphael himself had by that date …

Author

Francis Ames-Lewis

PublisherYale University Press

Related print edition pages: pp.1-15

https://doi.org/10.37862/aaeportal.00147.003

Stable URL: https://aaeportal.com/?id=-13898

Chapter subject tags:Italy--Intellectual life--16th centuryPainting, Renaissance--ItalySculpture, Renaissance--ItalyArtists--Italy--BiographyItaly--Intellectual life--15th centuryArtists' writings--ItalyArtists--German--BiographyPainting, Renaissance--Germany

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2. The Artist’s Education and Training

Francis Ames-Lewis

The Intellectual Life of the Early Renaissance Artist

King of Naples until he was ousted by Alfonso of Aragon in 1443, René d’Anjou held a high reputation as a painter. In his Cronaca rimata the Urbino court painter Giovanni Santi wrote that ‘in our time the aged King René / Painted better than many who are famous’, citing him as an example comparable with painters of high social status recorded in classical times. Another example is Baldassare d’Este, the Ferrarese painter and medallist, if he was indeed, like Duke Borso d’Este, an …

Author

Francis Ames-Lewis

PublisherYale University Press

Related print edition pages: pp.17-60

https://doi.org/10.37862/aaeportal.00147.004

Stable URL: https://aaeportal.com/?id=-13899

Chapter subject tags:Italy--Intellectual life--15th centuryArtists--Italy--BiographyPainting, Renaissance--ItalySculpture, Renaissance--ItalyPrints, RenaissanceCennini, Cennino, active 15th centuryArt--Study and teaching--ItalyPrints, Renaissance--Italy

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3. The Social and Cultural Activities of the Renaissance Artist

Francis Ames-Lewis

The Intellectual Life of the Early Renaissance Artist

During the early Renaissance, shifts in attitudes towards the artist affected both his social status and the extent to which he was valued as an intellectual. The favoured court artist in the early fifteenth century might be made a valet de chambre or a familiaris, the title bestowed, for example, on Pisanello by Gianfrancesco Gonzaga of Mantua in 1439. This position gave him a somewhat higher standing within court society than that of other artisans, a position from which he could …

Author

Francis Ames-Lewis

PublisherYale University Press

Related print edition pages: pp.61-87

https://doi.org/10.37862/aaeportal.00147.005

Stable URL: https://aaeportal.com/?id=-13900

Chapter subject tags:Painting, Renaissance--ItalyClothing and dress--Italy--HistoryArt patronage--ItalyArtists as collectorsSculpture, Classical--AppreciationArtists' studios--Italy

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4. Commemoration of the Early Renaissance Artist

Francis Ames-Lewis

The Intellectual Life of the Early Renaissance Artist

Early Renaissance artists had various opportunities during their lifetimes to enhance their social and intellectual position, and some took advantage of these whenever possible. Their final opportunity came after death, in the form of a visible commemoration. In fact, however, few tombs or commemorative monuments to Renaissance artists survive, although we have evidence of others. It appears from this evidence that over the course of the early Renaissance monuments to artists gradually became …

Author

Francis Ames-Lewis

PublisherYale University Press

Related print edition pages: pp.89-108

https://doi.org/10.37862/aaeportal.00147.006

Stable URL: https://aaeportal.com/?id=-13901

Chapter subject tags:Memorials--ItalyCenotaphs--ItalyPainting, Renaissance--ItalySculpture, Renaissance--ItalyArtists--Social conditions

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5. The Artist and Archaeology

Francis Ames-Lewis

The Intellectual Life of the Early Renaissance Artist

Roberto Weiss introduced The Renaissance Discovery of Classical Antiquity (1969) as ‘a history of classical archaeology in its early stages, showing … how it was developed by the enthusiasm and industry of countless humanists … [for] the concrete legacy of classical antiquity’. Renaissance artists played a part in this process of archaeological investigation and discovery. Some artists recognised the pursuit of archaeology as a route towards fulfilling their intellectual aspirations. They …

Author

Francis Ames-Lewis

PublisherYale University Press

Related print edition pages: pp.109-140

https://doi.org/10.37862/aaeportal.00147.007

Stable URL: https://aaeportal.com/?id=-13902

Chapter subject tags:Art, Renaissance--Classical influencesCoins, ClassicalSculpture, ClassicalArt, Classical--ReproductionClassical antiquities

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6. Image and Text: The Paragone

Francis Ames-Lewis

The Intellectual Life of the Early Renaissance Artist

This chapter and the following three offer discussions of aspects of the relationships between early Renaissance images and art-theoretical and other texts. The principal issue that runs through these discussions is: in what ways did the Renaissance artist respond to written texts, or engage with theoretical or intellectual questions relevant to his art practice that were also discussed in writings of the time? Issues raised in early Renaissance art theory have been extensively discussed in the …

Author

Francis Ames-Lewis

PublisherYale University Press

Related print edition pages: pp.141-161

https://doi.org/10.37862/aaeportal.00147.008

Stable URL: https://aaeportal.com/?id=-13903

Chapter subject tags:Rhetoric, RenaissancePainting, Renaissance--ItalyAlberti, Leon Battista, 1404-1472. De pictura. EnglishBattistero di San Giovanni (Florence, Italy)Ghiberti, Lorenzo, 1378-1455. Gates of paradiseLeonardo, da Vinci, 1452-1519Sculpture, Renaissance--ItalyArt criticism--Italy--HistoryArtists' writings--Italy

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7. Painting and Poetry

Francis Ames-Lewis

The Intellectual Life of the Early Renaissance Artist

The paragone between painting and sculpture was an issue that increasingly concerned Renaissance writers on art. Whether a painting could communicate expressive meaning as effectively and as affectingly as a poem had, however, been a recurrent theme in intellectual debate from at least the time of Dante. In his celebrated comment on Giotto’s new ascendancy over Cimabue in Purgatorio XI, Dante makes a clear comparison between these two painters and the two great poets of …

Author

Francis Ames-Lewis

PublisherYale University Press

Related print edition pages: pp.163-176

https://doi.org/10.37862/aaeportal.00147.009

Stable URL: https://aaeportal.com/?id=-13904

Chapter subject tags:European poetry--Renaissance, 1450-1600Alberti, Leon Battista, 1404-1472. De pictura. EnglishCastiglione, Baldassarre, conte, 1478-1529Painting, Renaissance--ItalySculpture, Renaissance--Italy

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8. Artistic Licence, Invention and Fantasia

Francis Ames-Lewis

The Intellectual Life of the Early Renaissance Artist

Much of Cennino Cennini’s Craftsman’s Handbook reflects the recipe-book mentality of the late medieval artisan painter. Nevertheless, Cennino already articulated an awareness of the painter’s inventive powers, believing that he was entitled to some licence in his interpretation of his subjects. The word invenzione (invention) does not find a place in Cennino’s vocabulary, but he recognised the role of the imagination – fantasia – in artistic production. It is the exercise of …

Author

Francis Ames-Lewis

PublisherYale University Press

Related print edition pages: pp.177-187

https://doi.org/10.37862/aaeportal.00147.010

Stable URL: https://aaeportal.com/?id=-13905

Chapter subject tags:Cennini, Cennino, active 15th centuryPainting, Renaissance--ItalyArt patronage--ItalyIsabella d'Este, consort of Francesco II Gonzaga, Marquis of Mantua, 1474-1539Bellini, Giovanni, 1426?-1516

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9. Ekphrasis

Francis Ames-Lewis

The Intellectual Life of the Early Renaissance Artist

The fresco of the Marriage of Alexander and Roxana (fig. 89), painted by Sodoma for Agostino Chigi’s bedchamber in the Villa Farnesina in Rome, is based on Lucian’s description of a painting by Apelles that celebrated this episode in the life of his patron Alexander the Great. Distantly based on a drawing by Raphael, the work was fairly certainly completed to coincide with Chigi’s marriage on 28 August 1519, under pressure from Pope Leo X, to his Venetian mistress, Francesca Ordeaschi …

Author

Francis Ames-Lewis

PublisherYale University Press

Related print edition pages: pp.189-207

https://doi.org/10.37862/aaeportal.00147.011

Stable URL: https://aaeportal.com/?id=-13906

Chapter subject tags:Art, Classical, in literatureArt, Renaissance--Classical influencesArt, Classical--ReproductionArt patronage--ItalyPainting, Renaissance--ItalyRhetoric, RenaissanceDescription (Rhetoric) in art

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10. Self-portraiture

Francis Ames-Lewis

The Intellectual Life of the Early Renaissance Artist

‘Through painting’, Alberti wrote in On Painting, ‘the faces of the dead go on living for a very long time’. But in their self-portraits early Renaissance artists, it seems, intended less to commemorate themselves for posterity than to assert in visual form their artistic and intellectual skills. The ways in which the Renaissance artist portrayed himself are therefore useful indicators of his self-image and aspirations. The context in which he sets himself, the clothes he is wearing, the …

Author

Francis Ames-Lewis

PublisherYale University Press

Related print edition pages: pp.209-243

https://doi.org/10.37862/aaeportal.00147.012

Stable URL: https://aaeportal.com/?id=-13907

Chapter subject tags:Self-portraits, RenaissanceEyck, Jan van, 1390-1440Dürer, Albrecht, 1471-1528Medals, RenaissanceAlberti, Leon Battista, 1404-1472

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11. Artists’ Display

Francis Ames-Lewis

The Intellectual Life of the Early Renaissance Artist

Renaissance artists sometimes produced works intended primarily to serve as demonstration pieces. They may have wished to display both their skills in technique and craftsmanship, and their intellectual concerns and abilities. A noteworthy example of this type of work, from the very end of our period, is Parmigianino’s Self-portrait in a Convex Mirror (fig. 112). Vasari writes that Parmigianino took this panel, and others, with him to Rome, where Pope Clement VII and his court were …

Author

Francis Ames-Lewis

PublisherYale University Press

Related print edition pages: pp.245-270

https://doi.org/10.37862/aaeportal.00147.013

Stable URL: https://aaeportal.com/?id=-13908

Chapter subject tags:Mantegna, Andrea, 1431-1506Painting, Renaissance--ItalyPiero, della Francesca, 1416?-1492Art patronage--ItalyDürer, Albrecht, 1471-1528Prints, Renaissance--ItalyPollaiolo, Antonio, 1426?-1498

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12. Conclusion: The Reputation of the Renaissance Artist

Francis Ames-Lewis

The Intellectual Life of the Early Renaissance Artist

The category of paintings here called ‘display pieces’ indicates what artists considered were significant about their own talents. They wished others, and perhaps especially potential patrons, to realise that these were the particular pictorial characteristics and qualities that they could offer. But what did others in the societies within which the Renaissance painter moved think of them? This concluding chapter will review some of the evidence that indicates how the Renaissance artist was …

Author

Francis Ames-Lewis

PublisherYale University Press

Related print edition pages: pp.271-279

https://doi.org/10.37862/aaeportal.00147.014

Stable URL: https://aaeportal.com/?id=-13909

Chapter subject tags:Dürer, Albrecht, 1471-1528Art patronage--ItalyPainting, Renaissance--Italy

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Bibliography

Francis Ames-Lewis

The Intellectual Life of the Early Renaissance Artist

Bibliography

Author

Francis Ames-Lewis

PublisherYale University Press

https://doi.org/10.37862/aaeportal.00147.015

Stable URL: https://aaeportal.com/?id=-13910

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