CULTURES OF EUROPE: THE RENAISSANCE
Florence, Italy: Cathedral (Brunelleschi), Palazzo Vecchio
Henry VIII-Head of the Church
Johannes Gutenberg, Germany 1450, the printing press 240 prints per hour (↔ monks copying/writing one codex for several months) The Gutenberg Bible, 1455 – a handwritten Bible: for one scribe it took one year
Giotto (14th c. trecento): The Birth of Christ
Fra Angelico
Leonardo da Vinci: Mona Lisa, The Vitruvian Man
Leonardo: The Last Supper
Leonardo: Virgin of the Rocks
Botticelli: The Birth of Venus
Botticelli: Primavera (Spring), c.1482 Mercury, Graces, Venus, Cupid, Flora, Chloris, Zephyr
SOURCES Ovid: Fasti Lucretius: De rerum Nature "Spring-time and Venus come,/ And Venus' boy, the winged harbinger, steps on before,/ And hard on Zephyr's foot- prints Mother Flora,/ Sprinkling the ways before them, filleth all/ With colours and with odours excellent."
Michelangelo: The Sistine Chapel
The Creation of Adam
Michelangelo: David
Michelangelo: Moses
Raphael/Raffaello Sanzio
Raphael: The School of Athens
Tizian
Hans Holbein, the Younger: Henry VIII (the King), Erasmus (the Scholar)
Hans Holbein, the Younger 1533: `The Ambassadors'
Realism, beauty and allegorical meaning: the active and the contemplative life, life and death nobleman/ambassador vs scholar/bishop ornate sheath of a dagger (29) vs book (25) the culture of the age: `Turkey' carpet, celestial globe and an array of astronomical and navigational instruments. The date: 11 April. A German text-book of Arithmetic for Merchants, propped open with a T-square. A lute and a case of recorders or flutes: Holbein's mastery of foreshortening and musical interests. A string of the lute: snapped, a traditional emblem of fragility. In the top left corner, at the edge of the magnificently patterned green hanging, is a crucifix. The hymnal in front of the lute is open at Martin Luther's hymn,'Come Holy Ghost our souls inspire‘ Memento mori: medieval mosaic (Westminster Abbey) – distorted skull + reality, as perceived by the senses, must be viewed `correctly' to reveal its full meaning
Pieter Brueghel: The Battle of Carnival and Lent
Thomas More-Utopia
Shakespeare: Hamlet; Romeo and Juliet