Baroque Art

The first Baroque artist we are going to look at is Bernini (1598-1680). Bernini is similar to his Italian Renaissance predecessors in that he practiced architecture and sculpture, painting, stage design, and playwright. He is the last of the dazzling universal geniuses. He is a prodigy, his first works date from his eighth birthday. He had his first commission from the papal family when he was only 11. The first work of Bernini's that we are going to look at is his David, sculpted for Cardinal Borghese in only 7 months. It is strikingly different than its Renaissance predecessors. By comparing it to Michelangelo's David, we can immediately ascertain the differences between the Renaissance and the Baroque periods. The essence of Baroque art is displayed in Bernini's David. Bernini chose the most dramatic moment to convey the event, which in turn created a dynamic, theatrical energized work which occupies our space. Bernini's theatrical masterpiece is his work in the Cornaro Chapel in Rome. Here Bernini not only designed a theatrical altarpiece, with the sculpture of St. Teresa, but provided the sculpted audience as well, he sculpted members of the Cornaro family, and six Cornaro Cardinals of the preceding century to witness (or view) the ecstasy of St. Teresa.Teresa of Avila is one of the great saints of the Counter Reformation, how claimed an angel pierced her heart with a flaming golden arrow.The group of St. Teresa and the Angel is revealed in celestial light within a richly articulated niche over the altar. Again Bernini chooses the most dramatic moment, the transport of ecstasy. The angel prepares to pierce St. Teresa as he gently pulls aside her drapery. St. Teresa is leaning back with closed eyes and slightly opened mouth.The diagonal composition adds to the drama.The gilded rays of light add to the drama, but also, a mysterious light falls on the group, which comes from a hidden window, obstructed from the viewer's view.This mysterious light from heaven adds to the already heightened drama.We no longer are speaking of sculpture in the conventional sense but of a pictorial scene framed by architecture that includes us as worshipers in a religious dram that is not so much acted as revealed. Bernini used painting, sculpture, architecture, and added the natural source of light to create a hallucinatory revelation.

Geoffroy Tory

Geoffroy Tory,  born 1480 Bourges,France died 1533 a (born c. 1480, Bourges, Fr.- died c. 1533, Paris), publisher, printer, author, orthographic reformer, and prolific engraver who was mainly responsible for the French Renaissance style of book decoration and who played a leading part in popularizing in France the roman letter as against the prevailing Gothic. His important publications include a number of “Books of Hours” and his famous philological work Champfleury (1529). In this work Tory put forward the idea of accents, the apostrophe, the cedilla, and simple punctuation marks. He was appointed imprimeue du roi (“printer to the king”) by Francis I  in about 1530.

Claude Garamond

Claude Garamond born 1480 in Paris,France type founder, publisher, punch cutter, type designer.1510:trains as a punch cutter with Simon de Colines in Paris. 1520: trains with Geoffroy Tory.1530: Garamond's first type is used in an edition of the book "Paraphrasis in Elegantiarum Libros Laurentii Vallae" by Erasmus. It is based on Aldus Manutius type De Aetna, cut in 1455. 1540: King Francis I commissions Garamond to cut a Greek type. Garamonds ensuing Grec du Roi used by Robert Estienne in three sizes exclusively for the printing of Greek books. From 1545 onwards Garamond also works as a publisher, first with Pierre Gaultier and later with Jean Barbe. The first book he published is "Pia et Religiosa Meditatio" by David Chambellan.The books are set using typefaces designed by Garamond!

Aldus Manutius

The famous "Dolphin and Anchor" device of Aldus appeared for only the second time in the second state of the 1502 Dante, and was used subsequently in all his editions. It is the symbol of the ancient proverb "Festina lente" (Hurry up slowly) which Aldus had taken as a motto as early as 1499, and seems to have regularly expounded to his friends.

A grammarian and humanist, Aldus' fame is above all connected to his greatness as a typographer and editor. Aldus began his career as a humanist teacher and became known to the most important humanist circles of the time before coming to Venice around 1490. In 1493 Aldus established a printing house together with Andrea Torresani da Asolo. Aldus' publishing activity, in contrast to the vast majority of printing during the incunable period, was inspired by clear cultural and intellectual goals in addition to economic ones. Founder of the Philhellenic Academy, he contributed in a decisive manner to the study and cultivation of Greek letters inItaly. He himself edited splendid Greek, Latin and vernacular editions,and had other editions prepared for him by the best scholars in these languages.

The revolutionary impact of Aldus' editions is readily apparent when the elegant portable octavo of his 1502 Dante, printed in beautiful italic type without commentary, is compared to the ponderous incunabula of the previous decade which buried Dante's text beneath exegetical commentary. Aldus' editions invited the reader to encounter the classics directly, in an unfiltered state. In addition, the portable format and unencumbered presentation of the text appealed to the expanding public demand for Dante and the vernacular classics. In the cities among the middle classes, and in the courts, vernacular poetry was flourishing among both gentlemen and gentlewomen -- giving rise, for the first time in the Italian tradition, to a distinguished group of women poets.

The Masters of Type

The Renaissance

The Renaissance was a cultural movement that spanned the period roughly from the 14th to the 17th century, beginning in Italy in the late middle ages and later spreading to the rest of Europe. Though availability of paper and the invention of metal movable type sped the dissemination of ideas from the later 15 th century,the changes of the Renaissance were not uniformly experienced across Europe. As a cultural movement, it encompassed innovative flowering of Latin and vernacular literatures, beginning with the 14th century resurgence of learning based on classical sources, which contemporaries credited to Petrarch, the development of linear perspective and other techniques of rendering a more natural reality in painting, and gradual but widespread educational reform. The Renaissance saw revolutions in many intellectual pursuits, as well as social and political upheaval, it is perhaps best known for its artistic developments and the contributions of such polymaths as Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo, who inspired the term "Renaissance man."

(Caravaggio Michelangelo)

(Caravaggio Michelangelo)

The Art of Calligraphy

It was inevitable that the upheval described above would also affect our subject matter.One of the major benefits of this new milieu of learning and enquiry was the spreading of literacy, the ability of not only to be able to read but also to write.Keeping diaries and notebooks became a widespread practice, not only amongst artist and scientist but also amongst the wealthy upper classes and the aristocracy, as did the sending back and forth of notes and letters.

Leonarda da Vinci: Florentine painter,sculptor,architect,engineer,and scholar, one of the greatest minds of the Renaissance; born at Vinci near Florence in 1452 died at Cloux near Amboise, France, 1519 natural son of  Ser Piero.He was quite self-made.His work was small in bulk, and what remains may be counted on fingers of both hands.

The Renaissance Book

The great intellectual movement of Renaissance Italy was humanism.The humanists believed that the Greek and Latin classics contained both all the lessons one needed to lead a moral and effective life and the best models for a powerful Latin style.They developed a new rigorous kind of classical scholarship,with which they corrected and tried to understand the works of the Greeks and Romans,which seemed so vital to them.

Johannes Gutenberg-Albrecht Duerer

Johannes Gutenberg

(1398-1468) was a German goldsmith and inventor who achieved fame for his invention of the technology of printing movable types during 1447. Gutenberg has often been credited as being the most influential and important person of all times, with his invention occupying similar status.The A&E Network ranked him at #1 on their People of the Millenium countdown in 1999.Block printing, where by individual sheets of paper were pressed into wooden blocks with the text and illustrations carved into them, was first recorded in Chinese history,and was in use in East Asia long before Gutenberg. Gutenberg knew of existing techniques, or invented them independently, although the former is considered unlikely because substantial differences in technique.Some also claim that the Dutchman Laurens Janszoon Coster was the first European to invent movable type.

Gutenberg began experimenting with metal typography after he had moved from his native town of Mains to Strasbourg around 1430.Knowing that wood block type involved a great deal of time and expense to reproduce because it had to be hand carved,Gutenberg concluded that metal type could be reproduced much more quickly once a single mould had been fashioned.In 1455, Gutenberg demonstrated the power of  the printing press by selling copies of two volume Bible for 300 florins each.This was equivalent of approximately three years wages for average clerk but it was significantly cheaper than a handwritten Bible that could take a single monk 20 years to transcribe.The one copy of the Biblia Sacre dated 1455 went to Paris,and was dated by the binder.(Gutenberg Bible)

Albrecht Duerer

(1471-1528)was a German painter, wood carver,engraver and mathematician.He is best known for his woodcuts in series, including Apocalypse, two series on the crucifixion of Christ, the Great Passion and the Little Passion as well as many of his individual prints,such as Knight, Death and the Devil...

His Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse part of the Apocalypse series is also celebrated.He is also known for his numerous self portraits.He is important for the history of graphic design in that he spent considerable time on the geometry of letters as well as book design.

The Printing Press

Incunabula

An incunabulum is a book,single sheet, or image that was printed before the year 1501 in Europe. These are usually very rare and fragile items whose nature can only be verified by experts. The origin of the word is the Latin incunabula for swaddling clothes used by extension for the infancy or early stages of something.

There are two types incunabula in printing the Block book printed from a single carved or sculpted wooden block for each page by the same process as the woodcut in art and the typographic book,made with individual pieces of cast metal movable type on a printing press.Many authors reserve the term incunabula for the typographic ones only.

The spread of printing to cities both in the north and in Italy ensured that there was great variety in the texts chosen for printing and the styles in which they appeared.Many early typefaces were modelled on local forms of European forms of Gothic script, but there were also some derived from documentary scripts and particularly in Italy, types modelled on handwritten scripts and calligraphy employed by humanists.

Printers congregated in urban centres where there were scholars, ecclesiastics,lawyers,nobles and professionals who formed their major customer base.

The introduction of rag paper

The word paper comes from the ancient Egyptian writing material called papyrus, which was woven papyrus plants. Paper remained a luxury item through the centuries until the advent of steam-driven paper making machines.Together with the invention of the practical fountain pen and the mass produced pencil of the same period, and in conjunction with the advent of the steam driven rotary printing press, wood based paper caused a major transformation of the 19 th century economy and society in industrialized countries.Before thies era a book or a newspaper was a rare luxury object and newspapers became slowly available to nearly all the members of an industrial society.

During the incunabula period, Europeans used rags to make paper by the following method: the rags were cut into small pieces; fermented: ground by watermill: and scooped into a mould to dry.