Alesso Baldovinetti Florentine Painter of The Early Renaissance

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Alesso Baldovinetti

1427-1499

Florentine Painter of The Early Renaissance

Influences - Paolo Uccello, Domenico Veneziano

Cause of Death - Heart Failure

Biography

Alesso Baldovinetti lived during troubled and restless times. The world was in transition. The outdated feudal order imposed by the Church was buckling under the expansion of towns, the rise of the merchant class, the emergence of national states, the spread of religious reform and invention of the printing press. People were becoming fascinated with science, art, political affairs and travel to far off lands. Alesso Baldovinetti was born at the beginning of the modern world.

Alesso Baldovinetti was born into a family wealth and influence. He was drawn to art from a young age. He completed many great works in his long life time and is considered one of the greatest Early Renaissance painters of all time. Baldovinetti worked mainly in the newly discovered oil painting mediums. The newly emerging painting techniques and styles were a reflection of the transformation that was taking place in Europe, the change from the Dark Ages to a more enlightened, tolerant society. According to Historian Hendrik van Loon, "People were no longer contented to be the audience and sit still while the emperor and the pope told them what to do and what to think. They wanted to be actors upon the stage of life. They insisted upon giving “expression" to their own individual ideas."

According to noted art historian and author, Bernhard Berenson

''The growing delight in life with the consequent love of health, beauty, and joy were felt more powerfully in Venice than anywhere else in Italy. The explanation of this may be found in the character of the Venetian government which was such that it gave little room for the satisfaction of the passion for personal glory, and kept its citizens so busy in duties of state that they had small leisure for learning. Some of the chief passions of the Renaissance thus finding no outlet in Venice, the other passions insisted all the more on being satisfied. Venice, moreover, was the only state in Italy which was enjoying, and for many generations had been enjoying, internal peace. This gave the Venetians a love of comfort, of ease, and of splendor, a refinement of manner, and humaneness of feeling, which made them the first really modern people in Europe. Since there was little room for personal glory in Venice, the perpetuators of glory, the Humanists, found at first scant encouragement there, and the Venetians were saved from that absorption in archeology and pure science which overwhelmed Florence at an early date. This was not necessarily an advantage in itself, but it happened to suit Venice, where the conditions of life had for some time been such as to build up a love of beautiful things. As it was, the feeling for beauty was not hindered in its natural development. Archeology would have tried to submit it to the good taste of the past, a proceeding which rarely promotes good taste in the present. Too much archeology and too much science might have ended in making Venetian art academic, instead of letting it become what it did, the product of a natural ripening of interest in life and love of pleasure. In Florence, it is true, painting had developed almost simultaneously with the other arts, and it may be due to this very cause that the Florentine painters never quite realized what a different task from the architect's and sculptor's was theirs. At the time, therefore, when the Renaissance was beginning to find its best expression in painting, the Florentines were already too much attached to classical ideals of form and composition, in other words, too academic, to give embodiment to the throbbing feeling for life and pleasure."

Domenico di Pace Beccafumi subjects, like his predecessors, are all religious ? the Virgin Mary, the Life of Christ, the Apostles, Angeles and the Life of St. Francis.

Changes in Society

The newly emerging painting techniques and styles were a reflection of the transformation that was taking place in Europe, the change from the medieval period to a more enlightened, tolerant society. Artists of the Renaissance were elevated in social standing and their art was no longer looked upon as simple handicrafts, but as divinely inspired creations. The spirit of an era awoke, revitalized with knowledge and creativity. The major painters of the Renaissance were not only artists but men of great genius who gave the world their great intellectual gifts. Florentine and Venetian painting were both formed by extraordinary personalities. These men tackled mathematical, artistic and philosophical problems of the highest interest, and presented solutions that have never lost their value. Leonardo da Vinci asserted "In dealing with a scientific problem, I first arrange several experiments, and then show with reasons why such an experiment must necessarily operate in this and in no other way. This is the method which must be followed in all research upon the phenomenon of nature. We must consult experience in the variety of cases and circumstances until we can draw from them a general rule that is contained in them. And for what purposes are these rules good? They lead us to further investigations of nature and to creations of art. They prevent us from deceiving ourselves and others by promising results which are not obtainable."

Key Descriptive Words and Phrases associated with the Renaissance Movement - rebirth, rediscovery of the classical world, publication of Della Pittura, a book about the laws of mathematical perspective for artists, sfumato, chiaroscuro, Savonarola, spiritually significant, illuminated manuscript, idealized biblical themes, scriptorium, illuminator, Age of Discovery, axonometric drawing, curiosity about the natural world, realistic use of colours and light, Bonfire of the Vanities, Old Testament stories, ethereal and foggy backgrounds, Gospel parables, The Blackdeath, romanticized landscapes, Christian symbolism.

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