The objective of this research point was to look at how Renaissance masters like Leonardo da Vinci and Dürer depicted animals, to make notes and find some images to include in the learning log.
Somehow I got carried away with the topic, realizing that I don’t know much about Renaissance masters and wanting to find out more about what happened in art at that time. But then, the task became too big for the time I had available.
I’ll include the notes I made, maybe I can take up the topic again at a later time.
Tuesday 4 September 2012
In addition to Leonardo and Dürer, I’d like to include one or two more Renaissance masters in my research, in order to get a feeling who counts as ‘Renaissance master’ and maybe discover similarities or differences.
I would also like to follow my tutor’s advice and go beyond my usual Google image search and also look into Bridgeman’s Educational library. I found Google image search very good, because it typically comes up with a broad variety of images and also permits to include keywords in the search. I’m not sure whether this will be possible with Bridgeman. But Bridgeman seems to present a more complete and systematic catalog of an artist’s work.
I also tend to find Wikipedia articles on selected artists very valuable, because they present a concise yet broad overview and help me to quickly get a context for a particular artist. I would like to find an additional source where an artist’s works are thematically presented, maybe in relationship to some contemporaries or so, but so far have not found something.
I would also like to focus my research on drawings of cats because its these animals that I’m most interested in to draw myself. But I’ll be open for other animals too.
First search: Google “Leonardo da Vinci animal drawings”
I especially liked the the Study of Cat Movements and Positions, 1517-18, and also selected the Study sheet with horses, ca. 1513.
The cats’ heads, bodies and extremities look a bit strange, but their positions are very typical! I live with four cats and feel familiar with almost any of the positions Leonardo has depicted.
Wikipaintings
I found the last image on the Wikipaintings site, which is an interesting source. It contains all Leonardo paintings in chronological ordering. It also permits to search artworks “by style”, and offering early and high renaissance as styles associated with Leonardo da Vinci.
From the chronological ordering there, it seems that both studies were made rather late in the artist’s life, because the listing of his works begin with 14xx dates. I just realize that these drawings are roughly 500 years old, this is amazing. Leonardo’s drawings remind me a bit of caricatures, the lines are so curly.
I realize that I should extend my research to include when was the Renaissance period as well as some biographical data about Leonardo and Dürer and other masters I would like to include in the research.
Albrecht Dürer (1471 – 1528)
Dürer was a Renaissance artist from Nuremberg, Germany. He produced an incredible 844 artworks during his life, beginning with a self-portrait at 13 (1484) to the ‘Youth with executioner” drawing or engraving (not dated).
The hare
This is a very famous work from 1502, a watercolour drawing with an enormous amount of detail. Wikipaintings presents an image of really good quality which permits assessing the details. I think Dürer has first painted the broad shapes of the hare in watercolour and then added the fine details of the furry surface. It is really a lovely drawing. He achieved a very nice effect for the whiskers by drawing them as a double line: A dark foundation line with a light reflective line on top of it, which created three-dimensionality and roundness.
Wikipaintings indicates the gallery where the artwork is located. The hare is at the Albertina Gallery in Vienna, Austria.
Cervus Lucanus, the beetle
This image dates from 1505. Again I’m amazed by the amount of detail in Dürer’s work.
Wednesday 5 September 2012
I wanted to look for some more Renaissance masters and decided to search in the WikiPaintings database. Leonardo was tagged with the ‘High Renaissance’ period, and overall there are 15 artists named in this group:
• Giovanni Bellini (c. 1430 – 1516)
• Vittore Carpaccio (c. 1465 – c. 1526)
• Cima da Conegliano (c. 1459 – c. 1517)
• Correggio (c. 1489 – 1534)
• Leonardo da Vinci (1452 – 1519)
• Giorgione (c. 1478 – 1510)
• Lorenzo Lotto (c. 1480 – 1556)
• Andrea Mantegna (c. 1431 – 1506)
• Michelangelo (1475 – 1564)
• Pietro Perugino (1446 – 1524)
• Raphael (1483 – 1520)
• Andrea del Sarto (1486 – 1530)
• Luca Signorelli (c. 1445 – 1523)
• Andrea Solario (1460 – 1524)
• Titian (c. 1488 – 1576)
I had difficulties detecting the ordering principle, but it seems to be by alphabet, only sometimes the ‘da’ or ‘del’ are counted and sometimes not. I’m surprised that the High Renaissance seems to be an Italian phenomenon, there are only Italian painters included! I’d have thought that painters from other countries would have been included in the group, because I meant to rember from history at school that at the time there was vivid intellectual exchange among scholars in Europe. I’m having difficulties to imagine that this didn’t apply to artists. But maybe some further research will answer this question.
From the 15 names, I had heard already of four (Leonardo, Michelangelo, Raphael and Titian). I initially thought to look in more detail at those I already had heard of because these might have been the most popular artists, but then for this research point the topic of interest is animal drawing. So I think I will have a brief look at all of them and then select one or two with interesting animal drawings.
Then there would be the same to do for Dürer because he was tagged with a different variety of Renaissance. Albrecht Dürer is associated to “Northern Renaissance, German School”, so maybe this sub-grouping is just for information purposes and not intended to express intellectual isolation or a different movement.
‘Northern Renaissance’ brings up 26 artists, and the subgroup “German School” brings up 4 artists. It would make more sense to consider the entire Northern Renaissance group, but then I wonder whether there’s also a ‘Southern’ or ‘Western’ Renaissance group, because I thought there should have been French and Spanish painters belonging to Renaissance, too.
A search for ‘Renaissance’ in this database brings up only irrelevant materials. Maybe I should try a Google search to see which subgroups are distinguished. These are my first moves into art history so my main problem is overall orientation – I need this for putting particular artists into a context. On the other hand, I wouldn’t want to shift away from the research topic (Renaissance masters depicting animals), so I’ll certainly restrict my research to a broad overview and introduction at this time.
The English Wikipedia article on “Renaissance” appears to be a good start, it is quite lengthy and has a star for article quality. From this article, I recap:
The renaissance was a cultural movement spanning roughly from 14th to 17th century, beginning in Italy and spreading to the rest of Europe. The “availability of paper and invention of metal movable types sped the dissemination of ideas from the later 15th century”.
Importantly, there was “in science an increased reliance on observation” – this may have found its reflection in the very naturalistic depictions of animals by Renaissance artists. Animals are shown in their natural, everyday poses and as realistically as possible (at least in what I’ve selected from Leonardo and Dürer).
The Wikipedia article also discusses the areas in which Renaissance changed human culture (Humanism, Art, Science, Religion, Self-awareness), and its geographical spread across European countries, and mentions Northern Europe, Portugal, Sapin, England, France, Europe, Germany, Hungary, the Netherlands, Croatia, Poland and Russia.
I will probably not be able to look at all the Renaissance masters to search for animal drawings… a Google search with keywords “Renaissance master animal drawing” might be a more feasible research strategy to start with.
References
Albertina Gallery, Vienna (several languages), http://www.albertina.at
Leonardo da Vinci: Study sheet with cats, dragon and other animals, 1513. 21.1 x 20.4cm, chalk and ink on paper, from http://amazing-animals.livejournal.com/112928.html
Leonardo da Vinci: Study sheet with horses, ca. 1513, chalk and ink on paper, size around A4 (29.8 x 21.2 cm), from http://www.wikipaintings.org/en/leonardo-da-vinci/study-sheet-with-horses
Albrecht Dürer: The hare, 1502, watercolour drawing, from http://www.wikipaintings.org/en/albrecht-durer/hare-1502
Albrecht Dürer: Cervus Lucanus (a beetle), 1505, from http://www.wikipaintings.org/en/albrecht-durer/cervus-lucanus
Wikipedia article “Renaissance”, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renaissance