Renaissance art: architecture, sculpture, painting
The heroism of a tragic hero is the heroism of an extraordinary consciousness. This is an awakening from the myth. This is a battle for human justice. The struggle of the tragic hero against fate was a reflection of the social upheavals of the seventh and fifth centuries. BC for political equality and justice. The tragedies of Aeschylus prepared the ground for democratic change in Athens, were the harbingers of the “golden age” of Pericles.
The free people of ancient cities certainly understood that their country has a fairly high level of spiritual culture. The Greeks had a common idea of the special gift that divine providence had given them. These ideas were embodied in the legend of the titan Prometheus (literally meaning “seer”), who saved humanity from a miserable life and death in general.
In the tragedy of Aeschylus “Prometheus chained”, the titan talks about his services to humanity. The torch of Prometheus symbolizes the great importance of the creative impulse, without which man would not be man.
Rationalism and the creative impulse of the Greeks led to a decisive turn from the religious and mythological perception of the world to a new scientific interpretation. This turn, made by the efforts of many eminent minds, was due to profound changes in the lives of the ancient Greek people. The victory of democracy and the strengthening of the city’s civil society – the polis, the laws of the Salon, and the Great Greek Colonization, the advent of iron tools, and foreign slavery – all made it possible to rethink the world more deeply and scientifically …
Later, the systematizing mind of the Greeks formed the canon of the seven sages, the first of whom was Thales of Miletus (c. 625-547 BC), the founder of Ionic natural philosophy. However, the culmination of the early development of science was Heraclitus of Ephesus (c. 520-460 BC). The essence of the philosophical teachings of Heraclitus lies in the integrity of his developed view of the single nature of the world and its only penetrating pattern. The main thing in his picture of the world is dialectics. This breakthrough ensured the emergence of a great philosophical triad – Socrates, Plato and Aristotle.
It should be noted that by the middle of the V century. BC BC was the allocation of political intellectual elite with a strong influence on the holders of political power. The reforms carried out by Themistocles, Ephialtes, and Pericles required professional politicians, people capable of philosophical thinking.
This explains the popularity of the Sophists in Athens – paid teachers of wisdom. Many prominent politicians from aristocratic circles were closely associated with philosophers, listened to their advice. Anaxagoras had a great influence on Pericles. There was a whole circle of Pericles – an intellectual environment that influenced the development of political line. The majority of citizens have always treated the intellectual elite with distrust and contempt. Yes, even during the life of Pericles, the citizens managed to massacre Anaxagoras and Phidias. Later, these trends intensified. A striking example is the tragic fate of Socrates, doomed to death.
Socrates (470 / 469-399 BC), according to Cicero, “brought philosophy down from heaven to earth.” The call for chaste improvement, consistent rationalism, faith in the power of reason – these are the most attractive features of the teachings of Socrates. Socrates was a mystery to contemporaries, he remains a mystery to this day. He sought to arouse thought and called for knowledge, but asserted, “I know only that I know nothing.” He criticized the polis morality and called himself a gnat that constantly stings a powerful but lazy horse – the Athenian people. Socrates did not hide his aristocratic sympathies and criticized the shortcomings of the democratic system of Athens.
In his last words in court, Socrates told the citizens of Athens: “By condemning me to death, you thought you would get rid of the whistleblower. By killing people, you will not get rid of condemnation. This remedy is unreliable. Another way is much better: without shutting your mouth to others, try to be the best you can be. ”Socrates refused to save his life at the cost of fleeing Athens. Obeying the sentence, he drank the poisonous juice of hemlock.
The disciples of Socrates – Plato (428 or 427-348 or 347 BC), and through him Aristotle (384-322 BC) – created philosophical schools that had and have great influence on formation of ideas. According to I. Kireevsky, Byzantine Orthodoxy is platonic in nature, just as Latin Catholicism is Aristotelian in nature.
The middle of the V century. BC BC – is the highest stage of ancient Greek culture, it is its noon. help me write an lab report for free “In the midday stuffiness,” said Aristotle, “the grasshopper, mad with the sun, cries out.” Greek culture of this time is really a cry of joy coming from the middle of the human race, giving the world ingenious works. The greatest victory of the Greeks in the Greco-Persian wars led to an unprecedented rise in culture.
Monumental construction reached its greatest scale in Athens during the time of Pericles: in less than two decades, the Parthenon was built. Propylaea, Temple of Athena the Victorious, Erechtheion.
The most remarkable examples of Greek architecture that have survived to the present day are the Parthenon and the Erechtheion of the Athenian Acropolis by the architects Ictinus and Calicratus. These masterpieces of world architecture were created under the general direction of Phidias.
The Argo sculptor Polycleitus depicted mostly beautiful guys – ideal citizens. His statues “Spearman” and “Diadumen” are especially famous. Polycleitus in his treatise “Canon” theoretically developed a system of ideal proportions of the human figure, as imagined by the Greeks of the V century. BC BC – the head should be 1/7 of the total height, face and hands – 1/10, foot – 1/6.
One of Pericles’ friends was the beautiful Greek sculptor Phi-dei. His most famous sculpture was a statue of the goddess Athena made of gold, wood and ivory, which stood on the Acropolis in front of the Parthenon. Its height reached 12.5 meters. For the temple of Zeus at Olympia, Phidias carved a statue of Zeus the Olympian sitting on a throne. This sculpture of Phidias belonged to the seven wonders of the world.
Greeks are as much sculptors as poets. We have already noted that antiquity is sculptural. However, it is also corporeal. The image of a naked body is the main plot for sculptors. Ancient sculpture is the art of physical intimacy and instantaneity. The statue of the Greeks was seen as part of nature, as a phenomenon that has already happened. This is the victory of beauty over chaos. However, ancient Greek sculpture is soulless, here the body wins the soul.
Myron, Phidias, Polycleitus have impersonal sculptures, they are full of soulless vitality. The Hellenic temple is also a form of corporeality, it is a “dwelling” for the majestic statues of the gods. The proportion of the temple includes bodily proportionality. “The Greek temple has no size, it has a proportion.” The beauty of the Parthenon is the beauty of “simplicity”, the product of the native land, it is inscribed in the environment, is an integral and integral part of the Acropolis and completes the landscape.
Greek classics give way to the Hellenistic era. This is the era of crop synthesis. The forest world of Greece blew itself up from within with wars. The imperial spirit of Alexander the Great made an attempt to unite the world, taking the tradition of Hellenic culture. For plastic art of III-I centuries. BC BC were not a time of decline. An example is the famous sculptural group “Laokoon” – a work of Rhodes artists Agesandra, Polydorus and Aphinodorus, a masterpiece of Hellenistic sculpture.
The historian Plush the Elder considered it the highest achievement the sculptor had ever achieved. Features of the same style are found in the famous statue of Aphrodite of Milos. The city of Alexandria became a symbol of a new cultural tradition with a Hellenic origin. This city is the last stronghold and repository of ancient wisdom. Hellenism passed the baton to a new tradition in antiquity. The century of Rome is coming, the golden autumn of antiquity.
11/15/2010
Renaissance art: architecture, sculpture, painting
The Renaissance is a truly new era. And the realization that a new era was born, in its distinctive features opposite to the previous era – one of the typical features of the culture of the XV and XVI centuries.
Already in the XIII-early XIV centuries. the view of reality changed, new ideas emerged, which led to radical changes in all spheres of ideology and worldview and which were impossible in the conditions of ancient or medieval society.
They are the result of the fact that as cities grow and bourgeoisie emerges, the foundations of a secular worldview are formed, which is closely within the framework of theological asceticism. E. Garen is undeniably right when he speaks of a “polemical consciousness” of a “clear rush to revolt” of a “program to break with the old world in order to establish other forms of education and communication.”
New intellectual interests, belief in their own strength are incompatible with control over human activities and their way of thinking by the church. Church regulation of life, which in the Middle Ages seemed natural, began to oppress. “Divine knowledge” was gradually supplanted by intellectual interests, which so far fell out of the official university program.
Artists and thinkers of this era are known to have been titans in strength of thought, passion and character, versatility and scholarship. It should be noted that “universal” personalities arose due to the lack of maturity of the new society, in which there was no specialization and standardization of labor. Obviously, the universality and versatility of such masters as Donatello, Leonardo da Vinci, Albrecht Dürer, due not only to their extraordinary talent, but also the conditions of their work and education.
She was to some extent “forced”. Since the division of labor has not yet affected art, artists engaged in everything: the construction of churches, palaces, city fortresses, military vehicles, combining various types of creative work – they were painters, architects, engineers, decorators.
Architecture
XV century (quatrocento) is a century of the birth of a new bourgeois worldview, a century of daring, creative freedom, and a bow to human individuality. This is a century in which purely artistic tasks have been solved.
One of the most prolific was the Florentine school. To the architecture of Florence in the XV century. features of the new style were introduced by Filippo Brunelleschi (1377-1446 pp.). In 1434 he completed the giant dome of the Florentine Cathedral (generally a Gothic building). Later, Brunelleschi and other quattrocento architects turned to the ancient order system.