ARTH154 Study Guide - Midterm Guide: Ghent Altarpiece, Jan Van Eyck, Giovanni Arnolfini
30 Apr 2018
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Notes from Art History Review Session
● Baptistery Competition
● Byzantine Late Gothic
○ 1300’s-1400s early
■ Collapse of constantinople
■ Clash of styles
● Byzantines in italy (making devotional altar pieces for monastic
orders behind where communion services happen)
○ Gold background leaf, halos of gold leaf, hierarchy of scale
--- altar piece
● Transubstantiation (bread and wine become christ)
■ Giotto - Lamentation: focused more on humanism: stylized expressions of
characters, foreshortening like with angels, grief and pity of angels faces,
narrative
● Madonna enthroned - more successful at perspective than
Cimabue’s madonna. Madonna has more of a full figure, the
angels overlap, there’s more of a complete change from gothic era
to renaissance.
● Early Renaissance 15th century
○ individual , and desire to excel
○ Drive toward naturalistic depictions of reality
○ Ospedale de innocenti: module repeating, rational building (humanism) (how
does this building suggest the rational design: corinthian capitals, modules
repeated…. idea of civic duty bc commissioners kept building going
○ Donatello david: POLITICS
○ Really big on donor portraits
○ Masaccio The Tribute Money
■ continuous narrative
■ atmospheric perspective
■ all disciples are grouped together
■ Contraposto orange shirt man
■ Orthogonals point to center which is Jesus (say there is linear perspective
but say where the vanishing point is and why it’s important, and say
where the orthogonals are)
○ Early Renaissance in North
■ Oil paint advantage: fine detail (like in Giovanni Arnolfini and his bride)
■ Descriptive naturalism, domestic settings, contemporary settings for
biblical scenes
■ Jan van Eyck Ghent Altarpiece: polyptych
● Closed and open panels
○ Annunciation in closed panels
■ Donor portraits on ends
■ Modern day setting (making religion relatable
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Document Summary
Byzantines in italy (making devotional altar pieces for monastic orders behind where communion services happen) Gold background leaf, halos of gold leaf, hierarchy of scale. Giotto - lamentation: focused more on humanism: stylized expressions of characters, foreshortening like with angels, grief and pity of angels faces, narrative. Madonna enthroned - more successful at perspective than. Madonna has more of a full figure, the angels overlap, there"s more of a complete change from gothic era to renaissance. Early renaissance 15th century individual , and desire to excel. Ospedale de innocenti: module repeating, rational building (humanism) (how does this building suggest the rational design: corinthian capitals, modules repeated . idea of civic duty bc commissioners kept building going. Orthogonals point to center which is jesus (say there is linear perspective but say where the vanishing point is and why it"s important, and say where the orthogonals are) Oil paint advantage: fine detail (like in giovanni arnolfini and his bride)
