Ancient Egypt Art Representing the Human Body Ancient Greece Art Representing the Human Body

Early representations of the human trunk were for sacred or religious purposes.

The lack of perspective makes Egyptian figures seem contorted to the mod eye. Nevertheless, the artists' system of proportions was remarkably accurate!

Both common people and mythological figures are depicted in Hellenistic sculpture.

The idealization of the homo effigy in Classical Greek art was tremendously influential to later artists, virtually notably artists in the Renaissance.

The Greeks idealized the proportions of the trunk and showed it in athletic poses and heroic acts.

Classical and Hellenistic sculptures were very dynamic, oftentimes showing the figure in dramatic or active poses.

Many of the sculptures from the Parthenon are on view in the British Museum.

The Romans extended the Greek tradition of idealizing the figure, but their portraits were oft more than private and revealing.

To support the Roman empire, the Romans arcadian warlike attributes in many of their sculptures.

Narrative relief sculpture was the paper front end page of Roman times, the place where events were recorded and communicated to the populace.

African and Japanese artists of the Renaissance era often represented the human being form with exaggerated features, but for very different reasons.

The woodblock art of the Uyiko-east period provided an amusing education manual on sexuality. This representation of the body occurred centuries before Western artists explored this theme.

	Ancient Arab republic of egypt

In the last lecture, nosotros learned about the architecture of ancient Egypt. In this lecture, we will begin by examining the Egyptians' treatment and representation of the human body.

To grasp their approach to representing the human figure, we must first acquire about the Egyptians' attitude towards life and decease. In a word, we need to talk about:

Mummification

Have y'all ever wondered why the Egyptians embalmed and mummified corpses? The Egyptians believed that a person's body must be preserved after death, if his soul was to live on in the afterlife. And and so they embalmed their dead kings, wrapping them in layers of textile, and placing the mummy in a series of coffins inside other coffins. (The procedure was like a Russian matrioska doll, in which the smaller wooden doll goes inside a bigger one, and so on.)

The tomb of the pharoah Tutankhamen (1327 BC) is the site of the most famous mummification in history. Tutankhamen's tomb consisted of iii coffins, two outer ones made of wood, and an interior one made of solid gilt. The exterior coffin conformed to the shapes of the king's body, showing Tutankhamen in a rigid frontal pose, with his artillery crossed across his breast.

This frontal pose is ane of two mutual homo poses in Egyptian imagery. In a variation, sometimes the artillery are shown extended downwards by the sides, with the hands closed in tight fists.

Tutankhamen'south mask. The aureate layer of the mask indicates that the king is of a higher social status than his subjects. Tutankhamen wears a stern even so benevolent expression that is plumbing fixtures for a king.

The second pose used frequently by Egyptian artists was a contour pose in which each part of the body was shown from its most characteristic angle. In this type of pose, the head is by and large shown in profile, but with a single eye pointing forward. Similarly, while the torso might be in profile, the shoulders and chest would be seen from the front, so that we can see how the arms are hinged to the body. Artillery and legs are shown sideways, and both anxiety are seen from the inside, to clearly outline the pes from the large toe up.

The feature profile pose can be seen in this reproduction of Egyptian wall paintings.

This approach to depicting the figure in profile can be seen on the wooden etching Portrait Console of Hesy-ra, from Saqquara (c. 2660 BC).

Most Egyptian carvings, paintings, and sculptures depict Pharaohs or loftier-ranking officials and their wives. Nearly of the homo representations are statues recovered from funerary temples or tombs. 1 of the finest is that of Chefren (c. 2500 BC), from Giza. Information technology is carved out of diorite—a very hard stone—and it shows the King seated at his throne.

Proportion

Viewed with modern eyes, the Egyptians' pictures of the figure in profile seem very flat and contorted. The artists had not still developed an approach to portraying the man effigy in perspective from a single betoken of view.

However, information technology should exist noted that the Egyptians did follow a very strict canon of proportion for drawing, painting, or sculpting the human body.

The surface on which a figure was portrayed was divided into a grid of squares, each equivalent to the width of the figure's fist. The Egyptians would then use the length of the fist to keep everything in proportion.

On average, the Egyptian artists calculated that the altitude from the hairline to the ground was xviii fists. The distance from the base of operations of the olfactory organ to the shoulder was found to be ane fist, while from the fingers of a clenched fist to the elbow it was four and half fists. The length of a human foot (from heel to toe) was estimated to be three and a half fists.

Egyptian carving demonstrating proportion. Take your time to prove the Egyptian catechism in this image. With a ruler and pencil, you can count xviii fists in the torso length of the biggest effigy.

Following a system of exact proportions fabricated possible information technology for Egyptian artists to maintain continuity in style for over ii,000 years.

After the civilization of ancient Egypt waned, Ancient Greece emerged to become the birthplace of western civilization, most 2,500 years ago. The great achievements of the Greeks still influence our lives, not only in the arts, but also scientific discipline, philosophy, and politics.

Few Greek paintings accept survived. Our noesis of Greek painting comes mainly from painted pottery, though some mosaics and frescoes remain. We can understand how the Greeks depicted the human torso by examining different historical periods and pottery techniques.

Historic Styles of Pottery

The first mode of pottery to emerge in ancient Hellenic republic was the geometric style (1000-700 BC). The aboriginal Greeks would decorate a vase chosen an amphora and utilize information technology equally a grave marker. Around the side of each amphora, artists would inscribe scenes depicting mourning rituals. In the geometric fashion, the human being body was represented by a flat black triangle for the torso, a round head, and slightly-formed sticks for the arms and legs.

Item from an urn showing the geometrical style.

This style evolved into the orientalizing way (700-600 BC). Nether the influence of Egyptian canons, the effigy became larger and more curvilinear than those in the geometric style. The profile view of the figure was the same as the contorted Egyptian one. Mythological scenes kickoff to appear at this fourth dimension.

The archaic style emerged around 600-480 BC. While the style of drawing the human figure remained consistent, the techniques and materials used began to change. The painting technique used during this period is called black figure. The artists painted figures in black silhouettes with a paste made of clay and water. Details were incised with a precipitous tool, exposing the orange clay below. After the vase was baked, the painted parts remained blackness and the surface of the vase turned reddish-orange.

Exekias (c. 550 BC) is the best-known blackness figure artist. Figures during this period are nonetheless depicted sideways, with the Egyptian frontal heart, but their postures are rendered in a more three-dimensional fashion.

Achilles and Ajax - Exekias. Motion and a lively quality is obtained past the pose of two figures engaged in some sort of board game.

Midway through the archaic menstruum, the classical style (530-400 BC) emerged. This manner involved a red figure technique that was basically the reverse of the black figure technique. Figures were left in crimson against a blackness painted background, and details were painted in black. This arroyo permitted the representation of more than natural forms and the orange clay was close to the actual skin colour of the Greeks.

Item of a classical Greek vessel. The figures are less potent than in the black figure technique, although the scene is nevertheless flat and lacking in perspective.

As the Classical menstruation drew to a close, the well-known Hellenistic mode (450-one BC) took the stage and white-basis vases were introduced. In this style, a launder of white clay formed the background. Figures were then added in black, and boosted colors were sometimes added after the baking process was complete.

Illusionism was in vogue, so figures were depicted as naturalistically equally possible, from any view and in any pose. Zeuxis was a Hellenistic painter who perfected trompe l'oeil (fooling the eye). He was reputed to take painted grapes that were so perfect they fooled a bird who tried to selection them.

Classical Sculpture

Greek sculptors portrayed figures of gods, goddesses, and human beings. Sculptures were produced in every era of Greek civilization, merely in this course, we will focus on the classical and Hellenistic periods of sculpture, when the slap-up masterpieces were produced.

Classical artists (450-323 BC) idealized the human form. Sculpted figures in this flow are usually young, with no trace of physical defect. They are well proportioned and symmetrical in form, but they lack personality and expression. Most of the figures were inspired past athletes, who enjoyed a high rank in the social strata.

Ane of the virtually impressive works of this period is the Discobolus (Discus Thrower, c. 450 BC) past Myron. The original does not exist, merely a Roman marble re-create exists. Discobolus consists of a freestanding statue of an athlete ready to throw the discus. The twisted body of the athlete in perfect residue conveys the essence of the action.

Discobolus (460 - 450 BC) - Myron. This sculpture reflects the fascination of the Greeks with the human figure and their full understatement in representing residuum and perfection in human beefcake and athletic activity.

Another great effigy sculptor of this menstruation is Phidias. He directed the sculpture carvings of the Parthenon (448-432 BC), which has some of the finest sculptures and friezes of all fourth dimension. Each figure portrayed is infused with life and movement, from the mortals to the divinities with their rippling draperies, to the horses that gallop across the frieze.

Praxiteles is another late classical sculptor well known for mastering feminine grace and for the sensuous evocation of the flesh through his art. His most acclaimed statues are Demeter (340-330 BC), Cnidian Aphrodite (350 BC), and Hermes and Babe Dyionisius (340 BC). Lyssipos of Sikyon sculpted mainly youths. He favored thinner bodies and smaller heads. In his Apoxymenos (320 BC) he increased the movement of freestanding sculpture, making the whole appearance of his piece of work lighter and livelier. He is a key artist in the transition from late classical to Hellenistic style.

Hellenistic Sculpture

The Hellenistic period (323-31 BC) started with the expiry of Alexander the Swell and lasted until the Romans took command of Hellenic republic. The sculpture in this flow leaned toward a more than expressive and dramatic style. Figures in the sculpture began to exhibit extremes of emotions: pain and pleasure, anguish and sweetness, withered old age and the flower of youth, victorious athletes and those who have been crushed, and virtually of all, imperial battles.

This dramatic consequence can exist seen in The Altar from Zeus in Pergamon (164-156 BC). The grouping of figures in the sculpture represents a battle between the Titans and the Gods. The scene rages with terrible violence, frenzy, and pathos. Information technology is very different from the harmony and refinement of early Greek sculpture.

Some other Hellenistic masterpiece is the Nike or Winged Victory of Samothrace (190 BC). It depicts a winged goddess descending from the skies. The drapery of the figure's dress evokes the pressure of the wind as she comes down from the heavens. Her stretched out wings point that she hasn't yet settled to earth.

Winged Victory of Samothrace (Discovered 1863) . Though the body is not twisted every bit in the Discobolus sculpture, there is a sense of motility and action provided past the wonderful etching of the figure's robes.

Probably the greatest example of Hellenistic sculpture is the larger than life sized marble Laocoon and His Two Sons (175-150 BC). What remains today is a Roman adaptation. Information technology depicts an incident from the end of the Trojan State of war in which Laocoon and his sons are devoured past a pair of giant serpents. The sculptors were Athanodorus, Hagesandros, and Polydorus of Rhodes.

Roman sculptors and painters (509 BC - 337 AD) borrowed from the Greek artists in their idealization of human form. However, Roman artists went farther in creating realistic sculptural portraits that revealed the individual personalities of their subjects.

The about popular subject area matter for Roman artists was the important events of the day, and the most important medium was sculpture depicting figures in a narrative relief. Painting was used for decorative purposes; big wall paintings showing garden landscapes, still-life images, mythology, and everyday life scenes adorned the houses of wealthy Romans.

In this section, we will concentrate on the written report of sculptural portraits and narrative relief, areas of Roman art that employed the homo body as their chief subject matter.

Portraiture

One of the most characteristic types of Roman portrait was the homo caput discrete from the torso, or bust. Busts were usually carved in marble, oft from a wax mask, so that even the finer physiognomic details were preserved.

Bust of a Roman youth from 40 AD.

Why was the bust so popular? Portraits of upper-course Romans were popular throughout the whole Roman empire. This reflects a patriarchal Roman custom that dates from artifact. At the death of the caput of the family, a waxen mold of his face up was preserved in a special family altar. In the 1st century BC, Roman families began to demand to have facial portraits duplicated in marble.

The "father image" spirit tin can be establish in the life-size marble Portrait of a Roman (80 BC). The figure shows an elderly man. His facial wrinkles are true to life, and the carver has treated them with a selective emphasis in order to bring out their distinctive personality: stern, rugged, and devoted to duty. It is a father image of frightening say-so.

Portraits of women became popular around the 1st century AD, when women began to enjoy increasing emancipation, retain their own legal identity, accept independent wealth, and participate in politics and the arts. The Portrait of a Flavian Lady (90 AD) shows a immature woman with a fashionably curled coiffure that frames the softly carved face. Her caput is gracefully tilted and the glance of her wide eyes is gentle.

While everyday people were often captured in portrait, the most important subject of Roman portraiture was the emperor himself. In that location were two major ways of depicting the emperor: freestanding sculptures, and the equestrian monument, a blazon of regal portrait invented past the Romans.

One of the finest freestanding sculptures of an emperor is Augustus of Prima Porta (1st century Advertizing). It is slightly larger than life-sized (6 foot, viii inches tall) and it shows Augustus addressing his troops as a general. Though Augustus was 76 years former when he died, the statue represents a self-confident, dominating, and youthful figure. Nosotros can perceive the Greek influence of idealizing the human effigy in this marble statue.

The nearly impressive equestrian monument is a bronze statue of Marcus Aurelius (164-166 AD). In this statue, the emperor is unarmed and his right arm is extended in the conventional gesture of an orator. Both domination and conquest are implied past equestrian iconography. The horse and rider are depicted in a highly illusionistic way, with veins, skin folds, and muscles all visible.

Statue of Marcus Aurelius. Only emperors were depicted in this majestic mode. I imagine Aurelius entering Rome from a successful campaign, greeted by his cheering citizens.

Later in the 4th century, the emperor Constantine (the kickoff Christian emperor) was depicted in a colossal marble statue (313 AD). The monumental head solitary is eight foot, 6 inches alpine! Everything is so out of proportion to the scale of ordinary men that we feel crushed by its immensity (probably an intended reaction). This piece is called superhuman non merely because of its size, just likewise considering it is an paradigm of accented majestic majesty. In the stop, the colossal marble tells us more virtually Constantine's view of himself than about his bodily physical appearance.

Narrative Relief

The focus on government and the military power is also present in the Romans' use of narrative relief, simply the presentation is quite dissimilar.

In Roman guild, the reliefs on commemorative architecture such equally arches, columns, or altars, functioned somewhat like war reports in a paper today. In the exceptional Trajan's Cavalcade in Rome (114 Advertizement), a detailed chronicle of an emperor's campaigns is carved in a unique manner that is almost motion-picture show-like. The documentary narrative of the battles is carved into stone, starting from the bottom of the column and winding around the column all the way to its top, 128 anxiety high.

Trajan's Column - Apollodorus of Damascus. The spiral composition reminds us of a pic ringlet. The impressive level of detail shows the states how important historic monuments of this kind were to keeping the people of Rome informed.

The cavalcade depicts no fewer than 2500 figures in an exquisite low relief, capturing moment-past-moment the fighting and conquering. It is a true cinematographic feel. In dissimilarity to the solemnity and stillness of Roman portraiture, narrative reliefs depict the human body in full action and vitality.

Other important works of commemorative architecture of the period includes the Ara Pacis or Altar of Peace in Rome (xiii-9 BC) and the Arch of Titus also in Rome (81 AD).

For more on the human being figure, let's discuss the following work, which you may already exist somewhat familiar with.

We turn our attention now to Africa, where of import man figure artwork emerged around the aforementioned fourth dimension as that of the aboriginal Greeks and Romans.

Sculpture is the best-known African art grade. The main materials used by African artists are wood, iron, clay, bronze, ivory, and textiles. The human being body is the main subject matter, and many African sculptures share the same characteristics: heads that are enlarged, big stomachs, arms held to the side, eyes in the frontal position, weight equally distributed on both anxiety, and protruding navels. The head is often exaggerated because it is considered the center of character and emotion.

African artists through the ages combined naturalistic and geometric shapes to produce a recognizable human body. They also distorted human features and limbs in guild to achieve dramatic furnishings. African sculptures are religiously empowered—they are rarely displayed in public and are stored in shrines, buried, or placed in containers. African fine art was intended to not only please the centre, just also to uphold moral values.

The longest surviving African sculptures are figures in terra cotta, dating back to the 5th century BC (gimmicky to ancient Greece'south classical menses). They are Nok sculptures (named for their tribe) from northwest Nigeria. Terracotta figures take as well been found in Ife (Nigeria) and Mali, dating from the 12th to the 15th century Ad.

A terra cotta Nok sculpture. The emphasis of the caput creates a asymmetry in the figure. However, the statue enjoys a grace typical of African sculpture.

Nearly wooden carvings have been lost throughout the years, considering of the perishable attributes of wood and the fatal piece of work of termites. Withal, some tribes mastered the bronze and metal casting technique. During the 15th century in Benin, powerful bronze and copper heads and life-sized masks were produced. They are surprisingly realistic.

Much later and halfway effectually the world, a very unlike style and technique of representing the homo figure began to develop. During the Edo period in Japan (1600-1868), Uyiko-e art flourished. Uyiko-e is the art of "the floating world of pleasures." The most commonly used technique was woodblock printing that depicted the daily life of the mutual man. Among these everyday images, artists inspired by the pleasance and theater quarters of Edo (at present Tokyo) produced romantically intimate and sexually explicit images called Shunga (spring pictures) or Makure-eastward (pillow pictures).

These pleasure-seeking woodblocks were used to inspire and instruct in the art of dearest. Many forms of man sexuality were portrayed, though Shunga woodblocks do not portray actors or prostitutes. Instead, they show married couples of all ages, shy and inexperienced youngsters, cheating wives and husbands, liaisons across class boundaries, and same-sex lovers.

As dresses were nigh identical for women as for men, the sexual differences in Shunga prints are explicitly stressed in oversized and minutely depicted genitals. Other parts of the trunk (with the exception of face and legs) were usually curtained under superb folds of fabric. Many Shunga have comical texts and dialogues accompanying the graphics, which makes the genre essentially humorous.

The Adonis Establish (1815) - Katsushika Hokusai. Hokusai emphasizes the ballocks by showing them in extreme item, while depicting other parts of the torso in a less elaborate manner.

Shunga erotic pictures and volume illustrations were enjoyed by all ranks of club, and the woodblock printing technique fabricated information technology possible to mass-produce them at depression cost. I recollect the popularity of pornography, the graphic novel, and manga anime in modern Japan is, to some extent, the issue of the popularity of Shunga books.

Many Shunga woodblocks were unsigned by the artists, but among its famous artists we can count Hishikawa Moronobu (died c. 1695), Suzuki Harunobu (1725-1770), and Kitagawa Utamaro (1754-1806). They all produced colour and monochrome woodblock prints, only sometimes they would hand-colour their pictures.

Da Vinci studied most every subject—beefcake, astronomy, phytology, geology, geometry, you name it! He was the original "Renaissance man."

Dutch and Flemish painters of the Renaissance used oil painting to portray nature in meticulous, naturalistic item.

Van Eyck's phrase "As skillful as I tin" is an inspiring motto for any artist.

In the Renaissance, the figure of the creative person himself became a more popular subject, through self portrait and also by inclusion in paintings of other people.

Bosch was among the first artists to show the human body disfigured and disarticulated, literally in pieces.

Mannerist artists showed the body in elongated, exaggerated, elegant, complex, and twisted poses.

"El Greco" ways "the Greek," the popular name for Dominikos Theotokópulos. His piece of work inspired 20th century artists such as Picasso.

Dramatic poses and compositions are characteristic of Bizarre sculpture.

Study Carvaggio if yous need a lesson in contrast.

Realistic scenes featuring ordinary people were also characteristic of Baroque painting.

The fleshy figures in Ruben'due south paintings testify how changing standards of beauty are reflected in fine art.

Rembrandt was the king of the self-portrait; he painted hundreds of them.

Mod sculptors frequently reacted against Classical ideals of the figure past using imperfect models in imperfect poses.

Abstract sculptors of the 20th century attempted to reduce the body to its essentials parts—or to convey the essence of motion.

In the 20th century, the self portrait—portraying the artist and his or her experience—in one case again became a principal focus of art.

In the last lecture, we looked at the representation of nature in the High Renaissance (1490-1527). While nature was important in the Renaissance, the menstruum is very much dominated past fine art representing the human figure. Masters such as Da Vinci, Michelangelo, and Raphael, each forged private styles while taking the classical Roman treatment of the trunk and the canons of proportion into account.

Perspective theory was to become the most of import new technique of the era. The study of the human figure was so precise that artists could draw a portrait of a person from whatever bending. For example, Michelangelo's painting at the Sistine Chapel must exist appreciated from beneath—a very difficult bending for a painter. Yet all the human figures seem impressively live because they have naturalistic proportions and the laws of perspective are perfectly practical.

Leonardo Da Vinci

Leonardo Da Vinci (1452-1519) was ane of the most versatile geniuses in history. A main painter, Da Vinci as well studied anatomy, astronomy, botany, geology, geometry, and eyes. He designed the plane, the parachute, and the catapult. He dissected human bodies and pioneered the written report of embryology. He was an skilful in human proportions. 1 of his most widely recognized drawings is the Vitruvian Homo (1492). In this drawing, he demonstrates the argument by a Roman architect Vitruvius that a homo should fit perfectly in a circle and a foursquare.

Vitruvian Man (1492) - Leonardo Da Vinci. Leonardo'south gesture of plumbing fixtures a human being body into geometric shapes reflects his desire for a scientific explanation for every natural phenomenon.

One of Da Vinci's main contributions to painting was to develop a technique called sfumatto. In Italian, this literally means "vanished in smoke."

Sfumatto can be seen in certain lighting conditions whereby fragile graduations of light and shade grade a blurred outline. Da Vinci achieved information technology in oil painting through the use of glazes, producing a misty, dream-similar effect. Nosotros tin run across this technique in Da Vinci's most famous painting, the Mona Lisa (1503-1505). The pic shows a woman staring directly at the observer, with a mysterious expression: half smiling, one-half heedless. Leonardo created parallels betwixt the human being figure and the landscape, inviting comparisons of mankind to soil, bone to rocks, and blood to waterways.

Virgin of the Rocks (1506-1508) - Leonardo Da Vinci. You lot can see the sfumatto technique in the face and trunk contours of the characters. This technique gave a soft quality to the skin texture.

Leonardo Da Vinci's masterpieces include Virgin of the Rocks (1483), The Last Supper (1495-1498), Madonna and Child with St. Anne (1503-1506), and Woman with an Ermine (1483-1490).

Michelangelo Buonarroti

Similar Da Vinci, Michelangelo Buonarroti (1475-1564) was an anatomy expert. He was a painter, a sculptor, an architect, and a poet. His first monumental sculpture is the marble Pietà (1498-1500), which depicts a young Mary mourning the dead Christ. This sculpture has a unique rhythm guided past Christ'southward position and Mary's drapery work. Michelangelo had the chapters to pb the eye of the observer throughout the whole marble statue, so that viewers do non miss a single detail.

Pietà (1498- 1499) - Michelangelo. Michelangelo guides our eye through the statue, starting at the virgin's face, jumping to Christ's agonizing facial gesture, following his weakened body all the way to his feet, and catastrophe on the folds of the virgin'due south elaborate article of clothing.

In 1501, Michelangelo was commissioned by the urban center of Florence to carve a marble of David. The result is the masterpiece David (1501-1504), an impressive etching of heroic scale, depicting a young David in an alert pose, ready for boxing. His hands are large in proportion to the residuum of his body, and his neck and torso muscles and veins are strained, giving him an appearance of ability and grandeur.

The statue of David consolidated Michelangelo'southward fame, and he was summoned by the Pope to paint the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel in the Vatican. This was to be his most impressive work. It took Michelangelo four years to finish the frescoes (1508-1512). It is said that during this time Michelangelo shut himself up in the chapel and worked lying and standing on scaffolding he designed. He even used live male models to programme the female person characters. This gigantic work (45' 10 138') represents images from the One-time Testament, including the famous cosmos of Adam. It is said that Leonardo and Michelangelo competed with each other to exist considered the leading artist in Florence.

Raphael

Built-in Raffaello Sanzio (1483-1520), Raphael was a painter and an builder. He is well known for painting altarpieces, frescoes of historical and mythological scenes, and portraits. His most popular works are his gentle paintings of Virgin and Child, such as Madonna of the Meadow (1505) and Madonna of the Goldfinch (1506). Every bit an builder, he directed the structure of the St. Peter's Basilica in Rome. His portrait of Pope Julius 2 (1511-1512) captures the pope'south personality, making information technology a psychological portrait, rather than an icon of ability.

Portrait of Julius Two - Raphael. Raphael depicts the Pope in a meditative attitude with a deep sadness in his eyes. The passing of time is implied not merely by his white beard, but besides past the slight inclination of his head.

Raphael mastered Leonardo's sfumatto technique, and he knew how to attain a sense of depth without upsetting the rest of a design. This can be seen in Schoolhouse of Athens (1509-1511), a fresco painted for the Pope's apartments at the Vatican. In it, he depicted not but Classical Greek philosophers, but also portrayed artistic personalities of the time such as Michelangelo and Leonardo. He even included a cocky-portrait in the limerick. In his last works, such as The Nymph Galatea (1512-1514), Raphael shifted towards a style of greater emotion and motility that would influence the side by side generation of Italian artists.

During the 15th and 16th centuries, artists in countries similar Germany, holland, and Flanders (role of modern day Kingdom of belgium), shared the Italian preference for representation of three-dimensional space and lifelike figures. Withal, they were less affected past the classical revival. Artists in northern Europe continued to work primarily in a Gothic tradition of figure painting, which they integrated with elements of Renaissance style.

Meanwhile in Italian republic, panel paintings were mainly executed in tempera until the 16th century, Dutch and Flemish painters preferred oil paint because it satisfied their interest in meticulous, naturalistic particular. This approach characterizes much of the 15th and 16th century northern European painting.

Albrecht Dürer

Albrecht Dürer (1471-1528) was the about famous painter and printmaker in the history of German art. A scholar and an writer, he published books on geometry and perspective and the measurements of the man body. Between the ages of thirteen and 40, Dürer painted and drew a remarkable series of revealing self-portraits. The most famous i is Self-Portrait (1500), where he appears solemnly staring straight into the viewer's eye. The portrait has a Christ-like idealization of the features that asserts his sense of authority.

In his engraving Adam and Eve (1504), Dürer uses a biblical field of study equally an excuse for displaying ii platonic nudes. Pare, muscles, and hair are wonderfully represented, though the ballocks are strategically covered by twigs from nearby trees.

In 1514, Dürer fabricated a portrait of his mother. The drawing, a black chalk on paper, is a truthful report of a worn old woman. The detail of the wrinkles and saggy skin may stupor us at first, but the drawing has a tremendous sincerity. The beauty of the drawing does non lie in the beauty of its subject, just in the true rendering of human aging.

In his engravings and watercolors, Dürer also studied nature: animals and landscapes. He devoted much labor to his works. Though we are studying the human body in this lecture, I want to betoken out Dürer's watercolor A Young Hare (1502). Every tiny hair and whisker is carefully recorded. It is an excellent example of his loving patience towards all of his subjects.

A Young Hare (1502) - Albrecht Dürer. Dürer imparts tri-dimensionality to this uncomplicated paradigm past slightly shading the flooring beside the hare. Note the attention put into every brush stroke.

Jan Van Eyck

Jan van Eyck (1380?-1441) also achieved stunning realistic effects through his mastery of the oil painting technique. Some scholars even say he invented this technique. He was certainly one of the kickoff artists to adopt oil as his main medium.

Amongst his masterpieces we can count the Ghent Altarpiece (completed in 1432) and The Crucifixion; The Terminal Judgment (1430-1425). Information technology is believed he collaborated with Hubert van Eyck, probably his brother, in the realization of these art pieces.

Many of van Eyck's paintings include a disguised symbolism. The realistic objects in the pictures often have a deeper meaning. In his oil The Arnolfini Portrait (1434), a young merchant and his bride are exchanging nuptials vows. The anniversary is taking place in the couple's room; a single candle burns in the chandelier as a symbol of unity. Their shoes are off to remind them of the holy ground equally they commutation vows. The piffling domestic dog represents fidelity in marriage. In a pocket-sized mirror on the back wall, two persons are reflected: the witnesses, one of them the artist himself. Over the mirror the phrase "Johannes de eyck fuit hic" (January van Eyck was here) can confirm this.

The Arnolfini Portrait (1434) - Jan van Eyck. Van Eyck had the capacity to create many unlike textures in his oil painting. The pare quality is totally different from the velvet of the dresses and the hairy fur of the domestic dog.

My favorite painting of all time is a van Eyck painting called Homo in a Blood-red Turban (1433) and scholars say information technology may be a self-portrait. I am convinced this small (x' x 7') but powerful painting is van Eyck's self-portrait. He has a stern merely piercing gaze, and his lips are tightly sealed as if something is worrying him. The red turban on his head is masterfully executed. But what really fascinates me about this motion-picture show is the aureate frame painted around it, creating an illusion of a real wooden frame, with the words engraved (actually painted) on it. It reads "Als Ich Kan" which tin be loosely translated as "As good as I can."

When I lived in London, every fourth dimension I had an artistic block or serious doubts almost my practice, I would go to the National Gallery to wait at this painting. You can see information technology hither. I would look at Mr. van Eyck's worried expression, and I would remind myself that even the masters suffer from insecurities or doubts regarding the work. I also told myself that every bit long as "I did it equally all-time equally I could" everything would be okay.

Rogier Van Der Weyden

Rogier van der Weyden (1399/1400-1463), known equally Rogier, was strongly influenced by van Eyck, although his human figures are longer and larger in relation to their spatial setting. The painter'southward Descent from the Cantankerous (1435) is a set of wooden panels depicting a biblical scene. The crowd around Jesus and the fainting Mary fills up the space, leaving no room for whatever kind of background.

In Saint Luke Depicting the Virgin (1435), Rogier captures the psychological aspect of the mother-child relationship. Mary looks downwards at Christ while she chest feeds him, while he gazes up at her. His physical pleasure in breastfeeding is revealed by his upturned toes and extended fingers.

Hans Holbein

Slightly subsequently Rogier'due south time came Hans Holbein, also known every bit Hans Holbein the younger (1497?-1543). Holbein ranks amidst the world'south greatest portrait painters. He portrayed many personalities of his time, notably the Dutch scholar Desiderius Erasmus (1523).

Portrait of Desiderius Erasmus (1532) - Hans Holbein. Erasmus is portrayed by Holbein every bit a noble character, with his scholarship represented by his books. Notation the careful work on the details in the face details and hands.

In 1532, he became court painter to King Henry Eight of England, and in 1540 he illustrated Henry VIII, reinforcing the King's stiff personality through his moving-picture show. Fusing style with content, Holbein captures Henry's wealth, ability, self-confidence, determination, and political acumen in this motion-picture show.

Hiëronymous Bosch and Pieter Brueghel

Bosch (1450-1516) is i of the almost puzzling artists, taking a far turn from the artists nosotros just discussed. He has been called the "creator of devils" due to the outlandish alien creatures that populate his work. Bosch is the first creative person who disarticulated and disfigured the man body. Though most of his subject area affair is religious, he combines it with alchemist symbols, popular literature, Dutch proverbs and puns, astrology, and witchcraft.

Bosch's favored format was the triptych (a three-paneled painting), which he populated with malformed people, fantastic demons, distorted animals, large and oddly-shaped pieces of food and, sometimes, unidentifiable objects. Bosch's largest and near complex work is the triptych The Garden of Earthly Delights (1504). The left panel depicts the Garden of Eden, God presenting it to Adam and Eve. The central panel shows the world earlier the Flood. In this panel, humans are committing all kinds of folly and stupid acts, also engaging in sexual pursuits. Decadence is imminent. The right console is hell. Humans are tortured in all possible ways past a legion of animal-like demons. An arrow pierces two ears with no head. Chaos reigns.

Hell (role of The Garden of Earthly Delights ) (1504) - Hiëronymous Bosch. The complication of the composition makes Bosch a bang-up story teller. He guides our heart from the frontal and lower plane upwardly to the upper, darkest part of the picture.

Pieter Brueghel (1525-1569), or Brueghel the Elder, was a follower of Bosch. In his paintings instead of idealized humans, yous tin see normal people: drunks, farmers, blind-men and gossiping women. His works include Hunters in the Snow (1565), The Peasants' Wedding ceremony (1565), and Blind Leading the Bullheaded (1569).

The Harvesters (c. 1560) - Pieter Brueghel. Normal people grow in this Brueghel painting; so normal, they are depicted eating and sleeping as well as working.

If classical Renaissance symmetry created a natural, stable feeling for the viewer, Mannerist art (1520-1600) did quite the reverse. The main subject in Mannerism is the human body, which is often elongated, exaggerated, elegant, and arranged in complex and twisted poses. A sense of instability in figures and objects is created. Spaces tend to be crowded and compressed, classical proportions are rejected, and odd juxtapositions of size, infinite, and color frequently occur.

Famous Italian mannerist painters include Jacopo da Pontorno (1494-1557), who started experimenting with contorted poses and contrasting colors; Parmigiano (1503-1540), who stated that there is no single right reality and that distortion is as natural as the appearance of things; Angolo Bronzino (1503-1572), whose paintings were very sexually charged; Jacopo Tintoretto (1518-1594), who had both anti-classical just elegant effects in his work; and Sofonisba Anguissola (1532-1625), the start renowned female artist since the heyday of Ancient Hellenic republic.

Self-Portrait (1554) - Sofonisba Anguissola. Sofonisba depicts herself in a girlish way, past enhancing the size of her caput relative to her body, and enlarging her blue eyes, which stare at us with a kind of innocent glare.

Mannerism also was plant in sculpture. Benvenuto Cellini (1500-1571) created elaborate and richly-ornamented utilitarian objects, such equally the golden Saltcellar of Francis I (1543), as well every bit oversized bronzes, such equally the statue of Perseus (1545-1555). Gianbologna (1529-1608) is known for his painting Mercury, a small bronze depicting the god stretched upwards as if he is flying.

The most famous Mannerist artist is El Greco (1541-1614). He was born in Crete just did near of his work in Spain. His paintings are done with a mystical fervor and exalted emotion. His singular style consists of over-elongated figures, acid colors, and swirls of unreal atmospheric events. His best works include The Burial of Count Orgaz (1586), The Resurrection of Christ (1597-1610), and Laocoon (1610-1614).

Baptism of Christ (1590s) - El Greco. Greco'south figures are distorted and seem to exist floating in space. The swirly characteristics of their bodies gives us a sense of their loss of gravity in the water.

Slightly overlapping and post-obit the Mannerist period is the Baroque period. The Bizarre era started effectually 1600 in Italy, spread through Europe, and lasted until effectually 1750 in areas of Germany and Austria.

Baroque artists rejected the virtuosity and the stylization of the figure of the Mannerists, simply absorbed their use of chiaroscuro technique and their theatrical effects. Baroque art achieved a new kind of naturalism, based in the straight study of nature.

Dramatic action, violent narrative, contrasting color and lite, rich textures, and asymmetry were widely used in Baroque artists' compositions.

Baroque art was as well strongly influenced by the historical context: the perceived decadence of the Holy Roman Empire, the colonization of the "uncivilized" world, rationalism, and the discovery that the sun is the center of the solar system. Allow'southward encounter some of the Baroque artists.

Italian Baroque Artists

Gianlorenzo Bernini (1598-1680) was the most famous Baroque sculptor. His life-size white-marble David (1623) represents a David in full action. The fighter is leaning to his right and stretching his sling, while looking over his shoulder at Goliath. The body forms a dynamic diagonal, which extends from caput to human foot.

The diagonal plane is a recurrent manner in Baroque sculpture and painting. In contrast to Michelangelo's David, this statue nigh seems to move; the figure's facial expression indicates he is in the middle of a boxing. Looking over his shoulder, he seems enlightened of the presence of Goliath, expanding the sculptural space psychologically also as formally. This is a Baroque technique for involving the spectator in the work.

Apollo and Daphne (1622-1625) - Gianlorenzo Bernini. The arms of the characters make a clear diagonal that gives movement to the composition, at the very moment when Daphne is turning into a bay tree.

Among Baroque painters, Caravaggio (1573-1610) was leader. He had an innovative style of working direct on the canvas without making preliminary drawings. Caravaggio'due south painting appealed to the ordinary observer and was not aimed at the elite. He studied nature and was able to render realistic images of the body. Far from painting classical, idealized bodies, nonetheless, he would pigment everyday, imperfect humans in a "perfect" illusionistic way. His violent contrast of calorie-free and shade is called tenebrism. His subject field matter ranges from biblical scenes to themes of a homoerotic nature. His masterpieces include Boy with a Basket of Fruit (1594), The Calling of Saint Mathew (1599-1600), and Doubting Thomas (1602-1603).

The Calling of Saint Matthew (1599-1600) - Caravaggio. Tenebrism is accomplished by dramatically shading the scene to heighten the effect of the light entering through the window. The ray of low-cal from the window points straight to the main grapheme: a crouched St. Matthew.

Artemisia Gentileschi (1593-1653) was one of the start female person artists to sally as a meaning personality in Europe. She was ane of Caravaggio's followers, called the Caravaggisti. She is known for her pictures of heroic women and violent scenes—they contain an inner drama that is unique to her. Her nigh famous painting is Judith Slaying Holofernes (1614-1620).

Baroque Outside of Italian republic

Peter Paul Rubens (1577-1640) was a Flemish artist known for his sensual delineation of the homo body and bright colour palettes. Consistent with the beauty standards of his time, Ruben's characters are total and fleshy. The men in his paintings are generally overweight or take exaggerated musculature. Women are round and generous in flesh; by today's standards, we might say they are slightly overweight. Children are chubby with red cheeks.

Self-Portrait with Isabella Brant in the Honeysuckle Bower (1610) - Peter Paul Rubens. Ruben'southward fascination for detail can be seen in his depiction of the muscles of his crossed legs, and in the different textures of the fabrics.

In Ruben'south painting Venus and Adonis (1635), Venus is depicted nude, in an agile and sensual pose. She is stretched forming a diagonal, trying to convince her lover to stay. Rubens emphasized her generous breasts and rippling, dimpled mankind. She has a circular belly and aplenty hips. She even has a double mentum! For Rubens, such total figures reflected the Flemish equation of fleshiness with prosperity.

Rembrandt van Rijn (1606-1669) was born in The netherlands. Rembrandt is ane of my favorite artists, partly because he produced an astonishing number of self-portraits (effectually 100 are known). I like to look at them and imagine what was passing through his head at the moment. No other creative person has left such an account of the transformation of age, physical and emotional. He was a prolific etcher, drawer, and painter. Rembrandt was a genius at manipulating light and night, which he used to create the characters of his figures. For me, he is the father of psychological portrayal—he would actually analyze the personality of his discipline and bring it out in the portrait...starting with himself!

Cocky Portrait (c. 1660) - Rembrandt. The Dutch main painted more than than 100 self portraits.

Rembrandt was an proficient in facial expressions and gestures. His subject area matter included biblical scenes, mythology, portraiture, landscapes, creature studies, history, nudes, and everyday life scenes. His works include The Blinding of Samson (1636), Anatomy Lesson of Professor Tulp (1632), and the famous Night Watch (1642) that was brutally slashed with a knife by a mad person in the 1990s.

Nighttime Watch (1642) - Rembrandt. Though this picture is nighttime, Rembrandt illuminates every face in the pic. Annotation that the vivid grapheme on the left hand side is the just female person in the group.

Diego Velazquez (1599-1660) was the greatest Spanish painter of the Bizarre period. Velazquez was the court painter of Philip IV. At court, Velazquez painted the royal family, every bit well equally dwarves, jokers, and servants who served at the palace. He portrayed both the cute and the ugly.

The painter'due south monumental masterpiece Las Meninas (1656) shows his use of realism and his ability to control the viewer'southward gaze through the composition. On the left side, nosotros see the painter himself working on a sheet, from which nosotros only come across the backside of the canvas. In the centre, Princess Margarita has entered the room with her maids and entertainers. She seems to arrogantly despise a fiddling beverage that is being offered to her. A dog lies peacefully on the right side, while a picayune person kicks him. In the back of the room, an open door lets u.s. see a waiting nobleman, or perhaps another retainer. Beside this door, a mirror reflects the King and Queen, who are probably the subject of Velazquez's canvas.

Las Meninas (1656) - Velazquez. Note how every single character in the moving picture is engaged in some sort of activeness, giving the painting a unique dynamic quality and a sense of vitality.

Velazquez created an illusion of space both within and beyond the painting. By including the reflection of the King and Queen, who would be standing where the viewers stand, he includes the space in front of the canvass as part of the limerick. He too makes a tribute to the very art of painting, by including himself in action. Another i of his great works is the Surrender of Breda and Venus with a Mirror (1648).

We'll now turn our attention back to sculpture, exploring some of the ways in which mod sculptors have represented the human trunk.

We first with the famous Auguste Rodin (1840-1917), a French sculptor who revolutionized the working methods of sculptors. He was primarily a modeler, preferring to work with clay or wax rather than carving in rock. Rodin would go out surfaces unpolished and crude, showing traces of the instruments used to model. He was interested in the experimental process of sculpting, rather than the finished work.

Rodin would use unprofessional models in unprofessional poses. His figures had a great emotional intensity and explored a wide range of man passions. Their inner feelings were expressed by gestures that emphasized different parts of the body. Many of his figures are incomplete or fragmented: a torso, a head, or just hands.

My favorite Rodin slice, and one of the best known, is The Thinker (1879-1902). Information technology depicts a seated man, hand holding his chin, carried away by deep thoughts. It is a large muscular body that gives a sense of contained energy.

The Thinker (1876-1902) - Rodin. Notice how Rodin is able to imply the pose of the feet without having to detail every last nerve and musculus. Also notation how unlike this texture is from the rock the subject is seated on.

While Rodin was inspired much by the sculptor'south process and by specific feelings and gestures, Henri Matisse (1869-1954) was inspired by ethnographic sculpture. In his Reclining Nude I Aurora (1907), we tin can perceive a well-defined nude, despite the bulging distortions of the anatomy. He manipulates the human figure to obtain an intricate rhythm and a muscular tension.

Taking a different approach to figure representation was Humberto Boccioni (1882-1916), part of the Futurist move. In his running effigy entitled Unique Forms of Continuity in Space (1913), he attempts to stand for not the human form itself, but the imprint of its motion in the surrounding space. The result is a quasi-robot homo, with flares protruding from the limbs that give the sense of movement.

Henry Moore (1898-1986) was an English language creative person with an abstract approach. His sculptures are based on the homo form, though they are abstract expressions of the body. He did not try to make a body in stone, but a stone which suggests a body. His figures are composed of flowing convex and concave curves that create rich contrasts of light and nighttime. His surfaces are polished smooth. I think of cliff or rock formations when I look at his work. A good example of how he treated the homo figure is his rock Family Group (1955).

Three Piece Reclining Effigy Draped (1976) - Henry Moore. In Moore's abstruse piece of work, the polished surface of the sculpture resembles the peel and though a consummate human body is not depicted, we can recognize a neck, an arm, and a leg. It can exist institute on the campus of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Alberto Giacometti (1901-1966) concentrated on human being figures afterwards 1945 (the end of the World State of war Two). These modeled and after cast figures are small, sparse, and elongated, every bit if they could disappear in whatever moment. They have crude surfaces and blank, expressionless faces. Whether single figures or in groups, the sculptures are arranged to propose a sense of loneliness, isolation, and existential feet.

To wrap upward our look at the human form in fine art history, nosotros'll briefly explore some Expressionist pieces that practise not necessarily represent specific figures at all. Rather than present a realistic or abstract figure, the 20th century abstract Expressionists put their own homo experience into their piece of work, mirroring human emotions and efforts, though non necessarily human forms.

An of import variant of Abstract Expressionism was activeness painting. Action painters developed characteristic methods of applying the paint. They dripped, splattered, sprayed, rolled, and threw pigment onto their canvases. The concluding image was a reflection of the creative person'due south body activity in the creative process.

Jackson Pollock (1912-1956) is the all-time-known activeness painter. From 1947 onward, he used a dripping technique to produce his paintings. He engaged his whole body in the deed of painting. He would stretch the canvass on the floor, instead of vertically, and he would control the drips with the movement of his arm and torso. He would frequently get out chance to accept its course, just there is an underlying chromatic organization in his canvases. His habit of cropping finished canvases adds to their dynamic quality, for the lines announced to move in and out the picture plane.

Fall Rhythm (Number xxx) (1950) - Jackson Pollock. The free energy in Pollock'south paintings is elemental; it can exist compared to the forces of nature.

Other notable action painters are Franz Kline (1910-1962), Lee Krasner, and Wilem de Kooning.

Operation Art

Too chosen live art, or in some occasions "happenings," performance art originated in the early 20th century with the Dadaist performances in the Cabaret Voltaire (which we will report in a later lecture). However it was not until the 1960s that it exploded equally an art tendency with the action of the Fluxus group.

Fluxus was a group of intellectuals organized past George Maciunas. It included musicians like John Muzzle, artists like Yoko Ono, and video artists like Nam June Paik. Fluxus organized events that incorporated literature, music, theater, dance, video, and other materials. In a reaction to minimalism, artists sought to affirm their presence once over again, by condign, in event, living works of art.

Farbtest, Die Rote Fahne ll (video installation) - Felix Gmelin. In this contemporary performance slice, Gmelin re-enacts an action made by his father 30 years agone, by running with a blood-red flag through the streets of a city.

In functioning art, a "performance" could consist of one person or a grouping. It could take identify anywhere and last whatever length of time. Performance art used (and still uses) the performer's body equally the primary art medium. It may be autobiographical or make a political argument. It often merges art with every day life.

The German artist Joseph Beuys (1921-1986) was an important pioneer in functioning art. For Beuys, life was a creative process in which everyone can be an artist. In his slice Coyote, he spent i week caged up with a coyote in a New York gallery. The coyote represented America, a state he was visiting for the start time, and with whom he intended to start a relationship. Eventually the coyote and the artist co-habitated in the space and got used to each other.

During the 1960s and 1970s, the English language artists Gilbert and George combined elements of traditional sculpture with performance fine art. They would dress like traditional English men and stand up over depression platforms, sometimes singing, just by and large bold static poses. By calling themselves living sculptures, Gilbert and George explored the ambiguous areas betwixt living and non-living, illusion and reality, and art and life.

Word
Share your thoughts on art history with your swain students.

Practice
Analyze artworks that represent men and women in different periods.

changshoul1983.blogspot.com

Source: https://documents.sessions.edu/eforms/courseware/coursedocuments/history_of_art/lesson3.html

Share this post