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Arturo Puttore here, but you could call me Art.

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This is Explorations in Art History, starring me.

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And the hand.

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Well, what about the rest of me?

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How embarrassing.

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People watching from around the world,

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and I'm stuck waiting on some five-fingered prima donna.

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Oh, that's better.

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It looks like we'll be talking about the Renaissance period.

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During the medieval period,

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the torch lit by the Greeks and carried on by the Romans

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had been rejected.

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Medieval values instead elevated the spiritual

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and denounced the flesh.

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Then, in the mid-14th century,

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Petrarch, an Italian poet and scholar of Latin,

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was able to reconcile Christianity

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and classical and Roman Greek thought in his writings

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and revive interest in what had been dismissed as the pagan past.

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This started the period called the Renaissance, or rebirth.

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The shift of focus from God-centered

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to more human-centered interest became known as humanism.

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Of course, there wouldn't have been much of a Renaissance

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without a Renaissance man or two,

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a man with expertise in many fields.

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Take Brunelleschi, who was a goldsmith, architect,

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engineer, sculptor, and mathematician.

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As an artist, he discovered the principles of linear perspective,

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which gives the illusion of three-dimensional space

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to two-dimensional art.

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Start with a horizon line, add a vanishing point,

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and then lines that converge to that vanishing point.

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Now you have a framework for making objects appear farther away.

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Or closer.

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Of course, Brunelleschi was most famous for his massive dome.

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No, not that dome.

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The dome he built for the Florence Cathedral,

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equal in size to the dome of the Pantheon.

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Brunelleschi's new method of construction was so different

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that some Florentines wondered if he was mad.

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He devised a way to build the dome without scaffolding

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and without using flying buttresses,

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commonly used in Gothic architecture

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to support the weight of large structures.

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Sixteen years later, when the dome was completed,

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it was recognized as a marvel of the era,

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and Brunelleschi was heralded as a genius.

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Eh, yes.

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Donatello also started as a goldsmith.

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No, no, no, no, Donatello was not a crime-fighting turtle.

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But Donatello did study the Old Roman styles

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of sculpture and ornamentation.

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His David is famous as the first freestanding bronze sculpture

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cast during the Renaissance.

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It depicts David as the beautiful youth of the Bible

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just after decapitating the giant Goliath,

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and uses classical techniques like contrapposto in its design.

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Donatello also developed a new way of sculpting in shallow relief

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that applied the rules of linear perspective

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to create a greater illusion of depth.

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He would have been hailed as the most accomplished sculptor

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of the Renaissance if not for the coming of Michelangelo,

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who, along with da Vinci and Raphael,

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kicked the art world into high gear,

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or the High Renaissance.

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Perhaps no one exemplifies the ideal of the Renaissance man

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more than Leonardo da Vinci.

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No, Renaissance man was not a superhero.

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Really, read your history.

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Leonardo was a talented painter, sculptor, scientist, architect,

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and even a military engineer.

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He painted the most famous portrait in the world, the Mona Lisa.

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His boundless curiosity was best exemplified by his notebooks,

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which were filled with inventions like a tank,

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a flying machine, and a parachute.

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In 1482, Leonardo went to Milan,

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where he painted his famous mural,

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The Last Supper, on the wall of a monastery.

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He chose to portray the emotional moment when Jesus predicts

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that one of the apostles will betray him,

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and the betrayer will take bread at the same time he does.

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The apostles react in varying degrees of surprise and horror,

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except for Judas, who, distracted by the commotion,

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reaches for a piece of bread.

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Leonardo used perspective lines as a compositional device

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that leads the eye to Jesus' face, the calm sinner in the chaos.

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Though The Last Supper had been painted by others,

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Leonardo's version was the first to depict the apostles

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as real people acting, or reacting, like real people.

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Now we come to Michelangelo.

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Do you think we can do this one straight?

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Okay.

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At 24, Michelangelo carved the famous Pietà,

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which in Italian means pity.

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The Pietà depicts the body of Jesus on his mother Mary's lap

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as she mourns his death by crucifixion,

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and combines the Renaissance ideals of classical beauty and naturalism.

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Shortly after installing the Pietà,

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Michelangelo overheard someone say

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that the sculpture was the work of another artist.

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That night, Michelangelo chiseled the words,

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Michelangelo Buonarroti Florentine made this,

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on the sash running across Mary's breast.

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Later, Michelangelo regretted this act.

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It was the only statue he ever signed.

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Michelangelo was reluctant to accept the commission

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to paint the Sistine Chapel, but Pope Julius II insisted.

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Contrary to popular belief, Michelangelo did not lay on his back to paint,

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but stood on specially designed scaffolding

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and had to reach upward, craning his neck awkwardly to paint.

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Fresco required painting into a newly applied layer of wet plaster,

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and Michelangelo, also a poet, complained in a letter to a friend,

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My beard turns up to heaven, my nape falls in.

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A rich embroidery bedews my face from brush drops, thick and thin.

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Four years later, the arduous task was done,

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and a masterpiece created.

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The paintings of the Sistine Chapel had a profound effect on other artists.

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One story claims that Raphael slipped into the chapel

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to examine the paintings when Michelangelo was absent.

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Mamma mia, what's the matter with me?

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It's the back of the drawing board.

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Raphael scraped the fresco he was painting off the wall and repainted it,

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imitating the more powerful style of Michelangelo.

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Raphael became a favorite of the Pope

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and was commissioned to paint other rooms in the Vatican.

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His greatest masterpiece, The School of Athens,

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portrays Plato, Aristotle, and other Greek philosophers,

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mathematicians, and scientists from classical antiquity

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sharing their ideas and learning from each other.

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It's a kind of intellectual fantasy gathering

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since these figures all lived at different times,

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and it shows that humanism had become accepted in the Church.

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Raphael even included himself standing with the astronomers.

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Sounds like my kind of party.

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Plato, Aristotle, Arturo.

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Huh?

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Oh, we haven't mentioned the Northern Renaissance.

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No, no, no.

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Leonardo, Michelangelo, and Raphael did not go north for a skiing trip.

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Sorry, folks, you'll have to excuse the hand today.

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It's just that, well, for many, the Renaissance was an intoxicating time.

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Okay, so what happened in Italy didn't stay in Italy.

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The ideas of the Renaissance migrated up into the rest of Europe

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and started what was called the Northern Renaissance.

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Jan van Eyck pioneered the techniques of painting

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with oil-based paints on wooden panels.

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Artists of the North had a fondness for meticulous detail

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and were more interested in realism than classicism.

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Albrecht Durer traveled to Italy and was friends with Raphael

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and other artists of the Renaissance.

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He was able to incorporate Italian and Northern ideas

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into his paintings and prints.

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He became one of the most influential artists of printmaking

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and elevated this relatively new art form

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to new levels of aesthetic quality and popularity.

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After the death of Leonardo in 1519 and Raphael in 1520,

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artists rejected the values of the High Renaissance

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for a more heightened or more mannered approach.

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Mannerists like Tintoretto created unbalanced compositions

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that gave a visual tension to the work.

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Tintoretto's painting of The Last Supper

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shifts the table from the center to the left side

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and emphasizes dramatic light and motion

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to increase the drama of the image.

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Mannerist artists also intentionally distorted

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and stylized the human body and spatial relationships,

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like this painting of the Madonna by Parmigianino.

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The figures are elongated,

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and instead of balancing the angels on either side of Mary,

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they are deliberately squeezed into left side

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with only a tiny Saint Jerome on the right.

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Ow! How does she do it?

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The Renaissance was a period of great discovery,

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invention, and creativity.

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The Renaissance included the discovery of the New World by Columbus,

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the invention of the printing press by Gutenberg,

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the beginner of the Protestant Reformation by Martin Luther,

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and the scientific advances of Copernicus and Galileo, to name a few.

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The influence of the Renaissance on Western art is ongoing

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and even went viral without Facebook or Twitter or YouTube

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because of the strength of its ideas

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and the beauty of its creations.

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