Italy Secondaria di secondo grado – classe 4ª Art history

1. From the origins to the 18th century

Greek and Roman art · Early Christian and medieval art · Renaissance · 17th–18th centuries

• Ancient Art: From Cave Walls to Roman Arches – Ancient art runs from cave paintings (over 40,000 years ago) to the fall of Rome (476 CE). Prehistoric people painted animals and hands with ochre and charcoal and raised megaliths using post-and-lintel. Egypt made stiff, rule-based figures for eternity. Greece searched for ideal beauty and balance in marble temples and statues. Rome copied Greek forms but added the arch, concrete and the dome, and used art and buildings to show the power of the state.
• Medieval Art: From Mosaics to Gothic Cathedrals – Medieval art in Europe and the Mediterranean covers about 300 to 1400 CE. Early Christian art took over the Roman basilica and catacomb paintings. Byzantine art added domes, gold mosaics and icons. Romanesque churches (c. 1000–1150) have round arches, thick walls and small windows, with teaching sculpture over doors. Gothic cathedrals (from c. 1140) use pointed arches, ribbed vaults and flying buttresses to build tall, thin walls filled with stained glass. Monks made illuminated manuscripts. Late Gothic painters like Giotto made art more lifelike, opening the way to the Renaissance. Art in this age mainly served faith and taught stories to people who could not read.
• Renaissance Art (c. 1400–1600) – Renaissance art began in Florence around 1400 and spread across Italy and northern Europe until about 1600. Inspired by humanism and by ancient Greek and Roman art, artists used linear perspective, correct proportion and anatomy, light and shade (chiaroscuro, sfumato) and, increasingly, oil paint. Rich patrons such as the Medici, the popes and city guilds paid for the work. The period is usually divided into the Early Renaissance, the High Renaissance (Leonardo, Michelangelo, Raphael), the Northern Renaissance (van Eyck, Dürer, Bruegel) and Mannerism.
• The Baroque: Art in Motion (c. 1600–1750) – Baroque is the European style of about 1600 to 1750 in painting, sculpture, architecture, music and literature. It grew in Rome after the Reformation, when the Catholic Church and kings used art to move and impress people. Its marks are motion, contrast and emotion: diagonals, dramatic light (chiaroscuro and tenebrism), curving walls and domes, gold and illusion ceilings, music with a basso continuo and many weaving voices, and writing full of contrasts, surprising metaphors and the theme of passing time. Key names: Caravaggio, Bernini, Rubens, Rembrandt, Velázquez, Borromini, Monteverdi, Vivaldi, Bach, Handel, Góngora, Donne. Classicism answered it with order, reason and calm.