The "Renaissance to the Nineteenth Century - Collection of the Italian Carrara Academy" is about to come to an end, which is being held at the Dongyi Art Museum in Shanghai, and has attracted a large audience for more than four months. In 2022, the "Botticelli and Renaissance Exhibition" will be unveiled in Shanghai.
The Renaissance is not a labeled concept. Associate Professor Wang Di of the School of Fine Arts of East China Normal University analyzed the process of Chinese approaching and understanding Renaissance painting.
"Renaissance to the Nineteenth Century - Exhibition of the Collection of the Italian Academy of Carrara" attracted many visitors photo by Dong Tianye
Painting is the essence of the Renaissance
The Renaissance refers to the intellectual and cultural movements of Europe from the 14th to the 16th centuries. The Renaissance first took place in Italy, which means "regeneration" and "revival" in Italian. Vasari, Michelangelo's student, argued in His Famous Biography of Famous Painters, Sculptors and Architects, published in 1550, that art was in decline in the late Roman Empire, and that after a long period of the Middle Ages, it was regenerated and perfected in its time. Vasari also divided the 3 historical periods of artistic regeneration, starting with Giotto, developing into Masaccio, and then da Vinci.
The concept of "Renaissance" was first used to describe fine art. Painting is the essence of Renaissance art and even culture, and many great artists and masterpieces appeared during the Renaissance. The artists broke free from the shackles of the traditional guild system and relied on their talents to find opportunities for development among the Italian countries. Their patrons sometimes do not interfere with their creative methods, allowing them to decide on their own subject matter, methods of expression, etc. As a result, some artists became guests of the royal family and the nobility, receiving rich annuities or commissioned deposits, and their social status was thus promoted.
With a certain degree of creative freedom and relatively stable economic support, artists have been able to improve their painting expression day by day, and constantly pursue nature and realism through the study of scientific problems such as anatomy, perspective, and proportion. They changed the single subject matter of painting, and in terms of technique, they also turned dullness into vividness, and tended to a state of perfection in reproducing nature.
Due to the outstanding achievements of Renaissance painters, people established academies of fine arts in Florence, Bologna and other places, and systematically studied and passed on through the way of academies. The value of Renaissance painting also spread from Italy to all of Europe, determining the direction of the development of Western painting in the following hundreds of years.
Raphael, Self-Portrait
Raphael in Kang Youwei's eyes
Chinese personally watch renaissance paintings in the late Qing Dynasty, and Xue Fucheng, one of the representative figures of the western affairs movement, recorded what he saw during his mission to Rome in the "Diary of the Four Kingdoms". Xue Fucheng believes that although religious painting is very realistic, it is not uncommon, but it is more worth appreciating the works that express the theme of daily life. For Renaissance painters, Xue Fucheng believes that Raphael has not been outstanding before, while Raphael is shallow and far-reaching, yin and yang, without losing minutes and seconds and the weather is ever-changing, which has never been reached by Chinese painters.
Kang Youwei, the leader of the Restoration, admired Raphael more than Xue Fucheng, and in Italy, he would visit Raphael's paintings or relics everywhere he went. Kang Youwei wrote the poem "The Eight Sentences of the Painter of Wyrafil", which includes: "The painter I love Rafiel (Raphael), and create the yin and yang wonderful and realistic. The fragrance outside the color is hidden, and the intention to fly is more like a god. In Kang Youwei's eyes, Raphael is like Wu Daozi, a great painter of the Tang Dynasty, who has the magic of both form and god.
Kang Youwei admired Raphael, intending to improve the declining Chinese literati painting after the Ming and Qing dynasties and revive the writing tradition of Song painting. However, Kang Youwei's understanding of Renaissance painting was not comprehensive, he visited many art galleries in Rome, but did not systematically investigate painting in Florence, the birthplace of Renaissance art, or even visit the Uffizi Gallery, the primary treasure trove of Renaissance painting.
Portrait of Léonello de Etes, Antonio Dipccio Pisano 1441
Xu Beihong admired Veronese
The Italian Renaissance became known to more Chinese after the New Culture Movement. Cai Yuanpei actively promoted aesthetic education during his presidency of Peking University, and he wrote "A Short History of European Art" in the Oriental Magazine: "Italy was a literary and artistic booming era, and painters were born, and they were enough to be the crowners of an era: Li Wengnai (da Vinci), Michelangelo (Michelangelo) and Lai Feier (Raphael) was also. Cai Yuanpei already knew the concept of the Renaissance and the order of the three masters, which was a great improvement over Kang Youwei.
In the 1820s, with the publication of a series of works on the history of the Renaissance and western art, Italian Renaissance painting was comprehensively introduced. There were also relevant introductions in the mass media, and the young painter Zhu Yingpeng carefully staged Italian paintings in newspapers. He said: "The study of the history of modern Western painting must begin from the Renaissance era, just as the study of the history of modern Chinese painting must start from the Jin Dynasty." To understand the outline of the history of Italian painting, the study of later painting can be easily solved, and it is very inappropriate for the average scholar to take French Impressionism as the starting point for his research. ”
Chinese oil painters also shifted from copying Renaissance paintings to absorbing and creating. Xu Beihong studied in France, and traced the Italian Renaissance painting from the French Academy, especially admiring the Venetian School. In his essay "The Difficulty of Historical Painting", Xu Beihong said that Veronese of the Venetian School (one of the three masters of the Venetian School of Painting in italy in the 16th century) was one of the greatest painters in the world.
Xu Beihong's reference to Veronese's history paintings is a defense of his large-scale oil painting "Five Hundred Soldiers of Tian Heng" to show that the history paintings are not completely evidence-based, but emphasize abundant emotions. Xu Beihong's "Five Hundred Soldiers of Tian Heng" does have the shadow of the Venetian school in its warm color performance, but its costumes and character expressions have distinct national characteristics.
Da Vinci's painting of eggs is just a legend
After the founding of New China, Engels's introduction to the Dialectics of Nature had an influence on the evaluation of the Renaissance in China: "This is the greatest and most progressive change that mankind has ever experienced, an era in which giants are needed and giants are produced; in the field of thinking ability, enthusiasm and character, in the age of giants in versatility and knowledge." Engels saw Leonardo da Vinci as a representative of the giant era of the Renaissance.
In 1952, to commemorate the 500th anniversary of da Vinci's birth, people's daily published a number of articles by Jiang Feng, Wu Zuoren, Wang Chaowen, Liang Sicheng, Lin Huiyin and others. In commemorative exhibitions and newspaper articles, two masterpieces, The Last Supper and the Mona Lisa, were highly promoted. Since then, leonardo da Vinci has become a household name in China, far surpassing other Renaissance painters.
In some newspapers and inspirational books at the time, the story of Leonardo da Vinci's "painting eggs" was circulated. The story goes to the effect that Da Vinci followed Verrocchio to learn to paint, and the teacher did not let him create at first, but asked him to keep drawing eggs. When Da Vinci was impatient, the teacher warned him that egg painting is to train to observe the image with the eyes and represent the object with the hand, and this basic skill is practiced well, and any image can be handled freely. However, when we look at Vasari's Biography of a Celebrity and early works of art history, we find no record of egg painting.
The reality is that Verrocchio first saw da Vinci Jr.'s drawings from Da Vinci's father, was amazed by his talent, and tried to persuade his father to send his son to learn to paint. Da Vinci did practice sketching hard, but instead of simply repeating it, he made his own mannequin, pasted it on the model with a wet piece of cloth, and then drew the model with a pen. Later, da Vinci assisted the teacher in drawing minor figures in some of his works, and the effect of his paintings was so much better than that of the teacher that the teacher closed the pen from then on. While Vasari's descriptions tend to be exaggerated, there is no doubt that da Vinci had a genius.
Today, da Vinci's greatness lies not in the quantity but in the quality, in its creativity and innovation.
Da Vinci, Self-Portrait, 1513
Approach the Renaissance
In recent years, with the activity of foreign cultural exchanges, the Renaissance is no longer only associated with labels such as "modernization" and "age of giants", but has entered the socio-economic level. People began to recognize the positive role of art patronage in promoting the development of Renaissance painting.
The audience was also more open and inclusive in terms of painting interest, and began to pay attention to the paintings before the heyday of the Renaissance in time, and became interested in artists such as Botticelli, Francesca, Uccero, and even in the frescoes of Cimabue and the Assisi Church before Giotto. For the painting of the Methodist period after the heyday of the Renaissance, it is no longer erased with stylistic mannerism, but sees its influence on contemporary Neo-Expressionist painting in Italy.
For local paintings outside the main line of Florence and Rome, including the Venetian School, the Siena School, the Umbrian School, etc., can also find its unique value.
Some scholars will compare the Northern Renaissance represented by the Netherlands and Germany with the Italian Renaissance, and even compare and analyze the landscape paintings of the Yuan, Ming and Qing dynasties in China with the landscape paintings of the Renaissance.
Italian Renaissance painting ceased to be text and blurred images in newspapers and books, but became a work of art that people had the opportunity to approach. In 2016, the National Museum held the exhibition "Venice and the Venetian School" and the Jeonsan Stone Art Center held an exhibition of "Titian and Rubens". In 2021, Beijing Guardian Art Center held heavyweight exhibitions such as "Meet Raphael – From the Renaissance to the Collection of Neoclassical Masters", and "Renaissance to the 19th Century – Exhibition of the Collections of the Italian Academy of Carrara".
It is believed that the holding of the "Botticelli and Renaissance Exhibition" in Shanghai in 2022 will promote the dissemination and acceptance of Renaissance art of great classic significance in the history of human culture in China.