Overzicht 1500-1800

Time of discoverers & reformers (1500-1600), period 5

• Renaissance: rebirth of art

• Architecture: Dome of Florence:
  • Santa Maria del Fiore
  • By Brunellesschi
  • Biggest dome till renaissance (till then)
  • Inner and outer construction à inner was needed to build a light construction holding it together à construction of ribbons and wood

• Leonardo da Vinci made the Homo Quadratus (ca. 1490)
  • Based on the theory written by Vitruvius called “Vitruvian Man”
  • Vitruvius described the human figure as being the principal source of proportion among the Classical order of architecture

• David sculptures:
  • Donatello made the bronze sculpture called David, this was the first free-standing sculpture since antiquity. Between the feet of David you can see the head of Goliath.
  • Michelangelo made the marble David, ordered by Florence its city council-àthis was symbolic because Florence was also a small city in that time so they showed they were still powerful besides being small. On the shoulder of David you can see his swing.

• Polymath/ Homo Universalis = a person whose expertise spans a significant number of different subject areas

• Music:

• Not Gregorian chant but music with chords (major & minor scales) and rhythms
• Vocal: mass (sang by choirs in church), madrigal (polyphonic song à multiple voices)
• Instrumental: danceforms

• Arnolfini Portrait, Jan van Eijk
  • Dog represents loyalty
  • Burning candle represents the presence of God
  • They’re married because the hair of the woman isn’t loose
  • The woman standing next to the bed represents the woman taking care of the household
  • The man standing next to the window represents the man taking care of the outside world
  • Oranges symbolize wealth
  • Woman: pregnant/ fashion?

• Other characteristics of the time of discoverers and reformers:
  • People learned reading and writing so they were able to create their own interpretation of the Bible
  • People started science à banned from the church

Church did counter-reformation (see next period)

Time of regents and monarchs (1600-1700), period 6

• Time of counter-reformation
• Visual arts: time of baroque (inside churches)
• Baroque:
  • Both southern & northern Europe
  • Diego Vélazquez, Las Meninas, 1656
  • Heavily decorated, lots of details
  • Rembrandt van Rijn: famous for clair obscure à creates light and shadow parts à not detailed, not like a picture, rough pencil strokes

• Porcelain, Delftware (called “China” by the English because it’s originally from China) à invented the Tulip Vase, showed your wealth

• Music:
  • Opera was invented
  • First composer was Monteverdi, he made l’Orfeo
  • Basso continuo: bassline played on an instrument which continues all the time
  • Melodies have complex decorated melodic lines (Baroque)
  • Start of era in which opera was a music style
  • Music becomes more dramatic
  • Rise of instrumental music (basso continuo)
  • Concertato: contrast between opposing groups of voices and groups of instruments
• 2 types of opera:
  • Opera Seria: heroic, based on mythological stories
  • Opera Buffa: ordinary themes

Time of wigs and revolutions (1700 – 1800), period 7

• Biggest revolution: French revolution

• Rococo style: even more detailed and filled than Baroque, about ordinary themes, famous painter: Jean Antoine Watteau

• Neoclassicism
  • The Death of Marat (1793) by Jacques-Louis David
  • Half-empty, lot of negative space
  • Paint human body in an objective way (like a sculpture) à focus on the anatomy of the human body

• Design: Meissenporcelain
  • Factory made, so affordable for many more people
• First Opera Buffa was made by Mozart: Die Zauberflöte (1791), which is a comic and not heroic

• St Matthew Passion, Bach (1729)
  • Last days of the life of Jesus Christ
  • Eastern
  • Bach made popular composition containing text from the Bible