Exposing the Secrets, Scandals, and Art of the Italian Renaissance

A time dominated by the likes of Raphael, Michelangelo, Caravaggio, and Botticelli, the Italian Renaissance was a stunning period for art. But it was more than just aesthetically beautiful, with plenty of complexities of the representation of self and the dynamics of working towards a new art while drawing heavily on the classical past, and trying to out do it. A new website from Oxford University Press’s Grove Art Online and the National Gallery of Art in Washington DC gives an introduction to this world.

While its title — Italian Renaissance Learning Resources — is painfully dull, the site gives some compelling insight into the 14th to 16th century as a span of changing art and society. Structured in eight units that can either be explored on one’s own or in a classroom, the image-heavy site does have the expected themes like “Virgin and Child,” but also some juicier topics like “Presentation of Self” and sub-discussions like “Friends and Enemies,” and the complications of pagan artifacts in christian art.

With still relatively small communities and concentrations of wealth, there were of course plenty of scintillating scandals in the Italian Renaissance. And as frequently happened, art was employed to commemorate and shame warring parties. One example given is the Pazzi conspiracy, where the Pazzi family attempted to remove the power-holding de’ Medici family from their place of rule in Florence. It was a failure and the family members were hunted down one by one and even their crest and references to them were forbidden and destroyed. In the aftermath, Lorenzo de’ Medici commissioned a medal by Bertoldo di Giovanni that celebrated his survival, while mourning the death of his brother, with each side showing their massive hovering heads above the murderous conspirators who “are depicted nude – probably to convey disrespect,” as the site describes.

There’s also a glimpse at hidden personal worlds and sadly vanished aspects of life like the “studiolo,” a room kept especially for contemplation and studying. As Machiavelli himself described: “When evening comes, I return home and go into my study. On the threshold I strip off my muddy, sweaty workday clothes, and put on the robes of court and palace, and in this graver dress I enter the antique courts of the ancients and am welcomed by them.” And there are also touches on secrets and mysteries like the busts of Francsco Laurana, an astounding sculptor who inexplicably created an elegant series of busts of idealized, unidentified, women.

Yet most interesting is the dynamic between “modern artists as rivals of the ancients,” reflecting the relationship between an idolization of the classical artists and a drive to outshine them. One such artist was Andrea Mantegna who designed a memorial for himself in the church that had a bust of his head modeled like a Roman emperor, wrapped with laurel leaves. Alongside he wrote this epitaph: “You who see the bronze images of Andrea Mantegna know him to be equal, if not superior to Apelles,” putting himself and this time of art above the the greatest art that had come before.

Click here to view the Italian Renaissance Learning Resources website.