Hese two paintings by the Flemish artist Rogier van der Weyden (FAN-der-VIE-den, c. 14001464) capture some of the most compelling characteristics of late medieval art, particularly the trend toward realistic representations of holy figures and sacred stories. On the left (image A), the artist depicts himself as the evangelist Luke, regarded in Christian tradition as a painter of portraits; he sketches the Virgin nursing the infant Jesus in a town house overlooking a Flemish city. On the right (image B), van der Weyden imagines the entombment of the dead Christ by his followers, including the Virgin (left), Mary
Magdalene (kneeling), and the disciple John (right). Here, he makes use of a motif that became increasingly prominent in the later Middle Ages: Christ as the Man of Sorrows, displaying his wounds and inviting the viewer to share in his suffering. In both paintings, van der Weyden emphasizes the humanity of his subjects rather than their iconic status (see Chapter 7), and he places them in the urban and rural landscapes of his own world.
Questions for Analysis
1. How are these paintings different from the sacred images of the earlier Middle Ages (see, for example, pages 214 and 217)? What messages does the artist convey by setting these events in his own immediate present?
2. In what ways do these paintings reflect broad changes in popular piety and medieval devotional practices? Why, for example, would the artist display the dead and wounded body of Christ-rather than depicting him as resurrected and triumphant, or as an all-seeing creator and judge?
3. I n general, how would you use these images as evidence of the worldview of the fifteenth century? What do they tell us about people's attitudes, emotions, and values?
A. Saint Luke drawing the portrait of the Virgin.
B. The Deposition.
Read the language of classical Greece. But as the Mongols and, after them, the Ottoman Turks put increasing pressure on the shrinking borders of Byzantium (see below), more and more Greek-speaking intellectuals fled to Italy, bringing their books and their knowledge with them.
to these developments, some Italian intellectuals not only had increased access to more classical texts, they also used these texts in new ways. For centuries, Christian scholars had worked to bring ancient writings and values into line with their own beliefs (see Chapter 6). By contrast, the new reading methods pioneered by Petrarch and others fostered an increased awareness of the conceptual gap that separated the contemporary world from that of antiquity. This awakened a determination to recapture truly ancient worldviews and value systems, and it would eventually be expressed in visual terms, too. In the second half of the fifteenth century, especially, classical models contributed strikingly to the distinctive artistic style that is most strongly associated with the Renaissance (something we will address in Chapter 12).
Another distinguishing feature of this new perspective on the classical past was the way that it became overtly materialistic and commercialized. The competition among and within Italian city-states fostered a culture of display that used the symbols and artifacts of ancient Rome as pawns in an endless power game. Meanwhile, the relative weakness of the Church contributed to the growth of claims to power based on classical models—even by Italian bishops and Church-sponsored universities. When the papacy was eventually restored to Rome, it too had to compete in this Renaissance arena, by patronizing the artists and intellectuals who espoused these aesthetic and political ideals.
The most basic feature of this new intellectual and political agenda is summarized in the term humanism. This was a program of study that aimed to replace the scholastic emphasis on logic and theology—which would continue to be central to the curriculum of medieval universities like Paris and Oxford—with the study of ancient literature, rhetoric, history, and ethics. That is, the goal of a humanist education was the understanding of the human experience as viewed through the lenses of the classical past, and devoted to the fulfillment of human potential in the present. By contrast, a scholastic education filtered human experience through the teachings of scripture and the Church fathers, with human salvation as the ultimate goal.
Moreover, some intellectuals like Petrarch believed that the university curriculum concentrated too much on abstract speculation, rather than the achievement of virtue and ethical conduct in the here-and-now. He felt that the true Christian thinker must cultivate literary eloquence and so inspire others to do good through the pursuit of beauty and truth. And according to him, the best models of eloquence were to be found in the classics of Latin literature, which were also filled with ethical wisdom. Petrarch dedicated himself, therefore, to rediscovering such texts and to writing his own poems and moral treatises in a Latin style modeled on classical authors.
Humanists accordingly preferred ancient writings to those of more recent authors, including their own contemporaries. And although some humanists wrote in Italian as well as Latin, most regarded vernacular literature as a lesser diversion suitable only for the uneducated; serious scholarship and praiseworthy poetry could be written only in Latin or Greek. Proper Latin, moreover, had to be the classical Latin of Cicero and Virgil (Chapter 5), not the evolving language common to universities, international diplomacy, the law, and the Church. Renaissance humanists therefore condemned the living Latin of their day as a barbarous departure from classical (and therefore “correct”) standards of Latin style. And ironically, their determination to revive this older language actually killed the lively Latin that had continued to flourish in Europe. By insisting on outmoded standards of grammar, syntax, and diction, they turned Latin into a fossilized discourse that ceased to have any direct relevance to daily life. They thus contributed, unwittingly, to the ultimate triumph of the various European vernaculars they despised, as well as to the demise of Latin as a common medium of communication.
Because humanism was an educational program designed to produce virtuous citizens and able public officials, it largely excluded women because women were largely excluded from Italian political life. Here again there is a paradox: as more and more Italian city-states fell into the hands of autocratic rulers, the humanist educational curriculum lost its immediate connection to the republican ideals of ancient Rome. Nevertheless, humanists never lost their conviction that the study of the “humanities” (as the humanist curriculum came to be known) was the best way to produce political leaders.
These new attitudes toward education and the ancient past were fostered in a northern Italy for historically specific reasons. After the Black Death, this region was the most densely populated part of Europe; other urban areas, notably northeastern France and Flanders, had been decimated by the Great Famine as well as the plague. This region also differed from the rest of urbanized Europe because aristocratic families customarily lived in cities rather than in rural castles and consequently became more fully involved in public affairs than their counterparts north of the Alps. Moreover, many town-dwelling aristocrats were engaged in banking or mercantile enterprises, while many rich mercantile families imitated the manners of the aristocracy. The Florentine ruling family, the Medici, originally made their fortune in banking and commerce and yet were able to assimilate into the nobility.
These developments help to explain the emergence of the humanist ideals described above. Newly wealthy families were not content to have their sons learn only the skills necessary to becoming successful businessmen; they sought teachers who would impart the knowledge and finesse that would enable them to cut a figure in society, mix with their noble neighbors, and speak with authority on public affairs. Consequently, Italy produced and attracted a large number of independent intellectuals who were not affiliated with monasteries, cathedral schools, or universities—many of whom served as schoolmasters for wealthy young men while acting as cultural consultants and secretaries for their families. These intellectuals advertised their learning by producing political and ethical treatises and works of literature that would attract the attention of wealthy patrons or reflect well on the patrons they already had. As a result, Italian schools and private tutors turned out the best-educated laymen in all of Europe, men who constituted a new generation of wealthy, knowledgeable patrons ready to invest in the cultivation of new ideas and new forms of literary and artistic expression.
A second reason why late-medieval Italy was the birthplace of the Renaissance movement has to do with its vexed political situation. Unlike France and England, or the kingdoms of Spain, Scandinavia, and eastern Europe, Italy had no unifying political institutions. Italians therefore looked to the classical past for their time of glory, dreaming of a day when Rome would be, again, the center of the world. They boasted that ancient Roman monuments were omnipresent in their landscape and that classical Latin literature referred to cities and sites they recognized as their own.
Italians were particularly intent on reappropriating their classical heritage because they were seeking to establish an independent cultural identity that could help them oppose the intellectual and political supremacy of France. The removal of the papacy to Avignon had heightened antagonism between the city-states of Italy and the burgeoning nation-state beyond the Alps. This also explains the Italians’ rejection of the scholasticism taught in northern Europe’s universities and their embrace of intellectual alternatives. As Roman literature and learning took hold in the imaginations of Italy’s intellectuals, so too did Roman art and architecture, for Roman models could help Italians create an artistic alternative to the dominant French school of Gothic architecture, just as Roman learning offered an intellectual alternative to the scholasticism of Paris.
Finally, this Italian Renaissance could not have occurred without the underpinning of Italian wealth gained through the commercial ventures described in Chapter 10. This wealth meant that talented men seeking employment and patronage were more likely to stay at home, fueling the artistic and intellectual competition that arose from the intensification of urban pride and the concentration of individual and family wealth in urban areas. Cities themselves became the primary patrons of art and learning in the fourteenth century.
The Renaissance of Civic Ideals
Petrarch’s personal goal was a solitary life of contemplation and asceticism. But subsequent Italian intellectuals, especially those of Florence, developed a different vision of life’s true purpose. For them, the goal of classical education was civic enrichment. Humanists such as Leonardo Bruni (c. 1370-1444) and Leon Battista Alberti (1404-1472) agreed with Petrarch on the importance of eloquence and the value of classical literature, but they also taught that man’s nature equips him for action, for usefulness to his family and society, and for serving the state—ideally a city-state after the Florentine model. In their view, ambition and the quest for glory are noble impulses that ought to be encouraged and channeled toward these ends. They also refused to condemn the accumulation of material possessions, arguing that the history of human progress is inseparable from the human dominion of the earth and its resources.
World History
