For sculpture in stone, marble was highly valued because most types of marble are very durable and can be beautifully smoothed and polished, as in ancient Roman statuary. Other stone favored by Renaissance sculptors included limestone and sandstone. Relief sculpture was often executed in a combination of marble and limestone. In some instances, artists created Renaissance stone sculpture from pieces of ancient Roman buildings or actual Roman sculpture, such as in the Medici tombs by Michelangelo. The dense Cararra marble found near Pisa was considered the best marble in Italy. Michelangelo personally traveled to the Carrara quarry in 1495 to select the large block of marble from which he would sculpt the Pieta for Saint Peter’s Basilica. Although most stone sculptors were men, one female sculptor was praised by Vasari, Properzia de’ Rossi (c. 1490-1530). She worked in her native Bologna, creating church sculpture and portrait busts. In his chapter on this artist, Vasari made a very interesting remark about women in general: “It is extraordinary that in all the skills and pursuits in which women in any period whatever have with some preparation become involved, they have always succeeded most admirably and have become more than famous, as countless examples could easily demonstrate” (Vasari 1998, p. 338).
Tomb sculpture provided commissions for many sculptors working in stone during the 15 th and 16th centuries. Unlike in the Middle Ages, when tombs were usually decorated years and even decades after the individual had died, many Renaissance patrons had their own tomb sculpture completed while they still were very much alive. In Gothic tomb sculpture, effigies, as if asleep, were often carved on a stone slab or sarcophagus installed on the floor of a church, with heraldic insignia to identify them and faces of portrait quality. There might also be a statue of the person as he or she looked when alive. In Italy, tomb sculpture was usually installed above the floor in a wall niche, with stone molding or curtains framing the niche. Tombs of royalty and other important people often included statues as “mourners,” including allegorical figures and ancestors. Michelangelo’s tomb sculpture for the Medici, created between 1521 and 1534 (Church of San Lorenzo, Florence), was famous among his contemporaries. Lorenzo de’ Medici is seen not as in death, but as a pensive, armored male figure seated in a niche above the sarcophagus. Two magnificent nude allegorical figures, one male and one female, partially recline on the classical sarcophagus. Vasari said of the Medici tomb sculpture that “these statues are carved with the most beautifully formed poses and skillfully executed muscles and would be sufficient, if the art of sculpture were lost, to return it to its original splendour” (Vasari 1998, p. 456).
Renaissance sculpture based on classical models was spread to other parts of Europe by Italian sculpture that was imported, Italian artists who worked outside Italy, and foreign artists who were trained in workshops in Italy. Several Spanish sculptors, for example, studied in Naples, which was part of the Spanish kingdom. Members of the Mendoza family preferred Italianate art, and Pedro Gonzalez de
Handbook to Life in Renaissance Europe
Mendoza (1428-95), who in 1473 became a cardinal, patronized Renaissance humanists and the new classicism. His tomb in the cathedral of Toledo, evidently by an Italian sculptor, includes a magnificent triumphal arch in Roman style. Funerary monuments in France began to have classicizing elements by the latter 15th century, and in the early 16th century several important tombs by Italian artists combined the medieval-style recumbent effigy with a classical-style sarcophagus. Receptacles for the heart of the deceased were sometimes commissioned separately from the tomb sculpture proper. The French artist Pierre Bontemps (c. 1512-c. 1570) created the classical urn for the heart of Francis I (Saint Denis, near Paris). Both the urn and its rectangular pedestal have Renaissance strapwork cartouches, oval on the urn and round on the pedestal, with allegorical figures representing the arts and sciences.
Secular sculpture in stone included garden statuary, such as fountains, allegorical and equestrian figures, portraits (especially bust portraits), and classical shapes such as urns and obelisks. Gardens sometimes had bust portraits mounted on high pedestals or columns so that those strolling through the garden would see the faces eye to eye. Garden sculpture included both ancient and modern pieces. Several important Italian villas, such as the Villa Far-nese, had a “secret garden” or “garden of love.” These featured monstrous, erotic, or amusing statues and inscriptions, installed to surprise or delight visitors. Several villas had a nymphaeum, a wading pool or small swimming pool like those found in private houses in ancient Rome. With mosaic floors in glass and ceramic tile, the nymphaea (plural form) often included statues of water nymphs.
World History
