Italian Renaissance Don't Know Where

Italian Renaissance don't know where I got my passion for drawing. It certainly wasn't from my father: he never enjoyed art and thought that artists were only a waste of somebody else's time. He was truly upset when he found out how much you could make on a commissioned painting, he who earned that much in a year. My mother however had a taste for fine things and encouraged my childhood attempts at drawing.

I used to spend most of my time in school drawing sketches of my fellow students and imagining what it would like to be a real artist. Only imaging though the art god was however kind to my cause: Ghirlandaio, the great master of our times paid a visit to one of our classes.

I wasn't paying attention, as usual, and was busy with a sketch that gave me a headache: how could I actually use proportions to draw an exact reproduction of the human body? I had seen some of Leonardo's paintings and was mesmerized by the way he always seemed to be able to fit everything in without exaggerating any of the body parts.

The head, body and legs of Leonardo's paintings were an exact reproduction of the reality and I was trying to use what seemed to me as a three thirds proportion for the body parts (a third for the head, a third for the body and a third for the legs). It never seemed to work and the head always came out bigger than expected. As I was saying, I was busy with my sketch when Ghirlandaio noticed I wasn't paying attention and was keen to see my work.

I was afraid of the laughter that would follow, but I was surprised to see that he was not laughing, but indeed paying close attention to my work and making accurate suggestions about what I should do to improve it. I was even more in awe when I heard him asking me whether I wanted to join his school as an apprentice and learn more closely the art craft. It was a dream come true, but I had to tell my father.

I was convinced he would not give his permission, so I asked Ghirlandaio if he could convince him on my behalf. The master was so convinced of my talents that he spent a whole afternoon talking my father into letting me study painting and art. Amazingly enough, he agreed and I entered as an apprentice to Ghirlandaio's studio. Domenico Ghirlandaio http://www.mega.it/eng/egui/pers/ghirl.htm. was a leading figure of Florentine painting at that time.

Having been influenced by Flemish painting, by Masaccio and Filippo Lippi, he had introduced a wave of realism to Italian painting of the time. His most important achievements had been in the Sistine Chapel, where he had been called in 1480, and in the Palazzo Vecchio, where he had decorated in 1482 the Sala dei Gigli. At the time I began studying with him, he was working in the choir of the church of Santa Maria Novella on what was to become his best known work of art.

This is where I learnt the use of perspective. As I had learnt form him, he had spent quite a few years studying the use of perspective and had achieved at that time a high perception of it. He taught me how we must imagine that as the sense of distance is to be evoked, the characters and figures need to be made smaller and compared it to Giotto's works where, in spite of a remarkable realism, all the figures are the same size.

I learnt from Ghirlandaio how to paint as a fresco, a delicate enterprise, as the paints used needed to be only wet enough to be able to paint, otherwise, the wall would not dry quickly enough and the mould that would have formed could ruin it. Mixing colors to achieve the right shade of darkness and the use of chiaroscuro, which was a new technique for Italian art at that time and had been inspired by the Flemish painters.

My teacher died however in 1494 and I was left only with so much to learn. But the years spent around him had prepared me for what was to come and I was ready to receive commissions at the time if his death and begin my life as a painter. Florence at that time provided a fully competitive market: there many painters, many of them extremely talented, but there was also much available work to be done.

The Medicis, rich bankers and art lovers, wanted to make out of their city one of the most beautiful in Italy and wanted to rival the Papal Rome in art and creation. Lorenzo de Medici provided a Mecca for artists in Florence and publicly supported them. I continued to work in the church of Santa Maria Novella where I finished what Ghirlandaio had started.

It was my pure luck that Giovanni de Medicis, Lorenzo's second born son, who was to become Pope Leo X, came one day to the church and keenly observed my work. He praised my use of perspective and told me he will remember me in times of power. However, there were black days to come for Florence and the Medici. Savonarola had destabilized the city with his puritan and anti-art preaching and soon, the Medici were expulsed from Florence in 1494.

By now, I was a protege of the family and I realized that my days in Florence were also numbered: known as a Medici partisan, who would think of commissioning me for any paintings now?...I left for Florence at the beginning of 1495, not knowing when I was to return and what I would do in the future. I had heard of Venice, where I thought I would find some work. Venice was a center of art in Italy and had been so for several centuries.

The Doges had always encouraged art and culture. Although at that time they were fighting the Turks for supremacy in the Mediterranean and were concerned for their Italian possessions because of French interference in the peninsula, the Venetians never ceased in their interest in art. Interesting people these Venetians: their art reflected their condition of isolation in that they had never suffered major influences from the mainland.

They had lived for centuries in their Laguna, coming in contact mostly with the people they were trading with in the east, but never actually with their fellow Italians. I took shelter to one of the monasteries in town, where I paid my dues by painting an altar piece for the sacristy. At this time, the Bellinis were undisputed rulers of Venetian paintings. Indeed, Titian was still very young and his influence was only to be felt some decades later.

The patriarch, Jacopo, had died some 20 years earlier and it was his two sons, Gentile (1429-1507) and Giovanni (1430-1507) that had taken over the trade. My luck was that the church I was working in happened to be their parochial church and they happened to take interest in the young artist that was painting the sacristy, asking the monks who he was and where he was from.

It seems that Ghirlandaio's hours in teaching me perspective had finally paid off and the Bellini's were truly intrigued by the mastering I showed in drawing. I became acquainted with them and was introduced to their studio. This is where I met Giorgione. Giorgione was a true figure of Venetian painting. In only a few years of creation (he was to die young, in 1510, aged only 33), he left a distinguishable mark on art history. Being of the same ages, we became friends.

Giorgione embraced the whole spirit of the Renaissance, with good and bad: he loved life, he loved women and, most of all, he loved art. He had executed some exceptional frescoes on the exterior of the German Exchange and was now working on the Tempest, that was to become a milestone of Renaissance painting. He had finished painting the foreground of the painting: a soldier on the left of the painting and a woman nursing a child on the right.

The mystic and mysterious air that the painting would have in the end was already showing: there was something in the air about that painting and I could not put my finger on it. What was the soldier's role in the painting? Was it to protect the nursing woman or was it a threat? I pondered towards the former, seeing his relaxed and rather thoughtful pose. I could only be enchanted by the marvelous physiognomy of the characters in Giorgione's painting.

As Giorgione let me know, the rest of the painting would contain only landscape, which was revolutionary in the European painting of the time. He meant to make the story irrelevant to the viewer and make him concentrate on what was behind it: mysterious scenery, reflecting a storm of some sort, with a clear cut lightning right in the middle. I had a lot to learn from Giorgione.

Having been taught in the fresco technique by Ghirlandaio, I was not acquainted much with oil painting and did not truly know the mastery of this type of painting.

How to mix the oil and the paints so that one was in enough quantity? More so, how to use enough oil so as to obtain the right amount of darkness or pale shade of a color? It was Giorgione who taught me the technique of oil painting on canvas and it was during this time that I started this type of painting. A liked to take my subjects from popular Venice, from the streets, from common people and Venice had plenty of these to provide.

Of course, this was the time of religious painting, not only in Venice, but throughout Italian Renaissance, yet I was taken by the mystery that common subject could provide and their stroke of realism. The Bellini brothers had shown me some reproductions of Dutch and Flemish paintings and I noticed that they were more used to painting casual subject and that even in religious paintings, ordinary people had their place. There was something that I didn't like with religious paintings: you had to paint idealized bodies of idealized characters.

It was the same with mythological painting: how could I portray Jupiter as an old and crippled man. I wanted to see realism in my painting, I wanted to see the traces of humanism there, so I took to the streets to find my characters. And I did. I started painting the landscape of Venetian streets, the Place of Saint Mark, the canals, ordinary people on the street.

Somehow, this interest in their state brought me to meet the Doge, who wanted to commission a portrait of himself and hearing that I had a gift for displaying people, asked that I would be brought to him. At this time, the Doge of Venise was Leonardo Leonardi, who had commissioned an older portrait of himself to Gentile Bellini.

How could I rival with that?...However, as I began work on his portrait, I discovered that drawing a profile bust could prove an easier enterprise than what a landscape for example. This was because in this case, there was no perspective I had to ponder on, but was only interested in the foreground, the Doge's bust. It was also easier than painting full-size humans, as Leonardo's rule on body proportion had no application here.

As I had mastered through time the art of oil painting on canvas, I trusted that the result would be to the Doges liking. And it truly was a masterpiece...Even now, decades later, my portrait of Doge Leonardo Leonardi still hangs in one of the corridors in the Doges' palace. My fame was now throughout the whole of Italy.

Everyone had heard of the innovative painter that revolutionized art by bringing in acute traces of realism in his painting and that mastered all the modern techniques of the time: perspective, fresco or oil painting on canvas. In the meantime, Julius II, Michelangelo's patron had died and was followed to the throne by my old acquaintance, Giovanni de Medici, who became pope as Leo X. A few words are in order about this most original character.

He had inherited from his family a taste for luxury and the arts and was said to have declared upon becoming a pope: "Let us enjoy the papacy since God has given it to us." Highly cultivated, he encouraged art, poetry and theater, but he also had a negative side: he was an incredible spender.

It was said upon his death that he had consumed three pontificates: that of Julius II (who had never been a great spender and who had kept the costs for the papal household at 48,000 ducats, half of what Leo spent), that of himself and that of his follower to the Papal throne. He was to suffer the embarrassment of having his treasury totally emptied and left huge debts after his death. However, he spent much money on commissioning works of art and this could only be to my best interest.

He wanted someone who would paint some of the chambers in the Vatican Palace and my interest in fresco painting had still remained over time. I immediately stepped up for the challenge and packed my bags for the Eternal City. What was to become known as the Stanzas is probably.