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Kathrynne T. - Why Humans Make Art Since Early Humanity Ages

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Kathrynne T. - Why Humans Make Art Since Early Humanity Ages

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The drag path trend - we humans generally want to make a mark of our existence. in my opinion, we always look for attention, a call out that we exist. If not to contribute to society, to just be remembered.

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Art during the Renasissance, and still to this day is a form of expretion. Artists of all mediums used their skills to capture the thoughts and belifs of that era. Not only does the art in this era bring to light the subjects of disscusion, but memorializes the values and symbols, for anyone to reflect upon.

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I believe art is both meaningful and meaningless, as in creating art for fun with no backstory or historical values. Or perhaps it's meaningful toward the artist; a sign of significance in the past, or to communicate certain ideas about large and harsh ideas.

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What purpose did art serve in the renaissance?

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What purpose did art serve in the renaissance?

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The art in the renaissance was often made to communicate ideas of wealth, power, ans status.

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I think for a variety of reasons. To be remembered in history, to be great (social status and fame), to build connection. Art is the most simplest form of communication. In a world where we have not always been able to communicate due to language barriers, illiteracy, etc. Art communicates social, political, and cultural ideas in a simple form and allows for a broader audience. A.B.

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I believe the purpose of art in the Renaissance was to highlight the time period as well as incorporate large values and ideas on spiritual and symbolic means. A portrayal of a perfect world could've been a potential preferred aesthetic during these times as well.

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I think humans make art to have their true inner thoughts expressed in a way that words can't, it also creates immortality by leaving behind a piece of yourself that won't be forgotten.

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I think that in the Renaisance art was highly relevant. It was a way of asserting education or status or intellect even. I wonder how influential art still is today?

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Why did people make art in the Renaissance? - Ms M

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Why did people make art in the Renaissance? - Ms M

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I think that sometimes art was aspirational, to portray the world as we wish it was. Sometimes art had an element of propaganda. e.g. for a dominant group such as the church to tell people how to live.

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What purpose did art serve in the Renaissance?

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What purpose did art serve in the Renaissance?

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What motivated people to make art in the Renaissance

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What motivated people to make art in the Renaissance

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Human's make art to express their inner feelings and to pass along a message to other people in the world, to spread their beliefs and ideas.

K.A

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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neoplatonism_and_Christianity
https://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Neoplatonism
https://www.academia.edu/3025007/Neo_Platonism_and_Hermeticism_in_the_Renaissance
https://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/paintings/glossary/neoplatonism

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Neoplatonism was a major influence on Christian theology throughout Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages in the West. This was due to St. Augustine of Hippo, who was influenced by the early neoplatonists Plotinus and Porphyry, as well as the works of the Christian writer Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite, who was influenced by later neoplatonists, such as Proclus and Damascius.

Certain central tenets of neoplatonism served as a philosophical interim for the Christian theologian Augustine of Hippo on his journey from dualistic Manichaeism to Christianity. As a Manichee, Augustine had held that evil has substantial being and that God is made of matter; when he became a neoplatonist, he changed his views on these things. As a neoplatonist, and later a Christian, Augustine believed that evil is a privation of good and that God is not material. Perhaps more importantly, the emphasis on mystical contemplation as a means to directly encounter God or the One, found in the writings of Plotinus and Porphyry, deeply affected Augustine. He reports at least two mystical experiences in his Confessions which clearly follow the neoplatonic model. According to his own account of his important discovery of 'the books of the Platonists' in Confessions Book 7, Augustine owes his conception of both God and the human soul as incorporeal substance to neoplatonism.

Many other Christians were influenced by Neoplatonism, especially in their identifying the neoplatonic one, or God, with Yahweh. The most influential of these would be Origen, who potentially took classes from Ammonius Saccas (but this is not certain because there may have been a different philosopher, now called Origen the pagan, at the same time), and the late 5th century author known as Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite.

Neoplatonism also had links with Gnosticism, which Plotinus rebuked in his ninth tractate of the second : "Against Those That Affirm The Creator of The Kosmos and The Kosmos Itself to Be Evil" (generally known as "Against The Gnostics").

Due to their belief being grounded in Platonic thought, the neoplatonists rejected Gnosticism's vilification of Plato's demiurge, the creator of the material world or cosmos discussed in the Timaeus. Although neoplatonism has been referred to as orthodox Platonic philosophy by scholars like Professor John D. Turner, this reference may be due in part to Plotinus' attempt to refute certain interpretations of Platonic philosophy, through his Enneads. Plotinus believed the followers of gnosticism had corrupted the original teachings of Plato.

Despite the influence this philosophy had on Christianity, Justinian I would hurt later neoplatonism by ordering the closure of the refounded Academy of Athens in 529.

Pseudo-Dionysius proved significant for both the Byzantine and Roman branches of Christianity. His works were translated into Latin by John Scotus Eriugena in the 9th century.

From the days of the Early Church until the present, the Orthodox Church has made positive selective use of ancient Greek philosophy, particularly Socrates, Plato, Aristotle and the Stoics. For example, the term 'logos' (Greek Λόγος ) originated with Heraclitus and meant reason or thought. In the Christian context, Logos takes on a deeper meaning and becomes a name for the second person of the Trinity. The writer and theologian Gregory Palamas in the 14th century gave four distinct meanings for the term 'logos'. The most important principle to keep in mind is that early Christianity developed in a Greek milieu and a common vocabulary was used in philosophical, spiritual and theological writing. However, the meanings of words sometimes evolved along different lines. In other cases, philosophical ideas and concepts were sometimes adapted and changed by Christian writers. Any exegetical endeavor trying to unravel the influence of neoplatonic thought on Christian theology needs to keep these principles in mind. One should also note that philosophy was used quite differently in the Eastern and Western theological traditions.

The writings attributed to Dionysius the Areopagite are among the most enigmatic works of late antiquity. Byzantine scholars such as Gregory Palamas cited Dionysius especially in matters of Mystical Theology such as theoria, the divine energies and the unknowability of God. At present, modern theologians and philosophers are still debating whether Dionysius was a neoplatonist with Christian influences or a Christian writer with neoplatonic influences. Among Orthodox scholars, the latter view seems to be shared by such writers as Andrew Louth and Vladimir Lossky. However, other Orthodox scholars such as John Meyendorff believe that the neoplatonism of Dionysius exerted both positive and negative influences on Orthodox theology. Meyendorff maintains that Dionysius has led to some confusion in the areas of liturgical and ecclesiological formulations.

Marsilio Ficino, who translated Plotinus, Proclus, as well as Plato's complete works into Latin, was the central figure of a major neoplatonist revival in the Renaissance. His friend, Giovanni Pico della Mirandola was also a major figure in this movement. Both were students of Jewish mystical Kabbalah, which was heavily influenced by neoplatonism. Renewed interest in Plotinian philosophy contributed to the rational theology and philosophy of the " Cambridge Platonist" circle ( B. Whichcote, R. Cudworth, J. Smith, H. More, etc.). Renaissance neoplatonism also overlapped with or graded into various forms of Christian esotericism.

Edwards, Mark. 2006. Culture and Philosophy in the Age of Plotinus. Classical Literature and Society Series. London: Duckworth.

Finan, Thomas and Vincent Twomey. eds. 1992. The Relationship between Neoplatonism and Christianity. Dublin: Four Courts Press.

Jurdjevic, Mark (2004). "Prophets and Politicians: Marsilio Ficino, Savonarola and the Valori Family". Past & Present. 183 (183): 41-77. doi:10.1093/past/183.1.41. JSTOR 3600860.

Gertz, Sebastian R. P. 2016. "Plotinos". In: Reallexikon für Antike und Christentum Bd. 27 (Lfg. 210/217), 988-1009

Martin, Francis X. and John A. Richmond. 1991. From Augustine to Eriugena: Essays on Neoplatonism and Christianity in Honor of John O'Meara.Washington: Catholic University of America Press.

Matthews, Alfred Warren. 1980. The Development of St. Augustine, From Neoplatonism to Christianity, 386-391 A.D. Washington: University Press of America.

O'Daly, Gerard. 2001. Platonism Pagan and Christian: Studies in Plotinus and Augustine. Aldershot; Burlington, VT: Ashgate.

Rist, John M. 1994. Augustine: Ancient Thought Baptized. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge Univ. Press.

Schott, Jeremy (2013). "Plotinus's Portrait and Pamphilus's Prison Notebook: Neoplatonic and Early Christian Textualities at the Turn of the Fourth Century C.E". Journal of Early Christian Studies. 21 (3): 329-362. doi:10.1353/earl.2013.0032.

Smith, Andrew. 2004. Philosophy in Late Antiquity. London/New York: Routledge.

Stang, Charles M. 2016. Our Divine Double. Cambridge, MA; London: Harvard University Press.

Trembovler, Larissa. 2000. "A Sound Mind in a Diseased Body: A Medical Aspect of the Soul-Body Relationship in Later Greek and Early Christian Philosophy. In From Athens to Jerusalem: Medicine in Hellenized Jewish Lore and in Early Christian Literature: Papers of the Symposium in Jerusalem, 9-11 September 1996. Edited by Samuel S. Kottek, 171-179. Rotterdam: Erasmus.

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Neoplatonism and Christianity - Wikipedia

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Neoplatonism was a major influence on Christian theology throughout Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages in the West. This was due to St. Augustine of Hippo, who was influenced by the early neoplatonists Plotinus and Porphyry, as well as the works of the Christian writer Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite, who was influenced by later neoplatonists, such as Proclus and Damascius.

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https://drive.google.com/file/d/1j4FhGjJcrVT2O_UZtAMTDaKQVbFunjwa/view?usp=sharing

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AH3_ Neoplatonism and its Influence on Michelangelo's Artwork by Caroline Shin.pdf

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A new history of Italian Renaissance Art

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A new history of Italian Renaissance Art

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TLJ - cultural and political (Art in Renaissance Italy 4th ed.)

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TLJ - cultural and political (Art in Renaissance Italy 4th ed.)

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What do you think is a strength for you at this stage?

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I've found these resources really useful

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I've found these resources really useful

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Share your gems with the class mates

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I want to go into more depth researching ...

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In which areas do you need to strengthen your knowledge?

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How did changing ideas (about religion/culture/education etc. ...) impact on Art

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How did changing ideas (about religion/culture/education etc. ...) impact on Art

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-Use your name or initials. This makes it easier to figure out who said what.
-Give examples of how changing ideas about religion effected/affected the artworks you are looking at?

-You can add your own questions, art works and resources
-See what you can add to the questions and ideas that have been posted.
-You can use headings like My idea is, New information, Another idea is, We need to find out, I wonder
- It's OK not to know very much at the beginning - add what you can even if it is just the beginning of an idea - that just means it is an area that we need to work on

Anyone can contribute to any part of this. Once an idea or question is out there, it is there for the group to work on.

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Gender Regimes and Classical Greek Antiquity in the Fifth and Fourth Centuries BC

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The Met’s Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History

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Women in Classical Greece | Essay | The Metropolitan Museum of Art | Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History

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In addition to childbearing, the weaving of fabric and managing the household were the principal responsibilities of a Greek woman. Young women, however, had some mobility in antiquity.

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Introduction to gender in renaissance Italy (article) | Khan Academy

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PM I would talk about the values of the Pope

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PM I would talk about the values of the Pope

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This might include cultural values (e.g. the importance of classical education), historical value perhaps .

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I think the creation of Adam would have Religious value, Iconic value and Symbolic value

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Influential Works

Apollo Belvedere

The Laocoon is once again a Roman copy in marble of a Greek original, dated back to between 42 and 20BC. It is rumored to have been made by three great Greek sculptors: Agesander, Athendoros and Polydorus. This statue was found in 1506 near the site of Nero's Golden House but it is possible that either it was a possession of Nero's or some other wealthy Roman.

The unearthing of the Laocoon in 1506 made for quite a ceremonious event. Michelangelo was in Rome at the time just after having finished his David in Florence and was able to be present at the unearthing. Immediately the group gathered there recognized the work from Pliny's histories as Pliny had described it among other things as 'superior to any other work in sculpture or painting'. As Pope Julius II was a lover of antiquities he of course immediately acquired the great work; church bells are said to have rung all throughout Rome as it was taken to the Vatican. It was immediately placed in the newly constructed Belvedere Courtyard and has resided in its niche there for all but 13 of the last 500 years.

The figures depicted in Laocoon are the priest Laocoon himself whom the statue is named after along with his two sons. Laocoon was a priest of either Poseidon or Apollo, and lived in the city of Troy. He is known for having attempted to warn his fellow Trojans against accepting the horse from the Greeks with the words 'Do not trust the Horse, Trojans, Whatever it is, I fear the Greeks even when they bring gifts.' His advice was not heeded of course and in his anger he hurled a spear against the horse, some say even hence producing a noise when weapons inside rattled. However, this act had sealed his fate for both Poseidon and Athena favored the Greeks in this war and they sent two sea serpents to kill Laocoon and his two sons, the scene depicted in the statue. The Trojans however misinterpreted his death as a sign of anger from the gods for hurling the spear at the Horse and immediately accepted the gift, meeting their own end as well. This statue serves as a symbol for the fall of Troy in that through the story of Aenas. Aenas escaped the fall of Troy while carrying his father on his back, displaying his virtues and later going on to found Rome. Hence this statue serves as a symbolic reminder of the fall of Try and the birth of Rome.

This statue had a profound influence upon Michelangelo. Michelangelo was present from the unearthing of the statue on and as an artist in such great favor with the Pope he enjoyed the special benefit of being able to spend far more time studying it than anyone else. He was most influenced by the figures depicted in their violent conflict with the serpents. This statue is rather Hellenistic in that the scene portrayed is one of action and emotion and it does not strive for the perfection, harmony and symmetry of the classical work. Instead it shows three people desperately struggling for their lives. The expressions of pain on the faces are also of note; they have a profound effect upon the viewer as a view from the backside highlights, a completely different mood is created. Michelangelo had always wanted to depict muscular movement in some way other than showing off strength and this was a blueprint depicting exactly how to do so. Michelangelo is now viewed as being on the forefront of the movement to Baroque and it is very possible that this statue through its emphasis on climax and emotion came to influence him into that direction.

When the statue was found it was in remarkable shape missing only Lacoon's right arm. As many people in the Renaissance focused on perfection, there was a general desire to correct the statue's flaw by replacing the missing arm. Michelangelo took an entirely opposite view in general upon restoration and refused to help restore any statue, often suggesting others to work in his place. Pope Clement went on to hold a contest for the best replacement arm and had Raphael judge the entries. The winner had Laocoon's arm held out, up into the air forming a diagonal with his left leg. This pose is thought to be more heroic and almost gives the impression that Laocoon has a chance at fighting off the mighty serpents. However this restoration was incorrect and several other attempts were made before the original arm was excavated in 1957. This find proved that the original arm had been strongly bent at the elbow, which one should note is exactly the position suggested by Michelangelo as most likely. The found arm was put back onto the statue, though due to the many attempts to restore it one can see additional cuts had been made to the shoulder of the statue, further degrading the precious ancient work.

As previously stated the Laocoon statue has resided almost entirely in its niche in the Belvedere Courtyard since its excavation in 1506. The only period at which it was not there was after Napoleon conquered Rome and removed it for placement in his palace, the Louvre. Napoleon did not last very long as an emperor however and it was returned in 1813 to the Vatican by the British. At one point the French King Francis I asked of Pope Leo X for the Laocoon statue, or at least one equally as grand as it. The Pope obviously did not want to part with such an incredible statue asked Bandinelli if he could make a copy on par with the original. Bandinelli replied that he could do even better and while that may or may not be true, the Pope liked Bandinelli's copy enough that he kept it as well and sent to the French King only the plaster casts used in making the copy.

Belvedere Torso

The Belvedere Torso was another statue found unceremoniously in the 15th century and brought to the Vatican by Pope Clement in 1523. This statue is again a Roman copy of a Greek original, and is dated via the inscription on the base to the 1st century BC. This is possibly a statue of Hercules or Apollo, though current thought is now leading to the possibility that this is a statue of Ajax pondering the death of Achilles. Though as one can obviously see there is an extremely limited context from which one can make judgments as the statue is lacking arms, legs and a head. This statue is obviously un-restored, and that is probably for the better as the lack of context would make restoration efforts rather improvisational. Michelangelo admired this statue and the pose portrayed immensely. His admiration for it came from the sense of internal struggle that is portrayed so elegantly and done so only with a torso. He often referred to it as his teacher, and went on to use copies of this pose throughout his future work and notably in the Sistine chapel.

The sculpture of Apollo Belvedere was referred to by J. J. Winckelman as "the consummation of the best that nature, art, and the human mind can produce". This statue is thought to be a second century marble copy of a Greek bronze original. It was found in the late 15th century and acquired by the Vatican in 1511.

This statue is the epitome of classical art and sculpture. This can be seen through the extremely realistic folds and falling of the cloak, as well as the perfection of the male figure depicted who is most likely the god Apollo. His stance is also of note; he is realistically positioned with one leg bent, a position referred to as contraposta. This statue is as well seen as a nearly perfect representation of the human figure. The effects of the classical style are also seen in that Apollo is in a calm serene state; he is not engaged in any violent actions or emotions, but rather is calmly posing. This statue is the epitome of classical style and is everything that the renaissance artists strived to achieve.

The statue as it can be seen in the Vatican Museums is completely un-restored, though at one point it was. Michelangelo was greatly opposed to any restoration of ancient works, but would suggest others to do so in his place when he was asked to do so. It was through such a student, Montorsoli, that Apollo Belvedere was at one point incorrectly restored. This restoration was shown to be wrong by the fact that Montorsoli left Apollo's hands empty, while the quiver of arrows on his back implies that he should be holding a bow. It is now hypothesized that the statue originally included Apollo holding both a bow and a laurel branch, symbolizing the two contrasting sides of Apollo: his punishment of the wicked and his forgivement of the repentant.

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Influential Works Apollo Belvedere The Laocoon is once again a Roman copy in marble of a Greek original, dated back to between 42 and 20BC. It is rumored to have been made by three great Greek sculptors: Agesander, Athendoros and Polydorus.

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The Unlikely Figure We Have to Thank For The Renaissance's Greatest Masterpieces - Google Arts & Culture

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https://ah3netnz.weebly.com/values-and-arguments.html

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How was it valued/considered to be significant?

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How was it valued/considered to be significant?

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Provenance: from the French word ‘provenir’, "to come from" refers to the chronology of the ownership, custody or location of an artwork, building or object

Monetary value: having material worth often indicated by the amount of money an art work, building or object would bring if sold

Cultural value: the importance of an artwork, building or object to the culture it was made in and for

Historical value: an increase in the value of an artwork, building or object because of historical aging

Political value: art works that reflect the ideals and goals of a particular group, or that can be used by a political group to gain that group greater social influence

Religious value: when an artwork, building or object has meaning and importance for an organised church group

Spiritual value: when an artwork, building or object has meaning and importance to a particular individual or group due to their religious or metaphysical beliefs

Symbolic value: an artwork, building or object that represents something deeper for those who value it

Iconic value: the importance of an artwork, building or object due to how famous and well known it is

Functional value: the importance of an artwork, building or object is due to its use or uses

Aesthetic value: the importance of an artwork, building or object based on its appearance

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How was this Fresco valued/considered to be important?

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How was this Fresco valued/considered to be important?

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Provenance: from the French word ‘provenir’, "to come from" refers to the chronology of the ownership, custody or location of an artwork, building or object

Monetary value: having material worth often indicated by the amount of money an art work, building or object would bring if sold

Cultural value: the importance of an artwork, building or object to the culture it was made in and for

Historical value: an increase in the value of an artwork, building or object because of historical aging

Political value: art works that reflect the ideals and goals of a particular group, or that can be used by a political group to gain that group greater social influence

Religious value: when an artwork, building or object has meaning and importance for an organised church group

Spiritual value: when an artwork, building or object has meaning and importance to a particular individual or group due to their religious or metaphysical beliefs

Symbolic value: an artwork, building or object that represents something deeper for those who value it

Iconic value: the importance of an artwork, building or object due to how famous and well known it is

Functional value: the importance of an artwork, building or object is due to its use or uses

Aesthetic value: the importance of an artwork, building or object based on its appearance

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How was this fresco valued/considered to be important?

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How was this fresco valued/considered to be important?

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Provenance: from the French word ‘provenir’, "to come from" refers to the chronology of the ownership, custody or location of an artwork, building or object

Monetary value: having material worth often indicated by the amount of money an art work, building or object would bring if sold

Cultural value: the importance of an artwork, building or object to the culture it was made in and for

Historical value: an increase in the value of an artwork, building or object because of historical aging

Political value: art works that reflect the ideals and goals of a particular group, or that can be used by a political group to gain that group greater social influence

Religious value: when an artwork, building or object has meaning and importance for an organised church group

Spiritual value: when an artwork, building or object has meaning and importance to a particular individual or group due to their religious or metaphysical beliefs

Symbolic value: an artwork, building or object that represents something deeper for those who value it

Iconic value: the importance of an artwork, building or object due to how famous and well known it is

Functional value: the importance of an artwork, building or object is due to its use or uses

Aesthetic value: the importance of an artwork, building or object based on its appearance

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How was this fresco valued/considered to be significant?

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How was this fresco valued/considered to be significant?

# data[].attributes.body
Provenance: from the French word ‘provenir’, "to come from" refers to the chronology of the ownership, custody or location of an artwork, building or object

Monetary value: having material worth often indicated by the amount of money an art work, building or object would bring if sold

Cultural value: the importance of an artwork, building or object to the culture it was made in and for

Historical value: an increase in the value of an artwork, building or object because of historical aging

Political value: art works that reflect the ideals and goals of a particular group, or that can be used by a political group to gain that group greater social influence

Religious value: when an artwork, building or object has meaning and importance for an organised church group

Spiritual value: when an artwork, building or object has meaning and importance to a particular individual or group due to their religious or metaphysical beliefs

Symbolic value: an artwork, building or object that represents something deeper for those who value it

Iconic value: the importance of an artwork, building or object due to how famous and well known it is

Functional value: the importance of an artwork, building or object is due to its use or uses

Aesthetic value: the importance of an artwork, building or object based on its appearance

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Floor plan - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michelangelo#/media/File:L%E2%80%99Architecture_de_la_Renaissance_-_Fig._13.PNG

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The Last Judgment ( Italian: Il Giudizio Universale) is a fresco by the Italian Renaissance painter Michelangelo covering the whole altar wall of the Sistine Chapel in Vatican City. It is a depiction of the Second Coming of Christ and the final and eternal judgment by God of all humanity. The dead rise and descend to their fates, as judged by Christ who is surrounded by prominent saints. Altogether there are over 300 figures, with nearly all the males and angels originally shown as nudes; many were later partly covered up by painted draperies, of which some remain after recent cleaning and restoration.

The work took over four years to complete between 1536 and 1541 (preparation of the altar wall began in 1535). Michelangelo began working on it 25 years after having finished the Sistine Chapel ceiling, and was nearly 67 at its completion. He had originally accepted the commission from Pope Clement VII, but it was completed under Pope Paul III whose stronger reforming views probably affected the final treatment.

In the lower part of the fresco, Michelangelo followed tradition in showing the saved ascending at the left and the damned descending at the right. In the upper part, the inhabitants of Heaven are joined by the newly saved. The fresco is more monochromatic than the ceiling frescoes and is dominated by the tones of flesh and sky. The cleaning and restoration of the fresco, however, revealed a greater chromatic range than previously apparent. Orange, green, yellow, and blue are scattered throughout, animating and unifying the complex scene.

The reception of the painting was mixed from the start, with much praise but also criticism on both religious and artistic grounds. Both the amount of nudity and the muscular style of the bodies has been one area of contention, and the overall composition another.

Where traditional compositions generally contrast an ordered, harmonious heavenly world above with the tumultuous events taking place in the earthly zone below, in Michelangelo's conception the arrangement and posing of the figures across the entire painting give an impression of agitation and excitement, and even in the upper parts there is "a profound disturbance, tension and commotion" in the figures. Sydney J. Freedberg interprets their "complex responses" as "those of giant powers here made powerless, bound by racking spiritual anxiety", as their role of intercessors with the deity had come to an end, and perhaps they regret some of the verdicts. There is an impression that all the groups of figures are circling the central figure of Christ in a huge rotary movement.

At the centre of the work is Christ, shown as the individual verdicts of the Last Judgment are pronounced; he looks down towards the damned. He is beardless, and "compounded from antique conceptions of Hercules, Apollo, and Jupiter Fulminator", probably, in particular, the Belvedere Apollo, brought to the Vatican by Pope Julius II. However, there are parallels for his pose in earlier Last Judgments, especially one in the Camposanto of Pisa, which Michelangelo would have known; here the raised hand is part of a gesture of ostentatio vulnerum ("display of the wounds"), where the resurrected Christ reveals the wounds of his Crucifixion, which can be seen on Michelangelo's figure.

To the left of Christ is his mother, Virgin Mary, who turns her head to look down towards the Saved, though her pose also suggests resignation. It appears that the moment has passed for her to exercise her traditional role of pleading on behalf of the dead; with John the Baptist this Deesis is a regular motif in earlier compositions. Preparatory drawings show her standing and facing Christ with arms outstretched, in a more traditional intercessory posture.

Surrounding Christ are large numbers of figures, the saints and the rest of the elect. On a similar scale to Christ are John the Baptist on the left, and on the right Saint Peter, holding the keys of Heaven and perhaps offering them back to Christ, as they will no longer be needed. Several of the main saints appear to be showing Christ their attributes, the evidence of their martyrdom. This used to be interpreted as the saints calling for the damnation of those who had not served the cause of Christ, but other interpretations have become more common, including that the saints are themselves not certain of their own verdicts, and try at the last moment to remind Christ of their sufferings.

Other prominent saints include Saint Bartholomew below Peter, holding the attribute of his martyrdom, his own flayed skin. The face on the skin is usually recognized as being a self-portrait of Michelangelo. Many others, even of the larger saints, are difficult to identify. Ascanio Condivi, Michelangelo's tame authorized biographer, says that all Twelve Apostles are shown around Christ, "but he does not attempt to name them and would probably have had a difficult time doing so". In the upper right corner, in the group ascending to heaven, there are three male couples embracing and kissing.

The movements of the resurrected reflect the traditional pattern. They arise from their graves at bottom left, and some continue upwards, helped in several cases by angels in the air (mostly without wings) or others on clouds, pulling them up. Others, the damned, apparently pass over to the right, though none are quite shown doing so; there is a zone in the lower middle that is empty of persons. A boat rowed by an aggressive Charon, who ferried souls to the Underworld in classical mythology (and Dante), brings them to land beside the entrance to Hell; his threatening them with his oar is a direct borrowing from Dante. Satan, the traditional Christian devil, is not shown but another classical figure, Minos, supervises the admission of the Damned into Hell; this was his role in Dante's . He is generally agreed to have been given the features of Biagio da Cesena, a critic of Michelangelo in the Papal court.

In the centre above Charon is a group of angels on clouds, seven blowing trumpets (as in the Book of Revelation), others holding books that record the names of the Saved and Damned. To their right is a larger figure who has just realized that he is damned, and appears paralyzed with horror. Two devils are pulling him downwards. To the right of this devils pull down others; some are being pushed down by angels above them.

The Last Judgment was a traditional subject for large church frescos, but it was unusual to place it at the east end, over the altar. The traditional position was on the west wall, over the main doors at the back of a church, so that the congregation took this reminder of their options away with them on leaving. It might be either painted on the interior, as for example by Giotto at the Arena Chapel, or in a sculpted tympanum on the exterior. However, a number of late medieval panel paintings, mostly altarpieces, were based on the subject with similar compositions, although adapted to a horizontal picture space. These include the Beaune Altarpiece by Rogier van der Weyden and ones by artists such as Fra Angelico, Hans Memling and Hieronymus Bosch. Many aspects of Michelangelo's composition reflect the well-established traditional Western depiction, but with a fresh and original approach.

Most traditional versions have a figure of Christ in Majesty in about the same position as Michelangelo's, and even larger than his, with a greater disproportion in scale to the other figures. As here, compositions contain large numbers of figures, divided between angels and saints around Christ at the top, and the dead being judged below. Typically there is a strong contrast between the ordered ranks of figures in the top part, and chaotic and frenzied activity below, especially on the right side that leads to Hell. The procession of the judged usually begins at the bottom (viewer's) left, as here, as the resurrected rise from their graves and move towards judgment. Some pass judgment and continue upwards to join the company in heaven, while others pass over to Christ's left hand and then downwards towards Hell in the bottom right corner (compositions had difficulty incorporating Purgatory visually). The damned may be shown naked, as a mark of their humiliation as devils carry them off, and sometimes the newly-resurrected too, but angels and those in Heaven are fully dressed, their clothing a main clue to the identity of groups and individuals.

The project was a long time in gestation. It was probably first proposed in 1533, but was not then attractive to Michelangelo. A number of letters and other sources describe the original subject as a "Resurrection", but it seems most likely that this was always meant in the sense of the General Resurrection of the Dead, followed in Christian eschatology by the Last Judgment, rather than the Resurrection of Jesus. Other scholars believe there was indeed a substitution of the more sombre final subject, reflecting the emerging mood of the Counter-Reformation, and an increase in the area of the wall to be covered. A number of Michelangelo's drawings from the early 1530s develop a Resurrection of Jesus.

Vasari, alone among contemporary sources, says that originally Michelangelo intended to paint the other end wall with a Fall of the Rebel Angels to match. By April 1535 the preparation of the wall was begun, but it was over a year before painting began. Michelangelo stipulated the filling-in of two narrow windows, the removal of three cornices, and building the surface increasingly forward as it rises, to give a single uninterrupted wall surface slightly leaning out, by about 11 inches over the height of the fresco.

The preparation of the wall led to the end of more than twenty years of friendship between Michelangelo and Sebastiano del Piombo, who tried to persuade the Pope and Michelangelo to do the painting in his preferred technique of oil on plaster, and managed to get the smooth plaster finish needed for this applied. It is possible that around this stage the idea was floated that Sebastiano would do the actual painting, to Michelangelo's designs, as they had collaborated nearly 20 years earlier. After, according to Vasari, some months of passivity, Michelangelo furiously insisted that it should be in fresco, and had the wall re-plastered in the rough needed as a base for fresco. It was on this occasion that he famously said that oil painting was "an art for women and for leisurely and idle people like Fra Sebastiano".

The new fresco required, unlike his Sistine Chapel ceiling, considerable destruction of existing art. There was an altarpiece of the Assumption of Mary by Pietro Perugino above the altar, for which a drawing survives in the Albertina, flanked by tapestries to designs by Raphael; these, of course, could just be used elsewhere. Above this zone, there were two paintings from the 15th-century cycles of Moses and Christ which still occupy the middle zone of the side walls. These were probably Perugino's Finding of Moses and the Adoration of the Kings, beginning both cycles. Above them were the first of the series of standing popes in niches, including Saint Peter himself, probably as well as a Saint Paul and a central figure of Christ. Finally, the project required the destruction of two lunettes with the first two Ancestors of Christ from Michelangelo's own ceiling scheme. However, some of these works may have already been damaged by an accident in April 1525, when the altar curtains went on fire; the damage done to the wall is unclear.

The structure of the chapel, built in a great hurry in the 1470s, had given trouble from the start, with frequent cracks appearing. At Christmas in 1525 a Swiss Guard was killed while entering the chapel with the pope when the stone lintel to the doorway split and fell on him. The site is on sandy soil, draining a large area, and the preceding "Great Chapel" had had similar problems.

The new scheme for the altar wall and other changes necessitated by structural problems led to a loss of symmetry and "continuity of window-rhythms and cornices", as well as some of the most important parts of the previous iconographical schemes. As shown by drawings, the initial conception for the Last Judgment was to leave the existing altarpiece and work round it, stopping the composition below the frescos of Moses and Christ.

The Sistine Chapel was dedicated to the Assumption of the Virgin, which had been the subject of Perugino's altarpiece. Once it was decided to remove this, it appears that a tapestry of the Coronation of the Virgin, a subject often linked to the Assumption, was commissioned, which was hung above the altar for important liturgical occasions in the 18th century, and perhaps from the 1540s until then. The tapestry has a vertical format (it is 4.3 by 3 metres (14.1 by 9.8 ft)), and is still in the Vatican Museums. A print of 1582 shows the chapel in use, with a large cloth of roughly this shape hanging behind the altar, and a canopy over it. The cloth is shown as plain, but the artist also omits the paintings below the ceiling, and may well not have been present himself, but working from prints and descriptions.

Religious objections

The Last Judgment became controversial as soon as it was seen, with disputes between critics in the Catholic Counter-Reformation and supporters of the genius of the artist and the style of the painting. Michelangelo was accused of being insensitive to proper decorum, in respect of nudity and other aspects of the work, and of pursuing artistic effect over following the scriptural description of the event.

On a preview visit with Paul III, before the work was complete, the pope's Master of Ceremonies Biagio da Cesena is reported by Vasari as saying that: "it was most disgraceful that in so sacred a place there should have been depicted all those nude figures, exposing themselves so shamefully, and that it was no work for a papal chapel but rather for the public baths and taverns". Michelangelo immediately worked Cesena's face from memory into the scene as Minos, judge of the underworld (far bottom-right corner of the painting) with donkey ears (i.e. indicating foolishness), while his nudity is covered by a coiled snake. It is said that when Cesena complained to the Pope, the pontiff joked that his jurisdiction did not extend to Hell, so the portrait would have to remain. Pope Paul III himself was attacked by some for commissioning and protecting the work, and came under pressure to alter if not entirely remove the Last Judgment, which continued under his successors.

There were objections to the mixing of figures from pagan mythology into depictions of Christian subject matter. Besides the figures of Charon and Minos and wingless angels, the very classicized Christ was suspect: beardless Christs had in fact only finally disappeared from Christian art some four centuries earlier, but Michelangelo's figure is unmistakably Apollonian.

Further objections related to failures to follow the scriptural references. The angels blowing trumpets are all in one group, whereas in the Book of Revelation they are sent to "the four corners of the earth". Christ is not seated on a throne, contrary to Scripture. Such draperies as Michelangelo painted are often shown as blown by wind, but it was claimed that all weather would cease on the Day of Judgment. The resurrected are in mixed condition, some skeletons but most appearing with their flesh intact. All these objections were eventually collected in a book, the Due Dialogi published just after Michelangelo's death in 1564, by the Dominican theologian Giovanni Andrea Gilio (da Fabriano), who had become one of several theologians policing art during and after the Council of Trent. As well as theological objections, Gilio objected to artistic devices like foreshortening that puzzled or distracted untrained viewers. The copy by Marcello Venusti added the dove of the Holy Spirit above Christ, perhaps in response to Gilio's complaint that Michelangelo should have shown all the Trinity.

Two decades after the fresco was completed, the final session of the Council of Trent in 1563 finally enacted a form of words that reflected the Counter-Reformation attitudes to art that had been growing in strength in the Church for some decades. The Council's decree (drafted at the last minute and generally very short and inexplicit) reads in part:

Every superstition shall be removed, ... all lasciviousness be avoided; in such wise that figures shall not be painted or adorned with a beauty exciting to lust, ... there be nothing seen that is disorderly, or that is unbecomingly or confusedly arranged, nothing that is profane, nothing indecorous, seeing that holiness becometh the house of God. And that these things may be the more faithfully observed, the holy Synod ordains, that no one be allowed to place, or cause to be placed, any unusual image, in any place, or church, howsoever exempted, except that image have been approved of by the bishop.

There was an explicit decree that: "The pictures in the Apostolic Chapel should be covered over, and those in other churches should be destroyed, if they display anything that is obscene or clearly false".

The defences by Vasari and others of the painting evidently made some impact on clerical thinking. In 1573, when Paolo Veronese was summoned before the Venetian Inquisition to justify his inclusion of "buffoons, drunken Germans, dwarfs, and other such absurdities" in what was then called a painting of the Last Supper (later renamed as The Feast in the House of Levi), he tried to implicate Michelangelo in a comparable breach of decorum, but was promptly rebuffed by the inquisitors, as the transcript records:
Q. Does it seem suitable to you, in the Last Supper of our Lord, to represent buffoons, drunken Germans, dwarfs, and other such absurdities?
A. Certainly not.
Q. Then why have you done it?
A. I did it on the supposition that those people were outside the room in which the Supper was taking place.
Q. Do you not know that in Germany and other countries infested by heresy, it is habitual, by means of pictures full of absurdities, to vilify and turn to ridicule the things of the Holy Catholic Church, in order to teach false doctrine to ignorant people who have no common sense?
A. I agree that it is wrong, but I repeat what I have said, that it is my duty to follow the examples given me by my masters.
Q. Well, what did your masters paint? Things of this kind, perhaps?
A. In Rome, in the Pope's Chapel, Michelangelo has represented Our Lord, His Mother, Saint John, Saint Peter, and the celestial court; and he has represented all these personages nude, including the Virgin Mary [this last not true], and in various attitudes not inspired by the most profound religious feeling.
Q. Do you not understand that in representing the Last Judgment, in which it is a mistake to suppose that clothes are worn, there was no reason for painting any? But in these figures what is there that is not inspired by the Holy Spirit? There are neither buffoons, dogs, weapons, nor other absurdities. ...

Some action to meet the criticism and enact the decision of the council had become inevitable, and the genitalia in the fresco were painted over with drapery by the Mannerist painter Daniele da Volterra, probably mostly after Michelangelo died in 1564. Daniele was "a sincere and fervent admirer of Michelangelo" who kept his changes to a minimum, and had to be ordered to go back and add more, and for his trouble got the nickname "Il Braghettone", meaning "the breeches maker". He also chiseled away and entirely repainted the larger part of Saint Catherine and the entire figure of Saint Blaise behind her. This was done because in the original version Blaise had appeared to look at Catherine's naked behind, and because to some observers the position of their bodies suggested sexual intercourse. The repainted version shows Blaise looking away from Saint Catherine, upward towards Christ.

His work, beginning in the upper parts of the wall, was interrupted when Pope Pius IV died in December 1565 and the chapel needed to be free of scaffolding for the funeral and conclave to elect the next pope. El Greco had made a helpful offer to repaint the entire wall with a fresco that was "modest and decent, and no less well painted than the other". Further campaigns of overpainting, often "less discreet or respectful", followed in later reigns, and "the threat of total destruction ... re-surfaced in the pontificates of Pius V, Gregory XIII, and probably again of Clement VIII". According to Anthony Blunt, "rumours were current in 1936 that Pius XI intended to continue the work". In total, nearly 40 figures had drapery added, apart from the two repainted. These additions were in "dry" fresco, which made them easier to remove in the most recent restoration (1990-1994), when about 15 were removed, from those added after 1600. It was decided to leave 16th-century changes.

At a relatively early date, probably in the 16th century, a strip of about 18 inches was lost across the whole width of the bottom of the fresco, as the altar and its backing was modified.

Artistic criticism

Contemporary

As well as the criticism on moral and religious grounds, there was from the start considerable criticism based on purely aesthetic considerations, which had hardly been seen at all in initial reactions to Michelangelo's Sistine Chapel ceiling. Two key figures in the first wave of criticism were Pietro Aretino and his friend Lodovico Dolce, a prolific Venetian humanist. Aretino had made considerable efforts to become as close to Michelangelo as he was to Titian, but had always been rebuffed; "in 1545 his patience gave way, and he wrote to Michelangelo that letter on the Last Judgment which is now famous as an example of insincere prudishness", a letter written with a view to publication. Aretino had not in fact seen the finished painting, and based his criticisms on one of the prints that had been quickly brought to market. He "purports to represent the simple folk" in this new wider audience. However, it appears that at least the print-buying public preferred the uncensored version of the paintings, as most prints showed this well into the 17th century.

Vasari responded to this and other criticisms in the 1st edition of his Life of Michelangelo in 1550. Dolce followed up in 1557, the year after Aretino died, with a published dialogue, L'Aretino, almost certainly a collaborative effort with his friend. Many of the arguments of the theologian critics are repeated, but now in the name of decorum rather than religion, emphasizing that the particular and very prominent location of the fresco made the amount of nudity unacceptable; a convenient argument for Aretino, some of whose projects were frankly pornographic, but intended for private audiences. Dolce also complains that Michelangelo's female figures are hard to distinguish from males, and his figures show "anatomical exhibitionism", criticisms many have echoed.

On these points, a long-lasting rhetorical comparison of Michelangelo and Raphael developed, in which even supporters of Michelangelo such as Vasari participated. Raphael is held up as the exemplar of all the grace and decorum found lacking in Michelangelo, whose outstanding quality was called by Vasari his terribiltà, the awesome, sublime or (the literal meaning) terror-inducing quality of his art. Vasari came to partly share this view by the time of the expanded 2nd edition of his Lives, published in 1568, though he explicitly defended the fresco on several points raised by the attackers (without mentioning them), such as the decorum of the fresco and "amazing diversity of the figures", and asserted it was "directly inspired by God", and a credit to the Pope and his "future renown".

In many respects, modern art historians discuss the same aspects of the work as 16th-century writers: the general grouping of the figures and rendering of space and movement, the distinctive depiction of anatomy, the nudity and use of colour, and sometimes the theological implications of the fresco. However, Bernadine Barnes points out that no 16th-century critic echoes in the slightest the view of Anthony Blunt that: "This fresco is the work of a man shaken out of his secure position, no longer at ease with the world, and unable to face it directly. Michelangelo does not now deal directly with the visible beauty of the physical world". At the time, continues Barnes, "it was censured as the work of an arrogant man, and it was justified as a work that made celestial figures more beautiful than natural". Many other modern critics take approaches similar to Blunt's, emphasizing Michelangelo's "tendency away from the material and towards the things of the spirit" in his last decades.

In theology, the Second Coming of Christ ended space and time. Despite this, "Michelangelo's curious representation of space", where "the characters inhabit individual spaces that cannot be combined consistently", is often commented on.

Quite apart from the question of decorum, the rendering of anatomy has been often discussed. Writing of "energy" in the nude figure, Kenneth Clark has:

The twist into depth, the struggle to escape from the here and now of the picture plane, which had always distinguished Michelangelo from the Greeks, became the dominating rhythm of his later works. That colossal nightmare, the Last Judgment, is made up of such struggles. It is the most overpowering accumulation in all art of bodies in violent movement"

Of the figure of Christ, Clark says: "Michelangelo has not tried to resist that strange compulsion which made him thicken a torso until it is almost square."

S.J. Freedberg commented that "The vast repertory of anatomies that Michelangelo conceived for the Last Judgment seems often to have been determined more by the requirements of art than by compelling needs of meaning, ... meant not just to entertain but to overpower us with their effects. Often, too, the figures assume attitudes of which a major sense is one of ornament." He notes that the two frescos in the Cappella Paolina, Michelangelo's last paintings begun in November 1542 almost immediately after the Last Judgment, show from the start a major change in style, away from grace and aesthetic effect to an exclusive concern with illustrating the narrative, with no regard for beauty.

Restoration (1980-1994)

Early appreciations of the fresco had focused on the colours, especially in small details, but over the centuries the build-up of dirt on the surface had largely hidden these. The built-out wall led to extra deposition of soot from candles on the altar. In 1953 (admittedly in November) Bernard Berenson put in his diary: "The ceiling looks dark, gloomy. The Last Judgment even more so; ... how difficult to make up our minds that these Sistine frescoes are nowadays scarcely enjoyable in the original and much more so in photographs".

The fresco was restored along with the Sistine vault between 1980 and 1994 under the supervision of Fabrizio Mancinelli, the curator of post-classical collections of the Vatican Museums and Gianluigi Colalucci, head restorer at the Vatican laboratory. During the course of the restoration, about half of the censorship of the " Fig-Leaf Campaign" was removed. Numerous pieces of buried details, caught under the smoke and grime of scores of years, were revealed after the restoration. It was discovered that the fresco of Biagio de Cesena as Minos with donkey ears was being bitten in the genitalia by a coiled snake.

Most writers agree that Michelangelo depicted his own face in the flayed skin of Saint Bartholomew (see the illustration above). Edgar Wind saw this as "a prayer for redemption, that through the ugliness the outward man might be thrown off, and the inward man resurrected pure", in a Neoplatonist mood, one that Aretino detected and objected to. One of Michelangelo's poems had used the metaphor of a snake shedding its old skin for his hope for a new life after his death. Bernadine Barnes writes that "recent viewers ... have found in [the flayed skin] evidence of Michelangelo's self-doubt, since the lifeless skin is held precariously over Hell. However, no sixteenth-century critic noticed it [as Michelangelo's face]."

The bearded figure of Saint Bartholomew holding the skin was sometimes thought to have the features of Aretino, but open conflict between Michelangelo and Aretino did not occur until 1545, several years after the fresco's completion. "Even Aretino's good friend Vasari did not recognize him."

1. Reported by ^ Lodovico Domenichi in Historia di detti et fatti notabili di diversi Principi & huommi privati moderni (1556), p. 668

2. Partridge (see Further reading) summarized (with comments) in notes 32 and 33 on p. 204 of Dillenberger, John, ^ Images and Relics: Theological Perceptions and Visual Images in Sixteenth-century Europe, 1999, Oxford University Press, ISBN 0-19-512172-4, 9780195121728, google books

3. Sistine, 194-198; Blunt, 76, 99; Vasari, 269, note on translating ^ terribiltà/terribilità

4. ^ Dixon, John W. Jr. "The Terror of Salvation: The Last Judgment". Archived from the original on 2007-08-14.

5. Bernadine Barnes, Michelangelo and the Viewer in His Times (Reaktion Books, 2017), p. 141.

Barnes, Bernardine, Michelangelo's Last Judgment: The Renaissance Response, 1998, University of California Press, ISBN 0-520-20549-9, google books

Berenson, Bernard, The Passionate Sightseer, 1960, Thames & Hudson

Blunt, Anthony, Artistic Theory in Italy, 1450-1600, 1940 (refs to 1985 edn.), OUP, ISBN 0-19-881050-4

Clark, Kenneth, The Nude: A Study in Ideal Form, orig. 1949, various edns., page refs from Pelican edn. of 1960

Freedberg, Sidney J. Painting in Italy, 1500-1600, 3rd edn. 1993, Yale, ISBN 0-300-05587-0

Friedländer, Walter. Mannerism and Anti-Mannerism in Italian Painting (originally in German, first edition in English, 1957, Columbia) 1965, Schocken, New York, LOC 578295

Hall, James, Hall's Dictionary of Subjects and Symbols in Art, 1996 (2nd edn.), John Murray, ISBN 0-7195-4147-6

Hartt, Frederick, History of Italian Renaissance Art, 2nd edn., 1987, Thames & Hudson (US Harry N. Abrams), ISBN 0-500-23510-4

Hughes, Anthony, "The Last Judgement", 2.iii, a), in "Michelangelo." Grove Art Online. Oxford Art Online. Oxford University Press. Web. 22 Mar. 2017. Subscription required

"Khan": "Last Judgment", Esperanca Camara, Khan Academy

"Kren": Kren, Thomas; Burke, Jill; Campbell, Stephen J. (eds), The Renaissance Nude, 2018, Getty Publications, ISBN 160606584X, 9781606065846, google books

Murray, Linda, The Late Renaissance and Mannerism, 1967, Thames and Hudson; The High Renaissance and Mannerism: Italy, The North, and Spain, 1500-1600, 1967 and 1977, Thames and Hudson

"Sistine": Pietrangeli, Carlo, et al., The Sistine Chapel: The Art, the History, and the Restoration, 1986, Harmony Books/Nippon Television, ISBN 0-517-56274-X

Vasari, selected & ed. George Bull, Artists of the Renaissance, Penguin 1965 (page nos. from BCA edn., 1979)

Wind, Edgar, Pagan Mysteries in the Renaissance, 1967 edn., Peregrine Books

James A. Connor, The Last Judgment: Michelangelo and the Death of the Renaissance (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009), ISBN 978-0-230-60573-2

Marcia Hall, ed., Michelangelo's Last Judgment (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), ISBN 0-521-78002-0

Loren Partridge, Michelangelo, The Last Judgment: A Glorious Restoration (New York: Abrams, 1997), ISBN 0-8109-1549-9

Leader, A., "Michelangelo's Last Judgment: The Culmination of Papal Propaganda in the Sistine Chapel", Studies in Iconography, xxvii (2006), pp. 103-56

Barnes, Bernadine, "Aretino, the Public, and the Censorship of Michelangelo's Last Judgment," in Suspended License: Censorship and the Visual Arts, ed. Elizabeth C. Childs (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1997), pp. 59-84 [1]

Barnes, Bernadine, "Metaphorical Painting: Michelangelo, Dante, and the Last Judgment", Art Bulletin, 77 (1995), 64-81

Roskill, Mark W., Dolce's Aretino and Venetian Art Theory of the Cinquecento (New York: Published for the College Art Association of America by New York University Press, 1968; reprinted with emendations by University of Toronto Press, 2000)

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The Last Judgment (Michelangelo) - Wikipedia

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The Last Judgment ( Italian: Il Giudizio Universale) is a fresco by the Italian Renaissance painter Michelangelo covering the whole altar wall of the Sistine Chapel in Vatican City. It is a depiction of the Second Coming of Christ and the final and eternal judgment by God of all humanity.

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Raphael, an introduction (article) | Raphael | Khan Academy

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Summary of Raphael

Alive for only 37 prolific and passionate years, Raphael blazed a comet's trail of painting throughout the apex of the Italian High Renaissance. His true lust for life translated onto the canvas where his skill in presenting the Rennaissance Humanist era's ideals of beauty was breathtakingly new. He is, alongside Leonardo Da Vinci and Michelangelo, considered an equal part of the holy trinity of master artists of his time.

Key Ideas

Raphael's prodigiousness in painting - despite his relatively short life - was a result of his training that began when he was just a mere child. From a childhood spent in his painter father's workshop to his adult life running one of the largest workshops of its kind, he garnered a reputation as one of the most productive artists of his time.

The serene and harmonious qualities of Raphael's paintings were regarded as some of the highest models of the humanist impetus of the time, which sought to explore man's importance in the world through artwork that emphasized supreme beauty.

Raphael not only mastered the signature techniques of High Renaissance art such as sfumato, perspective, precise anatomical correctness, and authentic emotionality and expression, he also incorporated an individual style noted for its clarity, rich color, effortless composition, and grandeur that was distinctly his own.

Although largely known for his paintings, many of which can still be seen in the Vatican Palace where the frescoed Raphael Rooms were the largest work of his career, he was also an architect, printmaker, and expert draftsman. In other words, a true "Renaissance man."

The artist was known, in contrast to one of his biggest rivals Michelangelo, as a man of conviviality, universally popular, and congenial, and a great lover of the ladies. His social ease and amicable personality allowed him acceptance and career opportunities at an advantage over other peers of the time.

Biography of Raphael

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Alive for only 37 prolific and passionate years, Raphael blazed a comet's trail of painting throughout the apex of the Italian High Renaissance. His true lust for life translated onto the canvas where his skill in presenting the Rennaissance Humanist era's ideals of beauty was breathtakingly new.

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Helpful essay - significance of Raphael's frescos in Della Segnatura room

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Helpful essay - significance of Raphael's frescos in Della Segnatura room

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-Use your name or initials. This makes it easier to figure out who said what.

-You can add your own questions, art works and resources

-See what you can add to the questions and ideas that have been posted.

-You can use headings like My idea is, New information, Another idea is, We need to find out, I wonder
- It's OK not to know very much at the beginning - add what you can even if it is just the beginning of an idea - that just means it is an area that we need to develop/build on/improve.

-All ideas are valid and improvable.

Anyone can contribute to any part of this. Once an idea or question is out there, it is there for the group to work on.

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Which Artists were influential in the Renaissance?

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Which Artists were influential in the Renaissance?

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How does the Renaissance influence us to this day?

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How does the Renaissance influence us to this day?

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My idea is that the person who made this drawing was making themselves immortal by capturing a moment in time when they were fully alive.

The impulse to me doesn't feel a million miles away from a patron commissioning an art work - portrait or important painting to say - I was here.

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Who was he?
Why was he important?
What did he contribute to the Renaissance?
How was he influenced by changing ideas in the Renaissance?

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https://www.biblicaltheology.com/Research/PorterR04.pdf

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https://www.museivaticani.va/content/museivaticani/en/collezioni/musei/cappella-sistina/volta.html

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Julius II's decision to completely renovate the decoration of the Ceiling was probably due to the serious problems of a static nature that affected the Sistine Chapel from the earliest years of his pontificate (1503-1513). They must have been the result of the excavations carried out both to the north and to the south of the building for the construction of the Borgia Tower and for the new St Peter's. After a long crack had opened in the Ceiling in May 1504, Bramante, then the Palace architect, was charged with finding a solution and he fixed some tie rods in the area above the Chapel. However, the damage suffered by the old painting must have been such as to convince the pontiff to entrust Michelangelo with a new pictorial decoration. On 8 May 1508, the artist signed the contract which foresaw the painting of twelve apostles in the pendentives and ornamental motifs in the rest. Subsequently, at the request of Buonarotti himself, who considered the project to be a "poor thing", the Pope gave him a new commission in which he left the full planning of the programme to the artist. It is however quite likely that for his creation the artist availed of the cooperation of the theologians of the papal court. Michelangelo placed nine Central stories illustrating episodes of the Genesis within a powerful painted architecture, with at their sides figures of Nudes, holding medallions with texts taken from the Book of Kings. At the base of the architectural structure twelve Prophets and Sibyls seated on monumental thrones are countered lower down by Christ's forefathers, portrayed in the Spandrels and in the Lunettes ( wall, wall, wall). Finally, in the four corner Pendentives, the artist illustrated some episodes of the miraculous salvation of the people of Israel. Michelangelo completed the first half of the Ceiling, that is from the entrance wall to the Creation of Eve, in August 1510. The work must have been completed by 31 October 1512, as the Pope celebrated Mass in the Chapel on 1 November.

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Julius II's decision to completely renovate the decoration of the Ceiling was probably due to the serious problems of a static nature that affected the Sistine Chapel from the earliest years of his pontificate (1503-1513).

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The frescoes that we are contemplating here introduce us into the world of the contents of the Revelation. The truths of our faith speak to us here from all sides. From them human genius took its inspiration undertaking to clothe them in forms of incomparable beauty. With these words pronounced in the during the Holy Mass celebrated on 8 April 1994, on the occasion of the completion of the restoration of the Last Judgement, the Holy Father John Paul II wished to place emphasis on the sacredness of the place in which the paintings, like the images of a book, serve to render the truths expressed in the Holy Scriptures more understandable.

The Sistine Chapel takes its name from Pope Sixtus IV della Rovere (pontiff from 1471 to 1484) who had the old Cappella Magna restored between 1477 and 1480. The 15 th century decoration of the walls includes: the false drapes, the Stories of Moses ( and walls) and of Christ ( and walls) and the portraits of the Popes ( and and walls). It was executed by a team of painters made up initially of Pietro Perugino, Sandro Botticelli, Domenico Ghirlandaio and Cosimo Rosselli, assisted by their respective shops and by some closer assistants among whom Biagio di Antonio, Bartolomeo della Gatta and Luca Signorelli stand out. On the Ceiling Pier Matteo d'Amelia painted a starry sky. The work on the frescoes began in 1481 and was concluded in 1482. This is also the date of the following works in marble: the screen, the choir stalls (where the choristers took their places), and the pontifical coat of arms over the entrance door. On 15 August 1483, Sixtus IV consecrated the new chapel dedicating it to Our Lady of the Assumption. Julius II della Rovere (pontiff from 1503 to 1513), nephew of Sixtus IV, decided to partly alter the decoration, entrusting the work in 1508 to Michelangelo Buonarroti, who painted the and, on the upper part of the walls, the lunettes. The work was finished in October 1512 and on the Feast of All Saints (1 November), Julius II inaugurated the Sistine Chapel with a solemn Mass. The nine central panels show the Stories of Genesis, from the Creation to the Fall of man, to the Flood and the subsequent rebirth of mankind with the family of Noah.

Reference to thefirst letter of Peter (3: 20-22) is likely. In this the water of the flood is seen as a prophetic sign of the water of Baptism, from which a new mankind emerges, that of those saved by Christ. In the spaces between the spandrels we see, seated on monumental thrones, five and seven . In the four corner pendentives are the Miraculous salvation of Israel while in the spandrels and lunettes ( and and entrance walls) are the Ancestors of Christ. Towards the end of 1533 Clement VII de' Medici (pontiff from 1523 to 1534) gave Michelangelo the task of further altering the decoration of the Sistine Chapel by painting the Last Judgement on the altar wall. This caused the loss of the 15th century frescoes, that is to say of the altar-piece of the Virgin assumed among the Apostles and the first two episodes of the Stories of Moses and of Christ, painted by Perugino. In this fresco Michelangelo wished to show the glorious return of Christ in the light of the texts of the New Testament (cf. Matthew 24:30-31; ; First letter to the Corinthians 15:51-55). The artist began the mighty work in 1536 during the pontificate of Paul III and completed it in the autumn of 1541. Using his extraordinary artistic capacities, Michelangelo tried to translate into visible forms the invisible beauty and majesty of God and guided by the words of Genesis he made the Sistine Chapel "the shrine of the theology of the human body". (, pronounced by His Holiness John Paul II, 8 April 1994).
The frescoes of theentrance wall were repainted in the second half of the 16 th century: Hendrik van den Broeck repainted the Resurrection of Christ by Ghirlandaio, while Matteo da Lecce repainted the Discussion over the body of Moses by Signorelli, which had been seriously damaged when the door collapsed in 1522. The frescoes of the Sistine Chapel underwent a complete restoration between 1979 and 1999. The intervention also regarded the marble parts, that is the cantoria, the screen and the coat of arms of Sixtus IV. The Conclave for the election of the Supreme Pontiff is held in the Chapel. It is again the words of the pronounced by His Holiness John Paul II that underline the primary importance of the Sistine Chapel in the life of the Church: "The Sistine Chapel is the place that, for each Pope, holds the memory of a special day in his life. ... Precisely here, in this sacred space, the Cardinals gather, awaiting the manifestation of the will of Christ with regard to the person of the Successor of St Peter [...]. And here, in a spirit of obedience to Christ and trusting in his Mother, I accepted the election that sprung from the Conclave, declaring [...] my readiness to serve the Church. Thus therefore the Sistine Chapel became once again before the whole Catholic Community the place of the action of the Holy Spirit that nominates the Bishops in the Church, and nominates especially he who must be the Bishop of Rome and the Successor of Peter".

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The frescoes that we are contemplating here introduce us into the world of the contents of the Revelation. The truths of our faith speak to us here from all sides. From them human genius took its inspiration undertaking to clothe them in forms of incomparable beauty.

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https://www.khanacademy.org/humanities/ap-art-history/early-europe-and-colonial-americas/renaissance-art-europe-ap/a/raphael-school-of-athens
https://artincontext.org/the-school-of-athens-raphael/
https://www.britannica.com/topic/School-of-Athens

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The School of Athens represents all the greatest mathematicians, philosophers and scientists from classical antiquity gathered together sharing their ideas and learning from each other. These figures all lived at different times, but here they are gathered together under one roof.

The two thinkers in the very center, Aristotle (on the right) and Plato (on the left, pointing up) have been enormously important to Western thinking generally, and in different ways, their different philosophies were incoporated into Christianity.

Aristotle holds his hand down, because in his philosophy, the only reality is the one that we can see and experience by sight and touch (exactly the reality dismissed by Plato). Aristotle's Ethics (the book that he holds) "emphasized the relationships, justice, friendship, and government of the human world and the need to study it."

Ptolemy (he has his back to us on the lower right), holds a sphere of the earth, next to him is Zaroaster who holds a celestial sphere. Ptolemy tried to mathematically explain the movements of the planets (which was not easy since some of them appear to move backwards!). His theory of how they all moved around the earth remained the authority until Copernicus and Kepler figured out (in the late 16th century) that the earth was not at the center of the universe, and that the planets moved in orbits the shape of ellipses not in circles. Raphael included a self-portrait of himself, standing next to Ptolemy. He looks right out at us.

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School of Athens by Raphael (article) | Khan Academy

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Learn for free about math, art, computer programming, economics, physics, chemistry, biology, medicine, finance, history, and more. Khan Academy is a nonprofit with the mission of providing a free, world-class education for anyone, anywhere.

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If before the Last Judgement we are dazzled by splendour and fear, admiring on the one hand the glorified bodies and on the other those subjected to eternal damnation, we also understand that the entire vision is deeply permeated by one light and one artistic logic: the light and logic of the faith that the Church proclaims by confessing: I believe in one God ... creator of heaven and earth, of all things visible and invisible (from the Homily pronounced by the Holy Father John Paul II on 8 April 1994).

The mighty composition, painted by Michelangelo between 1536 and 1541, is centred around the dominant figure of Christ, captured in the moment preceding that when the verdict of the Last Judgement is uttered ( Matthew 25: 31-46). His calm imperious gesture seems to both command attention and placate the surrounding agitation. It starts a wide slow rotary movement in which all the figures are involved. Excluded are the two upper lunettes with groups of angels bearing in flight the symbols of the Passion (on the left the Cross, the nails and the crown of thorns; on the right the column of the scourging, the stairs and the spear with the sponge soaked in vinegar). Next to Christ is the Virgin, who turns her head in a gesture of resignation: in fact she can no longer intervene in the decision, but only await the result of the Judgement. The Saints and the Elect, arranged around Christ and the Virgin, also anxiously await the verdict. Some of them can be easily recognized: St Peter with the two keys, St Laurence with the gridiron, St Bartholomew with his own skin which is usually recognized as being a self-portrait of Michelangelo, St Catherine of Alexandria with the cogwheel and St Sebastian kneeling holding the arrows. In the centre of the lower section are the angels of the Apocalypse who are wakening the dead to the sound of long trumpets. On the left the risen recover their bodies as they ascend towards heaven (Resurrection of the flesh), on the right angels and devils fight over making the damned fall down to hell. Finally, at the bottom Charon with his oars, together with his devils, makes the damned get out of his boat to lead them before the infernal judge Minos, whose body is wrapped in the coils of the serpent. The reference in this part to the Inferno of Dante Alighieri's Divina Commedia is clear. As well as praise, the Last Judgement also caused violent reactions among the contemporaries. For example the Master of Ceremonies Biagio da Cesena said that "it was most dishonest in such an honoured place to have painted so many nude figures who so dishonestly show their shame and that it was not a work for a Chapel of the Pope but for stoves and taverns" (G. Vasari, Le Vite). The controversies, that continued for years, led in 1564 to the decision by the Congregation of the Council of Trent to have some of the figures of the Judgement that were considered "obscene" covered. The task of painting the covering drapery, the so-called "braghe" (pants) was given to Daniele da Volterra, since then known as the "braghettone". Daniele's "braghe" were only the first and in fact others were added in the following centuries.

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If before the Last Judgement we are dazzled by splendour and fear, admiring on the one hand the glorified bodies and on the other those subjected to eternal damnation, we also understand that the entire vision is deeply permeated by one light and one artistic logic: the light and logic of the faith that the Church proclaims by confessing: I believe in one God ...

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"He will come to judge the living and the dead" (from the Apostle's Creed, an early statement of Christian belief)

This is it. The moment all Christians await with both hope and dread. This is the end of time, the beginning of eternity when the mortal becomes immortal, when the elect join Christ in his heavenly kingdom and the damned are cast into the unending torments of hell. What a daunting task: to visualize the endgame of earthly existence - and furthermore, to do so in the Sistine Chapel, the private chapel of the papal court, where the leaders of the Church gathered to celebrate feast day liturgies, where the pope's body was laid in state before his funeral, and where-to this day-the College of Cardinals meets to elect the next pope.

No artist in sixteenth-century Italy was better positioned for this task than Michelangelo, whose completion of the chapel's ceiling in 1512 had sealed his reputation as the greatest master of the human figure-especially the male nude. Pope Paul III was well aware of this when he charged Michelangelo with repainting the chapel's altar wall with the Last Judgment. With its focus on the resurrection of the body, this was the perfect subject for Michelangelo.

Historical & pictorial contexts

The Last Judgment was one of the first art works Paul III commissioned upon his election to the papacy in 1534. The church he inherited was in crisis; the Sack of Rome (1527) was still a recent memory. Paul sought to address not only the many abuses that had sparked the Protestant Reformation, but also to affirm the legitimacy of the Catholic Church and the orthodoxy of its doctrines (including the institution of the papacy). The visual arts would play a key role in his agenda, beginning with the message he directed to his inner circle by commissioning the Last Judgment.

The decorative program of the Sistine Chapel encapsulates the history of salvation. It begins with God's creation of the world and his covenant with the people of Israel (represented in the Old Testament scenes on the ceiling and south wall), and continues with the earthly life of Christ (on the north wall). The addition of the Last Judgment completed the narrative. The papal court, representatives of the earthly church, participated in this narrative; it filled the gap between Christ's life and his Second Coming.

The composition

Michelangelo's Last Judgment is among the most powerful renditions of this moment in the history of Christian art. Over 300 muscular figures, in an infinite variety of dynamic poses, fill the wall to its edges. Unlike the scenes on the walls and the ceiling, the Last Judgment is not bound by a painted border. It is all encompassing and expands beyond the viewer's field of vision. Unlike other sacred narratives, which portray events of the past, this one implicates the viewer. It has yet to happen and when it does, the viewer will be among those whose fate is determined.

Despite the density of figures, the composition is clearly organized into tiers and quadrants, with subgroups and meaningful pairings that facilitate the fresco's legibility. As a whole, it rises on the left and descends on the right, recalling the scales used for the weighing of souls in many depictions of the Last Judgment.

Christ is the fulcrum of this complex composition. A powerful, muscular figure, he steps forward in a twisting gesture that sets in motion the final sorting of souls (the damned on his left, and the blessed on his right). Nestled under his raised arm is the Virgin Mary. Michelangelo changed her pose from one of open-armed pleading on humanity's behalf seen in a preparatory drawing , to one of acquiescence to Christ's judgment. The time for intercession is over. Judgment has been passed.

Directly below Christ a group of wingless angels (left), their cheeks puffed with effort, sound the trumpets that call the dead to rise, while two others hold open the books recording the deeds of the resurrected. The angel with the book of the damned emphatically angles its down to show the damned that their fate is justly based on their misdeeds.

The elect (those going to heaven)

On the lower left of the composition (Christ's right), the dead emerge from their graves, shedding their burial shrouds. Some rise up effortlessly, drawn by a invisible force, while others are assisted by herculean angels, one of whom lifts a pair of souls that cling to a strand of rosary beads. This detail reaffirms a doctrine contested by the Protestants: that prayer and good works, and not just faith and divine grace, play a role in determining one's fate in the afterlife. Directly below, a risen body is caught in violent tug of war, pulled on one end by two angels and on the other by a horned demon who has escaped through a crevice in the central mound. This breach in the earth provides a glimpse of the fires of hell.

The damned (those going to hell)

On the right of the composition (Christ's left), demons drag the damned to hell, while angels beat down those who struggle to escape their fate (image above). One soul is both pummeled by an angel and dragged by a demon, head first; a money bag and two keys dangles from his chest. His is the sin of avarice. Another soul-exemplifying the sin of pride-dares to fight back, arrogantly contesting divine judgment, while a third (at the far right) is pulled by his scrotum (his sin was lust). These sins were specifically singled out in sermons delivered to the papal court.

In the lower right corner, Charon-the ferryman from Greek mythology who transports souls to the underworld-swings his oar as he drives the damned onto hell's shores (image above). In the lower right corner stands another mythological character, the ass-eared Minos, his own carnal sinfulness indicated by the snake that bites his genitals. He stands at the very edge of hell, judging the new-comers to determine their eternal punishment.

In the company of Christ

While such details were meant to provoke terror in the viewer, Michelangelo's painting is primarily about the triumph of Christ. The realm of heaven dominates. The elect encircle Christ; they loom large in the foreground and extend far into the depth of the painting, dissolving the boundary of the picture plane. Some hold the instruments of their martyrdom: Andrew the X-shaped cross, Lawrence the gridiron, St. Sebastian a bundle of arrows, to name only a few.

Especially prominent are St. John Baptist and St. Peter who flank Christ to the left and right and share his massive proportions (above). John, the last prophet, is identifiable by the camel pelt that covers his groin and dangles behind his legs; and, Peter, the first pope, is identified by the keys he returns to Christ. His role as the keeper of the keys to the kingdom of heaven has ended. This gesture was a vivid reminder to the pope that his reign as Christ's vicar was temporary-in the end, he too will to answer to Christ.

In the lunettes (semi-circular spaces) at the top right and left, angels display the instruments of Christ's Passion, thus connecting this triumphal moment to Christ's sacrificial death. This portion of the wall projects one foot forward, making it visible to the priest at the altar below as he commemorates Christ's sacrifice in the liturgy of the Eucharist.

Critical response: masterpiece or scandal?

Shortly after its unveiling in 1541, the Roman agent of Cardinal Gonzaga of Mantua reported: "The work is of such beauty that your excellency can imagine that there is no lack of those who condemn it. . . . [T]o my mind it is a work unlike any other to be seen anywhere." Many praised the work as a masterpiece. They saw Michelangelo's distinct figural style, with its complex poses, extreme foreshortening, and powerful (some might say excessive) musculature, as worthy of both the subject matter and the location. The sheer physicality of these muscular nudes affirmed the Catholic doctrine of bodily resurrection (that on the day of judgment, the dead would rise in their bodies, not as incorporeal souls).

Others were scandalized-above all by the nudity-despite its theological accuracy, for the resurrected would enter heaven not clothed but nude, as created by God. Critics also objected to the contorted poses (some resulting in the indecorous presentation of buttocks), the breaks with pictorial tradition (the beardless Christ, the wingless angels), and the appearance of mythology (the figures of Charon and Minos) in a scene portraying sacred history. Critics saw these embellishments as distractions from the fresco's spiritual message. They accused Michelangelo of caring more about showing off his creative abilities than portraying sacred truth with clarity and decorum. Religious art was the "book of the illiterate" and as such should be easy to understand.

Michelangelo's Last Judgment , however, was not painted for an unlearned, lay audience. To the contrary, it was designed for a very specific, elite and erudite audience. This audience would understand and appreciate his figural style and iconographic innovations. They would recognize, for example, that his inclusion of Charon and Minos was inspired by Dante's , a text Michelangelo greatly admired. They would see in the youthful face of Christ his reference to the Apollo Belvedere , an ancient Greek Hellenistic sculpture in the papal collection lauded for its ideal beauty. Thus, Michelangelo glosses the identity of Christ as the "Sun of Righteousness" (Malachi 4:2).

Even more poignant is Michelangelo's insertion of himself into the fresco. His is the face on the flayed skin held by St. Bartholomew, an empty shell that hangs precariously between heaven and hell. To his learned audience, the flayed skin would bring to mind not only the circumstances of the saint's martyrdom but also the flaying of Marsyas by Apollo. In his foolish arrogance, Marsyas challenged Apollo to a musical contest, believing his skill could surpass that of the god of music himself. His punishment for such hubris was to be flayed alive. That Michelangelo should identify with Marsyas is not surprising. His contemporaries had dubbed him the "divine" Michelangelo for his ability to rival God himself in giving form to the ideal body. Often he lamented his youthful pride, which had led him to focus on the beauty of art rather than the salvation of his soul. So, here, in a work done in his mid sixties, he acknowledges his sin and expresses his hope that Christ, unlike Apollo, will have mercy upon him and welcome him into the company of the elect.

Like Dante in his great epic poem, The Divine Comedy , Michelangelo sought to create an epic painting, worthy of the grandeur of the moment. He used metaphor and allusion to ornament his subject. His educated audience would delight in his visual and literary references.

Originally intended for a restricted audience, reproductive engravings of the fresco quickly spread it far and wide, placing it at the center of lively debates on the merits and abuses of religious art. While some hailed it as the pinnacle of artistic accomplishment, others deemed it the epitome of all that could go wrong with religious art and called for its destruction. In the end, a compromise was reached. Shortly after the artist's death in 1564, Daniele Da Volterra was hired to cover bare buttocks and groins with bits of drapery and repaint Saint Catherine of Alexandria, originally portrayed unclothed, and St. Blaise, who hovered menacingly over her with his steel combs.

In contrast to its limited audience in the sixteenth century, now the Last Judgment is see by thousands of tourists daily. However, during papal conclaves it becomes once again a powerful reminder to the College of Cardinals of their place in the story of salvation, as they gather to elect Christ's earthly vicar (the next Pope) -the person who will be responsible for shepherding the faithful into the community of the elect.

Bernardine Barnes, Michelangelo's Last Judgment: The Renaissance Response (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998).

Marcia Hall, ed., Michelangelo's Last Judgment (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005).

Loren Partridge, Michelangelo The Last Judgment: A Glorious Restoration (New York: Abrams, 1997).

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Michelangelo, Last Judgment, Sistine Chapel

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"He will come to judge the living and the dead" (from the Apostle's Creed, an early statement of Christian belief) This is it. The moment all Christians await with both hope and dread.

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Bramante, et.al., Saint Peter's Basilica (article) | Khan Academy

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Architects and designers included: Donato Bramante (whose design won Julius II's competition); Antonio da Sangallo, a student of Bramante (the Pauline Chapel); Fra Giocondo (strengthening of the foundation); Raphael and Fra Giocondo (whose redesigned building plan was not executed); Michelangelo (design of the dome, crossing, and exterior excluding the nave and facade); Giacomo della Porta (design of the cupola); Carlo Maderno (extension of Michelangelo's plan, adding a nave and grand facade); Gian Lorenzo Bernini (addition of the piazza, the Cathedra Petri, and the Baldacchino).

Pope Julius II commissioned Bramante to build a new basilica-this involved demolishing the Old St Peter's Basilica that had been erected by Constantine in the fourth century. This ancient church was in disrepair. But tearing it down was a bold maneuver that gives us a sense of the enormous ambition of Pope Julius II, both for the papacy as well as for himself.

Burial site of St. Peter

The site is a very holy one-it is (according to the Church) the site of the burial of St. Peter. Bramante did the first plan for the new church. He proposed an enormous centrally planned church in the shape of a Greek cross enclosed within a square with an enormous dome over the center, and smaller domes and half-domes radiating out. When Bramante died, Raphael took over as chief architect for St. Peter's, and when Raphael died, Michelangelo took over. Both Michelangelo and Raphael made substantial changes to Bramante's original plan. Nevertheless, the experience of being inside St. Peter's is awe-inspiring.

Basilica and central plan

The two basic types of Church are the basilica and the central plan. The basilica, with its long axis that focuses attention on the altar, has been the most popular type of church plan because of its practicality.

The other popular type of church plan is a central plan that is usually based either on the shape of a circle, or on a Greek cross (a cross with equal arms). These are called central plans because the measurements are all equidistant from a center. This type of Church, influenced by Classical architecture (think of the Pantheon), was very popular among High Renaissance architects. Besides the influence of ancient Roman architecture, the circle had spiritual associations. The circle, which has no beginning and no end, symbolized the perfection and eternal nature of God. For some thinkers in antiquity and the Renaissance the universe itself was constructed in the form of concentric circles with the sun, moon and stars moving in circular orbits around the earth.

Bramante's original design was for a central plan, however-as built-the church combines elements of a central plan with the longer nave of a basilica.

Architectural contributors to St. Peter's Basilica include:

Donato Bramante, whose design won Julius II's competition
Antonio da Sangallo, a student of Bramante, who designed the Pauline Chapel
Fra Giocondo, who strengthened the foundation
Raphael worked with Fra Giocondo, whose redesigned building plan was not executed
Michelangelo designed the dome, crossing, and exterior excluding the nave and facade
Giacomo della Porta designed the cupola
Carlo Maderno, extended Michelangelo's plan adding a nave and grand facade
Gian Lorenzo Bernini added the piazza, the Cathedra Petri, and the Baldacchino

Additional resources:
Designing St. Peter's from Columbia University
Vatican tour of the necropolis believed to contain the tomb of Saint Peter - Please note: to reach the interactive tour of the necropolis, proceed beyond the introduction and the brief lecture offered by Cardinal Comastri
St. Peter's Basilica at Sacred Destinations Google Satellite image
Smarthistory images for teaching and learning:
More Smarthistory images...

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Architects and designers included: Donato Bramante (whose design won Julius II's competition); Antonio da Sangallo, a student of Bramante (the Pauline Chapel); Fra Giocondo (strengthening of the foundation); Raphael and Fra Giocondo (whose redesigned building plan was not executed); Michelangelo (design of the dome, crossing, and exterior excluding the nave and facade); Giacomo della Porta (design of the cupola); Carlo Maderno (extension of Michelangelo's plan, adding a nave and grand facade); Gian Lorenzo Bernini (addition of the piazza, the Cathedra Petri, and the Baldacchino).

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This is a famous fresco by Raphael, that celebrates the idea of the 'forum'. It portrays a meeting of great thinkers, inventors, philosphers, scientists etc from across history.

Who/what does it value?
What/who is left out of this picture?

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Why don't we hear about great female artists in the Renaissance?

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Why don't we hear about great female artists in the Renaissance?

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n a dark cluttered studio in central Florence, restorer Rossella Lari is working on a little-known jewel of the Renaissance. It's vast: a seven metre by five metre depiction of the Last Supper, with figures that are almost lifesize, that was painted in the 1560s.

As she works, Lari says she thinks often of the person who painted it. "You get to know an artist when you restore their painting," she says. "You learn about them from the way they use the paint, from their brushstrokes, from their attention to detail." This artist, she says, was strong, confident and determined. She had to be, because she was also female, the earliest significant female Renaissance artist.

Her name was Plautilla Nelli (1524‑1588), and the painting Lari is working on is her masterpiece. When it's finished, in 2019, it will go on show at the Santa Maria Novella Museum in Florence, the first time it will have been publicly exhibited in 450 years. "That is a very significant moment, not only for Nelli but for all the forgotten women artists of the Renaissance, as well as for artists today who don't realise how rich a contribution women made to that era," says Linda Falcone of Advancing Women Artists (AWA), an organisation championing forgotten works.

Unfairly neglected ... Rossella Lari restores The Last Supper by Plautilla Nelli.

Ask most people to name a female artist, and chances are they will come up with a contemporary figure: Tracey Emin, Rachel Whiteread or Paula Rego. Or they'll name a 20th-century artist such as Frida Kahlo, or Georgia O'Keeffe. What they won't do, though, is name one of the 16th- or 17th-century women who painted during and in the years following the Renaissance. Nelli is one of many female artists - including Artemisia Gentileschi, one of the most accomplished followers of Caravaggio, and Marietta Robusti who learned from her father Tintoretto - that history has unfairly neglected.

Now, though - nearly half a millennium on - that is beginning to change. AWA, which was established in 2009 by US philanthropist Jane Fortune, is committed to rediscovering all the works by women that lie forgotten in the museum attics and churches of Florence: at least 2,000 so far. When a painting is found, crowdfunding and special appeals pay for its restoration: $67,000 (£50,000) was raised in six weeks to pay for the first stage of the restoration of Nelli's Last Supper, and another $145,000 is now being sought. "People want to see these works restored," says Falcone. "They're a missing piece of history, and they're also very beautiful and important paintings."

Look what's on the table! Plenty of food - lambs, beans and salad - and plenty of wine

To help me understand the significance of the Nelli work, Falcone takes me first to see another Last Supper, painted by Andrea del Sarto, who was described by Giorgio Vasari as being "without errors". The painting, a fresco on the refectory wall of the convent of San Salvi that dates from 1526-7, is effortlessly naturalistic, beautifully balanced and vibrantly coloured. "It's a wonderful work," says Falcone. "One of my absolute favourites. But look at the tablecloth - it's so scruffy! And this is a meal, but where's the food? This table is empty, apart from some bread ... "

Nelli's Last Supper, which takes up an entire wall of the crowded studio in which Lari works, shows the same scene with some significant differences. "The tablecloth is neat and has been folded, for one thing," says Falcone. "But look at what's on the table! There's plenty of food, including lamb and beans and salad: food for everyone, and plenty of wine." There's a very earthy, everyday feel to the composition; as well as providing for the figures at her table, Nelli has also taken great pains over the apostles' physique. "She was very interested in anatomy, and you can see that in the painting," says Lari. "Look at the hands; she's put so much detail into them."

A figure from The Last Supper shows Nelli's attention to anatomical detail. Photograph: Francesco Cacchiani

But perhaps the biggest and most significant difference of all is in the representation of the Christ figure. In Del Sarto's work he sits alone majestically; he seems to be talking, perhaps teaching his followers. In the Nelli work, he is almost maternal. "St John is leaning against him, and Christ is holding him," says Falcone. "You get a quite different sense of the Jesus in Nelli's painting."

Nelli was a nun at a time when convent life was often more liberal than life in the outside world. From her convent she ran an art school for other women, a crucial enterprise when women were unable to train as artists (nor could they join the all-important professional guilds). Women supported each other: some of Nelli's commissions came from the prioress of her Dominican convent. One shows St Dominic receiving the rosary from the Virgin, the other is St Catherine receiving the stigmata. Both were rescued by Falcone and her colleagues from the attic of the Pitti Palace. "They were in such a bad way that at first the museum authorities didn't want to try restoring them," she says. Today, they hang on the wall of the San Salvi Museum.

Women were thought to be more detail-oriented and detail on jewellery and clothing was important as it conveyed status

One oddity of the story of the Renaissance women is that they seem to have been more valued in their own time than they were subsequently. According to figures from the feminist art activist collective Guerrilla Girls, female visual artists earn 81 cents for every dollar made by a male artist. But in the Renaissance and baroque eras, says Falcone, painters such as Nelli and Gentileschi were better paid than many men for their work: at one point Gentileschi was earning five times more than her male counterparts. As portraitists they were particularly valued, because portraits were used to clinch marriage deals.

"Women were thought to be more detail-orientated, and detail on jewellery and clothing was important because it conveyed status," says Falcone. "They were also considered more capable of capturing psychology."

Nelli clearly seems to have regarded herself as a serious player in the art world; if she hadn't, she would not have tackled the Last Supper, the quintessential Renaissance subject. Only those artists who considered themselves greats even attempted it; it took large amounts of strength, time and resources. "She would have been working with assistants, and she'd have had to use scaffolding to cover a canvas this large," says Lari. "Physically, undertaking a work like this was a big deal."

Before it was removed for restoration, Nelli's Last Supper was on the wall of the Santa Maria Novella monastery in whose refurbished museum it will soon hang. Many of the other works being rescued by AWA are much harder to locate; but the task is being made a little easier by a historical quirk of fate, as Falcone explains. "In 1966, Florence suffered terrible floods: at least 14,000 works of art were destroyed in the deluge, and many more were damaged. And because of that, restoration became a growth industry, and many of the people who trained to do that work were women. And then those women started to think about the paintings they were working on and started to ask: where are all the women? And then they realised there were some women, but their work had been hidden: forgotten in attics, or wrongly attributed to men."

Bit by bit ... the restoration of Nelli's Last Supper Photograph: Francesco Cacchiani

Elizabeth Wicks, an American who has lived in Florence for many years, is one such restorer. "These paintings are hidden in plain sight, all over the city, and it's so exciting to be part of the operation to bring them back to the fore," she says. She takes me into the sacristy of Santa Maria Maddalena de'Pazzi where there is a painting of the Virgin presenting the Christ child to the church's eponymous Florentine noblewoman and saint. It's a copy of an altarpiece in the same church by Luca Giordano, painted 80 years previously. The creator of the sacristy work was the 18th-century painter Violante Siries Cerroti, the daughter of a Medici court engraver and a practitioner talented enough to have a portrait in the Vasari Corridor, where works by the famous masters are exhibited.

The sacristy painting, says Wicks, "had been very badly damaged in the 1966 flood, and when I first saw it I was horrified. If much more time had gone by, it would have been irreparable." Siries, she says, was the first female artist allowed into the Uffizi to make copies of the works there. Like Lari, Wicks feels a great affinity with her artist: "Siries was about my age when she did this work, and she was a working mother who needed to make a living. I can identify with that. It was physically challenging work, and she was meticulous in the details of the dress and the lace. There is also a wonderful light to the painting."

Nelli, whose work was shown in an exhibition at the Uffizi for the first time in the spring of 2017, was clearly aware of the danger that history would sideline her. Though the tradition of the day was not to sign a masterwork such as her Last Supper, she defied convention and made her mark: Lari shows me her signature, top left. In his appraisal of her, Vasari wrote that she could have achieved wonderful things, if only she had been given the opportunity to study as men were. But for her champions in Florence today, Nelli did achieve wonderful things; and soon, we will all be able to see more of them.

For more information about AWA see advancingwomenartists.org.

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New Renaissance: how Florence is freeing its great female artists

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n a dark cluttered studio in central Florence, restorer Rossella Lari is working on a little-known jewel of the Renaissance. It's vast: a seven metre by five metre depiction of the Last Supper, with figures that are almost lifesize, that was painted in the 1560s.

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You never know what will offend people. Researchers at the University of Cambridge have discovered that a skirt was crudely painted over the naked Eve in a Renaissance manuscript soon to go on view at the city's Fitzwilliam Museum. Some time between the 16th and 18th centuries a particularly prudish owner had this image bowdlerised, even though the nudity of Adam and Eve is a venerable and respectable religious theme.

It's far from the only incident where Renaissance art has been considered so sensual and provocative that it has been censored, or even destroyed. Works of art get lost for many reasons, but there is a suspiciously high destruction rate for those involving nudity. Leonardo da Vinci's Leda and the Swan was one of the first openly carnal depictions of myth in art, delighting in a big-bosomed, curvy-hipped Leda. Today, this painting is only known through drawings and copies. A French owner probably destroyed it deliberately.

Leda and the Swan is a particularly troubling Greek myth: understood literally, it is the tale of a woman who made love to a swan. In our own time it has been provocatively filmed by Sam Taylor-Wood, before she went on to make the Hollywood film of 50 Shades of Grey (as Taylor-Johnson). Perhaps one day a religious censor will destroy all copies of Taylor-Wood's Leda video. Not only did someone obliterate Leonardo's version, but yet another pious fool destroyed Michelangelo's (admittedly highly perverse) painting of Leda.

Michaelangelo gives Leda the face of his male assistant Antonio Mini and presses her/his lips to the tip of the swan's hard beak. This suggestion of fellatio may be one of the factors that pushed a prude to destroy the painting. Even a copy that survives in the National Gallery has a controversial history: in the 19th century, it was kept in the director's office because it was considered too disgusting to be on public view.

Another racy Renaissance painting in the National Gallery was, until comparatively recently, censored just like Eve in the Cambridge manuscript. Bronzino's great, and stupendously sensual painting An Allegory with Venus and Cupid (about 1545) had a flimsy veil added to make Venus "decent". A myrtle branch was also added over Cupid's buttocks. The nipple Cupid is caressing was painted out. These clumsy additions and erasures date from the 19th century. Only in 1958 did restorers remove them to reveal the full glory of Bronzino's masterpiece.

Why has so much great Renaissance art been censored over the centuries? The nudity of Eve in the 1505 manuscript at the Fitzwilliam reflects the classical sensuality of the Renaissance. This explosion of the carnal in art, when Europe rediscovered the beauty of the nude and the freedom of ancient Greek and Roman thought, crashed into religious revivals, iconoclasm and holy war during the Reformation and counter-Reformation, not to mention the later hypocrisies of the Victorian age.

Religion turned against the sexual freedom of Renaissance art. When it was unveiled in the Sistine Chapel, Michelangelo's Last Judgment was accused of being more fit for a gay bathhouse than the Pope's church. As soon as Michelangelo died, a painter was hired to cover the buttocks of his flying nudes with "decent" draperies. Many of these idiotic veilings are still there - the Vatican has not allowed modern restorers to remove them.

The same goes for Michelangelo's statue of the Risen Christ in Santa Maria sopra Minerva in Rome, which wears a ridiculous loincloth added after Michelangelo's death. It's all gratifying proof of the power and life of great art. The Renaissance is still dangerous after all these years. Just ask its censorious enemies.

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Agnolo Bronzino, An Allegory with Venus and Cupid, as it was meant to be seen. Photograph: Alamy Stock Photo

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The great art cover-up: Renaissance nudity still has power to shock

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You never know what will offend people. Researchers at the University of Cambridge have discovered that a skirt was crudely painted over the naked Eve in a Renaissance manuscript soon to go on view at the city's Fitzwilliam Museum.

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Museum of Modern Love by Heather Rose, p.19

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Is art relevant? Why or why not. Who do you agree/disagree with in this passage? Why is this?

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Humans have been making art since very very early  on in humanity.

What inspired the people who made cave art in prehistoric France to do this?

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wo women are holding a man down on a bed. One presses her fist against his head, so he can't raise it from the mattress, while her companion pins his torso in place. They are well-built with powerful arms but even so it takes their combined strength to keep their victim immobilised as one of them cuts through his throat with a gleaming sword. Blood spurts from deep red geysers as she saws. She won't stop until his head is fully severed. Her victim's eyes are wide open. He knows exactly what is happening to him.

The dying man is Holofernes, an enemy of the Israelites in the Old Testament, and the young woman beheading him is Judith, his divinely appointed assassin. Yet at the same time he is also an Italian painter called Agostino Tassi, while the woman with the sword is Artemisia Gentileschi, who painted this. It is, effectively, a self-portrait.

Two big, blood-drenched paintings of Judith and Holofernes by Gentileschi survive, one in the Capodimonte in Naples, the other in the Uffizi in Florence. They are almost identical except for small details - in Naples Judith's dress is blue, in Florence yellow - as if this image was a nightmare she kept having, the final act to a tragedy endlessly replaying in her head.

With words and images, she fought back against the male violence that dominated her world

"This is the ring you gave me and these are your promises!" yelled Gentileschi as she was tortured in a Rome courtroom in 1612. Ropes were wrapped around her fingers and pulled tight. The judge had advised moderate use of the sibille, as this torture was called, for she was after all 18. Across the court sat the man who had raped her. No one thought of torturing him. Defiantly, Gentileschi told him her thumbscrews were the wedding ring he'd promised. Again and again, she repeated that her testimony about the rape was reliable: "It is true, it is true, it is true, it is true."

Gentileschi was the greatest female artist of the baroque age and one of the most brilliant followers of the incendiary artist Caravaggio, whose terrifying painting of Judith and Holofernes influenced hers. She is one of the stars of Beyond Caravaggio, an epic survey of his rivals and disciples about to open at the National Gallery in London. With words and images, she fought back against the male violence that dominated the world she lived in.

Gentileschi achieved something so unlikely, so close to impossible, that she deserves to be one of the most famous artists in the world. It is not simply that she became a highly successful artist in an age when guilds and academies closed their doors to women. She also did what none of the other - rare - Renaissance and baroque women who made it as artists could manage: she communicated a powerful personal vision. Her paintings are self-evidently autobiographical. Like Frida Kahlo, Louise Bourgeois or Tracey Emin, she put her life into her art.

And what a brutally damaged life it was. In the wild art world of Caravaggio's Rome, artists were rich, arrogant and could do almost anything they liked so long as they stayed in the pope's good books. Gentileschi must have met Caravaggio many times as a child: perhaps he even encouraged her to paint. Her father, Orazio, also a talented artist, was Caravaggio's close friend. In 1603, Orazio and Caravaggio were up in court together after they scrawled libels about some enemy artist in the streets of Rome. In his evidence, Orazio casually mentioned Caravaggio coming round to his house to borrow a pair of angel wings.

Evidence of trauma ... Susanna and the Elders by Gentileschi. Photograph: © The Burghley House Collection

This gives us a lovely snapshot of Gentileschi's childhood: the great Caravaggio popping by for props. Born in 1593, she was 10 when that happened. When she was 13, disaster hit Caravaggio's circle. He was always on the edge of danger - he carried a sword and was ready to use it - but in 1606 he killed a man who had friends at the papal court. He fled. Orazio and his daughter would never see their inspiration again.

Being the daughter of an artist was the only way a young woman could hope to learn the complex skills it took to paint professionally in the baroque age. It seems that Orazio had ambition for his daughter - after all, he gave her a striking, classical name. And as her skill developed, he hired an upcoming artist, Agostino Tassi, to give her lessons. Then, in 1612, Orazio accused Tassi of raping his daughter, as well as tricking her out of a painting from his studio.

The resulting trial lasted seven months and shocked Rome. It made Gentileschi a celebrity - in the worst possible way. Amazingly, every word of this court case survives, in a transcript that opens a window on to the lives of artists in the age of Caravaggio. Gentileschi speaks to us from this 400-year-old document with a voice that is eloquent, courageous and compelling. It is a rare example of a woman in the pre-modern era taking a stance against the oppression that was just part of day-to-day life.

I pulled his hair, she told the court, and grabbed his penis so tight I even removed a piece of flesh

Tassi tricked his way into her room and started making unwanted offers of sex, she testified. "He then threw me on to the edge of the bed, pushing me with a hand on my breast, and he put a knee between my thighs to prevent me from closing them. Lifting my clothes, he placed a hand with a handkerchief on my mouth to keep me from screaming."

She fought back. "I scratched his face," she told the court, "and pulled his hair and, before he penetrated me again, I grasped his penis so tight that I even removed a piece of flesh." But she couldn't stop him. Afterwards, she rushed to a drawer and got out a knife. "I'd like to kill you with this knife because you have dishonoured me," she shouted. He opened his coat and said: "Here I am." Gentileschi threw the knife but he shielded himself. "Otherwise," she said, "I might have killed him."

The trial also featured months of meandering witness examinations. Friends, tenants, artists and relatives built up a picture of Gentileschi's household. She is portrayed as a teenager who spent all her time painting, rarely going out. Her rapist, meanwhile, emerged as an even worse character than he first seemed. Several witnesses claimed he had murdered his wife - and he could offer no good defence.

Yet Gentileschi was tortured and Tassi was set free. Why? He was protected by the pope, because his art - forgotten today - was rated at the time. Everyone knew he was a villain. "Tassi is the only one of these artists who has never disappointed me," said Pope Innocent X. Other artists pretended to be men of honour, he explained, but let him down. With the irredeemable Tassi, he knew where he stood.

Gentileschi, still a teenager when the trial ended, was shamed in a culture where honour was everything. Yet it also provided a kind of monstrous publicity. By the 1620s, she was a successful artist working as far from Rome as she could get. And she was taking revenge with the only weapon she had: a paintbrush. She could not write her story because, as she revealed during the trial, she was more or less illiterate. She could paint it, though, and change its ending - as her paintings of Judith and Holofernes show.

Gentileschi, however, brings out an element of the biblical story no male artist had ever dwelt on. In most paintings, including Caravaggio's hallucinatory rendering, Judith has a servant who waits to collect the severed head. But Gentileschi makes the servant a strong young woman who actively participates in the killing. This does two things. It adds a savage realism that even Caravaggio never thought of - it would take two women to kill this brute. But it also gives the scene a revolutionary implication. "What," wonders Gentileschi, "if women got together? Could we fight back against a world ruled by men?"

Armed with a brush ... Self-portrait as the Allegory of Painting, by Gentileschi. Photograph: Royal Collection Trust

Beyond Caravaggio will showcase another Gentileschi work, her 1622 painting of Susannah and the Elders. Here, again, she uses a biblical story to dramatise what it was to be a woman in the 17th century. Two old men are spying on a young woman bathing, but Gentileschi heightens the creepiness by having the men come right up and openly stare, while other artists tend to show them hiding at a distance. Why does she show the voyeurs as totally unembarrassed, making no attempt to conceal their lust and intruding on Susannah's space?

It is a disturbing effect, strangely reminiscent of her own persecution. In the, trial, it emerged that Tassi had an accomplice who also lusted after her. They both kept hanging around, bugging her, watching her, just like the voyeurs troubling Susannah. The trauma of Gentileschi's rape and the trial that gave her no justice haunt her art. Yet she was not crushed by her suffering. On the contrary, the visceral power of her paintings made her one of the most famous artists in Europe.Even the far-off British court had heard of her. In 1638, Charles I personally invited her to London to work for him. There, Gentileschi painted what may be her most original and important work. In her Self-Portrait as the Allegory of Painting - on show next month at the Queen's Gallery in Buckingham Palace in an exhibition called Portrait of the Artist - she depicts herself as a muscular, dynamic, forceful character, like the women who hold down Holofernes. Instead of a sword, she's armed with a brush. Centuries before feminism, Gentileschi moves through space with extraordinary fluency, the maker of her own image, the hero of her own life.

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More savage than Caravaggio: the woman who took revenge in oil

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wo women are holding a man down on a bed. One presses her fist against his head, so he can't raise it from the mattress, while her companion pins his torso in place. They are well-built with powerful arms but even so it takes their combined strength to keep their victim immobilised as one of them cuts through his throat with a gleaming sword.

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Provocation - Are some artists more likely to be taken seriously?

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Provocation - Are some artists more likely to be taken seriously?

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hy is it hard for people to accept the intellectual and creative authority of artists and writers who are women? Why did Lee Krasner's obvious influence on Jackson Pollock go unrecognised for decades? Why was Simone de Beauvoir's original thought attributed to Jean-Paul Sartre? Why did it take centuries for art historians to recognise the canvases of the Italian baroque painter Artemisia Gentileschi as hers, not her father's, even those that were signed by her? I don't believe the people involved in these attributions were all monsters out to destroy the reputation of the artist or thinker. The evidence was there. They couldn't see it. Why?

Paintings, novels and philosophy made by men feel more elevated somehow, more serious, while works by women feel flimsier and more emotional. Masculinity has a purifying effect, femininity a polluting one. The chain of associations that infect our thought dates back to the Greeks in the west: male, mind-intellect, high, hard, spirit, culture as opposed to female, body, emotion, soft, low, flesh, nature. The chains are hierarchical, man on top and woman on bottom. They are often subliminal, and they are emotionally charged. Ironically, these enduring associations become all the more important when the artwork in question is a urinal - a pee pot for men.

The story goes like this: Marcel Duchamp, brilliant inventor of the "ready-made" and "anti-retinal art", submitted Fountain, a urinal signed R Mutt, to the American Society of Independent Artists in 1917. The piece was rejected. Duchamp, a member of the board, resigned. Alfred Stieglitz photographed it. The thing vanished, but conceptual art was born. In 2004 it was voted the most influential modern artwork of all time.

But what if the person behind the urinal was not Duchamp, but the German-born poet and artist Baroness Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven (1874-1927)? She appears in my most recent novel, Memories of the Future, as an insurrectionist inspiration for my narrator. One reviewer of the novel described the baroness as "a marginal figure in art history who was a raucous 'proto-punk' poet from whom Duchamp allegedly stole the concept for his urinal". It is true that she was part of the Dada movement, published in the Little Review with Ezra Pound, Djuna Barnes, TS Eliot, Mina Loy and James Joyce and has been marginalised in art history, but the case made in my book, derived from scholarly sources enumerated in the acknowledgements, is not that Duchamp "allegedly stole the concept for his urinal" from Von Freytag-Loringhoven, but rather that she was the one who found the object, inscribed it with the name R Mutt, and that this "seminal" artwork rightly belongs to her.

Fountain, the famous porcelain urinal. Photograph: AP

In the novel, I quote a 1917 letter Duchamp wrote to his sister, Susanne. I took the translation directly from Irene Gammel's excellent biography of Von Freytag-Loringhoven, Baroness Elsa: "One of my female friends who had adopted the masculine pseudonym Richard Mutt sent me a porcelain urinal as a sculpture." I got it wrong. Glyn Thompson, an art scholar and indefatigable champion of the baroness as the brain behind the urinal, pointed out to me that Duchamp wrote " avait envoyé" not " m'a envoyé " - "sent in", not "sent me". R Mutt was identified as an artist living in Philadelphia, which is where she was living at the time. In 1935 André Breton attributed the urinal to Duchamp, but it wasn't until 1950, long after the baroness had died and four years after Stieglitz's death, that Duchamp began to take credit for the piece and authorise replicas.

Duchamp said he had purchased the urinal from JL Mott Ironworks Company, adapting Mutt from Mott, but the company did not manufacture the model in the photograph, so his story cannot be true. Von Freytag-Loringhoven loved dogs. She paraded her mutts on the sidewalks of Greenwich Village. She collected pipes and spouts and drains. She relished scatological jokes and made frequent references to plumbing in her poems: "Iron - my soul - cast iron!" "Marcel Dushit". She poked fun at William Carlos Williams by calling him WC. She created God, a plumbing trap as artwork, once attributed to Morton Schamberg, now to both of them. Gammel notes in her book that R Mutt sounds like Armut, the word for poverty in German, and whenthe name is reversed it reads Mutter - mother. The baroness's devout mother died of uterine cancer. She was convinced her mother died because her tyrannical father failed to treat his venereal disease. (The uterine character of the upside-down urinal has long been noted.) And the handwriting on the urinal matches the handwriting Von Freytag-Loringhoven used for her poems.

All this and more appears in Gammel's biography. All this and more reappears in my novel. All the evidence has been painstakingly reiterated in numerous articles and, as part of the Edinburgh festival fringe, Glyn Thompson and Julian Spalding, a former director of Glasgow Museums, mounted the 2015 exhibition A Lady's Not a Gent's, which presented the factual and circumstantial evidence for reattribution of the urinal to Von Freytag-Loringhoven.

The museums, including the Tate, have not budged. The standard Fountain narrative with Duchamp as hero goes on. I am convinced that if the urinal had been attributed to the baroness from the beginning, it would never have soared into the stratosphere as a work of consummate genius. Women are rarely granted such status, but the present reputation of Fountain, one that was hardly instantaneous but grew slowly over the course of many decades, has made the truth embarrassing, not to speak of the money involved and the urgent need to rewrite history. The evidence is there. They can't or won't see it. Why?

Lee Krasner in New York, c 1940. Photograph: The Jewish Museum

Expectation is the better part of perception, most of it unconscious. Past experience determines how we confront the world in the present. Prejudgment and stereotyping are part of cognition, but those preordained ideas - authority is masculine, for example - are cultural. Most people know about implicit bias. The media are full of it. Take the implicit association test to see if you are a racist or sexist. But as Perry Hinton put it: "The implicit stereotypical associations picked up by an individual do not reflect a cognitive bias but the associations prevalent in their culture - evidence of 'culture in mind'." We need "gut feelings", but we also devise post hoc explanations for them: "Certainly, Freytag-Loringhoven had created broadly similar scatological works but nothing that held the thinking expressed in Duchamp's piece." I lifted this sentence from an online article at Phaidon.com called The Fascinating Tale of Marcel Duchamp's Fountain. I quote it in the novel. The writer does not explain what he means by "thinking" or why works by the baroness lack thought.

To open oneself to any work - a sculpture, a book of literature or philosophy - is to acknowledge the authority behind it. When the spectator or reader is a man and the artist or thinker is a woman, this simple act of recognition can give rise to bad feelings of emasculation, what I call "the yuck factor" - the unpleasant sensation of being dragged down into fleshy feminine muck. But because the feelings are automatic, they may never be identified and can easily be explained away: she couldn't think. She was a wild woman who wore tin cans for a bra. She turned her body into Dada. In 1913, she picked a rusted ring off the street, a found object, and named it Enduring Ornament, a year before Duchamp's first readymade, Bottle Rack, but she wasn't thinking. She couldn't have influenced him. She was emotional, out of control - crazy. Duchamp, on the other hand, was dry, witty, a chess-playing genius of pure conceptual mind, a hero of high culture.

The baroness called herself "art aggressive." She celebrated and elevated bodily machinery, rejoiced in verbal hijinks, and pitied Duchamp for devolving into "cheap, bluff, giggle frivolity". She played with the outrage, contempt and disgust she incited. She wrote: "You forget, madame - that we are the masters - go by our rules." She broke the rules. The evidence is there. She sent in the urinal. It's time to rewrite the story.

Memories of the Future by Siri Hustvedt is published by Hodder & Stoughton at £18.99. Buy it for £16.71 at guardianbookshop.com.

This article was amended on 1 April 2019 to replace the main image, which due to a captioning error wrongly claimed to show Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven.

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When will the art world recognise the real artist behind Duchamp's Fountain?

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hy is it hard for people to accept the intellectual and creative authority of artists and writers who are women? Why did Lee Krasner's obvious influence on Jackson Pollock go unrecognised for decades? Why was Simone de Beauvoir's original thought attributed to Jean-Paul Sartre?

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Discuss why people make art. Start small and then think about the bigger implications and how art connects to wider society.