The Pieta Essay

Imagine seeing the crucifiction of Christ. Seeing that happen would change everyone’s view of the world. Christ’s crucifiction affected many people, including His mother, Mary. Juan de Juanes, the artist, painted this scene realistically. This painting was made with oil paints on panel with long flowing strokes, which seemed to make it come to life. Juan de Juanes depicts many aspects in this painting such as historical significance, colors, and subject matter.

Giotto di Bondonne created “Lamentation” circa 1305. This piece depicts Jesus Christ removed from the cross as Mary the Virgin embraces Him. There are two figures in the foreground with their backs facing the audience. Dawning a new style of artwork creating a sense of depth. John the Baptist is seen flailing his arms backwards. Body gestures were stiff and stern in comparison to previous works. Bondonne is an early artist in “the revival of the visual arts” by painting a scene to suggest a story (Richards). For example, angels are captured flying in the distance watching the people care for the deceased Jesus Christ. They grieve in unison with the crowd down below. Bondonne successfully creates a feeling of three dimensions by including a cluster of people on the far left tucked away in the corner. The mass of people gathered around to offer praise for His ultimate sacrifice.

Della francesca's Resurrection depicts Jesus during the resurrection triumphantly standing over four soldiers as they sleep in front of his tomb. The meaning of this fresco is to show how the heavens will always prevail over the human race. The picture also has newly planted trees

The ominous figure in the centre of the foreground - Jesus Christ hanging lifeless on the cross, in Luca di Tommè’s ‘The Crucifixion’, primarily catches the eye. The symmetrical arrangement of lamenting figures around the cross, as well as the gilded background, highlight him as the focal point of this artwork.

Giovanni di Paolo’s The Annunciation and Expulsion from Paradise is currently in the National Gallery of Art in Washington DC, was finished in 1435 CE, and is made of tempera on panel. This Sienese panel from the start of the Italian Renaissance is believed to be one of five from the lower part of the altarpiece. Giovanni di Paolo uses golden texture to display divinity, line to illustrate architectural perspective, and a strategic use of scale throughout the composition in order to portray the importance of the religious context. His personal artistic stylization, the experimentation of the Italian Renaissance but still firmly painting with Medieval Pictorial Tradition, and the use of symbolism can also demonstrate the religious meaning of the piece. Furthermore, in the context of Giovanni di Paolo’s The Annunciation and Expulsion from Paradise, the conversation between monetary and cultural value and the controversy of art being exhibited in its country of origin will be discussed.

Caravaggio’s, however, was darker and more dramatic. Caravaggio started an intense style called tenebrism. Tenebrism is a more prominent form of chiaroscuro, where there are vehement contrasts between light and dark. Fred Kleiner best describes Caravaggio’s style, “In his art, Caravaggio injected naturalism into both religion and the classics, reducing them to human dramas played out in the harsh and dingy settings of his time and place” (Kleiner, 681). Caravaggio painted during the Italian Baroque in the 1600’s. Italian Baroque artists like Caravaggio embraced theatricality and extravagant ornamentation, while Renaissance artists focused more on precise classical models. Now Caravaggio wasn’t exactly an upstanding member of society, most of what the art world knows about him is through his police reports. Caravaggio’s Entombment was created in 1603 and, like Giotto’s Lamentation, depicts the death of Jesus. While they both depict the same religious scene and use styles that are new for their time, Caravaggio’s painting has some drastic differences from Giotto’s. Caravaggio’s painting is oil painted on canvas, which gives Caravaggio the opportunity to be more detailed in his painting than Giotto can with fresco. Caravaggio creates these intense dramatic scenes of diagonals and intense movement. Unlike Giotto, Caravaggio uses linear perspective to direct his viewer’s attention to the body of Jesus. Caravaggio does this by using a diagonal cascade of mourners descending towards Jesus’ body. Inclusively, Caravaggio started a darker, more dramatic movement that gave naturalism a new realistic element.

The two main characters in the painting display elegant mannered poses and all the figures appear arranged in rather unnatural poses. There is a small scene at the foot of the Saint Catherine and Christ figures. This is thought to be the Christ child with the Virgin Mary and grandmother, Saint Anne. Below these two scenes are three smaller bordered scenes. The central one depicts two enemies reconciled by an archangel and the outer ones show Saints Michael and Margaret fighting demons. All these images show the triumph of good over evil, with the middle characters shedding their weapons and embracing. All these small pictures support that the painting was commissioned by Arigoi di Nero Arighetti to celebrate the end of a feud.

The Deposition from the Cross (Entombment of Christ) by Jacopo Pontormo was completed in 1528 and originally resided in the Florence Charterhouse as the main altarpiece. With it’s distinct iconography, the work was intended to show the public the raw suffering of Christ after his sacrifice and how those around him felt at the time of his death. It holds an uplifting and even hopeful tone with it’s “sour” color palette, a stable for the Mannerist movement.

In 1575 Paolo Caliari created the paint, Christ and the Centurion in Venezia, Italy. The image depicted shows Christ converting Roman Centurion and shows the symbolism of Christianity to non-Jews. The painting shows a strict relief composition to show the classicizing Renaissance style during the ages of Mannerism. Different details of the painting show a more contemporary style rather than ancient roman patterns which is typically shown in the Italian

The great thing about art, is that there are multiple portrayals of one idea but, the artist’s own personal style allows one to feel something that another may not. Early Renaissance painters, Giotto di Bondone and Duccio di Buoninsegna established their own unique style to depict a biblical scene known as, The Betrayal of Christ. Through a close analysis of each artist’s representation of, The Betrayal of Christ, one is able to compare and contrast the artists own understanding of the scene through their attention to detail, character, and space throughout the painting. When examining these two works, one will have a stronger emotional response towards Giotto’s interpretation rather Duccio’s, due to his methods of handling organization, figures, and space.

El Greco's artistic formation in Rome and Venice, reflects the influence of roman mannerist designs (e.g Michaelangelo's masterfully polished drawings) and that of the Venetian school of painting with its emphasis in the richness and variety of colors, the use of pigments to achieve the impression of depth and brightness,

Suddenly, people were recorded in an entirely new way. Artwork focused on more realistic features of the human body as humanists revitalized Greek and Roman styles surrounding love for accurate shape (Hunt et al. 428). Giotto di Bondone’s work, Lamentation of Christ, is a perfect example of this transition. Being a piece painted just at the beginning tip of the Renaissance, it utilizes realistic human bodies and faces. Bondone also played with depth, adding a small amount of three-dimensional space to his piece. The proportions are relatively realistic, while most of art previous to the Renaissance was much more abstract. At this point artists were being rediscovered and began to expand on the idea of linear perspective, horizon line, and vanishing point, making the Lamentation of Christ a great preview of what many wee focusing on and how they chose to communicate during the 14th and 15th

After completing the Case assignment for Module 1, I was immediately interested in seeking other forms of work that was completed by Michelangelo. I scanned over several paintings and architectural drawings that were all magnificent however, nothing compared to his sculptures. I was drawn back to several of his sculptures and finally decided to do an analysis on the Pieta.

Emotions such as sorrow, hate, fear, and love are what makes us human. These are what fuels our desires and marks our capacities. In Giotto’s Famous early renaissance painting entitled “The Lamentation”, or simply put as The Mourning of Christ we can see how he beautifully depicts human emotion all throughout the artwork (1). The Lamentation shows us the body of Christ surrounded by his mourners in which the center greatly highlights Mary as he cradles his son for the last time. In his work, Giotto’s portrayal of human emotion was raw yet powerful.

Long uses her article to look at early Florentine Renaissance artists and their depictions of Salome and Herodias as dangerous women. She chose four examples from Giotto, Lorenzetti, Pisano, and Donatello and analyzed how they chose to approach the scene. She is especially interested in which woman they blame for the martyrdom of St. John the Baptist based on the choices they made in their work. Because these images share many similarities with Gozzoli’s depiction of the same scene, it is easy to apply Long’s theories of composition and imagery indicating guilt to the focus of my project.