The A to Z of Renaissance Art (The A to Z Guide Series)

1531; Rome, Galleria Borghese) and Titian (1554; Vienna, Kunsthistorisches Museum) depicted Danaë as a reclining nude determine. Jan Gossart (1527; Munich, Alte Pinakothek) as an alternative rendered her seminude and seated, interested by the speckles of gold that fall from above. DANTE ALIGHIERI (1265–1321). Italian poet who authored the Divine Comedy (1307–1321). The son of a Guelf notary from Florence, Dante fought in 1289 within the conflict of Campaldino, which ended in the defeat of the Ghibellines. In 1295, he grew to become a member of the Guild of Physicians and Apothecaries, a club had to satisfy his posts as diplomat and Justice of the Peace. via 1300 the Guelfs divided into rivaling factions, the Bianchi and Neri, and while the Neri seized energy in Florence in 1302, the Bianchi, between them Dante, have been exiled from town. Dante traveled via Italy, and maybe additionally Paris and England. He died in Ravenna in 1321. Dante’s Divine Comedy describes his trip via hell (Inferno), purgatory (Purgatorio), and paradise (Paradiso), guided first through the Roman poet Virgil after which his loved Beatrice. Written within the vernacular, Dante inaugurated a brand new literary style and made the Tuscan dialect he used the traditional Italian language. till the sixteenth century, Dante’s impact on artwork and tradition was once truly felt. The depiction of hell within the Strozzi Chapel at Santa Maria Novella, Florence (1355–1357), by way of Nardo del Cione is predicated on Dante’s Inferno and, in Michelangelo’s final Judgment within the Sistine Chapel, Vatican (1536–1541), Charon, one among Dante’s characters within the similar textual content, mans the boat that takes the souls to the underworld. different artists celebrated Dante through together with his portrait in fresco cycles. within the Villa Carducci at Legnaia (1448), Andrea del Castagno put him one of the illustrious women and men he rendered. within the Stanza della Segnatura (1510–1511), Raphael positioned Dante in Parnassus along Petrarch, Giovanni Boccaccio, and the Ferrarese poet Ludovico Ariosto. DAVID (c. 1446–1460; Florence, Museo Nazionale del Bargello). Rendered through Donatello, this is often the 1st freestanding nude determine to were created for the reason that antiquity. David is proven because the shepherd boy who volunteered to bring the Israelites from the Philistines by way of killing their chief, the enormous Goliath. In his left hand he holds the stone he brought with a sling to knock the fellow down and in his correct is the sword he used to sever his head. The determine stands in an exaggerated contrapposto that provides him a marked sway, his left foot resting at the giant’s severed head and his left arm akimbo. His hat, pointed out as that worn by way of shepherds, and armed forces sandals, coupled by way of his smooth, fairly effeminate physique, furnish an erotic caliber to the paintings. The wreath round the base of the statue symbolizes victory. the main points of this fee are doubtful, but the sculpture was once visible within the courtyard of the Palazzo Medici in 1469 in the course of a marriage occasion, which might recommend that Donatello created the paintings for the Medici. a few artwork historians actually think that the statue can have as soon as served as a fountain in the midst of their courtyard.