PRECURSORS OF THE RENAISSANCE
The border between the Gothic and Renaissance eras, so pronounced in the painting and sculpture of other countries, is blurred in Italy. In the mid-thirteenth century. there has already been a phenomenon considered one of the foundations of the Renaissance – the rediscovery of the full sense of form, beauty and modeling characteristic of classical art – visible in the statues decorating the Porta Romana in Capua. fragments of which are kept in the city museum. They were ordered by Emperor Frederick II. who desired to rekindle the halo of glory, which once surrounded the Roman Empire. Italians were increasingly coming to the conviction, that it was the barbarians of the north who destroyed art, and it is their duty to revive it.
Nicola Pisano (Ok. 1220-84). sculptor from the south of Italy and undoubtedly familiar with the works of Capua. he developed this style in four of the greatest surviving works — the pulpits of the Pisan Baptistery and the Cathedral of Siena., in Arca San Domenico in Bologna and in Fonte Gaia in Perugia. His figures are endowed with a full sense of spaciousness, with the use of different depths of relief to obtain the illusion of three-dimensionality. Arnolfo di Cambio (Ok. 1245-1310). who assisted Pisan in some of his works, he developed this amalgam of classical and Gothic features in his own works, which include the famous statue of s.v. Peter in Rome and the Tombstone of Cardinal de Braye in San Domenico in Onrieto. This second work determined the format of wall tombstones for the entire next century., with the figure of the deceased lying on the coffin below the Madonna and Child. The whole is enclosed in an extensive architectural frame.
An even greater role was played by the work of Giovano Pisano (Ok. 1248-1314), who broke with his father's pagan predilections. setting instead their figures in dramatic poses, which has not been seen before in the entire history of sculpture. This is most conspicuous in the statues created for the façade of the Sienese Cathedral, that have been set high up, not around portals, and are radically different from their counterparts in French cathedrals.
Meanwhile, in painting, artists freed themselves from traditional Byzantine formulas only in the last three decades of the thirteenth century.. This breath of freedom begins in Cavallini's play The Floor in Rome, and developed by the Florentine Cimabue (Ok. 1240-1302), who introduced round forms in his fresco Madonna of St.. Francis in the lower church of Assisi. His masterpiece, Passion cycle in the upper church, unfortunately, it was destroyed, although even modest remains give a sufficient idea of the great tragedy of the work.
While Cimabue's work was still rooted in the Byzantine tradition and showed no attempt to break the flat surface effect., a great step forward was made by his disciple, just like him from Florence, Giotto di Bondone (1266-1337), whose inventions were to determine the direction, in which all subsequent European art went. Giotto firmly rejected the requirement of two-dimensionality imposed on painting and managed to give his paintings the illusion of depth.. Thanks to the use of better materials than those used by Cimabuego. the Holy Life has been preserved in good condition. Francis in the upper church of Assisi, as well as the decoration of the Padua Scrovegni Chapel of the same artist. These two great cycles best illustrate Giotto's genius in all its many aspects These aspects include the awareness of this. what is important in the image and what should not dissolve in detail, a convincing approach to action and movement, gesture and affection and complete mastery of such painting techniques as character modeling, shortening perspective and chiaroscuro effects.