Lesson video

Hello, my name's Mr. Groom and I'm thrilled that you're joining me again to learn all about the art and architecture of the Renaissance today.

We're gonna find out so much together.

So let's get started.

Today's lesson is called The Italian Renaissance: Art and Architecture, and it's from the unit, The Renaissance: What do the artefacts of the Renaissance tell us about it? By the end of today's lesson, we will be able to describe some examples of Renaissance art and architecture.

So here are some of the key words that we're gonna be looking at today: sfumato, chiaroscuro, and basilica.

So let's find out what they mean.

The artistic technique of allowing tones, or colours, to gradually shade into one another is called sfumato.

The use of light and shade in drawing and painting is called chiaroscuro.

A basilica is a church considered highly important by the Catholic church.

There are three learning cycles today that are gonna help us learn about the Italian Renaissance and its art and architecture.

Da Vinci and "The Mona Lisa," new artistic techniques, and Renaissance architecture.

So let's start with Da Vinci and "The Mona Lisa." Now, in the early 1500s, around the time that a Erasmus was travelling between France, England, and Italy, the most gifted painter of the Renaissance began his now famous portrait of a Florentine noblewoman named Lisa del Giocondo.

Or at least this is what many art historians believe.

In fact, mystery and debates surround almost every aspect of the Mona Lisa.

No one has been able to prove beyond doubt who the portrait represents or indeed when it was started or completed.

What is certain is that its painter, Leonardo da Vinci, is recognised as one of the most influential painters of the Renaissance period.

While humanist scholars like Erasmus were inspired by their classical heroes to experiment with their arguments and writing, Renaissance painters were similarly inspired by the art of the classical world and sought out new techniques in an effort to create ever-more-realistic and lifelike works of art.

The portrait that da Vinci began in the early 1500s, most likely of Lisa del Giocondo, clearly displayed Renaissance techniques.

And by looking at it closely, we can uncover what these Renaissance painters were trying to achieve, and how.

When looking at the painting, your eye is immediately drawn to the woman's face.

Here, da Vinci has used one of the key Renaissance painting styles.

Sfumato He described this himself as painting without lines or borders in the manner of smoke.

In trying to achieve a realistic depiction of the human face, da Vinci and other Renaissance painters used fine shading to produce a soft change between colours or areas of light and dark.

The eyes of the figure in "The Mona Lisa" are a particularly striking example of this.

So let's check that you understand this technique, sfumato, and what it means.

Which of these best describes sfumato? Is it A, ensuring objects and people are accurately sized? Is it B, the use of rich and vivid colours? Is it C, extreme contrast between light and dark areas? Or is it D, a soft change between colours or areas of light and dark? Pause the video to think about your answer and when you're ready to see if you are right, hit play.

That's right.

The answer is D.

Sfumato is a soft change between colours or areas of light and dark.

Now, this technique was grounded in the latest scientific research of the age, embracing the humanist focus on the natural sciences.

Da Vinci and other painters often applied a developing understanding of optics and the human eye to the manner in which they painted to try and produce ever-more realistic portraits and paintings.

The Leonardeschi, da Vinci's followers, students, and those influenced by him, studied his use of sfumato applying the technique to their own work.

However, sfumato was not the only technique that these painters adapted, studied, and replicated, as we shall see in a moment.

So let's check you understand how and why these Renaissance painters were able to produce such realistic portraits and paintings.

I want you to think about the question there.

Why were Renaissance painters able to produce more realistic portraits and paintings? Have a think about your answer.

When you're ready to see if you are right, press play.

So your answer might have been very similar to the one that's presented here, it's all to do with their understanding of optics.

Renaissance painters were able to produce more realistic portraits and paintings because they took advantage of better understanding of optics and the human eye.

Okay, so let's apply the knowledge and understanding that we've gained in that first learning cycle.

What I would like you to do is I'd like you to write just one short paragraph to explain what Leonardo da Vinci's portrait of "The Mona Lisa" tells us about the techniques used by Renaissance painters.

Now, you should try and include the following in your answer: sfumato and scientific research.

So I want you to think about writing about that technique of sfumato and what we just talked about with regard to scientific research into optics and the way the eye worked.

Start your answer, pause the video, and when you're ready to compare it to one that we can show you, press play.

Well done.

So your paragraph might have looked a little bit like this.

"The Mona Lisa" tells us a lot about the techniques used by Renaissance painters.

By looking closely at the details of the woman's face, we can see how da Vinci has used this sfumato.

This was a technique that Renaissance painters started to use to blur the boundary between different colours.

They were able to do this because they had a greater understanding of how the human eye works thanks to scientific research.

Now, just as I said, sfumato is not the only artistic technique that Renaissance painters were starting to use.

Let's have a look at some others in our second learning cycle.

As we have seen with "The Mona Lisa," da Vinci and his contemporaries were preoccupied with painting in as realistic a manner as possible.

They sort out every method they could to trick the human eye into thinking it was seeing a three-dimensional object on a flat surface.

Alongside sfumato, they used chiaroscuro, literally meaning light, dark.

Renaissance painters would purposely use a much greater range of dark to light tones in their paintings to create rich, varied shadows and light spots in their work.

Now, da Vinci employs this in another of his paintings, "The Virgin of the Rocks." His painting shows the Virgin Mary and Saint John, the Baptist, Jesus Christ's cousin, and an angel alongside the infant Christ.

Set in a rocky grotto, da Vinci has used chiaroscuro to emphasise the manner in which the figures appear to be emerging in the darkness of this setting.

You can see this in this closeup or part of the painting.

So let's see that you've understood what chiaroscuro should is.

So in which parts of "The Virgin of the Rocks" has Da Vinci used chiaroscuro? Pause the video, have a think, and press play when you're ready to check your answer.

So that's right.

The main place where da Vinci has used it in this painting is in the faces of the people.

However, you can also see that it's been used on some of the clothing and a little bit as well in the rocks in the background.

In both this painting, "The Virgin of the Rocks" and "The Mona Lisa," da Vinci shows off other Renaissance techniques, the use of perspective, foreshortening, and proportion, making use of various mathematical principles that were receiving renewed interest in the humanist universities of Italy.

He established lines that he then used to create the illusion of depth.

And you can see some of his studies or his experiments with how to do this in this page from his notebook.

Elsewhere, these revived mathematical principles were being used in a very different way, but one that still produced things of breathtaking beauty as we shall soon and see.

Let's check your understanding of these techniques.

True or false, sfumato and chiaroscuro were the only new painting techniques developed during the Renaissance.

Do you think that's true or do you think that's false? Think about your answer and pause the video.

And when you're ready to check if you were right, press play.

So it's false.

Sfumato and chiaroscuro were not the only painting techniques developed during the Renaissance.

So I want you to think a bit more deeply now.

Why is that statement false? Was it A, that painters developed perspective, foreshortening, and proportion, or was it that B, painters developed new pigments and styles of paint which produce more realistic paintings? Have a think about your answer.

Press pause, and when you're ready to see if you are right, hit play.

Absolutely.

Well done.

The reason sfumato and chiaroscuro were not the only new painting techniques developed during the Renaissance is that painters also developed using perspective, foreshortening, and proportion, as we've just heard.

So let's take your knowledge and understanding of these painterly techniques used during the Renaissance, and apply them to this task.

What I'd like you to do is I'd like you to complete the sentences below to provide greater detail about the subject of each sentence and the subject of each sentence comes at the beginning in these sentences.

Now we've done an example for you.

So that first sentence, Leonardo da Vinci is the subject, and we've added in some detail about him.

So "Leonardo da Vinci, a renaissance artist, painted 'The Mona Lisa,'" and we all agree that is a better sentence than if we'd just written "Leonardo di Vinci painted 'The Mona Lisa.

'" We've been able to add some extra detail about him.

So what I'd like you to do is I'd like you to have a go at providing greater detail in the three remaining sentences about the subject of each.

So sfumato, chiaroscuro, and new painting techniques.

Think about what you could add in between those commas to provide greater detail in each of those sentences.

Pause the video while you're having a go, and when you're ready to compare your answers to ours, hit play.

so, we've got some examples here of what your sentences might have looked like.

So you might have written something along the lines of this: "Sfumato, a soft change between different colours of shades made paintings more realistic." "Chiaroscuro, the use of a wide range of light and dark tones, was used by da Vinci in 'The Virgin of the Rocks.

'" "New painting techniques, such as proportion and perspective, made use of rediscovered mathematical principles." Great job.

We're going to look at our final learning cycle now, and I just hinted at it before.

It's somewhere else where mathematical principles were being used to produce beautiful things, and it's in Renaissance architecture.

So I want you to picture this scene in our third learning cycle.

Rubble crashes to the ground, labourers scatter to safety, stone masons shout in anger at the wastage of ancient blocks that might be reused.

All around St.

Peter's Square, there is noise, dust, and destruction.

The old Roman basilica is being demolished.

A great new church is being planned.

Around the time that da Vinci began his portrait of Lisa del Giocondo, Pope Julius III ordered the rebuilding of the crumbling Church of St.

Peter, one of the holiest places in the Christian world.

It was now almost 1,200 years old and had fallen into disrepair.

Believed to be the final resting place of Peter, one of Jesus's disciples and the first bishop of Rome, it would now be reconstructed on a grand scale and was financed partially by the selling of indulgences, which is where people paid the church to reduce the amount of punishment that awaited them in purgatory by having their sins forgiven.

So let's check that you've understood what we've heard there.

This is true or false.

Pope Julius the third ordered the rebuilding of St.

Peter's Basilica.

Pause the video.

Have a think about your answer, and when you're ready to check whether you were right, press play.

That's right.

Pope Julius III did order the rebuilding of St.

Peter's Basilica.

It was true, but why was that statement true? Was it because he did so because the old church was almost 1,200 years old and had fallen into disrepair? Or did he order the rebuilding of St.

Peter's Basilica because he thought it would strengthen his position as pope.

Is it A, or is it B? Have a think about your answer, pause the video and press play when you're ready to see if you were right.

That's right.

He did so because the old church was almost 1,200 years old and it had fallen into disrepair.

In the new St.

Peter's, two aspects of Renaissance rediscovery came together.

It's design both took inspiration from the classical buildings of Greece and Rome, and was underpinned by structural calculations that made use of old mathematical knowledge that was now being spread more widely across Europe.

Studying this building reveals a lot about the classical features that Renaissance artists and architects wanted to revive in buildings they designed.

The front of St.

Peter's is modelled on another building in Rome, the old Roman temple known as the Pantheon that you can see here.

The row of columns, or colonnade, at the front of St.

Peter's closely resembles that of the Pantheon and other classical buildings like the Parthenon atop the Acropolis in Athens, Greece.

Similarly, the enormous dome that you can see of St.

Peter's was also modelled on that of the Pantheon.

So let's check.

Have you understood which parts of St.

Peter's Basilica are clearly inspired by classical architecture? Look at the photograph, pause the video, and when you're ready to check your answers, press play.

So the columns at the front are clearly inspired by classical architecture, but also the dome.

Well done.

Right.

Let's take what you've learned today and put it all together.

I've got a statement here.

It reads: "Renaissance art and architecture was only focused on new ways of doing things." Now this is an incorrect statement.

What I'd like you to do is I'd like you to correct that statement and using the information you've learned today to explain your answer.

And I'd like you to try and include the following words: sfumato, chiaroscuro, mathematical principles, and classical.

So explain why that statement is incorrect.

Pause the video while you do it, and when you're ready to check your answer, press play.

But you might have said something like this: "Renaissance Art and architecture was not just focused on new ways of doing things.

In painting, many new techniques were used such as sfumato and chiaroscuro.

Paintings also used mathematical principles to create paintings with proportion and perspective.

However, Renaissance architecture was focused on classical buildings.

The new St.

Peter's Basilica took inspiration from the Pantheon and the Parthenon." So let's summarise what we've learned today.

We've learned, found out, that during the Renaissance, da Vinci and other painters used new painting methods such as sfumato and chiaroscuro to make their paintings more detailed and realistic.

These methods, and others, were based on growing scientific understanding.

Rediscovered mathematical knowledge was used to create new architecture in the style of classical buildings, such as St.

Peter's Basilica in Rome.

Excellent job today.

I hope you enjoyed learning about these beautiful paintings and fantastic architecture.

I hope to see you again soon when we explore the Renaissance further.