I am a bit of a fan of Jonathan Jones, who writes as an art critic for The Guardian Newspaper here in the U.K and also has an extremely fascinating and eclectic blog on:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/jonathanjonesblog
I have previously mentioned his book 'The Lost Battles', which i have purchased on pre-order from amazon.co.uk and cannot wait to read! Though his literary dissecting of art is by no means restricted to the Renaissance, he does seem to have a succinct and appropriate argument on the topic, which i tend to agree with.
Recently on sifting through some of his past Blog entries from this year i came upon 'Trying to revive the Renaissance' which you can view on the link below:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/jonathanjonesblog/2010/jun/03/leonardo-michelangelo-renaissance-mattered?INTCMP=SRCH
Jonathan's book, which explores th competition between two of the finest Renaissance minds of the time; Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo, also explores the significance of Florence itself. There is a continuing argument between modern art historians over the actual importance of Florence in the Renaissance, as to whether is was justly considered as the epicenter of 'the golden age' or whether this reputation was merely the result of rich patrons and propagandist literaries whose works have survived and have been passed down to us as fact - Georgio Vasari's 'Lives of the Artists' being one of them.
Jonathan Jones argues for the original idea, that indeed Florence has earned its reputation righteously, even with its turbulent history and infamous characters and that in fact, it has the right to remain preeminent when thinking of the Renaissance as opposed to those other Italian cities of Sienna - which has got more press lately than others, Urbino & Mantua. Or further afield, there has been great discussion as to the equal importance of the Renaissance in Flanders and the rest of Europe in order to unravel the allusion and allure of the shining city of Florence.
Jonathan says his book;
revises the revisionists. The story I tell in my book happens to vindicate everything the Victorians believed about this incredible cultural moment. What does it mean, historically, that in the early 1500s Michelangelo and Leonardo competed in their own city? It reminds us of the sheer wonder of Florence at this time – for how could two such geniuses be produced by its artistic workshops if not because this community was a unique crucible of talent? And if nothing else, my book puts Florence back at the heart of Renaissance Europe. The fact that Niccolo Machiavelli was involved in staging the contest adds to that argument – northerners' admiration for the Italian provocateur ensured that his ideas circulated through Europe and inspired Shakespeare's villains.So not only does Florence emanate the pinnacle of invention, intuitive genius and innovation that is so synonymous with the Renaissance, but it also, in the characters of Leonardo and Michelangelo, allows through the zeitgeist of its point in time, the emergence of the individual personality and ego. The development of the self, which Vasari, Burkhardt and many others since have been showing us all along.
What of the place of the Renaissance in global culture? There were many marvellous works of art being created in the world of 1504, in places as various as Mexico and Benin. But only in modern times have such objects been defined, some might say appropriated, as "art". It is the modern world that rips relics from temples and calls them Art. The very idea of "art" – I told my Hay audience – begins in Renaissance Italy, and the contest between Leonardo and Michelangelo is central to its birth. You could say that Leonardo was the first person we know to have a deep and unmistakable artistic personality, and that Michelangelo learned from the older man, self-consciously presenting himself as a free and original artistic genius. In their competition, the demands of political and religious, communal and ritual image-making were eclipsed by a new cult of art for art's sake.
Mr Jones likens the importance of Jacob Burkhardt's 19thC work; 'The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy' to that of Darwin's;
The study of the Renaissance can no more forget Burckhardt than biology can leave Darwin behind...The fascination of reading his book is its vision of Italy as the birthplace of modern individualism, political calculation, science and scepticism. In 1860 Burckhardt looked at Italy and saw the shock of the new, secreted in sleepy ruins.Burkhardt analyses the age of the Renaissance with a new overview, an eclectic formation of not just one part of the history, but of it all, the society, politics and economics that effected the creation of the art produced in Italy throughout the Renaissance;
The Civilisation of the Renaissance in Italy would ignite the spark of art history as an academic subject – but its greatness as a book lies in its imaginative intoxication. It is not a critique, but the supreme expression of the 19th-century fantasy of the Italian Renaissance...Burckhardt argues, "for the first time we detect the modern political spirit of Europe, surrendered freely to its own instincts"Jonathan goes on to write;
Burckhardt, like Darwin and Marx, wrote an epic of turbulence, change, transformation – he found in the Italian Renaissance the very birth of what he saw as the most striking aspects of the modern world. Italians never really knew feudalism, he argued. They had no time for the corporate character of medieval life. The second section of his book is called "The Development of the Individual" and portrays the typical Renaissance man as "the first-born among the sons of modern Europe."Having come through all that, the Victorian age of obsession, the development of a new and complete art history; seeing art as an diverse combination and result of socio-historical developments and political events, are we just in an age where the dissection of all that is previous is taken as given? Have we lost the original facts through skepticism and cynicism?
Burckhardt's panorama of the ruthlessness of the Italian despots relies heavily on Machiavelli's writings. Indeed he sees the entire Renaissance through Machiavellian, meaning political, eyes. In contrast to Marx and today's historians of the consumerist "material culture" of the Renaissance, he starts with politics and holds that the development of the Machiavellian state liberated Italian energy. Another source he cites is Francesco Guicciardini, a friend of Machiavelli whose great History of Italy, written in the 1530s, compares with Tacitus for its disabused gloom and which flavours Burckhardt's own cynical melancholy.
Is the abundance of Italy's heritage the cause for these modern historians to search elsewhere for culture when it is staring at their faces? John Hooper of the Guardian writes in 'Italy's abundance of heritage sites leads to indifference' that Italy;
A country sprinkled with aqueducts and amphitheatres, medieval piazzas and renaissance palazzos devotes far less of its budget to their conservation than others with less to boast.Roberto Cecchi, director-general of the heritage department of Italy's culture ministry, admits;
According to the latest comparative figures from the OECD, from 2006, Italy devoted only 0.8% of its public spending to culture and leisure, putting it 22nd on a list of 27 countries for which statistics were available. France, like Spain, spent almost twice as much.
"Italy has never spent enough on culture," says Cecchi
"If we do not work to preserve this enormous heritage, if we merely concentrate on the most eye-catching cases like the Colosseum and Pompeii, we risk losing the rest."There are of course, very good reasons to read between the lines of what history has told us is fact throughout the ages. Prime examples being many historical dialogues written corruptly or written out altogether. Women in the Renaissance for an obvious example and those artists overlooked by the towering personalities who made more noise than they did and whose lives have been read and reread over again.
So these missing histories are certainly important and worth our investigation and further analysis, but to forsake the rest of the history also presented at our doors is a mistake blindly bundled into. Simply because one historical narrative has received more attention than others does not negate its relevance nor its importance. History is not merely black and white with either one narrative or another. Burkhardt brought that to our attention. History itself is an interwoven tapestry of connecting threads.
So i am not saying we should ignore the unknown narrative, quite the opposite, however we should not forget the dominating histories either. To do so is to the demise and possible loss forever of these great monuments to the Renaissance. John Hooper reports of one instance as an example, where Italy's heritage, not just in Florance, has been left to ruin;
Few of the tourists who arrive in Rome by taxi realise, as they speed through, say, the Porta San Giovanni that the walls to either side were built in the 3rd century. The so-called Aurelian walls, of which some 8 miles remain, are among the glories of the Eternal City.I think that some of these modern historians have in them the remnants of that ego developed during the Renaissance. The pride in discovering something new, something now and being renowned for it. Its a little bit like when at school and a new band is unearthed from the midst of the chart toppers and one takes flattery for finding them out and telling ones friends. Then when everyone catches on to this new trend somehow it doesn't mean as much to the person - 'everyone thinks its cool so i don't think its cool'. To me its slightly the loftiness of being the patron of the new and being ahead of the crowd, being known as a forerunner and being remembered for it.
Yet the Romans too take them for granted, and the result is that they are gradually crumbling. A 15-metre stretch collapsed in 2007.
The Aurelian walls are perhaps the biggest structure on Italia Nostra's "red list". So far, it takes in only seven of Italy's 20 regions, but it already comprises the names of 60 severely endangered buildings and sites.
They include barely known castles, far off the beaten tourist track, such as the one at Olcenengo in Piedmont, and archaeological sites of acknowledged importance such as the Greek settlement at Selinunte in Sicily, with its magnificent, reconstructed Temple of Hera.
There are entire nations with a cultural heritage less illustrious than that which fills this red list and, says Cecchi, that could help explain why Italian governments have traditionally been so indifferent to conservation. "When you have things," he says, "there is a tendency to think you will have them forever."
Peter Hall, in his 'Cities in Civilization', 1998, writes of Florence as a catalyst of creativity at just the right moment. The quattrocentro of the 1400's;
was surely one of the most extraordinary periods in human creativity: within eighteen years, 1420-1438, Brunelleschi's huge dome for the Cathedral rose above the city; the great west façade was filled with sculptured saints; beside it Ghiberti completed his twenty-three year labour on the north doors of the Baptistery, before turning for the next twenty-seven years to the east doors; down the neighboring Via dei Calzaiuoli, Florentines could see the fourteen Orsanmichele statues, commissioned by the guilds; in the other direction, Brunelleschi was also directing work on the severe arcaded classical façade of the Spedele degli Innocenti, the first building of the classical revival in Europe and one of the definitive starting points of the Renaissance; not far away, in 1438, Fra Angelico began his frescoes in the convent San Marco; in Santa Maria Novella, Masaccio was painting his great Trinity; and Donatello was sculpting La Maddalena...There are ample, and more reasons than i can put into one blog post, why Florance should still be considered greatly important in the history of the Renaissance, and why Italy itself is a forerunner of the movement. Let us not be blinded by the over analytical cynicism of modern art history, but take from the Renaissance what it has to offer and revel in the accomplishments of its totality.
This was no conscious accident, for these works were conscious creations of the entire collectivity; they were not simply expressions of individual creativity or genius, but the result of long deliberations in committees and rigorous, indeed contentious and bitter, competition among artists of huge talent and - frequently - egos to match.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/culture/2010/dec/03/italy-heritage-abundance-indifference?INTCMP=SRCH
http://www.guardian.co.uk/culture/2010/jul/10/jacob-burckhardt-civilization-renaissance-italy?INTCMP=SRCH
http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/jonathanjonesblog/2009/feb/27/art-consumption-renaissance?INTCMP=SRCH
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