Painting
Painting, in its importance for the development of human civilization, can be safely compared with the invention of agriculture, writing or music.
After the discovery, in 1879, on the vaults of the Altamira cave, in Spain, images of animals, amazing in their plasticity and expressiveness, the modern world learned about the cave paintings of ancient people. In the course of studying this cultural phenomenon, scientists have discovered numerous monuments in different parts of the world, from Europe to North America. Unique drawings depicting various types of animals, flora and fauna, hunting and fishing scenes, geometric shapes and patterns are strikingly naturalistic, using light and shade modeling and the laws of perspective, and sometimes they are stylized and decorative in their interpretation.
There are numerous disputes and discussions about the purpose of drawings in scientific circles. Some scientists believe that the drawings served as part of the rituals of "hunting magic" and should, according to the ideas of primitive people, bring good luck in hunting.
There is a hypothesis that the geometric patterns in the caves were elements of a single communication system that Homo sapiens used to store and transmit information: in primitive maps or as memos for memorizing important myths or rituals. There is also a surprising, at first glance, version that the images, which are usually considered hunting scenes, in fact represent the schemes of the location of bright constellations during important events, and the ancient people already in the Stone Age knew about the anticipation of the equinoxes. Images from Lasko Cave reflect the fact that a large meteorite fell to Earth about 17 thousand years ago.
Painting, as a reflection of the surrounding reality, accompanied a person through the centuries. Thanks to the dry climate of Egypt, wonderful monuments of ancient Egyptian painting have come down to us. The purpose of the painting and relief was to immortalize the life of the deceased in the afterlife. The magical merits of the image and painting largely depended on the quality of the painting, and hence the thoroughness with which they were executed, moreover, the quality of the graphics is as important as the content contained in their forms. The visual system, the specific canon and the general style of ancient Egyptian painting had a huge impact on the development of world art.
In close contact with the ancient Egyptian civilization was the Crete-Mycenaean, the first centers of culture, which were discovered by Heinrich Schliemann in Mycenae (1876) and Arthur Evans on the island of Crete (from 1899).
The cult of the bull, widespread in this culture, and unique palace complexes with complex architecture, decorated with paintings, formed the basis of the Greek myths about the Minotaur. The main decoration of the palace chambers was painting - the most complete and wonderful expression of the Cretan artistic ideal. Patterns and figured images on the walls of the halls were usually located up to the very ceiling; in some rooms, the paintings covered the ceiling as well. The most beautiful and brightest was the so-called. the throne room is a cult room located on the second floor of the western part of the palace. On its pink-red walls, artists depicted griffins (creatures with a lion's body and head, and the wings of an eagle) among flowering lilies.
Cretan-Mycenaean paintings with their motives (scenes of hunting lions, images of cats catching birds) resemble ancient Egyptian art. Probably, the trade relations of the Cretans-seafarers with Egypt affected here. At the same time, Crete-Mycenaean painting differs in many respects from Egyptian with its monumental rigor and symmetry. The works of Cretan artists are distinguished by whimsical patterns and asymmetric forms. Even those frescoes in the Palace of Knossos, which depict a solemn procession with sacrificial gifts and cult ceremonies, are distinguished by their multicolored brightness and liveliness.
Many murals are dedicated to dances, feasts, theatrical performances, children's games. Not at all like the harsh and majestic Egyptian sphinxes, the griffins from the throne room, reminiscent of peaceful tame animals, playfully waving their tails in the circus arena.
At the end of the XVI century. BC e. a terrible catastrophe occurred in Crete: once flourishing cities turned into ruins. Most likely the cause was some kind of natural disaster. For a long time, Cretan cities could not recover from the destruction. In the XV century. BC e. they were attacked by the Achaean tribes, which finally destroyed the civilization of Crete.
Unfortunately, the history of painting of the ancient classics, Greeks and Romans (from the 5th century BC), seems to be a continuous mystery. Not a single picture in the true sense of the word has reached our time. It is known that the Greeks valued and revered their artists, among whom were Apollodorus, Zeuxis, Polygnotus, Parrasius, Apelles, and others. Apollodorus and Zeuxis were engaged in easel painting. The paintings they created decorated the dwellings of the townspeople or were kept in special rooms - the pinakothek. Contemporaries admired the ability of painters to paint realistically and convincingly from life and subtly convey the state of mind of the models. Already in those distant times, artists were able to masterfully apply light and shadow effects, use illusion, achieving absolute similarity with the subject of the image. Ancient sources say that Zeuxis wrote a bunch of grapes so reliably that the birds tried to peck at it.
In ancient Rome, painting was valued much more than sculpture. Roman palaces, public buildings, amphitheaters were decorated with sculptures, wall paintings, mosaics and paintings. From the surviving monuments, frescoes from Pompeii have come down to us, where we see everyday scenes depicted in bright colors, still lifes and mythological subjects in which gods and heroes appeared. Free plastic sculpting of figures that are naturally located in the surrounding space, or exactly connected with the plane of the wall, bright colorful combinations, multifaceted compositional construction are characteristic features of ancient Roman painting.
After the decline of the Roman Empire, the development of painting became inextricably linked with the power of the spreading Christianity. The formation of Christianity as a philosophical and religious system was a complex and lengthy process. The irreconcilability of Christianity with everything that bore the stigma of paganism was replaced by a compromise between the Christian and ancient world outlook. The first paintings in the catacombs reflect the transition from Hellenistic artistic naturalism (methods of illusionistic transmission of the depicted) - to an increasingly generalized and less naturalistic form. Stylistically, there is much in common between pagan and Christian frescoes, but in comparison with Pompeian painting, with secular painting that adorned dwellings, these are rustic, careless, often almost unprofessional sketches. However, they are related to the masterpieces of Roman painting by a common manner - the lightness of the outline, the ineradicable memory of the laws of human anatomy, the freedom of posture, gesture, and figure rotation.
Christianity brought with it the formation of religious painting - icon painting. In the narrow sense accepted in art history, icons are usually called images made within the framework of the Eastern Christian tradition on a hard surface (mainly on a linden board covered with levkas) and equipped with special inscriptions and signs. Tradition relates the creation of the first icons to the apostolic times and is associated with the name of the Evangelist Luke. The oldest icons that have come down to us (not counting the fresco painting in the catacombs) date back to the 6th century and were made using the encaustic technique on a wooden base.
The Middle Ages created a culture that was different from the ancient one.
This is the time of the dominance of the monotheistic Christian religion in Byzantium and Western Europe. Byzantium remained the only guardian of Hellenistic cultural traditions, absorbing the traditions of the art of Egypt, Syria, Iran. The art of Byzantium was influenced by oriental cults, mystical teachings, Christian symbolism and, while remaining anthropomorphic, long ago lost the clarity and integrity of the classical perception of the world. Glitter and splendor, gold and marble, brilliance and radiance - everything turned out to be appropriate as a symbol of spiritual bliss. Especially remarkable are the Byzantine mosaics - the most characteristic creation of the Byzantine genius. The mosaic technique is complex and requires a lot of art. Various small cubes of smalt, from which images are laid out on the wall, flicker, flash, shimmer, reflecting light. Amazing in their significance, created during the absence of a single strict canon, the mosaics of the Cathedral of Hagia Sophia and Ravenna represent scenes from the New Testament history, images of the apostles and early Christian saints.
Byzantine art spread with Christianity outside the empire, in the ancient Russian cities - Kyiv, Novgorod, Tver, Pskov and Moscow, where it became the main type of Russian medieval painting and stimulated the emergence of numerous centers of artistic skill. The highest point in the development of the Byzantine tradition in Russia is the work of Theophanes the Greek, Andrei Rublev and Dionysius. Their works are distinguished by the nobility of form, solemn and sublime rhythm and sophistication of the color scheme.
Since the 11th century, the Romanesque style has triumphed in Europe, which later gave way to the Gothic. Romanesque painting is distinguished by the formality of a style devoid of naturalism and humanism. The plot programs of wall paintings, where the narrative principle dominates, was based on the idea of an irreconcilable struggle between the divine good and the sinfulness of man as an expression of diabolical evil, the inviolability of the world order established by God, which administers the Last Judgment at the end of time.
In general, Romanesque art reflects the growth of political and economic stability in Europe. High taxes and the imposition of church tithes provided funds for the construction of new churches and their decoration with statues, frescoes, paintings, which, in turn, attracted more and more townspeople to the church and thereby increased the profits of church institutions.
Religious in form, Gothic art is more sensitive than Romanesque to life, nature and man. It includes in its circle the entire amount of medieval knowledge, complex and contradictory ideas and experiences. In the dreaminess and excitement of the images of the Gothic, in the pathetic rise of spiritual impulses, in the tireless searches of its masters, new trends are felt - the awakening of reason and feelings, passionate striving for beauty. In the Middle Ages, the Byzantine iconographic style was identified with the aesthetics of early Christian painting. The decree of the pope and the papal curia prescribed that this style, both in terms of form and content, be considered the only acceptable for religious art. Artists in Italy, France and Northern Europe found various ways to go beyond the Byzantine style. They sought to solve the problem of a realistic spatial depiction of objects, to connect all the elements of the picture into a single whole, as if collecting space from disparate images, combining them into a scene. This feature is common for such masters of painting as Cimabue, Duccio, Fra Angelico, Giotto, Henri Belshoz, Martini Simone.
The increased spirituality of Gothic art, the growing interest in human feelings, in the beauty of the real world, prepared the flourishing of the art of the Renaissance. Italy is considered the birthplace of the Renaissance, because it is Italy in the Western European space that is the direct heir to ancient culture. Proto-Renaissance, with its increased secularity in comparison with past traditions in painting, about the times of Duchento (1200s) and Trecento (1300s) paved the way for a new humanism. In this era, interest arose in man as a conscious and thinking person. This is the time of transition from a craftsman to an artist-creator, from a nameless master to an author. Man becomes like God, he is a creator on earth, he is a supreme being, created by the supreme.
The Renaissance transformed the visual arts, filling it with picturesque corporeality and earthly volume. Artists have learned to make full use of the contrasts of light and shadow as a means of modeling volumes and creating an artistic image. Another find of the Renaissance is direct and linear perspective. Quattrocento artists demonstrate their mastery of ownership and knowledge of perspective.
For a medieval man, the sky had a special attraction; for a Renaissance man, the horizon and landscape have such an attraction. With the help of scientific knowledge, geometry and mathematics, artists create an ideal world, not just imitating nature, but transforming it. At the beginning of the 15th century, Filippo Brunelleschi, a Florentine scientist and architect, discovered and described the laws of linear perspective in painting. This allowed artists to obtain perfect images of three-dimensional space on the flat canvas of the painting. Piero della Francesca is another master who is rightfully called the "father" of linear perspective. He writes a treatise "On Perspective in Painting", where the doctrine of perspective leads to a theoretical and practical level. And, of course, one of the most famous figures of the Renaissance, Leonardo da Vinci, did not ignore this issue and wrote the work "On Painting and Perspective", in which he polemicized with his predecessors, highlighting three types of perspective: linear, airy and picturesque.
The Renaissance era opens up new plots and genres, ancient mythology intertwines with Christianity, interpretations of images become ambiguous. The portrait is widely developed and moves from a profile, to a full-face image, revealing the character and inner world of the person being portrayed. There is a formation of the landscape as a genre, as a background image in portraits and religious paintings, it is given increasing importance.
For works by outstanding Renaissance masters - Raphael, Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, Sandro Botticelli, Masaccio, Filippo Lipli, A. del Castagno, P. Uccello, Fra Angelico, D. Ghirlandaio, A. Pollaiolo, Verrocchio, Piero della Franceschi, Andrea Mantella , Pietro Perugino, Giorgione, Titian are characterized by a feeling of harmonious order of the world, an appeal to the ethical and civic ideals of humanism, a joyful perception of the beauty and diversity of the real world, a love of storytelling and a bold play of artistic fantasy.
In the works of the High Renaissance masters Giorgione, Titian, Veronese and Tintoretto, it is as if the festivity and luminous softness of Venice are embodied. They seem to carry light energy. The color on their canvases consists of many shades, while it seems transparent.
Renaissance Italian art had a strong impact on neighboring countries - the Netherlands, France, Germany.
The creativity of the Dutch painters, who adopted the achievements of the masters of the Italian Renaissance, in turn influenced the Italians. Improved by the outstanding painter Jan van Eyck, the technique of oil painting, called the Flemish manner, spread widely throughout Europe.
A feature of the Flemish revival was the deliberate distortion of reality and the creation of grotesque images. Also, the painting of the northern countries is characterized by archaism, religiosity, symbolism - their art has less connections with antiquity.
Criticism of the vices of society, the demonstration of negative episodes of life is a distinctive feature of the moralizing artist Hieronymus Bosch.
In the work of Pieter Bruegel, we see the confrontation between good and evil, the display of the hidden meaning of phenomena, insanity and meaninglessness of human existence. Religious subjects are intertwined with everyday ones.
The great masters of the Northern Renaissance, like the genius Italians - Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, Raphael, treated art as a means of understanding the world. Jan van Eyck, Albrecht Durer, Lucas Cranach, Hans Holbein did not return to antiquity "directly", as the Italian masters did, they revised the canons of the last century. This was a new way of spiritual, spiritualistic and mystical art.
The religious tendencies and changes that were raging at that time were manifested in the work of these masters. The Reformation, which became "fresh blood" in a stagnant Catholic swamp, primarily influenced the creation of new Christian images in painting.
At the end of the XV century, the Spanish reconquista ended, and Spain, after the discovery of America by Columbus in 1492, became not only free and united, but also the richest state. The power of kings demanded its glorification in picturesque images. The so-called golden age of Spanish painting begins with the work of El Greco. His painting represents a completely original emotional and artistic system, returning the viewer to the Gothic experience.
In the second half of the XVI century, the small Italian city-states experienced a deep crisis. A wave of religious reformation was growing in Europe. Italy, where the Pope's throne was located, strengthened Catholicism, opposed the humanistic development of society with its orientation towards ancient, and therefore pagan, pre-Christian classics. A Mannerist movement emerges in art, smoothly turning into Baroque. The word "baroque", which means "whimsical", became the designation for the main style of the XVII century. In the creations of the masters of this direction, attention is opened to common folk plots and characters. The circle of plots is expanding - in addition to paintings on religious and mythological themes, there are scenes in taverns, musicians, fortune-tellers. Still life is becoming an independent genre. Michelangelo da Caravaggio was one of the Baroque masters.
Traditional religious themes received a completely new, intimate psychological interpretation from the painter. The artist made a great contribution to the formation of the genre of everyday life. The light in his works illuminates the main parts of the composition and obeys not the laws of optics, but only the will of the artist. Chiaroscuro - bright flashes and deep darkness - lends drama to each of his scenes. The followers and imitators of Caravaggio, who were at first called caravaggists, adopted the riot of feelings and characteristic manner of Caravaggio, as well as his naturalism in depicting people and events. Bologna academicism, opposed to caravaggism, was represented by Annibale Carracci and Guido Reni. The Venetian school also became famous, where the genre of veda, or urban landscape, became very popular. The most famous author of such works is D. A. Canaletto.
The Flemish painter Peter Paul Rubens was revered as the most famous artist in Europe in the XVII century. In the Antwerp workshop of Rubens, the court painter of the rulers of the Catholic Netherlands, the Spanish Infanta Isabella and the Archduke Albert, orders came from all over Europe - from England, Spain, Italy and France. Rubens in different genres, wrote church and mythological compositions, portraits, decorative and allegorical panels, hunting scenes and landscapes. The glorification of beauty and the joy of life made Rubens the favorite artist of his contemporaries.
The baroque style in Spain was embodied more rigid, strict embodiment, embodied in the works of such masters as Diego Velazquez, Jose Ribera and Francisco de Zurbaran, Bartolome Esteban Murillo. This time is called the "golden age" of Spanish painting.
The art of Spain is characterized by decorativeness, capriciousness, sophistication of forms, the dualism of the ideal and the real, bodily and ascetic, heaping up and avarice, sublime and funny.
At the beginning of the 17th century, the independence of the Netherlands from the Spanish crown was proclaimed. Following their faith - Calvinism, the Dutch did not decorate churches. The main ones in Dutch art were genre paintings not of a religious nature, but filled with everyday, everyday content. The very popular still life and landscape quickly developed into separate genres. Dutch painters have developed a brilliant technique for conveying the effect of light sliding over various surface textures.
The art of Rembrandt van Rijn stands apart in all world art. The enormous universal significance of his work is indisputable. Unlike most fellow Dutch artists, Rembrandt continues to be interested in mythological and biblical themes. It was they who allowed the master to raise the ordinariness to the heights of legends. Rembrandt conveys light amazingly. Its magical field envelops figures and faces in a golden halo. Radiant radiance gently captures the volume, relief of thick strokes superimposed on transparent surfaces. Transforming and poeticizing the world, the artist reveals its hidden depths.
In France, the royal court influenced the development of the country's culture so much that even the dominant styles were named after the rulers: "Style of Louis XIII", "Style of Louis XIV", "Style of Louis XV", "Style of Louis XVI".
Ancient art had a decisive influence on his work. Noble feelings are inherent in his heroes, they are ideally beautiful, their gestures are restrained, sculpturally majestic. The compositions are strictly verified according to the laws of geometry. However, using the principles of rationalism, Poussin's classicism, first of all, was guided by high spiritual ideals.
The classicism style has developed in France since the 17th century. The term is derived from the Latin word classicus, which means "exemplary". The classicists rejected the baroque aesthetics with its chaos and expression. Their art is cold and rational. For classicist artists, reason dominates over feelings, a strict ideal is opposed to the whimsicality of baroque forms. Classicism and Baroque existed side by side for a long time, representing two poles of European art.
The classicist tradition is characterized by the division of genres into high and low. This principle was observed in painting, literature, and drama. The high genres included historical, mythological and religious. In such stories, heroic motives are often heard, and they can be compared with an ode in writers and tragedy in playwrights. Still life, landscape and portrait were classified as low. Such plots were considered less significant, everyday.
The eighteenth century was the apotheosis of the end of the era of feudalism, and the transition to a capitalist society. At this time, the changes were felt especially clearly. Transformations took place in all spheres of life - political, public, social. Global changes were taking place in society. Political parties and periodicals appeared. Interest in science grew - geography, archeology, history, economics, technical disciplines. All this could not but affect the peculiarities of the painting of that time. Interest in the problem "personality - society" was still at the forefront.
Artists conveyed their vision of the world through the depiction of everyday scenes, typical situations, everyday images.
The dominant styles of that time were: baroque, which later turned into rococo, classicism and realism. Rococo and Baroque were a reflection of the choice of the aristocracy. Hence the pomp, splendor and embellishment that representatives of the progressive masses so often criticized. Antoine Watteau, François Boucher, Honoré Fragonard depict a world filled with “the poetry of pleasure”, play and charm.
Compositions of Rococo paintings resemble theatrical scenes, heroes dance, play music, relax, walk in the park. Enviable scenes of a carefree life.
Realism was the personification of the ideals of the lower classes - merchants, artisans, peasants. It was in this part of society that the mood of that time was felt most strongly. Realist artists sought to depict life without embellishment, but for this they used allegorical plots - myths, fables, legends.
They ridiculed the arrogance of the nobility and the hypocrisy of the bourgeoisie. The greatest achievement of realism in painting is the work of Jean Baptiste Chardin. He basically ignored the fashion for graceful subjects and ceremonial portraits. He was a third estate artist. But as a result, his work was timeless. You involuntarily wonder how much love for the world around you is read in his paintings. It seems that Chardin admired literally everything he saw around him.
The consummate masters of the urban landscape – veduta, which became especially popular in the 18th century was Canaletto. He remarkably managed to convey the complex space of Venice, the magical overflows of light reflected in the waters of the canals, and the splendor of architecture, now sparkling from the sun's rays, now immersed in a mysterious shadow.
And in the second half of the 18th century, thanks to the discovery of frescoes during the excavations of Pompeii, the era of neoclacissism began. The style found a new breath, and its main representative was Jacques-Louis David with his laconic canvases full of tragedy and heroism. It was said about this artist that he “anticipated the French Revolution” with his canvases. His work glorified the courage and duty of true citizens and patriots.
Russian art followed its own isolated path of development. The reforms of Peter the Great, who sought to make Russia a European state, had a strong impact on the development of Russian culture. The growing Russian state needed painting "heroic and sublime", so the main attention was paid to the historical genre. However, a huge interest in new characters, in personality made the portrait the leading genre in Russian art of the 18th century. Outstanding masters of this genre were Ivan Nikitin, Andrey Matveev, Ivan Vishnyakov, Alexey Antropov, Ivan Argunov and Fedor Rokotov, Vladimir Borovikovsky, Dmitry Levitsky and Anton Losenko. The charm of their canvases lies in the accuracy of conveying the individual traits of the characters with penetration into their subtle and complex emotional experiences. The portrait genre was also widely developed in England, which was experiencing an era of extraordinary economic upsurge. It shows the influence of Rococo and Romanticism, the tradition of Dutch painting and sentimentalism. Prominent representatives of the portrait art of England were Joshua Reynolds and Thomas Gainsborough.
The nineteenth century, with the ideas of liberalism and socialism, discovered the value of a unique human personality. And painting began to seek intimate connections with the human soul. The artistic directions of the 19th century - classicism, romanticism, academicism, realism, impressionism, symbolism and others, each in its own way, were looking for ways to understand the meaning of human life, its place in the universe, looking for new methods of reflecting reality and new ways of influencing a person.
Originated in the 18th century, classicism continued to develop, while in different countries its development had individual characteristics. The artists of this direction again turn to the images of antiquity. However, through classical plots, they try to express revolutionary sentiments - the desire for freedom, patriotism, harmony between man and society.
Romanticism, which swept aside classicism, is a capacious trend that is reflected in the art of many countries. Its meaning is to exalt the revolutionary struggle, create new canons of beauty, paint pictures not only with a brush, but also with the heart. Emotionality is put at the forefront here. Romanticism is characterized by the introduction of allegorical images into a very real plot, a skillful play of chiaroscuro. Representatives of this trend were the Spaniard Francisco Goya, the German Caspar David Friedrich, the French Antoine-Jean Gros, Theodore Gericault, Eugene Delacroix, the British William Turner. In Russia, the works of Karl Bryullov, Orest Kiprensky, Vasily Tropinin and Aivazovsky are classified as romanticism.
An interesting phenomenon of the 19th century was the emergence of associations protesting against academism. “The Nazarenes, or the Union of St. Luke "- a group of German and Austrian masters who sought to revive the religious naivety of the art of the Middle Ages and the Early Renaissance, opposing it to the" academic painting "of the culture of the High Renaissance. Like the Nazarenes, members of the Pre-Raphaelite association of English artists saw their ideal of morality and spirituality in the patriarchal Middle Ages, whose work, in turn, influenced the development of the Art Nouveau style.
Another creative association that influenced the development of world art was the Barbizon School. The landscape painters Theodore Rousseau, Jean-François Millet, Jules Dupre and other artists close in their creative attitudes created a national realistic landscape of their homeland with everyday motives with the participation of ordinary people engaged in labor. A characteristic technique of the Barbizon school, anticipating impressionism, was the creation of a study in the open air, followed by the final completion of work in the studio.
The Spanish artist Francisco Goya, who reflected in his works the unprecedented cruelty of the war between Napoleon's army and the Spaniards, had a serious influence on the development of European painting and the e