Palazzo del Te, Fall of the Giants

The Palazzo del Te done by Guilio Romano has a different theme for each room. One of them is the Fall of Giants. Done in frescoe, every inch of the walls are covered with mystical giants that are being crushed as the building collapses on them. This was an old Roman story where these giants tried to destroy Mount Olympus and Jupiter punishes them. This might have been a message Romano wanted to convey about the oppression in Italy at the time. It was mostly like a tribute to Charles V and his power.

Artistic Theory in Italy

Michelangelo was all about beauty. He was a sculpture and painted like a sculpture. He thought the male form was the ultimate definition of beauty. He didn't care about the science of things. He studied what people looked like but not like Leonardo Da Vinci as far as their anatomy or how things worked. He wrote out his thoughts about his art in poem form. He thought God was responsible for everything and defined what beauty is to us. Later on in his life he realized how much outside beauty is temporary and how its what inside that lasts. Like "The Last Judgment" no one looked beautiful. They are all waiting for their fate to heaven or hell. Where you spend eternity is what really matters and it is real. For Michelangelo he wasn't too sure which direction he was going to go; if he had done enough to make into heaven. Your outside looks weren't going to get you there, even though, Michelangelo based most of his career, including the Sistine Ceiling, on the idea of beauty.

Leonardo Da Vinci was very scientific. He painted with the idea of how the body worked, or how nature flowed. He painted hair like it moves. He painted grass like it was swaying in the wind. He did studies on the movements of hands and plants and water. This, in turn, I think makes his art better. His art is more precise and realistic. He thought that if science wasn't apart of art than there was no point in it. He focused on anatomy and muscle function. He drew from an engineering perspective. Leonardo wasn't big on feelings so he didn't write figuratively. All his journals were made up of experiments with hypotheses and conclusions.

I like Leonardo Da Vinci's work more than Michelangelo's. He captures beauty better than Michelangelo ironically, I think. By knowing how the body works he could capture it on paper better. Michelangelo paints like he would carve a sculpture. The bodies are too lumpy and the poses, all though inspiring, are unrealistic. But, for example, the Sistine Ceiling was supposed to be ethereal and out of this world. If he didn't think figuratively and with emotion that idea wouldn't have come across as successfully as it did. So I don't know if you can say one is better than the other, in general, they are just different. The way they think shaped their artistic styles.

Renaissance Rome

I understood Partridge's section way more than Rowland's. The papacy was getting too crooked and the people wanted a change. They were a symbol of divinity and yet they were acting of the world. "The Renaissance church was not only worldly, it was also corrupt. Popes generally appointed family members to high office regardless of merit (nepotism) and often carved dynastic family states out of church lands (alienation. Clerics were often poorly educated, lax in their vows, and undisciplined. offices were routinely bought and sold (simony), and a single church official could draw income from many offices and benefices (pluralism)without attending to the duties of any (absenteeism)" (Partridge, 13). The church was participating in the purchase of indulgence where anyone for a price could remit their sins. While this was all happening the papacy was working on reinventing Rome; turning it into the most successful city in Europe once again. With this success comes sin. The protestants hated all the greed and money and indulgences and revolted against the church. They were the biggest threat to the succession of the new Rome. "However, the Protestants in northern Europe posed by far the greatest challenge to papal primacy, eventually completely rejecting the church" (Partridge, 14). The papacy used humanistic ideas to gain the support of others, for example, Rome's antiquity.

The church did reform and brought stricter rules against the papacy. "The canons and decrees of the Council of Trent(1545-63) and subsequent papal commissions clarified doctrines, standardized liturgy and scriptures, and corrected the worst abuses of nepotism, alienation of church lands, simony, pluralism, absenteeism, and the sale of indulgences" (Partridge, 16). Priests got better education and honed in on their real goals for society. They focused on preparing for the second coming of Christ. The art was reflecting this fight between war and renewal. The of idea of the physical world versus the spiritual world was all over in renaissance art.

I must've missed the whole idea of this or something. If the church and the papacy were involved in all these "divine" benefits why would they want to reform and get rid of the things they were receiving and doing. I know the Protestants were making it difficult for them but what really made them reform? They had this grand city of Rome where they could continue all their awful things. Why didn't they?