Западноевропейское искусство от Джотто до Рембрандта
Шрифт:
2. What did Giotto represent in the frescoes that line the interior of the Arena Chapel in Padua? What is the subject of these frecoes?
3. What did Giotto introduce in his works of art?
4. What is depicted in one of Giotto's earliest frescoes? What device did Giotto use to emphasize the three-dimensionality of Joackim's figure? What scale did he recognize for the figures and for the surroundings?
5. How did Giotto represent the figures in the Madonna and Child Enthroned? How did Giotto depict the throne? How is the background painted? What models the form in the Madonna andChild Enthroned? What do Giotto's figures resemble?
6. What is represented in the Raising of Lazarus? What groups are distinguished in the fresco? How are they arranged? How did Giotto show the perspective in this fresco?
7. What does the Lamentation depict? How did Giotto group the grieving figures? What medieval legend is connected with the Tree of Knowledge?
III. I Give Russian equivalents of the following phrases:
to be recognized by the contemporaries; protagonist; ceremonial representation; to revive the art of painting; a cycle of frescoes; to line the interior; in the wilderness; to arrange frescoes in three layers; to cover walls with frescoes; to fresco the walls; to form a definite stage in space; frescoes on panels; cubic rocks; three-dimensional forms; a limited space; wrapped in graveclothes; according to the medieval legend; against the blue background; an ideal heavenly colour; Queen of Heaven; to take shelter; firmly stand; to recognize one scale for the figures and another for the surroundings; master's masterpiece; the miracle lies in; light without indication of source; to produce for the first time; to design a halo; to introduce light and inward extension; to group the figures; to resemble sculptural masses; foreshortened in perspective; visual unity; to rule out the distant space; to add mourners; in the foreground; in the background; facial types; to receive an outcast; brushwork; Redemption; Tree of Knowledge; a withered tree; the sin of Adam and Eve; shepherds and sheepfold; on a flat surface.
II. Give English equivalents of the following phrases:
Искупление
III. Make up sentences of your own with the given phrases.
IV. Translate the following groups of words into Russian:
accomplish – accomplished; paint – painter – painting; revive -revival – revived; illustrate – illustrator – illustration; arrange – arrangement; face – facial – faceless; space – spatial – spaceless; surround – surroundings; three-dimension – three-dimensional – three-dimensionality; ceremony – ceremonial – ceremonialism.
V. Arrange the following in the pairs of synonyms:
a) to accomplish; flat; extension; to represent; observer; heaven; to design; three-dimensional; perspective; to produce; to line;
b) spectator; to show, to picture, to present, to portray, to depict; panorama; to create; to finish; to cover; sky, paradise; to draw; cubic, solid; prostrate; prolongation.
VI. Arrange the following in the pairs of antonyms:
a) to accept; to accomplish; to rule out; three-dimensional; to produce; to recall; to decline;
b) flat; to revive; to forget; to include; to reject; to start; to break.
IV. Here are descriptions of some of Giotto's works of art. Match them up to the given titles.
1. The angels and saints firmly stand on either side of the throne.
2. The man wrapped in graveclothes is read together with the rock.
3. Humiliated, his head bowed, he stands between two shepherds.
4. The persons grieve in the manner possible to their individual personalities.
a. Lamentation
b. Raising of Lazarus
c. Joachim among the Shepherds
d. Madonna and Child Enthroned
V. Translate the text into English.
Конец XIII – начало Xiv вв. в европейской живописи знаменуется
VI. Summarize the text.
VII. Topics for discussion.
1. Giotto's style and characters.
2. Giotto as the father of modern painting.
Unit II Masaccio (1401-1427/29)
The break between what had gone before and the new 15th century creative art of Florence is seen immediately in the Enthroned Madonna and Child by the short-lived Tommaso di Ser Giovanni known to his contemporaries as Masaccio who was, after Giotto, the next great founder-figure not only of Italian but of Western painting. This picture is a central panel of an altar-piece painted by Masaccio when he was twenty-five. Its revolutionary heroic realism can be paralleled only in the work of his friend, the sculptor Donatello, older than Masaccio but working in Florence at the same time. In spite of the Gothic pointed arches used for the panels and the golden background this is a Renaissance picture. Masaccio's Madonna and Child are a simple, sculpted group, as if blocked out from the same piece of stone, absorbed, archaic and unsmiling images. The throne on which they sit and on which the large monumental Madonna casts a shadow is solid and three-dimensional. The Child is realistically human and seriously divine. He takes grapes from his Mother as a solemn foretaste of the Passion.
Masaccio's innovations are visible in the frescoes he painted about 1425 in the Chapel of the Brancacci family in Florence. In his mid-twenties he revolutionised the art of painting. In the principle scene in the series the Tribute Money Masaccio created a new sense of actual masses existing in actual space. The subject recounts how when Christ and the Apostles arrived at Capernaum, the Roman tax-gatherer came to collect tribute. Christ told Peter he would find the tribute money in the mouth of a fish in the nearby Sea of Galilee. Peter cast for the fish, found the coin, and paid the tax-gatherer. The artist has arranged the Apostle figures in a semicircle around Christ, with the discovery of the money placed in the middle distance at the left and the payoff at the right. The Apostles are enveloped in cloaks. This gives them the grandeur of sculpture and a sense of existence in space. The Apostles' faces are painted with quick, soft strokes of the brush. Masaccio has performed a miracle almost without the use of line. Form is achieved by the impact of light on an object. In this picture Masaccio proved a simple maxim that 'Nothing is seen without light'. Unlike Giotto who had attempted to take the observer only a few yards back into the picture, where he immediately encountered the flat, blue wall, Masaccio leads the eye into the distance, over the shore of Galilee, past half-dead trees to the range of far-off mountains, and eventually to the sky with its floating clouds. And while Giotto'sought for the best means of telling the story selected as the subject, Masaccio sought a fitting incident which as a theme, would enable him to depict the characters he chose to represent.
On the narrow entrance wall to the chapel Masaccio painted his vision of the ExpulsionfromEden. In this fresco the clothed angel floats above, sword in one hand, the other hand points into a desolate and treeless world. Adam's powerful body is shaking with sobs; he covers his face with his hands in a paroxysm of guilt and grief. Eve covers her nakedness with her hands, but lifts up her face in a scream of pain. Masaccio's drawing of the human figures and faces is masterly. Never before the nude figures had been painted with such breadth and ease; and the man's separation from God had never before been represented with such tragic intensity.