Original subtitles

Good afternoon. The Italian Renaissance is associated in many minds with the

reintroduction of the nude figure into art. In the Middle Ages, the nude figure

was rare, but with the rediscovery of ancient art came a fascination with the

expressive potential of the nude human body, male and female. In fact, however,

the appearance of the nude in Quattrocento painting and sculpture was

gradual. Church authorities were always wary of nudity, with the qualified

exceptions of Adam and Eve, and secular patrons varied widely in their attitudes.

Humanism encompassed the notion that the human body, as created by God, was an

object of admiration and beauty, not to be equated with sin, but with pride that it

was created in God's likeness, and with pride in the physical accomplishments of

human beings. The increasing rediscovery of ancient sculpture, in particular where

nudity was common, seemed justification to an increasing number of artists and their

patrons. The female nude was less common in Florentine Renaissance art, usually reserved

for allegorical and mythological figures or for Eve in Christian narratives. The male nude was

increasingly used for heroic figures, often also mythological, heroic figures in action. The nudity

justified, as we've already noted, by the example of ancient sculpture. Two artists who produced many of the most striking

nudes were Antonio del Pollaiuolo and Luca Signorelli, both specialists in the male nude

figure, pagan as well as Christian. Antonio del Pollaiuolo, a wonderful name, it derives from the

fact, from the word polo, chicken. His father raised and sold chicken, and so he became known

as Antonio, the son became known as Antonio del Pollaiuolo. He was born in 1433 and died in 1498.

He was among the first in the Quattrocento to make a specialty of the male nude, and his narrative figures are

invariably violently dramatic. However, he was also a gifted portrait artist, as his portrait of a young woman

Florentine attests. This portrait, painted about 1470, is extraordinarily beautiful, as you cannot help but agree,

and like most Florentine portraits of that date, it was painted in pure profile, emphasizing the beauty of the

linear contour. There's very little modeling in tone or in shadow. Line does most of the work. There is great refinement

in the subject as well as in the style. It is exquisitely delicate. If you look at it for a moment

further, I think you'll appreciate how beautifully the melodic profile of that face and the gentle flesh

tones, very, very gentle, almost breathed on, are securely held in place by the base of the low-cut

gown with its black strap, and that beautiful vase-like design at the bottom, a floral kind

of design on the sleeve. How beautifully that supports the shoulders, the neck, the head, and then it's all

capped by the ornamented hair, an elaborate pattern, but not overly elaborate, not fussy at all. It is an

exquisite, exquisite achievement. I probably used the word exquisite three times, but it deserves them

all. Palaiolo was an expert in several mediums, painting, sculpture, and engraving. His mythological

paintings, though usually small, are significant achievements. The Apollo and Daphne, which you see now,

probably painted in the 1470s, is a very small painting on panel, only about 12 inches high,

today in London in the National Gallery. The story, which you may know because it's so popular in art,

is that the god Apollo loved the nymph Daphne. She fled from his pursuit and prayed for her father,

who was a river god, to save her from Apollo's advances. The painting shows the god as he finally

has the beautiful nymph in his grasp, only to find her turning into a laurel tree, her arms becoming

branches, her feet taking root. The theme is the victory of chastity over love, and it is one of those

wonderful stories which seems to be used for a moral theme, but is mainly there, I think, to delight

the viewer in the representation of this striking subject. The river valley behind, we're on a high

point of land here, the river valley behind is the Arno River Valley, and the Arno snakes into the distance

here. Hercules and the Hydra is an even smaller panel, only about seven inches high, painted about 1460,

it's in the Uffizi in Florence. It shows one of the labors of Hercules. Hercules was both a god and a hero,

and his 12 labors, as they're called, were impossibly difficult struggles against evil, in which he

nonetheless triumphed, of course. The Lernaean Hydra was a many-headed monster who grew two heads for

every one that Hercules cut off. Eventually, by cauterizing the heads with a torch, which somebody

else supplied, Hercules vanquished the Hydra. Hercules and the Hydra in this wonderful little painting is a

tiny explosion of pictorial energy. It's a small replica, by the way, of one of a series of large

paintings on the subjects executed for the Medici Palace around 1460, which are all now lost, and only

the two very small replicas that exist give us an idea of what the series was like. The heraldic pose

of Hercules suggests that the painting must have had an allegorical significance for the Medici,

and indeed for Florence, where Hercules was often depicted in art, that is to say in Florence and

Florentine art. Florence, again, is seen in the distance here. That is an even more prominent view

of the river valley. You can see the Arno snaking far into the distance, and back here at the left

is Florence in a tiny, tiny thumb-sized area of the painting, but very, very detailed. Hercules,

incidentally, is often a symbol of the republican form of government. Indeed, in the early years of our own

country, Hercules was associated with American democracy, the American republic, and you find among

the then classically articulate classes in America constant references, or frequent references, to

Hercules in that regard. Palaiolo also created Hercules and Antaeus, a small bronze,

bronze, this about 1470, and with the base about 18 inches high. Such small bronzes were greatly prized

by Renaissance collectors. His Hercules and Antaeus, Antaeus is a superbly expressive sculpture of a subject

that he also painted. The subject is another of the heroic acts or labors of Hercules. In this case,

he wrestled Antaeus, and Antaeus gained his strength from contact with the earth. Therefore, in order to

defeat him, Hercules had to hold him high above the earth and squeeze the life out of him while he held him

free from the ground. This groundbreaking sculpture is notable because it shows violent action in which the

figures break out into space. They break out of what you might call an imaginary spatial container, defined

by the base. Arms and legs punch out of that. The right leg of Antaeus, his left elbow, punch out into the

space, and the design of the group is complex and dynamic, and you can understand that you have to see

this from all sides to fully appreciate the dynamic and complicated composition that he has achieved here.

Palaiolo, as I said, was also an engraver, and I greatly regret that time doesn't permit us to spend

longer looking at prints. This Battle of the Ten Naked Men, or sometimes just called the Battle of Nude

Men, ten gives us a more precise number, is an extraordinary achievement in printmaking.

Engravings and woodcuts gained in artistic stature during the Renaissance. Prints began and have remained a

popular medium because as multiple originals, that is to say more than one print could and can be printed from the

artist's metal plate or wooden block. They were less expensive to produce and, consequently, cheaper to

purchase. Some of the earliest prints in European history, art history, were popular devotional images,

often by less well-trained, to put it kindly, less well-trained artists. But during the Renaissance,

a succession of great artists, from northern Europeans like Albrecht de Durer to Italians like

Palaiolo, made prints of great beauty and the highest artistic significance. This large engraving,

it is two feet wide, or very nearly, of the Battle of Naked Men, is a landmark of early printmaking.

It precedes Durer's Durer's work, by the way, in the north, and it's a tour de force among

Renaissance renderings of the male nude. We have no idea what occasion this violent battle,

in which sabers, daggers, a battle axe, a bow and arrow on the left, and a club are wielded.

It is very much a battle in progress, since only one of the men has been stabbed in the lower

right-hand corner here, and that is happening as we watch. Their faces, the faces of these nudes,

are as extreme in emotional expression as the bodies are in action. Compositional control is achieved,

in this large work through relative symmetry. For example, the two central figures, the two central

fighters, are essentially mirror images of each other. The space is suggested only by the overlapping

and intertwining of the figures, much like those on a Roman sculptured relief. A background of trees

and reed-like plants gives the impression of a battle in a forest, or almost in a swamp. The nudity

is clearly inspired by Roman art, and is no more ridiculous in one case than it is in the other. I know

people aren't supposed to have battles with swords and battle axes and so forth if they don't have any

armor on or clothes at all, but that is the habit in Roman art and is picked up by the Renaissance

artists. Once the convention is accepted, and once one realizes it's accepted because of the expressive

potential, of showing the physique completely, the problem falls away to a large degree. The expressive

potential of the human body, you might say, trumps any realism that armor might have provided.

Antonio Pallaiuolo had a brother, Piero, and he's not considered to have been a very good artist,

but in fact we know very little about him because he mostly worked as an assistant

to his more talented brother. But in the extraordinarily large altar piece of the

Martyrdom of Saint Sebastian, they seem to have worked together. It is assumed that Piero assisted

him. In any event, this painting, a panel painting, or one really should say many panels put together

because you couldn't get a 10-foot panel, and this is a 10-foot high painting, of the Martyrdom of Saint

Sebastian, was painted in 1475 for an oratory in Florence, the oratory dedicated to Saint Sebastian,

which possessed a relic of the saint, a highly valued relic, an arm bone of Saint Sebastian,

and therefore they wanted this altarpiece to commemorate the important relic that they held.

It's a striking Renaissance example of figure painting, although here only Sebastian and one

of the archers are mostly nude. Sebastian's popularity among artists during the Renaissance

stemmed principally from two things. One, he's one of the saints invoked against the plague,

and two, the method of his martyrdom justified nudity, and therefore the artistic demonstration of human

anatomy. This composition, also like the engraving, introduces a fascinating mirror symmetry. The

four foreground figures consist of two pairs, each showing the same man seen from behind and frontally.

A fanciful Roman triumphal arch at the left in the middle distance, and an extraordinarily extensive

landscape of the Arno Valley demonstrate thoroughly that Palaiuolo's interests went well beyond the study

of the nude. Palaiuolo's contemporary Luca Signorelli, who was born about 1441 and died in 1523,

was probably a pupil of Piero della Francesca. He sometimes utilized the male nude in more static

contemplative poses reminiscent of Piero della Francesca, but in his end-of-the-century masterpiece,

the frescoes in the San Brixio chapel of the Cathedral at Orvieto, north of Rome. He invented amazing scenes of

the resurrection of the dead and the damned consigned to hell, filled with astonishingly physical nudes.

Another fresco in the San Brixio chapel there has a very different scene, and I'll show it to you

first. It is the preaching of the Antichrist. All of the figures in this chapel, I repeat, have to do with

the final things in the history of the earth before the end of the earth. This is one of them,

the preaching of the Antichrist. Let me say that the San Brixio chapel in this famous Gothic cathedral,

of which I will say more, was painted between 1499 and 154. Now, a fresco cycle of the Last Judgment was

begun in this chapel in 1447 by Fra Angelico, but he abandoned it with only two parts of the vault

finished when Pope Nicholas V summoned him to Rome. You don't turn down the papal invitation. And so it

remained unfinished for half a century, and Signorelli completed the cycle at the turn of the century. The

chapel is astonishing in its excess of imagination, its vivid colors, and its ceaseless animation.

First, let me point out that the spatial construction of these frescoes is fully developed from deep space

to the viewer. Signorelli uses the actual ribbed arches of the Gothic vaulting of the chapel as a

proscenium arch for each scene, and then designs his painted space so that it seems as though an apron

stage were thrust in front of that real architecture. The immediacy of the powerful figures in his murals

is thereby greatly enhanced. Second, it should be noted that although the subject of the Last Judgment

had always been intended for this chapel, it had taken on a much more intense significance at the time

Signorelli was given the commission. The half millennium of 1500 was regarded with as much trepidation as the

first Christian millennium had been. The second coming was widely expected, and in Orvieto specifically,

there were portents that the world might indeed be coming to its end. In late 1494, the huge French army of

Charles VIII entered Florence, then moved rapidly south. They laid waste to the area around Orvieto.

This military devastation was followed by crop failures, earthquakes, famine, and floods. And then

the plague struck with devastating virulence in 1497, killing more than 10 percent of the population

in three months. The plague continued well into 1500 when Signorelli was at work in this chapel. Toward the

end of 1499, a canon of the cathedral recorded in his diary apocalyptic events in nearby Gubbio,

including a terrible red and black cloud, which appeared and in which was visible an ugly and disheveled

man who was shouting unintelligible and thunderous echoing sounds. Well, you see, this is the background

against which Signorelli conceived and painted his Last Judgment frescoes. The theme of the preaching of the

Antichrist is one of the events associated with the end of the world, Christ's second coming, and the Last

Judgment. The Antichrist is regarded as a specific human personality, not merely as an Antichristian symbol.

And the Antichrist appears physically similar to Christ, but his preachings are Antichristian,

and they are, as you see them in this picture, whispered into his ear. He stands on the podium

preaching to the people, whispered into his ear by a demon, a devil, who stands beside him, who prompts him.

His words lead to the despoliation of the temple. In the background, you can see in front of the

Antichrist that many of the objects, the holy objects from the temple, have been brought and

dumped in front of his podium. And in the left middle ground, his words have led to the murder of innocent

persons in that area. At the left side of this chaotic scene, in the foreground, Signorelli has painted

himself, looking rather, rather fine, rather proud, and he's placed Fra Angelico beside him, which is a

rather pleasant recognition of his great predecessor in the San Brixio Chapel. Two of the frescoes are

astounding in their reliance on muscular nude figures, male and female, contrasted with the occasional

skeleton, to express the events of the end of the world. And this one is the damned consigned to hell, the

inferno. And that, of course, that calling it the inferno gives it a specific reference to Dante's epic, and it's an

intentional connection. In this very large, all of these frescoes are very large, indeed, you have a

gigantic crush of figures. This one in particular is just a subway train at rush hour. Extraordinary crush of

figures, just as little organizational clarity as you'd expect in hell. There are three archangels in the

sky above, led by Michael in the center here, and they have driven down the damned, and they're sort of

standing guard at the top as well. One of the most memorable images, once in your eye and mind's eye it

doesn't leave, is this woman riding a flying demon to her damnation. And holding on for, shall I say,

dear death, she is really clinging to this demon. The torments inflicted on the damned below are gruesome

indeed, and unrelievably physical, in case there was any doubt about what to expect in hell. I will point

out a few of them before passing on. Here in the foreground, just to the left, a woman is on the ground,

and she is being tormented rather, rather ceaselessly by a demon who has pulled her leg back and who is

ripping her toes apart, just dividing them, no doubt, one at a time. And there are, there are many such,

such instances here. There's a lot of biting going on, a lot of scratching. It must be rather noisy

in hell because you get the feeling that there's a lot of screaming, and some people have, have covered

their ears as well. You also see in certain figures, such as this one to the far left, and this one in the

right center, a peculiar kind of emphasis on anatomy that almost looks like one of those flayed figures

used in anatomy classes, where the skin is removed to show the musculature here. It's that literal in its,

in its anatomical rendering, almost as though the figures had been, been flayed in this way. Among all

the extreme poses in this fresco, in this group, the rather straightforward group in the center foreground,

in which a luridly colored demon is binding the hands of a kneeling sinner, is strikingly reminiscent

of the generic poses of Abraham and Isaac, and the sacrifice of Isaac. And it is probably an intentional

reference, not merely a convenient borrowing. Also, the entire composition of the fresco of the damned

is like an enormous polychromed relief sculpture that presses unrelentingly forward toward the viewer.

There is in the Dedo, which runs around the band that runs around the chapel just below the frescoes,

there are portraits of poets from Homer to, appropriately, Dante, whom we see here with his

Divine Comedy. So this is a frescoed portrait, as it were, based on earlier images of Dante. We've already

seen one. And he is surrounded with his books here, consulting them rather than writing them, it appears.

Since he has, as it were, in the Divine Comedy, a specific connection to these scenes of the Last

Judgment, it is very appropriate. The resurrection of the dead restores order, I think you'll agree,

compared to the last scene, even as it restores the dead. And it's as startling today, as it must have

been in the early 16th century for a particular conceit, an imaginative idea of the figures pulling

themselves laboriously, but inevitably successfully, given their physiques, from the ground. Occasionally, they

are helped. Here we have somebody getting a hand up at this point, but many of them, such as this figure here in the right

center foreground, is pulling himself up. His leg is still beneath the ground, is emerging, is being pulled

out. The same thing occurs back here to the left, on the left-hand side, where a figure is emerging, but

his left leg is still within. And here, more. One just getting his torso out, and another just emerging from

his head. And apparently, as they do, the Earth closes up behind them, because we don't see any

large holes left behind from those who have already emerged. I must say that perhaps never has the

resurrection seemed as much of a self-help clinic as it does here. All the resurrected men and women

look about the same age, all young. This apparently derives from St. Augustine's opinion that at the

general resurrection of mankind, everyone, regardless of their age at death, would be the same age as

Christ at his resurrection, that is, thirty years old, as it was believed. Upon their resurrection,

these fortunate people greet old friends in conversation. They dance a little. Look here in

the background on the left. They embrace, over here, right background, as if to emphasize that it

will all be again as it was before death. But we should not forget that the medieval habit of

reading the Bible literally had not ended with the advent of the Renaissance. These skeletons,

the group at the right, and others which are still emerging from the ground, or the skeleton lying on

the ground in the right foreground admiring the, admiring the risen man who is fully fleshed,

these skeletons. These skeletons are simply the result of a literal reading of the Old Testament

vision of the prophet Ezekiel, which was an allegory of the resurrection of Israel as a nation, but was

taken by Christian writers as a prefiguration of the general resurrection of mankind. The passage takes place

when in a valley of dry bones, the Lord asked Ezekiel, can these bones live, and then commanded Ezekiel to

prophesy. So I prophesied as I was commanded, and as I prophesied there was a noise. And behold,

lo, the sinews and the flesh came up upon them, the skin covered them above. It should, by the way, come as no

surprise to you to learn that these figures, these frescoes, and particularly in this fresco, these figures

were much admired by Michelangelo.

I didn't mention, look at the trumpeting angels above, they're gigantic, and of course it is the last

trump, it is their trumpets, and the Christian flags, the cross on the flag on either side,

that summon the saved from their tombs. Signorelli's nudes are almost

excessively modeled. Their bones and their muscles are overstressed. But precisely because of that,

they seem to me to have a special relevance to the famous cathedral at Orvieto which houses them.

Let me expand on it a second. This Gothic church owes its existence to a very important miracle

and to a key part of the Catholic liturgy which sprang from it. In nearby Bolsena in 1263,

a Bohemian priest stopped on his way to Rome. The priest harbored doubts about the truth of the

doctrine of transubstantiation, about whether Christ's blood and body were really present in the wine and

bread of the mass. And as he said mass in Bolsena, the host bled, and he believed. The stained altar cloth was

immediately carried in procession to Orvieto, where the papal court was in attendance. A member of that

papal entourage composed the service of the feast of Corpus Christi, the body of Christ,

which celebrates the physical truth of the sacrament. His name was Thomas Aquinas.

By 1290, the cathedral had been initiated. It is demonstrable that the famous sculptural

decoration of the facade of the Orvieto Cathedral contains a multitude of scenes directly inspired

by an emphasis on the physical body of Christ. The stained altar cloth, which they possess,

is the most prized relic of the cathedral and is brought out for annual procession. Actually,

they bring it simply to the front of the church where townsmen in Renaissance garb come,

meet it having come from the town hall. I think that it's highly likely that Signorelli,

fully cognizant of this history, consciously intended his frescoes of the end of the world with the

physical second coming of Christ and the physical resurrection of the dead to have the most intense

physicality he could manage to embody in paint. Lucas Signorelli surpassed himself in the San Brixio chapel,

for nothing really like it had yet been seen. His heroic nudes possess a scale and an epic sweep much

greater than those of Pagliauolo, and this is the first great fresco cycle of the 16th century.

Yet, in the long run, it was not enormously influential because it was so idiosyncratic that it was not

easily imitated. It remains, however, a startling and memorable experience for the visitor who first

encounters Signorelli's vision of the end of the world. The expressive potential of the nude human body

was thoroughly explored by Signorelli and by Pagliauolo.

music

music

music