A Short Guide to Art Movements from the Renaissance to 1900

A Short Guide to Art Movements

from the Renaissance to 1900

In this article, which will have two parts, we will present, in the form of a small dictionary, the currents in Art History starting with the Renaissance, in chronological order, with the main characteristics and representatives.

RENAISSANCE

Chronology, periods and artists : The Renaissance had several periods of manifestation, and the country where it originated was Italy:

• The Italian Trecento (circa 1200-1400) ; The most important centers of manifestation were in Siena, where the sculptors worked : Nicola Pisano (circa 1220-circa1283), Giovanni Pisano (1248 – 1314,1319?). In painting we have: Pietro Cavallini (circa1240?-circa 1330), who worked in Rome, Giotto (1266/1267?-1337) originally from Florence, working in several centers such as Assisi, Rome, Rimini, Naples. Duccio di Buoninsegna (circa 1260-1318/19?) and Simone Martini (circa 124-1344) from the Sienese School of painting; In Venice we have Paolo Veneziano (circa1300-1362);
• The Italian Quattrocento (1400-1470): It should be specified here that, during the first 30 years of the Quattrocento, an extraordinary artistic activity takes place in Florence that will establish the premises of the Renaissance. We will start with the sculptors who are: Lorenzo Ghiberti (1378-1455), Donatello (1386-1466) who will also have works in Rome or Padua, then we have Jacopo della Quercia (1374?-1438), Massaccio (1401-1428), Filippo Brunelleschi (1377-1446), Leon Battista Alberti (1404-1472) and Luca della Robbia (1399-1482). In painting, the main center is still Florence, but artists also work in Siena, Milan or Venice. Thus we have: Fra Angelico (1387-1455), Paolo Ucello (1397-1475), Piero della Francesca (circa 1416-1492), Filippo Lippi (1406-1469), Pisanello (circa 1395- between 1450 and 1455);
• If in Italy this early Renaissance period is clearly named, in the rest of Europe it is called the International Gothic (1380-1480) and has centers such as Paris - France, the Germanic Lands, Spain, but also a more special realism in the Flemish Lands, where we have: Robert Campin (1378-1379-1444), the brothers Hubert and Jan van Eyck (active between 1425-1441), Rogier van der Weyden (1399 or 1400-1464), Petrus Christus (known between 1444-1473).
• The late Gothic in Europe coincided with the period in which Leonardo da Vinci was already active in Italy, and soon Michelangelo and Raphael. In this period we have the Dutch painter Hieronymus Bosch (1453?-1516) whose original art consisted in dressing up religious and moral thought, revealing images from a world of fools that represent human wanderings. Also in this period we have Albrecht Dürer (1471-1528), Mathis Grünewald (circa 1480/1485-1532);
• The Italian Cinquecento (1480-1520) is the period of maximum flowering of the Renaissance, it is the period in which the genius of Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519) gives a new impetus to Florentine art, then Raphael (Raffaello Santi or Sanzio, 1483-1520), having Perugino as his mentor and who also works for a longer period of time in Rome. During this period, a number of other artists were active, such as: Domenico Ghirlandaio (under his name Benedetto Bigordi 1449-1494), Sandro Botticelli (1445-1510), Luca Signorelli (circa1445-1523) and Piero di Cosimo (circa 1462-1521), in Padua we have Andrea Mantegna (1431-1506), in Venice we have Antonello da Messina (1434-1479) who brought the technique of oil painting from Flanders, then Giorgio da Castelfranco also known as Giorgione (circa1476/77 – 1510). Also in Venice during this period, the sculptor Giovanni Bellini (1430-1515) was active. During this period, the genius of Michelangelo Buonarroti (1475-1564) also began to develop, but it was still in its infancy and only after Raphael's death in 1520 would he dominate Rome and Florence.
• Late Renaissance or Italian Mannerism (1520-1590). This period is of course dominated by Michelangelo in sculpture and painting, but we also have in Florence painters such as Jacopo Carucci known as Pontormo (1494-1556), Angelo di Cosimo known as Bronzino, (1503-1572), in Parma we have Corregio (1489-1534) and Parmigianino (1503-1540). In Venice the genius of Titian (Tiziano Vecelli, circa 1484-1576) is distinguished.
• In Europe, Mannerism is represented by El Greco (Domenico Theotokopulos) (1541-1614) in Spain, in the Germanic regions by Lucas Cranach (1472-1553), Hans Holbein the Younger (1497/98-1543), in the Netherlands by Peter Bruegel (1525-1559);

BAROQUE:

Timeline, periods and artists:

• The first period between about 1590 – 1660. Here we have Lorenzo Bernini (1589-1680) in sculpture, and in painting we have in Italy Annibale Carracci (1560-1609), Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio (1573-1610), in France Georges de la Tour (1593-1652), Claude Lorrain (1600-1682), Nicolas Poussin (1594-1665). In Flanders and the Netherlands we have the masters Pieter Paul Rubens (1577-1640), Anthonis van Dyck (1599-1641), Rembrandt Harmenszoon va Rijn (1606-1669). In Spain we find Francisco de Zurbaran (1598-1664), Diego de Silva y Velasquez (1599-1660) and Esteban Murillo (1617-1682)
• The last period of the Baroque is also known as Roccoco between about 1660 – 1725. Here we have in painting Pierre Mignard (1612-1695), Antoine Watteau (1684-1721), Jean–Baptiste Chardin (1699-1779), Francois Boucher (1703-1770) and Jean-Honore Fragonard (1732-1806);

NEOCLASSICISM:

Timeline, periods and artists:

• Neoclassicism is located somewhere between about 1770 and 1820 and was represented in sculpture by Canova (1757-1822) in Italy, Houdon (1741-1824) in France, and in painting by Jacques Louis David (1748-1825), Greuze (1725-1805), and in Spain by the great Francisco de Goya y Lucientes (1746-1828);

ROMANTICISM :

Timeline, periods and artists:

• The limits of Romanticism are somewhere between 1815 and 1848. In painting we have, in Germany, Caspar David Friedrich (1774-1840), in England John Constable (1776-1837), Joseph Mallord Turner (1775-1851), Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres (1780-1867), Theodore Gericault (1791-1824), Eugene Delacroix (1798-1863) .

REALISM :

Timeline, periods and artists:

• Realism is a specifically French movement and has its beginnings sometime after the French Revolution of 1848. Among the prominent representatives we mention Camille Corot (1796-1875), Gustave Courbet (1819-1877), Jean-François Millet (1814-1875), Honoré Daumier (1808-1879), of which the last three worked at the Barbizon School.

IMPRESSIONISM :

Timeline, periods and artists:

• Impressionism has its origins in France and was established somewhere between 1867 and 1886. Now we have as representatives Edouard Manet (1832-1883), Edgar Degas (1834-1917), Camille Pissarro (1830-1903), Paul Cezanne (1839-1906), Claude Monet (1840-1926), Auguste Renoir (1841-1919), Alfred Sisley (1839-1899), James Whistler (1834-1903);

SYMBOLISM and ART 1900 (ART NOUVEAU) :

Timeline, periods and artists:

• 1880-1900 was the period in which this period developed and had as artists Fussli (1741-1825), William Blake (1757-1827), Puvis de Chavannes (1824-1898), Gustave Moreau (1826-1898), the Swiss Arnold Bocklin (1827-1901);
• The PRE-RAPHAELITE group was founded in 1848 by John Everett Millais (1829-1896) and Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828-1882);
• ART 1900 (ART NOUVEAU) Paris plays a decisive role in the development of Art Nouveau, but England and the United States also play important roles. Among the artists we remember the Czech graphic artist Alfonso Maria Mucha (1869-1939), in England Aubrey Beardsley (1872-1898), in Belgium Victor Horta (1861-1946), but the most powerful personality of the movement is that of the Austrian Gustave Klimt (1862-1918), and in Spain we have Antonio Gaudi (1852-1926);

POST-IMPRESSIONISM :

Timeline, periods and artists:

• The birth date of Post-Impressionism is 1884 , but a new generation of artists entered the scene around 1850 and 1860, led by Odilon Redon (1840-1916), Paul Signac (1863-1935). Paul Gauguin (1848-1903) makes a distinct mark compared to the painters of this period, as does Toulouse Lautrec (1864-1901), artists whom we cannot clearly classify in any period or group.
• Within Post-Impressionism, a series of small groups emerged: the Pont-Aven School , the Nabi Group , which also included Edouard Vuillard (1868-1940), Maurice Denis (1870-1943), and Pierre Bonnard (1867-1947);

NEOMISSIONISM or POINTILLISM :

Timeline, periods and artists:

• It certainly has Georges Seurat (1859-1891) as its creator, but the one who remains faithful to it is Paul Signac. This trend is characterized by the division of tone, the dotted brushwork that are legacies of impressionism;
• The premises of 20th-century expressionism appear in the last two decades of the 19th century and can be observed in the art of Vincent Van Gogh (1853-1890), Edvard Munch (1863-1944) and to a lesser extent in James Ensor (1860-1949);