Renaissance_ A Short History, The - Johnson, Paul [49]
In late antiquity, or early in what we call the Dark Ages, this form of sophisticated illusionary art disappeared, and its techniques were lost. The loss applied as much to the Greek world of Byzantium, where the empire of Rome survived in debased and truncated form, as in the Latin West, where it disappeared completely. Artists reverted to the primitive visual technology of aspective art, both on two-dimensional surfaces, such as wall painting and illuminated manuscripts, and in low relief and sculpture. However, enough survived of illusionism, in the Byzantine world and in Italy, for artists to note it and in due course to imitate it. From the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, there was a classicizing revival in the Byzantine Empire, most notably expressed in wall paintings in the church of St. Nicholas, at Boyana in what is now Bulgaria, which are dated 1259. Similar, and possibly quite unconnected, developments took place in central Italy, at a somewhat later date. First Cimabue (1240–1302), then Duccio di Buoninsegna (c. 1255–1318) and Giotto di Bondone (1267–1337), in Siena, Florence and elsewhere, began to use foreshortening and various forms of perspective. These key developments can be seen in various churches, especially Cimabue’s wall paintings in the Upper Church of San Francesco in Assisi and Giotto’s work in the Arena Chapel in Padua and in the Bardi and Peruzzi chapels at Santa Croce in Florence.
These changes were pushed further by artists such as Masaccio (1401–28) and by the sculptors Ghiberti and Donatello. Early users of linear perspective, such as Giotto, tended to employ it instinctively, without ocular aids, as many artists have done ever since. But there are hints in Vitruvius that the Romans, and possibly the Greeks before them, had a “scientific” method. Early in the fifteenth century, Brunelleschi produced two “demonstration panels” of the Florence Baptistry and the Palazzo Vecchio, showing how correct perspective could be scientifically determined in the depiction of buildings. These have since disappeared, and we know about them only through his biography. However, in 1435–36, Alberti, building on the Brunelleschi panels and the work of Donatello and Masaccio, produced a detailed description of perspective technique in his treatise Della pittura. From the 1430s onward, virtually all the leading Italian painters began to familiarize themselves with perspective. They could thus organize space within their paintings in a natural manner (as seen), and were able to take on in consequence a much greater variety of subjects and—more important—treat them in far more adventurous and imaginative ways than in the past. The science of perspective was the basis of the art of composition. It is hard to exaggerate the significance of this development in Renaissance painting. It gave artists a freedom they had never enjoyed before.
But many objective difficulties remained, particularly in the materials available to painters and the way in which they had to be used. Late medieval and early Renaissance painters were often employed in covering wall spaces in churches and palaces, using methods that had been employed in Roman times and almost certainly much earlier. Here we must go into a little technical detail. The Romans smoothed the wall surface and then applied a preliminary layer of lime-and-sand plaster called (using later Italian painters’ terminology) an arriccio. If they wished they could then sketch in the outlines of the work (sinopia), followed by the application of several layers of lime and powdered marble to give a final smooth surface, or intonaco. The paint, a mixture of earth colors with egg yolk, or tempera, was then applied while the plaster was still wet (a fresco). The paint was then bonded to the wall by the carbonization of