The Middle Ages. Renaissance in Italy

Middle Ages

"When Rome was sacked and burned by the barbarians, it seemed that the fire and it is sad havoc with the buildings burned and destroyed the very art of building.

The fate of the Romans changed completely, instead of endless victories and triumphs came the distress and suffering of slavery. And immediately changed their way of building and surround oneself, as if it does not befit the conquered, who became slaves themselves, - to dwell in the same building and with the same splendor as in the days of their dominion over the world. Then the architectural style is the same with the previous contrast, as slavery to freedom. Consistent with their miserable existence, the architecture of the Romans lost all harmony and beauty. It seems that with the power of the people of the time lost every mind and every art. And in that ignorance they were in a very long time ...

This cruel and merciless storm of war and devastation broke out not only over Italy, but also over Greece, where once lived the inventors and the most perfect master of all arts, and there she gave birth to a style of painting, sculpture and architecture, which is beyond all measure is bad and does not have the slightest value. "

Thus, in the XVI century. (Ie, a thousand years after the collapse of the Western Roman Empire), wrote the great Raphael, fully expressing the tastes and aesthetic canons of the Renaissance. He is not only mourned the loss of ancient civilization, but rejected all artistic achievements of medieval Europe and Byzantium. Because that's what he wrote further: "These days, the architecture has reached a greater development and sufficiently close to the ancient manner."

Such, then, was the criterion of beauty in Raphael.

No wonder he was covered in the Vatican's own painting of his great paintings by Piero della Francesca's predecessor, which he regarded as obviously, not nearer to the ancient ideal of beauty. So, triumphantly claiming the ideal of beauty unknown to the Middle Ages, Rafael drew their attention to the art of the ancient world, although (as we shall see later), his own creativity is a relative to this new world is already shining top.

A purely negative attitude towards art, which we call the Middle Ages, Raphael experienced more than two centuries: it is fully shared by the Enlightenment philosophers of the XVIII century. Who have seen this corrupting a generation of art hated feudalism. After all, writing is the largest representative of Jean Jacques Rousseau: "Portals of our Gothic churches rise up shame for those who had the patience to build them." Not surprisingly, many of these churches at that time Dust destroyed.

Art for, received in the name of the classical European culture, has declared an aesthetic model for all times of the images and forms of ancient literature and art. And the term "gothic", which emerged in Italy and Raphael times to refer to all of Western European art (in the period from the formation of the "barbarian kingdoms" to the Renaissance) retained its original meaning since the dawn of the last century, all expressing the same negative assessment of this art, as destroyers supposedly pitiful legacy of ancient Rome ... barbarians ready.

We tried anyway. Let the downfall of ancient civilization, and it was a great tragedy. However, it is clear that this crash was caused not so much the barbarian invasions, how much expansion the most ancient civilization of slavery that caused the triumph of the barbarians. And because of what happened after their victory, we look first of all the germs of new life-giving, which, as we now know, despite the opinion of Raphael, and Rousseau was destined to create gradually the art of something great and unique.

Gogol wrote already, "the very process of merging two lives of the ancient world and the new ... this effort with which the European savages in their own tailor Roman education ... This is the chaos in which roam the beginning laid the terrible majesty of the current European and millennial force it - they're entertaining for us, and excite more curiosity than a fixed time, universally Roman Empire under the rule of the powerless emperors. " Gogol was referring to the Roman Empire during its decline.

Artists and writers of romance, the rebels in the first half of XIX century. against the ossified rules of classicism found new meaning and beauty of the greatest works of art of medieval Europe.

The brilliant French painter Eugene Delacroix recalled in his memoirs that the fine may not be limited to a school, place or era that you can not search only in the ancient writings that the variations of the beautiful "human genius is inexhaustible, that long before there were antique masterpieces. .. mankind has admired the beautiful images created by other people and other civilizations. " And in an article on Raphael, admiring works of art created by "the great era, rightly called the Renaissance," he just pointed to a double succession, since "it is in

While a rigorous taste of antiquity combined with imagination and boldness of the Gothic. "

Imagination and courage! In these essays, we will try to show what new qualities of medieval art has enriched European art culture.

It has long been abolished former arrogant attitude to the arts. Born in hard work and inspired the whole nation, it is consistent with the innermost dreams and aspirations of the people's soul.

Let us recall the words of Maxim Gorky:

"Cultural History tells us that in the medieval craft groups of masons, carpenters, wood carvers, potters were able to construct buildings and make things amazingly beautiful, is not surpassed by single artists. These are the medieval cathedrals of Europe, these are things that fill the museums of the West and the Soviet Union. Considering these things, you feel that they were made with the greatest love of labor. "Little" people were the great masters - that tell us the remains of antiquity in museums and magnificent temples in the ancient cities of Europe. "