Download - CULTURES OF EUROPE: THE RENAISSANCE. Florence, Italy: Cathedral (Brunelleschi), Palazzo Vecchio
Florence, Italy:Cathedral (Brunelleschi),
Palazzo Vecchio
Johannes Gutenberg,Germany
• 1450, the printing press
• 240 prints per hour (↔ monks copying/writing one codex for several months)
• The Gutenberg Bible, 1455 – a handwritten Bible: for one scribe it took one year
SOURCES
• Ovid: Fasti
• Lucretius: De rerum Nature
• "Spring-time and Venus come,/ And Venus' boy, the winged harbinger, steps on before,/ And hard on Zephyr's foot-prints Mother Flora,/ Sprinkling the ways before them, filleth all/ With colours and with odours excellent."
Realism, beauty and allegorical meaning: the active and the
contemplative life, life and death• nobleman/ambassador vs scholar/bishop• ornate sheath of a dagger (29) vs book (25)• the culture of the age: `Turkey' carpet, celestial globe
and an array of astronomical and navigational instruments. The date: 11 April. A German text-book of Arithmetic for Merchants, propped open with a T-square. A lute and a case of recorders or flutes: Holbein's mastery of foreshortening and musical interests. A string of the lute: snapped, a traditional emblem of fragility. In the top left corner, at the edge of the magnificently patterned green hanging, is a crucifix. The hymnal in front of the lute is open at Martin Luther's hymn,'Come Holy Ghost our souls inspire‘
• Memento mori: medieval mosaic (Westminster Abbey) – distorted skull + reality, as perceived by the senses, must be viewed `correctly' to reveal its full meaning