Arts & Culture
Art and ArchitectureThe earliest period of art in Italy is the Classical (750–330 BC). The ancient Greeks brought their architectural and sculptural skills to their Italian colonies. Doric temples in Sicily and southern Italy are amongst the finest still standing. The Etruscans of central Italy were great metallurgists, producing fine bronze figurines and statues, and exquisite gold granulated jewelry. They also frequently painted their tomb walls, such as the hundreds at Tarquinia, with its scenes of the afterlife.
Not until the Imperial period did Roman art distinguish itself from its Greek and Etruscan antecedents. Countless statues of the armored emperor-as-warrior, or the toga-clad emperor-as-pious-ruler, and eventually even the naked emperor-as-god spread across the empire. Having chosen to unite its empire through art, the emperors also proved their beneficence by building aqueducts, public baths, and theaters. Great civic buildings like the Colosseum, used for games and gladiatorial combat, also went a long way toward buying popular support.
Beginning with Constantine in the 4th century, the empire was Christianized and the capital moved from Rome to Constantinople. Byzantine influences there took over the old pagan and imperial art forms. Sculpture and painting declined into the less expressive medium of mosaic, seen most vividly at Ravenna. In the figures of Christ and the Apostles, heads stare forward, eyes disproportionately large and abstracted. Throughout the Middle Ages, art rarely concerned itself with the beauty of the classical human form.
The early Middle Ages is most notable for the monastic movement and the crusades, both of which contributed to Romanesque art. A proliferation of chapels was added to the Early Christian basilica to accommodate so many monks praying a set number of hours each day. Both sculpture and painting were subordinate to this architecture. The Gothic architectural movement was largely resisted in Italy (with the exception of Milan's Duomo and Naples's Santa Chiara), with unexpected consequences. Gothic walls were created to embrace stained glass, while traditional Italian church walls continued to be covered with frescoes and mosaics. By the end of the 13th century, the Florentine Giotto (1277–1337) was the first painter to re-create the illusion of spatial depth on the flat surface of a chapel wall or altar panel.
The Renaissance was born in Florence during the quattrocento (1400s). For the first time since antiquity, sculpture stood free of church portals and again expressed civil pride, not just Christian virtues. Donatello's (1386–1466) statues came to depict saints as confident citizens, their feet planted firmly on this earth and their gaze totally worldly. Masaccio's (1401–28) frescoes show the life of Christ unfolding in the familiar streets of Florence. Brunelleschi (1377–1446) created an architecture scaled to human proportions. Realism infused art, and the human form itself became worthy of admiration and was celebrated in sculptures such as the young and very nude David by Donatello and, later, by Michelangelo.
Nowhere was the Renaissance more richly transformed in the quattrocento, however, than in Venice, where the great painter Giovanni Bellini (c. 1430–1516) produced the brilliant colorism that would make Venetian art influential for centuries to come. The quattrocento ended with the graceful allegorical paintings of Sandro Botticelli (1445–1510).
The greatest period of Italian painting is the High Renaissance (1494–1527). Rome again was to become a great artistic center rivaling the grandeur of its ancient past. Under Pope Julius II (1503–1513) the awesome project of rebuilding St. Peter's and the Vatican was begun, a project that would inspire the monumentality of the High Renaissance style. The major artists of the cinquecento (1500s) include Leonardo da Vinci (1452–1519), Michelangelo (1475–1564), Raphael (1483–1576), and Titian (1485–1576). These artists created the High Renaissance style notable for its harmony and balance as well as for its virtuosity.
Early Baroque art grew out of the Counter-Reformation. During this somber period, artists painted the holy stories of the Church under the watchful eyes of priests and received commissions only when they inspired reverence for its dogmas. Baroque art is characterized by its grandiose, vivid, and often moody works, in which religious figures gaze raptly skyward. The greatest artists of the Baroque were Caravaggio (1573–1610) and Annibale Carracci (1560–1609). The most significant architect of this era was Gian Lorenzo Bernini (1598–1680), the man most responsible for Rome's Baroque grandeur.
Italian artists have participated in the major international movements of the 20th century, including such renowned painters as Amedeo Modigliani (1884–1920) and Giorgio de Chirico (1888–1978), and such recognizable sculptors as Marino Marini (1901–80). Recognition, too, has fallen on its many modern architects, such as Carlo Scarpa (1902–78) for his Mondrian-inspired detailing, Pier Luigi Nervi (1891–1979) for his sleek buildings of reinforced concrete, and the contemporary Gae Aulenti, who now designs Europe's most exciting museums, including the Musée d'Orsay in Paris.
Italian art history is far from over. New art movements, such as Arte Povera, or art made of plain materials, enliven the galleries of the cities. And design permeates all elements of modern Italian society, from fashion to Memphis furnishings, from hi-tech light fixtures to garlic presses.
Literature
The Romans were copious writers, expanding greatly on the literary forms inherited from Greece. Theater remained popular with the early Romans; major playwrights were the comic Plautus and the tragedian Seneca. Long narrative poems sought to ground the Roman experience in high-minded mythology, notably in the adventures of the Trojan hero Aeneas in Virgil's Aeneid and the Metamorphoses of Ovid. More personal and amorous poetry was written by Catullus and Horace. The Romans excelled at chronicling history. Julius Caesar's accounts of his conquest of Gaul and the final days of the Roman Republic still make for compelling reading. Livy wrote a complete history of Rome from its mythic beginnings to the time of Augustus, while Suetonius and Tacitus each recorded the more salacious goings-on of the imperial era. Arguably Western literature's first novel, Petronius's Satyricon is a bawdy tale of Rome in moral decline.
Except for ecclesiastical writing in Latin, the Dark Ages produced no popular literature. The domination of Latin came to an end and the Renaissance began with the Divine Comedy of Dante Alighieri (1265–1321). The epic poem dealt with punishment in the afterlife, and was a biting indictment of social injustice. More importantly, Dante was the first to write in the language of the common man, and is credited with fathering both modern Italian language and literature. Petrarch (1304–74) perfected the sonnet form in his love poems to Laura, his idealized love-object. Petrarch's contemporary Giovanni Boccaccio wrote the Decameron, a cycle of often racy stories told by travelers fleeing from a plague-ravaged Florence.
The Renaissance also produced a profusion of writing in Italy. The political uncertainties of the time are ruthlessly laid bare by Niccolo Machiavelli's The Prince, a cynical handbook on how to succeed through guile and intimidation. More high-minded is Baldassare Castiglione's The Courtier, a treatise on comportment and manners for the Renaissance gentleman. For a firsthand view of life in these tumultuous years, read Benvenuto Cellini's Autobiography.
Italy has produced a number of 20-century writers of note. Playwright Luigi Pirandello (Six Characters in Search of an Author) is one of the major figures of modern experimental theater. Italo Calvino, a prolific writer whose works span fable writing to experimental but highly readable fiction, has been influential to writers seeking to break away from strict narrative structures. Umberto Eco, an academician by training, became a best-selling author with The Name of the Rose, a spellbinding murder mystery set in a 14th-century monastery.