Art of the XVI century in the east of Europe. Eastern Europe

1. Art of Eastern Europe

In the Christian East, only Russia possessed its own indigenous art in the 16th century. In all other countries, it was all about the way of perceiving the new, revived and transformed in Italy world artistic language of the ancient Greeks. The ancient, sacred Byzantine art in the 15th century was obviously going to look younger, but before the conquering aspirations of the Turks going further and further, it disappeared into the silence of Athos, where we already overheard its last sighs. In Turkey itself, however, it still continued to lead a magnificent, ghostly life in a novovostochny attire. The rooting of the Italian renaissance on Turkish soil is out of the question, despite the attempts of Mohammed the Great, we already know. In fact, already Bayazet II, who ruled until 1512, returned to the old view, the hostile art of the West. That after this time Western European fortress builders were called into the country is just as unimportant as the fact that Soliman the Magnificent (1520–1566), before whom Europe was trembling, turned out to be so free from prejudice that he allowed Melhior Lorhu, already mentioned North German artist, to draw his portrait, which this master twice perpetuated in 1559 in an engraving on copper. In one case, the sultan is represented in the portrait on the chest, and in the other full-length with the famous Soliman mosque in the background, and in both cases, the large facial features breathing with will power and honesty allow one to guess the greatness of this person.

Venetian rule brought the Venetian Renaissance style to the islands of the Mediterranean, which is self-evident, but it is also clear that the spread of Turkish conquests here also prepared a sudden end to the magnificence of the Renaissance: on Fr. Rhodes already in 1522, in Cyprus in 1573. Therefore, we are not surprised when we meet on Fr. Zante is a classic Venetian palace of the XVI century with columns of all three orders in the style of Jacopo Sansovino, as it was published by Strigovsky in 1895, but we find, however, that the Renaissance wing of the royal palace in Famagusta on Fr. Cyprus was immediately destroyed by the Turks and preserved only in the form of ruins, as it was published by Anlyar.

In the north of Europe, we now meet in Russia with new, unprecedented art, which, as we know, arose from the surface merging of elements of the Italian early Renaissance with all the Byzantine and Oriental influences that were then crossed on Russian soil. We have already traced the development of this Russian national art right up to the end of the 16th century. The closest details can be found in Suslova's large work. The aforementioned St. Basil's Cathedral, the only one of its fantastic nature, in Moscow will always be considered the model of Russian art of the mid-16th century. With what difficulty, then, the rustic and the windows of the Renaissance were connected with the Old Russian palace style, shows the so-called "Palace of the Romanovs' boyars" in Moscow. An example of Russian art at the end of the century is the enormous bell tower of Ivan the Great, towering around the height of the Kremlin around 1600 and crowned with a gilded onion, in a slender building only elements of the Renaissance are shyly seen through here and there.

Hungary, as we have already seen, before all other countries in the north of the Alps opened its gates to the Italian renaissance. But it was here in the XVI century there was a complete failure. The wars with the Turks did not allow Hungary to breathe freely. There was nothing to think about the further development in the Hungarian land of the Italian Renaissance, as it is at last in the tombstone of Cardinal Thomas Vakos (1506 to 1507) in Gran Cathedral and in some altars of pale red marble in the chapel of the Lord's Body (Corpus Domini) of the cathedral in Fünfkirchen and in the parish church in Budapest the same time inside the city.

Instead of Hungary, as shown by Sokolovsky and Lechshy found out, Poland became the representative of the new world style in the 16th century. On the one hand, as we have seen, this style appeared in Krakow from Germany thanks to such sculptors as Faith Stoss and Peter Fischer’s followers, such painters as Hans Kulmbach and Hans Dürer, and on the other hand, this style was already at the very beginning of the 16th century was introduced here by the shortest path by Italian artists and gained rapid spread. Already in 1502 King Sigismund (1507–1548), led by humanist Filippo Buonacorci (Kallimachus), called Florentine architect Francis Italus in Krakow, and in 1509 Francesco del Laura, who left more of his work. The work of Laura is a beautiful renaissance castle courtyard surrounded by a three-story Ionic colonnade. This master died in 1516. His successor was Florentine Bartolommeo Berecić, who died in Krakow in 1537. The best work (1520–1530) Berecić here is Sigismund's gravestone chapel, a delightful central-type building, octagonal outside, round inside, covered with a light dome; it adjoins the south side of the cathedral. Its walls, animated by niches with sarcophagi and statues, are dissected by Corinthian pilasters thin in the Renaissance style: Giovanni Chini from Siena and Antonio da Fiesole, a student of Andrea Sansovino, richly decorated the entire building with grotesque ornaments in the Tuscan style of the XVI century.

Together with the Italian architects and decorators and after them came the sculptors, who performed here their magnificent sarcophagi with expressive lying figures, mostly made of red marble. Gian Maria Padovano, or Mosca, who died in 1573 in Krakow, belonged to the followers of Tullio Lombardo in the Padua "Santo". His best works in Poland are the tombstones of the Bishops of Tornytsky (1535) and Hamrat (1545) in the Krakow Cathedral and the hetman of Tarnowsky and his wife (1564 to 1567) in the Tarnovsky Cathedral. The later Italian gravestone monuments in Krakow include the characteristic recumbent image of Anna Jagellonka in the cathedral, belonging to, like the Sigismund and Sigismund-Augustus monuments in the said tombstone, Florentine Santi Gucci, whose son performed the monument to Stefan Batory in the cathedral.

Fig. 97. Paduan "Santo".

The German and Italian masters in Krakow, however, left successors from among the Poles. The first mentioned is Gabriel Slonsky (died in 1598), a disciple of Antonio da Fiesole. His student Jan Michalovich performed between 1572 and 1575. the monument of Bishop Felix Padnevsky, pure in style, is in the cathedral, and Peter Vadovsky finished in 1595 the magnificent, but already weaker in execution monument, Trytka Jordan in the church of Sts. Catherine in Krakow.

Finally, on the transition to the 17th century, the Renaissance style tomb chapel already mentioned was joined by a luxurious building in a Roman Jesuit style, church an. Peter, built by Gian Maria Bernandone (died in 1605) from Como. The 16th century Cracow art presents an instructive picture of the gradual victory of the Italian Renaissance and the beginning Baroque over the influence of the German Renaissance that lived here.

2. Greek art

Greek art still remained one of the most prominent in Europe, a distinctive feature was its religious orientation, the Greeks continued to continue to portray their gods.

On the Ionian temple of Apollo Didymeisky in Miletus, the construction of which continued throughout the whole of ancient history, among other decorations is the most ancient Oriental motif of two winged vultures facing each other on the sides of a candelabra. Brought to Rome, this composition is in the frieze of the temple of Antonin and Faustina. In the Renaissance, she reappears at Loggia del Papa Federiga in Siena; from Siena, the aforementioned Giovanni Chini transferred it, as Sokolovsky showed, to Poland and applied it to the grave chapel of Sigismund in Krakow. Of course, each Doric or Ionic capital can be traced in the same and further wanderings; but this motif, as a rarer one, tells our consciousness most clearly about its origin in the deep antiquity of the East and its application in the form of Hellenic, Roman ornament and, finally, the decoration of the Renaissance both in Italy and in the north. In its wanderings from the European and even further coast of the south-east to the shores of the west, the language of art that became classical in Hellas, after Italy awakened in the 15th and 16th centuries from a long sleep, went on a circuitous route that brought it to the far north and reversed ways again was returned to the east.

During the 16th century, the language of Greek forms completed its triumphant march throughout the European world, interrupted by the great medieval art movement, and underwent numerous changes. His starting point was now Italy. Under the guise of a renaissance, merging with a new, direct view of nature, ancient art became Italian; This Italian art has therefore carried away the whole of Europe, because it united its own great outlook on nature with the ancient language of forms. At the beginning of the XVI century, its stream was still somewhere detained by the powerful masses of the indigenous, who grew out of the medieval artistic trends, who were trying to take from him and who took only what was suitable for them. But by the end of the 16th century, all these individual aspirations had disappeared, at least at first glance. The Italian Renaissance was recognized everywhere as the only possible new direction, although each country and each decade could take advantage of it only insofar as they understood it.

It was also a solid victory in the field of architecture and ornamental forms. Even curl, navy and forging did not give the mainstream another direction. Antique forms, even in baroque processing, all the time surfaced up. But in the field of visual arts, the vital sources of which are drying up without constantly renewing contact with nature, in some places, especially in the German Netherlands, the germs of new truthful art, which with the force of victorious national feeling opposed themselves to Italian forms that quickly degenerated under foreign skies, were already moving.

By the end of the 16th century, not a single European nation had art left completely unaffected by Italianism; in the end, it was even a blessing that Italian art was quite versatile in order to give points of contact in different directions. Some peoples, who could not independently revive the exquisite beauty of Rome, were able, however, without difficulty to rework the fresh language of paints of Venice, since the very manner of widespread writing, the technique of which would be in the XVII century in various countries, bearer of the new, truly life-giving national painting, already in the XVI century, came out in Venice from the skillful hands of the old Titian.

In any case, the fact remains that after ancient Greek and Gothic art no other had such a deep and lasting influence on humanity as the art of the great Italians of the XVI century.