Selfies: Oil on Canvas

          Standing in a lush chamber, surrounded by marbles, silks, and velvet of the highest quality, dripping with the trappings of wealth, power and luxury, Louis XIV gazes out of the frame of his portrait.¹ In a regal pose with his body turned partially away, hand resting on a golden cane, and white-clad legs on full display, the King of France seems to gaze down upon the world. The world his visage looks down on is all that he thought himself the ruler as the “Sun King”.² This noble portrait, captured by Hyacinthe Rigaud in the opening years of the 18^th century, is a continuation of a tradition of donor portraiture, but applied to and glorifying the head of state instead of a religious subject. It is but one shift in the tapestry of artistic representation of the world. While a certain amount of portraiture in the 1600s was for the idealization of rich elite nobles, the rise of self-portraits and group portraits shows that artists were beginning to democratize their works and capture a shift in the political and social structures of society. 

The Dissection Of Humanism: Opening Up Renaissance Art

          As both a product and part of culture, art acts as mirror to the society that created it. When culture changes, generally so does art. As the Byzantine Empire began to crumble in the late-14^th to early 15^th centuries, Italy became the home of classic Greek and Roman writings and the scholars that broke translational traditions that made the works difficult to understand.¹ Those works reignited a spark of learning that was captured by the artists' hands, a reflection frozen in time. In this paper I will argue that Renaissance artists used the humanist ideals of their day to radically depart the Medieval traditions of the art world. I will do this by first showing why it is necessary to limit the meaning the of now-fattened “humanism” term down to something closer to what was understood in the Renaissance. Then I will show that the narrowed definition is clearly visible in the art itself.

          The term “humanism” has gained various meanings over the years including many from different philosophic, ethical, political, secular, and religious schools of thought.² It is close to becoming an umbrella term that can contain notions that confuse the nature of the topic being discussed. By that I mean that what can be properly called “humanistic” might be human-centric, the study of the modern concepts of the humanities, or more simply classicism (the study of the art of ancient Greece and Rome).³ Lest ideas from modernity be improperly conveyed into topics to which they have no business being associated, before beginning a discussion about humanism in the art of antiquity and the Renaissance, it is necessary to separated the exact meaning intended by the use of “humanism” in this context.

Absolute Masters

“... arborum autem consectione omnique materia et culta et silvestri partiam ad calficiendum corpus igni adhibito et ad mitigandum cibum utimur, partim ad aedificandum ut tectis saepti frigora caloresque pellamus. magnos vero usus adfert ad navigia facienda, quorum cursibus subpeditantur omnes undique ad vitam copiae … Terrenorum item commodorum omnis est in homine dominatus.”¹

“We cut down trees, and use every kind of wild and cultivated timber, not only to make fire to warm us and dress our meat, but also for building, and that we may have houses to defend us from the heat and cold. With timber likewise we build ships, which bring us from all parts every commodity of life. ... We are the absolute masters of what the earth produces.”²

Cicero, De Natura Deorum (On the Nature of the Gods), (45 CE).

          The heavy ax balanced by the trunk of the maple tree. The craggy branches stretched out in all directions like the veins in the wood cutter's sweat-drenched hands. The cool spring air had given way to the hot Mediterranean summer; the ocean breeze and the shade of the tree the only respite from the mid-day sun. It was a shame that by the evening, one of those things would be gone, but this was the last of Appius' work for now.

Gender and Sexuality in Ancient Art

          Early Greek artwork lacks the refinement that is seen in the formal styles found in the later Classical Greek period, but themes begin to emerge that can be used to draw some conclusion about the daily lives of those that created it. The oldest pieces often employ an extremely stylized form to represent the world, and the simplistic figures are barely above the status of symbols, like one might expect to see in pictographs. In many ways, they can be viewed in linguistic terms and they can almost be read like a page.

          For example, the geometric krater from the Diphlon cemetery shows, in two horizontal registers not altogether different from Egyptian hieroglyphs, the story of the internment of a figure, starting in the lower register with a procession of soldiers and chariots.¹ The soldiers in the procession, traveling from left to right, are recognizable by the figure-of-eight shields and weapons. The upper register focuses to a central image of a frontal figure horizontally displayed above what is likely a bier.² The form of the figures are nearly identical, except that on the second register females a denoted by having two small dots on one side of their bodies, believed to be breasts, and the central horizontal figure, a thin line from his upper thigh that represented his penis.³ From this depiction, it may be concluded that the Athenians placed an importance on the death of this individual, but also that death was dealt with using what appears to be a fair amount of public ritual, having such a procession of soldiers in addition to the attending mourners. The most important cultural clue from this piece is that the artist took the time to individuate the sex of each figure even though the primitive style otherwise depicted them as identical. The roles that the sexes are shown in seem to be exclusive, women in morning, and men in procession. This is not the first work to display both sexes nearly identically, but separated by artistic convention and role.