Ninth module for GNED 1201 (Aesthetic Experience and Ideas). This one mainly covers the late or high Renaissance. It begins with the political context of the early 16th Century in Italy. The presentation then focuses in depth on the three great Renaissance masters: Leonardo Da Vinci, Michelangelo, and Raphael. The presentation ends by trying to make an argument that Raphael is as an artist, the ideal artistic archetype for contemporary students. This course is a required general education course for all first-year students at Mount Royal University in Calgary, Canada. My version of the course is structured as a kind of Art History and Culture course. Some of the content overlaps with my other Gen Ed course.

1. Lecture 9
HIGH
RENAISSANCE
AESTHETIC
EXPERIENCE
AND
IDEAS

2. The High Renaissance refers to the apogee
(high point) of the visual arts during the
Italian Renaissance. It is associated with
three artists:

3. Late/High Renaissance
(1500-1550)
Leonardo da Vinci (1452 – 1519)
Michelangelo (1475 – 1564)
Raphael (1483 – 1520)

4. During this time period, the center of
artistic excellence had shifted away from
Florence and moved to Rome, the home of
the Papacy.

5. A series of cultured, worldly, and wealthy
Popes (Alexander VI, Julius II, and Leo X),
determined to make Rome the cultural
and political capital of Europe, spent
lavishly on the military as well as on
architecture and the visual arts.

6. Italian politics in the 16th century
were convoluted, pitting city against
city, city against the Papal states, and
after 1494, the French, and after
1498, the Spanish and German as
well.
The Italian wars of the 16th century
ended up devastating Italy, and it
never regained its 14th and 15th
century prosperity.

7. Military Revolution
Refers to new began military tactics that in the late
Renaissance due to the spread of gunpowder
weapons, which maximized the utility of firearms,
which in turn led to a need for more trained troops
and thus for permanent forces.
These changes in turn had major political
consequences in the level of administrative support
and the supply of money, men and provisions,
producing huge new financial demands which in turn
eventually led to the creation of new governmental
institutions (the nation state).

8. The spread of gunpowder weapons
massively increased the cost and scale of
war. No longer was armored cavalry the
most important weapon. Instead, mass
armies of infantry supported by artillery
became progressively more important.

12. Rodrigo Borgias (Pope Alexander VI from
1492-1503) appeared to epitomize the
corruption of the Renaissance Catholic
Church.
There wasn’t a sin that Alexander VI wasn’t
willing to sample, whether it be deception,
simony, avarice, fornication (he had seven
children from his numerous mistresses),
treason, violence, murder, even perhaps
incest, ……
His (and his son Cesare Borgia) efforts at
creating real political power for his family
(and the papacy) was a source of inspiration
for Machiavelli.
Alexander VI was a great patron of the arts,
hiring Michelangelo, Raphael, and others.

14. Machiavelli
(1469-1527)

15. Or as he appears in Assassin’s Creed

16. Machiavelli was an extraordinarily
innovative and influential writer.
He is a beautiful stylist and you
are not educated unless you have
read Machiavelli …

18. “Since myy intention is to sayy somethingg
that will prove to be of practical use to the
iinnqquuiirreerr, II hhaavvee tthhoouugghhtt iitt pprrooppeerr ttoo
represent things as they are in real truth,
ratthher tthhan as tthhey are iimagiinedd.””

19. “The ggulf between how one should live
and how one does live is so wide that a
mmaann wwhhoo nneegglleeccttss wwhhaatt iiss aaccttuuaallllyy ddoonnee
for what should be done learns the way to
sellff ddesttructtiion.””

20. Contrast this to the accepted view about
ethics and politics …

21. Cicero (106-43 BCE)
Roman Senator and writer
“HHoonneessttyy iiss tthhee bbeesstt ppoolliiccyy ffoorr
effective rule.”
“VViirrttuu [[iinn ppoolliittiiccss]] ccoonnssiissttss ooff
always acting honorably and
morally.”

22. “For a man who
professes goodness at all times
wwiillll ccoommee ttoo rruuiinn
among so many who are not good.”
Machiavelli, The Prince

23. vs

24. “I jjudgge it to be true that fortune is the
arbiter of one half of our actions but that
sshhee lleeaavveess tthhee ccoonnttrrooll ooff tthhee ootthheerr hhaallff ttoo
us.
…
She shows her force where there is
organized strength to resist her; and she
directs her imppact there where she knows
that dikes and embankments are not
ccoonnssttrruucctteedd ttoo hhoolldd hheerr.”

25. “Fortune is a women,, and it is necessaryy,,
in order to keep her down, to beat her
aanndd ssttrruuggggllee wwiitthh hheerr.”

26. Some have called Machiavelli the first
scientist because of his belief that one must
start with observation of the facts of the real
world, and then construct one’s theories
about action based on those facts (and not
based on ethics or religion or tradition).

27. Pope Leo X
1513-1521
Pope Alexander VI
1492-1503 1503-Pope Julius II
1503 1513

28. Italian Wars
Papal Alliance Opponent
1508‐1510 Papal States
France
Venice
Holy Roman Empire
Spain
1510‐1511 Papal States
Venice
France
Julius II , “The Warrior Pope “
1511‐1513 Papal States
France Venice
Holy Roman Empire
Spain
England
1513‐1516 Papal States
Holy Roman Empire
Venice
France
Spain
England
Scotland

29. The old St. Peter's Basilica in Rome was
built in the time of Constantine (around 330
CE)

30. In the 1510s, the Church under Pope Julius II had
decided it needed to rebuild its franchise church in
Rome.
The plan was to create the grandest church in
Europe.
A variety of architects worked and reworked the
plans over the next 100 years.

33. St. Peter’s monstrous scale can best be seen by looking at its immense piers.

35. The piers support the tallest Dome of any Christian church.

36. St Peter’s dome is the tallest in the world, and
its diameter is just a bit smaller than that in
Florence. This dome was designed by
Michelangelo and completed after his death in
1590.
It uses a similar design as Brunelleschi's (two
shells using herringbone bricks reinforced with
steel rods). Since the 1800s, the dome has
begun to crack and large chains have been
wrapped around it to prevent further spreading.

37. The piazza in front of the
church was designed by
baroque artist Bernini
and constructed much
later between 1647 and
1667.

39. Pope Julius II also commissioned Michelangelo’’s painting of the Sistine Chapel as well as the massive
Tomb of Julius II which was planned to include over 40 life-sized statues.

40. Julius’s successor was Pope Leo
X (born Giovanni di Lorenzo de'
Medic).
Like Julius, much of his reign was
focused on warfare. His papacy is
associated with the growth in the
sale of indulgences (to help fund
the on-going Italian Wars and to
fund the rebuilding of St. Peter’s)
as well as the beginning of the
Protestant schism.

41. Leonardo da Vinci
(1452 – 1519)

42. “Leonardo da Vinci united physical beauty and
infinite grace in all his actions and as for his
talent, no matter what difficulty presented itself, he
solved it without effort. In him dexterity was allied to
exceeding great strength; his spirit and his courage
showed something kingly and magnanimous.”
-- Vasari, The Lives of the Artists

43. Leonardo was born out of wedlock to a
peasant woman in the town of Vinci outside
of Florence. His father was an aristocrat
from Florence.
At the age of 14, his father moved
Leonardo to Florence and paid for him to
become an apprentice in the workshop of
Verrocchio, Florence’s leading painter
(Verrocchio has been a student of
Botticelli).

44. Leonardo as a teenager was said to be the model for Verrocchio’s
David sculpture.

45. Verrocchio, Baptism of Christ
1470
Leonardo da Vinci’s earliest
known painting (18 yrs old)
is this angel

47. Vasari tells us that after having seen
the kneeling angel painted by
Leonardo, Verrocchio, in despair, threw
down his brushes and gave up painting

48. Leonardo da Vinci, The Annunciation, 1472-5
Considered to be his first complete work, it shows that
Leonardo was still learning (e.g., the perspective of
the front of the lectern is wrong) but has touches of
brilliance (the finger in the book, the atmospheric
effects).

49. Soon after being charged for sodomy, Leonardo
left Florence and ended up in Milan working for
the Ludovico Sforza, Duke of Milan, where he
worked not only as a painter, but also as a
sculptor, military architect , and, later in 1502,
when we returned to Florence and worked for
Caeasr Borgia, he also worked as an engineer,
map maker, and spy.

50. Sketch for a giant crossbow, Leonardo, ca. 1480

52. Much like Machiavelli, Leonardo believed
truth was to be discovered by the close
observation of nature as it is.

53. Leonardo,
Adoration of the Magi
(unfinished)
1481
In this revolutionary early
work, we see many of Da
Vinci’s characteristic
approaches:
1. Use of shadow and
atmospheric
perspective.
2. Naturalized Mary and
Jesus
3. The use of geometric
principles in design.

54. Leonardo da Vinci painted two versions of this work : Virgin of the Rocks

55. Leonardo,
Virgin of the Rocks
1483
The use of atmospheric perspective, which is
created via his revolutionary technique of sfumato,
(or smoke) which involves creating several layers
of color on a painting in order to enhance the
perception of depth.
Another of his innovations is chiaroscuro: the use
of strong contrasts between light and dark as a way
to achieve volume, especially with human figures
(i.e., make them look more 3D in appearance).

56. Leonardo da Vinci described sfumato as "without lines
or borders, in the manner of smoke or beyond the
focus plane”

60. Leonardo’s other visual technique, chiaroscuro,
becomes extraordinarily influential as a
technique for creating the illusion of depth / 3D.

62. Prior to Leonardo, almost all female portraits were in
profile, while most men looked directly at the viewer with
the body in ¾ pose. Occasionally, female portraits used
the standard male pose (and vice versa).

64. Leonardo,
Lady with an Ermine
1489
The subject of the portrait is identified as Cecilia
Gallerani, and was probably painted at a time when
she was the mistress of Ludovico Sforza, Duke
of Milan, and Leonardo was in the service of the
Duke.
At the time of her portrait, Cecilia was about
sixteen. She was one of a large family, neither rich
nor noble. Her father served for a time at the
Duke's court. Cecilia was renowned for her beauty,
her scholarship, and her poetry. She was betrothed
at the age of about ten years to a young nobleman
of the house of Visconti, but the marriage was
called off. Cecilia became the mistress of the Duke
and bore him a son.
The ermine was a traditional symbol of purity
because it was believed an ermine would face
death rather than soil its white coat. The Duke’s
motto was “better to die than be sullied”, so the
ermine is also a stand-in for the Duke.
Yet the chaste sentiment of the ermine is
contradicted by its phallic appearance and her
embrace of it.
The painting’s chiaroscuro, its triangular spiral, and
the way it looks as if Cecilia is caught listening to a
conversation, all makes this one of Da Vinci’s
greatest works.

65. Leonardo,
La Belle Ferroniere
1490
The subject of the portrait is unknown, though a
recent exhibition identified her as Beatrice d'Este,
wife of Ludovico Sforza, Duke of Milan.
Like with the Lady with Ermine, this portrait
demonstrates Leonardo ‘s ability to capture
psychological states.

66. Leonardo, Last Supper 1495-8

69. Chapel containing the Last Supper was badly damaged
during the Second World War.

70. The Last Supper, ca. 1520, by Giovanni Pietro Rizzoli,
who worked with Leonardo, and who made this same-size
oil reproduction when it became clear that
Leonardo’s original was deteriorating quickly.

71. Domenico Ghirlandaio, 1480
Pietro Perugino, 1490
Unlike other paintings of the
Last Supper, which had Judas
visually separated from the
others, in Da Vinci’s version,
Judas is integrated in with the
rest.

72. Given the importance of the number three in
Christianity (due to the Trinity) there are many triangles
and groupings of three in the work.

73. Leonardo,
La Gioconda (Mona Lisa)
1500-1504
Vasari claims that this work was never finished.
Regardless of that, this work was especially
influential on Raphael (who we will talk about later)

74. Marcel Duchamp,
LHOOQ
1919
LHOOQ: when read out loud in French, it
sounds like "Elle a chaud au cul" which
literally translated is: "she has a hot ass"

75. According to Vasari, Leonardo claimed that
he said that “he never finished anything in
my life,” and indeed much of his
contemporary reputation as a Renaissance
Man (i.e., someone who is excellent at
many things), is due to our knowledge of his
notebooks which contain many unfinished
works of brilliance and acute almost
scientific observation.

77. Leonardo da Vinci,
Vitruvian Man,
c. 1485-90.
Generally considered an
example of how Leonardo saw
the proportions of the human
body as representative of the
higher order of the universe
(remember the social and
moral meaning Renaissance
artists attributed to linear
perspective).

78. Leonardo da Vinci.
Self-Portrait, c. 1512.

79. Much of what we know of Leonardo’s person life comes
from Vasri, who wrote of Da Vinci’s "outstanding physical
beauty", "infinite grace", "great strength and generosity",
"regal spirit and tremendous breadth of mind“.
One such aspect is his respect for life evidenced by his
vegetarianism and his habit, according to Vasari, of
purchasing caged birds and releasing them.
His sexuality has been the subject of satire, analysis, and
speculation. This trend began in the mid-16th century and
was revived in the 19th and 20th centuries (he was
charged with sodomy in 1476 but the charges were
dropped).

80. Leonardo da Vinci.
John the Baptist, c. 1514
The model Gian Oreno, who was
nicknamed Salai (““the little unclean
one”) was a student of Leonardo
and lived in his household for 30
years.

81. “Lo splendor dell’ aria sua, che bellissimo era,
rissereneva ogni animo mesto” (the splendour of his
aspect, which was beautiful beyond measure,
rejoiced in the most sorrowful souls).
-- Vasari, conclusion of his chapter on Leonardo in the
The Lives of the Artists

82. Michelangelo
(1475 – 1564)

83. Michelangelo has been famous from his
lifetime to the present day, and he worked
hard promoting himself to his
contemporaries as the paradigm of artistic
genius.

84. His early development happened while
apprenticed to the Florentine painter
Ghirlandaio and later to a Medici-sponsored
arts academy, were he studied
sculpture.

85. Interestingly, Michelangelo actively
attempted to suppress knowledge of his
painting experience: it conflicted with his
story that he had never painted prior to his
Sistine Chapel … that is, his self-presentation
as a genius who could paint
wonders with no prior experience or
training.

86. In 1496, at the age of 21, Michelangelo
travelled to Rome. A few years later after
he created one of his masterpieces, the
Pieta.

87. Michelangelo.
Pietà, 1498/9-1500

90. Leonardo’s drapery
studies from 1480 that
were in the Ghirlandaio
studio when Michelangelo
was apprenticed there.

91. Another of Leonardo’s drapery studies

93. Vasari tells a story that days after it was
placed in St. Peter’s church in Rome,
Michelangelo overhead someone said the
work was by Solari, a rival sculptor.
In anger that night, he carved
"Michelangelo Buonarroti, Florentine,
mad[e me]" on the sash across her chest.
This is the only work he ever signed.

94. Other art historians see the self-conscious
unfinished signature "Michelangelo
Buonarroti, Florentine, mad[e me]" as a
way to turn the work from a devotional
image into a Work of Art by Michelangelo™
(btw, Leonardo never signed any of his works)

95. On May 21, 1972 a mentally disturbed geologist named Laszlo
Toth walked into St. Peter’s and attacked the sculpture with
a geologist's hammer while shouting "I am Jesus Christ.“
Onlookers took many of the pieces of marble that flew off. Later,
some pieces were returned, but many were not, including Mary's
nose, which had to be reconstructed from a block cut out of her
back.

96. Michelangelo success with the Pieta led to
his triumph with the David in Florence.

97. Michelangelo,
David, 1501-1504.

99. The commission stipulated that the
sculpture be created from a gigantic single
block of marble that had recently been
transported to Florence.

102. What does it mean? Why would the city of
Florence commission a huge and
expensive statue of David?

103. Its location was going to be the top of the Florentine Dome,
but instead was placed outside of the Palazzo Vecchio, the
center of the Republic’s government.

104. Is this David after
killing Goliath, or
before?

105. Piece of graffiti attributed to
Michelangelo on the Palazzo
Vecchio in Florence

106. Vasari in his chapter on Michelangelo,
documents Michelangelo’s anti-social
disposition: moody, irritable, chronically
suspicious of others, ultra-competitive,
convinced others were scheming to kill him,
and spectacularly unkempt.
He followed his father’’s advice to never
wash, and wore pants made from dog’s
skin that he never cleaned nor changed.

107. Vasari does his best to turn these
characteristics into heroic attributes.
He interprets them as characteristics of
The Artist™ whose mind is focused on
creating Higher Things™ and whose
brilliance is not able to be appreciated by
us lesser mortals concerned with
mundane things like hygiene and
manners.

108. Like with his portrait of Brunelleschi,
Vasari’s portrayal of Michelangelo helped
define what posterity expected artists to be
like, as well as help create the stereotypical
idea of genius artists being too complex
and too lofty for most people to understand
or fully appreciate.

109. Of course, these stereotypes of The Artist™
are just that, stereotypes.
Michelangelo, for instance, while slovenly,
was, like perhaps any business person,
concerned about maximizing his income.

110. Michelangelo,
Tondo Doni
1506-1508

111. When the Doni was completed, the patron
balked at paying the requested payment of
70 ducats. Instead he gave the delivery
man 40 ducats to give to Michelangelo.
Michelangelo returned the 40 along with a
note demanding 100 ducats now. The
patron instead sent 70. Michelangelo
returned the money telling him the cost was
now 140 ducats. The patron paid the 140.

112. The Doni is also important for being
Michelangelo’s only finished panel painting
for its explicit rejection of Leonardo’s
aesthetic.

113. Leonardo da Vinci
Virgin and Child with
St. Anne
1510

114. Compare the femininity
of Mary in the Doni in
comparison to
Leonardo’s Mary.
Notice the muscularity
and athleticism of Mary
in Michelangelo’s
version.
Michelangelo in fact used
male models for his
female painted figures

115. So why the masculine and athletic Mary?
Perhaps he was trying to represent Mary’s
spiritual virility.
Perhaps he was also trying to exempt her
from his own society’s oppression of
women … as well as trying to shield her
from inappropriate connotations of female
sexuality.

116. Leonardo’s Mary is not only realistic, she
is beautiful, motherly and tender,
Michelangelo’s Mary is almost
, y , disengaged from her child; she is
representative of his society’s gendered
attitudes towards the ideal of
womenhood.
g g ;
worshipful rather than motherly, holding
up the Child in a way reminiscent of a
priest holding up the Eucharist during
mass. She is thus a symbol rather than a
person.

117. Between 1508 and 1512, Michelangelo
painted the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel
(this is the private chapel for the Pope and
is attached to St. Peters in Rome).

118. Michelangelo, Ceiling Sistine Chapel, c. 1508-1512
Contains nine scenes from the Book of Genesis of which the Creation of
Adam is the best known.
It contains 343 different figures.

122. Separation of Light from Darkness

123. The Creation of the Sun and the Moon

124. Separating Land from Water

125. Creation
of Adam

126. Creation of Eve

127. Temptation and
Expulsion

128. Sacrifice of
Noah

129. Noah and the
Flood

130. The
Drunkenness
of Noah

131. The ceiling also contains numerous trompe l'oeil effects (i.e.,
creating optical illusion that things in the painting actually exist in
3d space)

141. Michelangelo, Moses, c. 1514

143. Michelangelo,
Last Judgment
Sistine Chapel, Vatican,
Rome. 1534-1541

146. Raphael
(1483 – 1520)

147. Raphael was enormously productive,
running an unusually large workshop, and
despite his death at 37, a large body of his
work remains.

148. Raphael was apprenticed in the painter
Perugino’s workshop as a young teenager.

149. Raphael self-portrait
as a
young
teenager

150. Perugino at the time was consider Italy’s foremost painter.
His style, with its sweet calm faces, Raphael quickly
mastered. Indeed, we know of several of Perugino’s works
in which Raphael painted some or indeed most of the
work and yet even today experts are uncertain as to which
parts were painted by whom.

151. Perugino

153. Perugino

154. At 21, both Raphael and Perugino were
contracted to create competing versions of
the same scene by the same patron.

156. The audacity of Raphael placing his
signature at the very center of the
composition co pos o signifies professional
self-awareness of his status as an
Artist

157. Michelangelo tried hard to disguise, deny,
and hide the fact that he was influenced by
others; instead he wanted contemporaries
and posterity to think that he innovated in
everything he did.
But a large part of Raphael’s uniqueness
was not only his ability to be influenced by
others, but his willingness to openly
experiment with other’s stylistic
innovations.

158. After mastering Perugino’s style, Raphael
grew bored, and moved to Florence where
he quickly fell under the influence of
Leonardo’s paintings of sacred scenes.

159. Influenced by the above two works, Raphael copied
Leonardo’s visual language quickly producing dozens
of Madonna paintings, and within that genre, eventually
found a way to be creative within its constraints.

169. Raphael,
Madonna of the Meadow, 1505.

172. One of the features of the later
Renaissance is that “common” but wealthy
people began to want themselves
memorialized in art. So alongside religious
and mythological painting, we begin to see
the emergence of personal portraits.
Leonardo set the aesthetic standard with
La Gioconda …

173. After seeing Leonardo’s La
Gioconda while it was still a
work in progress, Raphael
quickly painted (within a
year) a wide variety of
portraits under its influence.
Recall that Leonardo spent 4 years on
his painting …

179. After quickly producing a wide variety of
variations of the La Gioconda, Raphael
then went significantly beyond Da Vinci’s
work, creating a wide range of superb
portraits that in many ways became the
paradigm for portraits for the next 400
years.
Each one encapsulates a real individual
within the portrait constraints created by
Leonardo in his La Gioconda.

187. Michelangelo and Raphael were both in
Rome painting different parts of the Sistine
Chapel for Pope Julius (the pope had
gathered more than 50 artists to work on
different projects).
Michelangelo tried his best to “hide” his
ceiling painting from Raphael. The story in
Vasari is that when Michelangelo was
forced to leave the city, Raphael snuck in to
examine the ceiling.

188. And once again, Raphael used it as an
opportunity to try new things …

190. Perhaps no other painting represents the
changing nature of the attitude towards to
the nude during the Italian Renaissance
than does Botticelli’s Birth of Venus.

191. Other artists, especially those hired
by the papal court in Rome (and later
also by the merchants in Venice),
appear to have been unmoved by
Savaronola, and we continue to see
classical-inspired themes and an
interest in representing the human
body.
Raphael, Galatea, Rome, c. 1512.

192. The Triumph of Galatea was painted
by Raphael for the Villa
Farnesina in Rome, which was built
for the Sienese banker Agostino
Chigi, one of the richest men of that
age.
In the painting, Raphael shows the
moment when Galatea, who is in
love with a shepherd, is being
transformed into a goddess.
Rumor was that the model for
Galatea was Chigi’s mistress (and
Raphael’s lover) Imperia.

194. Raphael painted a wide range of nudes in
the Villa Farnesina, all focused on
mythological, rather than Christian scenes,
all with a not-very well disguised fixation on
bodily pleasures…

200. Even the fruit seems curiously over-excited …

201. Vasari claims that Raphael would get so excited
as he was painting, that kept leaving to visit his
mistress, Margherita Luti.
Chigi grew so impatient with the slow progress,
that he eventually gave Luti a semi-permanent
room in the Villa so that Raphael wouldn’t have
to leave.

202. Raphael. The Fornarina, c. 1518.
The woman is traditionally identified
with Margherita Luti, Raphael's
Roman mistress.

203. School of Athens, 1509-1510

204. Plato Aristotle
Leonardo

205. Heraclitus
Michelangelo

208. Raphael,
The Deposition
1507

210. Raphael,
The Transfiguration
1520

213. According to Vasari, Raphael's premature
death on his 37th birthday was caused by a
night of too much sex …

214. He is buried in the Pantheon in Rome. The inscription reads: "Here lies that famous Raphael by
whom Nature feared to be conquered while he lived, and when he was dying, feared herself to die."

216. Raphael’s reputation today is nowhere near
to that of Leonardo or Michelangelo.
Yet I think there is much to admire today in
his work and in his general style.

217. In many ways, our understanding of what
art is has been too much influenced by
Vasari’s account of Brunelleschi, Leonardo
and especially of Michelangelo.

218. Vasari’s view of the artist as a solitary
genius creating completely unparalleled
and innovative works, created an
unrealistic expectation for subsequent
artists and distorted what really happens in
any artistic endeavor.

219. Raphael illustrates that all forms of
aesthetic experience, whether in the
creation or in the consumption, occur within
a context of the past and within rules and
constraints created by different genres,
techniques, and technologies.

220. True innovation doesn’t occur within a
realm of total freedom; rather often the best
innovation happens when someone is
working within a set of constraints.

221. This continues to be true …

222. Take Pablo Picasso for instance … often
considered the most influential and
innovative artist of the 20th century.

223. Yet despite his many innovations, he
tended to work for extended stretches
within a single aesthetic style … testing and
retesting a single approach, trying to find
improvement and self-expression within
tight self-imposed constraints.

224. Blue period

225. Red period

226. African
Period

227. Cubist
Period

228. NeoClassical
Period

229. This is why genre and style was, and
continues to be, important for aesthetic
experience.
Somewhat paradoxically, working within the
constraints of a tradition often provides one
of the truest ways to create something
great but also to discover something new.

230. Leonardo and Michelangelo are justly
famous and beloved for their innovations;
but Raphael is also just as beloved for
finding innovation by first imitating, and
then improving upon.

231. I think Raphael is a wonderful model for
students (and not perhaps the excessively
pungent and paranoid Michalengelo).
Raphael was always open to observing
what others were creating, then he would
work very hard learning and then mastering
those other ways … and then used that
foundation to build his own innovations.

232. It is the model for what education should
be: be willing to learn from others, work
hard to master established techniques and
knowledge, and then use that mastery to
do your own innovation.