© Henri Matisse, Les Héritiers Matisse, Artists Rights Society, New York, USA/ ADAGP, Paris
© Sucession H. Matisse, Paris/ Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York, USA
© Henri Michaux Estate, Artists Rights Society, New York, USA/ ADAGP, Paris
© Joan Miró Estate, Artists Rights Society, New York, USA/ ADAGP, Paris
© Giorgio Morandi Estate, Artists Rights Society, New York, USA/ SIAE, Roma
Art © Robert Motherwell / Licensed by VAGA, New York, NY
© Edvard Munch Estate, Artists Rights Society, New York, USA/ BONO, Oslo
© Tate London 2006, Paul Nash
© Barnett Newman Estate, Artists Rights Society, New York, USA/ ADAGP, Paris
© Benn Nicholson Estate, Artists Rights Society, New York, USA/ DACS, London
© Emil Nolde Estate, Artists Rights Society, New York, USA/ VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn
© The Georgia O’Keeffe Museum, Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York, USA
© Roland Penrose, England, 2006. All rights reserved
© Francis Picabia Estate, Artists Rights Society, New York, USA/ ADAGP, Paris
© Estate of Pablo Picasso/ Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York, USA
© Serge Poliakoff Estate, Artists Rights Society, New York, USA/ ADAGP, Paris
© The Pollock-Krasner Foundation/ Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York, USA
Art © Robert Rauschenberg/ Licensed by VAGA, New York, NY
© Ad Reinhardt Estate, Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York, USA
© Bridget Riley, all rights reserved
© Jean-Paul Riopelle Estate, Artists Rights Society, New York, USA/ SODRAC, Montreal
© Banco de México Diego Rivera & Frida Kahlo Museums Trust. Av. Cinco de Mayo n°2, Col. Centro, Del. Cuauhtémoc 06059, México, D. F.
Art © Estate of Larry Rivers / Licensed by VAGA, New York, NY
© 1943 The Norman Rockwell family Entities
© Norman Rockwell Art Collection Trust, Norman Rockwell Museum, Stockbridge, Massachussets
Art © James Rosenquist/ Licensed by VAGA, New York, NY
© Kate Rothko Prizel & Christopher Rothko/ Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York, USA
© Georges Rouault Estate, Artists Rights Society, New York, USA/ ADAGP, Paris
© Sucession Antonio Saura/ www.antoniosaura.org/ ARS, New York/ Vegap, Madrid
© Oskar Schlemmer Estate, Artists Rights Society, New York, USA/ ADAGP, Paris
© Karl Schmidt-Rotluff Estate, Artists Rights Society, New York, USA/ VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn
© Kurt Schwitters Estate, Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York, USA/ VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn
© Gino Severini Estate, Artists Rights Society, New York, USA/ ADAGP, Paris
© Walter Sickert Richard Estate, Artists Rights Society, New York, USA/ DACS, London
© Pierre Soulages Estate, Artists Rights Society, New York, USA/ ADAGP, Paris
© Chaim Soutine Estate, Artists Rights Society, New York, USA/ ADAGP, Paris
© Stanley Spencer Estate, Artists Rights Society, New York, USA/ DACS, London
© Nicolas de Staël Estate, Artists Rights Society, New York, USA/ ADAGP, Paris
© Frank Stella Estate, Artists Rights Society, New York, USA
© Clyfford Still, copyrights reserved
© Tate London 2006, Graham Sutherland
D.R.© Rufino Tamayo/ Herederos/ México/2006/ Fundacion Olga y Rufino Tamayo, A. C.
© Yves Tanguy Estate, Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York, USA
© Antoni Tàpies Estate, Artists Rights Society, New York, USA/ VEGAP, Madrid
© Vladimir Tatlin Estate, Artists Rights Society, New York, USA/ ADAGP, Paris
© Mark Tobey copyrights reserved
© Maurice Utrillo Estate, Artists Rights Society, New York, USA/ ADAGP, Paris
© Suzanne Valadon Estate, Artists Rights Society, New York, USA/ ADAGP, Paris
© Kees van Dongen Estate, Artists Rights Society, New York, USA/ ADAGP, Paris
© Bram van Velde Estate, Artists Rights Society, New York, USA/ ADAGP, Paris
© Victor Vasarely Estate, Artists Rights Society, New York, USA/ ADAGP, Paris
© Edouard Vuillard Estate, Artists Rights Society, New York, USA/ ADAGP, Paris
© Maria Helena Vieira da Silva Estate, Artists Rights Society, New York, USA/ ADAGP, Paris
© Jacques Villon Estate, Artists Rights Society, New York, USA/ ADAGP, Paris
© Maurice de Vlaminck Estate, Artists Rights Society, New York, USA/ ADAGP, Paris
© Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts/ Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York, USA
Art © Estate of Tom Wesselmann / Licensed by VAGA, New York, NY
© Wolfgang Wols Estate, Artists Rights Society, New York, USA/ ADAGP, Paris
Art © Estate of Grant Wood / Licensed by VAGA, New York, NY
American Gothic, 1930 by Grant Wood
All rights reserved by the Estate of Nan Wood Graham / Licensed by VAGA, New York, NY
© Andrew Wyeth
Introduction
For the sixteenth-century Italian writer and painter Giorgio Vasari, a dark period in human history ended when God took pity on humankind and brought about a reform of painting. Vasari wrote in his Lives of the Artists of 1550 that the naturalism of Tuscan painters like Giotto di Bondone in the early fourteenth century was a miracle, a gift to humankind to bring about an end to the stiff, formal, unnatural Byzantine style that had held sway before that time. Today, we recognise that it was hardly by chance or divine mercy that such a change occurred in artmaking. The development of crisp, effective narrative, convincing spatial representation, and the introduction of corporeal, realistic figures possessing physical presence are all aspects of painting echoing the changes in European culture that were beginning to take hold by the fourteenth century and later, and which found their most forcible expression in Italy. Set against a social revolution in which traders, manufacturers and bankers were gaining in prominence, painters were responding to the growing demand for clear, naturalistic representation in art. The monumental works of the Florentine Giotto and the elegant, finely wrought naturalism in the paintings of the Sienese Duccio di Buoninsegna were but one part of a larger cultural movement. It also comprised: the moving, vernacular writings of Dante, Petrarch, and Boccaccio; the vivid travel-adventure of Marco Polo; the growing influence of nominalism in philosophy, which encouraged real, tangible and sensate knowledge; and the religious devotion of Saint Francis of Assisi, who found God’s presence not in ideas and verbal speculation but in the chirping of birds and the glow of the sun and moon.
What the primi lumi, the ‘first lights’, in the art of painting had commenced by the fourteenth century was continued in the fifteenth century with ever greater sharpness and thoroughness, and with a new historical sense that caused them to look back before the Middle Ages to the world of the classical civilisations. Italians came to admire, almost worship, the ancient Greeks and Romans, for their wisdom and insight, and for their artistic as well as scholarly achievements. A new kind of intellectual, the humanist, fuelled a cultural revolution in the fifteenth century. A humanist was a scholar of ancient letters, and humanism was the broader attitude they fostered: a belief in the value of a thoughtful study of Nature, a faith in the potentiality