CANGIANTE: THAT REMARKABLE RENAISSANCE PAINTING TECHNIQUE

Delphica, the Oracle of Delphi
Michelangelo Buonarotti
c.1512
Capella Sistina, Vatican

Cangiante is one of the four canonical Renaissance painting techniques, the others being Unione, Sfumato and Chiaroscuro.

In the Cangiante technique, one color abruptly replaces another color, to create shadow or to highlight an area that would be dulled more if the color would simply be mixed with brown or black.

Notice the abrupt transition from green to yellow in Michelangelo’s famous Delphic Oracle in the Capella Sistina Her blouse displays Cangiante  technique, to create texture and shadow. There is also Cangiante seen in the orange to yellow transition in her outer robe. 

Much bolder than Unione and Sfumato, Cangiante accentuates changes in color as opposed to toning them down. You’ll notice greens as ”yellow” shadows and yellows as “orange” shadows in this type of painting style.

Another example of Cangiante is seen in the robe of Michelangelo’s Daniel, also in the Capella Sistina. 

The term Cangiante derives from “cangiare,” a Renaissance Italian verb for “cambiare,” “to change, to transform” Ultimately from “changier” French first half of the 14th century. Late Latin “cambiare,”  from Latin “cambire,”  “to trade or barter.” P-I-E root “kemb” “to bend”

Detail of Delphica, the Delphic Oracle

Michelangelo Buonarotti 

c.1512

Capella Sistina, Vatican

THE EXQUISITE CLARITY OF PINTURRICHIO

La Madonna della Pace (detail) 

The Perugia School of Painters - those remarkable Umbrian artistic geniuses: Raphael (Raffaello), the eponymously nicknamed Perugino, and Pinturicchio- have left as their legacy among the most exquisite visages of the Madonna, the baby Jesus and saints. 

Here we see a closeup of a sublime portrait of the Virgin by Pinturicchio. Born Bernardo di Betto in Perugia in 1454, his nickname “il Pinturicchio” means “the little painter,” an attribute of his short stature. 

Vasari, in his Lives of the Artists, tells us that Pinturicchio trained as a paid assistant under Perugino, thus the eerie similarity between Pinturicchio’s Madonnas and those of the Master himself.

The Madonna here is indeed exquisitely rendered: the sensitive depiciton of her face, its ovoid shape channeling the oval of an egg, the seed that became her Son. The modeling is subtle and soft, her cheeks almost seem to have rouge on them, creating a vitality, a vividness, her half-lidded eyes portraying both a sensuality and a sadness, a presaging of knowledge of His future Passion and Crucifixion. The veil, in ultramarine, that alchemically transformed lapis lazuli, has a translucency even as it is as a deep blue. Pinturicchio captures the Virgin as if she were sitting directly in front of his easel. 

La Madonna della Pace 

The Madonna of the Peace 

Il PInturrichio (Bernardino de Betto)

c. 1490

Pinacoteca civica Tacchi-Venturi

Duomo di San Severino 

San Severino nelle Marche

Does an Apple a Day keep the Doctor away?

An article I wrote on apples in art, philology, history, science and nutrition. 

https://hekint.org/2018/10/10/does-an-apple-a-day-keep-the-doctor-away/

Adam and Eve
Lucas Cranach the Elder
1526
Courtauld Institute
London 

LUX ET VERITAS: Jan van Eyck’s Eye

The Marriage of the Arnolfini
Jan van Eyck
1434
National Gallery of Art, London 

Jan van Eyck’s Arnolfini Marriage is one of the great secular masterpieces of early Nederlandisch painting and the northern Renaissance. That it is a secular painting, and not religious, is also what makes it so iconic and important. 

In the back of the painting, on the far wall, at the vanishing point, is a wondrous mirror, above which are these words in Latin: “Johannes de Eyck fuit hic” - “Jan van Eyck was here.” 

Jan van Eyck bore witness to the marriage of the Arnolfini with his presence, and he bore witness to his presence in the mirror. 

Here is a fine article about Jan van Eyck, his masterpiece the Arnolfini Portrait, Nikolaus Cusanus, and that wondrous and all-revealing mirror:

https://harpers.org/blog/2009/01/cusanus-and-van-eyck-the-eye-behind-the-mirror/

Beryllus lapis est lucidus, albus et transparens. Cui datur forma concava pariter et convexa, et per ipsum, videns attingit prius invisible. Intellectualibus oculis si intellectualis beryllus, qui formam habeat maximam pariter et minimam, adaptur, per eius medium attingitus indivisibile omnium principum.

The beryl is a brilliant, white and transparent stone. It is possessed simultaneously of a concave and a convex form, and whoever attempts to peer through it comes across things hitherto invisible. If we measure a beryl to reason and fix the gaze of eyes of reason upon it, we perceive the greatest and the smallest forms at once and are thus affected by the recognition of the inseparable origins of the all.

–Niclas Krebs, later Cardinal Nicholas of Kues (Nikolaus Cusanus), De beryllo, cap. ii (1458) in Nikolaus von Kues’ philosophisch-theologische Werke in deutscher und lateinischer Sprache, vol. 3, p. 4 (S.H. transl

The Marriage of the Arnolfini

Jan Van Eyck

1434

NGA, London