Западноевропейское искусство от Джотто до Рембрандта

5. The composition is centred around Lazarus.

6. In the Lamentation to typify the desolation of the scene Giotto depicted a bare tree against the blue background.

II. How well have you read? Can you answer the following questions?

1. How was Giotto characterized by his contemporaries?

2. What did Giotto represent in the frescoes that line the interior of the Arena Chapel in Padua? What is the subject of these frecoes?

3. What did Giotto introduce in his works of art?

4. What is depicted in one of Giotto's earliest frescoes? What device did Giotto use to emphasize the three- dimensionality of Joackim's figure? What scale did he recognize for the figures and for the surroundings?

5. How did Giotto represent the figures in the Madonna and Child Enthroned? How did Giotto depict the throne? How is the background painted? What models the form in the Madonna andChild Enthroned? What do Giotto's figures resemble?

6. What is represented in the Raising of Lazarus? What groups are distinguished in the fresco? How are they arranged? How did Giotto show the perspective in this fresco?

7. What does the Lamentation depict? How did Giotto group the grieving figures? What medieval legend is connected with the Tree of Knowledge?

III. I Give Russian equivalents of the following phrases:

to be recognized by the contemporaries; protagonist; ceremonial representation; to revive the art of painting; a cycle of frescoes; to line the interior; in the wilderness; to arrange frescoes in three layers; to cover walls with frescoes; to fresco the walls; to form a definite stage in space; frescoes on panels; cubic rocks; three-dimensional forms; a limited space; wrapped in graveclothes; according to the medieval legend; against the blue background; an ideal heavenly colour; Queen of Heaven; to take shelter; firmly stand; to recognize one scale for the figures and another for the surroundings; master's masterpiece; the miracle lies in; light without indication of source; to produce for the first time; to design a halo; to introduce light and inward extension; to group the figures; to resemble sculptural masses; foreshortened in perspective; visual unity; to rule out the distant space; to add mourners; in the foreground; in the background; facial types; to receive an outcast; brushwork; Redemption; Tree of Knowledge; a withered tree; the sin of Adam and Eve; shepherds and sheepfold; on a flat surface.

II. Give English equivalents of the following phrases:

Искупление грехов; расписывать стены фресками; тип лица; впервые изобразить; Грехи и Добродетели; на фоне голубого неба; мазки остаются спокойными; признанный современниками; напоминать готические скульптуры; шедевр великого художника; на плоской поверхности; ввести свет и внутреннее пространство; образовать определенную ступень в пространстве; ограниченное пространство; главный герой; роспись на доске; парадное изображение; на одной из первых сцен; подчеркнуть объемность форм; небесно голубой цвет; исключить глубинное пространство; на переднем плане; цикл фресок; принять изгоя; засохшее дерево; пастухи; овчарня; дописать плакальщиц; передать пространство; грех Адама и Евы; зрительное единство; изобразить нимб; сгруппировать фигуры; расположить фрески в три ряда; жертвоприношение; укороченный в перспективе; свет без указания источника.

III. Make up sentences of your own with the given phrases.

IV. Translate the following groups of words into Russian:

accomplish – accomplished; paint – painter – painting; revive -revival – revived; illustrate – illustrator – illustration; arrange – arrangement; face – facial – faceless; space – spatial – spaceless; surround – surroundings; three-dimension – three-dimensional – three-dimensionality; ceremony – ceremonial – ceremonialism.

V. Arrange the following in the pairs of synonyms:

a) to accomplish; flat; extension; to represent; observer; heaven; to design; three-dimensional; perspective; to produce; to line;

b) spectator; to show, to picture, to present, to portray, to depict; panorama; to create; to finish; to cover; sky, paradise; to draw; cubic, solid; prostrate; prolongation.

VI. Arrange the following in the pairs of antonyms:

a) to accept; to accomplish; to rule out; three-dimensional; to produce; to recall; to decline;

b) flat; to revive; to forget; to include; to reject; to start; to break.

IV. Here are descriptions of some of Giotto's works of art. Match them up to the given titles.

1. The angels and saints firmly stand on either side of the throne.

2. The man wrapped in graveclothes is read together with the rock.

3. Humiliated, his head bowed, he stands between two shepherds.

4. The persons grieve in the manner possible to their individual personalities.

a. Lamentation

b. Raising of Lazarus

c. Joachim among the Shepherds

d. Madonna and Child Enthroned

V. Translate the text into English.

Конец XIII – начало Xiv вв. в европейской живописи знаменуется переходом от условных традиций средневековья к реалистическим традициям эпохи Возрождения и связан с именем Джотто, который впервые ввел свет и внутреннее пространство. Композиции Джотто просты. В Капелле дель Арена в Падуе цикл фресок из 38 сцен на тему «Искупление Грехов», главными героями которых являются Христос и Мария, Джотто расположил в три ряда. Сюжеты из Евангелия художник представил как реальные события. Вместо условного золотого фона византийских мозаик Джотто ввел пейзажный фон. Он добился трехмерного пространства определенным расположением (arrangement) фигур на плоскости стены. В отличие от византийских фигур, висящих в пространстве, герои Джотто твердо стоят на ногах.

VI. Summarize the text.

VII. Topics for discussion.

1. Giotto's style and characters.

2. Giotto as the father of modern painting.

Unit II Masaccio (1401-1427/29)

The break between what had gone before and the new 15th century creative art of Florence is seen immediately in the Enthroned Madonna and Child by the short-lived Tommaso di Ser Giovanni known to his contemporaries as Masaccio who was, after Giotto, the next great founder-figure not only of Italian but of Western painting. This picture is a central panel of an altar-piece painted by Masaccio when he was twenty-five. Its revolutionary heroic realism can be paralleled only in the work of his friend, the sculptor Donatello, older than Masaccio but working in Florence at the same time. In spite of the Gothic pointed arches used for the panels and the golden background this is a Renaissance picture. Masaccio's Madonna and Child are a simple, sculpted group, as if blocked out from the same piece of stone, absorbed, archaic and unsmiling images. The throne on which they sit and on which the large monumental Madonna casts a shadow is solid and three-dimensional. The Child is realistically human and seriously divine. He takes grapes from his Mother as a solemn foretaste of the Passion.

Masaccio's innovations are visible in the frescoes he painted about 1425 in the Chapel of the Brancacci family in Florence. In his mid-twenties he revolutionised the art of painting. In the principle scene in the series the Tribute Money Masaccio created a new sense of actual masses existing in actual space. The subject recounts how when Christ and the Apostles arrived at Capernaum, the Roman tax-gatherer came to collect tribute. Christ told Peter he would find the tribute money in the mouth of a fish in the nearby Sea of Galilee. Peter cast for the fish, found the coin, and paid the tax-gatherer. The artist has arranged the Apostle figures in a semicircle around Christ, with the discovery of the money placed in the middle distance at the left and the payoff at the right. The Apostles are enveloped in cloaks. This gives them the grandeur of sculpture and a sense of existence in space. The Apostles' faces are painted with quick, soft strokes of the brush. Masaccio has performed a miracle almost without the use of line. Form is achieved by the impact of light on an object. In this picture Masaccio proved a simple maxim that 'Nothing is seen without light'. Unlike Giotto who had attempted to take the observer only a