Good day dear Hive community, as always, I would like to welcome you with friendly words at the beginning of my contribution and hope that you are all doing well and that you were able to have beautiful experiences! In this post, I would like to talk about art in Italy and hope you can learn something new.
Here you can see two wonderful paintings which create an unique atmosphere and were made by the painter Otto Hellmeier (1908 - 1996) and in both the artist has oriented himself towards Italy and I would like to refer to the general reference to Italy and art. One thing is certain, when it comes to art and culture, Italy is one of the top and a large part of all World heritages are located here and traces suggest that art in this country has been shaped by different cultures for thousands of years and with beginning of the Roman period, art grew up more and more. Before the time of the Romans had begun, many different peoples already settled the country and left some traces there and at that time Italy was still inhabited by the Greeks, Etruscans or the Celts and some excavations from this time are still very well preserved and confirm how important the influence of other cultures was on the development of Italian art. What distinguished Italy from other countries is that art was strongly associated with political ideas at that time and especially art developed in cities and at that time the Roman Empire encompassed pretty much all of Europe and special influence on Roman Art at that time were the greeks, who also strongly influenced architecture. At that time, the focus was particularly on sculptures, murals as well as mosaics and the traces left by the Roman Empire can be found everywhere in Europe. In the Middle Ages there was a great change and the architectural style was changed and especially this period was influenced by the Romanesque style and at that time religion had a great influence on ancient Italy and accordingly also on art and also many other categories such as goldsmithing, mosaics, pottery or painting grew more and more. With the beginning of the late Middle Ages in the 12th century, art changed a lot and the Romanesque became more and more Gothic and at the same time this epoch also developed in other countries. A particularly huge influence of Gothic emerged from Italy at that time and the artists were shaped a lot by influences from the early Middle Ages and you can see how many traditions have blossomed again and some stylistic devices have flowed together.
The works seemed much more realistic at that time and during this time painting was still very much based on religion and generally only published among nobles and it was still time before art came to the citizens. With the beginning of the Renaissance, all art movements in Italy also changed and adapted to this important epoch and well-known artists such as Michelangelo, Titian or Leonardo da Vinci shaped this epoch to a large extent and at that time Italy was the pioneer in the Renaissance and other countries ahead. During this time, much of ancient Rome was revived and moved to a new splendour and the paintings were expressed very exaggerated or magnificently and the next important period was the Baroque, which had developed especially in Rome at that time. Here, too, Italy was again one of the first and set an example and from there this epoch spread more and more throughout Europe and during this time magnificent buildings were created which were much decorated with silver and gold and in general it was characterized by the magnificent expression. In the 18th century during the beginning of classicism, Italy also continued to develop and this epoch shaped pretty much all art forms and in architecture many forms from ancient Greece were used and in sculpture the artists relied particularly on marble and also the painting has changed and it was less concentrated on the overall picture and more on the person. Art Nouveau also grow in Italy and in the 20th century with the beginning of modernity there were many changes and was shaped by social change or crises and often the works appeared rather gloomy and this epoch did not prevail quite as strongly as the previous ones and it also happened that some old works were destroyed and to this day Italy is considered a Capitol when it comes to art and to this day it is an important center in this topic and of enormous importance.
Thanks for stopping by and I hope you could learn something new about art! I captured these pictures with my Camera Sony Alpha 6000 plus 55-210 mm lens!