The Quattro Coronati, Four US Presidents

Nanni di Banco was a Italian sculptor from Florence. Nanni sculpted the group called Quattro Santi Coronati for his own guild, the Arte dei Maestri di Pietra and Legname (Guild of the Stone and Woodcutters). The life-size figures arranged in a semi-circle represent Claudius, Castor, Symphorian and Nicostratus, four Christian sculptors who refused to execute a statue of Aesculapius for the Emperor Diocletian; they were confused with Christian soldiers, were martyred for not venerating the Emperor and were worshipped as the Quattro Coronati.

The Quattro Coronati (Four Crowned Saints; c. 1411-13) is considered his masterpiece. The group of figures is bound together by the spatial relation of each to the other and by a kind of mute conversation in which they all seem to be engaged.

One can find another kind of sculpture that represents a part of history, in this case, four presidents. The faces of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Theodore Roosevelt and Abraham Lincoln look down from their stone heights and remind everyone that even the impossible is possible.

Mt. Rushmore National Memorial is a huge mountain sculpture of four US Presidents, located near Keystone, in the Black Hills of South Dakota. These four Presidents were chosen to represent the founding, growth and preservation of the United States. The work was designed by the sculptor John Gutzon Borglum. Bad weather and a lack of funding slowed work; although it took 14 years to finish the project, work was done for only about 6 of those years.

Two pieces have big dimensions to express the importance at the period of construction; both represent important people for his countries. Each character has a natural and pensive expression of humility and they create a union sense together. The sculptures are located on the top of the viewer, telling the witness the best way to admire the great work.

One important factor is the perception of one in the work; both show an added value on the position they are and the elements that surround them. For example, the Mount Rushmore is located on the top where clarify people can see a pyramid corner and nothing surround it; the Quattro Coronati, also has in the top a triangle, this is the visual tension point and this help to the right visual tour for the sculpture. At the end, this is a concentration point of viewer’s attention.

These monument's dimensions were determinate by the importance to civilization of the events commemorated, the constructive and dramatic moments or crises in our amazing history.

With Donatello and Ghiberti, Nanni di Banco is one of the artists responsible for the introduction of a new, fully realistic, and the individual style of expression of the sculpture, where a new generation monumental and heroic sculpture came into existence.

Giotto and Rivera

Today, people can enjoy and appreciate different artistic movements. These movements emerged from the Renaissance, and have influenced in actual artists, in his beginning and development. This is the case of Diego Rivera.

Diego Rivera was a featured Mexican muralist, active communist and famous for capture works of social contents in public buildings, and the creator of several murals in different parts of historic centre of Mexico City.

His complete name was Diego María de la Concepción Juan Nepomuceno Estanislao de la Rivera y Barrientos Acosta y Rodríguez, and he was married with Frida Khalo.

In 1907, Diego gets a scholarship that allows travel to Europe and study art works, such as Goya, El Greco, Giotto y Brueghel.

In renaissance for example, the artist search his own style, use of perspective, admiration of humans body, green and golden colours, religious topics, dark-light technique, triangular compositions, distinction of social classes, and finally, complex compositions with lot of characters.

Diego Rivera painted complex compositions with lot of characters, such as El Greco. Also, he used saturated, flat and vivid colors, he painted with all Mexican folklore, disproportions, many characters in a single work, he appears in all his works, landscapes with background generating a little sense of depth, and his primary technique was the Fresco, such as the Renaissance.

One can find many similarities between Giotto di Bondone and Diego Rivera. First, similitude with Gioto in the use lot of characters and how they are accommodated into the mural; second, in pay tribute to woman as most important and mother; third, the works are painted with encaustic technique and Fresco; next, use of similar colors; and finally, the men as the center of Universe.

Thanks to the Renaissance stage, because we can now enjoy a wealth of artistic expressions.

Brunelleschi´s vision

Artists like Giotto and the trecento had begun to conduct studies on perspective. Giotto needed to represent spatial relationships and volume to create a framework for the figures and objects of his narrative paintings giving them a more convincing as representations of reality.

The importance lies in the dynamic relationship between the subject and the object being seen or observed. Filippo Brunelleschi became the discoverer of linear perspective; this is a method to mimic the measurable space on a flat surface.

The contemporary artist Alex Grey uses these principles as a basis for their works. He studied art at Ohio, and in Harvard Medical School was working in the Anatomy department studying the body and preparing cadavers for dissection and for doing medical illustration.

With these details apparently objects are placed in three dimensional spaces, which pushed up the surface of the painting forward where is the observer, and in turn extends backwards where there is an imaginary spatial depth.

Brunelleschi's visual field was perfectly framed by the doorway, perhaps to use that way the door frame and create a grid in which each of its four sides indicating reference points located at equal distance from each other.

Brunelleschi also used polished silver for enhancing the optical illusion sky forcing the viewer to see the Baptistery painting since the location of the artist envisioned when the actual building. While Alex Grey highlights the vanishing point as representing spiritual and basically to attract the attention of the viewer. The image is thus transformed into a window where we see an artificial reality created but data based on actual experience, by appropriate scenery.

Brunelleschi's Legacy, to contemporary and Renaissance artists, was his vision of transform flat images and their discovery in the ideation of imaginary spaces.