A Classical Look : How was Renaissance Art Inspired by Classical Sculpture?

Fascinating online lecture from the National Gallery on the influence of classical sculpture in some of its paintings.

Catherine Heath took three paintings, Uccello’s “Battle of San Romano” (1438-40), Botticelli’s “Venus and Mars” (about 1485) and Titian’s “Bacchus and Ariadne” (1520-3) and used them to look at how Renaissance artists referenced classical art.

She gave examples of when they used actual sculptures as their models as in Titian’s figure with snakes based on the Laocoon in the Vatican which had been discovered just 14 years earlier. She included some examples of troupes which they might have been inspired by on Roman sarcophagi such as Botticelli’s use of one again in the Vatican collection.

She also talked about where the inspiration had possibly come from descriptions of lost classical art such as San Romano having links to a painting of a battle of Alexander the Great, much described but now only know from a Roman mosaic version in Naples. She also talked about where the art may have been influenced by classical writing such as allusions to Catullus in the Titian.

I’d expected this talk to cover well-trodden ground but by concentrating on just three works Heath was able to concentrate her arguments and present some ideas that were new to me.