tapestry (in Italian Renaissance)

As historical climatologists have not shown that Renaissance Italian winters and springs were warmer than they are now, it is puzzling that Italy did not fabricate tapestries to decorate and draught-proof the stony rooms of its palaces until 1545, when Cosimo I set up a manufactory in Florence. To hardiness or stinginess (tapestry was by far the most expensive form of wall decoration) we owe the existence of such secular frescoed decorative schemes as the labours of the months in the castle at Trent (c. 1407), the Arthurian scenes of Pisanello and the courtly ones of Mantegna in the Ducal Palace of Mantua, the delicious calendar fantasies of Cossa and others in the Palazzo Schifanoia in Ferrara - and, doubtless, many others that await liberation from whitewash or later panelling. These are all in situations where northern patrons would have used tapestries.

These were imported, chiefly from Flanders, into Italy. The influence of their hunting and ceremonial scenes in particular registered on Italian 'gothic' painting or illumination and stained glass, and in literature. But the Italians did not make them. The most famous of all 'Italian' tapestries, those for the Sistine Chapel designed by Raphael, were made in Brussels from the full-scale coloured patterns, or cartoons, now in the Victoria and Albert Museum, London. Nor is it clear whether imported tapestries were used habitually or simply to add grandeur to special occasions. Even when Cosimo's manufactory was in being, and working from designs by court artists of the calibre of Bronzino, Salviati and Allori, his own headquarters, the Palace of the Signoria (now the Palazzo Vecchio), was being decorated with frescoes. The subject is underexplored.

tempera (Lat. temperare, "to mix in due proportion")

A method of painting in which the pigments are mixed with an emulsion of water and egg yolks or whole eggs (sometimes glue or milk). Tempera was widely used in Italian art in the 14th and 15th centuries, both for panel painting and fresco, then being replaced by oil paint. Tempera colors are bright and translucent, though because the paint dried very quickly there is little time to blend them, graduated tones being created by adding lighter or darker dots or lines of color to an area of dried paint.

tenebrism

A style of painting especially associated with the Italian painter Caravaggio and his followers in which most of the figures are engulfed in shadow but some are dramatically illuminated by a concentrated beam of light usually from an identifiable source.

terracotta (It. "baked earth")

Unglazed fired clay. It is used for architectural features and ornaments, vessels, and sculptures.

terraferma (Ital. "firm land")

The mainland forming part of the Venetian Doge's sovereign territory, i.e. the strip of coastline immediately next to the lagoon.

three-quarter face

artistic term denoting a particular angle from which the human face is depicted. Depending on how far the head is turned away from a fully frontal angle en face, the picture is described as three-quarter face (in which a good deal of the face can be seen), quarter face, and profile.

tondo, pl. tondi (It. "round")

A circular painting or relief sculpture. The tondo derives from classical medallions and was used in the Renaissance as a compositional device for creating an ideal visual harmony. It was particularly popular in Florence and was often used for depictions of the Madonna and Child.

topiary (Gk. topia, "fields, gardens")

The craft of cutting bushes and trees into decorative shapes, usually those of animals or geometrical forms. triumphal arch, in the architecture of ancient Rome, a large and usually free-standing ceremonial archway built to celebrate a military victory. Often decorated with architectural features and relief sculptures, they usually consisted of a large archway flanked by two smaller ones. The triumphal archway was revived during the Renaissance, though usually as a feature of a building rather than as an independent structure. In Renaissance painting they appear as allusion to classical antiquity.

topos, pl. topoi (Gk. "a commonplace")

In literature, figure of speech; in art, widely used form, model, theme or motif.

tracery

the geometrical architectural ornamentation which is used in Gothic architecture to subdivide the upper parts of the arches belonging to large windows, and later to subdivide gable ends, walls, and other surfaces.

Trajan's Column

A monumental column erected in Rome in 113 AD to commemorate the deeds of Emperor Trajan. Around its entire length is carved a continuous spiral band of low relief sculptures depicting Trajan's exploits.

Trinity (Lat. trinitas, "threefold")

in Christianity, the term used for the existence of one God in three persons: the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.

triptych (Gk. tryptychos, "threefold")

A painting in three sections, usually an altarpiece, consisting of a central panel and two outer panels, or wings. In many medieval triptychs the two outer wings were hinged so that could be closed over the center panel. Early triptychs were often portable.

triumph

With growing interest from the early 14th century in the history of ancient Rome came a fascination with the city's conquests, the wars by which they were won - and the ceremony which marked their success: the victor's triumph. The knowledge that the privilege of being commemorated by one of these enormous and costly processions of warriors, loot and prisoners was given sparingly, only to the sole commander of a major victory over a foreign army of whom at least 5000 were slain, added to the glamour of the triumph. Its centrepiece was the chariot of the victor himself. Dante gave one to Beatrice in Purgatorio XXIX: 'Rome upon Africanus ne'er conferred / Nor on Augustus's self, a car so brave'. But it was tentatively with the relief carvings on the Triumphal Arch (1452-66) at Castelnuovo in Naples commemorating Alfonso the Magnanimous, and finally with Mantegna's superb Triumph of Caesar cartoons (Hampton Court), that the visual reconstruction of a Roman triumph became complete.

Meanwhile, in an age which did not like the idea of large numbers of victory-flushed soldiers parading through its streets, the military triumph became sublimated, as it were, into a number of less controversial forms. This was largely under the influence of Petrarch's 'Trionfi' - poems describing the processions commemorating the triumphs of love, chastity, death; fame, time and eternity. Disseminated soon after his death, they soon appeared in illuminated manuscripts, and the triumph scene became a popular one for woodcuts, decorated marriage chests and other paintings, most beautifully of all on the backs of Piero della Francesca's portraits of Federigo da Montefeltro and his wife, Battista Sforza. Other 'triumphs' were invented: of the seasons, of virtues and of the arts. Nor was the theme allowed to be simply a profane one. Just before his death Savonarola published his 'Triumph of the Cross', in which the reader was invited to imagine 'a four-wheeled chariot on which is seated Christ as Conqueror.' Before it go the apostles, patriarchs and prophets, beside it the army of martyrs, behind it, after 'a countless number of virgins, of both sexes', come the prisoners: 'the serried ranks of the enemies of the Church of Christ.' This aspect of the theme was magnificently realized in Titian's great woodcut 'The Triumph of the Faith'.

triumphal arch

In the architecture of ancient Rome, a large and usually free-standing ceremonial archway built to celebrate a military victory. Often decorated with architectural features and relief sculptures, they usually consisted of a large archway flanked by two smaller ones. The triumphal archway was revived during the Renaissance, though usually as a feature of a building rather than as an independent structure. In Renaissance painting they appear as allusion to classical antiquity.

tromp l'oeil (Fr. "deceives the eye")

A type of painting which, through various naturalistic devices, creates the illusion that the objects depicted are actually there in front of us. Dating from classical times, tromp l'oeil was revived in the 15th century and became a distinctive feature of 17th-century Dutch painting.

Tudor

An obscure Welsh family, first recorded in 1232, that seized the English throne in 1485 by defeating the Yorkist king Richard III at the Battle of Bosworth. Lancastrian Henry VII was its first crowned representative, marrying Richard's niece Elizabeth of York and thus symbolically ending the dynastic wars of the Roses. The Tudor dynasty lasted until 1603 (death of Elizabeth I). Tudor is also the name of a transitional Late Gothic building style during the reigns of the two Henrys. It incorporates Renaissance features.

tusche

A thick, viscous black ink.

tympanum (Lat. "drum")

In classical architecture, the triangular area enclosed by a pediment, often decorated with sculptures. In medieval architecture, the semi-circular area over a a door's lintel, enclosed by an arch, often decorated with sculptures or mosaics.

typology

A system of classification. In Christian thought, the drawing of parallels between the Old Testament and the New. Typological studies were based on the assumption that Old Testament figures and events prefigured those in the New, e.g. the story of Jonah and the whale prefigured Christ's death and resurrection. Such typological links were frequently used in both medieval and Renaissance art.

tyrannicide

Assassination of rulers (often in church, where they were most accessible, and often by cadets of their family) had long played an important part in the Italian political process. From the end of the 14th century these deeds came frequently to be gilded by biblical and classical references: to the precedents of Brutus (condenmed by Dante as an arch-traitor, then raised by such republican enthusiasts as Michclangelo to heroic stature), Judith, killer of Holofernes, and David, slayer of Goliath. So the killing of Galeazzo Maria Sforza (1476) was carried out by three Milanesi patricians inspired in part by the teachings of the humanist Cola Montano, while the Pazzi conspiracy in Florence was seen by Alamanno Rinuccini as an emulation of ancient glory. Intellectuals who combined a taste for violence with a classicizing republicanism featured largely too in the plots of Stefano Porcari against Nicholas V (1453), of the Roman Academy against Paul II (1468), and of Pietro Paolo Boscoli against the Medici in 1513.