Andy Warhol Explores the Italian Renaissance

Andy Warhol was an enigma within an enigma. There are so many facets of his career that are so important to understand but are still so confusing. It is likely that you recognize the name Warhol, but you may be wondering what was so confusing about him. He painted and tangled with famous people, created canvases filled with soup cans, and is often considered the father of commercial art. However, like every artist who makes their mark on history, there was so much more going on than what any person would assume.

What’s the story:

Although there are many stories to explore when it comes to Andy Warhol, there is one in particular that I think is interesting to consider. Andy Warhol’s appropriation of Renaissance masterpieces is a story that is much more distant from the rest of his narrative. However, that doesn’t make it less important to his overall career. Warhol’s use of Italian Renaissance works in his art helps us to understand and analyze Warhol’s motivations in creating art.

So, to start the story we have to go back to the first instance of Renaissance appropriation in Warhol’s career. This was in 1963 when the Mona Lisa was on tour and visited The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Warhol sketched the Mona Lisa as a whole and some of the more prominent details, like her hands and her face. The works that resulted from these sketches were Thirty are Better than One [figure 1], Double Mona Lisa [figure 2], and a handful of other smaller prints of Warhol’s sketches. Now as for the why of Warhol’s reasoning for creating these works, it seems like he made them because the opportunity was there. Who wouldn’t choose to study one of the most famous works of art? However, these works are still a fundamental part of Warhol’s tangle with the Renaissance as they capture the beginning of his style as well as his constant search for inspiration.

Now, fast forward roughly twenty years to 1984 when Warhol revisits the Renaissance with a series of prints. These prints take pieces of four different works from the Italian Renaissance and portray them in a variety of color schemes. These Details of Renaissance Paintings show the following works: Piero Della Francesca’s Madonna de Duca da Montefeltro, Sandro Botticelli’s Birth of Venus, Leonardo da Vinci’s The Annunciation, and Paolo Uccello’s St. George and the Dragon [figures 3-6]. These works have very little critical reception, but the two works that grasp the most attention are the prints of Birth of Venus and The Annunciation. This is because the artists who created these works were known for their processes and their commitment to creating works of art that have now shaped art history. Also, these prints are fascinating because they fit with Warhol’s “established” pop art style, but they do not fit his expected subject matter. They are also not done being discovered and attributed to Warhol. So, although this collection of prints seems small, and an outlier in Warhol’s career, it can be considered an important point in discussing Andy Warhol’s interest in the Italian Renaissance.

The best and most prominent example of Warhol’s use of Renaissance works came at the end of his life. Warhol created over one hundred prints and paintings of The Last Supper by Leonardo da Vinci from 1986 to 1987. There are six different types of prints of the Last Supper that Warhol produces, all of which were produced for the Last Supper Series shown in Milan on January 22, 1987. Out of all of the iterations of the Last Supper, there are three that capture a sense of what Warhol presented in his other prints of Renaissance works. The first is Camouflage Last Supper (1986), which is a silkscreen print done on canvas [figure 7]. This print takes the original Last Supper painting and places it behind a wall of green camouflage. The camouflage almost completely obscures the original work from view, which is entirely intentional. Another Last Supper appropriation by Andy Warhol is The Last Supper (dove) (1986), which is also a silkscreen print on canvas [figure 8]. This painting combines Warhol’s attention to the Last Supper in his late career with the commercial beginnings of his art career by integrating commercial symbols into the piece, while maintaining religious symbolism. One more print of the Last Supper that Warhol created in 1986, Sixty Last Suppers [figure 9] harkens back to Thirty are Better than One [figure 1] as it has the same compositional format of repetition.

Shortly after his series of The Last Supper, Warhol passed away. This effectively shows that the masterpieces of the Italian Renaissance wound their way throughout Warhol’s career.

[figure 7] Andy Warhol, Camouflage Last Supper, 1986, synthetic polymer paint and silkscreen ink on canvas, 213.36 x 1143cm, Andy Warhol Foundation — [figure 7] Andy Warhol, *Camouflage Last Supper*, 1986, synthetic polymer paint and silkscreen ink on canvas, 213.36 x 1143cm, Andy Warhol Foundation

[figure 8] Andy Warhol, Last Supper (dove), 1986, painting, 302.9 x 668.7cm, Museum of Modern Art — [figure 8] Andy Warhol, *Last Supper (dove)*, 1986, painting, 302.9 x 668.7cm, Museum of Modern Art

[figure 9] Andy Warhol, Sixty Last Suppers, 1986, acrylic and silkscreen ink on canvas, 294.6 x 998.2cm, sold by Christie’s in 2017 to undisclosed collection — [figure 9] Andy Warhol, *Sixty Last Suppers*, 1986, acrylic and silkscreen ink on canvas, 294.6 x 998.2cm, sold by Christie’s in 2017 to undisclosed collection

About the artist:

Andy Warhol was born in 1928 in Pittsburgh Pennsylvania to an Eastern European, Byzantine Catholic family. He went to Carnegie Institute for Pictorial Design, which today would mean Warhol received a degree in a close equivalent to Graphic Design and/or Studio Art. Immediately after he graduated in 1949, Warhol moved to New York City and soon got a job with a department store drawing shoes for their window advertisements. After living in New York for a while, Warhol bought an apartment in 1962 which he quickly turned into a studio that he named the “Silver Factory”, where any of his friends and colleagues could come and work on their next big project.

Warhol became known for his work in a variety of media, including film, paintings, prints, and photography. His most famous works fall into the genre of Pop Art, which is often characterized by bright colors, references to popular culture, and a somewhat abstract approach. This is the type of style that becomes characteristic of his career, along with the repetition of prints in one piece. In the context of this entry, The Details of Renaissance Paintings is the best example of Warhol’s style [figures 3-6].

As for why Warhol was interested in the Italian Renaissance, there are many possible motives that align with his artistic career. One that seems most likely is that Warhol was always willing to experiment with his style, medium, or inspiration, and the Italian Renaissance was just a movement that caught his attention. This seems even more likely if we consider the fact that the Italian Renaissance is often seen as one of the most important moments in art history. It is entirely possible that Warhol created these works as a way of acknowledging where his profession had started and shown that it continues to adapt through time. Though, in the end, looking for a deeper meaning in Warhol’s work is almost impossible since he himself refused to ever acknowledge a deeper purpose. Warhol often expressed that he wanted to have artistic freedom to pursue whatever type of art interested him.

Why is this important to art history:

Warhol’s career was and continues to be, complex in many ways, which makes his career a crucial part of contemporary art history. There were many themes and media that Warhol explored in his work, all of which have expanded critics’ and historians’ ability to acknowledge that artists can explore their style and create an individualized approach to their art. These themes often revolved around contemporary mindsets, which is what allowed the way of thinking about the delivery of art to evolve.

One of these themes that were especially important to Warhol’s career, and is an enduring conversation in the art world, is commercialism. Andy Warhol began his career by creating art for department stores. From that moment onward, commercialization becomes rooted in his style. This commercialization can be seen in Warhol’s constant decision to create multiple prints in one work like Thirty are Better than One and the Details of Renaissance Paintings [figures 1 and 3]. It also appears in works like The Last Supper (dove) [figure 8] where commercial symbols are used as an overlay on The Last Supper. Both of these techniques work to emphasize how well-hidden commercialization can be while also acknowledging that it is not easily separated from art either.

Warhol also weaves themes of icons and religion into his works. Both of these themes are important to consider when looking at Warhol’s work because they link his work back to himself. Warhol grew up in a very religious household, so creating works that deal with religion and religious iconography came easily. This could help to explain why Warhol chose to represent Renaissance works as well since they were mainly focused on religious subject matter.

Warhol uses these themes throughout his career and we can see him use them within his appropriation of Renaissance works as well. In linking these two we can understand that these Renaissance appropriations are an important part of Warhol’s career and should be considered as such.

How can you form your own perspective:

Now that you have had a moment to contemplate Andy Warhol’s interest in the Italian Renaissance it is time to think about this story in your own way. With someone as enigmatic as Warhol, it’s difficult to feel like there is any need to form your own conclusions since there will never be a solid answer. However, I encourage you to consider Warhol’s career and his choice of subject matter. After all, we can’t know why Warhol did anything, after all, he said art is anything you can get away with. So, was Warhol just trying to get away with throwing an unexpected subject matter into his career and random moments for us to guess at? Or was Warhol an artist who always felt comfortable in exploring the different facets of art? Maybe he was just trying to keep things interesting. For contemporary artists, and any artist really, it is always interesting to consider their motivations because these motivations often uncover something even more crucial to appreciating the art that they have created.

Also, as a disclaimer, the research on Andy Warhol and his career is still going on currently. Therefore, my findings and what I wrote about in this post are only thoughts and limited research on these works. Many of the works are not digitized and still, more have not even been cataloged yet. This means that they cannot specifically be attributed to Andy Warhol, even if we know that he made them. With that in mind, feel free to consider my research as an ongoing story that you can now be a part of.

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