The Influence of the Renaissance on Surrealism

This thesis will investigate the relationship between Surrealism and Renaissance art. Ostensibly, Surrealism rejected the Renaissance as a manifestation of the rational classicism and bourgeois individualism that Surrealists were rebelling against. André Breton, the leading theorist of Surrealism, stated his opposition to Renaissance art and culture in several texts, including the first Surrealist Manifesto of 1924. Yet a recurring influence of Renaissance art can be identified in the works of leading surrealist artists like Salvador Dalí and Max Ernst, or even in Breton's own writings. The Italian Renaissance artists chosen for analysis are Paolo Uccello, Piero di Cosimo and Leonardo da Vinci; the Northern Renaissance artists are Hieronymus Bosch, Matthias Grünewald and Peter Brueghel the Elder. The main questions that will be explored are the following:

1. How were Surrealist artists influenced by these Renaissance artists?

2. Can elements of irrationality and unconscious creativity be identified in Renaissance art?

3. Was the Renaissance more 'surreal' than Breton allowed?

4. Why did Surrealists like Dalí and Ernst have an obsessive interest in Renaissance art and how did this manifest itself?

5. Why did the Surrealists and other twentieth-century artists employ figures, symbols, themes and motifs deriving from Italian and Northern European Renaissance art?