Renaissance Art in Italy (c.

1400-1600)
History, Characteristics, Causes, Techniques

During the two hundred years between 1400 and 1600, Europe witnessed an astonishing revival of drawing,
fine art painting, sculpture and architecture centred on Italy, which we now refer to as the Renaissance
(rinascimento). It was given this name (French for 'rebirth') as a result of La Renaissance - a famous volume
of history written by the historian Jules Michelet (1798-1874) in 1855 - and was better understood after the
publication in 1860 of the landmark book "The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy" (Die Kultur der
Renaissance in Italien), by Jacob Burckhardt (1818-97), Professor of Art History at the University of Basel.

• What Were the Characteristics of the Renaissance?

• What Were the Causes of the Renaissance?
• Why Did the Renaissance Start in Italy?
• Renaissance Artists
• Effects of the Renaissance on Painting & Sculpture
• Renaissance Chronology
• History of Renaissance Art
• Greatest Renaissance Paintings
• Best Collections of Renaissance Art

What Were the Characteristics of the Renaissance?

In very simple terms, the Italian Renaissance re-established Western art

according to the principles of classical Greek art, especially Greek
sculptureand painting, which provided much of the basis for the Grand Tour,
and which remained unchallenged until Pablo Picasso and Cubism.

From the early 14th century, in their search for a new set of artistic values
and a response to the courtly International Gothic style, Italian artists and
thinkers became inspired by the ideas and forms of ancient Greece and Rome.
This was perfectly in tune with their desire to create a universal, even noble,
form of art which could express the new and more confident mood of the
times.

Mona Lisa (1503-6) By Leonardo. Renaissance Philosophy of Humanism

ART HISTORIANS
For the leading scholars and critics
of Renaissance painting, drawing
and sculpture, see:
Bernard Berenson (1865-1959)
Kenneth Clark (1903-83)
Leo Steinberg (1920-2011)
Above all, Renaissance art was driven by the new notion of "Humanism," a
philosophy which had been the foundation for many of the achievements (eg.
democracy) of pagan ancient Greece. Humanism downplayed religious and
secular dogma and instead attached the greatest importance to the dignity
and worth of the individual.
Detail showing The Son of Man from
The Last Judgement fresco on the
wall of the Sistine Chapel in Rome,
(1536-41) by Michelangelo. One of
the great works of Biblical art in
the Vatican.

Effect of Humanism on Art

Detail showing the face of Venus
from the Birth Of Venus (c.1486)
By Botticelli. One of the great
examples of mythological painting
of the Florentine Renaissance.
RELIGIOUS ARTS
Despite its humanism, the Italian
Renaissance produced numerous
masterpieces of religious art, in
the form of architectural designs,
altarpieces, sculpture & painting.
In the visual arts, humanism stood for (1) The emergence of the individual
figure, in place of stereotyped, or symbolic figures. (2) Greater realism and
consequent attention to detail, as reflected in the development of linear
perspective and the increasing realism of human faces and bodies; this new
approach helps to explain why classical sculpture was so revered, and why
Byzantine art fell out of fashion. (3) An emphasis on and promotion of
virtuous action: an approach echoed by the leading art theorist of the
Renaissance Leon Battista Alberti (1404-72) when he declared, "happiness
cannot be gained without good works and just and righteous deeds".
The promotion of virtuous action reflected the growing idea that man, not
fate or God, controlled human destiny, and was a key reason why history
painting (that is, pictures with uplifting 'messages') became regarded as the
highest form of painting. Of course, the exploration of virtue in the visual
arts also involved an examination of vice and human evil.

School of Athens (1509-11) by Raphael,

in the Stanza della Segnatura in the
Raphael Rooms at the Vatican.
PAINT-PIGMENTS, COLOURS, HUES
For details of the colour pigments
used by Renaissance painters
see: Renaissance Colour Palette.
Causes of the Renaissance
What caused this rebirth of the visual arts is still unclear. Although Europe
had emerged from the Dark Ages under Charlemagne (c.800), and had seen
the resurgence of the Christian Church with its 12th/13th-century Gothic
stylebuilding program, the 14th century in Europe witnessed several
catastrophic harvests, the Black Death (1346), and a continuing war between
England and France. Hardly ideal conditions for an outburst of creativity, let
alone a sustained rinascita of paintings, drawings, sculptures and new
buildings. Moreover, the Church - the biggest patron of the arts - was racked
with disagreements about spiritual and secular issues.
Increased Prosperity
However, more positive currents were also evident. In Italy, Venice and
Genoa had grown rich on trade with the Orient, while Florence was a centre of
wool, silk and jewellery art, and was home to the fabulous wealth of the
cultured and art-conscious Medici family.
Prosperity was also coming to Northern Europe, as evidenced by the
establishment in Germany of the Hanseatic League of cities. This increasing
wealth provided the financial support for a growing number of commissions of
large public and private art projects, while the trade routes upon which it was
based greatly assisted the spread of ideas and thus contributed to the growth
of the movement across the Continent.
Allied to this spread of ideas, which incidentally speeded up significantly with
the invention of printing, there was an undoubted sense of impatience at the
slow progress of change. After a thousand years of cultural and intellectual
starvation, Europe (and especially Italy) was anxious for a re-birth.
Weakness of the Church
Paradoxically, the weak position of the Church gave added momentum to the
Renaissance. First, it allowed the spread of Humanism - which in bygone eras
would have been strongly resisted; second, it prompted later Popes like Pope
Julius II (1503-13) to spend extravagantly on architecture, sculpture and
painting in Rome and in the Vatican (eg. see Vatican Museums, notably
theSistine Chapel frescoes) - in order to recapture their lost influence. Their
response to the Reformation (c.1520) - known as the Counter Reformation, a
particularly doctrinal type of Christian art - continued this process to the end
of the sixteenth century.
An Age of Exploration
The Renaissance era in art history parallels the onset of the great Western
age of discovery, during which appeared a general desire to explore all
aspects of nature and the world. European naval explorers discovered new
sea routes, new continents and established new colonies. In the same way,
European architects, sculptors and painters demonstrated their own desire for
new methods and knowledge. According to the Italian painter, architect, and
Renaissance commentator Giorgio Vasari (1511-74), it was not merely the
growing respect for the art of classical antiquity that drove the Renaissance,
but also a growing desire to study and imitate nature.

Why Did the Renaissance Start in Italy?

In addition to its status as the richest trading nation with both Europe and the
Orient, Italy was blessed with a huge repository of classical ruins and
artifacts. Examples of Roman architecture were found in almost every town
and city, and Roman sculpture, including copies of lost sculptures from
ancient Greece, had been familiar for centuries. In addition, the decline of
Constantinople - the capital of the Byzantine Empire - caused many Greek
scholars to emigrate to Italy, bringing with them important texts and
knowledge of classical Greek civilization. All these factors help explain why
the Renaissance started in Italy. For more, see Florentine Renaissance (1400-
90).

For details of how the movement developed in different Italian cities, see:

• Sienese School of Painting (eg. Lorenzetti brothers, Sassetta);

• Renaissance in Florence (eg. Giotto, Masaccio, Brunelleschi, Leonardo);
• Renaissance in Rome Under the Popes (eg. Raphael and Michelangelo);
• Renaissance in Venice (eg. Mantegna, Bellini family, Titian, Tintoretto).

Renaissance Artists

If the framework for the Renaissance was laid by economic, social and
political factors, it was the talent of Italian artists that drove it forward. The
most important painters, sculptors, architects and designers of the Italian
Renaissance during the 14th, 15th and 16th centuries include, in
chronological order:

Cimabue (c.1240-1302)
Noted for his frescos at Assisi.
Giotto di Bondone (1267-1337)
Scrovegni Arena Chapel frescos.
Gentile da Fabriano (1370-1427)
Influential Gothic style painter.
Jacopo della Quercia (c.1374-1438)
Influential sculptor from Siena.
Lorenzo Ghiberti (1378-1455)
Sculptor of "Gates of Paradise"
Donatello (1386-1466)
Best early Renaissance sculptor
Paolo Uccello (1397-1475)
Famous for work on perspective.
Tommaso Masaccio (1401-1428)
Greatest early Florentine painter.
Piero della Francesca (1420-92)
Pioneer of linear perspective.
Andrea Mantegna (1430-1506)
Noted for illusionistic foreshortening techniques.
Donato Bramante (1444-1514)
Top High Renaissance architect.
Alessandro Botticelli (1445-1510)
Famous for mythological painting.
Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519)
Creator of Mona Lisa, Last Supper.
Raphael (1483-1520)
Greatest High Renaissance painter.
Michelangelo (1475-1564)
Genius painter & sculptor.
Titian (1477-1576)
Greatest Venetian colourist.
Andrea del Sarto (1486-1530)
Leader of High Renaissance in Florence.
Correggio (1489-1534)
Famous for illusionistic quadratura frescoes.
Andrea Palladio (1508-80)
Dominated Venetian Renaissance architecture, later imitated in Palladianism.
Tintoretto (1518-1594)
Religious Mannerist painter.
Paolo Veronese (1528-1588)
Colourist follower of Titian.

General List of Renaissance Painters & Sculptors

ITALY & SPAIN

c.1280-1400 - Proto-Renaissance Artists
c.1400-1490 - Early Renaissance Artists
c.1490-1530 - High Renaissance Artists
c.1530-1600 - Mannerist Artists

NORTHERN EUROPE
c.1400-1600 - Northern Renaissance Artists.

SCULPTORS
c.1400-1600 - Renaissance Sculptors.

Effects of the Renaissance on Painting and Sculpture

As referred to above, the Italian Renaissance was noted for four things. (1) A
reverent revival of Classical Greek/Roman art forms and styles; (2) A faith in
the nobility of Man (Humanism); (3) The mastery of illusionistic painting
techniques, maximizing 'depth' in a picture, including: linear
perspective,foreshortening and, later, quadratura; and (4) The naturalistic
realism of its faces and figures, enhanced by oil painting techniques
like sfumato.

Renaissance Painting Techniques

• Linear Perspective
Example: Flagellation of Christ by Piero della Francesca.
• Foreshortening
Example: Lamentation over the Dead Christ by Mantegna.
• Quadratura
Example: Camera degli Sposi frescoes by Mantegna.
• Sfumato
Example: Mona Lisa by Leonardo da Vinci.

In Northern Europe, the Renaissance was characterized by advances in the

representation of light though space and its reflection from different surfaces;
and (most visibly) in the achievement of supreme realism in easel-portraiture
and still life. This was due in part to the fact that most Northern Renaissance
artists began using oil paint in the early 15th century, in preference
to tempera or fresco which (due to climatic and other reasons) were still the
preferred painting methods in Italy. Oil painting allowed richer colour and,
due to its longer drying time, could be reworked for many weeks, permitting
the achievement of finer detail and greater realism. Oils quickly spread to
Italy: first to Venice, whose damp climate was less suited to tempera, then
Florence and Rome. (See also: Art Movements, Periods, Schools, for a brief
guide to other styles.)

Among other things, this meant that while Christianity remained the dominant
theme or subject for most visual art of the period, Evangelists, Apostles and
members of the Holy Family were depicted as real people, in real-life postures
and poses, expressing real emotions. At the same time, there was greater use
of stories from classical mythology - showing, for example, icons like Venus
the Goddess of Love - to illustrate the message of Humanism. For more about
this, see: Famous Paintings Analyzed.

As far as plastic art was concerned, Italian Renaissance Sculpture reflected

the primacy of the human figure, notably the male nude. Both Donatello and
Michelangelo relied heavily on the human body, but used it neither as a
vehicle for restless Gothic energy nor for static Classic nobility, but for deeper
spiritual meaning. Two of the greatest Renaissance sculptures were: David by
Donatello (1440-43, Bargello, Florence) and David by Michelangelo(1501-4,
Academy of Arts Gallery, Florence). Note: For artists and styles inspired by
the arts of classical antiquity, see: Classicism in Art (800 onwards).

Raised Status of Painters and Sculptors

Up until the Renaissance, painters and sculptors had been considered merely
as skilled workers, not unlike talented interior decorators. However, in
keeping with its aim of producing thoughtful, classical art, the Italian
Renaissance raised the professions of painting and sculpture to a new level.
In the process, prime importance was placed on 'disegno' - an Italian word
whose literal meaning is 'drawing' but whose sense incorporates the 'whole
design' of a work of art - rather than 'colorito', the technique of applying
coloured paints/pigments. Disegno constituted the intellectual component of
painting and sculpture, which now became the profession of thinking-artists
not decorators. See also: Best Renaissance Drawings.
Influence on Western Art

The ideas and achievements of both Early and High Renaissance artists had a
huge impact on the painters and sculptors who followed during
thecinquecento and later, beginning with the Fontainebleau School (c.1528-
1610) in France. Renaissance art theory was officially taken up and
promulgated (alas too rigidly) by all the official academies of art across
Europe, including, notably, the Accademia di San Luca in Rome, the
Accademia del Disegno in Florence, the French Académie des Beaux-Arts in
Paris, and the Royal Academy in London. This theoretical approach, known as
'academic art' regulared numerous aspects of fine art. For example, in 1669,
Andre Felibien, Secretary to the French Academy, annunciated a hierarchy of
painting genres, modelled on Renaissance philosophy, as follows: (1) History
Painting; (2) Portrait art; (3) Genre Painting; (4) Landscape; (5) Still Life.

In short, the main contribution of the Italian Renaissance to the history of art,
lay in its promotion of classical Greek values. As a result, Western painting
and sculpture developed largely along classical lines. And although modern
artists, from Picasso onwards, have explored new media and art-forms, the
main model for Western art remains Greek Antiquity as interpreted by the
Renaissance.

Renaissance Chronology

It is customary to classify Italian Renaissance Art into a number of different

but overlapping periods:

• The Proto-Renaissance Period (1300-1400)

----- Pre-Renaissance Painting (1300-1400)
• The Early Renaissance Period (1400-1490)
• The High Renaissance Period (1490-1530)
• The Northern Renaissance (1430-1580)
----- Netherlandish Renaissance (1430-1580)
----- German Renaissance (1430-1580)
• The Mannerism Period (1530-1600)

[The High Renaissance developed into Mannerism, about the time Rome was
sacked in 1527.]

This chronology largely follows the account given in the authoritative book
"Vite de' più eccellenti architetti, pittori, et scultori Italiani" by the
Renaissance commentator Giorgio Vasari (1511-74).

History of Renaissance Art

The Renaissance, or Rinascimento, was largely fostered by the post-feudal

growth of the independent city, like that found in Italy and the southern
Netherlands. Grown wealthy through commerce and industry, these cities
typically had a democratic organization of guilds, though political democracy
was kept at bay usually by some rich and powerful individual or family. Good
examples include 15th century Florence - the focus of Italian Renaissance art
- and Bruges - one of the centres of Flemish painting. They were twin pillars
of European trade and finance. Art and as a result decorative craft flourished:
in the Flemish city under the patronage of the Dukes of Burgundy, the
wealthy merchant class and the Church; in Florence under that of the wealthy
Medici family.

In this congenial atmosphere, painters took an increasing interest in the

representation of the visible world instead of being confined to that
exclusive concern with the spirituality of religion that could only be given
visual form in symbols and rigid conventions. The change, sanctioned by the
tastes and liberal attitude of patrons (including sophisticated churchmen) is
already apparent in Gothic painting of the later Middle Ages, and culminates
in what is known as the International Gothic style of the fourteenth century
and the beginning of the fifteenth. Throughout Europe in France, Flanders,
Germany, Italy and Spain, painters, freed from monastic disciplines, displayed
the main characteristics of this style in the stronger narrative interest of
their religious paintings, the effort to give more humanity of sentiment and
appearance to the Madonna and other revered images, more individual
character to portraiture in general and to introduce details of landscape,
animal and bird life that the painter-monk of an earlier day would have
thought all too mundane. These, it may be said, were characteristics also of
Renaissance painting, but a vital difference appeared early in the fifteenth
century. Such representatives of the International Gothic as Simone Martini
(1285-1344) of the Sienese School of painting, and the Umbrian-born Gentile
da Fabriano (c.1370-1427), were still ruled by the idea of making an elegant
surface design with a bright, unrealistic pattern of colour. The realistic aim of
a succeeding generation involved the radical step of penetrating through the
surface to give a new sense of space, recession and three-dimensional form.

This decisive advance in realism first appeared about the same time in Italy
and the Netherlands, more specifically in the work of Masaccio (1401-28) at
Florence, and of Jan van Eyck (c.1390-1441) at Bruges. Masaccio, who was
said by Delacroix to have brought about the greatest revolution that painting
had ever known, gave a new impulse to Early Renaissance painting in his
frescoes in the Brancacci Chapel of Santa Maria del Carmine.

See in particular: Expulsion from the Garden of Eden (1425-6, Brancacci

Chapel), and Holy Trinity (1428, Santa Maria Novella).

The figures in these narrative compositions seemed to stand and move in

ambient space; they were modelled with something of a sculptor's feeling for
three dimensions, while gesture and expression were varied in a way that
established not only the different characters of the persons depicted, but also
their interrelation. In this respect he anticipated the special study of Leonardo
in The Last Supper (1495-98, Convent of Santa Maria delle Grazie, Milan).

Though Van Eyck also created a new sense of space and vista, there is an
obvious difference between his work and that of Masaccio which also
illuminates the distinction between the remarkable Flemish school of the
fifteenth century and the Italian Early Renaissance. Both were admired as
equally 'modern' but they were distinct in medium and idea. Italy had a long
tradition of mural painting in fresco, which in itself made for a certain
largeness of style, whereas the Netherlandish painter, working in an oil
medium on panel paintings of relatively small size, retained some of the
minuteness of the miniature painter. Masaccio, indeed, was not a lone
innovator but one who developed the fresco narrative tradition of his great
Proto-Renaissance forerunner in Florence, Giotto di Bondone (1267-1337).
See, for instance, the latter's Scrovegni Chapel Frescoes (c.1303-10, Padua).

Florence had a different orientation also as a centre of classical learning and

philosophic study. The city's intellectual vigour made it the principal seat of
the Renaissance in the fifteenth century and was an influence felt in every art.
Scholars who devoted themselves to the study and translation of classical
texts, both Latin and Greek, were the tutors in wealthy and noble households
that came to share their literary enthusiasm. This in turn created the desire
for pictorial versions of ancient history and legend. The painter's range of
subject was greatly extended in consequence and he now had further
problems of representation to solve.

In this way, what might have been simply a nostalgia for the past and a
retrograde step in art became a move forward and an exciting process of
discovery. The human body, so long excluded from fine art painting and
medieval sculpture by religious scruple - except in the most meagre and
unrealistic form - gained a new importance in the portrayal of the gods,
goddesses and heroes of classical myth. Painters had to become reacquainted
with anatomy, to understand the relation of bone and muscle, the dynamics
of movement. In the picture now treated as a stage instead of a flat plane, it
was necessary to explore and make use of the science oflinear perspective.
In addition, the example of classical sculpture was an incentive to combine
naturalism with an ideal of perfect proportion and physical beauty.

Painters and sculptors in their own fashion asserted the dignity of man as the
humanist philosophers did, and evinced the same thirst for knowledge.
Extraordinary indeed is the list of great Florentine artists of the fifteenth
century and, not least extraordinary, the number of them that practised more
than one art or form of expression.

In every way the remarkable Medici family fostered the intellectual climate
and the developments in the arts that made Florence the mainspring of the
Renaissance. The fortune derived from the banking house founded by
Giovanni de' Medici (c.1360-1429), with sixteen branches in the cities of
Europe, was expended on this promotion of culture, especially by the two
most distinguished members of the family, Cosimo, Giovanni's son (1389-
1464), and his grandson Lorenzo (1448-92), who in their own gifts as men of
finance, politics and diplomacy, their love of books, their generous patronage
of the living and their appreciation of antiques of many kinds, were typical of
the universality that was so much in the spirit of the Renaissance.

The equation of the philosophy of Plato and Christian doctrine in the academy
instituted by Cosimo de' Medici seems to have sanctioned the division of a
painter's activity, as so often happened, between the religious and the pagan
subject. The intellectual atmosphere the Medici created was an invigorating
element that caused Florence to outdistance neighbouring Siena. Though no
other Italian city of the fifteenth century could claim such a constellation of
genius in art, those that came nearest to Florence were the cities likewise
administered by enlightened patrons. Ludovico Gonzaga ( 1414-78)
Marquess of Mantua, was a typical Renaissance ruler in his aptitude for
politics and diplomacy, in his encouragement of humanist learning and in the
cultivated taste that led him to form a great art collection and to employ
Andrea Mantegna (1431-1506) as court painter.

Of similar calibre was Federigo Montefeltro, Duke of Urbino. Like Ludovico

Gonzaga, he had been a pupil of the celebrated humanist teacher, Vittorino
da Feltre, whose school at Mantua combined manly exercises with the study
of Greek and Latin authors and inculcated the humanist belief in the all-round
improvement possible to man. At the court of Urbino, which set the standard
of good manners and accomplishment described by Baldassare Castiglione in
Il Cortigiano, the Duke entertained a number of painters, principal among
them the great Piero della Francesca (1420-92).

The story of Renaissance painting after Masaccio brings us first to the

piousFra Angelico (c.1400-55), born earlier but living much longer. Something
of the Gothic style remains in his work but the conventual innocence, which is
perhaps what first strikes the eye, is accompanied by a mature firmness of
line and sense of structure. This is evident in such paintings of his later years
as The Adoration of the Magi now in the Louvre and the frescoes illustrating
the lives of St. Stephen and St. Lawrence, frescoed in the Vatican for Pope
Nicholas V in the late 1440s. They show him to have been aware of, and able
to turn to advantage, the changing and broadening attitude of his time. See
also his series of paintings on The Annunciation (c.1450, San Marco Museum).
His pupil Benozzo Gozzoli (c.1421-97) nevertheless kept to the gaily
decorative colour and detailed incident of the International Gothic style in
such a work as the panoramic Procession of the Magi in the Palazzo Riccardi,
Florence, in which he introduced the equestrian portrait of Lorenzo de' Medici.

Nearer to Fra Angelico than Masaccio was Fra Filippo Lippi (c.1406-69), a
Carmelite monk in early life and a protege of Cosimo de' Medici, who looked
indulgently on the artist's various escapades, amorous and otherwise. Fra
Filippo, in the religious subjects he painted exclusively, both in fresco and
panel, shows the tendency to celebrate the charm of an idealized human type
that contrasts with the urge of the fifteenth century towards technical
innovation. He is less distinctive in purely aesthetic or intellectual quality than
in his portrayal of the Madonna as an essentially feminine being. His idealized
model, who was slender of contour, dark-eyed and with raised eyebrows,
slightly retrousse nose and small mouth, provided an iconographical pattern
for others. A certain wistfulness of expression was perhaps transmitted to his
pupil, Sandro Botticelli (1445-1510).

In Botticelli's paintings, much of the foregoing development of the

Renaissance is summed up. He excelled in that grace of feature and form that
Fra Filippo had aimed to give and of which Botticelli's contemporary,Domenico
Ghirlandaio (1449-94), also had his delightful version in frescoes and
portraits. He interpreted in a unique pictorial fashion the neo-Platonism of
Lorenzo de Medici's humanist philosophers. The network of ingenious allegory
in which Marsilio Ficino, the tutor of Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco de' Medici (a
cousin of Lorenzo the Magnificent), sought to demonstrate a relation between
Grace, Beauty and Faith, has equivalent subtlety in La Primavera (c.1482-3,
Uffizi) and the Birth of Venus (c.1484-6, Uffizi) executed for Lorenzo's villa.
The poetic approach to the classics of Angelo Poliziano, also a tutor of the
Medici family, may be seen reflected in Botticelli's art. Though his span of life
extended into the period of the High Renaissance, he still represents the
youth of the movement in his delight in clear colours and exquisite natural
detail. Perhaps in the wistful beauty of his Aphrodite something may be found
of the nostalgia for the Middle Ages towards which, eventually, when the
fundamentalist monk Savonaroladenounced the Medici and all their works, he
made his passionate gesture of return.

The nostalgia as well as the purity of Botticelli's linear design, as yet

unaffected by emphasis on light and shade, made him the especial object of
Pre-Raphaelite admiration in the nineteenth century. But, as in other
Renaissance artists, there was an energy in him that imparted to his linear
rhythms a capacity for intense emotional expression as well as a gentle
refinement. The distance of the Renaissance from the inexpressive calm of
the classical period as represented by statues of Venus or Apollo, resides in
this difference of spirit or intention even if unconsciously revealed. The
expression of physical energy which at Florence took the form, naturally
enough, of representations of male nudes, gives an unclassical violence to the
work of the painter and sculptor Antonio Pollaiuolo (1426-98). Pollaiuolo was
one of the first artists to dissect human bodies in order to follow exactly the
play of bone, muscle and tendon in the living organism, with such dynamic
effects as appear in the muscular tensions of struggle in his bronze
of Hercules and Antaeus (Florence, Bargello) and the movements of the
archers in his painting The Martyrdom of St. Sebastian (NG, London). The
same sculptural emphasis can be seen in frescoes by the lesser-known but
more influential artist Andrea del Castagno (c.1420-57).

Luca Signorelli (c.1441-1523), though associated with the Umbrian School as

the pupil of Piero della Francesca, was strongly influenced by the Florentine
Pollaiuolo in his treatment of the figure. With less anatomical subtlety but
with greater emphasis on outward bulges and striations of muscle and sinew,
he too aimed at dynamic effects of movement, obtaining them by sudden
explosions of gesture.

It was a direction of effort that seems to lead naturally and inevitably to the
achievement of Michelangelo (1475-1654). Though there are manifest
differences in mode of thought and style between his Last Lodgement in the
Sistine Chapel and Signorelli's version in the frescoes in Orvieto Cathedral,
they have in common a formidable energy. It was a quality which made them
appear remote from the balance and harmony of classical art. Raphael (1483-
1520) was much nearer to the classical spirit in the Apollo of his Parnassus in
the Vatican and the Galatea in the Farnesina, Rome. One of the most striking
of the regional contrasts of the Renaissance period is between the basically
austere and intellectual character of art in Tuscany in the rendering of the
figure as compared with the sensuous languor of the female nudes painted in
Venice by Giorgione (1477-1510) and Titian (c.1485-1576). (For more, please
see: Venetian Portrait Painting c.1400-1600.) Though even in this respect
Florentine science was not without its influence. The soft gradation of shadow
devised by Leonardo da Vinci to give subtleties of modelling was adopted by
Giorgione and at Parma by Antonio Allegri da Correggio (1489-1534) as a
means of heightening the voluptuous charm of a Venus, an Antiope or an Io.

The Renaissance masters not only made a special study of anatomy but also
of perspective, mathematical proportion and, in general, the science of space.
The desire of the period for knowledge may partly account for this abstract
pursuit, but it held more specific origins and reasons. Linear perspective was
firstly the study of architects in drawings and reconstructions of the classical
types of building they sought to revive. In this respect, the great architect
Filippo Brunelleschi (1377-1446) was a leader in his researches in Rome. In
Florence he gave a demonstration of perspective in a drawing of the piazza of
San Giovanni that awakened the interest of other artists, his friend Masaccio
in particular. The architect Leon Battista Alberti (1404-72) was another
propagator of the scientific theory. Painters concerned with a picture as a
three-dimensional illusion realized the importance of perspective as a
contribution to the effect of space - an issue which involved techniques of
illusionistic mural painting such as quadratura, first practised by Mantegna at
the Ducal Palace in Mantua in his Camera degli Sposi frescoes (1465-74).

Paolo Uccello (1397-1475) was one of the earl promoters of the science at
Florence. His painting of the Battle of San Romano in the National Gallery,
London, with its picturesqueness of heraldry, is a beautifully calculated series
of geometric forms and mathematical intervals. Even the broken lances on
the ground seem so arranged as to lead the eye to a vanishing point. His
foreshortening of a knight prone on the ground was an exercise of skill that
Andrea Mantegna was to emulate. It was Mantegna who brought the new
science of art to Venice.

In the complex interchange of abstract and mathematical ideas and

influences, Piero della Francesca stands out as the greatest personality.
Though an Umbrian, born in the little town of Borgo San Sepolcro, he imbibed
the atmosphere of Florence and Florentine art as a young man, when he
worked there with the Venetian-born Domenico Veneziano (c.1410-61).
Domenico had assimilated the Tuscan style and had his own example of
perspective to give, as in the beautiful Annunciation now in the Fitzwilliam
Museum, Cambridge, though Piero probably gained his scientific attitude
towards design from the three pioneers of research, Brunelleschi, Alberti and
Donatello (1386-1466), the greatest sculptor in quattrocento Florence.

Classical in ordered design and largeness of conception, but without the touch
of antiquarianism that is to be found in Mantegna, Piero was an influence on
many painters. His interior perspectives of Renaissance architecture which
added an element of geometrical abstraction to his figure compositions were
well taken note of by his Florentine contemporary, Andrea del
Castagno(c.1420-57). A rigidly geometrical setting is at variance with and yet
emphasizes the flexibility of human expression in the Apostles in Andrea's
masterpiece The Last Supper in the Convent of Sant' Apollonia,
Florence.Antonello da Messina (1430-1479) who introduced the Flemish
technique of oil painting to Venice brought also a sense of form derived from
Piero della Francesca that in turn was stimulating in its influence on Giovanni
Bellini(1430-1516), diverting him from a hard linear style like that of
Mantegna and contributing to his mature greatness as leader of Venetian
Painting, and the teacher of Giorgione and Titian.

Of the whole wonderful development of the Italian Renaissance in the

fifteenth century, Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo were the heirs.
Theuniversality of the artist was one crucial aspect of the century. Between
architect, sculptor, painter, craftsman and man of letters there had been no
rigid distinction. Alberti was architect, sculptor, painter, musician, and writer
of treatises on the theory of the arts. Andrea del Verrocchio (1435-88), an
early master of Leonardo, is described as a goldsmith, painter, sculptor and
musician: and in sculpture could vie with any master.
But Leonardo andMichelangelo displayed this universality to a supreme
degree. Leonardo, the engineer, the prophetic inventor, the learned student
of nature in every aspect, the painter of haunting masterpieces, has never
failed to excite wonder. See, for instance, his Virgin of the Rocks (1483-5,
Louvre, Paris) andLady with an Ermine (1490, Czartoryski Museum, Krakow).
As much may be said of Michelangelo, the sculptor, painter, architect and
poet. The crown of Florentine achievement, they also mark the decline of the
city's greatness. Rome, restored to splendour by ambitious popes after long
decay, claimed Michelangelo, together with Raphael, to produce the
monumental conceptions of High Renaissance painting: two absolute
masterpieces being Michelangelo's Genesis fresco (1508-12, Sistine Chapel
ceiling, Rome), which includes the famous Creation of Adam (1511-12), and
Raffaello Sanzio'sSistine Madonna (1513-14, Gemaldegalerie Alte Meister,
Dresden). In addition, both artists were appointed architect-in-charge of the
new St Peter's Basilica in Rome, a symbol of the city's transformation from
medieval to Renaissance city. Leonardo, absorbed in his researches was
finally lured away to France. Yet in these great men the genius of Florence
lived on. For the story of the Late Renaissance, during the period (c.1530-
1600) - a period which includes the greatest Venetian altarpieces as well as
Michelangelo's magnificent but foreboding Last Judgment fresco on the altar
wall of the Sistine Chapel - see: Mannerist Painting in Italy. See also: Titian
and Venetian Colour Painting c.1500-76.

Best Collections of Renaissance Art

The following Italian galleries have major collections of Renaissance paintings
or sculptures.

• Uffizi Gallery (Florence)

• Pitti Palace (Florence)
• Vatican Museums (Rome)
• Doria Pamphilj Gallery (Rome)
• Capodimonte Museum (Naples)
• Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum (Boston, USA)