Early Renaissance

Renaissance

The origins of renaissance art can be traced all the way back to Italy during the late 13th and early 14th centuries. Italian scholars saw themselves as reawakening to the ideals and achievements of classical Roman culture. The work of Italian masters such as Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo and Raphael. In addition to its expression of classical Greco-Roman traditions, renaissance art sought to capture the experience of the individual and the beauty of the mysteriousness of the natural world

In the later 14th century, Renaissance was stifled by plague and war, and its influences did not come again until the first years of the next century. In 1401, the sculptor Lorenzo Ghiberti (c. 1378-1455) won a major competition to design a new set of bronze doors for the Baptistery of the cathedral of Florence, beating out contemporaries such as the architect Filippo Brunelleschi (1377-1446) and the young

He was the dominant sculptor of the High Renaissance, inventing pieces such as the Pietà in St. Peter’s Cathedral (1499) and the David in his native Florence (1501-04). He carved the latter by hand from an enormous marble block; the famous statue. Though Michelangelo considered himself a sculptor first and foremost, he achieved greatness as a painter as well, notably with his giant fresco covering the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, completed over four years (1508-12) and depicting various scenes from Genesis.

Raphael Sanzio, the youngest of the three great High Renaissance masters, learned from both da Vinci and Michelangelo. His paintings–most notably “The School of Athens” (1508-11), painted in the Vatican at the same time that Michelangelo was working on the Sistine Chapel–skillfully contained the classical ideals of beauty, serenity and harmony. Among the other great Italian artists working during this period were Titan, Jan Van Eyck and