Renaissance art

European art of the 15th–17th centuries, associated with the Renaissance, a revival in learning that began in Florence, Italy, with the rise of a spirit of humanism and a new appreciation of the classical Greek and Roman past. Artists, who had previously been ranked as skilled craftsworkers, were elevated for the first time to superior individuals, celebrated for their talent to create. Although the Church continued to have great influence on society, and remained a large patron of the arts, the growth in secular (non-religious) interests resulted in the increasing patronage of wealthy aristocrats, who wanted scenes inspired by classical antiquity. Artists perfected a visual language that held the human form in the highest esteem, following the example of classical art. Nature and human anatomy were studied in great detail by Renaissance artists, as were the rules governing perspective. Figures were painted with a sense of real weight and place, whereas previously they had seemed to ‘float’ against an unrealistic backdrop.

The 15th century is known as the Classical Renaissance; artists such as Masaccio, Filippo Brunelleschi, Donatello, and Sandro Botticelli led the Renaissance in Florence during this period, and Piero della Francesca and Andrea Mantegna elsewhere in Italy. The High Renaissance (early 16th century) covers the careers of Leonardo da Vinci, Raphael Sanzio, Michelangelo Buonarotti in Florence; Titian, Paolo Veronese, and Tintoretto in Venice; and Albrecht Dürer in Germany. Mannerism (around 1520–1600), a style that favoured exaggeration in figure and posture and distorted perspective, forms the final stage of the High Renaissance.