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leading figures of Early Renaissance painting in Florence, and is best known for the Madonna dell' Umilta, one of the finest panel paintings of the Early Renaissance.

The versatile Vecchietta (Lorenzo di Pietro) (1412-1480) produced high quality paintings and sculptures, the latter owing a strong debt to Donatello (1386-1466) who lived in Siena during the period 1457-59. Vecchietta also completed a number of exquisite International Gothic illuminations for an edition of Dante's Divine Comedy (1440, British Library). The Venetian painter Carlo Crivelli (1430/351495) was another conservative whose densely ornamented works are reminiscent of the Paduan tradition of Francesco Squarcione (1395-1468) and Andrea Mantegna (1431-1506). Matteo di Giovanni (1435-1495) personifies the progress of Sienese painting in the 15th century. He began by emphasizing line and pattern before developing an interest interest in contemporary Florentine art. Possessed of an elegant, decorative Sienese style, he became one of the most popular painters of the second half of the 15th century.

The multi-talented painter, sculptor, engineer and architect Francesco Di Giorgio Martini (1439-1501) was trained by Vecchietta, worked for the celebrated Federigo da Montefeltro of Urbino, painted the monochromatic frescoes in the Bichi Chapel of Sant'Agostino, designed the Church of the Madonna del Calcinaio outside Cortona, sculpted a set of bronze angels for the high altar of the Sienese Cathedral, before returning there as director of works. Benvenuto Di Giovanni (1436-1518) produced a number of derivative panel paintings, frescoes, manuscripts and designs for Siena Cathedral, while Neroccio de' Landi (1445-1500), a partner of Francesco di Giorgio until 1475, was another pupil of Vecchietta, who is known for his refined elegance and delicate colouring. His greatest work is a Portrait of a Girl in the National Gallery of Art in Washington DC. His exquisite colours, gold decoration, and controlled draughtsmanship paved the way for the emergence of International Gothic. This refined, cosmopolitan and courtly trend was also presaged by Simone Martini (1284-1344), noted for the Maesta in the Palazzo Pubblico, Siena (1315), and his fresco painting in the lower church of S. Francesco at Assisi (1320-30). Yet Martini was at heart a large-scale decorative illustrator, notably of illuminated manuscripts. Almost all his Medieval manuscript illumination has been lost - save for a frontispiece to a copy of Virgil (Milan, Biblioteca Ambrosiana) that belonged to Petrarch - but evidence of his impact on Gothic illuminated manuscripts is clear. His sumptuous decoration can be seen as the end of an era, where Giotto's realism ushers in the Proto-Renaissance and marks a new beginning. Martini's main follower was Lippo Memmi (c.1295-1356).

By comparison, the brothers Pietro Lorenzetti and Ambrogio Lorenzetti were greatly influenced by Giotto and preferred narrative realism to Simone Martini's decorative style. Even so, as former pupils of Duccio, several of their works (eg. Carmelite Altarpiece, 1329, Pinacoteca Nazionale, Siena) owe a debt to Duccio and Martini. Ambrogio's best pictures are the frescoes representing the Effects of

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Good and Bad Government (1339, Palazzo Pubblico, Siena), which art historians often cite as the apogee of naturalism in 14th-century Italian painting.

Sienese School of Painting: 15th Century

During the 15th century the two leading painters of the Sienese School were Sassetta (Stefano di Giovanni) (c.1395-1450) and Giovanni di Paolo (1403-1483). Sassetta, an artist who delighted in the slender figurative forms of International Gothic and in the clarity of Early Renaissance pictorial space, is famous for the St Francis Altarpiece painted for Borgo S. Sepolcro (1437-1444, in the Louvre, and National Gallery, London). Giovanni di Paolo's mature work is recognizable for the harshness of its colour, its elongated forms and its overall dreamlike quality. His most important paintings are the panels featuring the life of John the Baptist.

Other 15th century Sienese painters include Taddeo Di Bartolo (1362-1422), tutor of Domenico Di Bartolo (1400-1447), noted for his frescoes on Roman Republican heroes and civic virtues (1406-14) in the Palazzo Pubblico. His conservative style harked back to earlier works by Simone Martini and the Lorenzetti brothers. Domenico Di Bartolo went on to teach Piero della Francesca (1415-92), one of the leading figures of Early Renaissance painting in Florence, and is best known for the Madonna dell' Umilta, one of the finest panel paintings of the Early Renaissance.

The versatile Vecchietta (Lorenzo di Pietro) (1412-1480) produced high quality paintings and sculptures, the latter owing a strong debt to Donatello (1386-1466) who lived in Siena during the period 1457-59. Vecchietta also completed a number of exquisite International Gothic illuminations for an edition of Dante's Divine Comedy (1440, British Library). The Venetian painter Carlo Crivelli (1430/351495) was another conservative whose densely ornamented works are reminiscent of the Paduan tradition of Francesco Squarcione (1395-1468) and Andrea Mantegna (1431-1506). Matteo di Giovanni (1435-1495) personifies the progress of Sienese painting in the 15th century. He began by emphasizing line and pattern before developing an interest interest in contemporary Florentine art. Possessed of an elegant, decorative Sienese style, he became one of the most popular painters of the second half of the 15th century.

The multi-talented painter, sculptor, engineer and architect Francesco Di Giorgio Martini (1439-1501) was trained by Vecchietta, worked for the celebrated Federigo da Montefeltro of Urbino, painted the monochromatic frescoes in the Bichi Chapel of Sant'Agostino, designed the Church of the Madonna del Calcinaio outside Cortona, sculpted a set of bronze angels for the high altar of the Sienese Cathedral, before returning there as director of works. Benvenuto Di Giovanni (1436-1518) produced a number of derivative panel paintings, frescoes, manuscripts and designs for Siena Cathedral, while Neroccio de' Landi (1445-1500), a partner of Francesco di Giorgio until 1475, was another pupil of Vecchietta, who is known

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for his refined elegance and delicate colouring. His greatest work is a Portrait of a Girl in the National Gallery of Art in Washington DC.

Sienese School of Painting: 16th Century

In the 16th century Sienese artists included: the architect, painter and stage designer Baldassare Peruzzi (1481-1536), active mainly in Rome, where he worked under Donato Bramante (1444-1514) on St Peter's, becoming architect after the death of Raphael. A shy man, he was known for his sophisticated architectural style, very different from the monumental, grave idiom of his contemporaries. Also his friend Giovanni Antonio Bazzi, known as Il Sodoma (1477-1549), a licentious but prolific painter of frescoes and easel pictures, such as his masterpiece The Marriage of Alexander and Roxane (1516, Villa Farnesina, Rome). Although the Lombardian Il Sodoma was recognized as the top artist of the time by most of his contemporaries, modern opinion now assesses Domenico Beccafumi (1485-1551) as the most influential exponent of Mannerism in Siena. Fully conversant with the works of Raphael and Michelangelo as well as those of contemporary Florentine artists, he succeeded in integrating the new elements of the High Renaissance with the decorative qualities of Sienese tradition.

In 1918, the Renaissance art scholar Bernard Berenson (1865-1959) published an influential book Essays in the Study of Sienese Painting.

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.

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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)

Hugely influential Venetian architect, later imitated in Palladianism. Tintoretto (1518-1594)

Religious Mannerist painter. Paolo Veronese (1528-1588) Colourist follower of Titian.

Renaissance Painting Techniques

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. 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.

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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).

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 the cinquecento 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

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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.

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 the cinquecento 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)

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•The High Renaissance Period (1490-1530)

•The Northern Renaissance (1430-1580)

----- Netherlandish Renaissance (1430-1580)

----- German Renaissance (1430-1580)

•The Mannerism Period (1530-1600)

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 millionaire 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.13701427), 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.

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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 (149598, 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

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instead of a flat plane, it was necessary to explore and make use of the science of linear 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 pious Fra Angelico (c.1400-55), born earlier but living much longer. Something of the

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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.142197) 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, darkeyed 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 Savonarola denounced 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

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