Artistic Currents - Renaissance

The Renaissance started in Italy and slowly spread throught Europe.The church was still a major political, social and economic power as well as a primary patron of the arts, although it suffered some dark days during the Reformation. An emerging middle class began to question the old foundations and education became more available as a result of the printing press. Individual achievement, scientific inquiry and new wealth set the stage for the Renaissance to match and even surpass Classical Greece and Rome.

Italian Renaissance architects based their theories and practices on Classical Roman examples. The Renaissance revival of Classical Rome was as important in architecture as it was in literature. A pilgrimage to Rome to study the ancient buildings and ruins, especially the Colosseum and Pantheon, was considered essential to an architect's training. Classical orders and architectural elements such as columns, pilasters, pediments, entablatures, arches, and domes form the vocabulary of Renaissance buildings. Vitruvius's writings on architecture also influenced the Renaissance definition of beauty in architecture. As in the Classical world, Renaissance architecture is characterized by harmonious form, mathematical proportion, and a unit of measurement based on the human scale.

During the Renaissance, architects trained as humanists helped raise the status of their profession from skilled laborer to artist. They hoped to create structures that would appeal to both emotion and reason. Three key figures in Renaissance architecture were Filippo Brunelleschi, Leon Battista Alberti, and Andrea Palladio.

One of the great masters of the High Renaissance, who was also celebrated as a painter, sculptor, architect, engineer, and scientist was Leonardo da Vinci. His profound love of knowledge and research was the keynote of both his artistic and scientific endeavors. His innovations in the field of painting influenced the course of Italian art for more than a century after his death, and his scientific studies—particularly in the fields of anatomy, optics, and hydraulics—anticipated many of the developments of modern science.

The triumvirate of High Renaissance artists were Leonardo da Vinci, Raphael, and Michelangelo. But there were also other painters, sculptors, and architects that contributed to this magnificent moment in Renaissance Italian art. « Back