Starting around the 1500s, the High Renaissance was a blossoming time for art in Italy. High Renaissance artists were, more often than not, highly skilled in many different fields (italian-renaissance-art). Leonardo da Vinci was a guru when it came to sciences and Michelangelo was an immaculately gifted poet, painter and sculptor. The third member of the trio who is considered to have a great contribution to the magnificent examples of High Renaissance art is none other than the talented artist Raphael, an architect and gifted painter (italian-renaissance-art). The painters of this new century reflected the new sense of sanguinity felt by many. They were also aware of the debt they owed to those original ideas from artists that had been
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The early Renaissance years had been more present in the city of Florence but the High Renaissance was far more popular in Italy and focuses solely on the two cities of Rome and Venice. Eventually, the Renaissance style was adapted by later painters and became known as the style of Mannerism. Mannerism started around 1520 and happened towards the later years of the High Renaissance and introduces an immaculate variety if approaches. Later, Baroque began to replace Mannerism about 60 years after it had begun …show more content…
Improving and idealizing nature was not something da Vinci believed in, he believed in being the mirror of nature as a true artist. Following the rules of his teacher, Andrea Verrocchio, Leonardo kept notebooks with him all the time, filling them with drawings of everything he saw and imagined. In his system, imagination meant a recombination of things (or the parts of things) which already existed, and creating some previously unimagined form (Radford). The Madonna and Child with St. Anne is just one example of Leonardo's increasing use of a "pyramidal" composition or grouping of figures. Leonardo's portraits of women were positioned with 3/4 of their profiles showing and he used this before many other artists used it with female portraits, also because he says partly because he gave the sitter in the painting a strong presence (Radford). These are not generalized portraits of beautiful women as virtue and as Mary; these are portraits of individuals who seem to be making contact with the viewer. Take the Mona Lisa, for instance, partly because her head and body are not aligned in the same position, as they are in the painting of Ginevra (Radford). The rhyming curves, colors and forms which bring together the figure and the background is something da Vinci did in his paintings of religious scenes as well.
The early Renaissance years had been more present in the city of Florence but the High Renaissance was far more popular in Italy and focuses solely on the two cities of Rome and Venice. Eventually, the Renaissance style was adapted by later painters and became known as the style of Mannerism. Mannerism started around 1520 and happened towards the later years of the High Renaissance and introduces an immaculate variety if approaches. Later, Baroque began to replace Mannerism about 60 years after it had begun …show more content…
Improving and idealizing nature was not something da Vinci believed in, he believed in being the mirror of nature as a true artist. Following the rules of his teacher, Andrea Verrocchio, Leonardo kept notebooks with him all the time, filling them with drawings of everything he saw and imagined. In his system, imagination meant a recombination of things (or the parts of things) which already existed, and creating some previously unimagined form (Radford). The Madonna and Child with St. Anne is just one example of Leonardo's increasing use of a "pyramidal" composition or grouping of figures. Leonardo's portraits of women were positioned with 3/4 of their profiles showing and he used this before many other artists used it with female portraits, also because he says partly because he gave the sitter in the painting a strong presence (Radford). These are not generalized portraits of beautiful women as virtue and as Mary; these are portraits of individuals who seem to be making contact with the viewer. Take the Mona Lisa, for instance, partly because her head and body are not aligned in the same position, as they are in the painting of Ginevra (Radford). The rhyming curves, colors and forms which bring together the figure and the background is something da Vinci did in his paintings of religious scenes as well.