The document provides an overview of major artists of the High Renaissance period in Italy such as Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, and Raphael. It discusses their mastery of technical skills and elevated social status. Key works by each artist are described in detail, including Leonardo's anatomical studies, Mona Lisa, and Last Supper. Michelangelo's David and Sistine Chapel ceiling are highlighted. Raphael's works in the Vatican Stanze including School of Athens are also summarized. The document traces developments in Renaissance art and styles between different Italian cities.

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The High Renaissance
• No singular style characterizes
the High Renaissance, but the
major artists of the period—
Leonardo da Vinci, Raphael,
Michelangelo, and Titian—
exhibit a high level of technical
and aesthetic mastery.
• These artists also enjoyed an
elevated social status, while their
art was raised to the status
formerly only given to poetry.

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Leonardo da Vinci
(1452 - 1519)
• Leonardo da Vinci's wide-
ranging interests and scientific
investigations informed and
enhanced his art.
• He studied the human body and
considered the eyes the most
vital organs and sight the most
essential function.

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• In one of Leonardo's
notebooks containing his
anatomical studies is a
drawing of an Embryo in
the Womb.
• It is an early example of
scientific illustration.
• Leonardo also worked as
both architect and sculptor.
Embryo in the Womb, ca. 1510. Pen and ink on paper.

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• He made a systematic study
of the flying movements of
birds and investigated the
anatomy of the wing.
• He also studied general
forms of movement in nature
and understood that motion
was the result of force and
counterforce.
Flying machine, c. 1487
Metalpoint, pen and ink on paper,
235 x 176 mm
Insritut de France, Paris

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• Pure depictions of landscape, in other
words of depicting directly observed
nature, were a complete novelty during
Leonardo's time.
• While imitating nature was the central
task of artists at the time, none of them
had until then been so rigorous as to
go out into the open and draw an
actual landscape.
• The landscape was seen as an
accessory designed to support the
central subject in compositions of
the time, the human figure.
• Thus Leonardo's drawings
depicting real Italian landscapes
are of great importance.
Storm over a landscape ,c. 1500, Red chalk on
paper,
200 x 150 mm, Royal Library, Windsor

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• Garment studies were
part of the training of
every painter. It is likely
that prepared materials
were used for this in the
workshops in Florence. It
is above all the fineness
of this study that has led
to its being attributed to
Leonardo.

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• Leonardo's dramatic Last Supper in the refectory of the church of Santa Maria delle
Grazie in Milan shows the Twelve Disciples reacting to Christ's pronouncement that one of
them will betray him.
• The forceful and lucid conceptualization of the moment is enhanced by features in the
design of the simple room.
• Christ is the psychological and also the perspective focus of the painting.
• The Twelve Disciples, who register a broad range of emotional responses, are arranged
into four groups of three unified through gestures and postures.
Last Supper, 1495–1498. Fresco (oil and tempera on plaster)
29' 10" x 13' 9". Refectory, Santa Maria delle Grazie, Milan.

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The Refectory with
the Last Supper
after restoration,
1498, Convent of
Santa Maria delle
Grazie, Milan

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• While in Milan, Leonardo painted
Virgin of the Rocks, which
employs the subtle play of light
and dark to model forms and to
express the emotional states of his
figures.
• The figures, arranged in a
pyramidal group, are placed within
a cavern.
• The optical haziness
(sfumato) of the light creates an
atmosphere of psychological
ambiguity.
Virgin of the Rocks, 1483-1486
Transferred from
wood to canvas

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• Leonardo's famous portrait of
Mona Lisa shows a half-
length figure seated in a loggia
with columns against the
backdrop of a mysterious
uninhabited landscape.
• Leonardo uses a smoky
sfumato and atmospheric
perspective to enhance the
figure's ambiguous facial
expression, which serves to
conceal or mask her psychic
identity from the viewer.
Mona Lisa, ca. 1503–1505.
Oil on wood, approx.
2'6" x 1'9". Louvre.

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Michelangelo Buonarroti(1475-1564)
• Michelangelo created
works in architecture,
sculpture, and painting
that departed from High
Renaissance regularity.
• His often complex and
eccentric style expressed
strength and a looming
tragic grandeur.
• He insisted on the artist's
own authority and
independence and
believed that an artist's
own inspired judgment
could identify pleasing
proportions.

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• At the age of 21 Michelangelo went to
Rome for the first time. We still possess
two of the works he created in this period
(Bacchus and Pietà); others must have
been lost for he spent five years there.
• The statue of Bacchus was
commissioned by the banker Jacopo
Galli for his garden and he wanted it
fashioned after the models of the
ancients.
Bacchus, 1497, Marble, height: 203 cm, Museo
Nazionale del
Bargello, Florence

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• In 1499, he completed
this Pieta for the
Vatican.
• Christian emotion never
has been more perfectly
united with classical
form.
Michelangelo, Pieta, 1499. Marble.
St. Peter's,
Vatican.

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Michelangelo was only 23 when he
carved this Pieta!!!

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• Returning, famous, to Florence in
1501, Michelangelo was
commissioned by the new republican
government to carve a colossal
David, symbol of resistance and
independence.
• The monumental nude statue of
David reveals Michelangelo's early
fascination with the male body.
• The detailed play of muscles over the
figure's torso and limbs serves to
enhance the mood and posture of
tense expectation as David watches
for the approach of Goliath.
• The pent-up energy of David's
psychic and muscular tension is
contrasted with his apparently casual
pose.
• David is also represented as the
defiant hero of the Florentine republic.

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Michelangelo, David, 1501–1504. Marble,
14' 3" high. Galleria dell'Accademia, Florence

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• In less than four years,
(1508-1512)
Michelangelo painted a
monumental fresco on the
ceiling of the Sistine
Chapel organized
around a sequence of
narrative panels
describing the Creation as
recorded in the biblical
book Genesis.

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• the Doni Tondo by
Michelangelo, had
been cleaned during the
1950s, and revealed
colors very similar in
their intensity to those
that appeared in the
Sistine Chapel Ceiling
after its cleaning.
The Holy Family
with the infant St. John the Baptist
(the Doni Tondo)c. 1503-05,
Tempera on panel,
Diameter 47 in; Uffizi, Florence.

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Raphael Sanzio (1483-1520)
• In 1504, Raphael moved to
Florence, where he remained until
1508.
• These years were very important for
his development.
• He studied works of Leonardo da
Vinci and Michelangelo there, by
which he was greatly influenced.
• Yet he proved, that his ability to
adapt from others what was
necessary to his own vision and to
reject what was incompatible with it
was faultless.

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• Raphael's Marriage of the Virgin
shows Joseph's success in the
competition with other suitors for the
hand of Mary.
• The polygonal temple in the style of
Bramante establishes and
dominates the structure of this
composition, determining the
arrangement of the foreground
group and of the other figures.
The Betrothal of the Virgin
('Sposalizio'), 1504
Oil on panel, 170 x 118 cm
Brera, Milan

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• By painting his name and
the date, 1504, in the frieze
of the temple in the
distance, Raphael
abandoned anonymity and
confidently announced
himself as the creator of
the work.

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• The Madonna of the
Meadow is the first of a series
of full-length figure
compositions that portray the
apocryphal encounter between
the Child Jesus and the boy
Baptist.
• The boy Baptist is supposed to
have recognized and
worshipped Christ as the
Redeemer even in their
childhood. Raphael makes this
clear by letting Christ take the
cross from John
• Done during Raphael’s stay
in Florence, Michelangelo's
influence on Raphael is
evident in this composition.
• But Raphael exerts his own
balancing capacity on the
Leonardesque volumetric
conception, infusing it with
the idyllic serenity which
characterizes his paintings
from this period.
Madonna of Belvedere, 1506,
Oil on wood, 113 x 88 cm, Kunsthistorisches
Museum,
Vienna

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• By the autumn of 1508, Raphael was in Rome and was entrusted by Pope Julius
II with the decoration of the Stanze, the new papal apartment in the Vatican
Palace, an enormous commission for the 26-year-old artist.
• It was nevertheless a triumph.
• The first room was completed by 1511 and was probably Julius II's private library
and it was decorated in the traditional way of decorating libraries, which went
back to the Middle Ages.
• Each of the four walls was allocated one faculty from the spectrum then available:
Theology, Philosophy, Poetry and Justice and presented as female figures.

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• Along the walls are allocated to them the appropriate images of
men and women from history who had won fame in each of
these fields.
• The School of Athens (1509) is the depiction of
philosophy.

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• Plato and Aristotle are
standing in the center of
the picture at the head of
the steps.
The School of Athens
(detail), 1509
Fresco, Stanza della
Segnatura, Palazzi
Pontifici, Vatican

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• This detail
represents
Heraclitus
with the
features of
Michelangelo.

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• This detail shows
the portraits of
Raphael and
Sodoma.

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• The Transfiguration was
the last work Raphael painted.
• It was commissioned by
Cardinal Giulio de' Medici.
• Raphael died unexpectedly on
Good Friday. April 6, 1520.
Raphael. c.1519-1520. The
Transfiguration. Oil on panel.
Vaticano, Pinacoteca Apostolica
Vaticano, Rome.

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SUMMARY:
• Dissatisfaction with the leadership and policies of the Roman Catholic Church led
to the Protestant Reformation. In response, the Catholic Church initiated the
Counter-Reformation.
• The Catholic Counter-Reformation exploited the use of art to promote and
reinforce religious and ideological claims.
• Developments in Italian 15th-century art matured during the 16th century . No
singular style characterizes the High Renaissance, but the major artists of the
period exhibit a high level of technical and aesthetic mastery.

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• These artists also enjoyed an elevated social status, while their art was raised to
the status formerly only given to poetry.
• Leonardo da Vinci's wide-ranging interests and scientific investigations informed
and enhanced his art.
• The ambitious Pope Julius II was an avid art patron who understood the
propagandistic value of visual imagery.
• Michelangelo created works in architecture, sculpture, and painting that departed
from High Renaissance regularity. In less than four years, Michelangelo painted a
monumental fresco on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel.

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• In the suite of rooms forming Pope Julius II's papal apartments, Raphael painted a series
of frescoes including the so-called School of Athens.
• In architecture, architects reinvented classical forms. They emphasized rational designs,
balanced and harmonious in the relationship of the parts to one another and to the whole.
Bramante's design for the Tempietto in the cloister of the church of San Pietro in
Montorio, Rome, was inspired by ancient Roman round temples.
• Bellini and other Venetian artists focused on color and the process of paint application,
whereas Florentine and Roman artists were more concerned with sculpturesque form,
drawing, and design (disegno).

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• Titian was a supreme colorist and the most extraordinary and prolific of the great
Venetian painters.
• Mannerist art and architecture generally places an emphasis on staged and
contrived imagery. Mannerism's requirement of "invention" led artists to produce
self-conscious stylizations involving complexity, caprice, fantasy, elegance,
perfectionism, and polish.
• In Tintoretto’s paintings the converging perspective lines race diagonally away
from the picture surface to create a disturbing effect of limitless depth and motion.
• Andrea Palladio's employs a central plan design for the Villa Rotonda near Venice
that has four identical façades and projecting porches.

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Links:
• Renaissance in Italy (Web Museum)
• Art History Resources (Whitcomb)
• Leonardo’s Anatomical Sketches
• High Renaissance Art
• Art Lex on the High Renaissance
• Art History 101 - The High Renaissance
• Mannerism (National Gallery-USA)
• HISTORY OF MANNERISM ARCHITECTURE