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ITALIAN RENAISSANCE
ERA
Famous artists include:
Cimabue (c.1240-1302)
Giotto di Bondone (1267-1337)
Gentile da Fabriano (1370-1427)
Lorenzo Ghiberti (1378-1455)
Donatello (1386-1466)
Paolo Uccello (1397-1475)
Fra Angelico (1400-55)
Tommaso Masaccio (1401-1428)
Leon Battista Alberti (1404-72)
Piero della Francesca (1420-92)
Andrea Mantegna (1430-1506)
Donato Bramante (1444-1514)
Alessandro Botticelli (1445-1510)
Domenico Ghirlandaio (1449-94)
Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519)
Michelangelo (1475-1564)
Titian (1477-1576)
Raphael (1483-1520)
Jacopo Tintoretto (1518-1594)
Paolo Veronese (1528-1588)
Giambologna (1529-1608)
Caravaggio (1573-1610)
HISTORY
For an account of the evolution
of art in Italy during the 15th and
16th centuries, see:
Proto-Renaissance
(c.1300-1400)
Early Renaissance (1400-90)
High Renaissance
(1490-1530)
Mannerism (1530-1600)
Renaissance in
Florence (Medici)
Renaissance in Rome
(Papal)
Renaissance in Venice
(Colour)
LIST OF PAINTERS/SCULPTORS
For a list of artists from
the Quattrocento and
Cinquecento in Italy, see:
Early Renaissance
Artists
High Renaissance
Artists
Mannerist Artists.
WORLD'S BEST SCULPTORS
For the top 100 world's best
stone/wood carvers and bronze
artists, see: Greatest Sculptors.
GREAT EUROPEAN PAINTERS
For biographies and paintings
of the greatest artists in Europe
see: Old Masters: Top 100.
WORLD'S BEST ART
For a list of the finest artworks:
Greatest Paintings Ever
Oils, watercolours, fresco
from Giotto to postmodernism.
Greatest Sculptures Ever
Works in stone, bronze, wood
from 33,000 BCE-present.
Paintings by Renaissance artists
are in the best art museums
around the world.
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The son of Brunellesco Lippi, a Florentine
notary who held important posts in the Republic and was sometimes entrusted
with diplomatic missions, Filippo was enrolled as a master of the goldsmiths'
guild in 1398; in the following year he was active in the studio of Lunardo
di Matteo Ducci da Pistoia, for whom he made some silver figures for the
altar of S.Jacopo in Pistoia Cathedral.
Brunelleschi initially came to prominence
as a result of the competition for the second bronze door of the Florence
Baptistery, held in 1401, in which he participated alongside Ghiberti
and five other sculptors. This contest has been described as the first
art competition since Antiquity. In fact, it seems to have been common
late medieval practice for a patron to invite several artists to submit
designs before concluding a contract. Lorenzo
Ghiberti (1378-1455) and the anonymous biographer of Brunelleschi,
believed to be Antonio di Tuccio Manetti, differ in their accounts of
the result of this contest. While Ghiberti states that he won outright,
the biographer claims that Brunelleschi and Ghiberti were invited to share
the commission and that Brunelleschi subsequently withdrew.
Although Brunelleschi is known to have
participated in sculptural commissions around 1409 and in 1415, he seems
to have turned away from sculpture during
the decade following the competition. Between 1404 and 1406 he served
as a consultant on the fabric of Florence Cathedral, and it was probably
around this time that he first visited Rome.
It is not known precisely when Brunelleschi
formulated the principles of "one-point" perspective which were
subsequently employed by Tommaso Masaccio (1401-1428) and codified by
Leon Battista Alberti (1404-72),
although his discovery could hardly have been made later than the second
decade of the 15th century. There is little evidence that Brunelleschi
was interested in fine art painting;
the two small perspectival views with which he is said to have demonstrated
his ideas imply that his studies of this subject were primarily directed
towards the requirements of architecture.
Little is known of Brunelleschi's work
as an architect prior to 1417, when he was asked to give his opinion on
the dome of Florence Cathedral. Although the approximate design
of the dome had been established as early as 1367, its actual execution
remained a supremely difficult engineering problem. Originally working
alongside Ghiberti, Brunelleschi soon acquired control over the supervision
of the work. The completion of this enterprise spanned the rest of his
life and it remains his most famous achievement. He overcame the main
task of enclosing the enormous drum (which was already standing) by introducing
a double-shell dome. This required a series of ingenious technical innovations
to reduce weight and ensure maximum strength. The scaffolding and the
weight-lifting devices needed to erect the massive superstructure of the
dome posed serious difficulties in themselves. Brunelleschi surmounted
every problem as it arose, with a brilliant display of engineering skill
and meticulous attention to each detail of the construction.
Brunelleschi's earliest surviving public building is the Ospedale degli
Innocenti, Florence, begun in 1419. Its long semi-circular arcade
reveals a clear debt to the Tuscan Romanesque, but the precision with
which these medieval forms are applied, and the modular system of proportion
with which the disposition of the whole design is governed, are entirely
Classical. In 1421, Brunelleschi began the church of S.Lorenzo.
Here he brought the traditional basilican plan up to date with a rigid
application of modular theory, embracing the arcade bays, the span of
the nave, and the equally-sized transepts, choir, and crossing, each of
which stands in a precise proportional ratio to the others. The clarity
of Brunelleschi's thought is well exemplified by the Old Sacristy of the
church, adjoining the main building. A simple cube, rationally linked
by pendentives to its dome above, it stands as virtually the first of
a succession of centrally planned Renaissance structures.
With S.Spirito, begun in 1436 but completed after his death, Brunelleschi
continued to develop his ideas upon the basilican church without being
hampered, as he had been at S.Lorenzo, by an existing ground plan. The
design was tightened up by continuing the aisle in an unbroken band around
the transepts, choir, and west front, and by simplifying the ratio of
arcade to clerestory from 5:3 to 1:1. Brunelleschi's original design incorporated
a ring of semicircular chapel niches, visible from the outside, which
established a formal congruity between the exterior wall and the interior
configuration of the building.
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