High Renaissance

High Renaissance

Artistic Movements, Periods and Styles in 5 Points

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High Renaissance

• The High Renaissance is the height or the culmination of the Renaissance. And while there is no unanimous consensus on the years it covers, we can consider that it includes the first two decades of the 16th century (the Cinquecento). We can also add the last years of the previous century.
• Rome became the artistic center of the High Renaissance due to the patronage of Pope Julius of great artists (we need think only of Michelangelo working in the Sistine Chapel and Raphael in the Stanze, very close to each other). Florence was displaced as the center of the Renaissance for two reasons: the loss of power of the Medici family and the Church’s acceptance of a new moment in history. (During the Renaissance, as everything began to revolve around the human, God and the Church lost center stage.) Once the Church adapted to the new times, it did not want to lose the best artists (already the Florentines had used their patronage and supremacy in art as a demonstration of power), and power and money were not the problem.
• The other important city was Venice, where the artists of the Venetian School left their mark on the art history. Yes: Venice, at the height of the Renaissance, was more important than Florence.
• The search for beauty, harmony, perfection, then reached its highest point, its maturity. And the humanization of religious figures also reached its highest point (figures were not so ideal, they were more earthly than heavenly).
• As a final thought: even if we find geniuses such as the architect Bramante —who planned St. Peter’s Basilica in the Vatican— or Titian, Andrea del Sarto, Correggio or Giorgione in this period, a way to define the High Renaissance (not an exact way, but a very effective one), would be: “It was the moment of the Renaissance when Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo and Raphael were in activity at the same time.”

Image: Vault of the Sistine Chapel, detail (1508/1512). Michelangelo

Representative Artists: Da Vinci, Michelangelo, Raphael, Giorgione, Titian, Correggio, Andrea del Sarto.

Recommended links:

Characteristic Elements of Renaissance Painting.

The Four Greatest Painters of the Italian Renaissance.

Artistic Movements from Classical Antiquity to Rococo.

Humanism.

The Stanze of Raphael and the High Renaissance.

Fra Angelico and the Early Renaissance.

Why is La Gioconda the most famous painting in the world?

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