Renaissance: 1300-1500s

The Renaissance art movement formed in Italy during the 14^th century. Literally translated, the word means ‘rebirth’, so reflecting the renewed study of Classical literature and art that would offer inspiration for individual expression throughout this period. Edging away from the concentrated religious theme of the Middle Ages, the Renaissance was a time of intellectual and artistic revival, provoked by the sophistication of a society that chose to distinguish humanistic values and the material world in a naturalistic light.

Petrarch (1304-74) instigated the renewed scholarly interest in the Classical world after the predominant darkness of the Middle Ages, and the visual arts consequently developed on the back of a formerly intellectual and literary resurgence. The significance of Classical texts to the Renaissance artists was based around their intrinsic perception of a world with man at its centre.

In 1550, Vasari established the widely accepted chronological model for the progress of the artistic Renaissance, and it was not until the 20^th century that this was contested – largely due to the fact that he was a Florentine writer, configuring history in Florentine terms so as to pave the way for his friend and idol Michelangelo. The model, based on the ages of man, credits Giotto with the rebirth of art after centuries of barbarism and classes his immediate descendants as representing the infancy of art; Masaccio, Brunelleschi, Donatello and Ghiberti as the experimental youth; and Leonardo da Vinci, Raphael and Michelangelo as the perfected maturity.

Although the principles of this model are now rejected, Vasari's account nevertheless demonstrates a distinguishable movement away from conformist depictions of a mystical reality, towards an art based on technical expertise displaying a visually persuasive and logically ordered world. The theme remained predominantly sanctified in the Renaissance art movement, but Christ and the saints were now perceived with more physicality, and increasingly not in an ethereal Heaven, but at the centre of a natural earth.

Leonardo da Vinci was representative of the archetypal Renaissance man during the first quarter of the 16^th century, illustrating values and ideals of the age in his art, science and writing. Michelangelo and Raphael were also leading artists during this period, now classed the ‘High Renaissance’, achieving visual harmony and naturalistic effect in works deemed for centuries as denoting classical perfection.

The above artists were from Florence and this remained an important centre for the Renaissance until the 16th century, when it was to be overtaken by Rome (where they now resided) and Venice, where Bellini, Giorgione and Titian were forming their own High Renaissance style. The influence of the Italian Renaissance could be felt in other parts of Europe, an example being the German artist Albrecht Durer of the 'Northern Renaissance', but by the 1500s Mannerism had become a more established movement for producing European artists.

Our Art on Demand gallery contains the following Renaissance Art prints, posters and canvases: