Panchronia

Italian Renaissance

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c. 1400 – 1600 · Europe · architecture, painting, sculpture · origin: Florence

Antiquity measured anew: linear perspective, anatomy and proportion as the measure of man

Italian Renaissance
Sandro Botticelli · Public domain · Wikimedia Commons

How to recognise it

Why it emerged

Wealthy merchant republics and families such as the Medici competed through patronage while humanists recovered and translated ancient texts. Study of Roman ruins and the mathematics of perspective gave artists the tools to show the world as the eye sees it.

Examples

Dome of Florence Cathedral1420–1436 · Filippo BrunelleschiThe largest masonry dome since Rome, built without centring as a double shellThe Birth of Venusc. 1485 · Sandro BotticelliAmong the first large paintings since antiquity of a nude pagan goddessMona Lisac. 1503–1519 · Leonardo da VinciIts sfumato and three-quarter pose set the standard for portraiture for centuriesDavid1501–1504 · Michelangelo BuonarrotiA 5-metre hero carved from an abandoned block became the emblem of the Florentine RepublicSistine Chapel ceiling1508–1512 · Michelangelo BuonarrotiOver 300 figures in four years; the Creation of Adam became art's most famous gesture

More in this style

How it spread

Meanwhile elsewhere

Wikipedia (Russian) · Wikipedia (English)

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