The birth of the renaissance style

Known as the Renaissance, the period immediately following the Middle Ages in Europe saw a great revival of interest in the classical learning and values of ancient Greece and Rome. Against a backdrop of political stability and growing prosperity, the development of new technologies—including the printing press, a new system of astronomy and the discovery and exploration of new continents—was accompanied by a flowering of philosophy, literature and especially art.

Renaissance paintings

The style of painting, sculpture and decorative arts identified with the Renaissance emerged in Italy in the late 14th century; it reached its zenith in the late 15th and early 16th centuries, in the work of Italian masters such as Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo and Raphael. In addition to its expression of classical Greco-Roman traditions, Renaissance art sought to capture the experience of the individual and the beauty and mystery of the natural world.

The origins of Renaissance art can be traced to Italy in the late 13th and early 14th centuries. Writers such as Petrarch and Giovanni Boccaccio looked back to ancient Greece and Rome and sought to revive the languages, values and intellectual traditions of those cultures after the long period of stagnation that had followed the fall of the Roman Empire in the sixth century.

Did you know? Leonardo da Vinci, the ultimate "Renaissance man," practiced all the visual arts and studied a wide range of topics, including anatomy, geology, botany, hydraulics and flight. The Florentine painter Giotto ? His frescoes were said to have decorated cathedrals at Assisi, Rome, Padua, Florence and Naples, though there has been difficulty attributing such works with certainty.

In the later 14th century, the proto-Renaissance was stifled by plague and war, and its influences did not emerge again until the first years of the next century. In , the sculptor Lorenzo Ghiberti c. The other major artist working during this period was the painter Masaccio , known for his frescoes of the Trinity in the Church of Santa Maria Novella c.

Masaccio painted for less than six years but was highly influential in the early Renaissance for the intellectual nature of his work, as well as its degree of naturalism. Though the Catholic Church remained a major patron of the arts during the Renaissance—from popes and other prelates to convents, monasteries and other religious organizations—works of art were increasingly commissioned by civil government, courts and wealthy individuals.

Much of the art produced during the early Renaissance was commissioned by the wealthy merchant families of Florence, most notably the Medici family.