Art
Main articles: Italian Renaissance painting, Renaissance painting, and Renaissance architecture
Raphael's The School of Athens depicts illustrious contemporaries as Classical scholars, with Leonardo central as Plato.One of the distinguishing features of Renaissance art was its development of highly realistic linear perspective. Giotto di Bondone (1267-1337) is credited with first treating a painting as a window into space, but it was not until the writings of architects Filippo Brunelleschi (1377-1446) and Leon Battista Alberti (1404–1472) that perspective was formalized as an artistic technique.[28] The development of perspective was part of a wider trend towards realism in the arts (for more, see Renaissance Classicism).[29] To that end, painters also developed other techniques, studying light, shadow, and, famously in the case of Leonardo da Vinci, human anatomy. Underlying these changes in artistic method was a renewed desire to depict the beauty of nature, and to unravel the axioms of aesthetics, with the works of Leonardo, Michelangelo and Raphael representing artistic pinnacles that were to be much imitated by other artists.[30] Other notable artists include Sandro Boticceli, working for the Medici in Florence, Donatello another Florentine and Titian in Venice, among others.
Concurrently, in the Netherlands, a particularly vibrant artistic culture developed, the work of Hugo van der Goes and Jan van Eyck having particular influence on the development of painting in Italy, both technically with the introduction of oil paint and canvas, and stylistically in terms of naturalism in representation. (for more, see Renaissance in the Netherlands). Later, the work of Pieter Brueghel the Elder would inspire artists to depict themes of everyday life.[31]
In architecture, Filippo Brunelleschi was foremost in studying the remains of ancient Classical buildings, and with rediscovered knowledge from the 1st century writer Vitruvius and the flourishing discipline of mathematics, formulated the Renaissance style which emulated but most importantly improved on classical forms. Brunelleschi's major feat of engineering was the building of the dome of Florence Cathedral.[32] The first building to demonstrate this is claimed to be the church of St. Andrew built by Alberti in Mantua. The outstanding architectural work of the High Renaissance was the rebuilding of St. Peter's Basilica, combining the skills of Bramante, Michelangelo, Raphael, Sangallo and Maderno.
The Roman orders types of columns are used: Tuscan, Doric, Ionic, Corinthian and Composite. These can either be structural, supporting an arcade or architrave, or purely decorative, set against a wall in the form of pilasters. During the Renaissance, architects aimed to use columns, pilasters, and entablatures as an integrated system. One of the first buildings to use pilasters as an integrated system was in the Old Sacristy (1421–1440) by Filippo Brunelleschi.
Arches are semi-circular or (in the Mannerist style) segmental, are often used in arcades, supported on piers or columns with capitals. There may be a section of entablature between the capital and the springing of the arch. Alberti was one of the first to use the arch on a monumental. Renaissance vaults do not have ribs. They are semi-circular or segmental and on a square plan, unlike the Gothic vault which is frequently rectangular.
Renaissance painting bridges the period of European art history between the art of the Middle Ages and Baroque art. Painting of this era is connected to the "rebirth" (renaissance in French) of classical antiquity, the impact of humanism on artists and their patrons, new artistic sensibilities and techniques, and, in general, the transition from the Medieval period to the Early modern age.
In the visual arts, significant achievements occur around 1400 in both Italy and north of the Alps. Masaccio's art and the writings of Leon Battista Alberti helped establish linear perspective and the idealisation of the human body as primary ideas of Italian Renaissance painting in the early 15th century. Likewise, Early Netherlandish artists such as Jan van Eyck were innovators in oil painting and intuitive spatial compositions. The brief High Renaissance (c. 1500–1520) centred around Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo and Raphael in Florence and Rome, was a culmination of the Italian achievements, while artists like Albrecht Dürer brought a similar level of intellectual and artistic innovation to northern Europe. Late Renaissance painting, from about 1520 until the end of the 16th century, is marked by various Mannerist tendencies that spread from Italy through the rest of Europe.