Renaissance Art: History, Characteristics, and Examples

Though we often use the term “renaissance” to refer to the general revival of something, the Renaissance refers specifically to the period between 1400 and 1600 when the ideas and culture of ancient Greece and Rome were reintegrated into contemporary European culture. The Renaissance period differed from the Middle Ages in key ways.

• Development of humanism. Humanism was a significant new development in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries that involved the study of surviving ancient Greek and Roman texts about philosophy, politics, culture, and language. A humanist education consisted of studying the seven liberal arts—grammar, logic, rhetoric, arithmetic, music, geometry, and astronomy—and several other topics that would become central to Renaissance thought, such as literature, history, and moral philosophy. The so-called humanities became an essential component of a well-rounded education.
• Reign of the Renaissance man. We use the term “Renaissance man” today to refer to someone with a wide range of interests and talents, a reference to the importance of humanist education during the Renaissance era. Artists and scholars of the time were expected to display proficiency in multiple disciplines.
• Influence of classical art. Renaissance art was mainly concerned with imitating and improving upon classical models. This fascination with ancient Greek and Roman art began with the Italian Renaissance during the late fourteenth century and soon spread throughout Europe.

The term renaissance comes from the Italian word rinascita, which literally means rebirth. The word was used in the sixteenth century to refer to the general revival of classical culture that dominated Europe from the late thirteenth century to the late sixteenth century. This era of art history is often broken into three distinctive periods.

• Proto-Renaissance (late thirteenth–early fourteenth century): Artists like Giotto, Cimabue, and Duccio are often considered part of what art historians call the Late Gothic or Proto-Renaissance period. These artists distinguished themselves from other medieval artists by displaying human emotions in their subjects. Their work often showed groups of figures from different points of view: profile, three-quarter view, and from the back. Due to plague and civil war during the fourteenth century, there was a break between the Proto-Renaissance and the Early Renaissance.
• Early Renaissance (1401–1490): During the fifteenth century, merchant families like the Medicis of Florence amassed significant wealth through banking and international trade. Art patronage became a way for them to display their power to all. The artists of the Early Renaissance period, such as Masaccio, Sandro Botticelli, Domenico Ghirlandaio, Donatello, Fra Angelico, and Fra Filippo Lippi, situated religious figures like the Madonna in earthly settings, creating the illusion of depth by incorporating landscape into the backgrounds of their paintings. Their figures appeared naturalistically three-dimensional.
• High Renaissance (1490s–1527): The High Renaissance is characterized by the art of Michelangelo and Leonardo da Vinci, who possessed an expert understanding of the proportions and the musculature of human anatomy. The figures in paintings and frescoes from the High Renaissance often move gracefully and elegantly through space, or take on complex poses that display the beauty of the human form. These artists fully incorporated the illusionistic tools of linear and atmospheric perspective into their artistic practice so that their elegant figures frequently appear in a perfectly accurate and convincingly deep space to create formally and compositionally perfect images. Their influence led to the development of Mannerism, a style that incorporated Renaissance techniques but rejected naturalism in favor of exaggeration. By 1600, Mannerist painting gave way to Baroque art.

The manifestation of the Renaissance in visual art can be understood as several key compositional features. Through creating illusionistic form and space, art becomes more naturalistic—it looks closer to nature and the truth of lived human experience. This close observation of the natural world and a deep understanding of the anatomy of the human body can be traced directly back to ancient Greek art. Artists begin paying particular attention to the illusion of three-dimensional space.

1. 1. Chiaroscuro: Chiaroscuro is a painting technique developed during the Renaissance that contrasts light and dark. In depicting the fall of light and shadow, figures look as if they have a mass and volume.
2. 2. Study of anatomy: The study of anatomy and drawing the human figure using live models became an important part of artistic training during the Renaissance.
3. 3. Linear perspective: In order to create the appearance of deep space on a two-dimensional surface, Renaissance artists used the geometric tools of linear perspective, such as foreshortening, orthogonal lines, and vanishing points.
4. 4. Diminishing scale: The idea that the farther we are from an object, the smaller it looks was first incorporated into painting during the Renaissance.
5. 5. Atmospheric perspective: Renaissance artists created depth by painting far-away objects in lighter, less intense colors.
6. 6. Sfumato: This technique, popularized by Leonardo da Vinci and his followers, involves blurring the edges of subjects or objects to mimic the natural blurring of the eyes that humans experience when staring for long periods.

These nine artists from different times and cities exemplify some of the most important features of the Renaissance period.

1. 1. Giotto (d.1137): Giotto is often credited as the artist whose work made the most impact during the Late Gothic period in Italy. His frescoes in Florence and Padua, Italy are the first to accurately use modeling to create an image of the human form.
2. 2. Jan van Eyck (1390–1441): One of the greatest painters working north of the Alps during the Early Renaissance, Jan van Eyck’s masterful work in oil paint exemplifies the aesthetics of the Early Renaissance as it took hold in Northern Europe. (Oil painting would not become popular in Italy, where tempera reigned, until the 1470s.)
3. 3. Sandro Botticelli (d.1510): One of the best painters working in Florence during the Early Renaissance period, Botticelli is best known for his paintings The Birth of Venus and Primavera.
4. 4. Leonardo da Vinci (1452–1519): Leonardo was the quintessential Renaissance man, with interests in science, engineering, anatomy, philosophy, and astronomy. He is most famous for his Mona Lisa and The Last Supper, and for his drawings.
5. 5. Raphael (1483–1520): High Renaissance painter Raphael is known for his frescoes in the Vatican, including The School of Athens, and for his rivalry with Michelangelo.
6. 6. Albrecht Dürer (1471–1528): German High Renaissance painter Albrecht Dürer is best known for his portraits and religious altarpiece.
7. 7. Hans Holbein (d.1534): This German-born artist became one of the most notable portrait painters in England during the reign of Henry VIII.
8. 8. Michelangelo (1475–1574): One of the most virtuosic artists of the sixteenth century, Michelangelo is most famous for his monumental sculpture David and for painting the frescoes on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel.
9. 9. Titian (d.1576): Titian was considered one of the best painters in Venice during the sixteenth century. His mastery of oil paint was highly influential.

The best way to understand the Renaissance is by examining some of the best artworks from the period.

1. 1. Gates of Paradise by Lorenzo Ghiberti (1425–1452). This pair of bronze doors is one of the greatest examples of a relief sculpture created with bronze during the period. Created for the Baptistry of the Florence Cathedral, the gates depict significant scenes from the Old Testament and demonstrate the masterful integration of linear perspective.
2. 2. The Birth of Venus by Sandro Botticelli (1485–1486). The Birth of Venus is one of the most famous paintings of a female nude from the Renaissance period. The image depicts the ideals of feminine beauty during the fifteenth century in Italy while also telling the story of an ancient mythological goddess.
3. 3. The Last Supper by Leonardo da Vinci (1495–1498). Leonardo’s Last Supper is one of the best examples from the Renaissance of a painter incorporating the tools of linear perspective to create a highly rendered illusion of deep space on a two-dimensional surface.
4. 4. David by Michelangelo (1501–1504). Michelangelo’s sculpture of the Biblical David is one of the most monumental sculptures ever carved from a single block of marble.
5. 5. Sistine Chapel ceiling frescoes by Michelangelo (1508–1512): Commissioned by Pope Julius II, this is perhaps the most ambitious cycle of frescoes created for a religious space during the sixteenth century. The Sistine Chapel holds great significance within the Vatican complex and the Basilica of St. Peter, and the images on the ceiling, depicting scenes from the Book of Genesis, including the Creation of Adam, embody the values and aesthetics of art during the High Renaissance in Italy.
6. 6. The School of Athens by Raphael (1509–1511): The School of Athens depicts all of the great Greek philosophers debating in the topics that are most associated with humanism and ancient philosophy, and highlights the philosophical and educational values of the Renaissance period. The fresco famously includes portraits of notable Renaissance artists and philosophers that Raphael casts as ancient philosophers. This is just one image in a grand cycle of frescoes that Raphael created for the Pope’s private apartments in the Vatican palace.

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