Fine Art Touch is devoted to the exploration of Italian Renaissance Art and art in all its forms. Italian Renaissance artists changed the course of art history.
The study of Italian Renaissance Art is not just looking at great works of art, but also looking at the culture that created them..the body of knowledge that is Italian Renaissance Art History.
Primary Italian Renaissance art periods/movements including Trecento, Early Renaissance, High Renaissance, Late Renaissance/Mannerism, and Venetian Renaissance.
The writings of Italian Renaissance artist Giorgio Vasari offer a wealth of information about the art and artists of his time, his very name synonymous with accuracy of information.
Nero's Golden House, now buried for 2000 years, was newly discovered in the Renaissance with its classical Greek sculpture and frescoes intact, profoundly influencing Italian Renaissance art.
Following the breakdown of the feudal system and the subsequent Black Death in the Middle Ages, new sources of art patronage developed as business and commerce began to thrive with the emergence of a new wealth middle class.
Opulence was expected in Italian Renaissance courts, but princes were able to openly display their wealth while aristocrats were constrained by sumptuary laws.
The Este of Ferrara claimed to be descendants of Trojan princes during the Italian Renaissance, enjoying a courtly environment flavored with tales of mythology and medieval chivalry.
Ludovico Gonzaga, court of Mantua sponsored artists like Italian Renaissance artist Andrea Mantegna who turned his castle into a luxurious showplace for a visit from the pope.
Giovanni de' Medici began a powerful dynasty of banking and commerce that spread throughout Europe and funded many of the greatest works of the Italian Renaissance.
The early life of Lorenzo de' Medici was full of conspiracy and intrigue as he survived an assassination attempt by the pope and the Pazzi that killed his brother Giuliano.
It was in the Trecento or Proto-Renaissance that the ornamental, detailed International Gothic style of painting by artists like Gentile da Fabriano was in full bloom, but this was soon to change.
Information about early Italian Renaissance painter Giotto di Bondone who began the movement to the return to Greek and Roman ideals of naturalism in Italian Renaissance art.
The Early Renaissance began in the city of Florence in Central Italy in the fourteenth century. Early Renaissance painting, sculpture, and literature in Italy were influenced by an influx of scholars who migrated to Rome
Imagine the surprise of art experts when two long missing Fra Angelico paintings were found in November, 2006 behind a door in an apartment in Oxford, England.
The dome of Florence Cathedral by Brunelleschi is commonly known simply as The Duomo because of the beauty and magnificence of its design and its striking impact on the skyline of Florence.
Masaccio's Tribute Money is revolutionary in his use of perspective, not seen since antiquity, and the forms appearing to being rendered with a single light source.
For the first time since antiquity, we see the full use of Brunelleschi's innovative perspective technique in the fresco of the Holy Trinity by Masaccio.
Michelangelo aptly named Lorenzo Ghiberti's Gates of Paradise acknowledging the stunning work of the older artist, who transitioned art from the Gothic style into the Renaissance style.
Italian Renaissance artist Donatello was a skilled artisan in both marble and bronze, but it is said that he demanded a certain amount of artistic freedom.
This Donatello sculpture of Gattamelata was very controversial at the time of its creation as it was an equestrian monument glorifying a man who was just a man, not a ruler
Early Italian Renaissance artist Paolo Uccello joined the ranks of groundbreakers like Brunelleschi, Masaccio, and Ghiberti in his exploration of the new device of perspective.
Intensely interested in the movement of the human body, Antonio Pollaiuolo is thought to have dissected corpses to improve his understanding of human anatomy.
Andrea Mantegna paved the way for later artists of the Italian Renaissance and Baroque eras through his illusionistic style and dramatic foreshortening.
Forgotten for several hundred years, Italian Renaissance painter Melozza da Forli has regained his popularity. Although his frescoes survive only in fragmentary form now in the Quirinal Palace in the Vatican, his fame was well deserved as the inventor of sotto in su or extreme foreshortening.
Andrea del Verrocchio (1435-1488) was an Italian Renaissance artist working in the Florentine court of famous art patrons, Lorenzo and Giuliano de Medici.
The art of Botticelli features the face of a woman almost as familiar to art lovers as that of Leonardo da Vinci's Mona Lisa. She was the ravishing Florentine beauty, Simonetta Vespucci.
In the Cestello Annunciation by Botticelli the artist depicts the dramatic moment when the archangel Gabriel arrives announcing to Mary of the impending visit from the Holy Ghost.
As a young man Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519) was apprenticed to the studio of Italian Renaissance painter and sculptor, Andrea del Verrocchio. Da Vinci was a fast learner.
This early fine art work by Italian Renaissance master Leonardo da Vinci gives us a glimpse of this great artist of the High Renaissance we have come to know so well.
Leonardo da Vinci's Last Supper painting has been controversial since its exeution in 1498, not only due to Leonardo's experimental fresco technique which caused its deterioration.
The Mona Lisa portrait by Italian Renaissance artist Leonardo da Vinci was never delivered to a patron, but it eventually found its way into Napoleon's bedroom in the Tuileries.
Italian scholar Giuseppe Pallatini believes he has found where the real Mona Lisa is buried, and he claims to know the exact location of the beautiful woman who modeled for Leonardo da Vinci.
The original loose pages of the notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci are now bound and scattered throughout England, Italy, France, and America, separated into separate volumes.
Stolen from a Scottish castle owned by the Duke of Buccleuch in 2003, Leonardo's Madonna with the Yarn Winder is one of the few autograph works of the artist.
Raphael's biographer, Giorgio Vasari, writes "the most famous, the most beautiful and most divine" in describing Raphael's Transfiguration of Christ, his last painting.
Raphael Sanzio designed a fine art tapestry of The Miraculous Draught of Fishes, then sent the design to a Flemish fine art tapestry weaver where the best fine art tapestry wall hangings were made.
When asked for his opinion by a patron about the worth of the painter Raphael's fresco of Isaiah by the patron, Michelangelo simply replied, "For that knee alone, it is worth the price."
Raphael's portrait of Lorenzo de' Medici, Duke of Urbino, was bought for $325 in 1968 by a savvy art New York dealer, then auctioned for $37 million in 2007.
Information about the life of Michelangelo Buonarroti, irrascible Italian Renaissance artist, painter, sculptor, and architect, known for his "terribilita.".
The Italian Renaissance sculpture of David by Michelangelo looms over the town square in the city of Florence like a sentinel, larger than life, a symbol of the Florentine Republic.
After hearing that his work was credited to someone else, The Pieta by Michelangelo was secretly signed by the artist one night when he entered the Vatican after hours.
Though little is known of him today, High Renaissance painter Correggio's sensual, illusionistic works display his superb mastery of foreshortening and remarkable atmospheric effects.
Giorgione's painting of The Pastoral Concert in the Venetian Renaissance created a new genre in art, which the artist called his "poesie" painting, a poem expressed in paint..
Vittore Carpaccio, like Botticelli, is another important artist of the Italian Renaissance who fell into disfavor but was then resurrected by later generations.
Venetian artist Titian's Venus of Urbino has the trademark red-gold hair that history has named "Titian" after the artist's name because of his frequent use of the brownish orange color.
In thisTitian painting of Danae, Ovid's mythological story is depicted of the seduction of the young woman, Danae, by the god Zeus who comes down to her in a shower of gold.
The Rothschilds unsuccessfully attempted to purchase Titian's Sacred and Profane Love for a sum which exceeded the value of the Villa Borghese itself and all its art works where it remains today..
Mannerism in art appears in Florence and Rome following the death of Raphael Sanzio in 1520, a new style that focused on the human figure, with contorted poses and disturbing emotional content.
Caught up in the turmoil of Renaissance Rome early in the 16th century, Italian Renaissance artist Parmigianino developed his own unique Mannerist style of painting.
Artistic heir to the divine Raphael after his death, Giulio Romano completed many of the Raphael's unfinished works but never reached the same heights as his master.
Mannerist artist Benvenuto Cellini wrote one of the most engaging memoirs ever written and is described by others as boisterous, licentious, sensual, a murdering braggart.
Working in the Mannerist style, Jacopo Tintoretto claimed his artistic style developed from the figure drawing style of Michelangelo and the color sense of Titian.
Giuseppe Arcimboldo new style featured portraits of people not as we see them, but with rendered clumps of mammals, fish, vegetables and other natural objects.
Featured here are a variety of published articles by art historian and author, Brenda Harness. As more published articles become available, they will will find their way here.
Simonetta Vespucci died young in 1476 at the age of twenty-two from tuberculosis, but Botticelli continued to feature her image in his art for the next three decades.
Renaissance humanism was an invention of the mind based on the pagan concepts of classical antiquity. It seemed like a good thing at the time, but they couldn't quite make it work.
This article is about an unspoken competition between Italian Renaissance rivals, Michelangelo and Raphael, and how ach paid homage to the other in a subtle way.
Benvenuto Cellini's autobiography entertains readers still today, 500 hundred years after his death, and no one tells a tale better than Benvenuto Cellini.
For those folks not tuned in to their own historical roots, the Roman Emperor Nero is an important part of your culture, not just a computer software tool for burning compact disks.
The barbarian invasion of Attila the Hun may have caused a mass migration of whole populations of Roman citizens from their homes in the Italian countryside to found Venice.
Even though William Kingsland of Manhattan had no will and no heirs when he died in 2006, he did leave behind something else - some stolen art. Now the FBI is investigating Kingsland's art hoard.
Vatican Splendors, an exhibition from the Vatican Museums, may be coming to a town near you if you live near Florida, Ohio or Minnesota. Closer than Rome anyway.
Archaeologists have found a Roman gladiator mosaic outside Rome in the private arena of the imfamous Roman emperor Commodus where gladiators trained and fought for the pleasure of the emperor.
A Bernini sculpture worth $50M by Italian Baroque master Gian Lorenzo Bernini has found a new home. Bernini's masterpiece was donated in January 2007 to a gallery in Toronto.
Imagine being from a middle-class family struggling to pay college tuition for your daughter, then having a $600,000 eBay auction windfall fall into your lap.
The Easter Island moia, gigantic monolithic statues associated with the Polynesian culture, may soon share the island's limited space with a whole gaggle of new unwanted family members.
ROME (12/19/2006) - It was announced today that Nero's pleasure palace, the Domus Aurea or Golden House, closed for over a year, will reopen next month for public visitation.
New Aztec information: Archaeologists suggest that the monolith uncovered in October, 2006 in the heart of Mexico City may actually be the headstone of an Aztec ruler.
A fine art auction in New York of Nazi looted arts reaps a huge result for Christie's Auction House bringing in sales of $491,472,000, called the biggest fine art auction in history.
A Jackson Pollock painting, if rumors are true, has just been sold to an art collector for a whopping $140 million, breaking records for the highest amount ever paid for a painting.
This marble bust sculpture portrait of Aristotle of the Roman-era is said to the "the best-preserved likeness ever found" by Alkestis Horemi, senior archaeologist of conservation and archaeological work on the site of the new Acropolis Museum
The world's richest museum, the J. Paul Getty, has been embroiled in a recent art controversy with Italian authorities and has agreed to return disputed antiquities.
A new database of stolen and looted art has been created to help reunite the victims and famlies of the Holocaust with their property which was confiscated by the Nazis in Austria in WWII.
An ancient Western papyrus scroll, the Derveni Text, has been published 44 after its discovery, and called the greatest evidence of Greek philosophy and religion since the Italian Renaissance.
Imagine owning a famous Picasso art work worth $139 million and damaging it in front of witnesses. That's what happened to Steve Wynn who paid a small fortune for his famous Picasso art work.
The Aztec artifact discovered on 10/04/2006, probably the largest Aztec idel ever found, may actually be of greater historical significance than the altar found with it.
Renaissance writer and courtier Baldasar Castiglione will be resurrected temporarily to serve as a 3d-animated tour guide for the High Museum in Atlanta in October, 2006.
This newly discovered Bacchus image decorated the dining room of some wealthy ancient Roman and features an image appearing one way as a beardless young man, and reversed as a bearded, bald old man.
A glossary of art terms and definitions: buon fresco, cartoon, chiaroscuro, contrapposto, fresco, fresco secco, grisaille, humanism, perspective, sfumato, Renaissance Man
Fine Art Touch is owned and operated by Brenda Harness, Art Historian, who received a Master's Degree from Vanderbilt University with an emphasis in Italian Renaissance Art.
11-26-2006 - Harness House Publishing announces that its Fine Art Touch website (www.finearttouch.com) now has hand-painted reproductions of famous art works available for purchase.
Fine Art Touch encourages you to learn more about Italian Renaissance art and the Greco-Roman civilization which inspired the rise of artistic giants like Michelangelo, Leonardo, and Raphael.
Fine Art Touch explores the phenomenon that was Italian Renaissance Art through an examination of many complex factors that were present in Italian culture prior to and during the Renaissance.
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