Exploring Italian Renaissance art
The artists, their works, and the world that shaped them.
The Baptistery Door Competitions Florentine-born and goldsmth-trained, Lorenzo Ghiberti (1378-1455) is the Early Renaissance sculptor who won the second competition in 1403 for a commission to create gilded bronze doors for…
The Pieta by Michelangelo is a study in redemption through suffering, a common theme in Italian Renaissance art. The word ‘pieta’ means pity and the viewer of The Pieta by Michelangelo…
Italian Renaissance painter Andrea del Castagno (1423-1457) was well known for the emotional expressionism and naturalism of his figure style. Castagno’s first noteworthy paintings were executed for the Florentine convent of…
Italian Renaissance artist, sculptor Donatello (Donato di Niccolò di Betto Bardi), was born ca. 1386 and died in 1466. Donatello is a dimunitive form of his proper name Donato. Around 1405,…
Strongly influenced by the Florentine art of Donatello and Masaccio on his travels, history records nothing for centuries of Early Italian Renaissance painter Piero della Francesco (1416-1492) until his re-discovery in…
In the Cestello Annunciation by Early Renaissance artist Sandro Botticelli, the artist depicts the moment just after the Archangel Gabriel’s arrival when he announces to the Virgin Mary that the Holy…
The painter Raphael Sanzio’s fresco of The Prophet Isaiah of 1511-12 in Sant’Agostino, Rome was commissioned by the Head Chancellor of the Papal Court, Johannes Goritz of Luxemburg. This Italian Renaissance…
While High Renaissance painter Andrea del Sarto (1486-1530) spent most of his life in his home town of Florence, Italy, he probably briefly visited briefly both France to work and Rome…
This Donatello sculpture ca. 1447 of famous Venetian condottiere, Erasmo da Narmi, was popularly called Gattamelata (The Honeyed Cat). This Donatello sculpture was very controversial at the time of its creation…
This article was published in November, 2006 under the following title: Botticelli: From the Birth of Venus to a Bonfire of the Vanities Most of the Western world is familiar with…
