Exploring Italian Renaissance art
The artists, their works, and the world that shaped them.
Discover the paintings, sculpture, and ideas of the Renaissance through the lives of its artists and the world around them.
Artists, patrons, and the people they painted. Explore the stories behind some of the Renaissance’s most familiar works.
Browse the articlesThe Venetian painting technique of artists like Titian and Giorgione during the Italian Renaissance was derived from the painting technique of Northern Renaissance artists. Strongly influencing Venetian artists were the oil…
For the first time since antiquity in Western art, we see the use of full perspective in The Tribute Money by Italian Renaissance artist, Masaccio. The Tribute Money by Masaccio is…
The School of Athens by Raphael Sanzio is a fresco painting decorating the private library of the pope, the Stanza della Segnatura, in the Vatican palace in Rome. The School of…
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…
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…
Few men have lived life as full as late Italian Renaissance mannerist artist, Benvenuto Cellini. Born in 1500, Benvenuto Cellini would be thrilled that we still talk about his life five…
Begun in Florence and written from about his thirty-seventh year until his death, a period of about thirty years, the notebooks of High Renaissance master Leonardo da Vinci consist of about…
Michelangelo carved the Medici Tombs and was appointed Medici project chief architect, designing the New Sacristy Chapel of the Church of San Lorenzo in Florence which contains the Medici Tombs. The…
Florentine Mannerist artist Benvenuto Cellini (1500-1572) wrote one of the most engaging memoirs ever written, claiming descent back 1500 years to a captain under the command of Julius Caesar in the…
Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni (1475-1564), known simply as Michelangelo, was an Italian painter, sculptor, and architect of the High Renaissance period. Much of the information we know about the life…
