The High Renaissance in Italy

During the sixteenth century, the Renaissance movement reached its peak in Italy. The High Renaissance is roughly dated from 1500 to 1520. Its artists were trained in Florence and Northern Italy but also worked in other European countries. The predominant impulses of High Renaissance art were self-confident humanism, an admiration for classical forms, and a dominating sense of stability and order.

While careful observation and the recording of nature was still important, the fields of science, astronomy, physics, optics and mathematics greatly influenced sixteenth-century artists.

Titian, Bacchanal, 1518, oil on canvas

The popularity of Neoplationism, a movement based on Platonic idealism, dictated classical subject matter in art. Paintings such as Titian's Bacchanal and Botticelli's Galetea demonstrate the High Renaissance taste for secular art that provided access to emotional inspiration formerly reserved for religious subject matter. Another significant change in the art world during the sixteenth century was the status of the artist in society. During this period, visual art came to be regarded as a liberal art rather than a manual art, and artists were highly valued and rewarded for their work. Artists of fame worked solely on commissions of their own choosing-- the patrons were wealthy merchants, popes, emperors and kings. Most visual artists were well versed in a number of fields--Michelangelo was a painter, a sculptor, as well as an architect. During this period the modern myth of the "artistic genius" was born.

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