The High Renaissance in Italy:


The High Renaissance in Italy is associated with three artistic giants, Leonardo da Vinci, Raphael, and Michelangelo. Leonardo mastered the art of realistic painting and even dissected human bodies in order to better see how nature worked. However, Leonardo also stressed the need to advance beyond such realism. It was Leonardo who began the attempt during the High Renaissance to move beyond realism by painting ideal forms rather than realistic ones.

Raphael blossomed as a painter at an early age. At twenty-five, he was already regarded as one of Italy's best painters. Raphael was well known for his frescoes in the Vatican Palace and was especially admired for his numerous madonnas (paintings of the Virgin Mary). In these he tried to achieve an ideal of beauty far surpassing human standards. His Alba Madonna reveals a world of balance, harmony, and order--basically, the underlying principles of the art of the classical world of Greece and Rome.

Michelangelo, an accomplished painter, sculptor, and architect, was another artistic giant of the High Renaissance. Fiercely driven by his desire to create, he worked with great passion and energy on a remarkable number of projects. His figures on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel in Rome reveal an ideal type of human being with perfect proportions. The beauty of this idealized human being is meant to be a reflection of divine beauty. The more beautiful the body, the more Godlike the figure.

Another manifestation of Michelangelo's search for ideal beauty was his David, a colossal marble statue commissioned by the Florentine government. Michelangelo maintained taht the form of a statue already resided in the uncarved piece of stone" "I only take away the surplus, the statue is already there." Out of a piece of marble that had remained unused for fifty years, Michelangelo created a fourteen-foot-high figure, the largest piece of sculpture in Italy since ancient Roman times. Michelangelo's David proudly proclaims the beauty of the human body and the glory of human beings.

Questions:

1. List the three artists associated with the High Renaissance in Italy.
2. For what are each of the three artists known?
3. What do you think Michelangelo meant when he said, "I only take away the surplus, the statue is already there"?


A portion of Michelangelo's Sistine Chapel ceiling
with a demon that resembled one of his critics!

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