Architecture. Starting especially from the second half of the fifteenth century, Rome with the papal court frequented by humanists, artists, architects became the new center in the development of architecture, which it found in the works and drawings (projects, notebooks, etc.) of the Sangallo, the most significant testimonies of Bramante and Raphael. Bramante, first active in Lombardy with his research on the classic, in Rome drew a new coherence from the study and technical analysis of ancient architectures, in ordering spaces in a perfect static rhythm of proportions. Raphael, B. Peruzzi, Giulio Romano, Italy Sansovino, M. Sanmicheli were linked to his lesson with their own declinations.
According to ITYPETRAVEL.COM, Michelangelo transformed Bramante’s static coordination into dynamism of defined and powerful masses, subordinating the individual elements to a monumental unity. These cultural ferments followed and re-elaborated by A. da Sangallo the Younger, G. Vasari, B. Ammannati, B. Buontalenti. The expressiveness of Michelangelo’s drawing found in Vignola and G. Della Porta, active above all in Rome and Lazio, a simplification of forms with a classicistic accent. The Rule delli Five Commandments (1562) Vignola, with the recovery and the canonization of the classical language he had had in a precursor Serlio (1537), fits with authorities in the production of the Treaties, which is in Palladio and Scamozzi more elaborations.
From the second half of the 16th century. we are witnessing an exasperation of the classicist tendencies (D. Fontana, M. Longhi, GA Dosio etc.), while the prevalence of the interest in the ornament connected to the constructive one generates an emblematic architecture (Pirro Ligorio, Girolamo da Carpi, L. Leoni) even with bizarre and curious results (F. Zuccari, his houses in Florence and Rome). The Mannerist garden was born, which derives from the ancient (temple of Palestrina) and from Bramante (Belvedere) the terraced and tiered squaring, enriched with whimsical fantasy in the villas of Pratolino, Bomarzo, Boboli and Tivoli. Among the main interpreters of the theme of the villa around Rome are Vignola, G. della Porta, G. del Duca. In the north, the villa Borromeo on Isola Bella is a document of a different declination. Sansovino, who arrived in Venice after the Sack of Rome, brings to the city an interpretation of Roman classicism. He is joined by Sanmicheli, active above all in Verona, also as a military architect; A. Palladio, a great Venetian architect and theorist, profoundly renews all the themes of civil and religious architecture; its action is decisive for all European architecture. Umbrian G. Alessi renews Genoese architecture; he was also active in Milan where, as in other centers of Lombardy, the Bolognese P. Tibaldi, an expressive interpreter of mannerism, also worked. Umbrian G. Alessi renews Genoese architecture; he was also active in Milan where, as in other centers of Lombardy, the Bolognese P. Tibaldi, an expressive interpreter of mannerism, also worked. Umbrian G. Alessi renews Genoese architecture; he was also active in Milan where, as in other centers of Lombardy, the Bolognese P. Tibaldi, an expressive interpreter of mannerism, also worked.
Sculpture. In the sixteenth century, sculpture was also affected by Leonardo’s innovative spirit, contributing to the spread of a pictorial vision of form. In Tuscany its reflections can be seen in F. Rustici and Pierino da Vinci. The fifteenth-century tradition was represented in the central Italy by A. Sansovino (who had a large following in the northern Italy), by Bambaia and by the Solari; in southern Italy by Giovanni da Nola and Girolamo da Santa Croce; in Emilia by local modellers (A. Begarelli). Michelangelo, who started from the study of classical art, gave his images the expression of a tormented passion. His ways dominated the sculpture of every region; in the central Italy the followers were innumerable: from Tribolo to B. Bandinelli, to A. Montorsoli. B. Cellini, a brilliant sculptor and goldsmith, also spread the Italian way in France. To Venice, in addition to the influence of Sansovino, A. Vittoria was important, a vital interpreter of Michelangelo. In the late sixteenth century, Giambologna, T. Landini, P. Tacca, F. Mochi, V. Danti represent the sculpture of Florentine mannerism.
Painting In Florence, between the end of the 15th century. and at the beginning of the 16th, Leonardo turned to the study of nature in all its complex articulations: his painting, through the atmospheric sensitivity, surpasses the solidity of the fifteenth-century form. Its influence was notable in the mature Renaissance: in Lombardy on GA Boltraffio, A. Solario, Giampietrino, B. Luini; his research was important for Giorgione, Correggio, Andrea del Sarto and the first Florentine Mannerists, as well as for Raphael himself.
Michelangelo also represented in painting the break with the early Renaissance. Raphael, initially active in Florence, approached the Florentine currents; in Rome he looked to Michelangelo and also to the Ferrarese (Dosso Dossi) and Venetian (Sebastiano del Piombo) painters, welcoming very different experiences in a very personal synthesis, an unrepeatable example both in the inspiration of ancient painting (the grotesques) and in the naturalness of execution and ideation, germs of the Italian seventeenth century. Among the ranks of students, Giulio Romano, active in Mantua, excelled; disclosed his inventions M. Raimondi, the best known of the engravers of the 16th century. In Emilia, where the Bolognese F. Francia worked and where Dossi from Ferrara emerged, the delicate and monumental art of Correggio broke out, opening the way to Baroque decoration.
In Venice, Giorgione inaugurates a vision aimed at integrating landscape and figure in an intuitive fusion, starting tonal painting. Tiziano develops these premises, achieving very high results. His contemporaries were L. Lotto, with a collected and penetrating sensitivity, Italy Palma il Vecchio, Bonifacio de ‘Pitati, Pordenone and the two greats who concluded the golden period of Venetian painting: Tintoretto and Veronese. Sensitive to the art of the major Venetians was Italy Bassano, founder of a family of painters who developed the rural theme in typical genre scenes, with formal sensitivity to which the Greek referred. G. Romanino, G. Savoldo, A. Moretto, GB Moroni were active on the Veneto-Lombard borders, while Sebastiano del Piombo, who emigrated from Venice to Rome, merged his Venetian education with the ways of Michelangelo.
In Florence, in addition to the activity of B. Della Porta and Andrea del Sarto, the painting of mannerism developed with Pontormo and Rosso, brilliant researchers of new expressions; A. Bronzino, F. Salviati, Iacopino del Conte, G. Vasari, more faithful to Michelangelo’s ways. Mannerism had Michelangelo’s characteristics in Rome with Daniele da Volterra; it was represented in Siena, updated by Sodoma in sixteenth-century language, by D. Beccafumi; in Bologna by P. Tibaldi; in the Marche by F. Barocci; found a significant expression in Parma, with the stylistic elegance of Parmigianino. From Tuscany with Rosso, from Emilia with Primaticcio and with Nicolò dell’Abate, it spread to France in the school of Fontainebleau.
At the end of the century, two salient facts of opposite spirituality will mark the paths to the painting of the following century: the so-called reform of the Bolognese Carracci, who refer to Raphael, Correggio and Titian, and the new vision established by Caravaggio, a revolutionary artist who opposed the unadorned aspects of truth are stately and skilful imitation.
Decorative arts. The Renaissance also informed, often through the work of important artists, the sumptuary and decorative arts, which tend to be slower to break away from the Gothic tradition. The wooden inlay, in Tuscany, in the new pictorial and perspective tradition, translated the drawings of the best artists. The hard stone inlay began its great fortune in Florence in the sixteenth century. Pisanello remains unsurpassed in the art of the medal: among the many followers, Matteo De ‘Pasti. Faenza, Florence, Cafaggiolo, Deruta, Urbino are centers of excellence for Italian ceramics; Venice, for glass and fabric. After the great flowering of the miniature in the fourteenth century, the Renaissance gave new impetus to the art of the book. Characteristic of the Italian miniature is the decoration with spirals or precious gems; the Venetian miniature inaugurates the type of large architectural shots, which we also find in Ferrara and Rome. There are many workshops: Liberale da Verona had a particular significance for the painting itself in Siena. With the sixteenth century the Italian miniature decays; the Dalmatian G. Clovio stands out for his technical ability. In the engraving, we owe great masterpieces in books printed in Florence and Venice.
