Early Italian Renaissance Artists - the Beginning of a New Age.

The move away from a flat two-dimensional representation of reality expressed by the artists of the thirteenth century began in the fourteenth, the Trecento.

Breaking with the artistic traditions and mosaics of the Byzantine period at the end of the Middle Ages the Florentine artist Giotto de Bondone was the first to render the illusion of three-dimensional reality in paint on a flat surface. Giotto was the first to recapture a more realistic representation of the human body since the times of classical antiquity.

In the period known as the Proto-Renaissance Giotto and his contemporaries laid the foundation for the extraordinary innovations of the fifteenth century.

More than 80 years after Giotto’s death in 1337 another exceptional painter emerged from Florence. Tommaso di ser Giovanni di Simone Cassai, also known as Masaccio, was the most accomplished painter of the early fifteenth century. The Brancacci Chapel in Florence houses some of Masaccio’s finest frescoes including one of his most important works, ‘The Rendering of the Tribute Money’. Masaccio, along with Brunelleschi and the sculptor Donatello, are the trio of artists who represent the cornerstone of the early Italian Renaissance period.

The architect Filippo Brunelleschi pioneered the science of perspective, his experiments in and around Florence paved the way for artists to create a greater sense of realism into their paintings. Brunelleschi’s magnificent dome of Florence Cathedral is a lasting testament to the skill of a towering figure of the early Renaissance,

Fra Filippo Lippi. After the early death of his parents Lippi was placed in the Carmelite monastery in Florence. He was appointed chaplain to a convent in Florence where he met and formed a relationship Lucrezia Buti, the resulting romance produced a son, Filippino Lippi who also became a painter. Fra Filippo Lippi’s famous fresco, ‘The Feast of Herod’ in Prato Cathedral is an undoubted masterpiece of the early Renaissance.

Domenico Ghirlandaio was a successful fresco painter, lauded by wealthy Florentine patrons he was the head of a formidable workshop. In 1481 he, along with other artists, was summoned to Rome and tasked to paint frescoes on the wall of the Sistine Chapel. Ghirlandaio’s contribution was his ‘The Vocation of Peter and Andrew’ on the right wall of the chapel.

It was in Ghirlandaio’s workshop that the young Michelangelo mastered the techniques of painting and draughtsmanship.

Luca Signorelli from the town of Cortona in Tuscany was among the group of artists summoned to decorate the walls of the Sistine Chapel in Rome. Signorelli’s contribution was ‘The Testament and Death of Moses’ painted in collaboration with Bartolomeo della Gatta. Influenced by Piero della Francesca and Pietro Perugino, Signorelli’s paintings in Orvieto Cathedral are considered to be his masterworks.

This series of paintings influenced Michelangelo’s huge fresco ‘The Last Judgement’ on the South wall of the Sistine Chapel.

Pietro Perugino from Umbria was an acclaimed master with a large workshop. He worked as a pupil under Piero della Francesca and in the workshop of Andrea del Verrocchio alongside Leonardo da Vinci and other gifted individuals. Pietro was yet another artist summoned to Rome to paint frescoes on the walls of the Sistine chapel. Aided by his considerable workshop his contributions were, ‘The Charge to St Peter’, ‘Moses leaving for Egypt’ and ‘The Baptism of Christ’. 

The Black Death of 1348 swept across Europe; it has been estimated that one-third of the population died because of this devastating pandemic. This population decline continued and in 1450 the population of Europe was around half of what it had been in the early part of the fourteenth century.

This almost unique slump in population resulted in major cultural changes, land became more abundant, and labour became scarcer. The plague catalysed social and economic changes, leading to shifts in wealth and power that enabled vibrant cultural activity. This led to a society dependent on trade and industrial enterprise rather than on a land and rent-based system.

An equally vital event during this period was the invention of the printing press by Johannes Gutenberg in or around 1440. Before the printing press written works had been confined to manuscripts, Gutenberg's invention led to the production of affordable books that could be widely distributed on a scale that had been unimaginable previously. This significant development democratized knowledge, making books and literary materials more affordable and accessible. Consequently, literacy grew, and ideas spread swiftly, fuelling the Renaissance movement even more.