T
he 15th-century artistic developments in Italy (for example, the interest in perspective, anatomy, and
classical cultures) matured during the early 16th century in the brief era that art historians call the
High Renaissance—the period between 1495 and the deaths of Leonardo da Vinci in 1519 and Raphael
in 1520. The Renaissance style, however, dominated the remainder of the 16th century (the Late Renais-
sance), although a new style, called Mannerism, challenged it almost as soon as Raphael had been laid to
rest (in the ancient Roman Pantheon,FIG. 10-51). Thus, no singular artistic style characterizes 16th-
century Italy. Nonetheless, Italian art of this period uniformly exhibits an astounding mastery, both
technical and aesthetic.High and Late Renaissance
The High Renaissance produced a cluster of extraordinary geniuses and found in divine inspiration the
rationale for the exaltation of the artist-genius. The Neo-Platonists read in Plato’s Ionhis famous praise
of the poet: “All good poets ...compose their beautiful poems not by art, but because they are inspired
and possessed....For not by art does the poet sing, but by power divine.”^1 And what the poet could
claim, the Renaissance claimed also, raising visual art to the status formerly held only by poetry. Thus,
painters, sculptors, and architects came into their own, successfully advocating for their work a high
place among the fine arts. During the High Renaissance, the masters in essence created a new profession,
one having its own rights of expression, its own venerable character, and its own claims to recognition by
the great. The “fine” artist today lives, often without realizing it, on the accumulated prestige won by pre-
ceding artists, beginning with those who made the first great gains of the High Renaissance.
As in many other artistic eras, regional differences abounded in the 16th century, not only between
Northern Europe (discussed in Chapter 23) and Italy but within Italy itself. The leading artistic centers
of Central Italy were Florence and Rome, where three of the greatest artists who ever lived—Leonardo da
Vinci, Raphael, and Michelangelo—created works whose appeal has endured for 500 years.22