In art history , the High Renaissance was a short period of the most exceptional artistic production in the Italian states, particularly Rome , capital of the Papal States , and in Florence , during the Italian Renaissance . Most art historians state that the High Renaissance started between 1490 and 1500, and ended in 1520 with the death of Raphael, although some say the High Renaissance ended about 1525, or in 1527 with the Sack of Rome by the mutinous army of Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor , or about 1530. The best-known exponents of painting, sculpture and architecture of the High Renaissance include Leonardo da Vinci , Michelangelo , Raphael , and Bramante . In the 21st century, the use of the term has been frequently criticized by some academic art historians for oversimplifying artistic developments, ignoring historical context, and focusing only on a few iconic works.
53-592: The Cortile del Belvedere ( Belvedere Courtyard or Belvedere Court ) was a major architectural work of the High Renaissance at the Vatican Palace in Rome . Designed by Donato Bramante from 1505 onward, its concept and details reverberated in courtyard design, formalized piazzas and garden plans throughout Western Europe. Conceived as a single enclosed space, the long Belvedere court connected
106-491: A balance. Fortuna came to represent life's capriciousness. She was also a goddess of fate : as Atrox Fortuna , she claimed the young lives of the princeps Augustus ' grandsons Gaius and Lucius , prospective heirs to the Empire. (In antiquity she was also known as Automatia .) Fortuna's father was said to be Jupiter and like him, she could also be bountiful ( Copia ). As Annonaria she protected grain supplies. June 11
159-675: A great explosion of creative genius, following a model of art history first proposed by the Florentine Giorgio Vasari . The paintings in the Vatican by Michelangelo and Raphael are said by some scholars such as Stephen Freedberg to represent the culmination of High Renaissance style in painting, because of the ambitious scale of these works, coupled with the complexity of their composition, closely observed human figures, and pointed iconographic and decorative references to classical antiquity , can be viewed as emblematic of
212-558: A prominent role in everyday social life, also represented by the very common refrain "La [dea] fortuna è cieca" ( latin Fortuna caeca est ; "Luck [goddess] is blind"). Fortuna is often depicted with a gubernaculum (ship's rudder), a ball or Rota Fortunae (wheel of fortune, first mentioned by Cicero ) and a cornucopia (horn of plenty). She might bring good or bad luck: she could be represented as veiled and blind, as in modern depictions of Lady Justice , except that Fortuna does not hold
265-570: A temple at the Forum Boarium . Here Fortuna was twinned with the cult of Mater Matuta (the goddesses shared a festival on 11 June), and the paired temples have been revealed in the excavation beside the church of Sant'Omobono : the cults are indeed archaic in date. Fortuna Primigenia of Praeneste was adopted by Romans at the end of 3rd century BC in an important cult of Fortuna Publica Populi Romani (the Official Good Luck of
318-584: A wing of the Vatican Library, which occupies the former middle terrace and bisects the space. James Ackerman has suggested that the move was a conscious one, designed to screen the secular, even pagan nature of the Cortile and the collection of sculptures that Pope Adrian VI had referred to as " idols ". Today the lowest terrace is still called the Cortile del Belvedere, but the separated upper terrace
371-581: Is called the Cortile della Pigna after the Pigna , a large bronze pinecone, mounted in the niccione , likely to have been the finial of Hadrian's tomb or, as supposed in the Middle Ages, to mark the turning point for chariots in the hippodrome where many Christians were martyred. In 1990, a sculpture of two concentric spheres by Arnaldo Pomodoro was placed in the middle of the upper courtyard. High Renaissance The art historian Jill Burke
424-677: Is found in a variety of domestic and personal contexts. During the early Empire, an amulet from the House of Menander in Pompeii links her to the Egyptian goddess Isis , as Isis-Fortuna. She is functionally related to the god Bonus Eventus , who is often represented as her counterpart: both appear on amulets and intaglio engraved gems across the Roman world. In the context of the early republican period account of Coriolanus , in around 488 BC
477-539: Is from 55 BC. In Seneca 's tragedy Agamemnon , a chorus addresses Fortuna in terms that would remain almost proverbial, and in a high heroic ranting mode that Renaissance writers would emulate: O Fortune, who dost bestow the throne's high boon with mocking hand, in dangerous and doubtful state thou settest the too exalted. Never have sceptres obtained calm peace or certain tenure; care on care weighs them down, and ever do fresh storms vex their souls. ... great kingdoms sink of their own weight, and Fortune gives way 'neath
530-516: Is referred to in art history. The serene mood and luminous colours of paintings by Giorgione and early Titian exemplify High Renaissance style as practiced in Venice . Other recognizable pieces of this period include Leonardo da Vinci 's Mona Lisa and Raphael 's The School of Athens . Raphael's fresco, set beneath an arch, is a virtuoso work of perspective, composition and disegno . In more recent years, art historians have characterised
583-609: Is she good, who without discernment comes to both the good and to the bad?...It profits one nothing to worship her if she is truly fortune ... let the bad worship her...this supposed deity". In the 6th century, the Consolation of Philosophy , by statesman and philosopher Boethius , written while he faced execution, reflected the Christian theology of casus , that the apparently random and often ruinous turns of Fortune's Wheel are in fact both inevitable and providential, that even
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#1732771805030636-450: Is typical of Roman representations: in a letter from exile he reflects ruefully on the "goddess who admits by her unsteady wheel her own fickleness; she always has its apex beneath her swaying foot." Fortuna did not disappear from the popular imagination with the ascendancy of Christianity. Saint Augustine took a stand against her continuing presence, in the City of God : "How, therefore,
689-702: The Belvedere Torso . Julius commissioned Bramante to link the Vatican Palace with the Villa Belvedere. Bramante's design is commemorated in a fresco at the Castel Sant'Angelo; he regularized the slope as a set of terraces, linked by rigorously symmetrical stairs on the central longitudinal axis, to create a sequence of formal spaces that was unparalleled in Europe, both in its scale and in its architectural unity. A series of six narrow terraces at
742-635: The Greek goddess Tyche ) is the goddess of fortune and the personification of luck in Roman religion who, largely thanks to the Late Antique author Boethius , remained popular through the Middle Ages until at least the Renaissance . The blindfolded depiction of her is still an important figure in many aspects of today's Italian culture, where the dichotomy fortuna / sfortuna (luck / unluck) plays
795-602: The Roman senate dedicated a temple to Fortuna on account of the services of the matrons of Rome in saving the city from destruction. Evidence of Fortuna worship has been found as far north as Castlecary , Scotland and an altar and statue can now be viewed at the Hunterian Museum in Glasgow . The earliest reference to the Wheel of Fortune , emblematic of the endless changes in life between prosperity and disaster,
848-501: The Vatican Library . The wings have three storeys in the lower court and end in a single one enclosing the uppermost terrace. The whole visual scenography culminated in the semicircular exedra at the Villa Belvedere end of the court. This was set into a screening wall devised by Bramante to disguise the fact the villa facade was not parallel to the facing Vatican Palace facade at the other end. The entire perpectivised ensemble
901-615: The 1490s. Frederick Hartt states that Leonardo's The Last Supper , the painting of which began in 1495 and concluded in 1498, makes a complete break with the Early Renaissance and created the world in which Michelangelo and Raphael worked, while Christoph Luitpold Frommel, in his 2012 article "Bramante and the Origins of the High Renaissance," states The Last Supper is the first High Renaissance work but adds that
954-568: The 15th century. The ubiquitous image of the Wheel of Fortune found throughout the Middle Ages and beyond was a direct legacy of the second book of Boethius's Consolation . The Wheel appears in many renditions from tiny miniatures in manuscripts to huge stained glass windows in cathedrals, such as at Amiens . Lady Fortune is usually represented as larger than life to underscore her importance. The wheel characteristically has four shelves, or stages of life, with four human figures, usually labeled on
1007-521: The High Renaissance as a movement as opposed to a period, one amongst several different experimental attitudes towards art in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth century. This movement is variously characterised as conservative, as reflecting new attitudes towards beauty, a deliberate process of synthesising eclectic models, linked to fashions in literary culture, and reflecting new preoccupations with interpretation and meaning . High Renaissance sculpture, as exemplified by Michelangelo 's Pietà and
1060-505: The High Renaissance ended in 1520 with the death of Raphael. Honour and Fleming stated the High Renaissance was the first quarter of the 16th century meaning it would have ended in 1525. By contrast, Luigi Lanzi, in his History of Italian Painting , 1795–96, stated it ended with the Sack of Rome in 1527, when several artists were killed and many other dispersed from Rome , and Stokstad agrees. Raunch asserts that 1530 has been considered to be
1113-589: The High Renaissance were marked by a renewed emphasis upon the classical tradition, the expansion of networks of patronage , and a gradual attenuation of figural forms into the style later termed Mannerism . Alexander Raunch in The Art of the High Renaissance and Mannerism in Rome and Central Italy , 2007, states the High Renaissance began in 1490, while Marilyn Stokstad in Art History , 2008, states it began in
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#17327718050301166-405: The High Renaissance. Even relatively minor painters of the period, such as Fra Bartolomeo and Mariotto Albertinelli , produced works that are still lauded for the harmony of their design and their technique. The elongated proportions and exaggerated poses in the late works of Michelangelo , Andrea del Sarto and Correggio prefigure so-called Mannerism , as the style of the later Renaissance
1219-433: The Middle Ages. In Le Roman de la Rose , Fortune frustrates the hopes of a lover who has been helped by a personified character "Reason". In Dante's Inferno (vii.67-96), Virgil explains the nature of Fortune, both a devil and a ministering angel, subservient to God. Boccaccio 's De Casibus Virorum Illustrium ("The Fortunes of Famous Men"), used by John Lydgate to compose his Fall of Princes , tells of many where
1272-659: The Roman People ) on the Quirinalis outside the Porta Collina . No temple at Rome, however, rivalled the magnificence of the Praenestine sanctuary. Fortuna's identity as personification of chance events was closely tied to virtus (strength of character). Public officials who lacked virtues invited ill-fortune on themselves and Rome: Sallust uses the infamous Catiline as illustration – "Truly, when in
1325-602: The Vatican Palace with the Villa Belvedere in a series of terraces connected by stairs, and was contained on its sides by narrow wings. Bramante did not see the work completed, and before the end of the sixteenth century it had been irretrievably altered by a building across the court, dividing it into two separate courtyards. Innocent VIII began construction of the Villa Belvedere on the high ground overlooking old St Peter's Basilica , in 1484. Here, where
1378-473: The base was traversed by a monumental central stair leading to the wide middle terrace. The divided stair to the uppermost terrace, with flights running on either side against the retaining wall to a landing and returning towards the center, was another innovation by Bramante. His long corridor-like wings that enclose the Cortile now house the Vatican Museums collections. One of the wings accommodated
1431-572: The breezes could tame the Roman summer, he had the Florentine architect Antonio del Pollaiuolo , design and complete by 1487 a little summerhouse, which also had views to the east of central Rome and north to the pastures beyond the Castel Sant'Angelo (the Prati di Castello ). This villa suburbana was the first pleasure house to be built in Rome since Antiquity. When Pope Julius II came to
1484-471: The burden of herself. Sails swollen with favouring breezes fear blasts too strongly theirs; the tower which rears its head to the very clouds is beaten by rainy Auster . ... Whatever Fortune has raised on high, she lifts but to bring low. Modest estate has longer life; then happy he whoe'er, content with the common lot, with safe breeze hugs the shore, and, fearing to trust his skiff to the wider sea, with unambitious oar keeps close to land. Ovid 's description
1537-549: The close of the 15th century, while Franz Kugler, who wrote the first "modern" survey text, Handbook of Art History in 1841, and Hugh Honour and John Fleming in The Visual Arts: A History , 2009, state the High Renaissance started at the beginning of the 16th century. Another seminal work of art which was created in the 1495–1500 timeframe was Michelangelo's Pietà , housed in St. Peter's Basilica , Vatican City , which
1590-661: The end of the High Renaissance. Hartt adds that 1520 to 1530 was a transition period between the High Renaissance and Mannerism . Traditionally, the end of the High Renaissance in Florence is seen as marked by the end of the Republic of Florence and the beginning of the Duchy of Florence in 1532. High Renaissance style in architecture conventionally begins with Donato Bramante , whose Tempietto at S. Pietro in Montorio at Rome
1643-538: The festive early-17th-century joust depicted in a painting in Museo di Roma, Palazzo Braschi . The upper two levels were laid out with of patterned parterres that the Italians referred to as compartimenti , set in wide graveled walkways. The four sections (now grassed) of the upper courtyard have the same pattern that appears in 16th-century engravings. Sixtus V spoiled the unity of the Cortile (1585–90) by erecting
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1696-429: The hemicycle of the niche and took its cue from scholarly reconstructions of the ancient sanctuary dedicated to Fortuna Primigenia at Praeneste , south of Rome. The lowest, and largest level of the court was not planted. It was cobbled and paved with a saltire of stones laid corner to corner and had semi-permanent bleachers set against the Vatican walls to serve for outdoor entertainments, pageants and carousels such as
1749-463: The iconic David , is characterized by an "ideal" balance between stillness and movement. High Renaissance sculpture was normally commissioned by the public and the state, this becoming more popular for sculpture is an expensive art form. Sculpture was often used to decorate or embellish architecture, normally within courtyards where others were able to study and admire the commissioned art work. Wealthy individuals like cardinals, rulers, and bankers were
1802-399: The left regnabo (I shall reign), on the top regno (I reign) and is usually crowned, descending on the right regnavi (I have reigned) and the lowly figure on the bottom is marked sum sine regno (I have no kingdom). Medieval representations of Fortune emphasize her duality and instability, such as two faces side by side like Janus ; one face smiling the other frowning; half the face white
1855-529: The more likely private patrons along with very wealthy families; Pope Julius II also patronized many artists. During the High Renaissance there was the development of small scale statuettes for private patrons, the creation of busts and tombs also developing. The subject matter related to sculpture was mostly religious but also with a significant strand of classical individuals in the form of tomb sculpture and paintings as well as ceilings of cathedrals. Fortuna Fortuna ( Latin : Fortūna , equivalent to
1908-491: The most coincidental events are part of God's hidden plan which one should not resist or try to change. Fortuna, then, was a servant of God, and events, individual decisions, the influence of the stars were all merely vehicles of Divine Will. In succeeding generations Boethius' Consolation was required reading for scholars and students. Fortune crept back into popular acceptance, with a new iconographic trait, "two-faced Fortune", Fortuna bifrons ; such depictions continue into
1961-477: The other black; she may be blindfolded but without scales, blind to justice. She was associated with the cornucopia , ship's rudder, the ball and the wheel. The cornucopia is where plenty flows from, the Helmsman's rudder steers fate, the globe symbolizes chance (who gets good or bad luck), and the wheel symbolizes that luck, good or bad, never lasts. Fortune would have many influences in cultural works throughout
2014-481: The other half being of their own will. Machiavelli reminds the reader that Fortune is a woman, that she favours a strong, ambitious hand, and that she favours the more aggressive and bold young man than a timid elder. Monteverdi's opera L'incoronazione di Poppea features Fortuna, contrasted with the goddess Virtue. Even Shakespeare was no stranger to Lady Fortune: When in disgrace with Fortune and men's eyes I all alone beweep my outcast state... Ignatius J Reilly,
2067-475: The peak period of the High Renaissance was actually 1505 to 1513. David Piper in The Illustrated History of Art , 1991, also cites The Last Supper writing the work announced the High Renaissance and was one of the most influential paintings of the High Renaissance, but contradictorily states that the High Renaissance began just after 1500. Burchkardt stated the High Renaissance started at
2120-666: The place of work, idleness, in place of the spirit of measure and equity , caprice and pride invade, fortune is changed just as with morality". An oracle at the Temple of Fortuna Primigena in Praeneste used a form of divination in which a small boy picked out one of various futures that were written on oak rods. Cults to Fortuna in her many forms are attested throughout the Roman world. Dedications have been found to Fortuna Dubia (doubtful fortune), Fortuna Brevis (fickle or wayward fortune) and Fortuna Mala (bad fortune). Fortuna
2173-524: The protagonist in the famous John Kennedy Toole novel A Confederacy of Dunces , identifies Fortuna as the agent of change in his life. A verbose, preposterous medievalist, Ignatius is of the mindset that he does not belong in the world and that his numerous failings are the work of some higher power. He continually refers to Fortuna as having spun him downwards on her wheel of luck, as in "Oh, Fortuna, you degenerate wanton!" The Wheel of Fortune also has concerns with occultism and Satanism . In astrology
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2226-449: The realistic depiction of both physical and psychological features, and the manipulation of light and darkness, including tone contrast, sfumato (softening the transition between colours) and chiaroscuro (contrast between light and dark), in a single unifying style which expressed total compositional order, balance and harmony. In particular, the individual parts of the painting had a complex but balanced and well-knit relationship to
2279-478: The term Pars Fortuna represents a mathematical point in the zodiac derived by the longitudinal positions of the Sun , Moon and Ascendant (Rising sign) in the birth chart of an individual. It represents an especially beneficial point in the horoscopic chart. In Arabic astrology , this and similar points are called Arabian Parts . Al-Biruni (973 – 1048), an 11th-century mathematician, astronomer, and scholar, who
2332-485: The throne in 1503, he moved his growing collection of Roman sculpture here, to an enclosed courtyard within the Villa Belvedere itself. Soon after its discovery, Julius purchased the ancient sculpture of Laocoön and His Sons and brought it here by 1506. A short time later, the statue of Apollo became part of the collection, henceforth to be known as the Apollo Belvedere , as did the heroic male torso known as
2385-607: The turn of Fortune's wheel brought those most high to disaster, and Boccaccio essay De remedii dell'una e dell'altra Fortuna , depends upon Boethius for the double nature of Fortuna. Fortune makes her appearance in Carmina Burana (see image). The Christianized Lady Fortune is not autonomous: illustrations for Boccaccio's Remedii show Fortuna enthroned in a triumphal car with reins that lead to heaven. Fortuna also appears in chapter 25 of Machiavelli's The Prince , in which he says Fortune only rules one half of men's fate,
2438-400: The whole. Painting of the High Renaissance is considered to be the absolute zenith of western painting and achieved the balancing and reconciliation, in harmony, of contradictory and seemingly mutually exclusive artistic positions, such as real versus ideal, movement versus rest, freedom versus law, space versus plane, and line versus colour. The High Renaissance was traditionally viewed as
2491-500: Was attributed to the Etruscan Servius Tullius, while the second is known to have been built in 293 BC as the fulfilment of a Roman promise made during later Etruscan wars . The date of dedication of her temples was 24 June, or Midsummer's Day, when celebrants from Rome annually floated to the temples downstream from the city. After undisclosed rituals they then rowed back, garlanded and inebriated. Also Fortuna had
2544-484: Was begun in 1510. The Tempietto, signifies a full-scale revival of ancient Roman commemorative architecture . David Watkin writes that the Tempietto, like Raphael's works in the Vatican (1509–1511), "is an attempt at reconciling Christian and humanist ideals". The High Renaissance of painting was the culmination of the varied means of expression and various advances in painting technique, such as linear perspective ,
2597-636: Was consecrated to her: on June 24 she was given cult at the festival of Fors Fortuna . Fortuna's name seems to derive from Vortumna (she who revolves the year). Roman writers disagreed whether her cult was introduced to Rome by Servius Tullius or Ancus Marcius . The two earliest temples mentioned in Roman Calendars were outside the city, on the right bank of the Tiber (in Italian Trastevere ). The first temple dedicated to Fortuna
2650-430: Was designed to be best seen from Raphael's Stanze in the papal apartments of the palace. Shortly after, the court was home to the papal menagerie. It was on the lower part of the courtyard that Pope Leo X would parade his prized elephant Hanno for adoring crowds to see. Because of the pachyderm's glorious history he was buried in the Cortile del Belvedere. The court was incomplete when Bramante died in 1514. It
2703-528: Was executed in 1498–99. In contrast to most of the other art historians, Manfred Wurdram, in Masterpieces of Western Art , 2007, actually states that the dawn of the High Renaissance was heralded by Leonardo's Adoration of the Magi of 1481, for which only the underpainting was completed. As far as the end of the High Renaissance is concerned Hartt, Frommel, Piper, Wundrum, and Winkelman all state that
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#17327718050302756-444: Was finished by Pirro Ligorio for Pius IV in 1562–65. To the great open-headed exedra at the end of the uppermost terrace, Ligorio added a third story, enclosing the central space with a vast half-dome to form the largest niche that had been erected since antiquity — the nicchione ("great niche") visible today from several elevated outlooks around Rome. He completed his structure with an uppermost loggia that repeated
2809-461: Was the first to trace the historical origins of the term High Renaissance . It was first coined in German by Jacob Burckhardt in German ( Hochrenaissance ) in 1855 and has its origins in the "High Style" of painting and sculpture of the time period around the early 16th century described by Johann Joachim Winckelmann in 1764. Extending the general rubric of Renaissance culture, the visual arts of
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