Narcissus by Boltraffio and after Boltraffio, 1500-1510

Narcissus at the Fountain is a 1500-1510 oil-on-panel painting by Giovanni Antonio Boltraffio, now in the Uffizi, in Florence.

A copy is held in the National Gallery, London.

Both works show a young man in profile, interpreted as Narcissus due to his downward gaze.

Giovanni Antonio Boltraffio | Narcissus at the Fountain | Uffizi Gallery, Florence

15th-16th century Art | Sitemap

The 15th and 16th centuries saw the flowering of the Renaissance, a period of renewed interest in classical antiquity that emphasized humanism, naturalism, and the development of new artistic techniques.

It began in Italy and later spread throughout Europe, with distinct regional styles and priorities.

Key periods

The Early Renaissance (15th century)

Originating in Florence, the Early Renaissance, or Quattrocento, established the foundations for the later High Renaissance.

Masaccio (1401-1428): Credited with popularizing linear perspective and creating realistic figures with solidity and emotion.

Donatello (1386-1466): His bronze David was the first free-standing nude sculpture since antiquity, demonstrating classical influence.

Sandro Botticelli (1445-1510): Known for elegant mythological paintings like The Birth of Venus and Primavera.

Jan van Eyck (1390-1441): A pioneer of the Northern Renaissance who mastered oil painting and meticulous detail, as seen in The Arnolfini Portrait.

Botticelli | Venus and Mars, 1483

Giovanni Antonio Boltraffio | The Virgin and Child, 1493-1499

A grave, statuesque young woman gazes down at a positively enormous child, who lies sideways across her lap.

Her deep red gown is open to reveal her breast, which she offers to her son - though he seems uninterested.

He turns his head away from his mother to look out at the viewer, while playing with the beads which dangle from her scarf.

We know from their delicate haloes that these are the Virgin Mary and infant Christ, but this is a very modern Mary, painted in a newly realistic manner.

Boltraffio (Milan, 1467-1516) was Leonardo da Vinci’s most gifted pupil, and imitated his master in style and technique.

Michelangelo | Bacchus, 1496-1497

Bacchus (1496-1497) is a marble sculpture by the Italian High Renaissance sculptor, painter, architect and poet Michelangelo Buonarroti.

The statue is somewhat over life-size and depicts Bacchus, the Roman god of wine, in a reeling pose suggestive of drunkenness.

Commissioned by Raffaele Riario, a high-ranking Cardinal and collector of antique sculpture, it was rejected by him and was bought instead by Jacopo Galli, Riario’s banker and a friend to Michelangelo.

Along with the Pietà the Bacchus is one of only two surviving sculptures from the artist's first period in Rome.

Cappella Sistina | La Volta di Michelangelo, 1508-1512

"Senza aver visto la Cappella Sistina non è possibile formare un'idea apprezzabile di cosa un uomo solo sia in grado di ottenere" - Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

La decisione di Giulio II di rifare integralmente la decorazione della volta fu probabilmente dovuta ai gravi problemi di natura statica che interessarono la Sistina fin dai primi anni del suo pontificato (1503-1513).

Essi dovettero essere la conseguenza degli scavi eseguiti sia a nord che a sud dell’edificio per la costruzione della Torre Borgia e del nuovo San Pietro.

Dopo che nel maggio del 1504, una lunga crepa si aprì nella volta, fu incaricato Bramante, allora architetto di Palazzo, di porvi rimedio, il quale mise in opera alcune catene nel locale soprastante la Cappella.

Caravaggio and the birth of Baroque

Italian Renaissance painter Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio (1571-1610) "put the oscuro (shadows) into chiaroscuro".

Chiaroscuro was practised long before he came on the scene, but it was Caravaggio who made the technique a dominant stylistic element, darkening the shadows and transfixing the subject in a blinding shaft of light.

Correggio | Jupiter and Io, 1530

Jupiter and Io is a painting by the Italian late Renaissance artist Antonio Allegri da Correggio (1489-1534).

It is part of the collection of the Kunsthistorisches Museum of Vienna, Austria.

History

The series of Jupiter's Loves was conceived after the success of Venus and Cupid with a Satyr. Correggio painted four canvasses in total, although others had been programmed perhaps.

Master of the Story of Griselda | Artemisia, 1498

"Artemisia" - Museo Poldi Pezzoli, Milano (Lombardia, Italy) - attributed to an anonymous Sienese master, known conventionally as the Master of the story of Griselda.

The Master of the Griselda Story is named from set of paintings which relate the story of Patient Griselda.

Other paintings have been ascribed to him.

The style is typical of Sienese art in the late fifteenth century and reflects the manner of Luca Signorelli.

His figures are notable for their elongated limbs, almost dancing motion and great elegance.

Master of the Female Half-Lengths | Renaissance painter

The Master of the Female Half-Lengths, active ca.1530-1540, was a Dutch Northern Renaissance painter* or likely a group of painters of a workshop.

The name was given in the 19th century to identify the maker or makers of a body of work consisting of 67 paintings to which since 40 more have been added.

The works were apparently the product of a large workshop that specialized in small-scale panels depicting aristocratic young ladies at half-length.

Pontormo | Mannerist painter

Jacopo da Pontormo, original name Jacopo Carrucci (born May 24, 1494, Pontormo, near Empoli, Republic of Florence (Italy)-buried Jan. 2, 1557, Florence) Florentine painter who broke away from High Renaissance classicism to create a more personal, expressive style that is sometimes classified as early Mannerism.

Pontormo was the son of Bartolommeo Carrucci, a painter. According to the biographer Giorgio Vasari, he was apprenticed to Leonardo da Vinci and afterward to Mariotto Albertinelli and Piero di Cosimo.

Agnolo Bronzino | Mannerist painter

Agnolo Bronzino (1503-1563) of Florence, Italy, known as Il Bronzino, was a Mannerist painter.

Mixing styles of the late High Renaissance into the early Baroque period, Mannerists often depicted their subjects in unnatural forms.

Bronzino’s works have been described as “icy” portraits that put an abyss between the subject and the viewer.

The Sistine Chapel, Michelangelo's masterpiece, 1508-1512

Julius II's decision to completely renovate the decoration of the Ceiling was probably due to the serious problems of a static nature that affected the Sistine Chapel from the earliest years of his pontificate (1503-1513).

They must have been the result of the excavations carried out both to the north and to the south of the building for the construction of the Borgia Tower and for the new St Peter's.

After a long crack had opened in the Ceiling in May 1504, Bramante, then the Palace architect, was charged with finding a solution and he fixed some tie rods in the area above the Chapel.

However, the damage suffered by the old painting must have been such as to convince the pontiff to entrust Michelangelo with a new pictorial decoration.

Rosso Fiorentino | Pietà, 1538-1540

This is the only easel painting that can be dated with certainty to Rosso's stay in France in 1530-40.

The cushions beneath Christ's body bear the blue alerions on an orange background of the coat of arms of Constable Anne de Montmorency, from whose château at Ecouen the Pietà was taken to the Louvre in the late 18th century.

The marks visible on the bodies of Christ and St John are due to an initial, reversed composition - vsible under X-ray photography - which Rosso had blacked out.

Caravaggio's hands

Revolutionary in his way of painting, Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio (1571-1610) personifies in every aspect of his eventful life the romantic figure of the damned artist.

Caravaggio was a leading Italian painter of the late 16th and early 17th centuries who became famous for the intense and unsettling realism of his large-scale religious works.

Caravaggio's innovations inspired Baroque painting, but the latter incorporated the drama of his chiaroscuro without the psychological realism.

The Last Judgment, 1535-1541 (Michelangelo)

The mighty composition, painted by Michelangelo between 1536-1541, is centred around the dominant figure of Christ, captured in the moment preceding that when the verdict of the Last Judgement is uttered (Matthew 25:31-46).

His calm imperious gesture seems to both command attention and placate the surrounding agitation. It starts a wide slow rotary movement in which all the figures are involved.

Michelangelo | The young Saint John the Baptist, 1495-1496

The biographies of Michelangelo by Vasari (1550) and Condivi (1553) recount that following the artist’s return to Florence from Bologna in 1495, his first commission was for a marble sculpture of a “San Giovannino” for Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco de’Medici (cousin of Lorenzo the Magnificent), now identified as the present work.

Rather than following the model of Donatello’s Saint John the Baptist (Florence, Museo del Bargello) as other Florentine sculptors had done, Michelangelo depicted the Baptist as much younger, no more than a boy of six or seven.

Why the Michelangelo's David statue is so famous?

David is a masterpiece of Renaissance sculpture created between 1501-1504 by Michelangelo.

It is a 5.17-metre (17.0 ft)[a] marble statue of a standing male.

The statue represents the Biblical hero David, a favoured subject in the art of Florence.

Originally commissioned as one of a series of statues of prophets to be positioned along the roofline of the east end of Florence Cathedral, the statue was placed instead in a public square, outside the Palazzo della Signoria, the seat of civic government in Florence, where it was unveiled on 8 September 1504.

What did the Medici family do for the Renaissance?

The Medici family's extraordinary patronage of art in Florence, it's a story that fundamentally shaped the Renaissance and left a massive legacy.

Here's a breakdown, covering their history, motivations, key figures, notable artists and the impact of their support.

Michelangelo Buonarroti | Tomb of Lorenzo de' Medici, 1524-1527

Donatello | The bronze David, 1440

David is the title of two statues of the biblical hero by the Italian early Renaissance sculptor Donatello, an early work in marble of a clothed figure (1408-09), and a far more famous bronze figure and dates to the 1430s or later. Both are now in the Museo Nazionale del Bargello in Florence.

Lorenzo Lotto | The Recanati Polyptych, 1506-1508

The Recanati Polyptych is a painting by the Italian Renaissance painter Lorenzo Lotto, executed in 1506-1508 and housed in the Civic Museum of Villa Colloredo Mels, Recanati, Italy.

The work is dated and signed Laurent[ius] Lotus MDVIII.

Lotto began to work on the piece in 1506 as a devotional for the church of San Domenico in Recanati.