Early Renaissance

Italian art of the fifteenth century, the Quattrocento, when Florence led the way. Around 1420 Brunelleschi worked out linear perspective, and Masaccio used it in his frescoes, with solid figures standing in real space under a single light. Donatello revived the free-standing bronze nude. Over the next decades Fra Angelico, Uccello, Piero della Francesca, Mantegna, Botticelli and the young Perugino explored the new tools, often with a crisp, decorative clarity that still remembers Gothic elegance. Pictures are bright, evenly lit and carefully drawn, with outlines visible and architecture laid out like a stage set.

How to tell it apart: the High Renaissance that follows is softer and more unified, with blended shadows (sfumato) and grander, more monumental figures.

789 works in the quiz. Play a round on Early Renaissance.

Artists

Leonardo da Vinci · Sandro Botticelli · Donatello · Giotto · Filippo Brunelleschi · Fra Angelico · Piero della Francesca · Andrea del Verrocchio · Giovanni Bellini · Masaccio · Andrea Mantegna · Filippo Lippi · Duccio di Buoninsegna · Lorenzo Ghiberti · Paolo Uccello · Pietro Perugino · Carlo Crivelli · Antonello da Messina · Piero di Cosimo · Antonio del Pollaiuolo · Arnolfo di Cambio · Benozzo Gozzoli · Lorenzo di Credi · Justus van Gent · Michael Pacher · Piero del Pollaiuolo · Bartolomé Bermejo · Giovanni Ambrogio de Predis · Domenico Veneziano · Lippo Memmi

Best-known works

“The Birth of Venus” — Sandro Botticelli, 1485
“Primavera” — Sandro Botticelli, 1480
“Lamentation of Christ” — Andrea Mantegna, 1483
“Holy Trinity” — Masaccio, 1420
“Maestà” — Duccio di Buoninsegna
“Flagellation of Christ” — Piero della Francesca, 1459
“Virgin Annunciate” — Antonello da Messina, 1475
“Adoration of the Magi” — Sandro Botticelli, 1475
“Delivery of the Keys” — Pietro Perugino, 1480
“Portrait of Simonetta Vespucci” — Piero di Cosimo, 1480
“Diptych of Federico da Montefeltro and Battista Sforza” — Piero della Francesca, 1470
“David” — Donatello, 1440
“Venus and Mars” — Sandro Botticelli, 1485
“Saint George and the Dragon” — Paolo Uccello, 1470
“The Resurrection” — Piero della Francesca, 1463
“Saint Jerome in His Study” — Antonello da Messina, 1474
“Madonna Litta” — Leonardo da Vinci, 1490
“Annunciation” — Fra Angelico
“Calumny of Apelles” — Sandro Botticelli, 1497
“Benois Madonna” — Leonardo da Vinci, 1480
“Madonna del Parto” — Piero della Francesca, 1455
“Madonna of the Magnificat” — Sandro Botticelli, 1483
“Saint Sebastian” — Antonello da Messina, 1478
“The Baptism of Christ” — Piero della Francesca, 1448
“Funerary Monument to Sir John Hawkwood” — Paolo Uccello, 1436
“The Trials of Moses” — Sandro Botticelli, 1481
“Stefaneschi Triptych” — Giotto, 1320
“Pallas and the Centaur” — Sandro Botticelli, 1482
“Madonna and Child with Saints, Angels and Federico da Montefeltro (San Bernardino Altarpiece)” — Piero della Francesca, 1472
“Death of the Virgin” — Andrea Mantegna, 1462