Reniassance
Late Gothic
The Late Gothic is the bridge between the Middle Age and the Renaissance. The Crusades and trade that followed from them brought an influx of Byzantine art and artists to western Europeans. This influence appears strongly in the emotionalism of a large wooden crucifixes and icons. Although they are still Byzantine in style, they were becoming more 'Western' in treatment. Through these connections many literary works of classical antiquity were brought to the West. The new age began in the 14th century, where lawyers and notaries imitated ancient Latin style and studied Roman archaeology.
The novel unification of the characteristic style in art in Europe also took place at the end of the fourteenth century. The new hegemony was the consequence of a multifarious exchange of various artistic ideas and had lasted for several decades. It is difficult to point out the place and the time where the style came into being. That style was named the International Gothic.
The most significant artists of the period are Cimabue and Giotto. Giotto was trained in the Byzantine tradition. The art characterize rediscovery of the third dimension, of real and measurable space and architectural vocabulary based on the study of Classical structures.
Early Reniassance
Renaissance marks the period of European history at the close of the Middle Ages and the rise of the Modern world. It represents a cultural rebirth from the 14th through the middle of the 17th centuries. Early Renaissance, mostly in Italy, bridges the art period during the fifteenth century, between the Middle Ages and the High Renaissance in Italy. It is generally known that Renaissance matured in Northen Europe later, in 16th century.
The term renaissance means rebirth and is used to mark an era of broad cultural achievement as a result of renewed interest in the classical art and ideas of Ancient Greece and Rome. The main idea of rebirth lies at the belief that through the study of the intellectual and artistic treasures of the Greco-Roman antiquity, inspired by Humanism, can be reached the artistic greatness, wisdom and enlightenment.
The rediscovery of classical world radically altered the art of painting. By the year 1500, the Renaissance revived ancient forms and content. The spiritual content of painting changed - subjects from Roman history and mythology were borrowed. Devotional art of Christian orientation became classically humanized. Classical artistic principles, including harmonious proportion, realistic expression, and rational postures were emulated.
During this artistic period two regions of Western Europe were particularly active: Flanders and Italy. Most of the Early Renaissance works in northern Europe were produced between 1420 and 1550.
High Reniassance
The 'birth' of new interest in Classical Greco-Latin world, that artistic revolution of the Early Renaissance matured to what is now known as the High Renaissance. There has never been growth as lovely as that of painting in Florence and Rome, of the end of 15th and early 16th centuries. High Renaissance in Italy is the climax of Renaissance art, from 1500-1525. It is also considered as a sort of natural evolution of Italian Humanism (Umanesimo.
It has been characterized by explosion of creative genius. Painting especially reached its peak of technical competence, rich artistic imagination and heroic composition. The main characteristics of High Renaissance painting are harmony and balance in construction.
Italian High Renaissance artists achieved ideal of harmony and balance comparable with the works of ancient Greece or Rome. Renaissance Classicism was a form of art that removed the extraneous detail and showed the world as it was. Forms, colors and proportions, light and shade effects, spatial harmony, composition, perspective, anatomy - all are handled with total control and a level of accomplishment for which there are no real precedents.
We find it in the works of the greatest artists ever known: the mighty Florentines, Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo; the Umbrian, Raffaello Sanzio; along with the great Venetian masters Titian, Tintoretto and Veronese.
Mannerism
Mannersrism emerged from the later years of the Italian High Renaissance around the 1520. The word mannerism is derived from the Italian word maniera, meaning "style" or "manner". Rome, Florence and Mantua were mannerist centers in Italy.