Early Renaissance Art

Early Renaissance covered the period from 1400 to 1500. This period depicted artists as craftsman and arts were created by commission and imitation. This period was characterized by workshop system where there were collaborations between masters and apprentices, artworks were run like businesses and were commonly family-based. Artists who were product of this workshop system were Michelangelo and Leonardo da Vinci.

Early Renaissance Art was innovated by frescoes (art created on damp plaster), oil paints, chiaroscuro (use of shadows to show the balance of light and dark), science, linear perspective which allowed artist to represent objects in relative sizes and realistic portrayal of human nature.

Works of Filippo Bruneleschi, Masaccio, Pierro della Francesca, Donatello and Andrea Mantegna comprised the Early Renaissance Art. Examples of their works were the View of an Ideal City, Holy Trinity and the statue of David. Bruneleschi depicted the three-dimensional space in the arts, Masaccio was one of first artists who applied the new method of linear perspective as well as Pierro della Francesca and Donatello used new sense of naturalism including Mantegna which characterized all of the innovations of the Early Renaissance Period.

Most of the Early Renaissance Art were affected by the works of Dante Alighieri and Francis Petrarch. Dante was born in Florence while Petrarch was born in Arezzo. Artists influenced by Dante were Giotto, Michelangelo and Salvadore Dali including authors like Shelley, Byron, Yeats and T.S. Elliot. On the other hand, Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales and Sir Thomas Wyatt poems were greatly influenced by Petrarch.