Baroque

A time of luxury, power and extravagance, Baroque emerged in Rome around 1590 and quickly spread across Europe. The Baroque style was a reaction to the austerity and restraint of the Renaissance. It emphasized movement, color and sensuality. Baroque art mostly flourished in Rome, Naples, Turin, Florence, Genoa, and Venice. Many famous artists emerged during this time period in Italy, such as Caravaggio and Bernini. They had a significant influence on other European countries as well. The many palaces, churches, and fountains built during this period were opulent, to say the least. However, they are stunning in their artistry and made a powerful statement about the wealth and power of their patrons.

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Caravaggio

A revolutionary artistCaravaggio is considered a revolutionary artist, partly because of his dramatic use of light and shadow. He painted religious and mythological scenes in the naturalistic style of the late Renaissance.Originally from ItalyCaravaggio was born in Milan, where his father, Fermo Merisi, was a household administrator and architect-decorator to the Marchese of Caravaggio. In 1576 the family moved to Caravaggio to escape a plague that ravaged Milan, and Caravaggio's father and grandfather both died there on the same day in 1577. It is assumed that the artist grew up in Caravaggio ...

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Gian Lorenzo Bernini

Gian Lorenzo Bernini was an Italian sculptor and architect. While a major figure in the world of architecture, he was, also and even more prominently, the leading sculptor of his age, credited with creating the Baroque style of sculpture. As one scholar has commented: "What Shakespeare is to drama, Bernini may be to sculpture: the first pan-European sculptor whose name is instantaneously identifiable with a particular manner and vision, and whose influence was inordinately powerful...." In addition, he was a painter (mostly small canvases in oil) and a man of the theater: he wrote, ...

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Paolo Ucello

 Paolo Uccello was a painter and mathematician who was notable for his pioneering work on visual perspective in art. Although considered a "minor" master by some 17th-century English writers, his reputation grew steadily in the following centuries, and today he is recognized as one of the greatest painters of the early Italian Renaissance.His nickname, Uccello, means 'little bird' in Italian. He was the son of a barber and studied painting under Lorenzo Ghiberti, who won the competition for the doors of the Florence Baptistery in 1401. In his twenties, Uccello moved to Venice, ...

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Francesco Petrarca

Francesco Petrarca (1304 – 1374) was a scholar and poet of early Renaissance Italy, and one of the earliest humanists.Petrarch's rediscovery of Cicero's letters is often credited with initiating the 14th-century Italian Renaissance and the founding of it’s humanism. In the 16th century, Pietro Bembo created the model for the modern Italian language based on Petrarch's works, as well as those of Giovanni Boccaccio, and, to a lesser extent, Dante Alighieri.Petrarch's sonnets were admired and imitated throughout Europe during the Renaissance and became a model for lyrical poetry.Pe ...

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Dante Alighieri

Dante Alighieri (1265–1321) was an Italian poet, prose writer, and political thinker best known for The Divine Comedy, regarded as the most significant literary work composed in the Italian language and a masterpiece of world literature.Dante Alighieri was born in Florence, Italy, and spent his early years learning to read and write, as well as studying Latin. In the territory of Florence, he met Beatrice Portinari, who would become his muse in The Divine Comedy. He later married Gemma Donati, with whom he had multiple children. In his younger years, Dante led the Guelph military faction ...

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Giovanni Boccaccio

Giovanni Boccaccio was an Italian writer, poet, an important Renaissance humanist and one of the most important figures in the European literary panorama of the fourteenth century. Some scholars define him as the greatest European prose writer of his time, a versatile writer who amalgamated different literary trends and genres.The Decameron is a collection of novellas by the 14th-century Italian author Giovanni Boccaccio (1313–1375). The book contains 100 tales told by a group of seven young women and three young men; they shelter in a secluded villa just outside Florence in order to ...

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Pietro Bembo

A prodigy of Renaissance humanism, Pietro Bembo was a scholar, poet, historian, and cardinal. His letters are a remarkable record of the intellectual life of his day. He was a figure in the development of the Italian language, specifically Tuscan, as a literary medium, and his writings assisted in the 16th-century revival of interest in the works of Petrarch. Bembo's ideas were also decisive in forming the most important secular musical form of the 16th century, the madrigal.Pietro Bembo was born in Venice to a noble family. His father was a Venetian admiral and his mother was the daughter of ...