Category: Early Renaissance

Perugino’s Christ Handing the Keys to Saint Peter

Perhaps the most famous painting in the Sistine Chapel before Michelangelo’s time was one by fresco by Pietro Perugino called “Christ Handing the Keys of the Kingdom to Saint Peter”.  Perugino carried on what Masaccio and others had been doing before, but he was able to place his painted forms …

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Donatello’s Saint Mark

  The statue of St. Mark was commissioned by the linen guild, one of the poorer guilds in Florence whose patron was St. Mark.  They decided to hire the sculptor Donatello for the commission, who created a larger than life-size work (it is 7’9” tall).  The work itself was placed …

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Masaccio’s Holy Trinity

In the church of Santa Maria Novella in Florence is one of the best examples of the early Renaissance scientific approach to creating the convincing illusion of space within a painting.  It is here, on one of the walls inside the church, that Masaccio painted his fresco of the Holy …

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Donatello’s David

Perhaps Donatello’s landmark work – and one of the greatest sculptural works of the early Renaissance – was his bronze statue of David.  This work signals the return of the nude sculpture in the round figure, and because it was the first such work like this in over a thousand …

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Botticelli’s Primavera

Sandro Botticelli was one of the most well-known of the Medici employees.  He studied under Fra Filippo Lippi and had a technique which focused on line, and his forms were lightly shaded.  While art historians consider Botticelli to have been an expert at using line, he was also adept at …

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