The art of Italy
The Renaissance
It has been granted only to two nations, the Greeks and the Italians, and to the latter only at the time of the Renaissance, to invest every phase and variety of intellectual energy with the form of art.
Nothing notable was produced in Italy between the thirteenth and the seventeenth centuries that did not bear the stamp and character of fine art.
If the methods of science may be truly said to regulate our modes of thinking at the present time, it is no less true that, during the Renaissance, art exercised a like controlling influence.
Not only was each department of the fine arts practiced with singular success; not only was the national genius to a very large extent absorbed in painting, sculpture, and architecture; but the aesthetic impulse was more subtly and widely diffused than this alone would imply.
It possessed the Italians in the very center of their intellectual vitality, imposing its conditions on all the manifestations of their thought and feeling, so that even their shortcomings may be ascribed in a great measure to their inability to quit the aesthetic point of view.
We see this in their literature. It is probable that none but artistic natures will ever render full justice to the poetry of the Renaissance.
Critics, endowed with a less lively sensibility to beauty of outline and to harmony of form than the Italians complain that their poetry lacks substantial qualities; nor is it except by long familiarity with the plastic arts of their contemporaries that we come to understand the ground assumed by Ariosto and Poliziano.
We then perceive that these poets were not so much unable as instinctively unwilling to go beyond a certain circle of effects.
They subordinated their work to the ideal of their age, and that ideal was one to which a painter rather than a poet might successfully aspire.
The Renaissance is said to begin in 14th century Italy. The rediscovery of Ancient Greek and Roman art and classics brought better proportions, perspective and use of lighting in art. Wealthy families, such as the Medicis, and the papacy served as
patrons for many Italian artists, including Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo Buonarroti, Donatello, and Raphael.
The focus of most art remained religious. Michelangelo painted the Sistine Chapel, and sculpted his famous Pietà, Leonardo painted the Mona Lisa and The Last Supper. Raphael painted several Madonnas. Both Michelangelo and Donatello sculpted
visions of David.
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Gelato is a fine Italian art (York County Coast Star)
Gelato turns us into single-minded story tellers. We often recount our Italian holidays, filled with beautiful landscapes and breathtaking art, by reducing the cultural history into rest stops between new flavors and textures of gelato. The frozen milk...
Historic Italian art, students reunited at NMA (Reno Gazette-Journal)
With the Beffi Triptych in residence at the Nevada Museum of Art, two of L'Aquila, Italy's treasures -- its university students and its historic artwork -- will be reunited.
Rarely seen Italian Renaissance painting will be on view at Milwaukee Art Museum (The Canadian Press via Yahoo! Canada News)
MILWAUKEE - Rarely lent from the Pitti Palace in Florence, Italy, Raphael Sanzio's painting "The Woman with the Veil" is making its last United States' appearance likely for many years at the Milwaukee Art Museum.
An Italian Antihero’s Time to Shine (New York Times)
By one new metric, Michelangelo has been bumped from his perch atop the Italian art charts by Caravaggio.
Italian art shown in Shanghai (China Daily)
An exhibition featuring Italy's most valuable paintings kicked off in Shanghai on Wednesday, with 82 pieces of art from between the 15th and 20th centuries that belong to Italy's Uffizi museum.
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