Raffaello Sanzio, better known by his father and the rest of the world as Raphael, was born in the great city of Urbino, Italy, on April 6, 1483. His father Giovanni de' Santi, a painter of no great merit, but of good intelligence, had in his mind from the beginning that his only son would study t...

In the visual arts the sixteenth century saw the spread of Italian Renaissance ideas northward. In some cases they were carried by Italian artists like Benvenuto Cellini, who went to work in France. Cellini was Goldsmith to Francis I of France from 1537 to 1545. He completed here his first sculptur...

No one knows exactly when the Italian artist, Tiziano Vecellio, was born. Over the centuries, there has been a great deal of confusion concerning the date, due to a misprint in his biography by sixteenth-century art historian, Girgio Vasari. Vasari recorded the date as 1480, but the progress of Tizi...

Baroque is the name given to the art of the 17th century. But the baroque style, like all other styles in the history of art, began gradually. It started in the latter part of the 16th century and continued to be used well into the 18th century. Baroque can be defined as the florid, ornate style ...

Michelangelo Merisi was born in Caravaggio, Italy in 1573. He grew up to be known by the name of his birthplace, Caravaggio, and as an artist. He was probably the most revolutionary artist of his time, breaking the rules of previous artists. Caravaggio had spent his childhood in the presence of a...

Renaissance the renaissance was a cultural awakening for western Europeans from about 1350 to 1600. The renaissance began in the city-states of Italy first. It was a continuation of the middle ages, but it also signaled the beginning of modern times also. From this Europeans developed new attitude...

In Vasari\'s \"Lives of the Artists,\" Vasari offers us a fairly in-depth portrait of Tiziano de Cadore (most commonly and hereafter to be referred to as \"Titian\") both as one of the great painters of the Renaissance and as an influential and beneficent individual. Indeed, the portrait of Titian t...

A Painting In studying their prototypes the Byzantine artists learned anew the classical conventions for depicting the clothed figure, in which the drapery clings to the body, thus revealing the forms beneath-the so-called damp-fold style. They also wanted to include modeling in light and shade, wh...

The Borgias were one of the most important families in Italy, during the last years of the renaissance, if not the most important one. Not because of their goodness and kindness, the exact opposite, due to the behavior of some of the members of the family the Borgia name was soon known as a synonym...

Raphael\'s \"School of Athens\" is considered by many art historians to be the absolute masterpiece of the Renaissance. It is the perfect pictorial counterpart to the enormous changes in thinking that came about in the 1300s as a result of economic and technological developments. Its rational perspe...

There are many countries of the world that exist solely for the purpose of living. The people of these countries, cities, and towns may not know the treasures that their beautiful land has to offer. A magnificent example of such a country is Italy. The country of Italy is situated in Europe and at...