High Renaissance

Continued from the Early Renaissance.

The 16th century is often referred to as the ‘Golden Age’ of Venetian Art. While the rest of Italy followed the (mostly Tuscan) artists in Rome in learning drawing and anatomy, the Venetians went their own way, obsessed with the dramatic qualities of light and atmosphere. It was also a time, beginning around 1500, when wealthy Venetian began to collect art and patronize artists and sculptors, allow them to go beyond traditional commissions for altarpieces and develop new, secular art forms— evoking classical mythology, poetry, history and philosophy.

The elusive, short-lived Giorgione of Castelfranco, a pupil of Giovanni Bellini, was the seminal figure in this new manner. In his most famous painting, The Tempest, the mysterious subject matter is subordinate to its tense, brooding atmosphere.