High Renaissance Art in Italy

     In art history, High Renaissance, is the period denoting the apogee of the visual arts in the Italian Renaissance. The High Renaissance period is traditionally taken to begin in the 1490s, with Leonardo's fresco of the Last Supper in Milan and the death of Lorenzo de' Medici in Florence, and to have ended in 1527 with the sacking of Rome by the troops of Charles V. This term was first used in German (Hochrenaissance) in the early nineteenth century, and has its origins in the "High Style" of painting and sculpture described by Johann Joachim Winckelmann.


"Christ Among the Doctors" : painted in 1506 by
Albrecht Durer




"School of Athens"
Raphael, 1510-1511

"The Madonna of the Meadow"

1506, Raphael

In this painting Raphael used Leonardo's pyramidal composition for subjects of the Holy Family.

"The Marriage of the Virgin", also known as "Lo Sposalizio", is an oil painting by Italian High Renaissance artist Raphael. Completed in 1504 for a Franciscan church in Città di Castello, the painting depicts a marriage ceremony between Mary and Joseph. It changed hands several times before settling in 1806 at the Pinacoteca di Brera.