High Renaissance, term denoting a period of about 30 years, beginning in the 1490s, in which architects, painters, and sculptors in Italy (chiefly in Rome) aimed to create works that were harmonious and well-balanced, clear and direct, both visually and in content in short, ideal.
The first master who achieved in his own work the synthesis that has been designated High Renaissance style was Leonardo da Vinci (1452—1519). The archetypal solitary geLeonardo was both artist and scientist, and the two interests were mutually reinforcing. His dissections of the human body, for example, helped him to recreate in his art the universally perfect body. For Leonardo, art was an expression of beauty, but science was truth. His was a Renaissance mind.
Michelangelo Buonarroti’s (1475—1564) early sculpture, such as the “Piet?” (1499; St. Peter’s, Rome), the “David” (1501—04; Accademia, Florence), and the “Madonna and Child” (1501—04; Notre-Dame, Brugge), epitomize the High Renaissance style. Michelangelo’s was so restless and powerful a spirit, however, that he could not be contained for long within a system whose highest ideals were order and the negation of individuality for the sake of the anonymity of perfection in a work of art. Michelangelo was the first of the High Renaissance masters to break with the style: spread on the long length of the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel (1508—12) is the spectacular fresco that previews his evolution from an easy, graceful harmony of forms to the tenseness that is characteristic of his extremely personal later works.
The creator of High Renaissance architecture was Donato Bramante (1444—1514), who spent most of his life in Milan, where he knew and was influenced by Leonardo, and who went to Rome in 1499, when he was 55. His first Roman masterpiece, the Tempietto (1502) at S. Pietro in Montorio, is a centralized, domed structure that recalls Classical temple architecture. Pope Julius II (reigned 1503—13) chose Bramante to be papal architect and together they devised a plan to replace the old 4th century St.

Peter’s with a new church of gigantic dimensions and to rebuild the Vatican Palace. Both of these projects were commenced, but neither was completed until long after the deaths of Bramante and Julius.
The foremost painter of the High Renaissance was Raffaello Sanzio (1483—1520), known as Raphael. Born at Urbino and trained under Perugino (c. 1450—1523), Raphael quickly assimilated his master’s style and soon surpassed him, exhibiting extraordinary facility at placing painted forms into the picture space. Raphael settled for a time in Florence, where his facility in handling paint allowed him to satisfy the patrons of Leonardo and Michelangelo who had grown weary of waiting for thefr promised works. In three years’ time Raphael painted almost 20 Madonnas; in the same period Leonardo painted only the “Mona Lisa.”
Michaelangelo was working on the Sistine Ceiling when Julius II summoned Raphael to Rome to paint a series of rooms (the well- known Stanze) in the Vatican. In the first room he created his masterpiece, the “School of Athens” (1508—11), a monument to neoPlatonic thought, which is said to perfectly embody the Classical spirit of the High Renaissance. Raphael borrowed figures and compositional ideas from Leonardo and Michelangelo and set them into architecture inspired by Bramante. Raphael’s later paintings show his development away from the High Renaissance principles of total harmony and balance in composition,
The deaths of a number of the leading masters in painting, architecture, and sculpture; the diversion of the papacy’s interests to external threats; the rapid depletion of church finances; and the demands of the Augustinian monk Martin Luther for reform, all contributed to bringing this phase of civilization to a close, and long before May 7, 1527, when Rome was sacked by imperial troops, the High Renaissance was history.


Back to Top
Author Resource Box22, upplands vasby, Stockholms, Sweden.Read Elka Jorgensen Profile