The High Renaissance is widely viewed as the greatest explosion of creative
genius in history. Even relatively minor painters active during the
period, such as Fra Bartolomeo and Mariotto Albertinelli, produced works
remarkable for their perfect harmony and total control of the painterly
mediums. Simply put, this period represented a culmination.
Since the essential characteristic of High Renaissance art
was its unity, a balance achieved as a matter of intuition, beyond the
reach of rational knowledge or technical skill, the High Renaissance art
style was destined to break up as soon as emphasis was shifted to favor
any one element in the composition. The High Renaissance art style
endured for only a brief period, 1495-1520, and was created by a few
artists of genius, among them
Leonardo
da Vinci, Donato Bramante,
Michelangelo, Raphael, and Titian.
Leonardo da Vinci is considered the paragon of Renaissance thinkers, engaged as
he was in experiments of all kinds and having brought to his art a
spirit of restless inquiry that sought to discover the laws governing
diverse natural phenomena. The High Renaissance is generally held to
have emerged in the late 1490s, when Leonardo da Vinci painted his Last
Supper in Milan. Michelangelo has come to typify the artist endowed with
inexplicable, solitary genius.
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