Collection: High Renaissance

The High Renaissance is the short, intense period between approximately 1495 and 1520 when Italian painting reached the formal balance that European academic teaching would reference for the next four centuries. The principal centres were Florence and Rome, with Venice running on a parallel timeline.

Three figures define the period. Leonardo da Vinci, working principally in Milan and Florence, brought scientific observation and psychological tension to compositions of unmatched concentration, including the Mona Lisa and the Last Supper. Raphael, in his short Roman career under Pope Julius II, distilled the period's clarity into the Vatican Stanze and a series of altarpieces that became the academic textbook standard. Michelangelo, working across painting, sculpture, and architecture, produced the Sistine Chapel ceiling between 1508 and 1512, and the Last Judgement two decades later. The period closed with the Sack of Rome in 1527, after which Mannerism took the figure into more strained territory.