The High Renaissance included such great artists as Bacchiacca, the painter of Eve with Cain and Abel, Del Sarto who painted Head of the Madonna and The Holy Family with the infants Saint John, Santi di Tito who painted The Madonna and Child with Saint John the Baptist, Grannacci who painted Scenes from the life of Saint John the Bapist and The Crucifixon, Bartolomeo who painted Madonna and the Child with Young Saint Peter the Baptist, Cigoli, the painter of The Adoration of the Shepherds with Saint Catherine of Alexandria, Signorelli, who painted Madonna and Child, and Pulzone, who painted The Lamentation. There was also of course, Raphael who painted The Agony in the Garden, Michaelangelo, and his Sistine Chapel, and Da Vinci’s enigmatic Mona Lisa.
Raphael was a master painter and architect of the Italian High Renaissance. He lived from 1483-1520. He is most famous for his paintings of Angels and Madonnas, of which he painted over 300 in his lifetime. Raphael also painted portraits including one of Pope Julius II.
Michaelangelo is said to have been the absolute greatest artist of his time. He is of course most famous for his painting of the vaulted ceiling of the Sistine Chapel in Rome, which was done between the years 1508 and 1512, but he was a sculptor, and an architect as well, and also has a very famous sculpture of David.
Leonardo Da Vinci was not only an artist, but a man of many talents. Painter of Mona Lisa, and of the Last Supper. He was also a sculptor, an architect, and a man of science who did serious investigations into the natural and physical sciences, mathematics, mechanics, and engineering. He is said to have designed the earliest versions of airplanes and helicopters alongside his work as a master artists.
Some lesser-known artists are just as important to the landscape of the High Renaissance period in art.
Bacchiaca, though probably most famous for his Madonna and Child, became associated later with the period of Mannerism that followed the High Renaissance. After studying under Perugino, Bacchiacca developed a distinct style that borrowed from many influences but retained a sense of clarity and order. In 1523, Bacchiacca worked with Pontormo, an Artist whom he admired, on painted bedroom decorations, a collaboration that led to his adoption of a more Mannerist style. However, by the early 1540’s, he returned to painting in a classical style inspired by Michelangelo’s models. Later in his life, he worked mainly as a designer of tapestries.
Del Sarto may be most well known for the mention of his name in a Robert Browning poem. Nevertheless, his work stands among the greats of the High Renaissance. He was an Italian draftsman and painter who lived from 1486 to 1530, and was known for his fluent elaboration of the High Renaissance style and the natural expression of emotion in his mainly religious works. He used patches of colored light and shade to shape forms, rather than conceiving painting as colored drawing. His style is beautifully expressed in the paintings Head of the Madonna and The Last Supper.
Cigoli, like many of his contemporaries, was a painter and architect born in 1559 and dying in 1613. As an architect he was a student and helper of Buontalenti: executed the works of outstanding elegance in Florence and in Rome. is most famous works were realized between Florence and Rome, such as Martirio di Santo Stefano (1597). Though the period of his work fell somewhat outside the timeframe of the High Renaissance, the style still coincides with that of the High Renaissance artists.
These are just a handful of the artists who were an important part of the High Renaissance. There are certainly many more, and each added his own style to the realm and scope of true High Renaissance art.
