The Culture of the High Renaissance: Ancients and Moderns in Sixteenth-Century Rome

About this book

Between 1480 and 1520 a concentration of talented artists including Melozzo da Forl Bramante Pinturicchio Raphael and Michelangelo arrived in Rome and produced some of the most enduring works of art ever created. This period now called the High Renaissance is generally considered to be one of the high points of Western civilisation. How did it come about and what were the forces that converged to spark such an explosion of creative activity? In this study Ingrid Rowland examines the culture society and intellectual norms that generated the High Renaissance. This interdisciplinary 2001 study assesses the intellectual paradigm shift that occurred at the turn of the fifteenth century. It also finds and explains the connections between ideas people and the art works they created by looking at economics art contemporary understanding of classical antiquity and social conventions.