Early Italian Painting (14th - Early 16th Centuries)
The evolution of Italian painting from Giotto to the beginning of the 14th Century is the story of a search for the mastery of space and perspective and an attempt at the realistic rendering of expressions and attitudes. These developed in a climate of rejection of the earlier Byzantine style and the contemporary Northern manner, which was more attentive to detail than to a grandiose concept of the universe. While the 15th Century or Quattrocento marked the beginning of the Italian Renaissance and its passion for mathematical construction centred on mankind, other trends such as international Gothic were dominant in Florence. La Chasse (The Hunt) is a wonderful example of this court art which treats fable-like themes from the natural and animal world as if they were motifs in an embroidery. Neri di Bicci, a 15th Century Florentine painter, constructed his picture around a crucifix by Lorenzo Monaco, painted half a century earlier. At the beginning of the 16th Century, Perugino, outstripped by Raphael, his brilliant pupil, and Basaiti, the Venetian who did not follow the younger Giorgione and Titian in their use of colour, illustrated the constant conflicts in Italian painting between tradition and stylistic change.
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