High Florentine Renaissance

The Renaissance was officially born in Florence, a city that is often referred to as its cradle. This new figurative language, also linked to a different way of thinking about man and the world, began with local culture and humanism, which had already been brought to the fore by people like Francesco Petrarca or Coluccio Salutati. The news, proposed in the early fifteenth century by masters such as Filippo Brunelleschi, Donatello and Masaccio, were not immediately accepted by the client, indeed remained at least for twenty years a minority and largely misunderstood artistic fact, in the face of the now dominant international Gothic.

The Laurentian period (1470-1502)
The last thirty years of the fifteenth century apparently saw a slowdown in the innovative power of the previous decades, with a turn of taste to more varied and ornate expressions compared to the first Renaissance rigor. Interpretation of the measure between idealization, naturalism and virtuosity was in sculpture Benedetto da Maiano, author for example of a series of busts with soft workmanship and rich in descriptive details, and in painting Domenico Ghirlandaio.

The Chronicles of Benedetto Dei recorded in Florence, around 1472, forty workshops of painters, forty-four of goldsmiths, more than fifty of “master carvers” and more than eighty of “woodworms of inlays”. Such high numbers can only be explained by a strong external demand, coming from the other centers of the peninsula: since the eighties large prestigious commissions have come to the greatest Florentine masters from outside the city, such as the decoration of the Sistine Chapel for a team of painters or the construction of the equestrian monument to Bartolomeo Colleoni in Venice for Verrocchio.

For the artists of the so-called “third generation”, perspective was now an acquired datum and the researches were moving towards other stimuli, such as the dynamic problems of the masses of figures or the tension of the contour lines. The plastic and isolated figures, in a perfect balance with the measurable and immobile space, now left space for continuous games of moving shapes, with greater tension and expressive intensity.

Great influence in the figurative production was the diffusion of philosophical ideas from the Neoplatonic Academy, in particular through the writings of Marsilio Ficino, Cristoforo Landino and Pico della Mirandola. Among the various doctrines, those linked to the search for harmony and beauty were particularly important, as means for the attainment of the various higher forms of love (divine, human) and therefore of human happiness. Furthermore, the attempt to re-evaluate classical philosophy was fundamentalin Christian religious terms, which allowed a rereading of ancient myths as bearers of arcane truths and witnesses of a dreamed harmony now lost. So mythological scenes began to be commissioned to artists, returning to the category of subjects of the figurative arts.

The ratio of Lorenzo the Magnificent with the arts was different from that of his grandfather Cosimo, who had favored the construction of public works. On the one hand for “il Magnifico” art had an equally important public function, but rather turned to foreign states, as ambassador of the cultural prestige of Florence, presented as a “new Athens “: in this sense promoted a systematic diffusion both in literary field (with the sending, for example, of the Aragonese Collection to Alfonso d’Aragona, summa of Tuscan poetry from the thirteenth century onwards), and figurative, through the expedition of the best artists in various Italian courts. This favored the myth of the Laurentian age as the “golden age”, favored by the period of peace, although precarious and crossed by underground tensions, which he was able to guarantee in the Italian chessboard until his death; but it was also the origin of the weakening of the artistic vivacity of the city, favoring the future advent of other centers (in particular Rome) as a source of novelty.

On the other hand, Lorenzo, with his cultured and refined patronage, set a taste for objects rich in philosophical meanings, often establishing a confrontation, intense and daily, with the artists of his circle, seen as the top creators of beauty. This determined a precious, extremely sophisticated and learned language, in which allegorical, mythological, philosophical and literary meanings were bound in a complex way, fully legible only by the elite who possessed their interpretative keys, so much so that some meanings of the most emblematic works today they escape us. Art distanced itself from real life, public and civil, focusing on the ideals of escape from daily existence, in favor of an ideal goal of harmony and serenity.

The commendation of the lord was frequent, but gentle, veiled by cultured allusions. One example is the Apollo and Dafni (1483) by Pietro Perugino, in which Dafni was the Greek version of the name Laurus, ie Lorenzo. Works such as the lost Educazione di Pan by Luca Signorelli (about 1490) also imply meanings closely linked to the client, such as the theme of the incarnation of the god Pan, bearer of peace, in the Medici family, as the court poets extolled.

Architecture
Among the most important architectural constructions wanted by Lorenzo there was the villa of Poggio a Caiano, a private work therefore commissioned around 1480 to Giuliano da Sangallo. In it the noble floorit develops with terraces on all sides starting from a base surrounded by a continuous arched loggia. The volume has a square base, on two floors, with a large central hall, two floors high, barrel vaulted instead of the traditional courtyard. To ensure lighting at the salon the sides are moved by a recess on each, which gives the plan of the first floor the shape of an inverted “H”. The roof is a simple roof with protruding flaps, without a cornice. Original facade is in the presence of a tympanum of Ionic temple which gives access to a loggia-vestivolo covered by a barrel vault with lacunar. Inside the rooms are symmetrically arranged around the hall, differentiated according to the function.

Instead of closing on itself in the courtyard, the villa is open to the surrounding garden, thanks to the intelligent filter of the loggia, which gradually mediates between inside and outside. This characteristic, together with the conscious recovery of ancient techniques (such as the vaulted ceiling) and the application of elements of the classical temple, made the villa of Poggio a Caiano a real model for the subsequent private architecture of the villas, with important developments which later took place mainly in Rome and in the Veneto.

The protagonists

Antonio del Pollaiolo
The most prestigious shops in Florence in this period of time are those of Verrocchio and the brothers of Pollaiolo, Antonio and Piero. In the latter emerges the activity of Antonio, which stands out both in sculpture and in painting and in graphic arts. For example, Lorenzo de ‘Medici realized the classical theme bronze of Hercules and Antaeus (about 1475), where the mythological motif is represented by a play of broken lines that fit together with each other, generating tensions of unheard-of violence. In his works, research on human anatomy and the surrender of the movement becomes thicker and leads to a clear elaboration even of the smallest details.

Its main feature was the strong and vibrant contour line, which gives the figures an appearance of flickering tension of movement that seems to be able to burst at any moment. This can be clearly seen in the tablet of Hercules and Antaeus of the Uffizi (about 1475), in the Dance of Nudes by Villa La Gallina (full of classical quotations) or in the dense Battle of Ignudi (1471-1472).

The brothers of Pollaiolo were the first to use an oily primer both in the preparation of the wooden supports and in the drafting of the colors, thus achieving results of brilliance and smoothness that recalled the Flemish works.

Andrea del Verrocchio
Even Andrea del Verrocchio was a versatile artist, skilled in drawing and painting as in sculpture and in jewelry, with a distinctly taste inclined to naturalism and richness of ornament. During the seventies of the century the artist came to forms of great elegance to which he impressed a growing monumentality, as in David, a theme of the illustrious precedents, which was resolved according to “court” canons, with the effigy of an elusive young man and bold, in which we read an unprecedented attention to psychological subtleties. The work, which solicits multiple points of view, is characterized by a modeled sweet and suffused psychology that influenced the young Leonardo da Vinci, a pupil in Verrocchio’s workshop.

The multi-purpose workshop of Verrocchio became one of the most popular in the seventies, as well as the most important forge of new talent: from it came out, in addition to the famous case of Leonardo, Sandro Botticelli, Perugino, Lorenzo di Credi and Domenico Ghirlandaio.

Sandro Botticelli, training and maturity
Sandro Botticelli was perhaps the artist most associated with the Medici court and his ideal of harmony and beauty. Already in its first dated work, the Fortress (1470), shows a refined use of color and chiaroscuro derived from the lesson of Filippo Lippi, his first teacher, animated however by a strength and a stronger monumentality, to Verrocchio, with a tension linear learned by Antonio del Pollaiolo. The resulting style is very personal, with the figure for example appearing to be on the surface, rather than sitting on the shortened throne, animated by a play of lines that almost dematerialize its physicality. A fundamental characteristic of Botticellian art was in fact the design and the evidence accorded to the contour line.

Botticelli’s research led him to develop an incisive and “virile” style, with a progressive detachment from the natural datum. For example, in the Madonna del Magnificat, from 1483 – 1485, there is a real optical experiment, with the figures appearing as reflected in a convex mirror, with greater proportions than those at the center, moving away from the geometric and rational spatiality of the first fifteenth.

La Primavera (about 1478) was perhaps his most famous work, perfectly adhering to the Laurenzian ideals, where the myth reflects moral truths and modern style but inspired by the ancient. Spatiality is just alluded to an audience in front of a shady grove, where nine figures are arranged in a semicircle, to be read from right to left. The pivot is the Venus in the center, with two groups symmetrically balanced on the sides, with rhythms and pauses that recall a musical sway. The dominant motif is the linear cadence, linked to the attention given to the material (for example in the very fine veils of the Graces), for the soft volumes and for the search for an ideal and totalizing beauty.

Similar considerations are also valid for the famous Birth of Venus (about 1485), perhaps making a pendant with the Spring, characterized by an archaizing setting, with the opaque colors of the greasy tempera, an almost non-existent spatiality, a dim chiaroscuro in favor of maximum emphasis on linear continuity, which determines the sense of movement of the figures. These are the first elements of a crisis that manifested itself in Florence in all its strength after the death of the Magnificent and with the establishment of the Savonarolian republic. But it was a gradual and pre-announced turn, even in other artists, like Filippino Lippi.

The young Leonardo
Around 1469 the young Leonardo da Vinci entered the workshop of Verrocchio as an apprentice. The promising student from the seventies of the fifteenth received a series of independent commissions, which show its adherence to the “finished” style of the master, with a meticulous detail rendering, a soft pictorial draft and an opening to the Flemish influences: Examples are the Annunciation (c. 1472-1475) and the Madonna del Garofano (1475-1480). In the latter, in particular, a rapid maturation of the style of the artist is already evident, aimed at a greater fusion between the various elements of the image, with more sensitive and fluid light and chiaroscuro piercings; the Virgin in fact emerges from a room in twilight contrasting with a distant and fantastic landscape that appears from two mullioned windows in the background.

The rapid maturation of Leonardo’s style puts him in an increasingly close confrontation with his master, so much so that in the past the young Leonardo had also attributed a series of sculptures by Verrocchio. An example is the Lady with the bouquet by Verrocchio (1475-1480), in which the soft rendering of marble seems to evoke the atmospheric winding effects of Leonardo’s pictorial works such as the Portrait of Ginevra de ‘Benci (about 1475). The points of contact between these two works also extended to the iconographic level, considering that the Leonardian table was originally larger, with the presence of the hands in the lower part of which perhaps remains a study on paper in the royal collections of theWindsor Castle.

The Baptism of Christ (1475-1478), a collaborative work between the two, marks the closest point of contact between the two artists. In 1482, however, the Florentine experience of Leonardo closes abruptly when, after starting Adoration of the Magi, distanced himself from the dominant group of artists called the Sistine Chapel, he moved to Milan.

Domenico Ghirlandaio
Domenico Ghirlandaio was with Sandro Botticelli, Cosimo Rosselli and the Florentine by adoption Pietro Perugino, among the protagonists of the mission of “artistic ambassador” promoted by Lorenzo the Magnificent to make peace with Pope Sixtus IV, being sent to Rome to decorate the ambitious project papal of a new papal chapel, the Sistine Chapel.

Ghirlandaio had formed, like other colleagues, in the workshop of Verrocchio, from whom he had gained interest in Flemish art, which remained one of the constants of his work. To this component he added, from the earliest works, a sense for serene and balanced compositions, matured by the Florentine tradition, and a remarkable drawing ability that was manifested above all in the creation of portraits with a penetrating physiognomic and psychological individuation. Returning from Rome, he enriched his repertoire with the sumptuous, wide-ranging reproduction of ancient monuments. All these characteristics, combined with the ability to organize, with the help of the brothers, a quick and efficient shop, made it starting from the eighties the main reference point in the Florentine upper bourgeoisie. From 1482 he worked on the Stories of St. Francis in the Sassetti Chapel of Santa Trinita, from 1485 to the enormous Tornabuoni Chapel in Santa Maria Novella.

His talent as a storyteller, the clarity and pleasure of his language, the ability to alternate an intimate and intimate tone in domestic scenes and a solemn and high-sounding in crowded scenes, were the basis of his success. There is no shortage of quotations captured in his works, but his audience was generally not that of Neoplatonic intellectual circles, but the upper middle class, used to commercial and banking rather than literature and ancient philosophy, wishing to see himself portrayed as a participant in the sacred histories and little inclined to the frivolities and the anxieties that animated other painters like Botticelli and Filippino Lippi.

The Savonarolian crisis
With the descent of Charles VIII of France in Italy in 1494, the balances that held the fragile diplomatic and political system of the Italian seigniories broke, bringing a first wave of instability, fear and uncertainty that would then continue in the struggles between France and Spain for the dominion of the peninsula. In Florence a riot broke out Piero de ‘Medici, son of Lorenzo, establishing a new republic spiritually guided by the preacher Girolamo Savonarola. From 1496the friar openly condemned the neoplatonic and humanistic doctrines, exhorting a rigorous reform of the customs in the ascetic sense. The exaltation of man and beauty was deprecated, as well as every manifestation of the production and collecting of profane art, culminating in the sad bonfires of vanities.

The execution of the friar at the stake (23 May 1498), due to accusations of heresy by his enemy Pope Alexander VI, increased in the city the sense of loss and tragedy looming, forever undermining that system of certainties that had been the main assumption of the art of the early Renaissance. The tragic events were in fact a lasting echo in the artistic production, both for the new requests of the client ” piagnona “, that is a follower of Savonarola, both for the religious crisis and the rethinking triggered by the most sensitive artistic personalities, among whom in particular Botticelli, Fra Bartolomeo and Michelangelo Buonarroti.

The late Botticelli
The last works of Sandro Botticelli are all lit by a religious fervor and a rethinking of the principles that had guided his previous activity, in some cases coming to an involution and a withdrawal towards the ways of the first fifteenth century, exposing the now dramatic inadequacy of traditional figurative systems.

The turning point is clearly perceived, for example, in an allegorical work such as Slander (1496). The work aims to recreate a lost painting by the Greek painter Apelle, who was created to defend himself from an unjust accusation and described by Luciano di Samostata. Within a monumental loggia a bad judge is seated on the throne, advised by Ignorance and Suspicion; in front of him is the Livore (that is, the “rancor”), the beggar, who holds for his arm the slander, a very beautiful woman who gets her hair styled by Insidious and Fraud. It drags the Calunniato to the groundimpotent and with the other hand he wields a torch that does not make light, symbol of false knowledge. The old woman on the left is the Remorse and the last figure of a woman is Nuda Veritas, with her eyes turned to the sky, as if to indicate the only true source of justice. The dense decoration of the architectural elements and the excitement of the characters accentuate the dramatic sense of the image.

Everything seems to want to recreate a sort of “tribunal” of history, in which the real accusation seems to be aimed precisely at the ancient world, from which the absence of justice is bitterly acknowledged, one of the fundamental values of civil life.

Examples of the stylistic regression are the San Marco Altarpiece (1488-1490), where an archaizing gold background returns, or the Mystic Nativity (1501), where spatial distances merge, the proportions are dictated by hierarchies of importance and the poses are often accentuated expressive until they are unnatural.

Filippino Lippi
Filippino Lippi, Filippo’s son, was among the first artists to express a sense of unease in his style. Probably present at the Sistina next to Botticelli, he enriched during his stay in Rome his repertoire of citations of archaeological taste, inspired by a desire for a precise re-enactment of the ancient world.

Passionate inventor of capricious and original solutions, with a taste for the rich “animated” ornamentation, mysterious, fantastic and in some ways a nightmare, he poured all his capacity into some tables where you can see the very first Florentine art trends towards the deformation of the figures and anti-naturalism (as in the Apparition of the Virgin to St. Bernard of about 1485) and in some frescoed cycles. Among the latter stand out the Carafa Chapel in Rome and, above all, the Chapel of Filippo Strozzi in Florence, in which all its most original features found full expression. One example is the scene of St. Philip driving the dragon from Hierapolis, in which a pagan altar is so overloaded with decorations that it looks like a temple and the statue of the deity of Mars has a diabolical and threatening glimpse in the face, as if it were alive and was about to crash a thunderbolt against the saint.

The young Michelangelo
Already an apprentice in the Ghirlandaio workshop, the very young Michelangelo Buonarroti took his first steps by copying some masters at the base of the Tuscan Renaissance, such as Giotto della Cappella Peruzzi or Masaccio della Brancacci. Already in these first tests there is an extraordinary ability to assimilate the fundamental stylistic elements of the masters, with an insistence on the plastic and monumental aspects. Entered under the protection of Lorenzo the Magnificent, he studied the classical models made available by the Medici in the garden of San Marco, where the artist was soon aware of the indissoluble unity between the images of the myths and the passions that animated them, making himself soon able to revive the classical style without being a passive interpreter that copies a repertoire. In this sense the Battle of the centaurs (about 1492) is to be understood, where the swirling movement and the strong chiaroscuro recall the Roman sarcophagi and the reliefs of Giovanni Pisano, and the lost Cupido dormiente, passed off as a classic work that deceived Cardinal Riario in Rome, who passed the rage after the discovery of the fraud, wanted to meet the promising architect giving him the opportunity to go to Rome, where he produced his first masterpieces.

But alongside these animated and vigorous works, Michelangelo also demonstrated his ability to adopt different languages, as in the Madonna della Scala (1490-1492), of a more collected tone. Inspired by the stiacciato Donatello, shows, in addition to a certain virtuosity, the ability to convey a sense of blocked energy, given the unusual position of the Virgin and Child appear to try to turn his back to the viewer.

In the following years, struck by the Savonarolian preaching, he abandoned the profane subjects forever and often charged his works with profound psychological and moral meanings.

The age of “genes”
The last season of the Florentine Republic, that of the gonfaloniers for life of Pier Soderini, although not memorable from the political point of view, marked a singular record in the artistic field, favoring the resumption of public and private commissions. Great artists were recalled in the city with the aim of increasing the prestige of the new republic, generating a rapid and substantial artistic renewal. The protagonists of this scene were Leonardo and Michelangelo, who returned to the city after more or less long stays in other centers, to which was added later the young Raphael, recalled in the city just for the curiosity to attend the news in progress.

Return and departure of Leonardo
Leonardo returned to Florence before August 1500, after the fall of Ludovico il Moro. A few months later he exposed to Santissima Annunziata a cartoon with the Sant’Anna, from which he later gave a lively description of Vasari:

“At last he made a cardboard with a Madonna and a Saint Anna, with a Christ, who did not even marvel all the architects, but when it was finished, two days went by in the room to see her men. and the women, the young and the old, as we go to the solemn feasts, to see the marvels of Lionardo, who made all those people amaze. »

(Giorgio Vasari, The Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors and Architects (1568), Life of Lionardo da Vinci.)
It seems nowadays that the work is not the Carton of Saint Anne today in London, which is instead a work painted perhaps for Louis XII shortly thereafter, by 1505, and coming from the Milanese house of the Counts Arconati; rather, from the Florentine cardboard it had to derive the Sant’Anna, the Virgin and the Child with the lamb of the Louvre, completed however many years later. The two works are however close to the Florentine work. In London, in particular, the figures are locked in a single block and articulated in a rich intertwining of gestures and glances, with a fluid pattern of drapery; very close to the first floor, the figures are monumental and grandiose, as in the Cenacolo, while the nuanced creates a delicate balance in the alternation of shadows and light. Strong is the emotional component, above all in the focal point of the gaze of Saint Anne addressed to the Virgin. The work of Paris, on the other hand, is more loose and natural, with graceful attitudes and a profound landscape of rocks, which fades it to the figures. In any case, Leonardo’s lesson had a strong impact on local artists, revealing a new formal universe that opened new unexplored territories in the field of artistic representation.

In 1503 Leonardo, just before Michelangelo, was entrusted with the task of decorating with fresco a part of the great walls of the Salone dei Cinquecento in Palazzo Vecchio. Vinci The artist was required representation of the Battle of Anghiari, a fact of victorious arms to the Republic, to make pendant with the Battle of Cascina by Michelangelo.

Leonardo in particular studied a new technique that relieved him from the short time of the fresco, recovering from the Historia naturalis of Pliny the Elder the encaustic. As for the Last Supper, this choice proved to be dramatically unsuitable when it was too late. In fact, the vastness of the painting did not allow to reach with the fires a temperature sufficient to let the colors dry, which dripped onto the plaster, tending or fading, if not completely disappearing. In December 1503 the artist interrupted the transfer of the painting from the cardboard to the wall, frustrated by a new failure.

Among the best copies taken from Leonardo’s cardboard, all partial, is that of Rubens, now in the Louvre. Also lost the cardboard, the last traces of the work were probably covered in 1557 by Vasari’s frescoes. From the drawings autographs from the copies one can however evaluate how much the representation deviates from the previous representations of battles, organized as an overwhelming vortex with an unprecedented richness of motions and attitudes linked to the upsetting of the “bestial madness” of the war, as the artist.

Return of Michelangelo
After having lived four years in Rome, in the spring of 1501 also Michelangelo returned to Florence. Soon the consuls of the Art of Wool and the Workmen of the Cathedral entrusted him with an enormous block of marble to sculpt a David, an exhilarating challenge to which the artist worked hard throughout the 1503, proceeding to finishing at the beginning of the following year. The “colossus”, as it was called at the time, was a triumph of ostentatious anatomical virtuosity, moving away strongly from the traditional iconography of the biblical hero in an athletic sense, with a young man at the height of the forces that is preparing for battle, rather than like a dreamy and already winner teenager. The members of the Davidthey are all in tension and the face is concentrated, thus demonstrating the maximum concentration both physical and psychological. The nudity, the beauty, the sense of domination of the passions to beat the enemy soon made it a symbol of the virtues of the Republic, as well as the perfect embodiment of the physical and moral ideal of the Renaissance man: not by chance the original destination on the foothills of the Duomo it was soon changed, placing it in front of the Palazzo dei Priori.

The work developed a strong enthusiasm, which consecrated the fame of the artist and guaranteed him a large number of commissions, including a series of apostles for the Duomo (he only stapled a San Matteo), a Madonna for a merchant family in Bruges and a series of rounds, carved or painted. His sudden departure for Rome in March 1505 left many of these projects unfinished.

However, it is also noticeable that Michelangelo was influenced by the cardboard of Sant’Anna di Leonardo, taking up the theme also in some drawings, like one at the Ashmolean Museum, in which however the group’s circular motion is blocked by deeper, almost sculptural chiaroscuro effects. In the Madonna of Bruges we witness the contrast between the cold composure of Mary and the dynamism of the Child, which tends to project itself towards the viewer, charging itself also with symbolic meanings. Their figures can be inscribed within an ellipse, of great purity and apparent simplicity, which enhances its monumentality even in its small dimensions.

Difficult is to establish to what extent the unfinished of some rounds, such as the Tondo Pitti and the Tondo Taddei, is linked to the desire to emulate the atmospheric blend of Leonardo. A clear reaction to these suggestions is after all witnessed by Tondo Doni, probably painted for the wedding of Agnolo Doni with Maddalena Strozzi. The figures of the protagonists, the sacred family, are concatenated in a spiral motion, with a modeling of clearly distinct light and shadow planes, with an exaltation of the sharp severity of the profiles and the intensity of the colors.

Raffaello in Florence
In 1504 the echo of the astonishing innovations represented by the cartoons of Leonardo and Michelangelo also arrived in Siena, where Raffaello Sanzio was, a young but very promising artist at work as an aid to Pinturicchio. Determined to go to Florence, he had a letter of presentation prepared for the gonfaloniera by Giovanna Feltria, Duchess of Sora, sister of the Duke of Urbino and wife of the Prefect of Rome and Lord of Senigallia Giovanni Della Rovere. In the city Raphael dedicated himself eagerly to discover and study the local fifteenth-century tradition, up to the most recent conquests, demonstrating an extraordinary capacity for assimilation and re-elaboration, which after all had already made him the most gifted follower of Perugino.

Working above all for private clients, more and more impressed by his art, he created numerous medium-small size tables for private devotion, especially Madonnas and holy families, and some intense portraits. In these works he constantly varied on the theme, looking for always new groupings and attitudes, with particular attention to naturalness, harmony, rich and intense color and often to the clear landscape of Umbrian derivation.

Leonardo’s starting point for his compositions was often on which he was grafting other suggestions: the Madonna Pazzi by Donatello in the Madonna Tempi, the Tondo Taddei by Michelangelo in the Little Madonna Cowper or the Madonna Bridgewater, etc. From Leonardo Raffaello he borrowed the principles of the plastic-spatial composition, but avoided entering into the complex of allusions and symbolic implications, besides the psychological “indefinite” preferred more spontaneous and natural feelings. This is evident in portraits such as that of Maddalena Strozzi, where the half-figure setting in the landscape, with the hands folded, betrays the inspiration of the Mona Lisa, but with almost antithetical results, in which the description of physical features, clothing, jewels, and the brightness of the landscape prevail.

Alternating frequent trips to Umbria and Urbino, also dates back to this period an important work for Perugia, the Pala Baglioni, painted in Florence and which indissolubly refers to the Tuscan environment. The Deposition in the tomb is represented in the central altarpiece, to which the artist arrived after numerous studies and elaborations starting from the Lamentation over the Dead Christ of the Florentine church of the church of Santa Chiara di Perugino. The artist created an extremely monumental, dramatic and dynamic composition, in which there are now evident Michelangelesque and ancient hints, in particular from the representation of theDeath of Melagro that the artist had been able to see during a probable formation trip to Rome in 1506.

Opera concluding the Florentine period of 1507 – 1508, can be considered the Madonna of the Canopy, a large altarpiece with a sacred conversation organized around the fulcrum of the Virgin’s throne, with a great architectural backdrop but cut at the edge, so as to amplify its monumentality. This work was an essential model in the following decade, for artists such as Andrea del Sarto and Fra ‘Bartolomeo.

Source from Wikipedia