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PAINTING AND SCULTURE

The Etruscans
Italian artistic history begins with the Etruscans , whose culture spanned the seventh to the first centuries BC. Etruscan art was distinct from that of Greece, then the dominant nation both politically and artistically, though in many other respects it consistently shows the impact of contemporary trends in Greece. Many of the finest Etruscan sculptures date from the sixth century BC. Among the best examples, both now in the Villa Giulia in Rome, are the Apollo and Herakles from Veio, and the Sarcophagus of a Married Couple from Cerveteri, the reclining figures of the latter a typical motif of Etruscan art - the faces realistic and expressive, with prominent eyes and enigmatic smiles, but otherwise scant attention paid to human anatomy. Depictions of animals, both real and imaginary, were also common, most famous among which are the Chimera from Arezzo, now in the Museo Archeologico in Florence, and Rome's own emblem, the She-Wolf , in the Palazzo dei Conservatori - both from the fifth century BC.
Surviving Etruscan wall paintings are surprisingly numerous, especially considering that (apart from a few at Paestum) all of their Greek counterparts in Italy have vanished. The most outstanding array is in Tarquinia, which preserves examples ranging from the sixth to the first century BC; another fine group is at Chiusi. These paintings were at first of a religious or magic nature, initially intending to provide an amenable environment for the dead. Later, visionary views of the afterlife were attempted. With their bold drawing, bright colours and lively details, they have an immediate visual appeal.


The Romans
Like the Etruscans, the Romans were heavily indebted to the Greeks for their art forms, happily adapting Greek models to suit their own purpose, though they had little taste for the aesthetic values that had played such a key role in Greek art. Admittedly, the great heroic statues of the Greeks were highly prized. Many were brought to Rome, while others were extensively imitated and copied, and some of the most famous pieces of Roman sculpture - the Apollo Belvedere and the Venus of Cnidos in the Vatican, the Medici Venus in the Uffizi - are actually Roman copies of lost Greek originals, though they are successful pieces of work in their own right.
The Empire's own contribution to artistic development is exemplified by Roman portraiture , which usually eschewed idealization in favour of an objective representation of the physical features, typically showing a bony facial structure, bare forehead, pursed lips and large eyes. Only occasionally, as in the reigns of Augustus and Hadrian, was this image softened. Marble portrait busts have survived in vast quantities, but the bronze equestrian statues - a particularly effective means of stressing the power and charisma of the emperor - were later melted down. Only that of Marcus Aurelius in Rome survives.
The Romans also made full and varied use of relief sculpture, not least in the carvings which adorned the front of sarcophagi , their main form of funerary art, and on the triumphal arches and columns erected to celebrate military victories. Some of these, like Trajan's Column in Rome, which dates from the second century AD, display a virtuoso skill and attention to detail in their depiction of great deeds and battles.
In the domestic environment, wall paintings were an essential feature, though relatively few survive. In Rome itself, there are the Esquiline Landscapes and Aldobrandini Wedding , and the frescoes from the Villa Livia, while the best examples are those preserved in the towns of Pompeii and Herculaneum after their submersion by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 AD. Some of these remain in situ, notably the spectacular paintings in the Villa dei Misteri; others have been moved to the Museo Nazionale in Naples. In general, a huge range of subject matter was tackled - landscapes, portraits, still lifes, mythologies and genre scenes - while both realistic and stylized approaches to the depiction of nature were attempted.


Early Christian art
The early Christian period saw an almost total rejection of sculpture, other than for sarcophagi, though the remarkable wooden doors of Santa Sabina in Rome - featuring the earliest known representation of the Crucifixion - are a notable exception. The earliest murals were created in the Roman catacombs, and show no great stylistic innovation, but increasingly Christian painters began to render a sense of expression to the facial features, in order that the emotions of pain, sorrow and ecstasy could be depicted, along with a richly symbolic pictorial vocabulary. But the early Christians favoured mosaics rather than painting as a medium. This painstaking art form had hitherto been associated with floor decoration, but it proved ideal for the decoration of the early churches, its inappropriateness for the depiction of movement in many ways responsible for the rigid artistic forms which took an increasing grip. The earliest surviving cycle, in Santa Maria Maggiore in Rome , dates from the second quarter of the fifth century, and is fairly small-scale. The slightly later group in the Mausoleo di Galla Placidia in Ravenna , the city which had by then assumed the status of capital of the western empire, are more monumental, their daring geometric patterns, elaborate imagery and sublime colouring representing perhaps the first great milestone of Christian art.
Ravenna continued as a centre of artistic innovation when a century later it became in effect the Italian capital of Byzantine culture and politics. Many magnificent mosaic series were created, and three sets in particular far surpass in quality anything produced in Constantinople itself, or indeed anywhere else in its empire: at the church of San Vitale, where the mosaics are the central focus of the architecture itself; Sant'Apollinare Nuovo, whose two frieze processions were quite unlike anything previously seen in Italian art; and the church of Sant'Apollinare in Classe, whose apse mosaics exude a unique sense of peace and mystery.


The Middle Ages
Italy at first played a rather subsidiary role in the Europe-wide re-emergence from the Dark Ages. The Byzantine tradition proved surprisingly durable, particularly in Venice and Sicily, which both retained strong trading links with Constantinople. Throughout the twelfth century, Byzantine craftsmen proved that the art of mosaic was far from exhausted, providing works that are worthy successors to those at Ravenna in the Cappella Palatina of Palermo and the duomos of Cefalù and Monreale, and of course the Basilica of San Marco in Venice.
Many Italian fresco cycles of the period still show traces of Byzantine influence, and the style was also a feature of the great eleventh-century Benedictine art movement fostered by the abbey of Montecassino. Sadly, nearly all the products of this school have vanished, though the murals in Sant'Angelo in Formis near Capua give an approximate idea of what they must have looked like.
Because of the cost of frescoes, from the second quarter of the twelfth century panel paintings became increasingly important, particularly in Tuscany. Subjects fell into three main categories: the Madonna and Child with saints; the portrait of a saint surrounded by scenes from his life; or the Christus Triumphans , a large painted crucifix showing an open-eyed Christ with outstretched hands.
The art of sculpture was initially slow to revive after its long period in the doldrums, but it came to occupy a crucial role throughout Europe during the Romanesque period, with Lombard and Emilian masons playing a key role in its dissemination. Just after the turn of the twelfth century, a master by the name of Wiligelmo carved at Modena what may well be the earliest of the great cathedral porches - a form that was to become one of the outstanding features of European medieval art. His bas-reliefs feature expressive figures grouped with considerable narrative skill, and they suggest at least some familiarity with classical works. The same sculptor may also have carved the magnificent episcopal throne in San Nicolò in Bari. Nicolò , a pupil of Wiligelmo, seems to have been responsible for most of the other great portals of northern Italy - those of the Sacra di San Michele, San Zeno in Verona, and of the cathedrals of Verona, Ferrara, Piacenza and Cremona. Towards the end of the century, this style was developed in and around Parma by Benedetto Antelami , who created the graceful Deposition relief in the cathedral, the profuse and lively decoration of the baptistery.


The precursors of Renaissance
The distinction between Gothic and Renaissance , so marked in the painting and sculpture of other countries, is very blurred in Italy. In the mid-thirteenth century, what is normally considered one of the key planks of the Renaissance - the rediscovery of the full sense of form, beauty and modelling characteristic of classical art - had already occurred with the statues of the Porta Romana in Capua , fragments of which are preserved in the town's museum. These were commissioned by Emperor Frederick II, who wished to revive memories of the grandeur that was Rome. Increasingly, Italians came to believe that it was northern barbarians who had destroyed the arts, which it was now their own duty to revive.
A sculptor of south Italian origin who was doubtless familiar with the work at Capua, Nicola Pisano (c1220-84), developed this style, in four major surviving works - the pulpits of the Pisa Baptistery and the duomo in Siena, the Arca San Domenico in Bologna and the Fonte Gaia in Perugia. His figures have a sure sense of volume, with varying levels of relief used to create an illusion of space. Arnolfo di Cambio (c1245-1310), his assistant on some of these projects, developed the mix of classical and Gothic features in his own works, which include the famous bronze St Peter in Rome, and the Tomb of Cardinal de Braye in San Domenico in Orvieto. The latter defined the format of wall tombs for the next century, showing the deceased lying on a coffin below the Madonna and Child, all set within an elaborate architectural framework.
Of even greater long-term significance was the achievement of Giovanni Pisano (c1248-1314), who abandoned his father's penchant for paganism, adopting instead new and dramatic postures for his figures which were quite unlike anything in the previous history of sculpture. This is nowhere more evident than in the statues he created for the facade of the duomo in Siena, which are placed high up rather than round the portals, and are a world away from their static counterparts on French cathedrals.
It was only in the last three decades of the thirteenth century that Italian painters finally began to break away from the time-honoured Byzantine formulas, a new sense of freedom initiated by Pietro Cavallini (active 1273-1308) in Rome and developed by the Florentine Cimabue (c1240-1302), who introduced rounded forms to his fresco of The Madonna of St Francis in the lower church at Assisi. His masterpiece, the Passion cycle in the upper church, is sadly ruined, but enough remains to give evidence of the overwhelming tragic grandeur it must once have possessed.
Whereas Cimabue's works were still rooted in the Byzantine tradition, and made no attempt to break away from a flat surface effect, a huge leap was made by his pupil and fellow Florentine, Giotto di Bondone (1266-1337), whose innovations were to define the entire subsequent course of Western art. Giotto decisively threw off the two-dimensional restrictions of painting, managing to give his pictures an illusion of depth. Thanks to having better materials at his disposal than Cimabue, his Life of St Francis in the upper church at Assisi survived remarkably well until the 1997 earthquake; his decoration of the Scrovegni Chapel in Padua, however, is still in good condition. These two great cycles are the best examples of Giotto's genius in all its many facets. Among these are such basic principles as a sense for the significant, unencumbered by surplus detail; the convincing treatment of action, movement, gesture and emotion; and total command over technical matters like figure modelling, foreshortening, and effects of light and shade.


The fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries
In spite of the momentous developments, the path towards the Renaissance was not to follow a continuous or consistent course. Indeed, the leading local school of painters in the fourteenth century was not that of Florence, but of neighbouring Siena , which had very different preoccupations. This had a great deal to do with the father figure, Duccio di Buoninsegna (c1255-1318), who did not go along the revolutionary path of Giotto, but instead breathed a whole new life into the Byzantine tradition. Duccio's sense of grandeur is well conveyed by the central panel of his masterpiece, the Maestà, in the Museo dell'Opera del Duomo of his native city. However, it is the small scenes of this vast altarpiece which bring out his best quality: that of a masterful storyteller, adept at arrangement, grouping and the depiction of expression, feeling and movement. Colour, which in Giotto is merely used to bring out the forms, becomes a leading component in its own right.
In spite of the presence in the city of the vibrant statues of Giovanni Pisano, subsequent Sienese painters found Duccio's narrative art the more potent model. Simone Martini (c1284-1344) began his career by painting a fresco counterpart of Duccio's Maestà in the Palazzo Pubblico, though his most celebrated work in this building, the commemorative Equestrian Portrait of Guidoriccio da Fogliano , is now widely regarded as a fake. His refined, graceful style depended above all on line, colour and decorative effects - seen to best effect in the cycle of The Life of St Martin in the lower church in Assisi and in the sumptuous, cunningly designed Annunciation in the Uffizi. The latter was painted in collaboration with his brother-in-law Lippo Memmi (d1357), who independently painted the Maestà in the Palazzo Pubblico in San Gimignano, and may also have been responsible for the dramatic New Testament frescoes in the Collegiata of the same town, traditionally ascribed to the otherwise unknown Barna .
Another Sienese painter who worked at Assisi was Pietro Lorenzetti (active 1306-45); his frescoes there show the impact of Giotto, and have a sense of pathos which is uncharacteristic of Sienese painting. His brother Ambrogio Lorenzetti (active 1319-47) was a more original artist, whose main achievement was the idiosyncratic Allegory of Good and Bad Government in the Palazzo Pubblico, which shows painting being used for a secular, didactic purpose for the first time and raises the landscape background to a new, higher status, with an awareness of perspective uncommon for this date. The other notable Sienese sculptor of the period was the mysterious Lorenzo Maitani (c1270-1330), who is associated with one work only - the wonderfully lyrical reliefs on the most sumptuous facade in Italy, that of the duomo in Orvieto.
In Florence , meanwhile, a whole group of painters consciously followed Giotto's style, without materially adding to it. The most talented was Maso di Banco (active 1320-1350), who was particularly skilled at conveying the master's sense of plastic form, while the most faithful was Taddeo Gaddi (d1366), whose son Agnolo Gaddi (d1396) carried the Giottesque tradition on to nearly the end of the century. Bernardo Daddi (c1290-1349), on the other hand, combined this tradition with aspects of the Sienese style. The sculptor Andrea Pisano (c1290-1348) succeeded Giotto as master mason of the campanile. The reliefs he executed for it, plus the bronze door he made for the baptistry, translate Giotto's pictorial language back into a three-dimensional format.
A reaction against the hegemony of the Giottesque style came with Andrea Orcagna (c1308-68) who was equally prominent as a painter and sculptor, developing a flowery, decorative idiom seen to best effect in the tabernacle in Orsanmichele. The paintings of Orcagna and his school re-established the hierarchical tradition of the Byzantines, and rejected the importance of spatial depth.
At the very end of the fourteenth century, the International Gothic style, originating in the Burgundian courts, swept across Europe. This introduced a new richness to the depiction of landscape, animals and costume, though it was unconcerned with intellectual matters. Its dissemination in Italy was largely due to Gentile da Fabriano (c1370-1427), whose Adoration of the Magi in the Uffizi (one of his relatively few surviving compositions) shows the gorgeously opulent surface effects of this style at its best. Another leading practitioner was Masolino da Panicale (c1383-1447), who is best known for having begun the famous fresco cycle in Santa Maria del Carmine in Florence. In the same city, the new movement influenced Lorenzo Monaco (c1372-1425), whose work bridges the Florentine and Sienese traditions.
International Gothic took a particularly firm grip in Verona, chiefly through Antonio Pisanello (1395-1455). The latter's fame rests partly on his prowess as a medallist, and only a tantalizing handful of his paintings remain, notably the frescoes in the Veronese churches of Sant'Anastasia and San Fermo, and the Palazzo Ducale in Mantua, which magically evoke the idealized courtly world of fairy tales. Numerous drawings prove these were based on patient observations of nature - something that was to be a key element in the unfolding of the Renaissance.


The Florentine Renaissance
A date often given for the start of the Renaissance is 1401, when the Florentine authorities announced a public competition for the right to make a second door for the baptistry. Candidates had to submit a trial piece of The Sacrifice of Isaac , a stiff test presenting problems of narrative, expression, movement and spatial arrangement, in which scenery, animals and both nude and draped figures had to be adequately depicted. The most audacious solution, which can be seen in the Bargello, was provided by Filippo Brunelleschi (1377-1446), who in the process fully mastered the science of perspective. He failed to win, and in disgust gave up sculpture in favour of architecture, but the new possibilities opened up by his command over visuals, and the impetus they provided for other artists to experiment and discover, mark the transition from medieval art to modern.
Brunelleschi's mantle was taken over by Donatello (c1386-1466), who began his long career by creating a new kind of freestanding statue to adorn Florence's churches, which became the artistic symbol of the city. These heroic, larger-than-life figures are shown with their feet planted firmly on the ground, displaying facial expressions of great energy and concentration. A typical example is the St George made for Orsanmichele, below which was placed an extraordinary carving of the saint slaying the dragon which uses the art of perspective for the first time in stone sculpture, as well as pioneering the technique of very low relief. With the bronze David , now in the Bargello, Donatello helped bring the nude - the ultimate figurative challenge - back into the mainstream of art; and he also revived another lost art, the bronze equestrian statue, with the Monument to Gattamelata in Padua.
The victor of the baptistry door competition was Lorenzo Ghiberti (1378-1455), who thereafter devoted almost the rest of his life to the project. Ghiberti initially showed no interest in perspective, and remained loyal to most of the old Gothic formulas, his first set of doors merely refining Andrea Pisano's techniques. However, his second set of doors, known as the Gates of Paradise , show how his style evolved under the influence of classical antecedents, creating a sense of space and illusion, and imbuing the grouping and characterization of the figures with a gently lyrical touch.
Donatello's collaborator Nanni di Banco (c1384-1421) was another to achieve an individual mix of the Gothic and Renaissance idioms, notably in The Four Saints on Orsanmichele. Another architect-sculptor, Bernardo Rossellino (1409-64), created in the Monument to Leonardo Bruni in Santa Croce the prototype of the sort of niche tomb that was to prevail for the rest of the century.
Luca della Robbia (1400-82) began his career as a sculptor of marble and bronze, working in a classically derived style, but a very different one from the essentially serious approach of his contemporaries. However, after Luca invented the art of glazed terracotta, he abandoned other forms of sculpture, laying the foundation for a highly lucrative family business which was continued by his nephew Andrea della Robbia (1435-1525).
The painter Masaccio (1401-28) belongs with Brunelleschi and Donatello as a key figure of the early Renaissance. His Trinity fresco in Santa Maria Novella must have startled his contemporaries, its perfect sense of depth and perspective giving the illusion of peering into the solid wall on which it was painted. Masaccio collaborated with Masolino, most notably in the fresco cycle in Santa Maria del Carmine. In this, the scenes are pared down to the essentials; the figures have a heroic quality and dignity, with their gestures depicted at the moment of maximum intensity. A single source of light is used, with shadows cast accurately.
Fra' Angelico (1387/1400-55), like Ghiberti in sculpture, combined new techniques with the Gothic tradition. A devout Dominican monk, his pictures show a rapt, heavenly vision. Colour is a telling ingredient: Angelico's ethereal blue was inimitable, the rest of his palette hardly less fetching. Frescoes in the cells of his own monastery of San Marco, intended as aids to contemplation, rank as his most important body of work. Late in his career, Angelico was called to the Vatican, where he frescoed the Cappella Niccolina, employing a style which had by then lost all Gothic traces.
Fra' Filippo Lippi (c1406-69) gradually moved away from the style of his master Masaccio to develop a greater sense of drama, seen to best effect in the frescoes in the cathedral at Prato. His later panels show a highly personal, mystical vision, characterized by wistful Madonnas, playful children and poetic landscapes. Fra' Angelico's only follower of note was Benozzo Gozzoli (c1421-97), whose work lacks any sense of profundity, but possesses undeniable decorative charm, best seen in the frescoes in the Palazzo Medici-Ricardi in Florence.
The city's most eccentric painter was Paolo Uccello (1396-1475), who was obsessed by the problems of perspective and foreshortening. His Sir John Hawkwood in the duomo was a deliberate piece of trompe l'oeil, though its effect is marred by the use of different vantage points, a characteristic common to his paintings, in which he tried to find as many lines as possible to lead the eye inwards. Domenico Veneziano (1406-61) was one of the most admired artists of the day, but only a few works by him survive, notably the serene St Lucy Altar in the Uffizi, which shows his talent for spatial arrangement and gentle, pastel-like colouring. Andrea del Castagno (c1421-57), in contrast, favoured harsh, strong colours, and an exaggerated dramatic pose for his figures, as can be seen in The Last Supper in Sant'Apollonia. In the series of Famous Men in the Uffizi he initiated a Florentine trend by vividly translating onto canvas the late sculptural types of Donatello.
Halfway through the century, a new versatility was brought to Florentine art by Antonio Pollaiuolo (c1432-98), who was active as a painter, sculptor, engraver, goldsmith and embroidery designer. Pollaiuolo was renowned for the advances he made in the depiction of anatomy and movement; he was also one of the first to grapple with the next great challenge facing Renaissance painters, namely how to move beyond making all parts of a picture accurate and realistic, while at the same time creating a satisfying compositional whole. Another painter-sculptor was Andrea del Verrocchio (c1435-88), whose fame as a teacher has unfairly drawn attention away from his own wide-ranging achievements. His Christ and St Thomas on Orsanmichele shows crafty compositional skills in fitting two statues into a space intended for one, and marks a move away from classicism, as does his equestrian Monument to Bartolommeo Colleoni outside San Zanipolo in Venice. Other Florentine sculptors of this period preferred a much softer approach. Desiderio da Settignano (1428-64) made sensitive busts of women and children, and used Donatello's technique of low relief to create scenes of the utmost delicacy. Mino da Fiesole (1429-84), Antonio Rossellino (1427-79) and Benedetto da Maiano (1442-97) showed broadly similar preoccupations, all concentrating on grace and beauty of line.
Subjects drawn from classical mythology became an increasingly important part of the repertoire of Florentine painters in the second half of the fifteenth century, in large part owing to the humanist culture fostered at the court. One of Italy's most distinctive artists, Sandro Botticelli (c1445-1510), created the most famous and haunting images in this field, notably The Birth of Venus and Primavera , both now in the Uffizi. His late work shows a deliberate archaism, perhaps as a result of the religious fanaticism of the time.
Filippino Lippi (1457/8-1504), the result of Fra' Filippo's affair with a nun, came to fame with his completion of Masaccio's frescoes in Santa Maria del Carmine. He developed a style based on that of Botticelli, though with a more consciously antique feeling. Another painter with pagan tastes was the reclusive Piero di Cosimo (c1462-1521), who was at his best in enigmatic mythological scenes. Meanwhile, vivid new frescoes were created for Florence's churches by Domenico Ghirlandaio (1449-94), whose works are now chiefly remembered for their documentary interest, being filled with portraits of contemporary notables and vivid anecdotal details.


The fifteenth century outside of Florence
Although the fifteenth century brought a rich crop of artists working throughout Italy, including many places which previously had little tradition of their own to draw on, no other city came near to matching the depth and consistency of the fifteenth-century Florentine School.
However, although the technical innovations pioneered in Florence were to have an enormous influence, they were by no means slavishly followed. Sienese painters proved the continuing vitality of the colourful narrative approach of the previous century, modified by the impact of International Gothic. The works of Sassetta (c1392-1450), which are often impregnated by a sense of mysticism, do make some concessions to the new theories of spatial composition, but this is an essentially subordinate feature. The finest Sienese artist of the century was the sculptor Jacopo della Quercia (1374-1438), whose style is essentially linear, though with classical tendencies modified by knowledge of the most advanced northern European art of the day. He was given important public commissions in his native city, such as the overall supervision of the baptistry font and the Fonte Gaia. However, his masterpiece is his last work, the reliefs on the facade of San Petronio in Bologna, which show a vigorous approach fully comparable with those of the great Florentines. His main follower was the Florentine-born Agostino di Duccio (1418-81), another sculptor heavily dependent on line, whose work abounds with nervous energy. His masterpiece, executed in collaboration with Matteo de' Pasti (c1420-67), is the joyous series of low reliefs in the Tempio Malatestiano in Rimini.
Another artist associated with the Rimini project was the Tuscan Piero della Francesca (1410/20-92), who cast an overwhelming influence over the development of painting in central Italy. A painstaking worker, Piero was also active as a mathematician, hence the importance of perspective and symmetry in his compositions. His figures are painted with a cool sense of detachment yet have a grave, monumental beauty. Piero was also one of the great painters of light, in the blue skies which illuminate his gentle landscapes, and in more dramatic effects, such as in The Dream of Constantine , part of his most substantial commission - the fresco cycle in San Francesco, Arezzo.
Melozzo da Forlí (1438-94) was the closest follower of Piero della Francesca, showing a similar interest in perspective, and apparently inventing a favourite Renaissance trick device called sotto in su , an extreme form of illusion in which figures painted on a ceiling appear to float in space. Another inventive pupil of the same master was Luca Signorelli (1450-1523), who developed the ideas of dramatic movement pioneered by Pollaiuolo. In spite of obvious defects, such as harsh colours, stiff drawing and a tendency to overcrowd his compositions, Signorelli was responsible for some of the most heroic paintings of the day. His profound knowledge of anatomy was to be an enormous influence on the succeeding generation, and he used the nude to achieve the most spectacular effects, notably in the frescoes in Orvieto's duomo.
Pietro Perugino (1445-1523), probably yet another pupil of Piero, developed in a quite different way from Signorelli, producing calm altarpieces featuring soft and beautifully rounded figures set against serene Umbrian landscapes. His collaborator Bernardino Pinturicchio (c1454-1513) was a purely decorative artist whose work has no pretensions to depth, but is nearly always fresh and pleasing, particularly in his larger schemes such as the Libreria Piccolomini in the duomo in Siena.
The first important Renaissance painter in northern Italy was Andrea Mantegna (c1431-1506), who represents the apogee of classical influence. Steeped from an early age in the art of the Romans, Mantegna's ideal vision of the antique world permeates nearly all his work, even becoming the predominant element in many of his sacred compositions, together with a phenomenal technical skill, and daring use of unorthodox vantage points - best seen in the grief-laden Dead Christ in the Brera, Milan. In total contrast is the exuberant decoration for the Camera degli Sposi in Mantua, one of the artist's few works based on direct observation rather than classical inspiration.
Padua in the mid-fifteenth century became an important training ground for artists, thanks to the early successes of Mantegna, and the ten-year stay of Donatello. One of its offshoots was the group of painters active in Ferrara: Cosmè Tura (c1431-95), Francesco del Cossa (1435/6-77) and Ercole de' Roberti (1448/55-96). Tura's figures are highly charged, with mannered poses and claw-like hands, typically set against fanciful architecture very different from the idealized townscapes painted by other Renaissance artists. Cossa's outline is sharper, his figures energetic rather than theatrical, his colours more resplendent; he too favoured architectural backgrounds, particularly of ruins. Roberti's essentially small-scale style combines something of the pathos of Tura with Cossa's emphasis on colour and line.
Also trained in Padua was the Brescian Vincenzo Foppa (1427/30-1515/6), who subsequently became the leader of the Milanese school. His best works have a certain grandeur of conception, and a subdued sense of colouring. His main follower was Ambrogio Bergognone (1450/60-1523), who is particularly associated with the Certosa di Pavia. This great building project was also the main outlet for the talents of the leading Lombard sculptors of the day, notably Giovanni Antonio Amadeo (1447-1522), whose other main work is the decoration of the Cappella Colleoni in Bergamo.
Venice, as always, remained something of a law unto itself. Even in mid-century, the sculptures of Bartolomeo Bon (c1374-1464/7) and the crowded panels of Michele Giambono (active 1420-62) showed the city's continuing preference for late-Gothic forms. Something of a transition can be seen with the Vivarini family - Antonio (c1419-80), his brother Bartolomeo (c1430-91) and his son Alvise (c1445-1505) - who gradually introduced a sense of spatial perspective and an increased attempt at characterization. Carlo Crivelli (c1430-95) was also associated with them. One of the most inventive and idiosyncratic artists of the day, Crivelli abandoned Venice, preferring commissions from churches in small towns in Marche, which he executed in a deliberately archaic style. His altarpieces are claustrophobically opulent, characterized by strong drawing, rich colours, elaborate detail and a superfluity of decoration, with incidental still lifes a common ingredient.
Another, and far more influential, artistic dynasty was that of the Bellini family - Jacopo (c1400-70) and his sons Gentile (c1429-1507) and Giovanni (c1430-1516). The latter was the most significant, standing as a major influence on Venetian painters to come. Though influenced by his brother-in-law Mantegna, Bellini's overall effect is very different, with a soft beauty of both colour and outline. He painted a seemingly endless series of variations on subjects such as the Madonna and Child and pietà, yet always managed to make each very different. His larger altarpieces concentrate attention on the foreground, and arrange the figures in such a way that there is a parallel plane behind, rather than the more usual receding landscape. Gentile Bellini was essentially a history painter who epitomized the penchant for highly detailed depictions of Venetian life.
Vittore Carpaccio (c1460-1523) continued this narrative tradition, and two complete cycles by him can still be seen in Venice: that of St Ursula in the Accademia, and of St George and St Jerome in the Scuola di San Giorgio degli Schiavoni. A love of the picturesque also pervades his altarpieces, which generally give due prominence to fantastic landscapes and resplendent Renaissance buildings.
Venetian Renaissance sculpture was dominated by yet another dynasty, the Lombardo family: Pietro (c1438-1515) and his sons Antonio (c1458-1516) and Tullio (c1460-1532). Their strongly classical style was particularly suited to funerary monuments, the best of which are in San Zanipolo. They were also talented decorative carvers, as can be seen in the interior scheme for their own church of Santa Maria dei Miracoli.
Closely associated with the Venetian school was the only important southern Italian painter of the Renaissance, Antonello da Messina (c1430-79), who spent the last years of his life in the city. Antonello combined Italian painters' achievements in perspective and foreshortening with the ability to reproduce a variety of textures (skin, velvet, hair, wood) in the naturalistic way that was typical of contemporary Flemish artists; and it was through contact with their work that he introduced oil painting to Italy. His pictures have a strong sense of pathos, and some of his most arresting images are simple devotional pictures, which follow the same format he favoured for his secular portraits.


The High Renaissance
Just as the beginning of the Renaissance is linked to the specific circumstances of the competition for the Florence Baptistry doors, so the climactic part of the era, known as the High Renaissance, is sometimes considered to have started with the mural of The Last Supper in Santa Maria delle Grazie in Milan, painted in the last years of the fifteenth century by Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519). Apart from its magnificent spatial and illusory qualities, this painting endowed each of the characters with identifiable psychological traits, and successfully froze the action to capture the mood of a precise moment. His use of sfumato , a blurred outline whereby tones gradually but imperceptibly changed from light to dark, was of crucial importance to his ability to make his figures appear as living beings with a soul - a technique best seen in his portraits.
In Florence, the most original painter of the generation after Leonardo was Fra' Bartolommeo della Porta (c1474-1517), who was caught up in the religious fanaticism that also influenced Botticelli. As a device to stress the otherness of the divine, he clad the figures in his religious compositions in plain drapery, rather than the colourful contemporary costumes which had hitherto been fashionable. He also did away with elaborate backgrounds and anecdotal detail, concentrating instead on expression and gesture. Mariotto Albertinelli (1474-1515), who worked with him in the same workshop in San Marco that had once been run by Fra' Angelico, painted in a broadly similar but less austere manner. Andrea del Sarto (1486-1530), on the other hand, was the one Florentine artist who shared the Venetian precept of colour and shade as being the most important ingredients of a picture. His figures are classical in outline, aiming at a balance of nuance, proportion and monumentality.
These Florentines, however, stood very much in the shadow of Michelangelo Buonarroti (1475-1564), with whom the Renaissance period reaches its climax. Michelangelo's first love was the creation of marble statues. He had little interest in relief, and none at all in bronze or clay, believing that the slow building up of forms was too simple a task for a great artist. His technique is illustrated most graphically in the unfinished Slaves in Florence's Accademia, who seem to be pushing their way out of the stone. The colossal early David , also in the Accademia, shows his mastery of the nude, which thereafter became the key focus of his art. In spite of claiming to be a reluctant painter, Michelangelo's single greatest accomplishment was the ceiling fresco of the Sistine Chapel, one of the world's most awe-inspiring acts of individual human achievement. Its confident and elated mood is offset by the overpowering despondency of The Last Judgement on the end wall, painted three decades later. His later works are more abstract, as seen in the pietàs in the Museo dell'Opera in Florence and the Milan Castello, which contrast sharply with the formal beauty of his youthful interpretation of the scene in St Peter's.
Raphael (1483-1520) stands in almost complete antithesis to his rival Michelangelo, though the personal friendships he forged with his powerful patrons were as significant in raising the status of the artist as was the latter's less compromising approach. A pupil of Perugino, he quickly surpassed his teacher's style, going to Florence where he became chiefly renowned for numerous variants of the Madonna and Child and Holy Family . Raphael also developed into a supreme portraitist, skilled at both the psychological and physical attributes of his sitters. His greatest works, however, are the frescoes of his Roman period, notably those in the Stanze della Segnatura in the Vatican and the Villa Farnesina. Influenced by Michelangelo's achievement in the Sistine Chapel, Raphael's late works show him moving towards a large-scale, more dramatic and mannered style, but his early death meant that the continuation of this trend was left to his pupils.
Closely related to the classicizing tendency of Raphael is that of the Florentine-born sculptor Andrea Sansovino (c1467-1529), whose grandiose tombs in Santa Maria del Popolo in Rome, with standing effigies of the Virtues, set the tone for sixteenth-century funerary monuments. His pupil Jacopo Sansovino (1486-1570) took his name and carried on his tradition, spending the latter part of his career in Venice, where although principally active as an architect, he also made monumental sculptures which are inseparable from the buildings they adorn. Sebastiano del Piombo (c1485-1547), on the other hand, stood as a direct rival to Raphael in Rome, striving to transfer Michelangelo's heroic manner to panel painting. In this, he was only variably successful, though he was a highly sensitive portraitist.
Meanwhile Antonio Correggio (1489/94-1534) managed to carve out a brilliant career for himself in Parma. His three ceiling frescoes there develop the illusionistic devices of Mantegna, marking Correggio out as a precursor of the Baroque. One of the great painters of mythological scenes, he was also a relentless explorer of the dramatic possibilities of light and shade. Another fine exponent of the contrasts of light was the Ferrarese Dosso Dossi (1479/90-1542), a romantic spirit who created fantastic landscapes peopled with sumptuously dressed figures.
The golden period of Venetian painting, ushered in by Bellini, continued with his elusive pupil, Giorgione (1475-1510), whose short life is shrouded in mystery. One of the few paintings certainly by him is The Tempest in the Venice Accademia, whose true subject matter baffled even his contemporaries. In it, the figures are, for the first time in Italian art, completely subsidiary to the lush landscape illuminated by menacing shafts of light. The haunting altarpiece in the duomo of his native town of Castelfranco Veneto is also almost certainly his, but many other paintings attributed to him may actually be by one of many painters who maintained something of his poetic, colourful style. Some of these, notably Vincenzo Catena (c1480-1531) and Palma il Vecchio (c1480-1528), developed recognizable artistic personalities of their own. Lorenzo Lotto (c1480-1556) was the most distinctive of this circle, travelling widely throughout his career, assimilating an astonishing variety of influences.
Giorgione's influence is also marked in the early works of Titian (c1485-1576), the dominant personality of the Venetian school and one of the most versatile painters of all time. His art embraced with equal skill all the subjects that were required by the Renaissance - altarpieces, mythologies, allegories and portraits. Even more than Michelangelo, he was able to pick and choose his patrons, and was the first artist to build up a truly international clientele. As a portraitist of men of power, Titian was unrivalled, setting the vocabulary for official images which was to prevail until well into the seventeenth century. His complete technical and compositional mastery was already apparent in relatively early works such as the Assumption in I Frari, the first example of what was to become a Venetian speciality: a panel painting specially designed to fit an architectural space. Towards the end of his life, Titian abandoned his bravura and brilliant palette in favour of a very free style, stretching the possibilities of oil paint to their very limits.
Giovanni Antonio Pordenone (1483/4-1539) was a provincial north Italian painter strongly influenced by Giorgione and Titian. More obviously in direct descent from the Venetian masters was the school of Brescia. Giovanni Girolamo Savoldo (active 1508-48) showed particular adeptness at light effects, and was a pioneer of night scenes, while Alessandro Moretto (c1498-1554) was one of the most incisive portraitists of the Renaissance, and seems to have been responsible for introducing the full-length form to Italy. His altarpieces are more variable, but often have a suitably grand manner.


The late Renaissance
The perfection of form achieved in the late Renaissance was the culmination of centuries of striving. As artists could not hope to improve on the achievements of Michelangelo and Raphael at their peak, they had to find new approaches. As a result, Mannerism was born. This was a deliberately intellectual approach, aimed at flouting the accepted rules, notably by distorting the senses of scale and perspective, exaggerating anatomical details, adopting unlikely poses for the figures, and using unnaturally harsh colours.
One artist commonly labelled a Mannerist is Giulio Romano (c1499-1546), one of the most gifted of Raphael's assistants, whose frescoes in the Palazzo Te in Mantua, which he himself built, show the style at its most grandiose, notably in The Fall of the Giants , occupying a room to itself. A leading light in the adoption of Mannerism in Florence was Rosso Fiorentino (1494-1540), together with Jacopo Pontormo (1494-1556) and Agnolo Bronzino (1503-72). Pontormo, a brilliant draughtsman, was the most talented of this group, an able decorator and an inquiring if understated portraitist. Bronzino was highly prolific, but only his portraits of royal and noble personages have much appeal today, their detachment, concentrating more on the beauty of their clothing, casting an enormous influence on official portraitists down the centuries. Giorgio Vasari (1511-74), originally from Arezzo, was responsible for many of the frescoes in the Palazzo Vecchio, although he is now chiefly famous for his series of biographies of artists, which marked the birth of art history as a discipline.
Another Florentine Mannerist whose writings have helped secure his fame is the sculptor Benvenuto Cellini (1500-71), the author of a racy Autobiography which offers a fascinating insight into the artistic world of the time. Though he was successful in finding favour at courts all over Europe, only a few of his sculptures, all of a very high quality, survive. The Bust of Cosimo I , in the Bargello, marks the departure of the portrait from realism, creating instead a new heroic image. His Perseus, in the Loggia dei Lanzi, forms a fitting counterpart to Donatello's late Judith , and completely outclasses the Hercules and Cacus in the square outside by his rival Baccio Bandinelli (1493-1560).
By far the most influential Florentine Mannerist, however, was Giambologna (1529-1608), a sculptor of French origin. His favourite medium was bronze, and he established a large workshop which churned out miniature replicas of his most important compositions. These typically show figures in combat, and are designed for the spectator to walk around, rather than examine from only one viewpoint. His most famous image is the typically androgynous Mercury ; in a conscious rebuttal of the approaches of both Donatello and Michelangelo, this figure appears to float in the air, in the boldest attempt ever made by a sculptor to defy the laws of gravity.
One of the most individualistic Mannerists was Domenico Beccafumi (1486-1551), who provided a somewhat unusual end to the long line of Sienese painters, though his emphasis on colour was utterly typical of that city. He was a master of decorative effect, as witnessed by his illusionist frescoes in the Palazzo Pubblico, and his large altarpieces for Sienese churches, which show a particular concern for light and shade, perspective effects, and deep emotions. In Parma, the paintings of Francesco Mazzola, known simply as Parmigianino (1503-40), retained something of the consciously refined approach of Correggio, with their exaggeratedly sinuous figures, though his portraits reveal considerable spiritual insight. His decorative scheme for Santa Maria della Steccata typifies the Mannerist penchant for surplus ornament and demonstrates the fertility of his imagination.
Venice, as ever, followed its own distinctive late-Renaissance path, having no taste for the sort of Mannerism practised elsewhere in Italy. Jacopo Tintoretto (1518-94) aimed at an ideal based on the drawing of Michelangelo and the colour of Titian, though in fact the heroic style he forged had only superficial resemblances to his mentors. To heighten the sense of drama, he used a battery of other methods: unorthodox vantage points, elongated figures, and unexpected positioning of the main subject on the canvas.
In strong contrast to Tintoretto, the other leading Venetian painter of the day, Paolo Veronese (1528-88), was a supreme decorator on a grand scale. Indeed, some of his best work was conceived for architectural settings, such as San Sebastiano in Venice and the Villa Barbara in Masèr. Veronese's love of pomp and splendour, however, is carried over into his easel paintings, which revel in warm, glowing colours and monumental figures, with little sense of gravitas. He fell foul of the Inquisition as a result of the inclusion of German soldiers (which put him under suspicion of Protestant sympathies) and other anachronistic and surplus detail in a huge banquet scene (now in the Venice Accademia) purporting to represent The Last Supper . He responded by changing the title to A Feast in the House of Levi .
Alessandro Vittoria (1525-1608), a pupil of Jacopo Sansovino, embellished Venice's churches with sculptures that have much in common with Mannerist productions elsewhere in Italy, but are more classically modelled. Jacopo Bassano (1510-92) was trained in the city, but preferred to work in the provincial town after which he takes his name, where he was by far the most remarkable of a dynasty of painters. As a setting for his religious panels, he painted the small town and country life of his day as it really was. He also popularized the inclusion of animals and heaped piles of fruit and vegetables - features eagerly taken up by later northern European artists - and was a superb painter of light and shade, using heavy daubs of colour and strong chiaroscuro.
Another remarkable artist working well away from the main centres was Federico Barocci (1535-1612) of Urbino. His paintings were painstakingly executed, their soft rounded forms mirroring the comforting religious image propagated by the Counter-Reformation, and with an emphasis on light and movement that was to some extent anticipatory of the Baroque to


The Baroque age
The leadership of Italian art away from the sterility of late Mannerism came initially from cities that had hitherto played a minor role in its development. Bologna was the first to come to prominence, through the academy founded there in 1585 by members of the Carracci family - Lodovico (1555-1619), Agostino (1557-1602) and Annibale (1560-1609). This was by no means the first attempt to set up a training school for artists, a concept rendered necessary by the blow the Renaissance had dealt to the old workshop tradition, but it was far more successful than any previous venture. Annibale was easily the greatest and most versatile artist of the three, breathing a whole new life into the classical tradition. His frescoes in the Palazzo Farnese in Rome offer a fresh and highly imaginative approach to mythological scenes, as well as being brilliant examples of illusionism. A more serious intent is noticeable in the artist's canvases, which introduce an emotional yet untheatrical content to well-ordered religious subjects. He was also a major landscape painter, pioneering the sort of luscious scene with a subsidiary subject from the Bible or classical literature which was later to be developed in Rome by the great French painters, Claude and Poussin.
An entirely different but equally novel approach was taken by Michelangelo da Caravaggio (1573-1610), whose violent and wayward life led him from Milan to Rome, Naples, Malta, Sicily and most of the way back again. Caravaggio was the great master of chiaroscuro, which he used to even more dramatic effect than Tintoretto. He also used what seemed like shock tactics to his patrons in the Church, stripping away centuries of idealized tradition to present biblical stories as they might have seemed at the time. Real-life peasants, beggars, ruffians and prostitutes were all used as models for the figures, to enhance the realistic impact. His original canvases for commissions such as those for the Roman churches of San Luigi dei Francesi and Santa Maria del Popolo were sometimes rejected, though he always managed to find a private buyer. His impact on the great European Golden Age of seventeenth-century painting was immense, spawning whole schools of Dutch and French derivatives, along with Rembrandt, Rubens, and most of the great Spanish masters.
In Italy, Caravaggio's art had an immediate impact on the older Orazio Gentileschi (1563-1639), who was particularly keen on its tenebrist effects. The Mantuan Bartolomeo Manfredi (c1580-1620) extended the master's style to such genre subjects as card games and soldiers in guardrooms. And Caravaggio's style was brought to Naples by Giovanni Battista Caracciolo (c1578-1635), inspiring the city's painters to raise Naples from its traditionally marginal position in Italian art to a place, throughout the seventeenth century, at the very forefront.
The first important follower of the Carracci in Bologna was Guido Reni (1575-1642). In the nineteenth century, Reni was ranked as one of the supreme artists of all time, but suffered a slump in reputation when a reaction against artistic sentimentality set in; it is only very recently that his genuine gifts for the expression of feeling have been given their proper due. Among other Carracci pupils, Domenichino (1581-1641) was a faithful follower of the style, extending its hold on Rome, though he was better at its more decorative and idealized aspects. Guercino (1591-1666) merged the classical and realistic styles, imbuing chiaroscuro effects with a subtlety very different to that favoured by Caravaggio and his followers.
Giovanni Lanfranco (1582-1647), originally from Parma, combined the Carracci style with elements borrowed from Correggio. His frescoes in Rome and Naples have a greater sense of movement and technical trickery than those Domenichino was painting at the same time, and mark the beginnings of High Baroque painting. In turn, his own work was made to seem out-of-date by Pietro da Cortona (1596-1669), who introduced a sense of fantasy and freedom that was far more ambitious than anything previously attempted. His ceiling in the Palazzo Barberini presented the illusion of opening on to the heavily populated heavens above, with figures seen di sotto in su - apparently teeming down into the hall below. For a century, this was to be the sort of monumental painting favoured in Rome; it was also spread to Florence by Cortona himself, by means of a series of frescoes in the Palazzo Pitti.
The High Baroque style was essentially a Roman phenomenon, born out of the super-confident mood in the world capital of Catholicism as a result of the success of the Counter Reformation. Its overwhelmingly dominant personality was Gianlorenzo Bernini (1598-1680), a youthful prodigy who had created an entirely new sculptural language while still in his early twenties. Such works as David and Apollo and Daphne , both in the Villa Borghese, were the first great marble statues since Michelangelo, yet in their independence of form showed a decisive rejection of the concept of belonging to the block from which they were carved, drawing the spectator into the scene and asserting the primacy of the emotions - a key concept of the Baroque. Though only an occasional painter (he in fact spent more time as an architect), Bernini adopted painterly techniques for his work, using different materials for contrast, exploiting sources of light, and using illusionist techniques, producing a drama best seen in The Ecstasy of St Theresa in Rome's Santa Maria della Victoria, which goes so far as to re-create the atmosphere of a theatre by the inclusion of a gallery of onlookers.
So overwhelming was the impact of Bernini's art that most other sculpture of the period is but a pale imitation of it. One of the few sculptors not to be overawed was the Tuscan Francesco Mochi (1580-1654), who made two magnificent equestrian monuments in Piacenza. Alessandro Algardi (1598-1654) of Bologna managed a brilliant career in Rome as a bitter rival of Bernini, promoting a sculptural version of the Carracci style.
In Venice, the versatile Genoese Bernardo Strozzi (1581-1644) tried to revive memories of the great sixteenth-century masters. His exuberant early works are generally more successful, showing the influence of Rubens: they typically have very free brushwork, luminous colours and pronounced modelling. In Naples, Massimo Stanzione (1585-1656) combined something of the approaches of Carracci and Caravaggio, though his most original works are his detailed, colourful portraits. A much more aggressively Caravaggesque idiom is apparent in the work of Artemisia Gentileschi (c1597-1651), daughter of Orazio, who was particularly adept at lurid subjects. She enjoyed a remarkable degree of independence and status for a woman of her day, and has attracted a great deal of attention from modern feminists, having a fair claim to the title of "the greatest ever female painter". Salvator Rosa (1615-73) painted landscapes that have a wild, mystical quality very different from those of the classical painters of Bologna and Rome. Characteristically, they are populated by bandits or witches, or have an allegorical theme. Mattia Preti (1613-99), who originally hailed from the artistic backwater of Calabria, painted some of the most effective canvases in Caravaggio's idiom, excelling at its tenebrist aspects. His later work is more influenced by Roman Baroque, using brighter colours and pronounced spatial effects. In these, he resembles Luca Giordano (1632-1705), the main Neapolitan painter of the second half of the century. Giordano was renowned for his ability to paint quickly, and he ranks among the most prolific artists of all time. His output employs a whole variety of styles and is uneven in quality, but shows remarkable technical facility. The last major Baroque painter active in Naples was Francesco Solimena (1657-1747), whose large crowded compositions show the full theatricality of the style.
Meanwhile, the Roman vogue for spectacular illusionistic ceilings was continued by Giovanni Battista Baciccia (1639-1709), who was warmer in colour and even more audacious in approach than Pietro da Cortona. His most famous decoration is that in the Gesù, which boldly mixes painted and stucco figures. An even greater command of pyrotechnics, however, was displayed by the Jesuit Andrea Pozzo (1642-1709) on the ceiling of Sant'Ignazio, whose illusion is designed to be seen from only one specific point.


The eighteenth century
The decline of Italian art in many of its most celebrated strongholds gathered pace in the eighteenth century, a slump from which only Venice and Rome stood apart. In the case of the former, its pre-eminence was due to a revival of its grand decorative tradition after a century's gap. This gave it a leading position in European Rococo , the ornate derivative of late Baroque.
An updated version of the style of Veronese was first fostered by Sebastiano Ricci (1659-1734), whose work is superficially similar to Veronese's, but has an airier, lighter feel. A more individual approach is apparent in the work of Giovanni Battista Piazzetta (1683-1754), an outstanding draughtsman whose joyful and harmonious paintings give the impression of a free and easy approach, yet which were actually the result of meticulous planning. Venice also boasted a notable female portraitist in Rosalba Carriera (1675-1757), who was the first artist to use pastel as an independent medium.
By far the most accomplished exponent of Venetian Rococo, and one of the greatest decorative artists of all time, was Giovanni Battista Tiepolo (1696-1770). His work is best seen in an architectural setting, where his illusionistic approach compares favourably with those of the earlier Roman artists in its colour, handling, spatial awareness, sense of fantasy and depth of feeling. The finest schemes were made for foreign patrons (in Würzburg and Madrid), but there are some excellent examples in Udine, Vicenza and Stra, and several in Venice itself, notably the Palazzo Labia and Ca'Rezzonico.
His son, Giovanni Domenico Tiepolo (1727-1804), aided him on many projects and painted in a broadly similar style, though he had a more obvious eye for satire. Also active in Venice were a number of painters who specialized in painting views of the city as mementos for its aristocratic visitors. The best known of these was Antonio Canaletto (1697-1768), whose images, often painted on the spot and with the use of a camera obscura, have defined the popular conception of the buildings and lifestyle of Venice ever since. However, they are an idealized representation, with spatial arrangements and even individual buildings altered. Canaletto's nephew, Bernardo Bellotto (1721-80), closely followed his style and applied it to cities all over Europe, but took a more literal approach, stressing topographical exactness. A more sombre, musing mood is present in the Venetian views of Francesco Guardi (1712-93), who used a darker palette. His emphasis on transitory light effects foreshadowed the French Impressionists, while his figures have a greater vivacity than those of Canaletto. Genre scenes were also much in demand with visiting tourists, and Pietro Longhi (1702-85), who had a limited technique but ready sense of humour, vividly characterized the Venetian life of his day for the benefit of this market.
Among non-Venetian painters, the Genoese Alessandro Magnasco (1667-1749) is particularly distinctive, often combining into one picture his two favourite themes of mannered landscapes ravaged by the elements and ecstatic monks at prayer. In Rome, the tourist demand for views was met by Giovanni Paolo Panini (c1692-1765), who painted both the ruins of the classical period and the modern buildings of the day. These are surpassed, however, by the grandiose large-scale etchings of Giovanni Battista Piranesi (1720-78), which fully exploit the dramatic contrasts of light and shade possible in the black-and-white medium.
The latter can be seen as an early manifestation of Neoclassicism , a movement which began in the middle of the century, inspired partly by a reaction against Baroque excesses, and partly by the excitement caused by the discovery of Pompeii and Herculaneum, though many of its leading exponents were foreigners resident in Rome. Neoclassicism aimed at the complete revival of the arts of the ancients, a trend that was particularly marked in sculpture, which had a far larger legacy to borrow on than painting. It is best seen in the works of Antonio Canova (1757-1822), which show great beauty in modelling, though a certain frigidity in the depiction of emotions. His statues are often highly erotic in effect: the several monuments he made in honour of Napoleon include life-sized nude depictions, one of which is now in the Brera, Milan.


The nineteenth century
If the eighteenth century was a lean time for Italian art, the nineteenth century was even worse, Paris becoming the overwhelmingly dominant European trendsetter. Francesco Hayez (1791-1882) was perhaps the most successful painter at work in the first half of the century, continuing the Neoclassical manner in his history scenes and highly finished portraits.
Towards the 1850s the Romantic taste for realism was reflected in an interest in the country's scenery, immortalized by various local schools: the Scuola di Posillipo and the Palizzi brothers (Giuseppe, 1812-88, and Filippo, 1818-99) in Naples; the Scuola di Rivara in Piedmont; il Piccio (1804-73) in Lombardy; and the Macchiaioli in Tuscany. The Macchiaioli were a group of painters based in Florence, who held comparatively modern and definable aims. Their name derives from the Italian word for a blot, as they made extensive use of individual patches of light and dark colour, which was used to define form, in opposition to the super-smooth Neoclassical approach then in vogue. The guiding spirit of the movement was Giovanni Fattori (1825-1905), who painted scenes of military life (based on his experiences fighting in the Wars of Independence of 1848-9) and broad landscapes using very free brushwork and compositional techniques. The group's chief theorist, Telemaco Signorini (1835-1901), came to be influenced by the painting of Corot and the Barbizon School, and later followers moved to Paris, to become accepted as peripheral members of the Impressionist circle.
The turn of the century drew, once again, on international trends. Symbolism was chiefly represented by the haunting femmes fatales of Gaetano Previati (1852-1920) and the subtler compositions of Giovanni Segantini (1858-99), who coupled naturalism with imagination. Giuseppe Pellizza da Volpedo (1868-1907) experimented with Divisionismo , the Italian version of Seurat's Pointillisme. His most famous work, The Fourth State , is a striking depiction of the inevitable progress of the working class as outlined by Marx.
Compared with painting, the development of nineteenth-century sculpture was somehow delayed. The Canova influence seems to have been hard to escape, and works from this period often demonstrate great skill but little originality. Favourite subjects were portraits and, in typically Romantic fashion, historical characters with heavy revolutionary overtones, such as Spartacus by Vincenzo Vela (1820-91). Vela's work, together with the later efforts of Lorenzo Bartolini (1777-1850), introduced a more naturalistic touch while still retaining a high degree of finish. A more dramatic change of direction occurred through the Neapolitan Vincenzo Gemito (1852-1929), who dared to leave smoothness aside and concentrated on movement. Mario Rutelli (1859-1941) developed a naturalistic and lively style, taking inspiration from Hellenistic sculpture and specializing in bronze figures for fountains and equestrian monuments, which have since become famous Roman landmarks (the Fontana delle Naiadi in Piazza della Repubblica and Anita Garibaldi , on the Janiculum Hill, for example).
Yet the most innovative experiments would only be made by Medardo Rosso (1858-1928), who managed to capture the fluidity and elusiveness of the fleeting moment in the third dimension, influencing, among others, Rodin. After the latter's death in 1917, Guillaume Apollinaire acclaimed Rosso as "the greatest living sculptor"; his wax and bronze sculptures, when properly lit, seem to emerge softly from the shadows. Rosso, however, lived and worked in Paris for most of his life.


The twentieth century
The only Italian artist born within the last two hundred years to have gained truly universal recognition is Amedeo Modigliani (1884-1920). Although most of his adult life was spent in Paris, Modigliani's work is recognizably Italian, being rooted in the tradition of the Renaissance and Mannerist masters. Primitive African art, then being appreciated in Europe for the first time, was the other main influence on his highly distinctive and essentially linear style. His output consists almost entirely of sensuous reclining female nudes, and strongly drawn, psychologically penetrating portraits.
In 1909 an attempt to break France's artistic monopoly was launched - ironically enough, in Paris - by the Futurists , who aimed to glorify the dynamism of the modern world, including the key role of warfare. Their approach was similar to the recently founded Cubist movement in aiming to reproduce several sides of an object at the same time, but differed in striving to convey movement as well. Umberto Boccioni (1882-1916) was the most resourceful member of the group, which never recovered from his death in World War I - for which, true to his principles, he had volunteered. His erstwhile colleagues later developed in different directions. Giacomo Balla (1871-1958) painted in a variety of styles, ranging from the academic to the abstract. Gino Severini (1883-1966) joined the Cubists after the latter had become more interested in colour, then turned to mural and mosaic decorations, before reverting, towards the end of his life, to a sense of fantasy that was characteristic of his Futurist phase. Carlo Carrà (1881-1966) did a complete about-face from his Futurist origins, aiming to revive the representationalism of the old Italian masters.
Carrà teamed up in 1917 with Giorgio de Chirico (1888-1978) to form Pittura Metafisica , which reacted against both the mechanical approach of Cubism and Futurism's infatuation with the modern world, cultivating instead a nostalgia for antiquity. The movement, which established a school in Ferrara, was influenced by Surrealism, and had in particular a penchant for the presence of unexpected, out-of-place objects; de Chirico's Metaphysical Interiors show rooms littered with all the fetishes of modern civilization. Architectural forms of a strange and rigid nature are another recurring theme in his work of this period, though like Carrà he later abandoned this in favour of a consciously archaic approach.
Other Italian painters of the twentieth century to have gained an international reputation include Giorgio Morandi (1890-1964), who was strongly influenced by de Chirico and specialized in haunting still lifes - very precisely drawn and often in monochrome. Also touched by the Metaphysical tradition was Filippo de Pisis (1896-1956), whose huge output is experimental in nature, often exploring sensation and the unexpected; consequently, it is highly uneven in quality.
If Futurism had been the official art of the Fascist regime, after World War II any self-respecting artist had to be a Communist, or at least display left-wing sympathies. However, unanimity in political ideas didn't generate agreement on how these ideas should be expressed. Realists such as Renato Guttuso (1912-1987), who believed in figurative painting and focused on dramatic subjects, were opposed by Formalists like Renato Birolli (1905-1959), who were moving towards experimental, non-figurative art. Italy's leading practitioner of abstraction was Alberto Burri (1915-95), best known for his collages of waste materials with a thick blob of red or black paint. One of the most successful experiments in Formalism was Spazialismo , a group founded by Lucio Fontana (1899-1968) with the aim of integrating the third dimension with the two-dimensional format of traditional painting.
Between 1960 and 1970 the antithesis between Realism and Formalism was resolved with the so-called Informal Art that originated from a rejection of the establishment, an attitude shared by both European and American artists (New York having by now become the modern alternative to Paris). Since contemporary society was viewed as hostile, the artist wanted to affirm his or her own individuality without even attempting to communicate or to represent reality in any immediately recognizable way. The work of art became equated with the artist's individual gestures, such as Lucio Fontana's sharp cuts in the canvas. Particular importance was attached to the materials on which the informal artist impressed his mark: wood, cloth, metal scraps, plastic were cut, torn, and burned to emphasize the purely "gestural" value of the work.
However, not all artists took themselves that seriously. Piero Manzoni (1933-1963) parodied both "the artist's gesture" and the deliberate lack of any communicative content by a series of provocative experiments à la Warhol, from Consecration of the Art of the Hard-boiled Egg , where cooked eggs available for public consumption were given added value by the artist's thumb print, to Lines , traced on a piece of paper rolled up and sealed into a container. But the most sensational of these statements was perhaps his Merda d'Artista (literally, "Artist's Shit"), mercifully tinned and sealed but outrageously sold by weight at the current price of gold.
After this eloquent comment on art as self-expression, the focus shifted once more to materials and techniques, particularly as a response to an exhibition of American pop art at the prestigious Venice Biennale in 1964. Italian artists such as Michelangelo Pistoletto (b1933) rediscovered the creative possibilities of the mixed media collage (pioneered by Burri), with cheap materials still enjoying popularity and sometimes even attaining subject-matter status. Meanwhile, politics made a quiet exit from the art scene.
A parallel development in terms of a "return to reality" was Minimalism (yet another US creature), which concentrated on the mechanical process of constructing the artwork, again using unsophisticated materials (steel, iron, concrete) and elementary geometrical shapes. The traditional divide between painting and sculpture, already blurred by Fontana, seemed to be gone for good, as Minimalist artists such as Rodolfo Aricò (b1930) and Mario Surbone (b1932) played ambiguous games with depth and surface.
Along these lines came the so-called Arte Povera ("Poor Art"), a post-Minimalist movement whose leading figure was Jannis Kounellis (b1936), an artist of Greek origin who produced 3D installations and performances using odd media mixes (such as cotton and steel). Another representative of this "school", which flourished mainly between the late Sixties and the mid-Seventies, is Mario Merz (b1925), who uses found objects and materials (glass sheets, twigs, metal scraps) to create installations that convey a sense of fragility and danger.
Figurative art made a comeback at the end of the Seventies with the work of Francesco Clemente (b1952), Enzo Cucchi (b1949), Sandro Chia (b1946) and Mimmo Paladino (b1948), usually referred to, in the veritable jungle of twentieth-century art movements as Transavantguardia or Neo-Expressionist painters. Not only was the human figure rehabilitated but so too were the traditional media, from oil on canvas, to watercolour, pastel, and even fresco. After a long spell of sulky anti-commercialism, Italian painting seemed to have finally made up with the public.
Generally speaking, modern Italian sculptors have been more successful than painters in reinterpreting Italy's heritage in a novel way. Giacomo Manzù (1908-91) aimed to revive the Italian religious tradition, in a highly personal manner reminiscent of Donatello, whose technique of very low relief he used extensively. His best-known work is the bronze door of St Peter's on the theme of death, a commission awarded following a highly contentious competition in 1949. Marino Marini (1901-80) specialized in another great theme of Italian art, that of the equestrian monument - examples of his work are now displayed in a museum specially devoted to Marini in Florence - while the elegant portraits and female nudes of Emilio Greco (1913-95) stand as an updated form of Mannerism.
Although there is nothing truly ground-breaking about the Italian sculpture or painting of the last few years, there are a couple of interesting artists who have been well-received in the international forum. Video-artist Grazia Toderi (b1963) uses images of water to discuss transformation and existence, while Padua-born Maurizio Cattelan (b1960) creates witty, thought-provoking installations that explore themes of Italian popular culture. Unnerving work like bidibidobidiboo (1996) and La Nona Ora (1998) hide a lonely despondency behind their laconic humour.
 

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