High Renaissance

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The High Renaissance is a rather subjective art term denoting the culmination of the Italian Renaissance art between 1500 and 1525.

The High Renaissance painting is generally held to have been born in the late 1490s, when Leonardo da Vinci executed his Last Supper in Milan. The style was introduced to architecture by Donato Bramante who in 1502 built the Tempietto, with its majestic proportions signifying the full-scale revival of ancient Roman architecture. The High Renaissance sculpture, as exemplified by Michelangelo's Pietà and David, is characterized by the ideal balance between statics and movement. The serene mood and luminous colours of Giorgione and young Titian exemplify the High Renaissance in Venice.

The High Renaissance is widely viewed as the greatest explosion of creative genius in history. Even relatively minor painters active during the period, such as Fra Bartolomeo and Mariotto Albertinelli, produced works remarkable for their perfect harmony and total control of the painterly mediums. In the late works of Raphael, Andrea del Sarto and Correggio the elongated proportions and exaggerated poses prefigure the nascent Mannerism, as the Late Renaissance is referred to in the history of art. Raphael's death in 1520 and the Sack of Rome (1527) spelled the end of the High Renaissance. In 1520, Cardinal Andrea della Valle built the Palazzo Valle (later renamed the Palazzo Valle-Capranica), one of the first collections of Roman antiquities from the High Renaissance.