Parallel to this awakening of the human intellect was a great development of the fine arts. After centuries of stiff symbolic representation, artists began again to study nature herself and to work from the living model. New ideas of grace, harmony, and beauty were gained from the sculpture and other artistic remains of classical Greece and Rome. Presently came the discovery of better technical methods of execution--of the laws of perspective and the process of painting in oils. The result was that the art of painting burst into a glory previously unknown, and sculpture and architecture rivaled the grandeur of the ancient days.
As in the revival of learning, Italy again led the way, though the countries beyond the Alps soon followed. The dawn of the new age came with the sculptors Nicholas, John, and Andrew of Pisa. Contemporary with them was Giotto of Florence (1 266?-l337)--sculptor, architect, painter, and friend of Dante. Ghiberti, Donatello, and Della Robbia--the latter the creator of the charming medallions of children in glazed terra cotta-continued the work in sculpture; Fra Filippo Lippi, Botticelli, Ghiriandaio, and Perugino in painting; and Brunelleschi and Bramante in architecture. The tumultuous exuberance of Gothic art gave way to the serene and rational beauty of the classic orders, the pointed arches to rounded Roman ones, the aspiration of vertical lines to the restful calm of the horizontal. St. Peter's in Rome sums up in itself the spirit of Renaissance architecture.
The full flowering of Renaissance art came in the late 15th and early 16th centuries, with Raphael, the prince of painters, Leonardo da Vinci, and Michelangelo, embodiments of supreme many-sided genius. With these flourished the lesser lights--Andrea del Sarto, "the faultless painter"; Correggio, who depicts Christian saints with pagan charm and beauty; Titian, the superb master of Venetian colorists; and Tintoretto, a master of technique.
North of the Alps--in Flanders, Holland, and Germany--the chief names are the brothers Van Eyck, to whom is ascribed an important part in developing oil painting, Albrecht Durer and Hans Holbein, each of whom is connected with the new art of printed engraving as well as painting. The greatest of northern painters-- Rubens and Rembrandt--belong top the period following the Renaissance.