ledge ortechnical skill--the High Renaissance style was destined to break up as soon as emphasiswas shifted to favor any one element in the composition.The High Renaissance style endured for only a brief period (c. 1495-1520) andwas created by a few artists of genius, among them Leonardo da Vinci, Donato Bramante,Michelangelo, Raphael, and Titian. Leonardo da Vincis unfinished Adoration of the Magi(1481; Uffizi Gallery, Florence) is regarded as a landmark of unified pictorial Kirkwood 4composition, later realized fully in his fresco The Last Supper (1495-97; Santa Maria delleGrazie, Milan). Leonardo is considered the paragon of Renaissance thinkers, engaged ashe was in experiments of al kinds and having brought to his art a spirit of restless inquirythat sought to discover the laws governing diverse natural phenomena. In a different way,Michelangelo has come to typify the artist endowed with inexplicable, solitary genius. Hisuniversal talents are exemplified by the tomb of Julius II (c. 1510-15), San Pietro inVincoli, Rome; the Medici Chapel (1519-34), Florence; the Sistine Chapel ceiling(1508-12) and Last Judgment (1536-41), Rome; and the cupola of Saint Peters Basilica(begun 1546)--works that represent major and inimitable accomplishments in the separatefields of sculpture, painting, and architecture. Raphael, a man of very differenttemperament, evoked, in paintings of Madonnas and in frescoes, not overwhelming forcesbut sublime harmony and lyric, graceful beauty. The term Renaissance, adopted from the French equivalent of the Italian word rinascita, meaning literally "rebirth," describes the radical and comprehensive changes that took place in European culture during the 15th and 16th centuries, bringing about the demise of the Middle Ages and embodying for the first time the values of the modern world. The c...
