The principal elements of High Renaissance art, first formulated by Leonardo da Vinci in the 1490s, came to their true flowering in the brilliant achievements of Bramante, Raphael and Michelangelo in Rome, of Michelangelo in Florence and Giorgione and Titian in Venice.
After the death of Raphael in 1520, the next generation in Italy was to see the rise of the complex and refined sensibility summed up in the term "Mannerism." In this uniquely comprehensive guide to sixteenth-century Renaissance art, Linda Murray examines the manifold achievements of Italian artists and identifies the individual forms taken by artists in Northern Europe and in Spain, including Durer, Bruegel and El Greco.