15 - Architecture and Painting

Summary

few epochs in the history of art occupy so central a position in western achievement yet so strongly resist the neat distinctions of period and categorisation as the fifteenth century. Suspended between two pan-European artistic styles (a Parisian-centred Gothic and a Roman-based High Renaissance and Early Baroque), and straddling two historical epochs (‘the late Middle Ages’ and ‘the Renaissance’), the arts of fifteenth-century Christendom, known variously as ‘late medieval’, ‘early Renaissance’, ‘late Gothic’, even ‘florid’ and ‘flamboyant’, present a confusing and extraordinarily heterogeneous picture. The period saw one of the most profound changes in visual language in the history of western art, from the late Gothic formalities of the so-called International Style of c. 1400, to the accomplished naturalism of Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo. In a Europe fragmented by complex political units and sharpening differences in vernacular languages, the fifteenth century is remarkable for an acute diversity of artistic styles.