Giovanni di Paolo di Grazia

1403-1483

Italian, Early Renaissance  Painter of the Sienese School

Influences: Taddeo di Bartolo, Simone Martini, Ambrogio Lorenzetti and Duccio di Buoninsegna

Mediums - panel painting, frescoes and manuscript illumination

Cause of Death - old age, he was 80

                                                                One of the Greatest Painters Of All Time

Biography Information and Facts About the Artist

Foundations of the Renaissance

 The endless curiosity of Renaissance painters for all things classical spurned them on to study the human body in ways not seen since the ancients.  A change of  attitude was taking place. Artists reveled in their new found passion, the passion for beauty, for sophistication, and for elegance.

At the closing of the fourteenth century there was an awakening of the senses. Italy felt the awakening earlier than the rest of Europe, and felt it far more powerfully. Its first manifestation was a limitless and unquenchable curiosity, urging people to find out all they could about the world and about man. They looked around them at the amazing building that still stood, the Roman forum, the coliseum and realized that something truly great had preceded them. People turned enthusiastically to the study of classic literature and ancient civilizations. They were inspired by the vast store-house of long forgotten knowledge of antiquity. Walter Pater observed "No account of the Renaissance can be complete without some notice of the attempt made by certain Italian scholars of the fifteenth century to reconcile Christianity with the religion of ancient Greece. "

The newly emerging painting techniques and styles were a reflection of the transformation that was taking place in Europe, the change from the medieval period to a more enlightened, tolerant society.  Artists, writers and scholars were flourishing. Great states were being created. Large centers of commerce were being founded. High above the turreted towers of the castle and the peaked roof of the town-hall, rose the slender spire of the newly built Gothic cathedral. Everywhere the world was in transition. The newly wealthy merchat class, was becoming conscious of their own strength and were struggling to throw off the yoke of their feudal masters.

Key Descriptive Words  and Phrases associated with the Renaissance Movement -  rebirth, rediscovery of the classical world,  publication of Della Pittura, a book about the laws of mathematical perspective for artists,  sfumato, chiaroscuro, Savonarola, spiritually significant,  illuminated manuscript,  idealized biblical themes, scriptorium, illuminator,  Age of Discovery, axonometric drawing, curiosity about the natural world, the works of Dante, realistic use of colours and  light,  Bonfire of the Vanities, Old Testament stories, ethereal and foggy backgrounds, Gospel parables, The Black death, romanticized landscapes,  Christian symbolism.