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In the 14th century, a drastic change in the way people were thinking and the art they were making started happening in Europe. One city - Florence, had the most important role in this change. The home of Dante Alighieri, Giovanni Boccaccio, and Niccolo Machiavelli has preserved so much of the renaissance art and architecture created there, that now it is considered the Living museum of this period.
Sandro Botticelli
Alessandro di Mariano di Vanni Filipepi (c. 1445 – May 17, 1510), who is widely known as Sandro Botticelli, was an Early Renaissance Italian painter. He was part of the Medici's court artistic group and was highly regarded among his contemporaries but later his work was forgotten until the 19th century. The Pre-Raphaelites rediscovered him and since then his pictures are praised as some of the most important forerunners of the High Renaissance. As opposed to the voluminous, sculpture-like style of latter artists like Michelangelo or Raphael, he put the accent on the linear grace of the personages represented.
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1 October 1507. Or Who Introduced Baroque into Architecture
On this day, 963 years ago, the great Italian architect Giacomo Barozzi da Vignola was born. His most famous projects are Villa Farnese at Caprarola and the Jesuits' Church of the Gesu in Rome. The later, actually named Chiesa del Santissimo Nome di Gesu all'Argentina, is the first building with a true Baroque facade. Vignola is one of the three architects that spread the Italian Renaissance through Western Europe (the other two are Serlio and Palladio).
