Early Renaissance

The Early Renaissance describes the first phase of the Italian Renaissance, centered on Florence from roughly 1400 to 1490, when artists including Brunelleschi, Donatello and Masaccio recovered and systematized linear perspective, anatomical naturalism and classical proportion after centuries of Gothic convention. Brunelleschi's demonstrated perspective construction and his dome for Florence Cathedral, Donatello's freestanding bronze David, the first such nude since antiquity, and Masaccio's Trinity fresco, the first fully convincing perspectival space in painting, mark the movement's defining breakthroughs. Patronage from the Medici and other Florentine banking families financed much of this work, tying artistic innovation closely to civic and mercantile pride. The Early Renaissance's systematic naturalism set the technical and intellectual foundation the High Renaissance built on a generation later.