THE SPIRIT OF RENAISSANCE

RENAISSANCE
The Renaissance is a period in European history marking the
transition from the Middle Ages to modernity and covering the 15th
and 16th centuries, characterized by an effort to revive and surpass
ideas and achievements of classical antiquity. It occurred after
the Crisis of the Late Middle Ages and was associated with
great social change. In addition to the standard periodization,
proponents of a "long Renaissance" may put its beginning in the 14th
century and its end in the 17th century.
The Renaissance was a cultural movement that profoundly affected
European intellectual life in the early modern period. Beginning in
Italy, and spreading to the rest of Europe by the 16th century, its
influence was felt
in art, architecture, philosophy, literature, music, science, technology
, politics, religion, and other aspects of intellectual inquiry.
Renaissance scholars employed the humanist method in study, and
searched for realism and human emotion in art.
The Renaissance began in the Republic of Florence, one of the many
states of Italy. Various theories have been proposed to account for
its origins and characteristics, focusing on a variety of factors
including the social and civic peculiarities of Florence at the time: its
political structure, the patronage of its dominant family,
the Medici, and the migration of Greek scholars and their texts to
Italy following the Fall of Constantinople to the Ottoman Turks.
RENAISSANCE ART
Renaissance art (1350 - 1620 AD) is the painting, sculpture, and
decorative arts of the period of European history known as
the Renaissance, which emerged as a distinct style in Italy in about
AD 1400, in parallel with developments which occurred
in philosophy, literature, music, science, and technology.
Renaissance art took as its foundation the art of Classical antiquity,
perceived as the noblest of ancient traditions, but transformed that
tradition by absorbing recent developments in the art of Northern
Europe and by applying contemporary scientific knowledge. Along
with Renaissance humanist philosophy, it spread throughout Europe,
affecting both artists and their patrons with the development of new
techniques and new artistic sensibilities. For art historians,
Renaissance art marks the transition of Europe from the medieval
period to the Early Modern age.
The body of art, painting, sculpture, architecture, music and
literature identified as "Renaissance art" was primarily produced
during the 14th, 15th, and 16th centuries in Europe under the
combined influences of an increased awareness of nature, a revival
of classical learning, and a more individualistic view of man. Scholars
no longer believe that the Renaissance marked an abrupt break with
medieval values, as is suggested by the French word renaissance,
literally meaning "rebirth". In many parts of Europe, Early
Renaissance art was created in parallel with Late Medieval art.
Renaissance art marks a cultural rebirth at the close of the Middle
Ages and rise of the Modern world. One of the distinguishing
features of Renaissance art was its development of highly realistic
linear perspective. Giotto di Bondone (1267–1337) is credited with
first treating a painting as a window into space, but it was not until
the demonstrations of architect Filippo Brunelleschi (1377–1446) and
the subsequent writings of Leon Battista Alberti (1404–1472) that
perspective was formalized as an artistic technique.
The development of perspective was part of a wider trend
towards realism in the arts. Painters developed other techniques,
studying light, shadow, and, famously in the case of Leonardo da
Vinci, human anatomy. Underlying these changes in artistic method
was a renewed desire to depict the beauty of nature and to unravel
the axioms of aesthetics, with the works of
Leonardo, Michelangelo and Raphael representing artistic pinnacles
that were much imitated by other artists. Other notable artists
include Sandro Botticelli, working for the Medici in
Florence, Donatello, another Florentine, and Titian in Venice, among
others.
In architecture, Filippo Brunelleschi was foremost in studying the
remains of ancient classical buildings. With rediscovered knowledge
from the 1st-century writer Vitruvius and the flourishing discipline of
mathematics, Brunelleschi formulated the Renaissance style that
emulated and improved on classical forms. His major feat of
engineering was building the dome of the Florence Cathedral.
Another building demonstrating this style is the church of St. Andrew
in Mantua, built by Alberti. The outstanding architectural work of
the High Renaissance was the rebuilding of St. Peter's Basilica,
combining the skills
of Bramante, Michelangelo, Raphael, Sangallo and Maderno.
During the Renaissance, architects aimed to use columns, pilasters,
and entablatures as an integrated system. The Roman orders types
of columns are used: Tuscan and Composite. These can either be
structural, supporting an arcade or architrave, or purely decorative,
set against a wall in the form of pilasters. One of the first buildings to
use pilasters as an integrated system was in the Old Sacristy (1421–
1440) by Brunelleschi. Arches, semi-circular or (in
the Mannerist style) segmental, are often used in arcades, supported
on piers or columns with capitals.
Renaissance artists were not pagans, although they admired
antiquity and kept some ideas and symbols of the medieval
past. Nicola Pisano (c. 1220 – c. 1278) imitated classical forms by
portraying scenes from the Bible. His Annunciation, from
the Baptistry at Pisa, demonstrates that classical models influenced
Italian art before the Renaissance took root as a literary movement.
Techniques

 The use of proportion – The first major treatment of the painting

as a window into space appeared in the work of Giotto di
Bondone, at the beginning of the 14th century. True linear
 perspective was formalized later, by Filippo Brunelleschi and Leon
Battista Alberti. In addition to giving a more realistic presentation
of art, it moved Renaissance painters into composing more
paintings.
 Foreshortening – The term foreshortening refers to the artistic
effect of shortening lines in a drawing so as to create an illusion of
depth.
 Sfumato – The term sfumato was coined by Italian Renaissance
artist Leonardo da Vinci and refers to a fine art painting technique
of blurring or softening of sharp outlines by subtle and gradual
blending of one tone into another through the use of thin glazes
to give the illusion of depth or three-dimensionality. This stems
from the Italian word sfumare meaning to evaporate or to fade
out. The Latin origin is fumare, to smoke.
 Chiaroscuro – The term chiaroscuro refers to the fine art painting
modeling effect of using a strong contrast between light and dark
to give the illusion of depth or three-dimensionality. This comes
from the Italian words meaning light (chiaro) and dark (scuro), a
technique which came into wide use in the Baroque period.

RENAISSANCE PHILOSOPHY
The designation "Renaissance philosophy" is used by scholars
of intellectual history to refer to the thought of the period running in
Europe roughly between 1400 and 1600[1] (the dates shift forward for
central and northern Europe and for areas such as Spanish America,
India, Japan, and China under European influence). It therefore
overlaps both with late medieval philosophy, which in the fourteenth
and fifteenth centuries was influenced by notable figures such
as Albert the Great, Thomas Aquinas, William of Ockham,
and Marsilius of Padua, and early modern philosophy, which
conventionally starts with René Descartes and his publication of
the Discourse on Method in 1637.
Philosophers usually divide the period less finely, jumping from
medieval to early modern philosophy, on the assumption that no
radical shifts in perspective took place in the centuries immediately
before Descartes. Intellectual historians, however, take into
considerations factors such as sources, approaches, audience,
language, and literary genres in addition to ideas. This article reviews
both the changes in context and content of Renaissance philosophy
and its remarkable continuities with the past.
Characteristics
The structure, sources, method, and topics of philosophy in the
Renaissance had much in common with those of previous centuries.
Structure of philosophy
Particularly since the recovery of a great portion of Aristotelian
writings in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, it became clear that,
in addition to Aristotle's writings on logic, which had already been
known, there were numerous others roughly having to do with
natural philosophy, moral philosophy, and metaphysics. These areas
provided the structure for the philosophy curriculum of the emerging
universities. The general assumption was that the most 'scientific'
branches of philosophy were those that were more theoretical and
therefore more widely applicable. During the Renaissance too, many
thinkers saw these as the main philosophical areas, with logic
providing a training of the mind to approach the other three.
Sources of philosophy
A similar continuity can be seen in the case of sources.
Although Aristotle was never an unquestioned authority (he was
more often than not a springboard for discussion, and his opinions
were often discussed along those of others, or the teaching of Holy
Scripture), medieval lectures in physics consisted of reading
Aristotle's Physics, lessons in moral philosophy consisted of
examinations of his Nicomachean Ethics (and often his Politics), and
metaphysics was approached through his Metaphysics. The
assumption that Aristotle's works were foundational to an
understanding of philosophy did not wane during the Renaissance,
which saw a flourishing of new translations, commentaries, and
other interpretations of his works, both in Latin and in the
vernacular. After the Reformation, Aristotle's Nicomachean
Ethics continued to be the main authority for the discipline of ethics
at Protestant universities until the late seventeenth century, with
over fifty Protestant commentaries published on the Nicomachean
Ethics before 1682.
Method of philosophy
In terms of method, philosophy was considered during the late
Middle Ages as a subject that required robust enquiry on the part of
people trained in the subject's technical vocabulary. Philosophical
texts and problems were typically approached through university
lectures and 'questions'. The latter, similar in some ways to modern
debates, examined the pros and cons of particular philosophical
positions or interpretations. They were one of the cornerstones of
the 'scholastic method', made students who proposed or responded
to questions quick on their feet, and required a deep familiarity with
all of the known philosophical tradition, which would often be
invoked in support of or against specific arguments. This style of
philosophy continued to have a strong following in the
Renaissance. Pico della Mirandola's Disputations, for instance,
depended directly on this tradition, which was not at all limited to
university lecture halls.
Topics in philosophy
Given the remarkable range of Aristotelian philosophy, it was
possible to discuss all kinds of issues in medieval and Renaissance
philosophy. Aristotle had treated directly problems such as the
trajectory of missiles, the habits of animals, how knowledge is
acquired, the freedom of the will, how virtue is connected with
happiness, the relationship of the lunar and the sublunar worlds.
Indirectly he had stimulated discussion on two points that were
particularly of concern to Christians: the immortality of the soul and
the eternity of the world. All of these continued to be of
considerable interest to Renaissance thinkers, but we shall see that
in some cases the solutions offered were significantly different
because of changing cultural and religious landscapes.
SCIENTIFIC RENAISSANCE
During the Renaissance, great advances occurred
in geography, astronomy, chemistry, physics, mathematics, manufact
uring, anatomy and engineering. The collection of ancient scientific
texts began in earnest at the start of the 15th century and continued
up to the Fall of Constantinople in 1453, and the invention
of printing allowed a faster propagation of new ideas. Nevertheless,
some have seen the Renaissance, at least in its initial period, as one
of scientific backwardness. Historians like George Sarton and Lynn
Thorndike criticized how the Renaissance affected science, arguing
that progress was slowed for some amount of
time. Humanists favored human-centered subjects like politics and
history over study of natural philosophy or applied mathematics.
More recently, however, scholars have acknowledged the positive
influence of the Renaissance on mathematics and science, pointing
to factors like the rediscovery of lost or obscure texts and the
increased emphasis on the study of language and the correct reading
of texts.
Marie Boas Hall coined the term Scientific Renaissance to designate
the early phase of the Scientific Revolution, 1450–1630. More
recently, Peter Dear has argued for a two-phase model of early
modern science: a Scientific Renaissance of the 15th and 16th
centuries, focused on the restoration of the natural knowledge of the
ancients; and a Scientific Revolution of the 17th century, when
scientists shifted from recovery to innovation.
Alchemy
Alchemy is the study of the transmutation of materials through
obscure processes. It is sometimes described as an early form
of chemistry. One of the main aims of alchemists was to find a
method of creating gold from other substances. A common belief of
alchemists was that there is an essential substance from which all
other substances formed, and that if you could reduce a substance to
this original material, you could then construct it into another
substance, like lead to gold. Medieval alchemists worked with two
main elements or principles, sulphur and mercury.
Paracelsus was an alchemist and physician of the Renaissance. The
Paracelsians added a third principle, salt, to make a trinity of
alchemical elements.
Astronomy
The astronomy of the late Middle Ages was based on the geocentric
model described by Claudius Ptolemy in antiquity. Probably very few
practicing astronomers or astrologers actually read
Ptolemy's Almagest, which had been translated into Latin by Gerard
of Cremona in the 12th century. Instead they relied on introductions
to the Ptolemaic system such as the De sphaera mundi of Johannes
de Sacrobosco and the genre of textbooks known as Theorica
planetarum. For the task of predicting planetary motions they turned
to the Alfonsine tables, a set of astronomical tables based on
the Almagest models but incorporating some later modifications,
mainly the trepidation model attributed to Thabit ibn Qurra.
Contrary to popular belief, astronomers of the Middle Ages and
Renaissance did not resort to "epicycles on epicycles" in order to
correct the original Ptolemaic models—until one comes to
Copernicus himself.
Sometime around 1450, mathematician Georg Purbach (1423–1461)
began a series of lectures on astronomy at the University of
Vienna. Regiomontanus (1436–1476), who was then one of his
students, collected his notes on the lecture and later published them
as Theoricae novae planetarum in the 1470s. This "New Theorica"
replaced the older theorica as the textbook of advanced astronomy.
Purbach also began to prepare a summary and commentary on
the Almagest. He died after completing only six books, however, and
Regiomontanus continued the task, consulting a Greek manuscript
brought from Constantinople by Cardinal Bessarion. When it was
published in 1496, the Epitome of the Almagest made the highest
levels of Ptolemaic astronomy widely accessible to many European
astronomers for the first time.
The last major event in Renaissance astronomy is the work
of Nicolaus Copernicus (1473–1543). He was among the first
generation of astronomers to be trained with the Theoricae
novae and the Epitome. Shortly before 1514 he began to
revive Aristarchus's idea that the Earth revolves around the Sun. He
spent the rest of his life attempting a mathematical proof
of heliocentrism. When De revolutionibus orbium coelestium was
finally published in 1543, Copernicus was on his deathbed. A
comparison of his work with the Almagest shows that Copernicus
was in many ways a Renaissance scientist rather than a
revolutionary, because he followed Ptolemy's methods and even his
order of presentation. Not until the works of Johannes Kepler (1571–
1630) and Galileo Galilei (1564–1642) was Ptolemy's manner of
doing astronomy superseded.
Mathematics

The accomplishments of Greek mathematicians survived

throughout Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages by a long and indirect
history. Much of the work of Euclid, Archimedes, and Apollonius,
along with later authors such as Hero and Pappus, were copied and
studied in both Byzantine culture and in Islamic centers of learning.
Translations of these works began already in the 12th century, by the
work of translators in Spain and Sicily working mostly from Arabic
and Greek sources into Latin. Two of the most prolific were Gerard of
Cremona and William of Moerbeke.
The greatest of all translation efforts, however, took place in the
15th and 16th centuries in Italy, as attested by the numerous
manuscripts dating from this period currently found in European
libraries. Virtually all leading mathematicians of the era were
obsessed with the need for restoring the mathematical works of the
ancients. Not only did humanists assist mathematicians with the
retrieval of Greek manuscripts, they also took an active role in
translating these work into Latin, often commissioned by religious
leaders such as Nicholas V and Cardinal Bessarion.
Some of the leading figures in this effort include Regiomontanus,
who made a copy of the Latin Archimedes and had a program for
printing mathematical works; Commandino (1509–1575), who
likewise produced an edition of Archimedes, as well as editions of
works by Euclid, Hero, and Pappus; and Maurolyco (1494–1575), who
not only translated the work of ancient mathematicians but added
much of his own work to these. Their translations ensured that
the next generation of mathematicians would be in possession of
techniques far in advance of what it was generally available during
the Middle Ages.
It must be borne in mind that the mathematical output of the 15th
and 16th centuries was not exclusively limited to the works of the
ancient Greeks. Some mathematicians, such as Tartaglia and Luca
Paccioli, welcomed and expanded on the medieval traditions of both
Islamic scholars and people like Jordanus and Fibonnacci.
Medicine
With the Renaissance came an increase in experimental
investigation, principally in the field of dissection and body
examination, thus advancing our knowledge of human anatomy. The
development of modern neurology began in the 16th century
with Andreas Vesalius, who described the anatomy of the brain and
other organs; he had little knowledge of the brain's function, thinking
that it resided mainly in the ventricles. Understanding of medical
sciences and diagnosis improved, but with little direct benefit to
health care. Few effective drugs existed,
beyond opium and quinine. William Harvey provided a refined and
complete description of the circulatory system. The most useful
tomes in medicine, used both by students and expert physicians,
were materiae medicae and pharmacopoeiae.
Geography and the New World
In the history of geography, the key classical text was
the Geographia of Claudius Ptolemy (2nd century). It was translated
into Latin in the 15th century by Jacopo d'Angelo. It was widely read
in manuscript and went through many print editions after it was first
printed in 1475. Regiomontanus worked on preparing an edition for
print prior to his death; his manuscripts were consulted by later
mathematicians in Nuremberg.
The information provided by Ptolemy, as well as Pliny the Elder and
other classical sources, was soon seen to be in contradiction to the
lands explored in the Age of Discovery. The new discoveries revealed
shortcomings in classical knowledge; they also opened European
imagination to new possibilities. Thomas More's Utopia was inspired
partly by the discovery of the New World.
RENAISSANCE LITERATURE
Renaissance literature refers to European literature which was
influenced by the intellectual and cultural tendencies associated with
the Renaissance. The literature of the Renaissance was written
within the general movement of the Renaissance, which arose in
14th-century Italy and continued until the 16th century while being
diffused into the rest of the western world. It is characterized by the
adoption of a humanist philosophy and the recovery of the classical
Antiquity. It benefited from the spread of printing in the latter part of
the 15th century.
For the writers of the Renaissance, Greco-Roman inspiration was
shown both in the themes of their writing and in the literary forms
they used. The world was considered from
an anthropocentric perspective. Platonic ideas were revived and put
to the service of Christianity. The search for pleasures of the senses
and a critical and rational spirit completed the ideological panorama
of the period. New literary genres such as the essay (Montaigne) and
new metrical forms such as the Spenserian stanza made their
appearance.
The impact of the Renaissance varied across the continent; countries
that were predominantly Catholic or Protestant experienced the
Renaissance differently. Areas where the Eastern Orthodox
Church was culturally dominant, as well as those areas of Europe
under Islamic rule, were more or less outside its influence. The
period focused on self-actualization and one's ability to accept what
is going on in one's life.
The earliest Renaissance literature appeared in Italy in the 14th
century; Petrarch, Machiavelli, and Ariosto are notable examples of
Italian Renaissance writers. From Italy, the influence of the
Renaissance spread at different times to other countries and
continued to spread around Europe through the 17th century.
The English Renaissance and the [[Renaissance in Scotland date from
the late 15th century to the early 17th century. In northern Europe,
the scholarly writings of Erasmus, the plays of William Shakespeare,
the poems of Edmund Spenser, and the writings of Sir Philip Sidney
may be considered Renaissance in character.
The development of the printing press (using movable type)
by Johannes Gutenberg in the 1440s encouraged authors to write in
their local vernacular instead of Greek or Latin classical languages,
thus widening the reading audience and promoting the spread of
Renaissance ideas.
RENAISSANCE SCULPTURE
Renaissance sculpture is understood as a process of recovery of
the sculpture of classical antiquity. Sculptors found in the artistic
remains and in the discoveries of sites of that bygone era the perfect
inspiration for their works. They were also inspired by nature. In this
context we must take into account the exception of the Flemish
artists in northern Europe, who, in addition to overcoming the
figurative style of the Gothic, promoted a Renaissance foreign to the
Italian one, especially in the field of painting. The rebirth of antiquity
with the abandonment of the medieval, which for Giorgio
Vasari "had been a world of Goths",and the recognition of the
classics with all their variants and nuances was a phenomenon that
developed almost exclusively in Italy. Renaissance art succeeded in
interpreting Nature and translating it with freedom and knowledge
into a multitude of masterpieces.
Renaissance sculpture took as its basis and model the works of
classical antiquity and its mythology, with a new vision
of humanist thought and the function of sculpture in art. As in Greek
sculpture, the naturalistic representation of the naked human body
was sought with a highly perfected technique, thanks to the
meticulous study of human anatomy. In Italy, profane and religious
themes coexisted equally; this was not the case in other countries
such as Spain and Germany, where religious themes prevailed.
The human body represented absolute Beauty, whose mathematical
correspondence between the parts was well defined, and
the contrapposto was constantly used
from Donatello to Michelangelo. It was at this time that sculpture
was practically freed from the architectural framework, the reliefs
were made with the rules of perspective and the characters were
shown with dramatic expressions that led to the sensation of
great terribilità in the feelings expressed in Michelangelo's
sculptures, as in the face of his David.
A fundamental role was played by the figure of the Maecenas,
represented by the church and noblemen who, with their patronage,
obtained social prestige and political propaganda, and covered all
themes: religious, mythological, daily life, portraits of characters, etc.
With the Renaissance, the Greco-Roman glyptics reappeared, which
had been almost completely forgotten during the Middle Ages in fine
stone carving (except for a few examples of Byzantine art), and from
the 16th century, precious cameos of classical taste were carved, so
perfect that sometimes they could be confused with the ancient
ones. However, the use of fine stone carvings, so favored by the
Greek and Roman civilizations, was hardly restored. These small
reliefs served as a model, once enlarged, for decoration by sculptors
in large medallions for palaces in Italy and France.
Materials
Renaissance sculpture made use of all kinds of materials,
mainly marble, bronze and wood. Reproductions of statuettes in
bronze were widespread in the Renaissance, due to the large
number of collectors. In Florence, Antonio Pollaiuolo (Hercules and
Antaeus) and Andrea del Verrocchio (Winged Boy with Fish) were the
initiators, commissioned by the Medici. From the workshop
of Leonardo da Vinci small bronzes with the rearing horse of a height
of 23 cmare preserved. The Mantuan sculptor Pier Jacopo Alari
Bonacolsi, called Antico, settled in Rome for the execution of bronze
reductions of ancient marbles.
Wood was used in countries such as Germany and Spain, where the
great forest wealth and the traditional work of polychrome wood
was deeply rooted; it was used in the execution of religious imagery,
altarpieces and altars.
Terracotta was used as a more economical material, in natural color
and polychrome, as used by Antonio Rossellino and his
disciple Matteo Civitali in the Virgin of the Annunciation in the church
of the Servants of Lucca. The Italian artist Pietro Torrigiano made in
Spain several sculptures in polychrome clay, some of them are
preserved in the Museum of Fine Arts of Seville. Luca della Robbia,
who followed the Donatello style, is credited with the invention of
enameled clay, which he used in the tabernacle of Santa Maria
Novella in Florence in combination with marble to give color to the
work, and later in tondos and Madonnas; his workshop, followed by
his nephew Andrea della Robbia, produced a large number of works
in enameled terracotta that spread throughout Europe. This has
reached different parts of the world as it is a manifestation of
feelings and history.
Techniques
The technique of marble carving was recovered in Renaissance times
with the perfection it had had during the classical period. From the
Renaissance onwards, the hand drill or trepan was used to remove
the stone to a certain depth. This tool was used whether the
sculpture was made in direct carving, as Michelangelo had
sometimes done, or whether the past of points from a model made
in plaster was used, as was usually done by artists such
as Giambologna, whose marked points can be seen in many of his
sculptures. Donatello used the Greek method of working the block in
the round, but Michelangelo carved it from one side. This is
how Benvenuto Cellini described it:
The best method ever employed by Michelangelo; after having
drawn the main perspective on the block, he began to tear off the
marble from one side as if he intended to work a relief and thus, step
by step, to bring out the complete figure.
— Benvenuto Cellini, on Miguel Angel, escultor.
For bronze works, the work had to be previously made in clay or wax
for its subsequent casting; it was then chiseled to eliminate possible
casting defects, the surface was polished with abrasives and patinas
were added to the sculptor's taste.
The wood carving, used mainly in Northern Europe and Spain, could
also be done in direct carving on the wood block with the execution
of a small sketch for guidance or with the previous model in plaster
or clay, and also pass it through points as in marble.
Composition

 Sculpture in the round

The Renaissance adopted the basic elements that had been
described by Vitruvius, who held:
... that the proportion of the human form was to serve as a paradigm
for the proportions of man's creations. Since nature has designed the
human body in such a way that its members are properly
proportioned to the figure as a whole; it seems that the ancients had
good reason for their rule, which says that in perfect buildings the
different members must bear exact symmetrical relations to the
general scheme as a whole.
— Vitruvius (1st century), on D'Architectura
The composition of the human figure was based on the search for
perfection in anatomy, about which many artists of this period
acquired real knowledge through the practice of dissections for
study. The first Renaissance free-standing sculpture that showed the
harmony of the nude was Donatello's David during the Quattrocento,
in which the influence of Praxiteles' style could be appreciated with a
slight contrapposto to achieve balance in the composition. During
the following years the knowledge of the human anatomy was
acquiring a great perfection, until reaching a full contrapposto. The
expressions of the faces stopped being hieratic and absent to show
inner feelings; the so-called Renaissance terribilità (Michelangelo's
David, around 1504). In the sculptural groups of religious character,
the combination of naturalism with an intense expressiveness was
shown, the Florentine serenity disappeared before the passions
shown by the characters with their faces deformed by gestures of
despair and pain, visible in the Burials of Christ by Guido
Mazzoni and Niccolò dell'Arca. Sculpture evolved in its conception
and in the compositions of its groups, until it reached the
serpentinata typical of Mannerism, which is clearly shown in works
such as the Florentine Pietà (Michelangelo) or the Rape of the Sabine
Women (Giambologna).

 Relief sculpture
In relief, architecture and the newly acquired laws
of perspective were used to compose the backgrounds of the
representations, as in the famous Gates of Paradise by Ghiberti or in
the reliefs with the stiacciato technique for the altar of St. Anthony
in Padua by Donatello. Architectural structures were composed as a
backdrop, just as Giotto had done in his Protorrenaissance paintings.
Some Italian bronze laudas were transported to Spain, such as the
one in the cathedral of Badajoz by Lorenzo Suárez de Figueroa.
The Flemish sculpture together with that of Germanic countries
developed with a realism that was appreciated in all the ornamental
details, where the sculptural work was presented almost as a work of
goldsmithing that was applied in the great altars made of wood. Also
in Spain, the Gothic-Flemish influence together with the Italian
influence was reflected in reliefs, such as the one on one of the doors
of the cathedral of Barcelona made by the Flemish sculptor Michael
Lochner and by Bartolomé Ordóñez in Italian style in the backchorus
of the same cathedral. The reliefs around the sarcophagi usually
represented scenes from the life of the deceased: their life, miracles
and martyrdom if they were religious, or the representation of
battles and military deeds if they were nobility figures. The funerary
monuments were developing different phases of composition, from
the traditional structure of the funerary slab or the statue of the
solitary recumbent in his sarcophagus used in medieval times, to the
tombs attached framed by architectural elements in the manner of
a triumphal arch, and with a result similar to an altarpiece, where in
the central street was the urn usually with the figure of the
recumbent on it and allegorical figures in the side streets. Finally,
they were made with the representation of the deceased in a praying
attitude, typical of Spain and France.
During the Renaissance, the Plateresque style originated in Spain,
which represented a change in the way buildings were decorated
with sculptural elements in a mainly Italian style, not only in the
stone of the facades but also in wood and plaster in the interiors of
the buildings, based on historiated reliefs and vegetal ornaments
typical of the early Renaissance (called "in candelieri") with
large heraldic escutcheon and putti around them.

 Bust
Bust portraits continued to be used in the Quattrocento with the
new humanistic conception that imposed the representation with
great physical resemblance, but also with the affirmation of the
personality of the sitter. According to Alberti, the artist had to
"characterize but also establish harmonious relationships". They
were made in bronze, polychrome terracotta and marble
(Donatello, Verrocchio, Francesco Laurana).

 Equestrian statue
The life-size equestrian statue in bronze had already been treated by
Roman sculptors such as the Marcus Aurelius then located in St. John
Lateran; also the bronze horses of St. Mark's in Venice served as a
model for the Italian Renaissance, and can be considered
inspirational for Donatello's Gattamelata and Verrocchio's Colleoni.
Leonardo da Vinci's studies led to a change in the representation of
the horse, which was placed on its hind legs and in an attitude of
pouncing on the enemy; the idea was probably taken from reliefs of
ancient sarcophagi.