The Early Renaissance

The Early Renaissance began in Florence and the Low Countries as artists broke decisively with medieval conventions. In Italy, Masaccio introduced mathematical perspective and monumental figure painting; Brunelleschi codified the laws of linear perspective; and Fra Angelico, Botticelli, and Mantegna created works of unprecedented naturalism and spatial depth. In the North, Jan van Eyck perfected oil painting technique, achieving a microscopic realism that astonished contemporaries.

This was the age of experimentation. Artists were inventing the visual language that would define Western painting for centuries. Patrons like the Medici in Florence and the Burgundian dukes in the North funded an explosion of artistic innovation. The period produced the first true portraits, the first convincing landscapes, and the first paintings where sacred figures inhabit a recognizably real world.