Madonna of the Long Neck

After the sack, when painters fled rome in search of personal safety and work, several found positions at courts that provided them with job security. The long-term result of the Sack was not the collapse of Rome as the leading artistic center of central Italy, for Rome revitalized itself in the 1530s. Rather, it was the transfer of Roman style to...

The sacred image is a genre that serves two masters, art and the Church. Although the requirements of art are constantly changing, those of the Church remain relatively constant: to create images that will instruct the worshiper and move his or her emotions. Twice during the Renaissance the ecclesiastical establishment judged that the images artists were producing were unsatisfactory: locally and...

This pen drawing of St. Paul at Athens was executed by the eighteen-year-old artist before he had received any formal instruction...