Italian Painting

Michelangelo, Creation of the Heavens, 1508-12, Sistine Chapel.

Italian painting is one of the most important in world history. Works of art produced in this geographic region are brilliant. Italian art has engendered great public interest and involvement, resulting in the consistent production of monumental and spectacular works. [1] Several of the greatest masterpieces have been made by Italian artists.

Main exponents of Italian painting are: Duccio di Buoninsegna, Giotto di Bondone, Fra Angelico, Piero della Francesca, Sandro Botticelli, Pietro Perugino, Leonardo da Vinci, Vittore Carpaccio, Michelangelo, Tiziano Vicellio, Raphael, Tintoretto, Paolo Veronese, Annibale Carracci, Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio, Domenico Zampieri, Carlino Dolci, Antonio Canaletto and Amedeo Modigliani.

The leading lights of the 18th cent. came from Venice. Among them were the brilliant exponent of the rococo style, Tiepolo; the architectural painters Guardi, Canaletto, Piazzetta, and Bellotto. Fantastic landscape was brought into vogue in the works of Castiglione and Magnasco, both of whom worked in Naples. [2]

During the 19th century Italian artists responded to movements such as Romanticism and Realism, but with little originality... The main artists were Giovanni Fattori (1825–1908), Silvestro Lega (1826–1895), and Telemaco Signorini (1835–1901), main exponents of a group known as Macchiaioli (patchers). [3]

In the 20th century, Lucio Fontana, founded the Spazialismo (style in which matter should be transformed into energy in order to invade space in a dynamic form), and Giorgio de Chirico founded the scuola metafisica art movement, which profoundly influenced the surrealists.

Italian painting is studied in periods like: The Medieval, the Renaissance, Mannerism, Venetian Painting, the Baroque Period, the Rococo Period, and Modern painting.