In the arts and sciences as well as society and government, Italy was the major catalyst for progress during the Renaissance: the rich period of development that occurred in Europe at the end of the Middle Ages. Because of the number of different fields in which it applied, ``Renaissance'' is a word with many layers of meaning. Accordingly, Renaissance painting cannot signify any one common or clearly definable style. As Gothic painting had been shaped by the feudal societies of the Middle Ages, with its roots in the Romanesque and Byzantine traditions, Renaissance art was born out of a new, rapidly evolving civilization. It marked the point of departure from the medieval to the modern world and, as such, laid the foundations for modern Western values and society.

The High Renaissance style endured for only a brief period (c.1495-1520) and was created by a few artists of genius, among them Leonardo da Vinci, Donato Bramante, Michelangelo, Raphael, and Titian. Leonardo da Vinci's unfinished Adoration of the Magi (1481; Uffizi Gallery, Florence) is regarded as a landmark of unified pictorial composition, later realized fully in his fresco The Last Supper (1495-97; Santa Maria delle Grazie, Milan). Leonardo is considered the paragon of Renaissance thinkers, engaged as he was in experiments of all kinds and having brought to his art a spirit of restless inquiry that sought to discover the laws governing diverse natural phenomena. In a different way, Michelangelo has come to typify the artist endowed with inexplicable, solitary genius. His universal talents are exemplified by the tomb of Julius II (c.1510-15), San Pietro in Vincoli, Rome; the Medici Chapel (1519-34), Florence; the SISTINE CHAPEL ceiling (1508-12) and Last Judgment (1536-41), Rome; and the cupola of SAINT PETER's BASILICA (begun 1546)--works that represent major and inimitable accomplishments in the separate fields of sculpture, painting, and architecture. Raphael, a man of very different temperament, evoked, in paintings of Madonnas and in frescoes, not overwhelming forces but sublime harmony and lyric, graceful beauty.