Oil paintings of Venice Italy

In the second decade of the 15th cent. Italy Fine Art - primarily Florence - took the lead and affected Europe profoundly for more than 500 years. At that time Jacopo Bellini, a superb draftsman, had two sons, Gentile and Giovanni Bellini, who continued his Venetian workshop. Gentile painted detailed and delightful scenes of Venice, as did Carpaccio. Giovanni Bellini initiated a century of Venetian greatness with the richness of color for which Venice became famous

Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, and Raphael, the greatest italian artists competed with one another in Florence and in Rome to create a perfect art. Leonardo has left only a small group of magnificent easel paintings and one grand but deteriorated fresco, The Last Supper in Milan. Michelangelo's magnificent ceiling and Last Judgment for the Sistine Chapel of the Vatican are the only monumental projects in painting, sculpture, or architecture that materialized according to his plans. Most of his sculptural masterpieces were never executed in their entirety.

At the beginning of the 16th cent. two superlative Italian Artists, the mysterious, short-lived Giorgione and the long-lived, prolific Titian, continued the tradition established by Giovanni Bellini of sumptuous, poetic coloring. They created sensuous figures whose contours melted into luminous, atmospheric landscapes. Their stylistic effects influenced the works of Palma Vecchio, Pordenone, the Bassano family, the Ferrarese Dosso Dossi, and the lavish banquet scenes of Paolo Veronese. Only Tintoretto veered away from the harmonious canvases that were typical of the Venetian artists. He created instead twisted, dramatic, elongated forms, related to those of the mannerists but more vigorously conceived.

Toward 1640 many of the italian artists leaned toward the classical style that had been brought to the fore in Rome by the French expatriate Nicolas Poussin. The sculptors Alessandro Algardi and the Fleming François Duquenoy also tended toward the classical. Notable late baroque italian artists include the Genoese Gaulli and the Neapolitans Luca Giordano and Francesco Solimena.