Meet The Experts
Leonardo da Vinci
Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci (15 April 1452 – 2 May 1519, Old Style) was an Italian Renaissance polymath: painter, sculptor, architect, musician, mathematician, engineer, inventor, anatomist, geologist, cartographer, botanist, and writer. His genius, perhaps more than that of any other figure, epitomized the Renaissance humanist ideal. Leonardo has often been described as the archetype of the Renaissance Man, a man of "unquenchable curiosity" and "feverishly inventive imagination". He is widely considered to be one of the greatest painters of all time and perhaps the most diversely talented person ever to have lived. According to art historian Helen Gardner, the scope and depth of his interests were without precedent and "his mind and personality seem to us superhuman, the man himself mysterious and remote". Marco Rosci states that while there is much speculation about Leonardo, his vision of the world is essentially logical rather than mysterious, and that the empirical methods he employed were unusual for his time.
Raphael
Raffaello Sanzio da Urbino (April 6 or March 28, 1483 – April 6, 1520), better known simply as Raphael, was an Italian painter and architect of the High Renaissance. His work is admired for its clarity of form and ease of composition and for its visual achievement of the Neoplatonic ideal of human grandeur. Together with Michelangelo and Leonardo da Vinci, he forms the traditional trinity of great masters of that period.
Donatello
Donato di Niccolò di Betto Bardi (most people just called him Donatello) (1386 – December 13, 1466) was an Italian artist during the Renaissance. He lived in Florence and was very famous because he was one of the best sculptors of his times. He used special sort of sculpture technique, or way of doing things, called 'shallow relief', which made his work look very real.
He was the son of Niccolo di Betto Bardi, and was born in Florence. His mother's name is not known. When Donatello was older, he studied with Filippo Brunelleschi the architect. He also helped the sculptor Lorenzo Ghiberti to make statues for the Battistero di San Giovanni. Some of Donatello's most famous works are statues of Mary Magdalene and a life-size statue of David.
Donatello was one of the greatest Italian Renaissance artists. He influenced the renaissance by his new and improved way of international gothic sculpture. “International gothic, a style of graceful, softly curved lines strongly influenced by northern European art” He was serious at his work which has worked successfully through the decades. Donatello accomplished his work because of the detail he would put into every piece.
Michelangelo Buonarroti
Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni (6 March 1475 – 18 February 1564), commonly known as Michelangelo, was an Italian sculptor, painter, architect, poet, and engineer of the High Renaissance who exerted an unparalleled influence on the development of Western art. Despite making few forays beyond the arts, his versatility in the disciplines he took up was of such a high order that he is often considered a contender for the title of the archetypal Renaissance man, along with his fellow Italian Leonardo da Vinci.
Michelangelo was considered the greatest living artist in his lifetime, and ever since then he has been held to be one of the greatest artists of all time. A number of his works in painting, sculpture, and architecture rank among the most famous in existence. His output in every field during his long life was prodigious; when the sheer volume of correspondence, sketches, and reminiscences that survive is also taken into account, he is the best-documented artist of the 16th century.
