This exhibition, being held at the musee du Louvre in Paris, and its catalogue
follow those dedicated to Florentine sculpture in the early Renaissance,
1400-1460, that took place in 2013-14 (Le Printemps de la Renaissance).
The period scrutinised is 1460-1520 but the geographical coordinates
are widened to include Northern Italy (Venice, Milan, Pavia, Padua,
Bologna) and Rome as the artistic landscape of Italy becomes more
complex. Some of the great sculptors, in fact, travelled and their style
and their ideas influenced pre-existing local tradition.


These
new artistic languages share a common characteristic: the relationship
to Greco-Roman Antiquity, especially in the representation of grace and
passion: the expression of pathos and the theatrical quality of
religious works, the symbolic richness of profane works and finally the
development of a new and refined style which will find its highest
expression in Roman classicism and in the work of Michelangelo.


The
catalogue includes the works of, among others, Donatello, Antonio
Pollaiolo, Bertoldo di Giovanni, Giovanfrancesco Rustici, Francesco di
Giorgio Martini, Guido Mazzoni, Bartolomeo Bellano, Cristoforo Solari,
Tullio Lombardo, Andrea Riccio, and Bambaia, Sansovino, and
Michelangelo.


Text in French.