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The cultural and artistic events ofItaly during the period 1500 to 1599 are collectively referred to as theCinquecento (/ˌtʃɪŋkwɪˈtʃɛntoʊ/CHING-kwih-CHEN-toh,[1][2][3]Italian:[ˌtʃiŋkweˈtʃɛnto]), from the Italian for the number '500', in turn frommillecinquecento, '1500'. Cinquecento encompasses the styles and events of the HighItalian Renaissance, andMannerism.
Especially in Northern Italy, artists began to use new techniques in the manipulation of light and darkness, such as the tone contrast evident in many ofTitian's portraits and the development ofsfumato andchiaroscuro byLeonardo da Vinci andGiorgione.[4] The period also saw the first secular (non-religious) themes. Debate has ensued as to the secularism of theRenaissance emphasized by early 20th-century writers likeJacob Burkhardt due to the presence of these – actually few – mythological paintings.Botticelli was one of the main painters whose secular work comes down to us today, though he was deeply religious (a follower ofSavonarola) and painted plenty of traditional religious paintings as well.[5]
The period known as theHigh Renaissance represents the culmination of the goals of the earlier period, namely the accurate representation of figures in space rendered with credible motion and an appropriately decorous style. The most famous painters from this time period areLeonardo da Vinci,Raphael, andMichelangelo Buonarroti.[6] Their images are among the most widely known works of art in the world. Leonardo'sThe Last Supper, Raphael'sThe School of Athens and Michelangelo'sSistine Chapel ceiling are the textbook examples of this period.
High Renaissance painting evolved intoMannerism (c. 1520–1580), especially in Florence. Mannerist artists, who consciously rebelled against the principles of High Renaissance, tend to represent elongated figures in illogical spaces.[7] Contemporaries criticized this period as seeming artificial. Modern scholarship has recognized the capacity of Mannerist art to convey strong (often religious) emotion where the High Renaissance failed to do so. Some of the main artists of this period arePontormo,Rosso Fiorentino,Parmigianino andGiulio Romano.
After 1580, the Carracci brothers,Annibale andAgostino, began to develop theBaroque style of painting focused on greater drama, rich colors and the use of extreme light and darkness. After 1590,Caravaggio developed a realistic approach to the human figure,[8] painted directly from life and dramatically spotlit against a dark background having an even larger impact on painting moving the Baroque style to the forefront after 1600.
The music ofGiovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina is probably the most archetypical Cinquecento music.[9] He simplified some of the complexities of the music of the time, and advocated a morehomophonic style. He was partially reacting to the strictures of theCouncil of Trent, which discouraged excessively complex polyphony as inhibiting understanding the text. He was the foremost member of theRoman School, a group of composers of predominantly church music, in Rome, spanning the late Renaissance into early Baroque eras. Many of the composers had a direct connection to the Vatican and the papal chapel, though they worked at several churches, stylistically they are often contrasted with the Venetian School of composers, a concurrent movement which was much more progressive.
InVenice, from about 1534 until around 1600, an impressive polychoral style developed,[10] which gave Europe some of the grandest, most sonorous music composed up until that time, with multiple choirs of singers, brass and strings in different spatial locations in the BasilicaSan Marco di Venezia (seeVenetian School). These multiple revolutions spread over Europe in the next several decades, beginning in Germany and then moving to Spain, France and England somewhat later, demarcating the beginning of what we now know as theBaroque musical era.
In the late 16th century, as the Renaissance era closes, an extremely manneristic style develops. In secular music, especially in themadrigal, there was a trend towards complexity and even extremechromaticism (as exemplified in madrigals ofLuzzaschi,Marenzio, andGesualdo). The termmannerism derives from art history.
The most famous works of theItalian Renaissance byBoccaccio, andPetrarch were written in the 14th century, but continued to exert influence.Ludovico Ariosto (Orlando furioso),Baldassare Castiglione (The Book of the Courtier) andNiccolò Machiavelli (The Prince) were eminent writers of the Cinquecento.
It was the result of the revival of classic architecture known asRenaissance, but the change had commenced already a century earlier, in the works ofGhiberti andDonatello in sculpture, and ofBrunelleschi andAlberti in architecture.[11]
One or more of the preceding sentences incorporates text from a publication now in thepublic domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Cinque Cento".Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 6 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. p. 377.
The dictionary definition ofcinquecento at Wiktionary
