The Early Renaissance




 

Andrea del Castagno [Andrea di Bartolo di Simone di Bargiella; Andreino degli Impicchati]
 

(b Castagno, before 1419; d Florence, bur 19 Aug 1457).

Italian painter. He was the most influential 15th-century Florentine master, after Masaccio, of the realistic rendering of the figure and the representation of the human body as a three-dimensional solid by means of contours. By translating into the terms of painting the statues of the Florentine sculptors Nanni di Banco and Donatello, Castagno set Florentine painting on a course dominated by line (the Florentine tradition of disegno), the effect of relief and the sculptural depiction of the figure that became its distinctive trait throughout the Italian Renaissance, a trend that culminated in the art of Michelangelo.

The Youthful David
c. 1450
National Gallery of Art, Washington