Early Renaissance

American  

noun

1. a style of art developed principally in Florence, Italy, during the 15th century and characterized chiefly by the development of linear perspective, chiaroscuro, and geometrically based compositions.

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Early Renaissance British  

noun

1. the period from about 1400 to 1500 in European, esp Italian, painting, sculpture, and architecture, when naturalistic styles and humanist theories were evolved from the study of classical sources, notably by Donatello, Masaccio, and Alberti

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Example Sentences

Early Renaissance sculptors went to school on works like this, learning from them how to tell a complex story on a flat surface within a circumscribed area.

From The Wall Street Journal • Oct. 22, 2025

They differ from the carefree geometries of much 1960s abstraction the same way the emotionally charged clumsiness of the Early Renaissance contrasted with the perspectival ebullience of the High.

From New York Times • Jan. 6, 2022

Real or not, seeing them is a bit like seeing Early Renaissance paintings for the first time.

From New York Times • May 23, 2019

During his trip, Lewis tells the Commodore, he met the critic John Ruskin, who opened his eyes to the beauties of medieval and Early Renaissance Italian painting.

From New York Times • Dec. 31, 2015

Since the Early Renaissance, we have become accustomed to experiencing paintings as windows onto separate illusionistic realities.

From "History of Art, Volume 1" by H.W. Janson