Early Renaissance Fresco

Timeline

1. c. 1300–1337Padua · PaduaGiotto's frescoes at the Scrovegni Chapel and elsewhere broke from Byzantine conventions through simplified backgrounds, weighty figures, and emotional narrative, providing a direct precedent for the fifteenth-century Florentine school.
2. 1425–1428Brancacci Chapel, Florence · FlorenceMasaccio's frescoes in the Brancacci Chapel revolutionized spatial expression through linear perspective, unified lighting, and anatomically accurate nude figures, directly influencing mid-fifteenth-century Florentine painters.
3. 1441–1450Florence and the Convent of San Marco · FlorenceFra Angelico painted a series of frescoes at the Convent of San Marco, serving Dominican friars with soft colors and meditative compositions; meanwhile Piero della Francesca received large wall commissions in Tuscany and the Marche, bringing perspective and geometric order to maturity.
4. c. 1470–1500Florence · FlorenceBotticelli, Ghirlandaio, and others continued the fresco tradition on church and palace walls, with more elaborate compositions and figures of greater classical grace, paving the way for the large ceiling frescoes of sixteenth-century Rome and the Vatican.