Quattrocento


The cultural and artistic events of Italy during the period 1400 to 1499 are collectively referred to as the Quattrocento from the Italian word for the number 400, in turn from millequattrocento, which is Italian for the year 1400. The Quattrocento encompasses the artistic styles of the late Middle Ages, the early Renaissance, and the start of the High Renaissance, generally asserted to begin between 1495 and 1500.

Historical context

After the decline of the Western Roman Empire in 476, economic disorder and disruption of trade spread across Europe. This was the beginning of the Early Middle Ages, which lasted roughly until the 11th century, when trade picked up, population began to expand and the people regained their authority.
In the late Middle Ages, the political structure of the European continent slowly evolved from small, highly unstable fiefdoms into larger nation states ruled by monarchies, thereby providing greater stability. In Italy, urban centers arose that were populated by merchant and trade classes, who were able to defend themselves. Money replaced land as the medium of exchange, and increasing numbers of serfs became freedmen. The changes in Medieval Italy and the decline of feudalism paved the way for social, cultural, and economic changes.
The Quattrocento is viewed as the transition from the Medieval period to the age of the Italian Renaissance, principally in the cities of Rome, Florence, Milan, Venice, Naples, and was compared with the Timurid Renaissance.

Development of Quattrocento styles

Quattrocento art shed the decorative mosaics typically associated with Byzantine art along with the Christian and Gothic media of and styles in stained glass, frescoes, illuminated manuscripts and sculpture. Instead, Quattrocento artists incorporated the more classic forms developed by classical Roman and Greek art.

List of Italian Quattrocento artists

Since the Quattrocento overlaps with part of the Renaissance, it would be inaccurate to say that a particular artist was Quattrocento or Renaissance. Artists of the time probably would not have identified themselves as members of a school or period.
Also see the list of 27 prominent 15th century painters made contemporaneously by Giovanni Santi, Raphael Sanzio's father as part of a poem for the Duke of Urbino.