Renaissance artists were people of ideas who discovered them in nature herself and from the work of the living model. A new secular framework in the search for languages, literature, history, and philosophy supported the move into humanism. The awakening of the human intellect and individualism paralleled the great development in the fine arts. With newfound inspiration and execution styles, the fine arts of the Renaissance questioned the traditional beliefs and stiff representation of the Middle Ages. The Roman Catholic Church and the Crusades set the standards of the truth in the Middle Ages. In contrast, human achievements in the arts and sciences stimulated the Renaissance. As the first period in history to be aware of its own existence, the Renaissance broke down old rules and launched a revival of the classics.
The Renaissance period was divided into Early Renaissance and High Renaissance. Fra Filippo Lippi's Madonna and Child Enthroned with Two Angels (c. 1434) was created in the Early Renaissance period and Andrea del Sarto's The Holy Family with The Infant St. John the Baptist (c. 1530) was created in the High Renaissance period. The Early Renaissance followed centuries of religiously dominated eras - Byzantine to Gothic. As Gothic art continued into the 1400's, Early Renaissance painting did not appear until the early 1420s. Masaccio, the first genius painter of the time, combined the methods of Giotto of Gothic art and Brunelleschi's scientific perspective - created "clothed nudes" as the body and its drapery were to be like one, scientific perspective of space dimensions, and the relation between figure and space. Masaccio's influence would be seen about 10-15 years later in Fra Filippo Lippi's Madonna and Child Enthroned with Two Angels. A century later, the High Renaissance introduced perfection in art through the work of Leonardo, Raphael, and Michelangelo. During the High Renaissance, artists tended to reduce their subjects to the bare essentials.
