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Fra Bartolommeo's devotional pictures are notable for their harmonious color and idealized but recognizably Tuscan landscapes. The Florentine Michelangelo, primarily a sculptor, isolated the human body to give his compositions a monumental grandeur.
Raphael came to Florence in around 1505 and brilliantly combined both approaches. In 1508, he joined Michelangelo in Rome where both artists worked for Pope Julius II and his successor. Their rivalry was notorious. Michelangelo helped design Sebastiano del Piombo's huge 'Raising of Lazarus', in successful competition with Raphael for the commissioning of an altarpiece for Narbonne Cathedral in France.
Later in the century, painting in Florence was dominated by the painter-poet Bronzino, whose highly sophisticated paintings appealed to the erudite court of his principal patron Cosimo de' Medici, Grand Duke of Tuscany. |
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