Early Renaissance in the context of "Prado Museum"

Piero della Francesca (/ˌpjɛəroʊ ˌdɛlə frænˈtʃɛskə/ PYAIR-oh DEL-ə fran-CHESK-ə, US also /- frɑːnˈ-/ -⁠ frahn-; Italian: [ˈpjɛːro della franˈtʃeska] ; né Piero di Benedetto de' Franceschi; c. 1415 – 12 October 1492) was an Italian painter, mathematician and geometer of the Early Renaissance, nowadays chiefly appreciated for his art. His painting is characterized by its serene humanism, its use of geometric forms and perspective. His most famous work is the cycle of frescoes The History of the True Cross in the Basilica of San Francesco in the Tuscan town of Arezzo.

Fra Angelico, O.P. (/ˌfrɑː ænˈdʒɛlɪkoʊ/ FRAH an-JEL-ik-oh, Italian: [ˈfra anˈdʒɛːliko]; born Guido di Pietro; c. 1395 – 18 February 1455) was a Dominican friar and Italian Renaissance painter of the Early Renaissance, described by Giorgio Vasari in his Lives of the Artists as having "a rare and perfect talent." He earned his reputation primarily for the series of frescoes he made for his own friary, San Marco, in Florence, then worked in Rome and other cities. All his known work is of religious subjects.

He was known to contemporaries as Fra Giovanni da Fiesole ("Friar John of Fiesole") and Fra Giovanni Angelico ("Angelic Brother John"). In modern Italian, he is called Beato Angelico ("Blessed Angelic One"); the common English name Fra Angelico means the "Angelic Friar."

The 15th century was the century which spans the Julian calendar dates from 1 January 1401 (represented by the Roman numerals MCDI) to 31 December 1500 (MD).

In Europe, the 15th century includes parts of the Late Middle Ages, the Early Renaissance, and the early modern period. Many technological, social and cultural developments of the 15th century can in retrospect be seen as heralding the "European miracle" of the following centuries. The architectural perspective, and the modern fields which are known today as banking and accounting were founded in Italy.

Filippo Lippi O.Carm. (c. 1406 – 8 October 1469), also known as Lippo Lippi, was an Italian Renaissance painter of the Quattrocento (fifteenth century) and a Carmelite priest. He was an early Renaissance master of a painting workshop, who taught many painters. Sandro Botticelli and Francesco di Pesello (called Pesellino) were among his most distinguished pupils. His son, Filippino Lippi, also studied under him and assisted in some late works.

Donato di Niccolò di Betto Bardi (c. 1386 – 13 December 1466), known mononymously as Donatello (English: /ˌdɒnəˈtɛloʊ/; Italian: [donaˈtɛllo]), was an Italian sculptor of the Renaissance period. Born in Florence, he studied classical sculpture and used his knowledge to develop an Early Renaissance style of sculpture. He spent time in other cities, where he worked on commissions and taught others; his periods in Rome, Padua, and Siena introduced to other parts of Italy the techniques he had developed in the course of a long and productive career. His David was the first freestanding nude male sculpture since antiquity; like much of his work, it was commissioned by the Medici family.

He worked with stone, bronze, wood, clay, stucco, and wax, and used glass in inventive ways. He had several assistants, with four perhaps being a typical number. Although his best-known works are mostly statues executed in the round, he developed a new, very shallow, type of bas-relief for small works, and a good deal of his output was architectural reliefs for pulpits, altars and tombs, as well as Madonna and Childs for homes.

Lorenzo Ghiberti (UK: /ɡɪˈbɛərti/, US: /ɡiːˈ-/, Italian: [loˈrɛntso ɡiˈbɛrti]; né di Bartolo; 1378 – 1 December 1455) was an Italian Renaissance sculptor from Florence, a key figure in the Early Renaissance, best known as the creator of two sets of bronze doors of the Florence Baptistery, the later one called by Michelangelo the Gates of Paradise. Trained as a goldsmith and sculptor, he established an important workshop for sculpture in metal. His book of Commentarii contains important writing on art, as well as what may be the earliest surviving autobiography by any artist.

Ghiberti's career was dominated by his two successive commissions for pairs of bronze doors to the Florence Baptistery (Battistero di San Giovanni). They are recognized as a major masterpiece of the Early Renaissance, and were famous and influential from their unveiling.

Antonello da Messina (Italian pronunciation: [antoˈnɛllo da (m)mesˈsiːna]; c. 1425–1430 – February 1479), properly Antonello di Giovanni di Antonio, but also called Antonello degli Antoni and Anglicized as Anthony of Messina, was an Italian painter from Messina, active during the Italian Early Renaissance.

His work shows strong influences from Early Netherlandish painting, although there is no documentary evidence that he ever travelled beyond Italy. Giorgio Vasari credited him with the introduction of oil painting into Italy, although this is now regarded as wrong. Unusually for a southern Italian artist of the Renaissance, his work proved influential on painters in northern Italy, especially in Venice.

Bastiano di Bartolo Mainardi (1466–1513) was an Italian painter of the Early Renaissance. He was born in San Gimignano and was active there and in Florence.

According to Giorgio Vasari, Mainardi is portrayed in the frescoes in the Sassetti and Tornabuoni Chapels by Domenico Ghirlandaio, Mainardi's brother-in-law and master. Vasari also claimed that Mainardi took part in Ghirlandaio's frescoes (1476) in the Abbey of Passignano in Val di Pesa, near Florence, and in the chapel of Saint Fina in the Collegiata of San Gimginano (1485). The Annunciation fresco in the loggia of San Gimignano's Collegiata, dated 1482, is often also attributed to Mainardi. Mainardi's authorship of these works was, however, proven impossible when Italian art historian Lisa Venturini discovered Mainardi's birthdate as 1466 (it was previously placed around 1460 or earlier). Thus, Mainardi was too young to have assisted Ghirlandaio in these works or to have painted the Annunciation San Gimignano (which is now regarded as a work by Domenico Ghirlandaio's brother, Davide). Further, Mainardi could probably not have painted most of the Ghirlandaio workshop paintings once attributed to him, like the famous tondo of the Madonna and Child with the Infant Saint John the Baptist and Three Angels at the Louvre.

Afrocentrism is a racialized worldview that is centered on the history of people of Black African descent or a view that favors it over non-African civilizations. It is in some respects a response to Eurocentric attitudes about African people and their historical contributions. It seeks to counter what it sees as mistakes and ideas perpetuated by the racist philosophical underpinnings of Western academic disciplines as they developed during and since Europe's Early Renaissance as justifying rationales for the enslavement of other peoples, in order to enable more accurate accounts of not only African but all people's contributions to world history. Afrocentricity deals primarily with self-determination and African agency and is a pan-African point of view for the study of culture, philosophy, and history.

What is today broadly called Afrocentrism evolved out of the work of African American intellectuals in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, but flowered into its modern form due to the activism of African American intellectuals in the U.S. civil rights movement and in the development of African American studies programs in universities. However, following the development of universities in African colonies in the 1950s, African scholars became major contributors to African historiography. A notable pioneer is the professor Kenneth Dike, who became chairman of the Committee on African Studies at Harvard in the 1970s. In strict terms Afrocentrism, as a distinct historiography, reached its peak in the 1980s and 1990s. Today it is primarily associated with Cheikh Anta Diop, John Henrik Clarke, Ivan van Sertima and Molefi Kete Asante. Asante, however, describes his theories as Afrocentricity.