A Legacy of Technical Achievement.

Increasing technical mastery and experimentation in the visual arts had characterized the three centuries that preceded the rise of the Baroque style around 1600. During the Renaissance, artists had gradually perfected a number of techniques that allowed them to portray the natural world in ways that appeared more realistic than ever before. They had also studied the art of Antiquity, and by 1500 many Italian artists, in particular, worked in a fashion that was heavily influenced by their understanding of a classical harmony and proportion. New media, like oil paints, came to allow later Renaissance artists to portray the world in ways that were strikingly realistic. Thus as the Baroque age approached, Western painters and sculptors inherited several centuries of rising mastery over their craft. This trend provided them with the tools to portray nature and the human with...