Whips, Deaths and Madonnas

Waldemar Januszczak returns to Italy to trace the Italian Renaissance from its perceived origins with Giotto and takes a look at the importance of religious narrative in Italian art. While there were certainly a few aesthetic influences from classical art, the majority of Italian painting and sculpture in the 14th and 15th centuries was created to inspire devotion, especially in the work of Piero della Francesca, Michelangelo, Leonardo, Raphael and Fra Angelico.