The frescoes in the Arena Chapel in Padua are among the most celebrated works in the history of art. Giotto's work was a source of inspiration and instruction for generations of painters; it was studied and absorbed by Masaccio, Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, and Raphael, artists whose own work was to be of such fundamental importance for the history of European art.
Raphael, The School of Athens, 1509. Fresco，Stanza della Segnatura, Palazzi Pontifici, Vatican.
Creation of Adam, 1510, Fresco, 280 x 570 cm. It is scarcely possible to put into words the impressions roused by this marvellous painting; it is as though current passed from the painted scene to the beholder, who often feels that he is assisting at a hallowed world-shaking event. Michelangelo experiences the stages of creation within himself, retracing the way to the divine source by the double path of religion and of art.
Michelangelo's organization of the Sistine ceiling frescos represents perhaps the most complex composition in Western art. The space contains an intricate pseudo structure of architecture that frames the sculpture-like forms. Out of the nine narrative scenes depicting events from Genesis, the most sublime scene is this "Creation of Adam," in which his new vision of humanity attains pictural form.
Parmigianino,
Madonna dal Collo Lungo (Madonna with Long Neck)
1534-40, Oil on panel, 216 x 132 cm, Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence
The painter worked upon the picture for six years, but this notwithstanding, it remained unfinished. It is a work of intense if somewhat aloof poetical feeling, this effect mainly arising from the splendid abstraction of the forms, so smoothly rounded under the cool and polished colour.
"The historian Procopius wrote: One would declare that the place were not illuminated from the outside by the sun, but that the radiance originated from within, such is the abundance of light which is shed about this shrine." -Gardner's Art Through the Ages