<P> As far as the end of the High Renaissance is concerned Hartt, Frommel, Piper, Wundrum and Winkelman all state that the High Renaissance ended in 1520 with the death of Raphael . Honour and Fleming stated the High Renaissance was the first quarter of the 16th century meaning it would have ended in 1525 . By contrast, Luigi Lanzi, in his History of Italian Painting, 1795 - 96, stated it ended with the Sack of Rome in 1527 . and Stokstad also says 1527 is traditionally considered to be the end of the High Renaissance as several artists were killed, and many others dispersed from Rome . Raunch asserts that 1530 has been considered to be the end of the High Renaissance . Frederick Hartt adds that 1520 to 1530 was a transition period between the High Renaissance and Mannerism . </P> <P> High Renaissance style in architecture conventionally begins with Donato Bramante, whose Tempietto at S. Pietro in Montorio at Rome was begun in 1510 . The Tempietto, signifies a full - scale revival of ancient Roman commemorative architecture . David Watkin writes that the Tempietto, like Raphael's works in the Vatican (1509--11), "is an attempt at reconciling Christian and humanist ideals". </P> <P> The High Renaissance of painting was the culmination of the varied means of expression and various advances in painting technique, such as linear perspective, the realistic depiction of both physical and psychological features, and the manipulation of light and darkness, including tone contrast, sfumato (softening the transition between colours) and chiaroscuro (contrast between light and dark), in a single unifying style which expressed total compositional order, balance and harmony . In particular, the individual parts of the painting had a complex but balanced and well - knit relationship to the whole . Painting of the High Renaissance is considered to be the absolute zenith of western painting and achieved the balancing and reconciliation, in harmony, of contradictory and seemingly mutually exclusive artistic positions, such as real versus ideal, movement versus rest, freedom versus law, space versus plane, and line versus colour . The High Renaissance was traditionally viewed as a great explosion of creative genius, following a model of art history first proposed by the Florentine Giorgio Vasari . </P> <P> The paintings in the Vatican by Michelangelo and Raphael are said by some scholars such as Stephen Freedberg to represent the culmination of High Renaissance style in painting, because of the ambitious scale of these works, coupled with the complexity of their composition, closely observed human figures, and pointed iconographic and decorative references to classical antiquity, can be viewed as emblematic of the High Renaissance . </P>

General features that characterize painting of the high italian renaissance
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