general features that characterize painting of the high italian renaissance
High Renaissance The High Renaissance of painting was the culmination of the varied means of expression[14] and various advances in painting technique, such as linear perspective,[15] the realistic depiction of both physical[16] and psychological features,[17] and the manipulation of light and darkness, including tone contrast, sfumato (softening the transition between colours) and chiaroscuro (contrast between light and dark),[18] in a single unifying style[19] which expressed total compositional order, balance and harmony.[20] In particular, the individual parts of the painting had a complex but balanced and well-knit relationship to the whole.[21] Painting of the High Renaissance is considered to be the absolute zenith of western painting[22] 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.[23] 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.