Art from the Baroque Period to the Postmodern Era The history of Renaissance art began as a civic history; it was an expression of civic pride. The first such story was De origine civitatis Florentiae et eiusdem famosis civibus by Filippo Villani, written around 1381-82. Florentine artists revived an almost dead art, Villani argues, just as Dante had restored poetry after its decline in the Middle Ages. The renaissance was begun by Cimabue and completed by Giotto, who equaled the ancient painters in fame and even surpassed them in skill and talent. After Giotto came his disciples, Stefano, Taddeo Gaddi and Maso, uomini illustri all, who, together with eminent jurists, poets, musicians, theologians, doctors, orators and others, made Florence the preeminent city of Italy. Villani, published a roll of honor of famous men of Florence, including artists. And Cristoforo Landino wrote in the same vein in a better known work published in 1481; the Preface to his Commentary on the Divine Comedy contains a recapitulation of classical world painting followed by a brief history of modern art, that is, Florentine art, beginning with Cimabue and Giotto and listing the contributions of the masters of the quattrocento: Masaccio, Lippi, Castagno, Uccello, Fra Angelico, Brunelleschi, Donatello, Desiderio, Ghiberti and the two Rossellini. Although by no means a history, Alberti's De pictura of 1435-36, like these works, contains a list--a much abbreviated version--of the great Florentine artists: Brunelleschi, Donatello , Luca della Robbia, Ghiberti and Masaccio. And, more importantly, the list is part of a eulogy similar in type to those mentioned: Brunelleschi, like Villani's Giotto, has...... middle of paper ......the quality of Architecture in these countries is best seen in the works of Neumann and Johann Bernhard Fischer von Erlach. From Europe, Baroque spread across the Atlantic Ocean to the New World. Gradually, the massive forms of Baroque gave way to the lighter, more graceful contours of Rococo.ReferencesBaxandall, M., Giotto and the Orators: Humanist Observers of Painting in Italy and the Discovery of Pictorial Composition, 1350-1450, Oxford, 1971. Bellori, GP, Le vite detpittori, scultori et architetti modern), Rome, 1672. ed. E. Borea, introduction. G. Previtali, Turin, 1976. Goldstein, C., Visual Fact over Verbal Fiction: A Study of the Carracci and the Criticism, Theory, and Practice of Painting in Renaissance and Baroque Italy, Cambridge, 1988. Malvasia, CC, Felsina pittrice : Vite de'pittori Bolognesi (Bologna, 1678), ed. Mr. Brascaglia, Bologna,1971.