In
art history,
High Renaissance, is the period denoting the apogee of the visual arts in the
Italian Renaissance. The High Renaissance period is traditionally taken to begin in the 1490s, with
Leonardo's fresco of the Last Supper in Milan and the death of
Lorenzo de' Medici in
Florence, and to have ended in 1527 with the
sacking of Rome by the troops of
Charles V. This term was first used in German (Hochrenaissance) in the early nineteenth century, and has its origins in the "High Style" of painting and sculpture described by
Johann Joachim Winckelmann. Over the last twenty years, use of the term has been frequently criticized by academic art historians for oversimplifying artistic developments, ignoring historical context, and focusing only on a few iconic works.