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| Francesco Morone Portable Altarpiece Virgin and Child with Saints Onuphrius, Sebastian, Justine and Ursula ca. 1500 oil on canvas Philadelphia Museum of Art |
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| Bernardino Luini Altarpiece Side Panel - St Anne ca. 1523 oil on panel Philadelphia Museum of Art |
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| Titian Portrait of a man holding a book ca. 1540 oil on canvas Museum of Fine Arts, Boston |
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| Polidoro da Caravaggio Ornamental panel with River God before 1543 oil on canvas Museum of Fine Arts, Boston |
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| Lorenzo Lotto Virgin and Child with St Jerome and St Nicholas of Tolentino 1523-24 oil on canvas Museum of Fine Arts, Boston |
"After 1510, while admiration for Raphael and Michelangelo was spreading, and, due to the availability of classical models, the formulation and diffusion of Mannerism were under way, a reaction began to take shape against the increasingly elitist and intellectual nature of "official" art. We can detect in the most common portraits and sacred themes a desire for increasing realism, especially in northern Italy – in the former duchy of Milan, and in Bergamo and Brescia (the westernmost provinces of the Venetian Republic). The characters and settings are no longer idealized, but rather are depicted in a straightforward realistic manner. Such fidelity, found in the works of Guadenzio Ferrari, Lorenzo Lotto, Moretto da Brescia, Savoldo, Romanino, and even Correggio in Parma, does not rise to the level of a full-fledged movement. Instead it heralds an expressive approach that would develop further in the latter half of the 16th century, in part due to the recommendations of the Counter-Reformation, giving rise to the art of Annibale Carracci and Caravaggio."
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| workshop of Lorenzo Lotto Mystic Marriage of St Catherine ca. 1550 oil on panel Museum of Fine Arts, Boston |
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| Giovanni Battista Moroni Portrait of a man and boy ca. 1545-50 oil on canvas Museum of Fine Arts, Boston |
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| workshop of Paris Bordone Mystic Marriage of St Catherine ca. 1550 oil on canvas Museum of Fine Arts, Boston |
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| Jacopo Bassano Christ healing the lame man ca. 1568-71 oil on canvas Museum of Fine Arts, Boston |
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| Jacopo Bassano Mocking of Christ ca. 1580-90 oil on canvas Museum of Fine Arts, Boston |
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| Bartolomeo Passarotti Portrait of a man playing a lute 1576 oil on canvas Museum of Fine Arts, Boston |
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| Bartolomeo Passarotti Blood of the Redeemer before 1592 oil on panel Museum of Fine Arts, Boston |
"Leonardo da Vinci was the first artist to plan an illustrated treatise on anatomy. For this project he did a series of remarkable drawings, in a clear polemic against the traditional "ideal" canons. Direct observation, made possible by dissection, showed that one could not constrain the "accidents" of biology within a schematic relationship of predefined proportions. An alternative to the auctoritas of classical authors thus appeared. . . . The study of human anatomy, following the pioneering treatise of Jacopo Berengario da Carpi (1521), finally found a solid basis in the scientific book by Andreas Vesalius titled De humani corporis fabrica, published in 1543 and illustrated with magnificent engravings by the German artist Jan Steven van Calcar, probably in collaboration with Titian. During the same period, Michelangelo completed his Last Judgment in the Sistine Chapel, presenting in the astounding crowd of nude bodies an image of an "interior" anatomy, tragically complementary to that of Vesalius."
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| Jacopo Tintoretto The Nativity ca. 1570 oil on canvas Museum of Fine Arts, Boston |
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| Paolo Veronese Dead Christ supported by Angels ca. 1580-88 oil on canvas Museum of Fine Arts, Boston |
– quoted passages are from European Art of the Sixteenth Century by Stefano Zuffi, translated by Antony Shugaar (Getty Museum, 2006)