onardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, and Raphael are the three major artists of the period, with da Vinci serving as the leader who paved the way for much innovation in this and later ages. Leonardo was the definition of the Renaissance man, studying every discipline and working in both artistic and scientific realms. Leonardo also elevated the reason of the individual above church or other authority, and he introduced a new realism that derived from direct observation, without recourse to idealized traditions. Leonardo carried the study of perspective beyond what had been started by Brunelleschi and adapted and continued by others.. He followed Pollaiuolo in terms of his understanding of the composition of moving figures. Leonardo's understanding of these things enabled him to break with the rules that had been developed and to produce works that did not blindly follow rules of perspective, for instance, His Last Supper has a perspective that does not come together according to the rules, and in this he makes a break with the tradition developed in the early Renaissance. Leonardo establishes instead an ideal world that will be taken up later by Michelangelo and Raphael. Leonardo gives his figures grandeur and size beyond the reality of their depiction, and he seems to be presenting the viewer with a higher reality while grounding this reality very much in observations of the real world (Chilvers, Osborne, and Farr 284-286).
In part, the Renaissance was a revival. The Roman era would be revived in the Renaissance, and the Renaissance was a period seen
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