该术语通常用于回溯到古典文化的时期。尽管它在其他地方也有应用，但它最常被用来指代大约在14世纪开始的欧洲那个时代，在那个时代，绘画，雕塑和建筑学的一种新风格是继哥特式之后形成的，从更广泛的文化意义上讲，实现了从中世纪到现代的过渡。这一时期达到了高文艺复兴时期的高潮，这是一种短暂的现象，基本上在16世纪的前二十年仅限于意大利，并在莱昂纳多·达·芬奇，米开朗基罗和拉斐尔的某些作品中得到了最大体现。在此之后，是文艺复兴后期的阶段，称为“矫饰主义”。
Term generally used for periods that hark back to the culture of Classical antiquity. Though it has applications elsewhere, it is most often used to refer to that era in Europe, beginning approximately in the 14th century, in which a new style in painting, sculpture and architecture was forged in succession to that of Gothic and in which, in a broader cultural sense, the transition from the Middle Ages to the modern age was made. This period culminated in the High Renaissance, a brief phenomenon confined essentially to Italy in about the first two decades of the 16th century and supremely embodied in some of the work of that time by Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo and Raphael. Following this came that phase of the late Renaissance called 'Mannerism'.
