[Ital. = five hundred; but here short for mil cinque cento 1500.]
A term applied in Italy to the 16th century (15—), and to that style of art and architecture, characterized by a reversion to classical forms, which arose about 1500. Also attrib.
1760. Goldsm., Cit. W., xxxiii. He showed us one [intaglio] … which he thought to be an antique, but my governor … soon found it to be an arrant cinque cento.
1841. W. Spalding, Italy & It. Isl., II. 394. Titian … was the last survivor of the great painters in the cinquecento, as the Italians call the sixteenth century.
1847. Ld. Lindsay, Chr. Art, I. 38. Till the fifteenth century, when Latin, Lombard, and pointed architecture all went down before the revived antique or cinquecento.
1866. Reader, 6 Jan., 20/1. The great cinquecento artists.
1876. Gwilt, Archit., Cinquecento Architecture.… In France … called Style François premier, and Renaissance; and in England the Revival, and Elizabethan.
