renaissance painters

Cimabue (Cenni di Peppi)

• Known for Maesta and the frescos of the Basilica of St. Francis of Assisi

• first of the "modern" painters.

Cimabue (Cenni di Peppi)

• Initiated the move from the static "unreal" style of Byzantine art to the realistic trecento idiom of Proto-Renaissance art,

• Three-dimensional space, more natural-looking human forms, and greater emotion.

Duccio di Buoninsegna

• Known for the Sienese Maesta and the Rucellai Madonna

• Contributor for the Sienese Gothic Style

• Father of Sienese paintin

Simone Martini

• Known for the Annunciation Altarpiece

• Epitome of gothic stylization for generations of Sienese artists.

Giotto di Bondone

Known for The Ognisantti Madonna and the Frescos of Scrovegni Chapel in Padua.

• First naturalistic painter in Italy.

• Started the movement towards realism, naturalism, and the third dimension.

Tommasco Masaccio

known for Holy Trinity fresco in St Maria Novella.

• Father of early renaissance painting.

• Combined Giotto’s principles of composition with Brunelleschi’s discovery of linear perspective

Fra/Beato Angelico (Guido di Pietro)

• Known for the Annunciation, painted in San Marco.

• Famous for frescoes he painted in the Dominican friary.

Fra Filippo Lippi

known for Madonna with the Child and Two Angels/ The Uffizi Madonna

Alessandro Botticelli

• known for Primavera that is a series of classical mythology in a garden or woodland,

• The Birth of Venus that is the inclusion of such a prominent female nude at near-life-size

  • Influential painter in Renaissance Florence

  • Strove towards beauty and virtue, the qualities represented by the goddess Venus.

Leonardo da Vinci

La Gioconda (Mona Lisa) and The Last Supper (II Cenacolo)

• A painter, sculptor, engineer, architect, and scientist.

• master of oil painting, including:

  • Chiaroscuro

  • Sfumato

Chiaroscuro

shadow to create a 3D effect

Sfumato

glazing in diff. tones of creating light to dark.

Mona Lisa

• born Lisa Gherardini, the wife of a Florentine merchant.

• The relationship between figure and background was no longer dependent upon the usual recession of planes in even gradation.

The Last Supper

• experimented with a technique based on an impasto using oil and tempera to be placed on a wall covered with a layer of varnish made of a gesso mixture.

• technique is unsatisfactory, and it deteriorated.

Michaelangelo Buonarroti

known for Sistine Chapel and the Last Judgement.

• A genius polymath who regarded as one of the greatest artists of the Italian Renaissance period.

• Known for his temper-driven, fickle, and difficult personality.

• Works were infused with psychological intensity and emotional realism, often causing controversy

The Sistine Chapel Ceiling

• Biblical art and one of the greatest Renaissance paintings of 16th century Rome. 

  • Commissioned by Pope Julius II in 1508

The Last Judgement

• covers the entire altar wall of the Sistine Chapel. Last pieces in the chapel that was commissioned by Pope Clement VII.

  • use of figures from pagan mythology.

Doni Tondo

greatest free-standing painting, example of congiantismo.

Raffaello/Raphael Sanzio

• famous for his frescos in the Raphael Rooms (including the Stanza Della Segnatura with the School of Athens fresco)

• famous for the perfect grace and spatial geometry

Giorgione/Giorgio Barbarelli da Castelfranco

•  famous for The Tempest, seen as the first ever landscape. Another work is The Sleeping Venus.

• Student of Bellini, and ranked with da Vinci as pioneers of oil painting.

• First artist in Venice to produce small pictures in oil.

titian/Tiziano Vecellio 

• notable for Bacchus and Ariadne and The Venus of Urbino

• Versatile Italian painter, equally skilled in painting portraits, mythological and religious subjects, and landscape backgrounds.

Paolo Veronese

• known for The Wedding at Cana

• Ranks alongside Titian and Tintoretto as one of the giants of Venetian painting and one of the best history painters of the period.

• great colorists of the Mannerism school.

Parmigianino/ Francesco Mazzola

• known for the Self-portrait in a convex mirror; and Madonna of the long neck

  • showing true artistic daring in a readiness to confront the orthodoxies of the day

  • emotionally intense elongated figures, executed with enormous refinement and grace

Jan van Eyck

• Ghent Altarpiece (which was initiated by his brother, Hubert van Eyck) and The Arnolfini Marriage.

• Flemish painters during the Netherlandish Renaissance.

• Master of oil painting, which was a novel technique

• renowned for his lifelike figure painting, especially of religious themes and portrait art.

Roger Van der Weyden

• known from The Descent from the Cross(Deposition)

• slender and elegant figures and his interior perspective.

• famous for creating colorful panel paintings, especially altarpieces, that depict Biblical subjects.

Hieronymus Bosch

• known for The Garden of Earthly Delights triptych, enigmatic and evocative religious painting.

• Imaginative Old Masters of the Netherlandish Renaissance.

• fantasy figure painting of demons, machines, and grotesque, sometimes nightmarish, imagery

Pieter Bruegel the Elder

• known for The Dutch Proverbs, Hunters in the Snow, The Peasant Wedding, and The Tower of Babel.

• Flemish painter, known for detailed landscapes, colorful, comical views of peasant life, and extraordinary visionary paintings.

Albrecht Dürer

•  revered for his woodcuts, such as the Apocalypse Series, and engravings, including The Knight, Death and the Detail

  • first non-Italian artist to achieve international fame.

  • pioneer in several art mediums, particularly drawing, and is widely regarded as a master of printmaking.

Hans Holbein The Younger

• known for The Ambassadors and Portrait of Henry VIII

• Painter and printmaker who worked in the Northern Renaissance.

• greatest portraitists of the 16th

• painted the English ruling elite, producing images that defined their public personas

• mastery of light and texture, and his exquisite portrayals of fabric, fur, and glass are a testament to his skill

Jean Fouquet

• known for the Melun Diptych, depicting Etienne Chevalier with his patron saint, and Virgin and Christ child surrounded by cherubim.

• master of panel painting and manuscript illumination

• inventor of the portrait miniature

El Greco/Domenikos Theotocopoulos 

known for The Burial of the Count of Orgaz

• Greek artist and regarded as a key influence in Expressionism

• contributor to Catholic Counter-Reformation Art

Lorenzo Ghiberti

• known for the Gates of Paradise, 10 panels, each depicting scenes from a particular story in the Old Testament.

• his second set of doors for the baptistery, referred to as "The Gates of Paradise" by Michelangelo

Donatello/Donato di Niccolo di Betto Bardi 

famous for the first unsupported standing work of bronze cast of David

• known for his bas-relief, a form of shallow relief sculpture

• worked in bronze, stone, and wood

• profound knowledge of bronze casting also meant he was also a master of terracotta sculpture.

Michelangelo Buonarroti 

famous for Pieta, David, and Moses for the Tomb of Julius II.

• Believed that sculpture was superior to painting because it allowed the artist to "make man" and share in divine power.

• Finding the idea, or the image locked in the stone, was the most important part of sculpting

Benvenuto Cellini

known for the bronze Perseus with the head of Medusa, and the Saliera, a saltcellar for the table of Francis I.

Giambologna/Jean de Boulogne 

known for the statues on The Rape of the Sabines and "Hercules and the Centaur Nessus" both stand at the Piazza della Signoria.

• known for his fine sense of action and movement and a refined, differentiated surface finish

• close second to that only of Michelangelo