Leonardo da Vinci

Madonna with a Flower (Madonna Benois)
c. 1478
Oil on canvas transferred from wood, 50 x 32 cm
The Hermitage, St. Petersburg

Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci  (April 15, 1452 – May 2, 1519) was an Italian polymath: painter, sculptor, architect, musician, scientist, mathematician, engineer, inventor, anatomist, geologist, cartographer, botanist and writer.
Leonardo has often been described as the archetype of the Renaissance Man, a man of "unquenchable curiosity" and "feverishly inventive imagination".
He is widely considered to be one of the greatest painters of all time and perhaps the most diversely talented person ever to have lived.
According to art historian Helen Gardner, the scope and depth of his interests were without precedent and "his mind and personality seem to us superhuman, the man himself mysterious and remote".

Man, Cornelis de

The Chess Players
c. 1670
Oil on canvas, 97,5 x 85 cm
Museum of Fine Arts, Budapest, Hungary

Man, Cornelis de (1621 - 1706)
Dutch Golden Age painter.
He became a successful painter in Delft, and painted a prestigious group portrait for the Anatomy guild there, as well as a renowned painting for the Amsterdam Noorsche Compagnie, a northern branch of the Amsterdam Dutch East India Company.

Kauffmann, Angelica

Self-Portrait
1780-85
Oil on canvas, 77 x 63 cm
The Hermitage, St. Petersburg

Swiss painter.
Maria Anna Angelika/Angelica Katharina Kauffmann
 (1741 – 1807) was a Swiss-Austrian Neoclassical painter.

Oost, Jacob van, the Elder

Female Martyr
-
Oil on canvas, 74,3 x 56,8 cm
Groeninge Museum, Bruges

Jacob van Oost the Elder (1603 - 1671)
Flemish painter.
The leading artist of 17th-century Bruges.
He painted many altarpieces in the churches of his native city; he was also exceptionally gifted as a portrait painter.

Ribera, Jusepe de

The Holy Family with Saints Anne and Catherine of Alexandria
1648
Oil on canvas
82 1/2 x 60 3/4 in. (209.6 x 154.3 cm)
Samuel D. Lee Fund, 1934
The Metropolitan Museum of Art. New York

Jusepe de Ribera, probably an italianization of Josep de Ribera (1591 – 1652)
Spanish Tenebrist painter and printmaker.
He was also called by his contemporaries and early writers Lo Spagnoletto, or "the Little Spaniard".
Ribera was a leading painter of the Spanish school, although his mature work was all done in Italy.

Ranc, Jean

Vertumnus and Pomona
1710s
Oil on canvas, 171 x 119 cm
Musee Fabre, Montpellier

Jean Ranc (1674 - 1735)
French painter, mainly active in portraiture.
He served in the courts of both Louis XV of France and (from 1723 onwards) Philip V of Spain.

Cole, Thomas

The Architect's Dream
1840
Oil on canvas, 136 x 214 cm
Toledo Museum of Art, Toledo, Ohio

Thomas Cole (1801 – 1848)
English-born American artist.
His work was known for its realistic and detailed portrayal of American landscape and wilderness, which feature themes of romanticism and naturalism.

Watteau, Louis Joseph

The Storm
-
Oil on canvas
Musee des Beaux-Arts, Valenciennes

Louis Joseph Watteau (1731 - 1798), known as the Watteau of Lille was a French painter active in Lille.
He played a decisive role in the foundation of what would become the musée lillois des Beaux-Arts, opened in 1803, by producing the first ever inventory of paintings confiscated by the state during the French Revolution.

Parmigianino

Portrait of a Youth
1520s
Oil on wood, 59 x 44 cm
Musee du Louvre, Paris

Parmigianino (1503 – 1540)
A nickname meaning "the little one from Parma" or sometimes "Parmigiano", was a prominent Italian Mannerist painter and printmaker active in Florence, Rome, Bologna, and his native city of Parma.

Ingres, Jean Auguste Dominique

Roger Freeing Angelica
1819
Oil on canvas, 147 x 190 cm
Musee du Louvre, Paris

Ingres, Jean Auguste Dominique (1780-1867)
French Neoclassical painter.
Although he considered himself to be a painter of history in the tradition of Nicolas Poussin and Jacques-Louis David, by the end of his life it was Ingres's portraits, both painted and drawn, that were recognized as his greatest legacy.
A man profoundly respectful of the past, he assumed the role of a guardian of academic orthodoxy against the ascendant Romantic style represented by his nemesis Eugène Delacroix.
His exemplars, he once explained, were "the great masters which flourished in that century of glorious memory when Raphael set the eternal and incontestable bounds of the sublime in art ... I am thus a conservator of good doctrine, and not an innovator.
Nevertheless, modern opinion has tended to regard Ingres and the other Neoclassicists of his era as embodying the Romantic spirit of his time, while his expressive distortions of form and space make him an important precursor of modern art.

Winterhalter, Franz Xaver

Portrait of Empress Maria Alexandrovna
1857
Oil on canvas, 120 x 95 cm
The Hermitage, St. Petersburg

Winterhalter, Franz Xaver (1805 - 1873)
German painter, the most successful court portraitist of his period.
He was based in Paris for most of his career, but he painted most of Europe's royalty and was a particular favourite of Queen Victoria, who called him 'excellent, delightful Winterhalter'.

Fischbach, Johann

View of Salzburg with the Kapuzinerberg
1844
Oil on wood, 38 x 48 cm
Residenzgalerie, Salzburg

Johann Fischbach (1797 - 1871) war ein österreichischer Maler.

Reinhold, Heinrich

Terrace of the Capucin Priory in Sorrento
1823-24
Oil on canvas, 42 x 55 cm
Neue Pinakothek, Munich

Heinrich Reinhold (1788 - 1825)
German painter.
One of the most talented of the landscape painters living in Rome.

Koekkoek, Barend Cornelis

Winter landscape
1838
Oil on canvas, 62 x 75 cm
Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam

Koekkoek, Barend Cornelis (1803 - 1862)
Dutch landscape artist.
Barend Cornelis Koekkoek came to be known during his lifetime as the “Prince of Landscape Painting” and was by far the most applauded landscapist of his time and regarded as the founding father of Dutch romantic landscape painting.

Munch, Edvard

The Dance of Life
1899-1900
Oil on canvas
49 1/2 x 75 in
National Gallery, Oslo

Munch, Edvard (1863 - 1944)
Norwegian Symbolist painter, printmaker and an important forerunner of expressionist art.
His best-known composition, The Scream, is part of a series The Frieze of Life, in which Munch explored the themes of love, fear, death, melancholia, and anxiety.

Feuerbach, Anselm Friedrich

Ricordo da Tivoli
1867
Oil on canvas, 194 x 131 cm
Nationalgalerie, Berlin

Feuerbach, Anselm Friedrich (1829 - 1880)
He was steeped in classic knowledge, and his figure compositions have the statuesque dignity and simplicity of Greek art. He was the first to realize the danger arising from contempt of technique, that mastery of craftsmanship was needed to express even the loftiest ideas, and that an ill-drawn coloured cartoon can never be the supreme achievement in art.

Tintoretto

The Origin of the Milky Way
1570
Oil on canvas, 148 x 165 cm
National Gallery, London

Tintoretto (1518 – 1594)
Real name Jacopo Comin, was an Italian painter and a notable exponent of the Venetian Renaissance school.
For his phenomenal energy in painting he was termed Il Furioso, and his dramatic use of perspectival space and special lighting effects make him a precursor of Baroque art.

Badalocchio, Sisto

The Holy Family
c. 1610
Oil on panel, 81.3 x 57 cm
Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford

Badalocchio, Sisto (1585 - c. 1647)
Italian painter and engraver of the Bolognese School.
Born in Parma, he worked first under Agostino Carracci in Bologna, then Annibale Carracci, in Rome.
He worked with Annibale till 1609, then moving back to Parma.

Tiziano, Vecellio

Venus and an Organist and a Little Dog
c. 1550
Oil on canvas, 136 x 220 cm
Museo del Prado, Madrid

Tiziano Vecelli or Tiziano Vecellio (c. 1488/1490 - 1576 )
Italian painter, the most important member of the 16th-century Venetian school. 

Monet, Claude

La Japonaise
1876
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

Monet, Claude (1840 - 1926)
Founder of French impressionist painting, and the most consistent and prolific practitioner of the movement's philosophy of expressing one's perceptions before nature, especially as applied to plein-air landscape painting.

Cranach, Lucas the Elder

Cranach, Lucas the Elder
The Golden Age
-
Wood, 73 x 105 cm
Alte Pinakothek, Munich

Cranach, Lucas the Elder (1472 – 1553)
German Renaissance painter and printmaker in woodcut and engraving.
He was court painter to the Electors of Saxony for most of his career, and is known for his portraits, both of German princes and those of the leaders of the Protestant Reformation, whose cause he embraced with enthusiasm, becoming a close friend of Martin Luther.

Kauffmann, Angelica

Portrait of a Woman Dressed as Vestal Virgin
-
Oil on canvas, 91,5 x 71,5 cm
Gemäldegalerie, Dresden

Kauffmann, Angelica  (1741 - 1807)
Swiss painter in the early Neoclassical style who is best known for her decorative wall paintings for residences designed by Robert Adam.

Moreau, Gustave

Orpheus
1865
Oil on canvas
154 x 99.5 cm
Musée d'Orsay, Paris

Moreau, Gustave (1826-1898)
French painter, one of the leading Symbolist artists.
He was a pupil of Chassériau and was influenced by his master's exotic Romanticism, but Moreau went far beyond him in his feeling for the bizarre and developed a style that is highly distinctive in subject and technique.

Lippi, Fra Filippo

Portrait of a Woman with a Man at a Casement
ca. 1440
Tempera on wood
25 1/4 x 16 1/2 in. (64.1 x 41.9 cm)
Marquand Collection, Gift of Henry G. Marquand, 1889
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Fra Filippo Lippi (1406–1469)
Italian painter of the Italian Quattrocento.
He approaches religious art from its human side, and is not pietistic though true to a phase of Catholic devotion.
He was perhaps the greatest colourist and technical adept of his time, with good draughtsmanship.

Basaiti, Marco

Call of the Sons of Zebedee
1510
Panel, 386 x 268 cm
Gallerie dell'Accademia, Venice

Marco Basaiti (c. 1470 – 1530)
Greek ancestry in either Venice or Friuli in 1470.
Basaiti worked primarily with religious themes, but he also did portraits.
Contrary to the trends of the time, he used very bright colours in rendering his religious subjects.

Amerling, Friedrich von

Likeness of a Girl
c. 1837
Oil on canvas, 64 x 51 cm
Residenzgalerie, Salzburg

Friedrich von Amerling (1803 –1887)
Austro-Hungarian portrait painter in the court of Franz Josef.
He was one of the outstanding Austrian portrait painters of the 19th century.

David, Gerard

The Marriage at Cana
c. 1500
Wood
39 1/4 x 50 1/2 in (100 x 128 cm)
Musée du Louvre, Paris

David, Gerard (c. 1460-1523)
Netherlandish painter.
He was the leading painter in Bruges following the death of Memling.

Manet, Edouard

Races at Longchamp
c. 1867
Oil on canvas
17 1/4 x 33 1/4 in. (43.9 x 84.5 cm)
The Art Institute of Chicago

Manet, Edouard (1832 –1883)
French painter.
One of the first 19th-century artists to approach modern-life subjects, he was a pivotal figure in the transition from Realism to Impressionism.

Cot, Pierre Auguste

The Storm
1880
Oil on canvas
92 1/4 x 61 3/4 in. (234.3 x 156.8 cm)
Paintings
Catharine Lorillard Wolfe Collection, Bequest of Catharine Lorillard Wolfe, 1887
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Cot, Pierre Auguste (1837 – 1883)
French painter of the Academic Classicism school.

Tiziano, Vecellio

Penitent Mary Magdalen
1560s
Oil on canvas
118 x 97 cm (46 1/2 x 38 in)
Hermitage, St. Petersburg

Tiziano, Vecellio (c. 1485-1576).
The greatest painter of the Venetian school.