Michelangelo Buonarroti
Born in Caprese, near Florence, in 1475, this magnificent artist and sculptor transformed blocks of marble into figures full of life. His immortal works include the Sistine Chapel in the Vatican Museum, the Pietà and The Last Judgment. Read the biography.
Donatello
Considered the founder of modern sculpture, Donato de Bardi was born in Florence in 1386. His bronze David was the first nude statue of the Renaissance. Read the biography.
Sandro Botticelli
A friend of both Leonardo and Michelangelo, born in 1445 and renowned for religious and secular-themed masterpieces such as the Primavera, Birth of Venus and Adoration of the Magi. Read the biography.
Giotto
Ambrogio Bondone was born in Vespignano near Florence, in 1267. He is best known for the emotion and realism depicted in his frescoes, which grace the Scrovegni Chapel in Padova and the Basilica of St. Francis in Assisi. Read the biography.
Bernardino Luini
Bernardino Luini was a North Italian painter from Leonardo’s circle, a conservative painter who took “as much from Leonardo as his native roots enabled him to comprehend”. Read the biography.
Masaccio
Tommaso Masaccio was born in San Giovanni Valdarno, Tuscany in 1401. Leonardo, Michelangelo and Raphael were all influenced by his work, a collection of which lies in the Brancacci Chapel of Santa Maria del Carmine in Florence. Read the biography.
Paolo Uccello
Paolo Uccello (born Paolo di Dono in 1397) was a Florentine painter who was notable for his pioneering work on visual perspective in art. With his precise, analytical mind he tried to apply a scientific method to depict objects in three-dimensional space. Read the biography.
Leonardo da Vinci
Born in Vinci, near Florence, in 1452. A Renaissance genius, world-renowned for his paintings, including The Mona Lisa and The Last Supper. Leonardo was also a master architect, engineer, mathematician and philosopher. Read the biography.
Raphael
Raffaello Sanzio was born in Urbino in 1483. His superb use of perspective, realism and animation is exemplified by the School of Athens adorning the walls of the Vatican. Read the biography.
Tintoretto
Jacopo (Robusti) Tintoretto, born in 1518, was one of the greatest painters of the Venetian school and probably the last great painter of the Italian Renaissance. Read the biography.
Fra Angelico
Fra Giovanni da Fiesole (Fra Angelico), a Dominican friar, was perhaps the most important painter of Renaissance Florence. He was born Guido di Pietro in Mugello, in 1400, and began the significant part of his career at the Dominican monastery at Fiesole. Read the biography.
Fra Filippo Lippi
Fra Filippo Lippi has entered legend as a Renaissance prototype of the rebellious romantic artist. Read the biography.
Artemisia Gentileschi
Born in Rome in 1593, Artemisia was the daughter of artist Orazio Gentileschi. Recognized as the first woman artist in a male-dominated world of post-Renaissance art, her works are to be found in Rome and in Florence’s Uffizi Gallery. Read the biography.
Giovanni Battista Tiepolo
Giovanni Battista Tiepolo was born in Venice on March 5, 1696. His father, who was part owner of a ship, died when Tiepolo was scarcely a year old, but the family was left in comfortable circumstances. Read the biography.
Giorgio Giorgione
Giorgione was an Italian painter of the Venetian school in the High Renaissance from Venice, whose career was cut off by his death at a little over 30. Read the biography.
Canaletto
Canaletto had a large studio in Venice and turned out quantities of paintings and etchings that have made his name synonymous with eighteenth-century Venice. Read the biography.
Caravaggio
Born Michelangelo Merisi in Caravaggio, east of Milan, in 1571, his baroque style explored the balance between light and dark, portraying still life in astonishingly realistic form – as shown in Basket of Fruit, The Musicians and the Burial of Saint Lucy. Read the biography.
Dante Gabriel Rossetti
Not only a painter but also a poet, Dante Gabriel Rossetti was born in London in 1828, where his father, an exiled Italian painter and Dante scholar, served as Professor of Italian at King’s College. The family was steeped in literature and art. Read the biography.
Amedeo Modigliani
Amedeo Modigliani was born in Italy in the Livorno ghetto in 1884. His father, a ruined banker, died young and his mother encouraged her delicate son in his aptitude for art, sending him to study in Florence and Venice and to visit museums throughout Italy. Read the biography.
Giorgio De Chirico
Giorgio de Chirico was an Italian artist who was born in Greece. In the years before World War I, he founded the scuola metafisica art movement, which profoundly influenced the surrealists. Read the biography.
Alberto Giacometti
Alberto Giacometti, the Surrealist sculptor known for his nervous, elongated forms, was born in Stampa, Switzerland. He started drawing at the age of nine, painting at twelve and created his first sculpture at fourteen. Read the biography.
Marino Marini
By using a great variety of different media, Marini expresses emotions through color, form, and with an archaic simplicity of shape that goes back through the centuries to very early Chinese figurines and Etruscan or Greco-Roman sculpture. Read the biography.
Umberto Boccioni
Umberto Boccioni was an influential Italian painter and sculptor. He helped shape the revolutionary aesthetic of the Futurism movement as one of its principal figures. Read the biography.