Giotto di Bondone (c. 1267 – January 8, 1337), better known simply as Giotto, was an Italian painter and architect from Florence in the late Middle Ages. He is generally considered the first in a line of great artists who contributed to the Italian Renaissance.
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 whose unquenchable curiosity was equaled only by his powers of invention. 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.
Albrecht Dürer (21 May 1471 – 6 April 1528) was a German painter, printmaker and theorist from Nuremberg. His prints established his reputation across Europe when he was still in his twenties, and he has been conventionally regarded as the greatest artist of the Northern Renaissance ever since.
Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni (6 March 1475 – 18 February 1564), commonly known as Michelangelo, was an Italian Renaissance painter, sculptor, architect, poet, and engineer. Despite making few forays beyond the arts, his versatility in the disciplines he took up was of such a high order that he is often considered a contender for the title of the archetypal Renaissance man, along with his rival and fellow Italian Leonardo da Vinci.
Raffaello Sanzio da Urbino (April 6 or March 28, 1483 – April 6, 1520), better known simply as Raphael, was an Italian painter and architect of the High Renaissance, celebrated for the perfection and grace of his paintings and drawings. Together with Michelangelo and Leonardo da Vinci, he forms the traditional trinity of great masters of that period.
Tiziano Vecelli or Tiziano Vecellio (c. 1473/1490 – 27 August 1576 better known as Titian was an Italian painter, the leader of 16th-century Venetian school of the Italian Renaissance.
Pieter Bruegel the Elder (c. 1525 – 9 September 1569) was a Dutch Renaissance painter and printmaker known for his landscapes and peasant scenes.
El Greco (Doménikos Theotokópoulos) (1541 – April 7, 1614) was a painter, sculptor, and architect of the Spanish Renaissance. El Greco's dramatic and expressionistic style was met with puzzlement by his contemporaries but found appreciation in the 20th century. El Greco is regarded as a precursor of both Expressionism and Cubism.
Sir Peter Paul Rubens (June 28, 1577 – May 30, 1640) was a prolific seventeenth-century Flemish Baroque painter, and a proponent of an extravagant Baroque style that emphasized movement, color, and sensuality. He is well-known for his Counter-Reformation altarpieces, portraits, landscapes, and history paintings of mythological and allegorical subjects.
Diego Rodríguez de Silva y Velázquez (June 6, 1599 – August 6, 1660) was a Spanish painter who was the leading artist in the court of King Philip IV. He was an individualistic artist of the contemporary Baroque period, important as a portrait artist. In addition to numerous renditions of scenes of historical and cultural significance, he painted scores of portraits of the Spanish royal family, other notable European figures, and commoners, culminating in the production of his masterpiece Las Meninas (1656).
Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn (July 15, 1606 – October 4, 1669) was a Dutch painter and etcher. He is generally considered one of the greatest painters and printmakers in European art history and the most important in Dutch history. His contributions to art came in a period that historians call the Dutch Golden Age.
Johannes, Jan or Johan Vermeer (baptized in Delft on 31 October 1632 as Johannis, and buried in the same city under the name Jan on 16 December 1675) was a Dutch Baroque painter who specialized in exquisite, domestic interior scenes of middle class life.
Joseph Mallord William Turner RA (23 April 1775–19 December 1851) was an English Romantic landscape painter, watercolourist and printmaker. Turner was considered a controversial figure in his day, but is now regarded as the artist who elevated landscape painting to an eminence rivalling history painting. Although renowned for his oil paintings, Turner is also one of the greatest masters of British watercolour landscape painting. He is commonly known as "the painter of light" and his work regarded as a Romantic preface to Impressionism.
Vincent Willem van Gogh (30 March 1853 – 29 July 1890) was a Dutch post-Impressionist painter whose work had a far-reaching influence on 20th century art for its vivid colors and emotional impact. He suffered from anxiety and increasingly frequent bouts of mental illness throughout his life, and died largely unknown, at the age of 37, from a self-inflicted gunshot wound.
An insight into the life and work of 15th-century Italian painter Piero della Francesca. Tim Marlow travels through the villages of Tuscany and Umbria to uncover the enigmatic artist responsible for religious works including The Baptism of Christ, and famed fresco cycle The Legend of the True Cross, which were later cited by masters such as Cezanne and Picasso as major influences on their work. Only 26 of his pieces have survived the centuries since his death in 1492, and one - The Resurrection - is still housed in Sanselpocro, Piero's home town, but it was not until long after his demise that his fame spread worldwide.
The life and work of German-born artist Hans Holbein, whose photographically realistic portraits captured imaginations across Europe and led to his appointment as official artist to Henry VIII. Famed for his paintings of Erasmus, Sir Thomas More and the French ambassadors to the English court, he compromised his integrity for once with the picture of Anne of Cleves that prompted the king to propose to the `Flanders mare'.
The art historian takes a look at the life and work of Italian Renaissance painter Caravaggio. Born in 1571, he caused ructions with his rejection of classical style, calling for a new naturalism to be brought to great works of art, but his life was marred by his own unpredictable behaviour which eventually forced him to go into exile to avoid prison. Works including The Calling of St Matthew and The Martyrdom of St Matthew are examined, revealing what gives the pieces their power and the influences affecting Caravaggio as he created them.
The art historian explores the life of 18th-century British painter George Stubbs, whose extraordinary pictures of horses led to his being dubbed a genius. He mastered his craft by buying and studying horse carcasses to better understand their anatomy, but the fashions of the time meant he was initially forced to earn money through painting society portraits. Luckily, the formation of the Jockey Club allowed him to return to the equestrian art he adored.
The art historian presents a profile of the artist Goya, who was court painter to the Spanish royal family and famous for works such as The Third of May 1808.
The art historian explores the life and career of French painter Jacques-Louis David, whose best-known works include a series of portraits of Napoleon Bonaparte. From an early age, David was determined to become a great artist, but it was only after spending years mastering his craft in Rome that his work caught the attention of his peers, leading to commissions from King Louis XVI. The revolution saw him become more politicised, and the ensuing tumultuous years prompted him to create propagandist work, but after Bonaparte seized power and named David First Painter to the Emperor, the glory went to his head, resulting in his eventual downfall.
There have been few more powerful painters of landscape than John Constable. He brought a scale, ambition and impact to a subject long considered amongst the lowest forms of art. Constable is often celebrated as a nostalgic painter of a lost England but look a little harder, though, and you discover an intense and radical vision at work which changed the course of British art. As well as looking Constable’s most famous works, such as The Haywain and Flatford Mill, Tim Marlow explores lesser known works such as the expressive sketch for The Leaping Horse
Delacroix is France’s greatest romantic painter – an artist who challenged to rigid classicism of the previous generation, injecting a degree of fluidity and unpredictability to his art. He established a taste for the exotic in European art, influenced by his travels in North Africa, as in his famous Women of Algiers in their Apartment. He is often considered to be the last great history painter of European art, producing the iconic Liberty Leading the People, a work which encapsulates the revolutionary turmoil of his day.
Whistler was the first great international American artist, hugely well travelled, a painter and printmaker who bridged the gap between Impressionist Paris and symbolist London. He was an intelligent and original artist who radically proclaimed that art rather than documenting the visual world around us - should be experienced for its own sake. His Arrangement in Grey and Black, a portrait of Whistler’s mother, is one of the great portraits in the history of art, not least for its elusive title. Whilst his Nocturne Black and Gold, was thought so radical that Whistler had to go to court to defend it.
Auguste Rodin redefined the idea of sculpture in European Art liberating it from the constraints of classicism and created three dimensional forms which pulsated with life and energy. His masterpiece, the Gates of Hell, is the greatest public sculpture of the 19th century, a work that obsessed him for almost 40 years, and which acted as a laboratory for Rodin imagination and which produced some of greatest sculptures of his career, works such as the Kiss and the Thinker.
Mary Cassatt is one of only a handful of women artists up to the beginning of the twentieth century who have managed to forge a reputation in the male dominated story of art history. She was an American by birth but lived in France for sixty years and helped to develop the first great movement in Modern art – Impressionism. In works such as The Boating Party, Cassatt articulates her bold, vivid vision.
Egon Schiele has become one of the most celebrated artists of the last hundred years. He was a controversial figure in his own short lifetime who was jailed on an obscenity charge. His work is starkly honest and provocative, intensely powerful images where the human figure is stripped down, both sexually and psychologically. He’s one of the great draftsmen in art history and perhaps the most obsessive painter of the self. In the programme Tim Marlow examines Schiele’s vision in works such as Death and the Maiden and Seated Male Nude.