Curated category
Catholic painters
- MichelangeloMichelangelo carved one of his most famous works, the Pietà, before he turned 30, then sculpted David before the same milestone.
- Gregório LopesIn 1514, Gregório Lopes married the daughter of Jorge Afonso. This union marked a pivotal moment in his career as he transitioned from student to family…
- Diego VelázquezDiego Rodríguez de Silva y Velázquez was baptized at the church of St. Peter in Seville on the 6th of June 1599, the son of a notary and a woman whose…
- TitianIn 1590, the painter and art theorist Giovanni Paolo Lomazzo called Titian "the sun amidst small stars not only among the Italians but all the painters of…
- Salvador DalíSalvador Dalí was born on the 11th of May 1904, at 8:45 in the morning, in a house on Carrer Monturiol in the Catalan town of Figueres.
- TintorettoTintoretto placed an inscription over his studio door that announced his entire ambition in seven words: Il disegno di Michelangelo ed il colorito di Tiziano.
- Nuno GonçalvesOn the 20th of July 1450, King Afonso V appointed Nuno Gonçalves as his court painter. This official position held until at least 1471, marking a stable…
- RaphaelRaphael died on the 6th of April 1520, which was, by some accounts, his 37th birthday. Four cardinals dressed in purple carried his body through Rome.
- Filippino LippiFilippino Lippi was born probably in 1457 at Prato, Tuscany, under circumstances that would have seemed to doom him before he ever picked up a brush.
- Hugo van der GoesHugo van der Goes died inside a monastery near Brussels in 1482, a painter who had walked away from the peak of his career just five years earlier.
- Pieter Bruegel the ElderPieter Bruegel the Elder was painting the world as most artists refused to see it: muddy, crowded, comic, and deeply human.
- Paolo VeronesePaolo Veronese stood before the Venetian Holy Inquisition on the 18th of July 1573 and told his interrogators that painters take the same liberties as poets…
- El GrecoEl Greco was once asked what he thought of Michelangelo, the giant of the Sistine Chapel. His answer was startling. "He was a good man," El Greco said, "but…
- GiottoGiotto di Bondone died on the 8th of January, 1337, and left behind a question that scholars have never fully resolved: who exactly was he?
- Albrecht DürerAlbrecht Dürer was born in Nuremberg on the 21st of May 1471, the third child of a Hungarian goldsmith who had translated his own family name from the word…
- Hieronymus BoschHieronymus Bosch died on the 9th of August 1516, and the church of Saint John in 's-Hertogenbosch held a memorial funeral mass in his honour.
- Sandro BotticelliSandro Botticelli was buried, as he had requested, at the foot of a tomb in the Ognissanti Church in Florence. The woman in that tomb was Simonetta Vespucci…
- Hubert van EyckHubert van Eyck likely entered the world in Maaseik, a town now located within Belgium's Limburg province. Records from 1409 identify him as Magister…
- CaravaggioCaravaggio died on the 18th of July 1610 in Porto Ercole, near Grosseto in Tuscany, alone and on the run, with three paintings in his possession intended as…
- Giorgio VasariGiorgio Vasari coined a word that historians still reach for five centuries later. Writing about Giotto's fresh way of painting, he called it a rinascita, a…
- Giovanni Battista TiepoloGiovanni Battista Tiepolo was born in Venice on the 5th of March 1696, the youngest of six children in a household without noble blood but bearing a…
- Gustave DoréGustave Doré created over 10,000 illustrations across his lifetime, and at the peak of his career he kept some 40 block-cutters employed just to translate…
- Ambrogio LorenzettiAmbrogio Lorenzetti painted something that had rarely been attempted in European art before: a vast, panoramic vision of daily life in a medieval city…
- Andrea MantegnaAndrea Mantegna was born around 1431 in Isola di Carturo, a small settlement near Padua, the son of a carpenter named Biagio.
- Giulio ClovioGiulio Clovio was born in 1498 within the village of Grižane, located in the Kingdom of Croatia. His family background remains a point of historical interest…