Curated playlist
Catholic painters
- MichelangeloMichelangelo said he lived like a poor man, yet he was worth about 50,000 gold ducats.
- Gregório LopesGregório Lopes was a Portuguese painter who lived from about 1490 to 1550, and in 1520 a prince made him a knight. Prince Jorge de Lencastre conferred the honor, and with it Lopes entered the Order of Santiago. That is an unusual…
- Diego VelázquezVelázquez freed his assistant Juan de Pareja from slavery in 1650.
- TitianTitian painted his own face into a prayer against the plague. The plague reached Venice, and he died in 1576.
- Salvador DalíSalvador Dalí was born nine months after his older brother, also named Salvador, died.
- TintorettoTintoretto secretly hung a full-sized painting on a ceiling instead of submitting a sketch.
- Nuno GonçalvesFor centuries, a famous Portuguese painting had no known painter. Nuno Gonçalves was court painter to King Afonso V.
- RaphaelRaphael painted Michelangelo into The School of Athens as Heraclitus.
- Filippino LippiEvery workshop in Florence closed for a day when painter Filippino Lippi died in 1504. His mother was a nun.
- Hugo van der GoesPainter Hugo van der Goes shut his busy Ghent workshop in 1477 and became a monastery lay brother.
- Pieter Bruegel the ElderPieter Bruegel the Elder reportedly told his wife to burn some of his drawings before he died.
- Paolo VeroneseFacing the Inquisition in 1573, painter Paolo Veronese refused to repaint his Last Supper. He renamed it instead.
- El GrecoEl Greco once offered to repaint Michelangelo's Last Judgment. He made the offer to Pope Pius V.
- GiottoGiotto probably did not paint the famous St. Francis frescoes at Assisi.
- Albrecht DürerAlbrecht Dürer drew a rhinoceros he had never seen. His 1515 woodcut still appeared in some German school textbooks.
- Hieronymus BoschHieronymus Bosch left no letters or diaries, only his paintings.
- Sandro BotticelliIn 1811, no buyer wanted Botticelli's The Mystical Nativity. In 1857, more than a million people saw it in Manchester.
- Hubert van EyckHubert van Eyck was praised as a great painter, yet no painting is proven to be entirely his.
- CaravaggioCaravaggio's Grooms' Madonna hung in Saint Peter's Basilica for exactly two days.
- Giorgio VasariGiorgio Vasari's word rinascita, meaning rebirth, became the name of the Renaissance.
- Giovanni Battista TiepoloIn Madrid, a rival got Tiepolo's church paintings removed. Anton Raphael Mengs had the ear of the king's confessor.
- Gustave DoréBritish critics disliked Gustave Doré's book of London, saying he drew its poverty. Van Gogh painted one scene.
- Ambrogio LorenzettiThe first known picture of an hourglass hides in a fresco about bad government. Ambrogio Lorenzetti painted it in Siena.
- Andrea MantegnaAndrea Mantegna's teacher mocked his first frescoes as figures "like men made of stone."
- Giulio ClovioBoth Italy and Croatia celebrate the painter Giulio Clovio as their own. He was born in Croatia but worked in Italy.