Curated playlist
Italian male painters
Paolo Veronese stood before the Inquisition in 1573 and would not repaint his Last Supper. He changed its title instead. Painters in Italy often worked under pressure, and the stories below show how they handled it. Masaccio drove a nail into a wall to guide string for perspective lines in his Holy Trinity. Tintoretto secretly hung a full-sized canvas on a ceiling instead of sending a sketch. Rosso Fiorentino, named for his red hair, carried Italian painting to the French court. Sandro Botticelli's The Mystical Nativity found no buyer in 1811, then drew over a million viewers in 1857.
- Leonardo da VinciLeonardo da Vinci wrote most of his notes in mirror-image cursive, right to left.
- MichelangeloMichelangelo said he lived like a poor man, yet he was worth about 50,000 gold ducats.
- TitianTitian painted his own face into a prayer against the plague. The plague reached Venice, and he died in 1576.
- TintorettoTintoretto secretly hung a full-sized painting on a ceiling instead of submitting a sketch.
- Francesco PrimaticcioFrancesco Primaticcio died in 1570 before his Valois Chapel at Saint-Denis was finished.
- 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.
- Niccolò dell'AbbateNiccolò dell'Abbate was a painter born in Modena, the son of a violinist, who died in 1571 at the royal château of Fontainebleau in France. His birth year is uncertain, either 1509 or 1512. He worked in fresco and in oils, in the Mannerist…
- Rosso FiorentinoRosso Fiorentino's nickname came from his striking red hair. He later carried Italian painting to the French court.
- Paolo VeroneseFacing the Inquisition in 1573, painter Paolo Veronese refused to repaint his Last Supper. He renamed it instead.
- GiottoGiotto probably did not paint the famous St. Francis frescoes at Assisi.
- Leon Battista AlbertiAt twenty, Leon Battista Alberti wrote a comedy that fooled a famous printer.
- MasaccioMasaccio drove a nail into a wall to draw perspective lines with string. His Holy Trinity fresco still shows the marks.
- Sandro BotticelliIn 1811, no buyer wanted Botticelli's The Mystical Nativity. In 1857, more than a million people saw it in Manchester.
- Neri di BicciNeri di Bicci recorded every painting order his Florence workshop took. His diary filled 189 pages from 1453 to 1475.
- CaravaggioCaravaggio's Grooms' Madonna hung in Saint Peter's Basilica for exactly two days.
- Jacopo de' BarbariJacopo de' Barbari left behind more spellings of his name than certainties about his life. Documents and contemporaries call him de'Barbari, de Barberi, Barbaro, Barberino, Barbarigo or Barberigo, and these are only some of the variants.…
- Giorgio VasariGiorgio Vasari's word rinascita, meaning rebirth, became the name of the Renaissance.
- CimabueA painting from a French kitchen, attributed to Cimabue, sold for 24 million euros in 2019.
- Cesare MaccariA famous fresco of Cicero in the Roman Senate gets the setting wrong. Cesare Maccari painted it in 1888.
- Giovanni Battista TiepoloIn Madrid, a rival got Tiepolo's church paintings removed. Anton Raphael Mengs had the ear of the king's confessor.
- 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."
- Benvenuto CelliniA thief climbed scaffolding in Vienna in 2003 and stole Benvenuto Cellini's gold salt cellar.
- Giulio ClovioBoth Italy and Croatia celebrate the painter Giulio Clovio as their own. He was born in Croatia but worked in Italy.
- Giambettino CignaroliGiambettino Cignaroli was an Italian painter born in Verona on the 4th of July 1706, and he died in the same city on the 1st of December 1770. The final entry in the list of his works carries that year, 1770. It bears the title Wolfgang…