Le Nain Brothers | The Adoration of the Shepherds, 1640

A group gathers around a manger to adore the newborn Christ.

On the right, the Virgin Mary and Joseph gaze reverently at the infant, alongside two small angels.

On the left are two young boys and an old, barefooted man: they are the shepherds mentioned in the Gospel of Luke (2: 8-20).

Le Nain Brothers (fl. 17th century) | The Adoration of the Shepherds, 1640 | The National Gallery, London

Ilian Rachov, 1970 | Baroque Era style painter

Born in Sofia, Bulgaria, Ilian Rachov starts his artistic career like self-taught man in 1988 realizing copies of medieval orthodox icons and frescoes, re-discovering ancient techniques of gilding methods and how to engrave after the golden backgrounds of the icons.

His personal elaboration of that kind of old techniques and his modern view of this very antique art helps him to develop an own personal and unmistakable style in the iconography field.

Valentin De Boulogne | Baroque painter

With the exception of Valentin de Boulogne's baptismal record, bearing a disputed date of either 1591 or 1594, the artist's early life is undocumented.

The son of a painter and stained glass worker, Valentin likely received his first training with his father in his native Coulommiers, near Paris.

He may subsequently have studied with an artist in Paris or in Fontainebleau.

It is not known when he departed for Italy, where he resided the remainder of his short life.

Joachim von Sandrart remarked (1675) that Valentin reached Rome before Simon Vouet (1590-1649), who arrived around 1614.

Carlo Francesco Nuvolone | Baroque painter

Carlo Francesco Nuvolone (Milan, 1609-1662)) was an Italian painter of religious subjects and portraits who was active mainly in Lombardy.

He became the leading painter in Lombardy in the mid-17th century, producing works on canvas as well as frescoes.

Because his style was perceived as close to that of Guido Reni he was nicknamed il Guido della Lombardia (the Guido of Lombardy).

Caravaggio and the birth of Baroque

Italian Renaissance painter Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio (1571-1610) "put the oscuro (shadows) into chiaroscuro".

Chiaroscuro was practised long before he came on the scene, but it was Caravaggio who made the technique a dominant stylistic element, darkening the shadows and transfixing the subject in a blinding shaft of light.

Gian Lorenzo Bernini, uomo ed artista universale

Oltre ai suoi autoritratti e ad un ritratto fattogli dal Gaulli (Roma, Gall. Corsini), il Bernini è stato descritto fisicamente e moralmente da numerosi autori: basti ricordare lo Chantelou, ed il figlio Domenico, che lo disse "aspro di natura, fisso nelle operazioni, ardente nell'ira".

Egli fu l'artista più intimamente legato al cattolicesimo risorgente nella temperie postridentina, e non può esserci dubbio sulla sua convinzione religiosa; pare che negli anni successivi al 1630 la sua fede si fosse approfondita e che nell'ultimo periodo della sua vita frequentasse assiduamente gesuiti e oratoriani: era amico intimo dei padre G. P. Oliva, gesuita, per il quale disegnò il frontespizio al secondo volume delle Prediche (1664) e ebbe come consigliere spirituale anche un suo nipote, padre Marchesi, oratoriano.

Gerard ter Borch | Baroque painter

Gerard Terborch, Terborch also spelled Ter Borch or Terburg (1617-1681), Dutch Baroque painter who developed his own distinctive type of interior genre in which he depicted with grace and fidelity the atmosphere of well-to-do, middle-class life in 17th-century Holland.

Terborch’s father had been an artist and had visited Rome but from 1621 was employed as a tax collector.

Agnolo Bronzino | Mannerist painter

Agnolo Bronzino (1503-1563) of Florence, Italy, known as Il Bronzino, was a Mannerist painter.

Mixing styles of the late High Renaissance into the early Baroque period, Mannerists often depicted their subjects in unnatural forms.

Bronzino’s works have been described as “icy” portraits that put an abyss between the subject and the viewer.