Cornelis de Heem | Baroque painter

Cornelis de Heem (8 April 1631 (baptized) - 17 May 1695 (buried) was a still-life painter associated with both Flemish Baroque and Dutch Golden Age painting.

He was a member of a large family of still-life specialists, of which his father, Jan Davidszoon de Heem (1606–1684), was the most significant.

Cornelis was baptised in Leiden on 8 April 1631, and moved with his family to Antwerp in 1636.

Rachel Ruysch | Baroque painter

Rachel Ruysch (1664-1750), who has been called the "most celebrated Dutch woman artist of the 17th and 18th centuries", was successful for nearly 70 years as a specialist in flower paintings.

Born in The Hague, Ruysch moved to Amsterdam with her family when she was three.

Her maternal grandfather, Pieter Post, was an important architect and her father, Frederik Ruysch, an eminent scientist from whom she learned how to observe and record nature with great accuracy.

Matthias Stom | Baroque painter

Matthias Stom or Matthias Stomer (1600-1652) was a Dutch, or possibly Flemish, painter who is only known for the works he produced during his residence in Italy.

He was influenced by the work of non-Italian followers of Caravaggio in Italy, in particular his Dutch followers often referred to as the Utrecht Caravaggists, as well as by Jusepe de Ribera and Peter Paul Rubens.

The Ladies of the Baroque | Part 1

As in the Renaissance Period, many women among the Baroque artists came from artist families. Artemisia Gentileschi is an example of this.

She was trained by her father, Orazio Gentileschi, and she worked alongside him on many of his commissions.

Luisa Roldán was trained in her father's (Pedro Roldán) sculpture workshop.

Artemisia Gentileschi | Judith and her maid with the head of Holofernes, 1613 | Gallerie degli Uffizi, Firenze.

Michaelina Wautier | Baroque painter

Michaelina Wautier, also Woutiers (1604-1689), was a painter from the Southern Netherlands.

Only since the turn of the 21st century has her work been recognized as that of an outstanding female Baroque artist, her works having been previously attributed to male artists, especially her brother Charles.

Wautier was noted for the variety of subjects and genres that she worked in.

This was unusual for female artists of the time who were more often restricted to smaller paintings, generally portraits or still-lifes.

Maria Sibylla Merian | Baroque Era Illustrator

Maria Sibylla Merian (1647-1717) was a German naturalist and scientific illustrator.

She was one of the earliest European naturalists to observe insects directly. Merian was a descendant of the Frankfurt branch of the Swiss Merian family.

Merian received her artistic training from her stepfather, Jacob Marrel, a student of the still life painter Georg Flegel.

Merian published her first book of natural illustrations in 1675.

Jan Brueghel the Elder | Baroque painter

Biography from: The National Gallery, London

Jan Brueghel the Elder was born in Brussels in 1568, the son of Pieter Brueghel the Elder.

He is said to have been taught in Antwerp by Pieter Goetkint and to have visited Cologne.

From 1589-1596 he worked in Italy, mainly in Naples, Rome, and Milan where he met one of his most important patrons, Cardinal Federico Borromeo, who remained a lifelong friend.

Philippe Mercier | Rococo painter

Philippe Mercier (also spelled Philip Mercier; 1689 - 18 July 1760) was an artist of French Huguenot descent from the German realm of Brandenburg-Prussia (later Kingdom of Prussia), usually defined to French school.

Active in England for most of his working life, Mercier is considered one of the first practitioners of the Rococo style, and is credited with influencing a new generation of 18th-century English artists.

Mercier was born c. 1689-1691 in Berlin, the son of Pierre Mercier (died 1729, Dresden), a Huguenot tapestry-worker.

Sir Peter Lely | Baroque painter

Sir Peter Lely (1618 -1680) was a painter of Dutch origin whose career was nearly all spent in England, where he became the dominant portrait painter to the court.

Lely was born Pieter van der Faes to Dutch parents in Soest in Westphalia, where his father was an officer serving in the armed forces of the Elector of Brandenburg.

Lely studied painting in Haarlem, where he may have been apprenticed to Pieter de Grebber.

He became a master of the Guild of Saint Luke in Haarlem in 1637.

Orazio Borgianni | Baroque painter

Orazio Borgianni (6 April 1574 - 14 January 1616) was an Italian painter and etcher of the Mannerist and early-Baroque periods. He was the stepbrother of the sculptor and architect Giulio Lasso.

Borgianni was born in Rome, where he was documented in February 1604. He was instructed in the art of painting by his brother, Giulio Borgianni, called Scalzo.

The patronage by Philip II of Spain induced him to visit Spain, where he signed an inventory in January 1605.

He returned to Rome from Spain after April 1605 at the height of his career, and most of the work of his maturity was carried out 1605–16.

Cesare Dandini | Baroque painter

Cesare Dandini (1 October 1596 - 7 February 1657) was an Italian painter of the Baroque period, active mainly in his native city of Florence.

He was the older brother of the painter Vincenzo Dandini (1609-1675).

His nephew, Pietro was a pupil of Vincenzo, and Pietro's two sons, Ottaviano Dandini and the Jesuit priest Vincenzo also worked as painters in Florence.

According to the biographer Baldinucci, Cesare first worked under Francesco Curradi, then Cristofano Allori, and finally Domenico Passignano.

Eustache Le Sueur | Baroque painter

Eustache Le Sueur or Lesueur (19 November 1617 – 30 April 1655) was a French artist and one of the founders of the French Academy of Painting. He is known primarily for his paintings of religious subjects. He was a leading exponent of the neoclassical style of Parisian Atticism.

Training and career

He was born in Paris, where he spent his entire life. His father, Cathelin Le Sueur, a turner and sculptor in wood, placed him with Vouet, in whose studio he rapidly distinguished himself.

Admitted at an early age into the guild of master-painters, he left them to take part in establishing the French Royal Academy of Painting and Sculpture in 1648 and was elected as one of the original twelve elders in charge of its administration.

Élisabeth Vigée Le Brun | Self-Portrait in a Straw Hat, 1782

"Self-Portrait in a Straw Hat" is a signed copy by the artist of a very popular self portrait that she painted in 1782 and which is now in the collection of the baronne Edmond de Rothschild.

The pose is deliberately modelled on Rubens’s Portrait of Susanna Lunden (?) (also in the National Gallery’s collection), which was formerly, but incorrectly, known as Le Chapeau de Paille (The Straw Hat).

Luca Carlevarijs | Baroque Era / Veduta painter

Luca Carlevarijs or Carlevaris (1663-1730) was an Italian painter and engraver working mainly in Venice.

He pioneered the genre of the cityscapes (vedute) of Venice, a genre that was later widely followed by artists such as Canaletto and Francesco Guardi.

Carlevarijs was born in Udine.

He was also known as 'Luca Casanobrio' or 'Luca di ca Zenobrio', for his patronage by the latter family.

Tomasz Rut, 1961 | Neo Baroque painter

Named one of the most collectible living artists, Tomasz Rut continues to expand the realm of contemporary figurative painting to the artistic limits reached only by the Great Masters of the past. Often compared to the epic works of the Antiquity, Renaissance and Baroque, his Classical artwork, inducted into The Vatican Collection by Pope Benedict XVI, resurrects the dormant tradition of figurative painting, emulating the style, harmonious elegance and passion in the spirit of Michelangelo, Raphael or Caravaggio, but does it in an eloquent, modern adaptation, accommodating the contemporary viewer.

Ambrosius Bosschaert the Elder | Baroque painter

Ambrosius Bosschaert the Elder (1573-1621) was a Flemish-born Dutch still life painter and art dealer.

He is recognised as one of the earliest painters who created floral still lifes as an independent genre.

He founded a dynasty of painters who continued his style of floral and fruit painting and turned Middelburg into the leading centre for flower painting in the Dutch Republic.

Diego Velázquez | Italian period

In 1629, Spanish painter Diego Rodríguez de Silva y Velázquez (1599-1660) was given permission to spend a year and a half in Italy.

Though this first visit is recognized as a crucial chapter in the development of his style - and in the history of Spanish Royal Patronage, since Philip IV sponsored his trip - few details and specifics are known of what the painter saw, whom he met, how he was perceived and what innovations he hoped to introduce into his painting.

He traveled to Venice, Ferrara, Cento, Loreto, Bologna, and Rome.

Timeline of Art History

An Art Period is a phase in the development of the work of an artist, groups of artists or art movement.

The history of art is immense and the earliest cave paintings pre-date writing by almost 27,000 years!

Ancient Classical art

Minoan art

Ancient Greek art

Roman art

Ancient Egyptian colors

Massimo Stanzione (1585-1656) | Baroque painter

Massimo Stanzione was an Italian Baroque painter, mainly active in Naples, where he and his rival Jusepe de Ribera dominated the painting scene for several decades. Most of his work, in both oils and fresco (these usually for ceilings), depicted religious subjects.

A papal knight, he is often referred to as Cavalliere Massimo Stanzione, especially in older sources.

Born in Frattamaggiore, Naples in 1585, Massimo Stanzione was influenced by Caravaggio.

What distinguished Massimo’s art from that of Caravaggio's was that he combined the latter's dramatically lit and brutally realistic style with the classical and lyrical manner of Bolognesi painters, earning him the nickname of the Napolitan Guido Reni.

Rembrandt | Adoration of the Magi, 1632 | Hermitage Museum

The Adoration of the Magi (anglicized from the Matthean Vulgate Latin section title: A Magis adoratur) is the name traditionally given to the subject in the Nativity of Jesus in art in which the three Magi, represented as kings, especially in the West, having found Jesus by following a star, lay before him gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh, and worship him.