Baroque
Baroque painting emerged in Italy around 1600, using dramatic light and expressive figures in religious and historical scenes that spread across Europe.
Painting Movement
Renaissance
Renaissance painting developed across Europe as artists revived classical ideas and used perspective, light, and anatomy to create balanced compositions.
Renaissance quick facts
The Renaissance is a broad historical period and set of related artistic traditions, not one organized painters' group or a single painting technique.
| Origin | Italian cities, especially Florence, with related developments across Northern Europe |
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| Approximate period | About 1400–1600 in Italy; regional dates varied, including Northern Renaissance traditions. |
| Classification | A broad historical period with regional painting traditions, not one organized movement. |
| Historical context | Urban patronage, religious commissions, humanist scholarship, renewed study of classical antiquity, and close observation of nature shaped artistic practice. Renaissance approaches to perspective, form, and classical subjects influenced European painting for centuries. |
| Common subjects | Christian stories, saints, portraits, mythology, classical figures, and historical narratives |
| Defining characteristics | Balanced compositions, modeled figures, classical forms, measured perspective, and attention to anatomy and light |
| Paint types | Oil paint on wood and traditional tempera on wood or canvas; fresco is a separate wall-painting technique. |
| Painting surfaces | Prepared wood panels and canvas for paintings; plaster for architectural frescoes. |
| Painting methods | Methods included underdrawing, linear perspective, oil glazing, tempera on prepared panels, and true fresco on damp plaster. Leonardo's Last Supper uses tempera-based paint on dry plaster, not traditional wet-plaster fresco. |
| Famous painters | Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, Raphael, Sandro Botticelli, and Albrecht Dürer |
| Representative works | Leonardo's The Virgin of the Rocks, Botticelli's Primavera, and Botticelli's The Birth of Venus |
Sources: National Gallery of Art: Italian Renaissance, National Gallery: Renaissance masterpieces, The Met: early tempera panel painting, and Last Supper museum: dry-plaster technique, The National Gallery: Leonardo's oil panel, Uffizi: Primavera, tempera grassa on wood, and Uffizi: The Birth of Venus, tempera on canvas.
Paint types in Renaissance
Renaissance painters used oil and tempera across panel, canvas, and wall works, with fresco remaining a distinct technique applied to wet plaster.
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Oil paint
Leonardo da Vinci's The Virgin of the Rocks (begun around 1491–92 and finished in stages through 1508) is oil on a poplar-wood panel. Its soft transitions of light and shadow show how layered oil painting could model figures in a dark grotto. This is the National Gallery's version, not the related earlier painting in the Louvre.
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Traditional tempera
Sandro Botticelli painted Primavera (around 1480) in tempera grassa, an oil-enriched tempera formulation, on wood. His The Birth of Venus (around 1485) instead uses tempera on canvas, then a common support for decorative works. The Uffizi identifies these materials specifically; neither painting should be described simply as an oil canvas.
Sources: The National Gallery: Leonardo's oil-on-poplar Virgin of the Rocks, Uffizi: Botticelli's Primavera in tempera grassa, and Uffizi: Botticelli's tempera-on-canvas Birth of Venus.
Famous painters from Renaissance
Leonardo, Michelangelo, and Raphael shaped the High Renaissance; Botticelli led in Florence, while Dürer developed a major Northern Renaissance practice.
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Leonardo da Vinci
In the National Gallery's Virgin of the Rocks, Leonardo layers oil paint to soften transitions between the figures and the dim grotto. The careful modeling of faces and hands shows how High Renaissance painting used controlled light to create a coherent space without hard outlines.
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Michelangelo
Michelangelo's Doni Tondo uses tempera grassa on a round panel, with tightly modeled figures arranged in a complex spiral. Its sculptural bodies and bright color carry his interest in anatomy into a painted family group, while his Sistine Chapel frescoes extend that figure-centered approach across a monumental ceiling.
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Raphael
Raphael's School of Athens organizes philosophers within a deep architectural space, using perspective and balanced groups to guide the eye toward its central figures. The Vatican fresco shows the High Renaissance preference for clear relationships between bodies, setting, and learned subject matter.
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Sandro Botticelli
Botticelli's Primavera brings mythological figures together in a shallow garden setting, where flowing contours and measured gestures connect the scene. His tempera painting favors clear line and patterned detail over deep spatial illusion, a distinctive Florentine approach within the broader Renaissance.
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Albrecht Dürer
Dürer's Adoration of the Magi combines close observation of plants, animals, and fabric with a carefully ordered religious scene. His painted panels link Northern Renaissance detail to Italian compositional ideas, while watercolor studies and prints show the broader technical range of his workshop practice.
Sources: National Gallery of Art: Italian Renaissance; National Gallery: Renaissance masterpieces; The Met: early tempera panel painting; Last Supper museum: dry-plaster technique; The National Gallery: Leonardo's oil panel; Uffizi: Primavera, tempera grassa on wood; Uffizi: The Birth of Venus, tempera on canvas.
Related painting movements
Mannerism extended High Renaissance forms, Baroque intensified drama, Neoclassicism revisited antique ideals, and Realism turned to contemporary life.
Neoclassicism
Neoclassicism emerged in eighteenth-century Europe, drawing on Greek and Roman art through clear contours, balanced compositions, and moral subjects.
Realism
Realism emerged in nineteenth-century France, depicting ordinary people, rural labor, and contemporary life without idealization or heroic subjects.
Mannerism
Mannerism developed in sixteenth-century Italy after the High Renaissance, using elongated figures, artificial color, and complex, unsettled compositions.