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Using this drawing- replicate as best you can

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Animals and fur

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Albrecht Dürer, sometimes spelled in English as Durer or Duerer, was a German painter, printmaker, and theorist of the German Renaissance. Born in Nuremberg, Dürer established his reputation and influence across Europe in his twenties due to his high-quality woodcut prints. He was in contact with the major Italian artists of his time, including Raphael, Giovanni Bellini, and Leonardo da Vinci, and from 1512 was patronized by Emperor Maximilian I.
Dürer's vast body of work includes engravings, his preferred technique in his later prints, altarpieces, portraits and self-portraits, watercolours and books. The woodcuts series are more Gothic than the rest of his work. His well-known engravings include the three Meisterstiche Knight, Death and the Devil, Saint Jerome in his Study, and Melencolia I. His watercolours mark him as one of the first European landscape artists, while his woodcuts revolutionised the potential of that medium.
Dürer's introduction of classical motifs into Northern art, through his knowledge of Italian artists and German humanists, has secured his reputation as one of the most important figures of the Northern Renaissance.

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Albrecht Dürer, sometimes spelled in English as Durer or Duerer, was a German painter, printmaker, and theorist of the German Renaissance. Born in Nuremberg, Dürer established his reputation and influence across Europe in his twenties due to his high-quality woodcut prints.

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Hand studies in pen

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Filippo Brunelleschi- The father of modern perspective

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Filippo Brunelleschi- The father of modern perspective

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Linear perspective was one of the art world’s greatest and most ingenious discoveries, but who was the very first to uncover its magic?

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Famous for his Etching and texture illustrations as well as painting

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Sir Peter Paul Rubens was a Flemish artist and diplomat from the Duchy of Brabant in the Southern Netherlands. He is considered the most influential artist of the Flemish Baroque tradition. Rubens's highly charged compositions reference erudite aspects of classical and Christian history. His unique and immensely popular Baroque style emphasized movement, colour, and sensuality, which followed the immediate, dramatic artistic style promoted in the Counter-Reformation. Rubens was a painter producing altarpieces, portraits, landscapes, and history paintings of mythological and allegorical subjects. He was also a prolific designer of cartoons for the Flemish tapestry workshops and of frontispieces for the publishers in Antwerp.
In addition to running a large workshop in Antwerp that produced paintings popular with nobility and art collectors throughout Europe, Rubens was a classically educated humanist scholar and diplomat who was knighted by both Philip IV of Spain and Charles I of England. Rubens was a prolific artist. The catalogue of his works by Michael Jaffé lists 1,403 pieces, excluding numerous copies made in his workshop.

"My talent is such that no undertaking, however vast in size... has ever surpassed my courage."

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Peter Paul Rubens - Google Arts & Culture

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Sir Peter Paul Rubens was a Flemish artist and diplomat from the Duchy of Brabant in the Southern Netherlands.

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He did a lot of self portraits

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While many seventeenth-century artists specialized in a particular type of subject, Rembrandt tried his hand at all imaginable genres. He painted portraits, landscapes, scenes from everyday life, historical events, literary events and scenes from the Bible, along with an occasional still life. The precise subject of this 1626 painting is unclear. We see a company of four people singing and making music.

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Rembrandt van Rijn (1606 - 1669) - Google Arts & Culture

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While many seventeenth-century artists specialized in a particular type of subject, Rembrandt tried his hand at all imaginable genres. He painted portraits, landscapes, scenes from everyday life, historical events, literary events and scenes from the Bible, along with an occasional still life. The precise subject of this 1626 painting is unclear.

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 Johannes Vermeer October 1632 - December 1675

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 Johannes Vermeer October 1632 - December 1675

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Milkmaid 1660

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Johannes Vermeer (1632 - 1675) - Google Arts & Culture

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One of the most celebrated Dutch 17th century masters

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An example of Michelangelo's painting with elaborate background

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Michaelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni Mar 6, 1475 - Feb 18, 1564

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Michaelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni Mar 6, 1475 - Feb 18, 1564

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Mar 6, 1475 - Feb 18, 1564

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Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio, known as Caravaggio, was an Italian painter active in Rome for most of his artistic life. During the final four years of his life he moved between Naples, Malta, and Sicily until his death. His paintings have been characterized by art critics as combining a realistic observation of the human state, both physical and emotional, with a dramatic use of lighting, which had a formative influence on Baroque painting.
Caravaggio employed close physical observation with a dramatic use of chiaroscuro that came to be known as tenebrism. He made the technique a dominant stylistic element, transfixing subjects in bright shafts of light and darkening shadows. Caravaggio vividly expressed crucial moments and scenes, often featuring violent struggles, torture, and death. He worked rapidly, with live models, preferring to forgo drawings and work directly onto the canvas. His inspiring effect on the new Baroque style that emerged from Mannerism was profound. His influence can be seen directly or indirectly in the work of Peter Paul Rubens, Jusepe de Ribera, Gian Lorenzo Bernini, and Rembrandt.

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Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio, known as Caravaggio, was an Italian painter active in Rome for most of his artistic life.

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A small portion of the chapel ceiling by Michelangelo

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Many developments and circumstances were necessary for artist to make their works. Albrecht became famous because the printing press became available.

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From Darkness to Light: The Renaissance Begins

During the Middle Ages, a period that took place between the fall of ancient Rome in 476 A.D. and the beginning of the 14th century, Europeans made few advances in science and art.

Also known as the "Dark Ages," the era is often branded as a time of war, ignorance, famine and pandemics such as the Black Death.

Some historians, however, believe that such grim depictions of the Middle Ages were greatly exaggerated, though many agree that there was relatively little regard for ancient Greek and Roman philosophies and learning at the time.

Humanism

During the 14th century, a cultural movement called humanism began to gain momentum in Italy. Among its many principles, humanism promoted the idea that man was the center of his own universe, and people should embrace human achievements in education, classical arts, literature and science.

In 1450, the invention of the Gutenberg printing press allowed for improved communication throughout Europe and for ideas to spread more quickly.

As a result of this advance in communication, little-known texts from early humanist authors such as those by Francesco Petrarch and Giovanni Boccaccio, which promoted the renewal of traditional Greek and Roman culture and values, were printed and distributed to the masses.

Additionally, many scholars believe advances in international finance and trade impacted culture in Europe and set the stage for the Renaissance.

Medici Family

The Renaissance started in Florence, Italy, a place with a rich cultural history where wealthy citizens could afford to support budding artists.

Members of the powerful Medici family, which ruled Florence for more than 60 years, were famous backers of the movement.

Great Italian writers, artists, politicians and others declared that they were participating in an intellectual and artistic revolution that would be much different from what they experienced during the Dark Ages.

The movement first expanded to other Italian city-states, such as Venice, Milan, Bologna, Ferrara and Rome. Then, during the 15th century, Renaissance ideas spread from Italy to France and then throughout western and northern Europe.

Although other European countries experienced their Renaissance later than Italy, the impacts were still revolutionary.

Renaissance Geniuses

Some of the most famous and groundbreaking Renaissance intellectuals, artists, scientists and writers include the likes of:

Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519): Italian painter, architect, inventor and "Renaissance man" responsible for painting "The Mona Lisa" and "The Last Supper.

Desiderius Erasmus (1466-1536): Scholar from Holland who defined the humanist movement in Northern Europe. Translator of the New Testament into Greek.

Rene Descartes (1596-1650): French philosopher and mathematician regarded as the father of modern philosophy. Famous for stating, "I think; therefore I am."

Galileo (1564-1642): Italian astronomer, physicist and engineer whose pioneering work with telescopes enabled him to describes the moons of Jupiter and rings of Saturn. Placed under house arrest for his views of a heliocentric universe.

Nicolaus Copernicus (1473-1543): Mathematician and astronomer who made first modern scientific argument for the concept of a heliocentric solar system.

Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679): English philosopher and author of "Leviathan."

Geoffrey Chaucer (1343-1400): English poet and author of "The Canterbury Tales."

Giotto (1266-1337): Italian painter and architect whose more realistic depictions of human emotions influenced generations of artists. Best known for his frescoes in the Scrovegni Chapel in Padua.

Dante (1265-1321): Italian philosopher, poet, writer and political thinker who authored "The Divine Comedy."

Niccolo Machiavelli (1469-1527): Italian diplomat and philosopher famous for writing "The Prince" and "The Discourses on Livy."

Titian (1488-1576): Italian painter celebrated for his portraits of Pope Paul III and Charles I and his later religious and mythical paintings like "Venus and Adonis" and "Metamorphoses."

William Tyndale (1494-1536): English biblical translator, humanist and scholar burned at the stake for translating the Bible into English.

William Byrd (1539/40-1623): English composer known for his development of the English madrigal and his religious organ music.

John Milton (1608-1674): English poet and historian who wrote the epic poem "Paradise Lost."

William Shakespeare (1564-1616): England's "national poet" and the most famous playwright of all time, celebrated for his sonnets and plays like "Romeo and Juliet."

Donatello (1386-1466): Italian sculptor celebrated for lifelike sculptures like "David," commissioned by the Medici family.

Sandro Botticelli (1445-1510): Italian painter of "Birth of Venus."

Raphael (1483-1520): Italian painter who learned from da Vinci and Michelangelo. Best known for his paintings of the Madonna and "The School of Athens."

Michelangelo (1475-1564): Italian sculptor, painter and architect who carved "David" and painted The Sistine Chapel in Rome.

Renaissance Impact on Art, Architecture and Science

Art, architecture and science were closely linked during the Renaissance. In fact, it was a unique time when these fields of study fused together seamlessly.

For instance, artists like da Vinci incorporated scientific principles, such as anatomy into their work, so they could recreate the human body with extraordinary precision.

Architects such as Filippo Brunelleschi studied mathematics to accurately engineer and design immense buildings with expansive domes.

Scientific discoveries led to major shifts in thinking: Galileo and Descartes presented a new view of astronomy and mathematics, while Copernicus proposed that the Sun, not the Earth, was the center of the solar system.

Renaissance art was characterized by realism and naturalism. Artists strived to depict people and objects in a true-to-life way.

They used techniques, such as perspective, shadows and light to add depth to their work. Emotion was another quality that artists tried to infuse into their pieces.

Some of the most famous artistic works that were produced during the Renaissance include:

The Mona Lisa (Da Vinci)

The Last Supper (Da Vinci)

Statue of David (Michelangelo)

The Birth of Venus (Botticelli)

The Creation of Adam (Michelangelo)

Renaissance Exploration

While many artists and thinkers used their talents to express new ideas, some Europeans took to the seas to learn more about the world around them. In a period known as the Age of Discovery, several important explorations were made.

Voyagers launched expeditions to travel the entire globe. They discovered new shipping routes to the Americas, India and the Far East and explorers trekked across areas that weren't fully mapped.

Famous journeys were taken by Ferdinand Magellan, Christopher Columbus, Amerigo Vespucci (after whom America is named), Marco Polo, Ponce de Leon, Vasco Núñez de Balboa, Hernando De Soto and other explorers.

Renaissance Religion

Humanism encouraged Europeans to question the role of the Roman Catholic church during the Renaissance.

As more people learned how to read, write and interpret ideas, they began to closely examine and critique religion as they knew it. Also, the printing press allowed for texts, including the Bible, to be easily reproduced and widely read by the people, themselves, for the first time.

In the 16th century, Martin Luther, a German monk, led the Protestant Reformation - a revolutionary movement that caused a split in the Catholic church. Luther questioned many of the practices of the church and whether they aligned with the teachings of the Bible.

As a result, a new form of Christianity, known as Protestantism, was created.

End of the Renaissance

Scholars believe the demise of the Renaissance was the result of several compounding factors.

By the end of the 15th century, numerous wars had plagued the Italian peninsula. Spanish, French and German invaders battling for Italian territories caused disruption and instability in the region.

Also, changing trade routes led to a period of economic decline and limited the amount of money that wealthy contributors could spend on the arts.

Later, in a movement known as the Counter-Reformation, the Catholic church censored artists and writers in response to the Protestant Reformation. Many Renaissance thinkers feared being too bold, which stifled creativity.

Furthermore, in 1545, the Council of Trent established the Roman Inquisition, which made humanism and any views that challenged the Catholic church an act of heresy punishable by death.

By the early 17th century, the Renaissance movement had died out, giving way to the Age of Enlightenment.

Debate Over the Renaissance

While many scholars view the Renaissance as a unique and exciting time in European history, others argue that the period wasn't much different from the Middle Ages and that both eras overlapped more than traditional accounts suggest.

Also, some modern historians believe that the Middle Ages had a cultural identity that's been downplayed throughout history and overshadowed by the Renaissance era.

While the exact timing and overall impact of the Renaissance is sometimes debated, there's little dispute that the events of the period ultimately led to advances that changed the way people understood and interpreted the world around them.

HISTORY Vault: World History

Sources

The Renaissance, History World International.
The Renaissance - Why it Changed the World, The Telegraph.
Facts About the Renaissance, Biography Online.
Facts About the Renaissance Period, Interestingfacts.org.
What is Humanism? International Humanist and Ethical Union.
Why Did the Italian Renaissance End? Dailyhistory.org.
The Myth of the Renaissance in Europe, BBC.

HISTORY Vault

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Renaissance Period: Timeline, Art & Facts

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The Renaissance was a fervent period of European cultural, artistic, political and economic "rebirth" following the Middle Ages.

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Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni, known simply as Michelangelo, was an Italian sculptor, painter, architect and poet of the High Renaissance born in the Republic of Florence, who exerted an unparalleled influence on the development of Western art. His artistic versatility was of such a high order that he is often considered a contender for the title of the archetypal Renaissance man, along with his rival and elder contemporary, Leonardo da Vinci. Several scholars have described Michelangelo as the greatest artist of his age and even as the greatest artist of all time.
A number of Michelangelo's works of painting, sculpture, and architecture rank among the most famous in existence. His output in these fields was prodigious; given the sheer volume of surviving correspondence, sketches, and reminiscences, he is the best-documented artist of the 16th century. He sculpted two of his best-known works, the Pietà and David, before the age of thirty.

"The best of artists has no conception that the marble alone does not contain within itself."

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Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni, known simply as Michelangelo, was an Italian sculptor, painter, architect and poet of the High Renaissance born...

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The David Sculpture by Michelangelo

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Michelangelo sculpted the tomb of the Duke of Urbino

(1492-1519), nephew of Leo X, during his last years in Florence between 1531 and 1532.

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Some academic scholars have suggested that Michelangelo predominantly used male models in his figure studies and thats why many of his dipictions of figures all look like body builders.

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Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci, known as Leonardo da Vinci, was an Italian polymath of the Renaissance whose areas of interest included invention, drawing, painting, sculpture, architecture, science, music, mathematics, engineering, literature, anatomy, geology, astronomy, botany, paleontology, and cartography. He has been variously called the father of palaeontology, ichnology, and architecture, and is widely considered one of the greatest painters of all time.
Born out of wedlock to a notary, Piero da Vinci, and a peasant woman, Caterina, in Vinci, in the region of Florence, Italy, Leonardo was educated in the studio of the renowned Italian painter Andrea del Verrocchio. Much of his earlier working life was spent in the service of Ludovico il Moro in Milan, and he later worked in Rome, Bologna and Venice. He spent his last three years in France, where he died in 1519.
Leonardo is renowned primarily as a painter. The Mona Lisa is the most famous of his works and the most popular portrait ever made. The Last Supper is the most reproduced religious painting of all time and his Vitruvian Man drawing is regarded as a cultural icon as well.

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Leonardo da Vinci - Google Arts & Culture

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Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci, known as Leonardo da Vinci, was an Italian polymath of the Renaissance whose areas of interest included invention, drawing, painting, sculpture, architecture, science, music, mathematics, engineering, literature, anatomy, geology, astronomy, botany, paleontology, and cartography.

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Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni, known simply as Michelangelo, was an Italian sculptor, painter, architect and poet of the High Renaissance born in the Republic of Florence, who exerted an unparalleled influence on the development of Western art. His artistic versatility was of such a high order that he is often considered a contender for the title of the archetypal Renaissance man, along with his rival and elder contemporary, Leonardo da Vinci. Several scholars have described Michelangelo as the greatest artist of his age and even as the greatest artist of all time.
A number of Michelangelo's works of painting, sculpture, and architecture rank among the most famous in existence. His output in these fields was prodigious; given the sheer volume of surviving correspondence, sketches, and reminiscences, he is the best-documented artist of the 16th century. He sculpted two of his best-known works, the Pietà and David, before the age of thirty.

"The best of artists has no conception that the marble alone does not contain within itself."

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Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni, known simply as Michelangelo, was an Italian sculptor, painter, architect and poet of the High Renaissance born...

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Animals and fur

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Albrecht Dürer, sometimes spelled in English as Durer or Duerer, was a German painter, printmaker, and theorist of the German Renaissance. Born in Nuremberg, Dürer established his reputation and influence across Europe in his twenties due to his high-quality woodcut prints. He was in contact with the major Italian artists of his time, including Raphael, Giovanni Bellini, and Leonardo da Vinci, and from 1512 was patronized by Emperor Maximilian I.
Dürer's vast body of work includes engravings, his preferred technique in his later prints, altarpieces, portraits and self-portraits, watercolours and books. The woodcuts series are more Gothic than the rest of his work. His well-known engravings include the three Meisterstiche Knight, Death and the Devil, Saint Jerome in his Study, and Melencolia I. His watercolours mark him as one of the first European landscape artists, while his woodcuts revolutionised the potential of that medium.
Dürer's introduction of classical motifs into Northern art, through his knowledge of Italian artists and German humanists, has secured his reputation as one of the most important figures of the Northern Renaissance.

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Albrecht Dürer, sometimes spelled in English as Durer or Duerer, was a German painter, printmaker, and theorist of the German Renaissance. Born in Nuremberg, Dürer established his reputation and influence across Europe in his twenties due to his high-quality woodcut prints.

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pen and ink and watercolor, fantasy, fairy tales

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Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn, usually simply known as Rembrandt, was a Dutch Golden Age painter, printmaker and draughtsman.

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Richard Avedon - Photos, American West & Career

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American photographer Richard Avedon was best known for his work in the fashion world and for his minimalist, large-scale character-revealing portraits.

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It is one of the iconic photographs of the 20th Century, an image that is synonymous with love and with Paris, the city of romance. Its name is Le Baiser de l'Hôtel de Ville (The Kiss by the Hôtel de Ville) and an exhibition at the Martin-Gropius-Bau in Berlin is currently displaying it alongside another hundred or so pictures by the great French photographer Robert Doisneau.

"People like my photos because they see in them what they would see if they stopped rushing about and took the time to enjoy the city," Robert Doisneau used to say. It is very true, however, perhaps surprisingly, his most famous picture was staged, says Francine Deroudille, Robert Doisneau's daughter and co-curator of the exhibition, as she reveals the story behind Le Baiser de l'Hôtel de Ville to BBC Culture.

"The picture was taken in the spring 1950. My father's agent had pitched a series on 'the lovers of Paris' to American publications and Life magazine had commissioned it," Deroudille explains.

At the time, image rights were already protected by law and a cautious Robert Doisneau preferred to use friends or young actors to feature in some of his commissioned reportage, in order to avoid legal issues. One afternoon in March 1950, Doisneau went out into the streets of Paris with young actor friends and just let them be: they walked, held hands, talked, and kissed, with Doisneau never far behind. "His models weren't models in the sense that they didn't pose. Doisneau was simply catching them flirting and kissing, in a very natural way, " says Deroudille.

The result, a kiss caught at the corner of rue du Renard and rue de Rivoli right across from the city's town hall, feels like the best of Doisneau: a suspended moment whose beauty is known only to the lovers and the photographer. Around them, indifferent Parisians walk, hardly noticing the young couple; cars shoot by and people seated at a café (now a shoe shop) speak animatedly.

But, we, sharing Doisneau's gaze, stop in our tracks in front of this picture: the immediacy of it, the young bodies' movement and the place and time, Paris, 1950, cast a spell on the viewer. Who cares about authenticity? The sentiments showed in the picture are authentic. Truth here lies in the beauty of the impulse and a spontaneity that is closely linked to the French spirit and its capital city.

"At the time, American magazines were very keen on Paris stories, especially stories covering the life in Paris streets where people behaved much more freely than anywhere in America. Even in New York's streets, couples weren't seen kissing, and certainly never with such carefree abandon," says Francine Deroudille.

However, after it was shot, and published in Life Magazine, the picture remained just one of many in the very large Doisneau portfolio (today totalling 450,000 negatives, and managed by his two daughters Francine and Annette). Doisneau himself didn't think it such an extraordinary picture.

"He thought it was well composed but nothing more" says his daughter. "And then, 30 years later, in the early 1980s, a young publisher suggested to publish it again, in poster format. Doisneau wasn't convinced but all the young people at the Rapho agency where he worked were so enthusiastic that he accepted." The success was instant and global. How did Doisneau explain his picture's sudden and universal success? "We all realised that it represented a perfect fantasy. It encapsulates the world's view of Paris as the city of love and freedom."
'A humanist photographer'
Robert Doisneau's photographs are intimately associated with Paris at a time when the city was the world capital of arts and culture. "He was in awe of Paris and his love never faltered until his death in 1994," says Deroudille. Doisneau documented Paris's evolution from the 1930s up to the late 1980s; he saw and often welcomed both social and architectural changes. "Paris has this intrinsic beauty which touches everyone who visits or lives here. Paris has this ability of making you happy, it certainly made him very happy," reveals Deroudille.

Doisneau wasn't the only one fascinated by Paris's grandeur and its myriad small pleasures. Eugène Atget, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Brassaï, André Kertész, Willy Ronis, Robert Capa, among many others, have made Paris the most photographed city of the 20th Century. Their pictures have shaped the world's perception of the city, enhancing and enchanting the reality. Decades later, we still see Paris as a place where mystery and charm take you by surprise at almost every corner.

Much of Doisneau's work came out of commissions from newspapers and magazines, but he always used his assignments as opportunities to catch moments that interested him personally. With his Rolleiflex, he photographed building facades, interiors, river banks, children playing, passers-by, wedding couples.

"He felt comfortable everywhere, in the poor areas and the posh districts of Paris. What he enjoyed most was to show all the facets of Paris even if he had a particular fondness for Paris's children and its working class," says Deroudille. Often referred to as a 'humanist photographer', Doisneau's pictures focused on people by making the private and the personal visible. For decades, Paris streets, in which Parisians lived day and night to escape small, shabby and decrepit lodgings, offered the best of theatre. "Parisians don't live as much in the streets as they used to, however, cafés' terraces, the habit of walking and ' flâner ', the concentration of shops such as bakeries and food markets, mean that the spirit remains and continues to fascinate visitors," says Francine Deroudille.

But what would Doisneau make of today's photography? Of selfies and Instagram fads? "He would have loved to see that photography had become accessible to all. However, [I] am sure he would have been aghast by the selfie culture which, in many ways, is a vain obsession with the self to the detriment of a wider view," says Deroudille.

Doisneau, a modest man, valued empathy with others, simplicity, and above all, spontaneity.

If you would like to comment on this story or anything else you have seen on BBC Culture, head over to our Facebook page or message us on Twitter.
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One of history's most romantic photographs was staged

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A shot that Robert Doisneau took of two people kissing has become intrinsically related to Paris - and to romance. Agnès Poirier takes a closer look.

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His buildings are found across the globe, and include the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland, Ohio, and the John F. Kennedy Library in Boston. In Japan the Miho Museum bears his imprint, while he gave Singapore The Gateway - a skyscraper complex known for its striking angles.

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I M Pei: His most iconic buildings in pictures

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His works range from the famous Louvre Museum pyramid in Paris, to Hong Kong's Bank of China Tower.

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Peter Zumthor’s Bruder Klaus Field Chapel Through the Lens of Aldo Amoretti

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The Bruder Klaus Field Chapel by Peter Zumthor, completed in 2007, is known for its beautiful respect for the materials which were used to construct…

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Bruder Klaus Field Chapel | Peter zumthor architecture, Peter zumthor, Architecture drawing

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Dec 20, 2019 - The Bruder Klaus Field Chapel by architect Peter Zumthor was built in Mechernich, Eifel, Germany in 2007.

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13 Iconic Buildings Designed by Frank Gehry

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Frank Gehry’s recognizable designs are often cited as being among the most important works of contemporary architecture.

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Giovanni Battista Piranesi - Carceri Series

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Giovanni Battista Piranesi - Carceri Series

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Horizontal rectangle. Multiple vaults supported on rusticated piers and strengthened by wooden cross-beams. A broad staircase rises to the left. Center right, Calcografia number 362.

Explore museums and play with Art Transfer, Pocket Galleries, Art Selfie, and more

Recommended

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Carceri Series, Plate XIV - Giovanni Battista Piranesi - Google Arts & Culture

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Horizontal rectangle. Multiple vaults supported on rusticated piers and strengthened by wooden cross-beams. A broad staircase rises to the left. Center right, Calcografia number 362. Explore museums and play with Art Transfer, Pocket Galleries, Art Selfie, and more Recommended

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Hogarth is best known for his series paintings of 'modern moral subjects', of which he sold engravings on subscription. The Collection contains the set called 'Marriage A-la-Mode'. Although pugnaciously hostile to Continental art, he succumbed to French influence. In 1753 he published his 'Analysis of Beauty', in which he stresses the importance of the serpentine line.

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Movie scene of moving staircases in Harry Potter

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Movie scene of moving staircases in Harry Potter

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Did Esher or Pirrannse influence this scene?

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The scene of Harry Potter and the sorcerer's stone with the moving stairs.

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Light and Shadow - Chiaroscuro

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Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio, known as Caravaggio, was an Italian painter active in Rome for most of his artistic life. During the final four years of his life he moved between Naples, Malta, and Sicily until his death. His paintings have been characterized by art critics as combining a realistic observation of the human state, both physical and emotional, with a dramatic use of lighting, which had a formative influence on Baroque painting.
Caravaggio employed close physical observation with a dramatic use of chiaroscuro that came to be known as tenebrism. He made the technique a dominant stylistic element, transfixing subjects in bright shafts of light and darkening shadows. Caravaggio vividly expressed crucial moments and scenes, often featuring violent struggles, torture, and death. He worked rapidly, with live models, preferring to forgo drawings and work directly onto the canvas. His inspiring effect on the new Baroque style that emerged from Mannerism was profound. His influence can be seen directly or indirectly in the work of Peter Paul Rubens, Jusepe de Ribera, Gian Lorenzo Bernini, and Rembrandt.

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Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio, known as Caravaggio, was an Italian painter active in Rome for most of his artistic life.

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line, textures, negative space, fantasy, and spot color

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Childrens book author and illustrator

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Movie Poster Artist

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 cartooning, caricature, expressive line and water color

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How it was built

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'The Bean' is one of Chicago's most famous landmarks. These pics show how it was built.

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"An Inventive and Creating Genius:" Drawings by Giovanni Battista Piranesi

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Christos preliminary drawings for the wrapped arche

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Christos preliminary drawings for the wrapped arche

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The Arc de Triomphe in Paris will be swathed in silvery blue fabric and red rope as a posthumous project planned by the artist Christo since the early 1960s finally becomes reality.

Work will begin next month on L'Arc de Triomphe, Wrapped, a €14m installation at one of the world's most recognised monuments. The arch will be swathed in 25,000 sq metres of recyclable polypropylene fabric, fixed with 3,000 metres of red rope, also recyclable.

The project is the realisation of a dream spanning almost 60 years for Christo and his French wife, Jeanne-Claude, who first drew up plans to wrap the Arc de Triomphe in 1962 while renting a small room near the monument.

"A photo montage of how it would look was done but they never proposed actually doing it because they thought they would never get the necessary permission," Christo's nephew Vladimir Yavachev told the Guardian last week.

"We can do this project without him today because they [Christo and Jeanne-Claude] already drew up every visual and artistic aspect of it. This project is 100% Christo and Jeanne-Claude's project. It was his wish that this should happen even after he was gone. We are just realising his vision."

The idea was revived in 2017 to coincide with a Christo exhibition and has been approved by the Paris city authorities and the Centre des monuments nationaux, which oversees public monuments. Jeanne-Claude died in 2009 and Christo died in May last year.

Construction teams will work for 12 weeks to begin building the installation after France's traditional Bastille Day 14 July commemorations on the Champs Elysées, which starts at the Arc de Triomphe, to complete it before 18 September. Like most of Christo's work, it will be temporary. On 3 October, work will begin to remove the wrapping in time for the November Armistice Day ceremonies.

The project has been entirely funded through the sale of Christo's preparatory studies, drawings and collages of the project as well as scale models, works from the 1950s and 1960s and original lithographs on other subjects. It will receive no public funds.

The Eternal Flame, in front of the tomb of the Unknown Warrior at the Arc de Triomphe, will continue to burn throughout the preparation and display of the artwork.

Born Christo Vladimirov Javecheff in Bulgaria, the artist studied in Sofia but defected to the west in 1957, stowing away on a train from Prague to Vienna and on via Geneva to Paris, where he met Jeanne-Claude Denat de Guillebon, who became his wife and artistic partner until her death. The couple moved to New York in 1964, spending their first three years there as illegal immigrants.

Among Christo's most famous works were wrapping the entire Reichstag in Berlin in 1995 and the Pont-Neuf in Paris in 1985.

Anne Hidalgo, the mayor of Paris, said: "Thirty-five years after Pont-Neuf, one of the most ambitious projects of Christo and Jeanne-Claude will see the day ... the Arc de Triomphe will be wrapped according to Christo's wishes to highlight this symbolic monument of our capital and our history. More than a year after Christo's death, Paris is continuing the work of this great artist. It is an opportunity to say 'thank you' to him and to defend our attachment to contemporary creation."

L'Arc de Triomphe, Wrappedwas due to take place last year to coincide with a Christo exhibition at Paris's Pompidou Centre, but was cancelled because of Covid.

Yavachev said there was another unforeseen hitch. "The French bird protection league contacted us and said there was a kestrel falcon nesting in the monument and could we postpone the project until September," he said.

Christo with his project in 2019. 'They never proposed actually doing it because they thought they would never get the necessary permission.' Photograph: 2019 Estate of Christo Javecheff

In an interview last year, while under Covid isolation shortly before his death, Christo gave an interview and recalled being invited to do "something" outside the Pompidou Centre to coincide with his exhibition. He replied: "I will never do anything here. If I do something, it will be to wrap the Arc de Triomphe, but nothing else.

"The packaging of the Arc de Triomphe is quite special," Christo said. "It all came together quite suddenly. The proposal goes back to 1962, of course, but the authorisation was granted suddenly. "I never imagined that this would happen."

The artist said he had barely 18 months to draw up the concrete details of the Arc de Triomphe project.

"We had 10 years for the Pont Neuf. We had 25 years for the Reichstag because it was refused three times. We waited 26 years for the Gates [Central Park, New York] after being turned down again and again. That's not patience ... Jeanne-Claude always said it was passion," he said.

"In the 1960s I made several plans that we sold to finance other projects. At the end of the 1980s I even made a very elaborate collage edition with fabric; we thought at that time that the Arc de Triomphe project would never see the light of day. Honestly, it's strange how suddenly everything came together."

He added: "I never though it would ever happen ... But I want you to know that many of these projects can be built without me. Everything is already written."

This article was amended on 12 September 2021 to change the spelling of Vladimir's surname "Javacheff" to Yavachev, in the light of new guidance from the family on the transliteration of the name from the Bulgarian Cyrillic alphabet.

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L'Arc de Triomphe, Wrapped: Christo's dream being realised

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Work begins next month to swathe monument in blue fabric a year after Bulgarian-born artist's death

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A child in front of Paris's Arc de Triomphe, wrapped in fabric, as it was designed by the late artists Christo and Jeanne-Claude, who had dreamed of the project for decades. (Alain Jocard/AFP/Getty Images)

Christo, the artist who died last year after wrapping everything from a stretch of rocky coastline in Australia to Berlin's parliament house, the Reichstag, had a long-term dream: to wrap Paris's Arc de Triomphe. The project, which was still in the planning stages when he died, has been realized posthumously. "L'Arc de Triomphe, Wrapped," which was declared open on Saturday and will run until Oct. 3, has been attracting big crowds, as you can see on a live feed on YouTube.

Why would anyone conceal something that was built to be seen - and which most people would consider too big to wrap?

Like so many of the projects of Christo (1935-2020) and his wife, Jeanne-Claude (1935-2009), wrapping the Arc de Triomphe was an impressive logistical feat. Much of the media attention has understandably focused on the scale of the project (270,000 square feet of polypropylene fabric, shimmery gray to match the zinc roofs of Paris; almost 1.9 miles of red rope), the number of workers involved (1,200), the technical challenges (protecting the arch's sculptural reliefs and nesting falcons), the bureaucratic impediments and the delays caused by environmental concerns and then covid-19.

But logistics are logistics. Once you have said "wow," there's little left to add. In the end, we're talking about a work of art, not a bridge or a tunnel, so it's more interesting to wonder what it means - to you, to me, to the people of France - to wrap the world's most famous triumphal arch in pleated fabric. What does "L'Arc de Triomphe, Wrapped" evoke? What emotions does it stir?

Beauty, unquestionably, is part of it. To convert something as solid and sturdy as the Arc de Triomphe into a gently billowing, pleated wrap, like a Greek gown cinched at the waist, is an act of useless - and splendid - beauty.

Charles Baudelaire, who haunted the streets of Paris during France's Second Empire, described beauty as one part timeless ("eternal and invariable") and one part ephemeral ("relative, circumstantial"). In his great essay " The Painter of Modern Life," he upheld the importance of all the aspects of beauty in that second category, the things that didn't last: The pageant of fashion. The sketch of manners. Curiosity. Appetite. Eros.

Christo and Jeanne-Claude's "L'Arc de Triomphe, Wrapped" belongs in that same category. The Arc de Triomphe was erected at the behest of Napoleon Bonaparte. It was intended as a tribute to his and France's everlasting glory, whereas the duo's wrapped arch is a salute to circumstantial beauty. It's temporary. It's lightweight. It's responsive to the wind and the changing light and the world around it. And after just 16 days, it will be gone.

But it goes deeper than beauty. It's also a question of ethics. Christo (who was born Christo Vladimirov Javacheff) loved beauty, but he cared just as much about freedom. He had attended art school in communist Bulgaria where, as his nephew and this project's director Vladimir Yavachev told the New York Times, "he was criticized by the authorities because the peasants in his painting did not look happy enough!" This assertion of control over the artistic impulse bred in Christo a lifelong distrust of making things look as the authorities wanted them to look.

Like most public monuments, the original Arc de Triomphe expresses an idea. It is the idea of national glory - what the French call "la gloire" - achieved through military victory and underwritten by tragedy. When you wrap that idea, it seems to me that you are concealing it, snuffing it out. At least temporarily. Why would an artist do that?

There are many possible reasons. We can each find our own. We certainly don't have to pin them down. But when we cover something up - when we put on clothes, paint over graffiti, or erect facades around rubble - we are concealing shame, and specifically the shame we attach to ugliness (shame is always ugly).

When Christo and Jeanne-Claude wrapped the Reichstag in Berlin, it read to me primarily as a way to acknowledge - by conspicuously covering up - the shame associated with Germany's 20th century, and the weight of responsibility borne in particular by that one building, a seat of national power.

Florian Philippot, a far-right politician in France, recently denounced the wrapped Arc de Triomphe as "a garbage bag draped over one of our most glorious monuments." It's easy to imagine a similar response on Fox News if an artist were to wrap Mount Rushmore or the Capitol.

But Christo might not actually have disputed M. Philippot's characterization. He was, if I read him right, extremely skeptical about the virtue or necessity of "glorious monuments." He couldn't say it openly (it would have made getting the permissions and public support he needed extremely difficult), but I think he thought the very idea of an "arch of triumph" was garbage - an expression of what Wilfred Owen called " the old Lie," that "it is sweet and fitting to die for one's country." Garbage needs to be wrapped.

Napoleon had the Arc de Triomphe erected in 1806, at the height of his power. In retrospect, it was one of the most delusional moments in French history. Napoleon was a complex figure. His positive achievements were considerable. But his dream of European domination wasdoomed to collapse within a few short years. It was founded on earlier imperial dreams (Alexander the Great, Imperial Rome, the Holy Roman Empire), and after his death, it continued to seed more dreams of radical territorial expansion (colonialism, the Third Reich).

You could see his era as glorious - and many still do - but only, I suspect, if you were looking from a great distance. Look closer, let in more reality, and the picture changes dramatically. Where was the glory in the catastrophic retreat from Russia, where order broke down, soldiers froze to death and ate their own horses? Where was the glory in the terror and barbarity of the Peninsular War (which Goya depicted in his " Disasters of War " etchings)?

So much of the Napoleonic "adventure" was in fact a debacle. But ever since his demise, France has had trouble casting off his spell. His nephew, Louis-Napoleon, assumed power in a coup in 1851 riding the coattails of "la gloire." But his reign ended in September 1870 when his reckless declaration of war against Prussia ended in a swift and humiliating defeat. Louis-Napoleon - or Napoleon III as he fashioned himself - was taken captive at Sedan, and Paris was besieged for more than four months.

America has the recent experiences of Afghanistan, Iraq and Vietnam to remind it that every war has unintended consequences. At the beginning of 1871, when Paris was still surrounded by an enemy army and reduced to eating horses and rats, Otto von Bismarck masterminded the unification of Prussia with the smaller German-speaking states to its south to form the nation of Germany - an unintended consequence that turned out very badly for France in the first half of the 20th century.

The fact that the unification ceremony took place in the Hall of Mirrors at Versailles - France's former royal palace - only deepened the humiliation. And when Paris finally surrendered, the German army exacerbated the shame of defeat by marching through the Arc de Triomphe and along the Champs-Élysées.

What happens to the idea of a triumphal arch when your enemy is marching through it?

It isn't canceled out. It is simply reversed. The result will be more shame and a thirst for revenge. The cycle of violence will continue. Which, of course, is exactly what happened. It is impossible to understand the causes of the first and second world wars without registering the humiliation felt by France in 1870-71.

Christo wanted to cancel it all out. Or at least, to toy with that idea - to invite us all to imagine what would happen if we did away with triumphal arches, with "la gloire" and with military parades. The idea of military glory was inimical to his and Jeanne-Claude's conception of art, to their sense of freedom and beauty and their longing for a shared humanity.

Wrapping a triumphal arch is a way of creating something beautiful that also says: Enough with your delusions of grandeur. Away with your nationalist rhetoric, your dreams of world conquest. Away with all lies. Let us instead gaze at something solemn, poignantly mute, and beautiful to boot. And after we do that, let us take a moment to bow our heads in shame as we contemplate the millions of lives lost for the sake of such lies.

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Perspective | Christo and Jeanne-Claude's wrap of L'Arc de Triomphe reads like a salient point on hollow glory

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Christo, the artist who died last year after wrapping everything from a stretch of rocky coastline in Australia to Berlin's parliament house, the Reichstag, had a long-term dream: to wrap Paris's Arc de Triomphe. The project, which was still in the planning stages when he died, has been realized posthumously.

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Tara Donovan’s sculptures, drawings, prints, and large-scale installations transform the banality of everyday objects into the extraordinary.

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The Most Iconic Sculptures by Richard Serra

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Richard Serra is an American artist and sculptor involved in a Process Art Movement, here’s a look through his most iconic sculptures.

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Horizontal rectangle. Multiple vaults supported on rusticated piers and strengthened by wooden cross-beams. A broad staircase rises to the left. Center right, Calcografia number 362.

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Early years

Brunelleschi was the second of three sons of Ser Brunellesco di Lippo Lapi, a Florentine notary of some distinction, and Giuliana Spini. After training as a goldsmith and sculptor, he applied for registration in the Arte della Seta and in 1401 was designated a master. Brunelleschi competed with Lorenzo Ghiberti and five other sculptors in 1401 to obtain the commission to make the bronze reliefs for the door of the Baptistery of Florence. Brunelleschi's trial panel depicting The Sacrifice of Isaac is the high point of his career as a sculptor. His ability to arrest narrative action at the moment of its greatest dramatic impact and the vigorous gestures and animated expressions of the figures account for the merit of his panel. It was Ghiberti, however, who was declared the winner of the commission. Brunelleschi's extreme disappointment at losing the commission probably accounted for his decision to concentrate his talents on architecture instead of sculpture.

While still in the early phase of his architectural career (probably c. 1410-15), Brunelleschi rediscovered the principles of linear perspective known to the Greeks and Romans but buried along with many other aspects of ancient civilization during the European Middle Ages. Brunelleschi demonstrated his findings with two painted panels, now lost, depicting Florentine streets and buildings. From Manetti's descriptions it is clear that Brunelleschi had understood the concept of a single vanishing point, toward which all parallel lines drawn on the same plane appear to converge, and the principle of the relationship between distance and the diminution of objects as they appear to recede in space. By using the optical and geometric principles upon which Brunelleschi's perspective devices were based, the artists of his generation were able to produce works of astonishing realism. On two-dimensional surfaces they were able to create extraordinary illusions of three-dimensional space and tangible objects, so that the work of art appeared to be either an extension of the real world or a mirror of nature. Although the laws governing perspective construction were brought to light by Brunelleschi, they were codified for the first time by the humanist architect Leon Battista Alberti. In 1435 Alberti set them down in Della pittura (On Painting), his famous treatise on painting, which included a warm dedication to Brunelleschi-undoubtedly an expression of Alberti's debt to his friend's revolutionary discovery.

Architectural career

Solving complex problems of engineering and statics was another facet of Brunelleschi's wide-ranging abilities. The machines that Brunelleschi invented for the construction of the soaring dome of the Duomo and its lantern (a structure set on top of the dome to help illuminate the interior) and his scheme for the construction itself represent his greatest feats of technological ingenuity. The cathedral was begun in 1296; during the 14th century the nave was completed and work commenced on the complex octagon of the east end. By 1418 construction had reached the stage at which the technical problems of constructing a vault above the enormous dimensions of the octagon had to be solved. These problems had involved previous generations of cathedral architects in bitter disputes. It was Brunelleschi who worked out a successful method to vault the dome, invented the machinery necessary to carry it out, and designed the structure's crowning lantern and its lateral tribunes (semicircular structures). He was named chief architect ( capomaestro) of the dome project in 1420 and remained in that office until his death in 1446.

In 1418 the cathedral officials announced a prize for models presenting technical devices for the construction of the dome, which had been designed in the late Gothic period as an eight-sided vault of pointed curvature without exterior buttresses (structures built for additional support). Brunelleschi, along with many others (including his archrival, Lorenzo Ghiberti), submitted a model. In 1420 a decision was reached in favour of Brunelleschi's model, which demonstrated that the dome could be constructed without the traditional armature, or wooden skeletal framework, by placing the brickwork in herringbone patterns between a framework of stone beams. This construction technique had been evolved by the ancient Romans and had possibly been first observed by Brunelleschi on his supposed trip to Rome (c. 1401) with his friend the sculptor Donatello, when both of these giants of early Renaissance art are believed to have studied classical sculpture and architecture. In 1420 Brunelleschi's dome was begun; in 1436 the completed structure was consecrated, and, in the same year, his design for its lantern was approved. (The lantern, however, was not completed until after his death.) The imagination and the engineering calculations that led to the successful erection of the dome established Brunelleschi's fame.

Mid-20th-century criticism modified the earlier approach to Brunelleschi's buildings as the foundations of Renaissance architecture. They are now understood in the context of the influence on him of the classical elements in 11th- and 12th-century Tuscan Romanesque and proto-Renaissance buildings such as San Miniato al Monte. Brunelleschi, therefore, is seen as an artist still profoundly dependent on local forms of architecture and construction but with a vision of art and science that was based on the humanistic concept of the ideal. This is borne out by his first major architectural commission, the Ospedale degli Innocenti (Hospital of the Innocents, or Foundling Hospital). Although the portico of the hospital is composed of many novel features, morphologically it still is related to traditions of Italian Romanesque and late Gothic architecture. The truly revolutionary aspects of the building emanated from Brunelleschi's intuitive sense of the formal principles of the classical art of antiquity. The Innocenti facade offered a new look in Florentine architecture and a marked contrast to the medieval buildings that preceded it. Its lingering late-medieval echoes were subordinated to the new style that provided the facade with its antique air: a wall delicately articulated with classical detail (such as Corinthian capitals, pilasters, tondi, and friezes), modular construction, geometric proportions, and symmetrical planning.

By the early 1420s Brunelleschi was the most prominent architect in Florence. At this time the powerful and influential Medici family commissioned him to design the sacristy of San Lorenzo (known as the Old Sacristy, to distinguish it from Michelangelo 's "new" 16th-century sacristy in the same church) and the Basilica of San Lorenzo itself. Work was begun in 1421. The sacristy was completed (without its decoration) by 1428. Construction on the basilica was halted at that time but began again in 1441 and lasted into the 1460s.

The San Lorenzo structures are considered keystones of the early Renaissance architectural style. In form the church did not depart from the traditional basilican church with nave (central aisle), side aisles, and apse (a semicircular projection at the end of the nave). What Brunelleschi added to the conventional format was a new vocabulary using his own interpretation of antique designs for the capitals, friezes, pilasters (rectangular columns set into the wall), and columns. Further, his design of the church as a whole was one of unusual regularity, where the separate parts of the church rationally corresponded to each other and created a profound visual and intellectual harmony.

Brunelleschi designed the Old Sacristy (originally intended as a Medici family mausoleum) as a cube vaulted with a hemispherical dome. The structural and decorative units that delineate the architectural surface of the walls of the Old Sacristy and of the basilica proper are of particular elegance and restraint characteristic of Brunelleschi's work at this time.

About 1429 another wealthy and influential Florentine family, the Pazzi, commissioned Brunelleschi to design a chapel adjacent to the monastic Church of Santa Croce that was intended to be a chapter house (a place of assembly for monks to conduct business). Work probably did not begin before 1442; the building still was not complete in 1457. Brunelleschi used mathematical modules and geometric formulas for the plan and elevation of the Pazzi Chapel, as he had in San Lorenzo, but he arranged the space in a more complex and sophisticated manner in the later building. A hemispherical dome covers a central square, which is extended on either side so that the square forms the centre of a rectangle. The minor spatial compartment, opening off a third side of the main square, is a corresponding square apse covered by a dome and containing the altar. The creamy wall surface of the Pazzi Chapel is marked off in geometric patterns by dark gray stone. The clarity, coolness, and elegance for which Brunelleschi's architecture is noted are seen in this small, harmoniously proportioned chapel.

Another example of Brunelleschi's experiments with central planning is one of his most enigmatic buildings, Santa Maria degli Angeli, built for the Camaldolese monastery in Florence. It was begun in 1434 but left incomplete in 1437 (remaining in an unfinished state until the 1930s, when it was completed in a controversial manner). The building was planned as a central octagon with a 16-sided exterior. A chapel opened on each of the eight sides of the interior octagon, terminating in a deeply recessed apse at the end. Eight niches were cut into alternate facets of the exterior walls. Santa Maria degli Angeli was Brunelleschi's most revolutionary design. It represented a perfectly centralized structure, more formally consistent than the Old Sacristy.

Brunelleschi's Church of Santo Spirito in Florence was designed either in 1428 or 1434. Work on the church was begun in 1436 and proceeded through the 1480s. A basilican church with a centrally planned eastern end, Santo Spirito is ringed by semicircular chapels opening off the dome-vaulted side aisles, the transept, and the apse. These chapels accounted for a unique aspect of the design, for the exterior walls of the church were meant to conform to the shape of the chapels in a sequential series of curves. After Brunelleschi died, however, the protruding round chapels were walled over with the flat conventional exterior now visible. Rather than creating its walls as flat surfaces onto which are pressed thin rectilinear members (pilasters), a style perfected in San Lorenzo and the Pazzi Chapel, Brunelleschi designed Santo Spirito with a feeling for its weight, gravity, and plasticity. The building, therefore, can be associated stylistically with Santa Maria degli Angeli, and also with the four semicircular tribunes above the sacristies of the Duomo. Brunelleschi's model for these tribunes was approved in 1439; the first one was completed in 1445, and the remaining three were finished in the 1460s. They are composed of deeply concave semicircular niches crowned with a shell device and separated by thick walls to which have been applied Corinthian half columns with projecting entablatures. In form and in mood, the tribunes were closer to monumental antique architecture than anything constructed in Florence up to that time, and they foreshadowed the strong profiles and massive grandeur of the buildings of Leon Battista Alberti and Donato Bramante.

Brunelleschi's role as architect of residential buildings is difficult to assess, although Manetti relates that he was summoned from far and wide to design palaces. No documentary evidence exists for the houses and palaces with which biographers and scholars have credited him, the most significant of which (all in Florence) are the Pitti Palace, a rejected plan for the Palazzo Medici-Riccardi, and the Palazzo Bardi-Busini. Each of these palaces contains novel features that are tempting to attribute to Brunelleschi's inventiveness, but definitive proof of his influence or authorship has not been offered.

The manifold architectural abilities of Brunelleschi also are attested to by his military architecture, some of which is partially extant. He is associated with the building and rebuilding of fortifications in Pisa, Rencine, Vicopisano, Staggia, Castellina, Rimini, and Pesaro. In 1430 he was involved in a plan to convert the city of Lucca into an island by building a dam and deflecting the Arno River.

Brunelleschi was active through the early 1440s and probably continued to be until shortly before his death. He died in Florence and was buried in the Duomo.
Isabelle Hyman The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica

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Filippo Brunelleschi | Biography, Artwork, Accomplishments, Dome, Linear Perspective, & Facts

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Filippo Brunelleschi, architect and engineer who was one of the pioneers of early Renaissance architecture in Italy. His major work is the dome of the Cathedral of Santa Maria del Fiore (the Duomo) in Florence (1420-36). Learn more about Brunelleschi's life, works, and significance in this article.

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Codified the principles and math of Perspective. Wrote them down!!!

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Leon Battista Alberti, (born Feb. 14, 1404, Genoa-died April 25, 1472, Rome), Italian humanist, architect, and principal initiator of Renaissance art theory. In his personality, works, and breadth of learning, he is considered the prototype of the Renaissance "universal man."

Childhood and education

The society and class into which Alberti was born endowed him with the intellectual and moral tendencies he was to articulate and develop over a lifetime. He belonged to one of the wealthy merchant-banker families of Florence. At the time of his birth, the Alberti were in exile, expelled from Florence by the oligarchical government then dominated by the Albizzi family. Alberti's father, Lorenzo, was managing the family's concerns in Genoa, where Battista was born. Shortly thereafter he moved to Venice, where he raised Battista (Leo or Leon was a name adopted in later life) and his elder brother, Carlo. Both sons were illegitimate, the natural offspring of Lorenzo and a Bolognese widow, but they were to be Lorenzo's only children and his heirs. An affectionate and responsible father, Lorenzo provided his sons with a Florentine stepmother (whom he married in 1408), and he attended carefully to their education.

It was from his father that Battista received his mathematical training. The useful intellectual tools of the businessman inspired in him a lifelong love for the regular, for rational order, and a lasting delight in the practical application of mathematical principles. "Nothing pleases me so much," Alberti was to have a figure in one of his dialogues remark, "as mathematical investigations and demonstrations, especially when I can turn them to some useful practice as Battista here did, who drew from mathematics the principles of painting [perspective] and also his amazing propositions on the moving of weights." As in Leonardo da Vinci's case, mathematics led Alberti into several seemingly disparate fields of learning and practice. At one stroke, it resolved a diversity of problems and awakened an appreciation of the rational structure and processes of the physical world.

His early formal education was humanistic. At the age of 10 or 11, Alberti was sent to boarding school in Padua. There he was given the classical Latin training that was to be denied to Leonardo, illegitimate son of a poor notary in a rustic village of Tuscany. The "new learning" was largely literary, and Alberti emerged from the school an accomplished Latinist and literary stylist. Relishing his skill as a classicist, he wrote a Latin comedy at the age of 20 that was acclaimed as the "discovered" work of a Roman playwright-and was still published as a Roman work in 1588 by the famous Venetian press of Aldus Manutius. But it was the content rather than the form of the classical authors that absorbed Alberti as a youth and throughout his life. As for most humanists, the literature of ancient Rome opened up for him the vision of an urbane, secular, and rational world that seemed remarkably similar to the emerging life of the Italian cities and met its cultural needs. He brought his own emotional and intellectual tendencies to "the ancients," but from them he drew the conceptual substance of his thought.

Alberti completed his formal education at the University of Bologna in an apparently joyless study of law. His father's death and the unexpected seizure of his legacy by certain members of the family brought him grief and impoverishment during his seven-year stay at Bologna, but he persisted in his studies. After receiving his doctorate in canon law in 1428, he chose to accept a "literary" position as a secretary rather than pursue a legal career. By 1432 he was a secretary in the Papal Chancery in Rome (which supported several humanists), and he had a commission from a highly placed ecclesiastical patron to rewrite the traditional lives of the saints and martyrs in elegant "classical" Latin. From this point on, the church was to provide him with his livelihood. He took holy orders, thus receiving in addition to his stipend as a papal secretary an ecclesiastical benefice, the priory of Gangalandi in the diocese of Florence, and some years later Nicholas V conferred upon him as well the rectory of Borgo San Lorenzo in Mugello. Although he led an exemplary, and apparently a celibate, life, there is almost nothing in his subsequent career to remind one of the fact that Alberti was a churchman. His interests and activities were wholly secular and began to issue in an impressive series of humanistic and technical writings.

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Leon Battista Alberti | Renaissance Architect & Author

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Leon Battista Alberti, Italian humanist, architect, and principal initiator of Renaissance art theory. In his personality, works, and breadth of learning, he is considered the prototype of the Renaissance "universal man." The society and class into which Alberti was born endowed him with the

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Filippo Brunelleschi -The father of renaissance linear perspective

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Filippo Brunelleschi -The father of renaissance linear perspective

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John Singer Sargent was an American expatriate artist, considered the "leading portrait painter of his generation" for his evocations of Edwardian-era luxury. He created roughly 900 oil paintings and more than 2,000 watercolors, as well as countless sketches and charcoal drawings. His oeuvre documents worldwide travel, from Venice to the Tyrol, Corfu, the Middle East, Montana, Maine, and Florida.
Born in Florence to American parents, he was trained in Paris before moving to London, living most of his life in Europe. He enjoyed international acclaim as a portrait painter. An early submission to the Paris Salon in the 1880s, his Portrait of Madame X, was intended to consolidate his position as a society painter in Paris, but instead resulted in scandal. During the next year following the scandal, Sargent departed for England where he continued a successful career as a portrait artist.
From the beginning, Sargent's work is characterized by remarkable technical facility, particularly in his ability to draw with a brush, which in later years inspired admiration as well as criticism for a supposed superficiality.

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John Singer Sargent - Google Arts & Culture

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John Singer Sargent was an American expatriate artist, considered the "leading portrait painter of his generation" for his evocations of Edwardian-era luxury.

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Artists who excelled at the use of Chiaroscuro

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Artists who excelled at the use of Chiaroscuro

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List of drawings by Rembrandt - Wikipedia

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The following is a list of drawings by Rembrandt that are generally accepted as autograph.

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Rembrandt Harmensz. van Rijn, after Rembrandt Harmensz. van Rijn

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Google Arts & Culture features content from over 2000 leading museums and archives who have partnered with the Google Cultural Institute to bring the world's treasures online.

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Gesture drawings that capture movement instead of detail

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Leonardo da Vinci, Codice sul volo degli uccelli, f.8 r - Google Arts & Culture

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Fac-simile reproduction from the collections of the Biblioteca Leonardiana