10 Most Famous Painters of all Time

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10 Most Famous Painters of all Time

Painting emerged in prehistory when nomadic people made use of paintings on rocky walls.

They made drawings with charcoal leaving marks in the caves where they passed. Painting is the action of using paint in or as a decoration.

The painting expresses ideas and emotions with the creation of certain aesthetic qualities in a two-dimensional visual language.

Painting boosts memory recollection and works to sharpen the mind through conceptual visualization and implementation. It allows people to express their feelings and emotions without words.

1. Raffaello Sanzio da Urbino

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Raffaello Sanzio da Urbino was born on April 6, 1483 in Urbino. He died on April 6, 1520, in Rome Papal states in Italy.

He was an Italian painter and architect. He began painting a series of Madonnas. He painted the Stanza Della Segnatura Frescoas located in the palace of the Vatican.

Also, he painted another Fresco cycle for the Vatican in the Stanza d’ Eliodoro. He was hired by Pope Julius II in 1514 as his chief architect.

In 1507, he created his most ambitious work in Florence, The Entombment, which was evocative of the ideas that Michelangelo had recently expressed in his Battle of Cascina.

2. Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni

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

His birth date was March 6, 1475, at Caprese Michelangelo, Italy while his death date was February 18, 1564, in Rome Italy.

His paintings earned him a record of the greatest living artist in his lifetime. His paintings, sculpture, and architecture are ranked among the famous ones in existence.

One of his famous paintings is the Sistine Chapel in the Vatican. He also designed military fortifications for Florence City. Most of his best works were Pieta and David.

3. Peter Paul Rubens

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He was born on June 28, 1577, in Siegen, Germany. He died on May 3, 1640, at Antwerp, Belgium.

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

He used the Baroque style in his paintings which made him outstanding. He painted The Massacre of the Innocent.

The painting talks of the biblical tale of Roman soldiers executing male newborns in Bethlehem on King Herod’s orders. He painted it after his return from an eight years sojourn in Italy.

Also, he painted the Horrors of War between 1637 and 1638, a painting that is found in Palazzo Pittis Palatine Gallery in Florence.

The painting portrayed Mars, the Roman god of war, marching from the temple of Janus guarded by Alecto the fury god of war, and restrained by Venus.

His other painting was The Judgment of Paris. It depicted a mythic Roman tale in which Paris was forced to judge the most 3 goddesses, Venus, Minerva, and Juno, events that ignited the Trojan war.

4. Salvado Domingo

Salvador Domingo Felipe Jacinto Dalí i Domènech was born on May 11, 1904 at Figueres, Spain. He was a Spanish surrealist, known for his artistic skills. He died on January 23, 1989, at Figueres, Spain.

He was known as the world’s best surrealist artist. His drawings represented a dream world in which objects are portrayed on a painful reality and placed within bleak sunlit landscapes that were reminiscent of his Catalonian homeland.

One of his artwork was the Persistency of Memory of 1931 which he painted limp melting watches resting in an eerily calm landscape. He also made two surrealistic films in 1929 and 1930.

5. Johannes Vermeer

Vermeer was born in October 1632, in Delft, Netherlands, and, died in December 1675. He began his career in the early 1650s by painting large biblical and mythological scenes.

His paintings included Christ in the House of Martha and Mary, Diana and Her Companions, The Procuress, Girl Reading a Letter at an Open Window also known as Young Woman Reading a Letter at an Open Window, A Girl Asleep.

More importantly, he painted The Little Street, Officer With a Laughing Girl, The Milkmaid, The Wine Glass, and many others.

6. Oscar Claude Monet

Oscar Claude Monet was a French painter and a founder of Impressionist Painting. He was born on November 14, 1840, in Paris and, died on December 5, 1926, in France. He attended an art school when he was 11 years.

His first painting was completed in 1858, a realistic landscape called View at Roulles, Le Havre.

His worked included a Woman in a Green Dress a portrait of his future wife and another titled woman in a Garden. He also painted Windmill Amsterdam in London.

He painted Madame Monet and Child in 1875 a scene resplendent with color and life. He also painted Camille at Her Deathbed after his wife Camille Monet died during childbirth in 1879.

The Camille on Her Deathbed served as a final tribute to her wife, a painting covered in flower blossoms, feathery brush strokes, and her face bathed in light.

7. Pablo Picasso

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He was a Spanish painter, a sculptor, and a theater designer. He was born on October 25, 1881, in Malaya, Spain. He died on April 8, 1973, at Mougins, France.

At the age of 14, he painted a portrait of Aunt Pepa, a striking representation that has been referred to as one of the best portraits in Spanish history.

His first masterpiece was Les Demoiselles d’ Avignon a painting representing five naked women with figures composed of flat, splintered planes, and faces inspired by Iberian sculpture and African Masks. He produced several other paintings.

8. Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn

He was a Dutch Golden age painter, print-maker, and, also a well known designer. He was born on July 15, 1606, in Leiden, Netherlands, and died on October 4, 1669.

As a painter, he sketched people on the street, beggars, circuses, women, and children in 1639.

His paintings were influenced by new developments in Italian art which reached the Netherlands via prints. He used brush strokes and palette knives in his paintings.

Examples of his artworks include Man in a Cap, Anna and the Blind Tobit, An Elderly Man as Saint Paul among others.

9. Vincent Willem Van Gogh

Vincent was born on March 30, 1853, at Zundert, Netherlands.

His artworks sought to express humanity’s inherent spirituality which culminated in a synthesis of approach and substance that led to dynamic, expressive, and emotive compositions that express much more than the subject’s apparent appearances.

He began his first masterpiece Potato Eaters in 1885.

10. Leonardo Da Vinci

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He was an Italian polymath and an active painter. He was born on April 15, 1452, in Anchiano, Italy. His most famous paintings are Mona Lisa and the Last Supper.

Mona Lisa painting presents a woman revealed to likely have been Lisa del Giocondo, the wife of the Florentine merchant Francesco del Giocondo.

The picture presents a half-body portrait with a distant landscape visible as a backdrop. The paint depicts the connection between humanity and nature through the apparent in the sitter’s faint smile.

Through Leonardo da Vinci, Vincent Willem, Rembrandt Rijn, Pablo Picasso, Claude Monet, Johannes Vermeer, Peter Paul Rubens, Michelangelo, and Raphaello Sanzio Paintings and artworks it is evident that all paintings have messages behind them.

More importantly, all paintings speak out emotions, give a recollection of memories and allow people to express themselves without speaking.