The Master of Ambrass was a Bohemian painter active probably in Prague at the end of the fourteenth century. He was the creator of the Wiener Musterbuch, a set of silverpoint studies and subjects all dated to the same period, which were used as models in painters' studios. Among the subjects are bust-length images of Christ, the Virgin, various saints, the Crucifixion, and the Annunciation. The pictures are collected in groups of four, affixed to fourteen small framed panels. Three independent designs also exist, depicting a philosopher and astronomer, a sibyl and John the Evangelist, and the Three Magi; these, too, were probably part of the set. Such is the realism of the designs that it is believed the Master had contact with an artist of the Franco-Flemish school. Also attributed to his hand, dubiously, is an Annunciation at the Fogg Art Museum in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Stylistically, the Master's work bears some similarities to that of the Master of the Pähl Altarpiece. He is sometimes conflated with both the Master of the Gerona Martyrology and the Master of the Rajhrad Altarpiece, but this attribution is not universally accepted.
Fra Angelico, OP was a Dominican friar and Italian painter of the Early Renaissance, described by Giorgio Vasari in his Lives of the Artists as having "a rare and perfect talent". He earned his reputation primarily for the series of frescoes he made for his own friary, San Marco, in Florence, then worked in Rome and other cities. All his known work is of religious subjects.
Paolo Uccello, born Paolo di Dono, was an Italian painter and mathematician who was notable for his pioneering work on visual perspective in art. In his book Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects, Giorgio Vasari wrote that Uccello was obsessed by his interest in perspective and would stay up all night in his study trying to grasp the exact vanishing point. While his contemporaries used perspective to narrate different or succeeding stories, Uccello used perspective to create a feeling of depth in his paintings. His best known works are the three paintings representing the battle of San Romano, which were wrongly entitled the Battle of Sant'Egidio of 1416 for a long period of time.
Hubert van Eyck or Huybrecht van Eyck was an Early Netherlandish painter and older brother of Jan van Eyck, as well as Lambert and Margareta, also painters. The absence of any single work that he can clearly be said to have completed continues to make an assessment of his achievement highly uncertain, although for centuries he had the reputation of being an outstanding founding artist of Early Netherlandish painting.
Domenico di Tommaso Curradi di Doffo Bigordi, professionally known as Domenico Ghirlandaio, also spelt as Ghirlandajo, was an Italian Renaissance painter born in Florence. Ghirlandaio was part of the so-called "third generation" of the Florentine Renaissance, along with Verrocchio, the Pollaiolo brothers and Sandro Botticelli. Ghirlandaio led a large and efficient workshop that included his brothers Davide Ghirlandaio and Benedetto Ghirlandaio, his brother-in-law Bastiano Mainardi from San Gimignano, and later his son Ridolfo Ghirlandaio. Many apprentices passed through Ghirlandaio's workshop, including the famous Michelangelo. His particular talent lay in his ability to posit depictions of contemporary life and portraits of contemporary people within the context of religious narratives, bringing him great popularity and many large commissions.
Antonello da Messina, properly Antonello di Giovanni di Antonio, but also called Antonello degli Antoni and Anglicized as Anthony of Messina, was an Italian painter from Messina, active during the Italian Early Renaissance.
Robert Campin, now usually identified with the Master of Flémalle, was a master painter who, along with Jan van Eyck, initiated the development of Early Netherlandish painting, a key development in the early Northern Renaissance.
Carlo Crivelli was an Italian Renaissance painter of conservative Late Gothic decorative sensibility, who spent his early years in the Veneto, where he absorbed influences from the Vivarini, Squarcione, and Mantegna. He left the Veneto by 1458 and spent most of the remainder of his career in the March of Ancona, where he developed a distinctive personal style that contrasts with that of his Venetian contemporary Giovanni Bellini.
Martin Schongauer, also known as Martin Schön or Hübsch Martin by his contemporaries, was an Alsatian engraver and painter. He was the most important printmaker north of the Alps before Albrecht Dürer, a younger artist who collected his work. Schongauer is the first German painter to be a significant engraver, although he seems to have had the family background and training in goldsmithing which was usual for early engravers.
Lorenzo di Credi was an Italian Renaissance painter and sculptor best known for his paintings of religious subjects. He is most famous for having worked in the studio of Andrea del Verrocchio at the same time as the young Leonardo da Vinci.
The Mérode Altarpiece is an oil on oak panel triptych, now in The Cloisters, in New York City. It is unsigned and undated, but attributed to Early Netherlandish painter Robert Campin and an assistant. The three panels represent, from left to right, the donors kneeling in prayer in a garden, the moment of the Annunciation to Mary, which is set in a contemporary, domestic setting, and Saint Joseph, a carpenter with the tools of his trade. The many elements of religious symbolism include the lily and fountain, and the Holy Spirit represented by the rays of light coming through from the central panel's left hand window.
Ridolfo di Domenico Bigordi, better known as Ridolfo Ghirlandaio was an Italian Renaissance painter active mainly in Florence. He was the son of Domenico Ghirlandaio.
Peter de Witte, known in Italy as Pietro Candido and in Bavaria as Peter Candid was a Flemish-born Mannerist painter, tapestry designer and draughtsman active in Italy and Bavaria. He was an artist at the Medici court in Florence and at the Bavarian court of Duke William V and his successor Maximilian I in Munich.
Jacopino del Conte was an Italian Mannerist painter, active in both Rome and Florence.
The Master of the Morrison Triptych is the name given to an unknown Early Netherlandish painter active in Antwerp around 1500-1510. He is named for the Morrison Triptych, now in Toledo, Ohio, United States, which is described below.
Mair von Landshut was a German engraver, painter, and designer of woodcuts, who worked in Bavaria. He probably came from Freising near Munich, and worked in both towns, as well as Landshut.
Zanobi di Benedetto di Caroccio degli Strozzi, normally referred to more simply as Zanobi Strozzi, was an Italian Renaissance painter and manuscript illuminator active in Florence and nearby Fiesole. He was closely associated with Fra Angelico, probably as his pupil, as told by Vasari. He is the same painter as the Master of the Buckingham Palace Madonna. Most of his surviving works are manuscript illuminations but a number of panel paintings have also been attributed to him, including seven altarpieces and six panels with the Virgin and Child, along with some designs for metalwork.
The Annunciation is an oil painting by the Early Netherlandish painter Hans Memling. It depicts the Annunciation, the archangel Gabriel's announcement to the Virgin Mary that she would conceive and become the mother of Jesus, described in the Gospel of Luke. The painting was executed in the 1480s and was transferred to canvas from its original oak panel sometime after 1928; it is today held in the Robert Lehman collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.
Two small paintings in London and New York are believed to come from the same predella, and are attributed to Zanobi Strozzi, a Florentine painter who was probably a pupil of Fra Angelico. They are an Adoration of the Magi in the National Gallery in London, and a Nativity in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. They date to about 1433–34 and are in tempera and gold on panel.
Ambras sketchbook (c.1410) is a rare set of 56 small-format drawings on 14 wooden plates that has survived in its entirety. It was in the collections of the Ferdinand II, Archduke of Austria at Ambras Castle and hence its designation in the literature. This work comes from the Prague artistic community and represents a sampling of faces from different phases of the development of the beautiful style, for which the panel paintings of Master of the Třeboň Altarpiece or the sculptural works of Master of the Týn Calvary and his workshop were a model. The sketchbook is also related to the typology of faces of the so-called Capuchin Cycle. Ambras sketchbook is in the collection of the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna.