Private chapel of the popes in Rome, one of the principal glories of the Vatican.

From The Bloomsbury Guide to Art
A polyptych painted primarily by Jan van Eyck, possibly with the assistance of his brother Hubert van Eyck. It is also known as the Altarpiece of the Holy Lamb.

From Encyclopaedia of the Renaissance
A large-scale triptych commissioned from Hugo van der Goes by Tommaso Portinari, the Italian agent of the Medici in Bruges, for the church of the hospital of Sta Maria Nuova, Florence (now in the Uffizi).

The pupil of Pontormo and his lifelong friend, was the principal practitioner of Florentine Mannerism. He is best known for his portraits of Cosimo de' Medici's family and his courtiers, which reveal beneath their glacial exteriors the sitters' anxieties.

Tuscan painter, daughter and pupil of Orazio Gentileschi, b. Rome.

Italian architect and painter in the High Renaissance style; designed the Villa Farnesina and the Palazzo Massimo in Rome.

Born near Florence, the sculptor Bartolomeo Ammanati trained in the workshop of Pisa Cathedral, where his first independent work is found (1536).

1500–1571, Italian sculptor, metalsmith, and author. His remarkable autobiography (written 1558–62), which reads like a picaresque novel, is one of the most important documents of the 16th cent.

Spanish painter. He painted elegant portraits and intensely emotional religious scenes with increasingly distorted figures and unearthly light.

Italian architect, painter, and art historian, noted for his Lives of the Most Excellent Italian Architects, Painters, and Sculptors (1550; 1568), a principal source for the history of Italian Renaissance art.

Italian painter, sculptor, architect, musician, engineer, and scientist, b. near Vinci, a hill village in Tuscany. The versatility and creative power of Leonardo mark him as a supreme example of Renaissance genius.

Universally recognized as one of the greatest artists in history, perhaps the greatest. He excelled as a sculptor, painter, architect, and poet of the Italian High Renaissance.

1571–1610, Italian painter. His strong chiaroscuro technique of partially illuminating figures against a dark background was immediately adopted by his contemporaries.

Raphael was the common name of the Italian painter Raffaello Sanzio or Santi.

Jacopo Robusti, whose name derived from the profession of his father, a dyer (tintore), was, with Veronese, the chief Venetian painter of the later 16c.

Venetian painter. Of the very first rank among the artists of the Renaissance, Titian had an immense influence on succeeding generations of painters, especially in his use of color.

Paolo Caliari, with Tintoretto, succeeded Titian as the chief artist of 16c. Venice. Born in Verona, as his popular name, Veronese, indicates, he was trained there by a local painter, Antonio Badile, before moving to Venice about the age of 23.

Italian baroque painter. He was active chiefly in Rome. In his ceiling painting of Aurora (1621–23; Villa Ludovisi, Rome), the chariot-borne figure of Dawn rides across the heavens; the architectural framework is imitated in the painting, giving the illusion that the ceiling opens into the sky.

One of a Bolognese family of painters, the oldest of whom, Lodovico (1555–1619), founded a school in Bologna. His cousins Agostino (1557–1602) and Annibale worked in their early years with Lodovico, but left Bologna, working first in north Italy and later in Rome.

16th-century reformation that arose largely in answer to the Protestant Reformation; sometimes called the Catholic Reformation. Although the Roman Catholic reformers shared the Protestants' revulsion at the corrupt conditions in the church, there was present none of the tradition breaking that characterized Protestantism.

1449–92, Italian merchant prince, called Lorenzo il Magnifico [the magnificent]. He was a patron of Sandro Botticelli, Ghirlandaio, Filippino Lippi, Andrea del Verrocchio, Michelangelo, and other famed artists.

Office of the pope, head of the Roman Catholic Church. He is pope by reason of being bishop of Rome and thus, according to Roman Catholic belief, successor in the see of Rome (the Holy See) to its first bishop, St. Peter.

From The Bloomsbury Guide to Art
The encouragement and support, often financial, of artists and craftspeople. In the Middle Ages there were two main sources of patronage - the church and the State.

Religious and political movement in 16th-century Europe to reform the Roman Catholic Church, which led to the establishment of the Protestant churches.

Period in European cultural history that began in Italy around 1400 and lasted there until the end of the 1500s.

European art of the 15th–17th centuries, associated with the Renaissance, a revival in learning that began in Florence, Italy, with the rise of a spirit of humanism and a new appreciation of the classical Greek and Roman past.

Altdorfer's major contribution to the history of European painting is his powerful imaginative vision of landscape.

Hans Baldung (Grien) was a German painter and engraver. He was born at Swäbisch-Gmünd but settled in Strasbourg where he became a member of the city council in his later years.

Fra Bartolommeo was born Baccio della Porta in Florence where he trained in the workshop of Cosimo Roselli.

Florentine painter. He depicted religious and mythological subjects. He was patronized by the ruling Medici family and was deeply influenced by their neo-Platonic circle.

From The encyclopedia of the Renaissance Brueghel was possibly born near Breda and apparently trained in Brussels under Pieter Coecke, whose daughter he married. He subsequently worked for Pieter Balten at Malines and for Hieronymus Cock in Antwerp. After Pieter Coecke's death, he visited Rome (1552–53), where he became acquainted with the miniaturist Giulio Clovio.

Real name Donato di Betto Bardi. Florentine sculptor, regarded as the greatest sculptor of the quattrocento, who was greatly influenced by classical sculpture and contemporary humanist theories.

The German painter, printmaker, and theorist Albrecht Dürer is generally acknowledged to be the most significant figure in the history of European art outside Italy in the period of the Renaissance.

The Flemish painter Jan or Jennyn Gossaert is also known as Mabuse, this name deriving from Mauberge in Hainault, where he was born.

German painter, architect, and engineer. His altarpiece at Isenheim, southern Alsace, (1515, Unterlinden Museum, Colmar, France), with its grotesquely tortured figure of Jesus and its radiant Resurrection, is his most important work.

German painter and woodcut artist who spent much of his career as a portrait artist at the court of Henry VIII of England.