Artists

Bishandas served the future emperor Jahangir at Allahabad and continued at his court in Agra. From 1613 to 1619 he travelled in Iran with a Mughal delegation.

Hashim was a portrait specialist from the Deccan who moved to the Mughal court around 1620.

This Hamzanama leaf was made in Akbar's workshop, but its painter is unidentified. The extensive illustrated cycle was one of the new royal atelier's first major commissions.

This Akbarnama leaf was made in a Mughal workshop, but its attribution remains under discussion. It belongs to a biography of Akbar prepared shortly before his death.

Leonardo trained in Andrea del Verrocchio's Florentine workshop, which practised painting, sculpture and metalwork.

Raphael grew up in Urbino, the son of the court painter Giovanni Santi. In 1508 Pope Julius II summoned him to Rome to paint the papal apartments. His responsibilities expanded rapidly.

Bellini painted The Feast of the Gods late in life. Titian subsequently altered its composition, so the museum retains both names.

Holbein trained with his father and joined Basel's painters' guild in 1519. In 1526 he travelled to England with Erasmus's recommendation to Thomas More, returning to settle in 1532.

Judith Leyster had joined Haarlem's painters' guild by 1633 and had three pupils in 1635. Frans Hals and the Utrecht followers of Caravaggio influenced her manner.

Heda lived and worked in Haarlem. He helped develop tonal still life, using a restricted range of colours and close relationships between shades.

The brothers Hubert and Jan van Eyck worked on the Ghent Altarpiece. Jan completed it after Hubert's death for its unveiling in May 1432, but the division of their work remains unresolved.

Michelangelo first trained as a painter with Ghirlandaio, then studied sculpture under Lorenzo de' Medici's patronage. In 1505 Julius II called him to Rome to begin a tomb.

Bosch was a painter's son and spent most of his life in 's-Hertogenbosch, the city that supplied his professional name.

Géricault studied with Carle Vernet and then Pierre Guérin. A visit to Italy in 1816–17 deepened his interest in Michelangelo. He later travelled to England.

After a year of engineering studies, Munch entered an art school in Kristiania. His career lasted more than sixty years.

Few documents survive about Giorgione, and the attribution of many paintings remains disputed. He worked with Titian, who completed some of his pictures.

Masaccio worked in Florence in the 1420s. The sculpture of his friend Donatello influenced his treatment of the human figure's weight and volume.

The painter of the Tomb of the Diver is unidentified. The paintings were discovered in 1968 south of ancient Poseidonia.

Unidentified painters made the Villa of the Mysteries frescoes in the first century BCE. Large figures occupy the room's walls and relate to Dionysus and his companions.

Millais entered the Royal Academy Schools in 1840 at the age of eleven. Early meetings of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood took place in his studio in 1848. His position later changed.

Venetsianov painted portraits and scenes of rural life. He became an academician in 1811 and moved to his Safonkovo estate in 1819. There he painted from life and established an art school.

Fedotov began as an officer in the Finnish Life Guards Regiment. From 1835 he attended evening classes at the Academy of Arts. Painting later became his main occupation.

Ge studied at the Academy of Arts and worked in Italy for several years. He painted portraits, historical scenes and Gospel subjects, and helped establish the Association of Travelling Art…

Polenov studied both art and law. In 1871 he graduated from the Academy of Arts with a major gold medal.

Kuindzhi was born in Mariupol. Sources disagree about his birth year, so it is given approximately.

Korovin studied under Savrasov and Polenov at the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture.

Maximov was born in the village of Lopino in Saint Petersburg Governorate. He studied at the Academy of Arts from 1863 to 1866, joined the Peredvizhniki in 1872 and became an academician of…

Borisov-Musatov was born in Saratov and studied in Moscow, Saint Petersburg and Fernand Cormon’s Paris studio. He painted landscapes, portraits and figure compositions.

Rublev was an icon painter and monk. His life dates are approximate. A chronicle entry for 1405 names him among the painters working on the Annunciation Church in the Moscow Kremlin.

Eadfrith became bishop of Lindisfarne in 698. The Lindisfarne Gospels are attributed to him on the basis of a colophon added in the tenth century, long after his lifetime.

Kandinsky was born in Moscow and studied law and economics before moving to Munich to study art. With Franz Marc he helped establish Der Blaue Reiter.

The people who painted Altamira are unidentified. They depicted animals on uneven cave surfaces, using projections of rock to suggest volume.

The images at Cueva de las Manos in Patagonia were made over millennia. Hand stencils and hunting scenes survive on the rock. UNESCO dates the paintings to roughly 9,300–1,300 years ago.

The mosaicists of San Vitale in Ravenna are unidentified. The basilica was consecrated in 547.

The painter of the Vladimir icon is unidentified. It was made in Byzantium in the first third of the twelfth century and brought from Constantinople to Rus around 1130.

Nikolai Yaroshenko painted portraits, scenes of everyday life and landscapes. His paintings of prisoners and students addressed contemporary social debates.