Verbum Treasury of Sacred Art

Alessandro di Mariano di Vanni Filipepi (c. 1445–1510), known as Sandro Botticelli, was an Italian painter of the Early Renaissance. He belonged to the Florentine School under the patronage of Lorenzo de’ Medici, a movement that Giorgio Vasari would characterize less than a hundred years later in his Vita of Botticelli as a “golden age.” Botticelli’s posthumous reputation suffered until the late 19th century; since then, his work has been seen to represent the linear grace of Early Renaissance painting.

Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio (1571–1610) was an Italian painter active in Rome, Naples, Malta, and Sicily from the early 1590s to 1610. His paintings combine 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.

Doménikos Theotokópoulos (1541–1614),[2] most widely known as El Greco (“The Greek”), was a painter, sculptor and architect of the Spanish Renaissance. “El Greco” was a nickname, a reference to his Greek origin, and the artist normally signed his paintings with his full birth name in Greek letters, Δομήνικος Θεοτοκόπουλος, Doménikos Theotokópoulos, often adding the word Κρής Krēs, Cretan.

El Greco was born in the Kingdom of Candia, which was at that time part of the Republic of Venice, and the center of Post-Byzantine art. He trained and became a master within that tradition before traveling at age 26 to Venice, as other Greek artists had done. In 1570 he moved to Rome, where he opened a workshop and executed a series of works. During his stay in Italy, El Greco enriched his style with elements of Mannerism and of the Venetian Renaissance taken from a number of great artists of the time, notably Tintoretto. In 1577, he moved to Toledo, Spain, where he lived and worked until his death. In Toledo, El Greco received several major commissions and produced his best-known paintings.

Fra Angelico (c. 1395–1455) was a Dominican friar and a painter in the early Italian Renaissance. Fra Angelico translates as “Angelic Friar”, and he is considered to be the artistic “father” of Michelangelo. Over the course of his life he painted altarpieces, frescoes, and other depictions of saints and scenes from Scripture. The jewel-like splendor of his images and the sweetness and gentleness of their figures are hallmarks of his work. Among his most famous pieces are the Annunciation of Cortona and The Last Judgment.

Fra Angelico lived a humble and devout life, exemplifying asceticism, obedience, and care of the poor. His reported motto was, “He who does Christ’s work must stay with Christ always.” He was beatified in 1982 by Pope John Paul II under the title Blessed John of Fiesole, OP. He is the patron of artists.

Guido Reni (November 4, 1575–August 18, 1642) was an Italian Baroque painter, born in Bologna. His subjects were varied, depicting scenes from the Classics as well as from Scripture and Church history.

As a well-known and influential artist in Rome, Reni navigated tricky political waters. Among his patrons were the Barberini and Borghese families, including Pope Paul V. In St. Michael Archangel—where the Archangel stomps on the head of Satan—Reni’s Satan reportedly resembles Cardinal Pamphilj, a member of a rival family who had offended Reni in some way. After various similar scuffles—as well as artistic triumphs—in both Rome and Naples, Reni returned to Bologna where he ran a successful studio.

Among his masterpieces are Massacre of the Innocents, Bacchus and Ariadne, and St. Dominic’s Glory.

Jacob Jordaens (May 19, 1593–October 18, 1678) was a Baroque painter in Antwerp, Belgium. He is remembered now for his religious and mythological art, as well as for unusually authentic depictions of Flemish life. He was also a well-known portrait painter and leading tapestry designer—very lucrative pursuits of that time. Jordaens’ art was strongly influenced by Rubens, whom he occasionally worked with. Though he lived a life of privilege, he was known to be kind and generous. Among his famous works are The Adoration of the Shepherds, Prometheus, and The Martyrdom of St. Apollonia.

James Tissot (October 15, 1836–August 8, 1902) was borne Jacques Joseph Tissot in France. He was raised in a devoutly Catholic home, with parents involved in the fashion industry. He began his art career in Paris, studying at the École des Beaux-Arts. Tissot exhibited in the Paris Salon for the first time in 1859, and in London in 1862. His modern portraits became highly successful and critically acclaimed. He moved to London in 1871, and was known for his depictions of fashionable life. In 1876, divorcée Kathleen Newton—who frequently modeled for Tissot—moved into his home in St. John’s Wood, remaining with him until her death in 1882.

After Newton’s death, Tissot returned to Paris, and in 1885 had a revival of his Catholic faith. He traveled to the Middle East several times to study landscape, population, and architecture. His series of 365 watercolor illustrations of the life of Christ brought him much wealth and acclaim. He moved on to the Old Testament—completing 80 paintings—but died before he could finish the series. Some well-known pieces from his diverse collection include Young Lady in a Boat, The Seven Trumpets of Jericho, and The Ball.

Nicolas Poussin (1594–1665) was the leading painter of the classical French Baroque style, although he spent most of his working life in Rome. Most of his works were on religious and mythological subjects painted for a small group of Italian and French collectors. He returned to Paris for a brief period to serve as First Painter to the King under Louis XIII and Cardinal Richelieu, but soon returned to Rome and resumed his more traditional themes. In his later years he gave growing prominence to the landscapes in his pictures. His work is characterized by clarity, logic, and order, and favors line over color. Until the 20th century he remained a major inspiration for such classically-oriented artists as Jacques-Louis David, Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres and Paul Cézanne.

Peter Paul Rubens (June 28, 1577–May 30, 1640) was a Flemish Baroque painter, diplomat, and leading influence in the Catholic Counter-Reformation style. He was classically educated as a humanist scholar and then apprenticed to landscape artist Tobias Verhaeght at age 14. After completing his education, Rubens traveled to Italy to begin his painting career, spending eight years there. In 1609, he returned to Antwerp and was appointed as court painter for the Low Countries. He worked out of his own studio in Antwerp and was free to take on other clients. He was also assigned diplomatic duties by his royal patrons.

Rubens remained based in Antwerp for the rest of his life, traveling often for diplomatic missions and art commissions. His artistic and diplomatic careers dovetailed well—he was knighted in 1624 by Phillip IV of Spain and by Charles I of England in 1630. He created many altar pieces and was a popular portraitist. The subject matter of his pieces was often religious or related to Classical mythology. Rubens was known for depicting sensuous figures of abundant flesh, particularly in his later years. Among his many famous pieces are The Three Graces, Susanna and the Elders, The Judgment of Paris, the Marie de’Medici cycle for the Luxembourg Palace (now housed in the Louvre) and The Virgin of the Immaculate Conception.

Raffaello Sanzio da Urbino (1483–1520), known as Raphael, was an Italian painter and architect of the High Renaissance. His work is admired for its clarity of form, ease of composition, and visual achievement of the Neoplatonic ideal of human grandeur. Together with Michelangelo and Leonardo da Vinci, he forms the traditional trinity of great masters of that period.

Raphael was enormously productive, running an unusually large workshop and, despite his death at 37, leaving a large body of work. Many of his works are found in the Vatican Palace, where the frescoed Raphael Rooms were the central, and the largest, work of his career. The best known work is The School of Athens in the Vatican Stanza della Segnatura. After his early years in Rome much of his work was executed by his workshop from his drawings, with considerable loss of quality. He was extremely influential in his lifetime, though outside Rome his work was mostly known from his collaborative printmaking.

Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn (1606–1669) was a Dutch draughtsman, painter and printmaker. An innovative and prolific master in three media, he is generally considered one of the greatest visual artists in the history of art and the most important in Dutch art history. Unlike most Dutch masters of the 17th century, Rembrandt’s works depict a wide range of style and subject matter, from portraits and self-portraits to landscapes, genre scenes, allegorical and historical scenes, biblical and mythological themes as well as animal studies. His contributions to art came in a period of great wealth and cultural achievement that historians call the Dutch Golden Age, when Dutch art (especially Dutch painting), although in many ways antithetical to the Baroque style that dominated Europe, was extremely prolific and innovative, and gave rise to important new genres. Like many artists of the Dutch Golden Age, such as Jan Vermeer of Delft, Rembrandt was also an avid art collector and dealer.

Tiziano Vecelli or Tiziano Vecellio (c. 1488/1490–1576), known in English as Titian, was an Italian painter, the most important member of the 16th-century Venetian school. He was born in Pieve di Cadore, near Belluno (in Veneto, Republic of Venice). During his lifetime he was often called da Cadore, taken from the place of his birth.

Recognized by his contemporaries as “The Sun Amidst Small Stars” (recalling the famous final line of Dante’s Paradiso), Titian was one of the most versatile of Italian painters, equally adept with portraits, landscape backgrounds, and mythological and religious subjects. His painting methods, particularly in the application and use of colour, would exercise a profound influence not only on painters of the late Italian Renaissance, but on future generations of Western art.