The Renaissance and Baroque eras
The rebirth of Classical ideals lead to a Europe-wide flowering of the arts
The Renaissance hit England late, but its museums contain many important Old Masters from Italy and Germany. "Renaissance" means "rebirth," in this case of Classical ideals.
Artists strove for greater naturalism, using newly developed techniques such as linear perspective to achieve new heights of realism.
Some foreign Renaissance masters—notable painters Hans Holbein the Younger and Anton Van Dyck and sculptor Pietro Torrigiano—came to the English courts and influenced local artists like William Hogarth, but significant British painters didn't really emerge until the Baroque period with the likes of Joshua Reynolds and Thomas Gainsborough.
The Baroque is rather more decorative than the Renaissance, while often also mixing in a kind of super-realism based on the peasant models and exaggerated chiaroscuro ("light and dark") of Italy's Caravaggio with compositional complexity and explosions of dynamic fury, movement, color, and figures.
Rococo is what happened when the later baroque got out of hand and gone awry: all frothy and chaotic and often (shudder) pastel.
Renaissance artist in England
Topics in England
Italian Renaissance sculptor to the Kings and Queens of England (that's his bust of King Henry VII above)
German portraitist who painted some of the seminal figures of the British Renaissance
An English painter in the Flemish mold, depicting wonderful slices of life in early 18C England
Arguably the greatest artist who ever lived, part of the Holy Trinity of Italian Renaissance masters
One of the greatest painters of the early Renaissance was nothing if not a man of his times
Baroque artist in England
Topics in England
The baroque master of chiaroscuro, turning the dance of darkness and light into story and character
