RENAISSANCE

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Giotto di Bondone was probably born in 1266 in Vespignano, a place near Florence in Italy. He died on January 8, 1337 in Florence. He was the most important Italian painter of the 14th century, whose works pointed to the innovations of the Renaissance style that developed a century later. Giotto is considered the father of European painting and the first of the great Italian masters. Apparently, he decorated chapels in Assisi, Rome, Padua, Florence, and Naples with frescoes and panel paintings in tempera. Little of his life and few of his works are documented, attributions and a stylistic chronology of his paintings remain problematic and often highly speculative.

Gian Lorenzo Bernini was born on December 7, 1598 in Naples, Italy and he died on November 28, 1680 in Rome. He was an Italian artist who was perhaps the greatest sculptor of the 17th century and an outstanding architect as well. Bernini created the Baroque style of sculpture and developed it to such an extent that other artists are of only minor importance in a discussion of that style. 

Leonardo da Vinci was born on April 15, 1452 in Anchiano, a place near Vinci which is in Florence, Italy. He died on May 2, 1519 in Cloux France. He was an Italian painter, draftsman, sculptor, architect, and engineer whose genius, perhaps more than that of any other figure, epitomized the Renaissance humanist ideal. His Last Supper (1495–98) and Mona Lisa (c. 1503–19) are some of the most popular and influential paintings of the Renaissance. His notebooks reveal a spirit of scientific inquiry and a mechanical inventiveness that were centuries ahead of their time.