Leonardo da Vinci was a Renaissance painter, sculptor, architect, inventor, military engineer and draftsman — the epitome of a true Renaissance man. Gifted with a curious mind and a brilliant intellect, da Vinci studied the laws of science and nature, which greatly informed his work.

Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, Raphael and Donatello. Popularized in modern times by the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles’ homage, these four great artists are the most well-known maestro (masters) of the Renaissance period.

There were many great artists during the Renaissance. Perhaps the most famous are Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo. Other artists, however, had great influence both during Renaissance times and later, even influencing modern day artists. Donatello was a sculptor and one of the pioneers in Renaissance art.

More than 65,000 years ago, a Neanderthal reached out and made strokes in red ochre on the wall of a cave, and in doing so, became the first known artist on Earth, scientists claim. The discovery overturns the widely-held belief that modern humans are the only species to have expressed themselves through works of art.

If art had a single inventor, she or he was an African who lived more than 70,000 years ago. That is the age of the oldest work of art in the world, a piece of soft red stone that someone scratched lines on in a place called Blombos Cave.

Some of The Most Famous Artists Of All Time

• Pablo Picasso.
• Vincent van Gogh.
• Leonardo da Vinci.
• Michelangelo.
• Henri Matisse.
• Jackson Pollock.
• Edvard Munch.
• Claude Monet.

The oldest secure human art that has been found dates to the Late Stone Age during the Upper Paleolithic, possibly from around 70,000 BC, but with certainty from around 40,000 BC, when the first creative works were made from shell, stone, and paint by Homo sapiens, using symbolic thought.

Father of the Subjects

George Emil Palade