Pre-20th century painters

[blackmage_nuke]

Who is your favorite?
Who do you think is over-rated?

Van Gogh uses nice colours and all but I dont like they way he does perspective

Claude Monet 4 lyf

[Big D]

Giovanni Bellini's 1601 portrait of Leonardo Loredan, Doge (lol) of Venice still pretty much blows my mind, and it's my firm favourite piece of renaissance art. Something about how it's basically photo-realistic, down to the intricate brocade on Loredan's mantle.

I'm also partial to Albrecht Dürer's style, and going a little bit further back to Jan van Eyck. Like Bellini, van Eyck has one painting in particular that I love because of attention to intricate detail - namely, the Arnolfini wedding portrait. At first it just seems to be a portrait of a slightly awkward-looking couple in slightly-awkward Flemish attire, but then you notice the concave mirror on the wall behind them. "Oh hai, don't mind me, I'm just a fragment of creative genius that could easily have been left out, but I'm here anyway because I was painted by a guy who's JUST THAT RAD."