A leading figure in the baroque Spanish tradition — alongside El Greco, Velázquez and Zurbarán — José Ribera’s style was the most markedly tenebrist; he was also one of the first artists to be both a painter and printmaker. In his earlier style, sometimes drawing on Caravaggio and sometimes on Guido Reni’s various techniques, his study of Spanish and Venetian masters can be traced. Along with his massive and predominant shadows, one of his strongest points throughout his career was the use he made of color.

Rediscovered at the end of the 19th century,Vermeer’s art has intrigued and astounded ever since.Vermeer was unlike his Dutch contemporaries and other painters in his own century and indeed stands out in the whole of the history of painting as unique.The perfection of his work, which everyone recognises and acknowledges, is itself an enigma: how, why, in what conditions, and with whom around him didVermeer paint these silent scenes whose magic holds us in thrall?

Doménicos Theotokópoulos, better known as El Greco (1541-1621), gained his training as an artist in Crete, Venice and Rome, the three centers of art that he passed through. Yet even though he learned from the great Italian artists of the 16th century, his arrogance was such that he went so far so to say that Michelangelo was a good man but he did not know how to paint, remarking that the Last Judgment could be painted over and that he could be commissioned to re-do it with honesty and decency and no less quality in the painting. His contemporaries found him a difficult personality.

Conventional studies of the Catalan Romanesque do not do justice to the true nature of this art. To remedy this, Diether Rudloff offers us not only an artistic appreciation of these works but also an absolutely new study of the values and the essence of the Romanesque in Catalonia. His vision tends towards a modern cognitive Goetheanism, nuanced by the ideas of Rudolf Steiner, who sees the various historical stages of the human consciousness as an expression of the metamorphosis of a constant spiritual awareness.

When asked who he considered an importance, Picasso only mentioned Goya (1746-1828). But, his extremely influence has arrived to a lot of modern and contemporary painters, such as Manet, the Expressionist movement on early twentieth-century and, most recently, Francis Bacon, and Sigmar Polke. As painter of the Spanish Court, he created series of tapestry cartoons, wallpaintings, and individuals and group portraits, but, after his serious illnes in late 1792, he starts an important body of uncommissioned works that introduces new elements which greatly enhance their expressive potential.

With Velázquez and El Greco, Zurbarán (1598-1664) is undoubtedly one of the best known seventeenth-century Spanish monastic ascetism, has come to the forefront once again in the XX century, thanks party to cubism, which contributed to rediscovery of the great plastic qualities of his work. Indeed, if the simplicity of his artistic preparation reflects a melancholy and somewhat unrefined temperament, and his painting contains a rustic accent, in his work there is a preponderance of plastic values that respond to a concern with giving a concrete form to the construction os the spirit.

Renowned as the largest art gallery in the world, the Prado houses sculptures, drawings, coins, and other works of art—but it is its incomparable collection of paintings which had drawn fame worldwide. Included in its store of more than 8,600 paintings are works by members of the Italian, Flemish, Spanish, French, Dutch, and German schools.

Velázquez Career can be characterised as a lifelong examination of the relationship of painting to nature, in which bushwork takes a leading role. As he developed, he realised evergreater physical and psycological naturalism with progressively more pronounced and elegant brushstrokes, attaining miracolous effects of illusion with and astounding, abbreviated technique based on the implication rather than the elaboration of detail.

Hieronymus Bosch (c. 1450-1516) produced what is unquestionably one of the most mysterious and evocative bodies of painting in the history of art. His fantastical scenes of grotesque creatures, demons and monsters have given rise to all kinds of speculation about his personal life and religious beliefs. Hieronymus Bosch: Complete Works contains reproductions of Bosch’s paintings and drawings, including his famous triptychs, and examines his work in the context of his times from a number of different angles of vision.

Very few paintings, less than forty in all, can be attributed with certainty to Vermeer, but each one is a perfectly achieved study of light, colour and space. For all his profound originality, Vermeer is very much a part of the Dutch tradition, combining realism and sobriety with a skilful rendering of perspective and optical effects.