Jacopo Bellini (c. 1400 - c. 1470) combined elements of Gothic and Renaissance styles. His son Gentile (1429-1507) became the founder of the Venetian historical painting art. The younger son, Giovanni Bellini (c. 1430 – 1516), became the founder of a new tradition, according to which the main role in art is played by color and light.

Sandro Botticelli (1445 – 1510) was called a "genius of Florence." The Florentine school is one of the main painting schools of Italy. In the period of the Proto-Renaissance, it was represented by Giotto; in the Early Renaissance by Botticelli and Lynnie; and in the High Renaissance by Leonardo, Michelangelo, and Fra Bartolomeo.

Filippo Brunelleschi (1377 – 1446, Florence) was the founder of a new direction in Italian architecture. The octagonal dome of Santa Maria del Fiore cathedral whose diameter is 42 meters consists of two shells connected with rings and nervures. This gave the construction lightness and rigidity. It became the prototype of St. Peter's (Rome) dome by Michelangelo.

"Allegory of Spring" (1477-1478) is one of the most famous works of Botticelli. Painted for Lorenzo de' Medici, this painting is one of the first in the Renaissance that was based on a secular theme, which Botticelli borrowed from ancient mythology.

The painting "Penitent Mary Magdalene" (c. 1560) is kept in the State Hermitage Museum of St. Petersburg. In this masterpiece of Titian (as also in all his later works) moods of anxiety and despair can be felt that are combined with adoration of female beauty and fullness of life.

The nickname "Peasant" was given to the artist Pieter Bruegel the Elder (1525-1569) because he created people-inspired art, drawing his themes from folk proverbs and parables as well as popular engravings. His paintings are an ironic commentary on the pointlessness of human activity, weakness, and stupidity. His later works ("Winter," "The Blind") embodied the desperate helplessness of humans before inexorable laws of nature.

The birthplace of the Renaissance was, of course, Italy. In 12th-century Italy, many urban communes were freed from feudal dependence. In strong city-states, the bourgeoisie became the customer of the new culture. However, though the artists of Germany, France, and the Netherlands went to Italy "to study the Revival," they found their own ways in plastic arts.

"Ghent Altarpiece" (1432) is one of the most significant works in the history of European painting. It is a large wooden triptych with twelve folds painted on both sides. It shows a majestic and joyful scene of the divine world order in all its variety, painted with an almost physical tangibility.

Great mystic Hieronymus Bosch (1450-1516) combined sophisticated medieval fantasy and grotesque demonic images with moralizing tendencies in his multi-figure compositions. His "Garden of Earthly Delights" can serve as an illustrated manual for Freud's "The Interpretation of Dreams."

Instead of southern artists' tendency to create sublime and embellished images, Northern European artists were mostly attracted to the correct transmission of reality, without fearing to give the impression of clumsiness. Albrecht Dürer (1475-1528) believed that in art, rude, ugly, even monstrous images play an important role.