16 awesome painters you might not know that well

Giorgio Vasari (1511 - 1574) was an Italian painter, architect, writer and historian, most famous today for his Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects, considered the ideological foundation of art-historical writing. Vasari was born in Arezzo, Tuscany.

Giuseppe Cesari (c. 1568 - 1640) was an Italian Mannerist painter, also named Il Giuseppino and called Cavaliere d'Arpino, because he was created Cavaliere di Cristo by his patron Pope Clement VIII. He was much patronized in Rome by both Clement and Sixtus V.

Guido Reni (4 November 1575 - 18 August 1642) was an Italian painter of high- Baroque style. Born in Bologna into a family of musicians, Guido Reni was the son of Daniele Reni and Ginevra de' Pozzi. As a child of nine, he was apprenticed under the Bolognese studio of Denis Calvaert.

Adam Elsheimer (18 March 1578 - 11 December 1610) was a German artist working in Rome who died at only thirty-two, but was very influential in the early 17th century. His relatively few paintings were small scale, nearly all painted on copper plates, of the type often known as cabinet paintings.

Domenico Fetti (also spelled Feti) (c. 1589 - 1623) was an Italian Baroque painter active mainly in Rome, Mantua and Venice. Born in Rome to a little-known painter, Pietro Fetti, Domenico is said to have apprenticed initially under Ludovico Cigoli, or his pupil Andrea Commodi in Rome from circa 1604-1613.

Gerard van Honthorst (or Gerrit van Honthorst) (4 November 1592 - 27 April 1656) was a Dutch Golden Age painter. Early in his career he visited Rome, where he had great success painting in a style influenced by Caravaggio. Following his return to the Netherlands he became a leading portrait painter.

Claude Lorrain ( born Claude Gellée dit le Lorrain; traditionally just Claude in English; c. 1600 - 23 November 1682) was a French painter, draughtsman and engraver of the Baroque era. He spent most of his life in Italy, and is admired for his achievements in landscape painting.

David Teniers the Younger (15 December 1610 - 25 April 1690) was a Flemish artist born in Antwerp, the son of David Teniers the Elder. His son David Teniers III and his grandson David Teniers IV were also painters. His wife Anna, née Anna Breughel, was the daughter of Jan Brueghel the Elder and the granddaughter of Pieter Bruegel the Elder.

Bartolomé Esteban Murillo (December 1617 - April 3, 1682) was a Spanish Baroque painter. Although he is best known for his religious works, Murillo also produced a considerable number of paintings of contemporary women and children. These lively, realist portraits of flower girls, street urchins, and beggars constitute an extensive and appealing record of the everyday life of his times.

Eustache Le Sueur or Lesueur (19 November 1617 - 30 April 1655), one of the founders of the French Academy of Painting, was born in Paris, where he passed his whole life. His early death and retired habits led to various fables attaching to his life, in a similar way to Claude Lorrain.

Gerbrand van den Eeckhout (August 19, 1621 - September 29, 1674), was a Dutch Golden Age painter and a favourite student of Rembrandt. He was also an etcher, an amateur poet, a collector and an adviser on art. Gerbrand was born in Amsterdam, the son of a jeweller, a Mennonite who fled after 1585 from Antwerp to the north.

Carlo Maratta or Maratti (13 May 1625 - 15 December 1713) was an Italian painter, active mostly in Rome, and known principally for his classicizing paintings executed in a Late Baroque Classical manner. Although he is part of the classical tradition stemming from Raphael, he was not exempt from the influence of Baroque painting and particularly in his use of colour.

Gabriël Metsu (January 1629 - October 1667) was a Dutch painter of history paintings, genre works and portraits. Metsu was the son of the Flemish painter Jacques Metsu (c.1588-1629), who lived most of his days at Leiden, and Jacomijntje Garniers, his third wife, whom he married in 1625.

Gerard or Gérard de Lairesse (11 September 1640 or 1641 - June 1711) was a Dutch Golden Age painter and art theorist. Lairesse was born in Liège and was the second son of painter Renier de Lairesse (1597-1667). His broad range of talent included music, poetry, and the theatre.

Alessandro Magnasco (February 4, 1667 - March 12, 1749), also known as il Lissandrino, was an Italian late-Baroque painter active mostly in Milan and Genoa. He is best known for stylized, fantastic, often phantasmagoric genre or landscape scenes. Born in Genoa to a minor artist, Stefano Magnasco, he apprenticed with Valerio Castello, and finally with Filippo Abbiati (1640-1715) in Milan.

Bernardo Strozzi (c. 1581 - August 2, 1644) was a prominent and prolific Italian Baroque painter born and active mainly in Genoa, and also active in Venice. Strozzi was born in Genoa. He was probably not related to the Florentine Strozzi family.