The lapis lazuli stone was mined in Afghanistan and Pakistan since the seventh millennium BCE. In the early Renaissance, it was finally imported to Europe, where the paint produced from lapis lazuli from the stone became highly valued. This paint was widely used in Renaissance art for the blue robe of the Virgin Mary; it is also widely associated with the Dutch painter Johannes Vermeer.

The Oath of the Horatii presents three brother from the Horatius clan making an oath to their father that they will fight three brothers from the rival city of Alba Longa. This story, in which only one brother survived, but the brothers' task of defeating their rivals was ultimately achieved, was quite popular as a Roman lesson about honor and patriotism. During the late eighteenth century, many intellectuals throughout Europe looked back to Classical sources for guidance, resulting in the philosophical movement known as the Enlightenment and the artistic style known as Neoclassicism.

Artwork from Wikimedia Commons: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Jacques-Louis\_David,\_Le\_Serment\_des\_Horaces.jpg

The Medicis were a banking family who gained power in Florence during the fifteenth century and held sway for over two hundred years in the Northern Italian city state. While controlling the wheels of state, the Medicis were also important patrons of important Renaissance artists, making great strides in art possible in the sixteenth century. In particular, artists like Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, and Botticelli were only able to make the works they did because of the protections of the Medicis.

Impressionists had less of an interest in painting works with religious themes while Baroque artists often engaged with these themes. Impressionism emerged in France while Baroque art gained popularity across Western Europe. Both Impressionists and Baroque artists had an interest in portraiture and the everyday world. Both kinds of artists showed an interest in capturing light on the canvas.

Greuze's Village Wife echoes Rousseau's writings, which placed emotions above reason as the most natural of human expressions. The painting's sentimental tone is characterized by the simplicity seen in the peasant's rustic, unadorned dwelling and its depiction of this happy climax to a rural romance. It promotes a moral message that happiness is the reward of natural virtue.

The men in the foreground of Rembrandt van Rijn's The Night Watch all carry muskets and wave banners, indicative of militia soldiers in the seventeenth century. The captain, Frans Banning Cocq, was an actual leader of a militia, and Rembrandt intentionally captured his company. It was also intentional on the artist's part to show their supporters behind them.

Figure 3: The Night Watch by Rembrandt van Rijn (1642)

Figure 4: The Astronomer by Johannes Vermeer (1668)

Caravaggio (1571-1610) built on earlier Renaissance paintings that used naturalistic poses and deep use of contrast and color, but pushed them into almost new forms. Caravaggio focused on emotional themes through natural pose and extremely sharp contrasts between dark and light elements in his paintings. These refinements were key to the development of the Baroque style of the seventeenth century.

Rembrandt van Rijn, like other Dutch Masters of the seventeenth century, painted different images from other European painters, thanks to the Netherlands' unique religious and political situation. As a Protestant-majority nation that was ruled by the Spanish monarch, court paintings, images of Roman antiquity, and classical mythology were unpopular subjects among the Dutch in the seventeenth century. As such, the most popular subjects for Rembrandt were scenes from the Bible, especially the New Testament.

Etching such as this one, Self-Portrait with Saskia, served two functions for an artist like Rembrandt. While some would be sold at a much lower cost than large-scale paintings, they also allowed Rembrandt to practice techniques he utilized in paintings. Rembrandt made a large number of self-portraits throughout his career, each of which had different poses, but all showed his hallmarks such as heightened contrast of light and dark elements and a revealing view of his subject, each of which are showed in this etching.

Image is in the public domain, accessed through Wikipedia Media Commons: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Self-portrait\_with\_Saskia.jpg

Rubens derived great insight into European politics from his diplomatic missions, and never ceased to promote peace. He used Allegory of the Outbreak of War to express his horror at the Thirty Years War and promote his message of peace.