Hans Holbein the Younger made a name for himself by painting nearly every figure associated with the court of the English king Henry VIII. In doing so, he helped pioneer a new use of perspective in his portraits. Holbein's work helped push Renaissance art to new places simply through portraits.

After the Battle of Muhlberg in 1547, the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V had a portrait commissioned to celebrate his victory. He specifically called on the Italian artist Titian, who created a portrait that was a model of Renaissance portraiture. Titian shows a realistic looking Emperor bestride a massive horse, with allusions to mythology, Roman art, and Charles' own history.

The three panels of the Merode Annunciation triptych show (from left to right) two friends of Mary and Joseph arriving to pay their respects, Mary sitting and reading calmly with the angel Gabriel and the tiny flying figure of the Holy Spirit, and Joseph at a wood-working bench.

Jan van Eyck was a transformative figure in European painting, as his approach to painting depended on realism and a naturalistic viewpoint. His Ghent Altarpiece, also called The Lamb of God, was a departure from Medieval standards that typically valued idealization and symbolism in religious imagery. Van Eyck, who lived from 1390 to 1441, had an outsized influence on the artistic transformations that occurred during the Renaissance.

Michelangelo (1475-1564) is often considered the prototypical "Renaissance man," along with Leonardo da Vinci, thanks to his key involvement in painting, sculpture, and design. Michelangelo was one of the earliest painters to use realistic imagery, forced perspective, and an enhanced use of color. His work was key in the development of Renaissance themes like a return to classical motifs, a sense of grandeur, and the use of scientific knowledge in the arts.

Pieter Bruegel the Elder was known to many at the time of his work as "peasant Bruegels" because he often used commoners and everyday scenes as his subject matter.

DaVinci even dissected human cadavers in his efforts to understand accurately the human form. His drawings and paintings reflect great attention to reproduction of reality, as seen in his quote. Matisse was a Fauve, Renoir, an Impressionist, and Parmigianino was a Mannerist, whose elongated body features depart from strict realism.

None of these answers is correct; the correct answer is the Renaissance. The Renaissance was a cultural and intellectual awakening for Europe. The paintings from the Renaissance tend more toward realism than paintings and artworks before it. Therefore, artists dedicated themselves to studying different aspects of real, three-dimensional spaces, like perspective and shadows. The human form was deeply studied by Leonardo da Vinci and other artists.

Michelangelo Caravaggio's paintings showed a striking use of the high contrast between dark and light known as chiaroscuro, pushing the technique further than any artist had previously. He used it to give drama to many of his psychologically charged paintings of religious scenes. He also often painted boys, sometimes incorporated into these scenes and sometimes in a non-religious or Classical context.

The Garden of Earthly Delights, painted between 1490 and 1510, is a highly idiosyncratic and complicated triptych of the Garden of Eden, earthly pleasures, and their subsequent punishment in a hell-like atmosphere. The religious overtones and multi-faceted story are features of most paintings by Hieronymus Bosch, who was an early Netherlandish painter during the Renaissance. Bosch's painting, now in the Museo del Prado in Madrid, was highly influential for its depiction of human forms, its allegorical tales, and its peculiar form of storytelling.