Old Master

In the study of the history of art, the term Old Master refers to European painters working before the 19^th Century. When applied to artworks, such as a drawing, a painting or a print, it the term can either mean that the painting is made by an Old Master artist or is rendered in the style of one. 

The most well-known and often copied European Old Masters worked in the Renaissance and Baroque periods. These included Italian artists such as Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519), Sandro Botticelli (1445-1510), Titian (1490-1576), Raphael Sanzio (1583-1620) and Caravaggio (1592-1610). The 16^th Century Flemish dynasty of the Brueghels are also deonoted as Old Masters, as are the Baroque masters Pieter Paul Rubens (1577-1640), Anthony Van Dyck (1599-1641), Diego Velazquez (1599-1660) and Bartolome Esteban Murillo (1617-1686) and the painters of the Dutch Golden Age Johannes Vermeer (1632-1675), Rembrandt van Rijn (1606-1669), Pieter Claesz (c. 1597– 1660) and Frans Hals (1580-1666).