Bible Artists

Fra Angelico

c. 1395–1455

Italian

Fra Angelico (c. 1395–1455), born Guido di Pietro and later known as Fra Giovanni da Fiesole, was a Dominican friar and one of the principal painters of the Early Renaissance in Florence. Biblical subjects stand at the center of his surviving work. His paintings combine the gold and brilliant color inherited from earlier Italian religious art with the dev...

Giotto

c. 1265–1337

Italian

Giotto (c. 1265–1337), also known as Giotto di Bondone, was a Florentine painter and architect whose work played a decisive role in the development of Western painting. He gave sacred figures a new sense of physical presence and placed them within spaces that appear more substantial and understandable than those in much earlier medieval painting. Human ge...

Heinrich Hofmann

1824–1911

German

Heinrich Hofmann (1824–1911) was a German painter known especially for his images of Jesus. Trained in the academic tradition, he studied in Düsseldorf and Antwerp before spending several years traveling and studying European art. He settled permanently in Dresden in 1862 and later became a professor at the Dresden Academy of Fine Arts. Religious subjects...

Hans Holbein the Younger

1497/98–1543

German

Hans Holbein the Younger (1497/98–1543) was a German painter, draftsman, and print designer whose career developed in Basel before reaching its culmination at the Tudor court in England. Although best known today for his portraits of Henry VIII and other prominent figures, Holbein also produced an important body of biblical and religious art. His painting...

William Brassey Hole

1846–1917

English

William Brassey Hole (1846–1917) was an English-born artist whose career was centered in Edinburgh. He worked as a painter, etcher, illustrator, and muralist. History and biblical subjects became important parts of his mature work. In 1901 Hole traveled through Palestine to study the setting of the Gospels. He made sketches and paintings and also used pho...

Lorenzo Lotto

c. 1480–1556/57

Italian

Lorenzo Lotto (c. 1480–1556/57) was an Italian Renaissance painter whose religious works combine vivid color with unusually personal expressions of faith and emotion. Born in Venice, Lotto spent much of his career working elsewhere in northern and central Italy, particularly in Treviso, Bergamo, and the Marches. Biblical subjects remained important throug...

Andrea Mantegna

c. 1431–1506

Italian

Andrea Mantegna (c. 1431–1506) was an Italian Renaissance painter and printmaker whose biblical art combines careful narrative with an intense interest in classical antiquity. Trained in Padua, he developed a distinctive style characterized by sculptural figures, sharply defined forms, carefully constructed perspective, rocky landscapes, and architecture...

Hans Memling

c. 1430–1494

Netherlandish

Hans Memling (c. 1430–1494) was a leading painter of the Early Netherlandish tradition who spent most of his documented career in Bruges. His religious paintings combine careful observation with a calm and orderly approach to biblical and devotional subjects. Memling was strongly influenced by Rogier van der Weyden, in whose workshop he may have worked, b...

Michelangelo

1475–1564

Italian

Michelangelo (1475–1564) was an Italian sculptor, painter, architect, and poet whose biblical works became some of the most recognizable images in Western art. He regarded sculpture as his principal calling, yet two of his greatest achievements were painted in the Sistine Chapel. Its ceiling presents scenes from Genesis within a much larger meditation on...

Gustave Moreau

1826–1898

French

Gustave Moreau (1826–1898) was a French painter whose mysterious images helped prepare the way for the Symbolist movement. Rather than attempting to reconstruct biblical events realistically, Moreau transformed them into elaborate visions filled with symbolism. Biblical subjects appear alongside stories drawn from classical mythology and literature throug...

Bartolomé Esteban Murillo

1617–1682

Spanish

Bartolomé Esteban Murillo (1617–1682) was one of the leading painters of the Spanish Baroque and the dominant painter in Seville during the later seventeenth century. Religious subjects formed a major part of his career, but his approach often differed from the severe intensity associated with some of his Spanish contemporaries. Murillo frequently emphasi...

Jim Padgett

1931

American

Jim Padgett (born 1931) is an American illustrator best known for the extensive biblical artwork created for the Read-n-Grow Picture Bible, published by Sweet Publishing in 1984. Rather than concentrating on a small number of famous biblical scenes, Padgett illustrated stories throughout much of the Old and New Testaments. Many narratives were presented a...