The Virgin Mary is placed in the left hand portion of this painting, the Madonna and Child with Two Angels by Filippo Lippi. Lippi does many things that are different than traditional portrayals of the Virgin Mary in this work, especially showing her without a shawl on her head and interacting with the Christ child in a more realistic manner. Still, Lippi presents the Virgin Mary in a blue robe, with a halo over her head, and surrounded by angels, all signifiers of the Virgin Mary in art.

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Tempera paint, made from water-soluble binders (usually eggs) and color pigments, was the most common paint form in Europe from the Roman era through about 1500. Tempera paint was valued for its quick drying time and its ability to last. This work, Madonna and Child with Two Angels by Filippo Lippi, is from the last era of tempera painting in Italy, as painting on canvases, which were better applied with oil paints, became more popular a few decades after Lippi’s work.

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The Entombment of Christ depicts the descent of Christ from the cross, one of the Twelve Stations of the Cross. This particular work hangs in the Capponi Chapel, a sixteenth century addition to the much older Church of Saint Felicita in Florence, which was built by the architect by Filippo Brunelleschi. Pontormo’s work was part of a series depicting the Stations of the Cross, in the then vogue mannerist style, which adorned the walls of the brand new chapel.

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The Last Supper is located in the Santa Maria della Grazie church in Milan, Italy. It is in the refectory, or the area where the monks would eat.

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Da Vinci used oil and tempera paint to create The Last Supper. He also used a double layer of plaster with a white lead undercoat to make the colors brighter.

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The School of Athens by Raphael is the only painting of these five that depicts the two philosophers, as well as many other philosophers of Ancient Greece. The rest are other paintings by Raphael.

The image of Christ in the background is in stark contrast to the woman weighing her jewelry, it is a comment on the contrast between humility and wealth.

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Grisaille, Hatching, and underpainting were all techniques commonly used by Vermeer and the early Dutch painters.

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Venus of Urbino is painted with oil paint. Titian used thin layers of oil paint to create glazes in this art. Tempera and watercolor are other types of paint, stucco is a particular style of painting that involves plasterwork, and terra cotta is a type of porous clay often used for ceramics.

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During the Renaissance, a burgeoning middle class created by a robust mercantile, trading, and banking industry began using their new found money to sponsor the creation of art. Though several works of Renaissance art use divine subject matter, the focus was largely on innovation within the art itself, namely the study of perspective, light, color, and the human figure, with a renewed interest and rediscovering of Greek art and culture. Because of this increased access to money, an emphasis on the importance of knowledge, and the increased availability of books, The Renaissance became the most productive and innovative period in the history of Western art. This stems from a fundamental change in the art's patronage, and the knowledge being absorbed by these patrons: whereas before the art was controlled almost entirely by the Church, a newly enlightened population was now calling the patronal shots, resulting in a diversification and innovation of all the arts across the spectrum of media, and a longing for a type of pre-Christian Hellenistic revival.