The middle panel of the Annunciation Triptych by the Workshop of Robert Campin depicts an angel telling the Virgin Mary that she will give birth to the Christ child. The Annunciation was an extremely common subject of medieval European art due both to its obvious important to Christian faith and its ease of communication to parishioners who were not able to read. Campin's piece is littered with extra significance, including the Old and New Testaments to demonstrate the believed fulfillment of prophecies that the birth of Christ brought.

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Trompe-l'œil is a French term meaning “deceive the eye,” which is used in artistic terms to describe an image where the viewer is tricked into seeing a two-dimensional image as three-dimensional. By placing the figures in front of a painted frame, Filippo Lippi makes the Madonna and Child with Angels appear to be something other than a traditional painting on its first viewing.

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Jacopo da Pontormo’s Entombment of Christ is also known as the Deposition from the Cross, as it depicts the crucified Christ being taken from the cross to the grave. Such a scene is identifiable not only for the deceased Christ being carried but also the image of a fainting Virgin Mary, which were the main signifiers of a scene of the descent from the cross. Pontormo’s work is notable among such scenes for having the subjects around Christ and the Virgin looking at the viewer, almost imploring the viewer to share in the emotional suffering of the event.

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Mannerism was essentially the second wave of Renaissance painting, being most prevalent in the second half of the sixteenth century. Mannerism took many of the Renaissance values of clarity and formal achievement and pushed them even further. In the works of artists such as Tintoretto, El Greco, and Giambologna created highly stylized, formal works that were paragons of mannerism.

A donor portrait is a portrait within a larger painting of the person who commissioned it. Donor portraits are especially common in the art of the Renaissance, particularly in religious painting. The purposes of the donor portrait was to memorialize the person who commissioned the work of art, particularly to solicit prayers for them after their death.

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 Dutch painter Hieronymus Bosch took many of the conventions of Medieval art and turned them on their heads. His "Garden of Earthly Delights" is a triptych altarpiece depicting religious themes and is meant as instruction in religious belief. It also, however, features odd figures and a massive scale with unique perspectives that helped kick off many features of Renaissance art.

Lucas Cranach the Elder played an important role in the Protestant Reformation: not only did he paint portraits of leading German reformers like Martin Luther and Philip Melanchthon, but he also made altarpieces and devotional pieces that conformed to Lutheran precepts. Cranach's use of realistic drawings and perspective owed a debt to the Italian renaissance, but his use of symbolism and plain depictions were largely due to the influence of the Protestant Reformation.

Hans Holbein the Younger had a strange relationship to other early Renaissance painters. Famous for his portraits of the court of King Henry VIII of England, Holbein crafted realistic portraits of his subjects using perspective and other techniques borrowed from Italian Renaissance painters. Nonetheless, his symbolism and allegory contained in settings and props for his portraits called back to Gothic styles.

Both Jan van Eyck and Rogier van der Weyden are part of what is now known as early Netherlandish painting. This largely fifteenth-century school of painting introduced a few key techniques and styles, such as oil painting and approaches to perspective, that were highly influential. In particular, many artists in the early Italian Renaissance were directly influenced by early Netherlandish painting.