Important painters of the Baroque period in Italy are the brothers Agostino and Annibale Carracci, Michelangelo da Caravaggio, Guido Reni and Giovanni Tiepolo, in Spain Bartolomé Murillo and Diego Velázquez, in France Nicolas Poussin, Claude Vignon and Claude Lorrain, in Germany Adam Elsheimer, Cosmas Damian Asam, Johannes Zick and his son Januarius, Joseph Wannenmacher, in Tyrol Stephan Kessler and in the Netherlands Peter Paul Rubens, Rembrandt and Vermeer.
Caravaggio is an heir to the humanist painting of the High Renaissance. His realistic depiction of the human figure, painted directly from life and dramatically lit against a dark background, shocked his contemporaries and opened a new chapter in the history of painting. In Baroque painting, scenes are often dramatised with chiaroscuro lighting effects; this can be seen in works by Rembrandt, Vermeer, Le Nain and La Tour. The Flemish painter Anthony van Dyck developed a graceful but imposing style of portraiture that was particularly influential in England.
The prosperity of 17th century Holland led to an enormous production of art by a large number of painters, most of whom were highly specialised and painted only genre scenes, landscapes, still lifes, portraits or history paintings. Technical standards were very high and Dutch Golden Age painting created a new repertoire of subjects that was very influential until the arrival of modernism.