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A shepherd boy who dragged painting from its static, Byzantine methodology and set it on the road to the Renaissance. He imbued his paintings with earthy reality, giving his figures bulk and expressiveness.

Martini took a medieval eye for narrative and iconography and married it to a vibrant Gothic palette, richly patterned fabrics and intense drama in his courtly, graceful figures.

The first fully Renaissance sculptor worked out perspective in sculpture well before painters got there. He cast the first free-standing nude and first equestrian statue since antiquity, and came up with the schiacciato technique, using etched perspective lines to create the illusion of great depth in a shallow relief.

A devout Dominican friar, Beato (Italians honour him as beatified) Angelico’s origins as a manuscript illuminator informed his art. But his work is grounded in the Renaissance precepts of naturalism and perspective.

Not only did Masaccio imbue Renaissance painting with an unflinching naturalism, he also perfected single point perspective (Florence’s Santa Maria Novella’s Trinità ). Not the best draughtsman, but his strong brushstrokes and penetrating scenes are a cornerstone of Renaissance art.

A visionary early Renaissance master whose paintings have an ethereal spirituality, his well-modelled figures endowed with great humanity. His complex compositions also show his early mastery of perspective.

Renaissance master of languid figures populating grand mythological scenes. He got caught up in Florence’s spiritual crisis, and is said to have tossed his own “blasphemous” canvases upon Savonarola’s “Bonfires of the Vanities” (see Florence). He spent the rest of his career painting vapid Madonnas and uninspired religious scenes.

The ultimate Renaissance Man: a genius painter, inventor and proto-scientist, with a penchant for experimentation but a short attention span (he left much unfinished). His sfumato technique of blurring outlines and hazy backgrounds lent his works tremendous depth and realism.

Famously irascible, he was a sculptor of genius by his early 20s, who only painted the Sistine Chapel under protest. He also found time to design Florence’s defences, write quality sonnets and become a significant architect.

Mixing Andrea del Sarto’s experimentation with twisting figures and Michelangelo’s use of non-primary colours, Pontormo took these concepts to vivid and complex extremes.