30 artists in the museums, in order of birthArtists to see in Florence

Painter, 1240 to 1302

Cimabue

The painter Florence puts at the head of its history. The Uffizi has his great Madonna from Santa Trinita, and Santa Croce has the Crucifix that the flood of 1966 half destroyed.

Italo-Byzantine. 2 works in 2 museums

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Painter, 1267 to 1337

Giotto

Giotto was a Florentine. The Uffizi has his great Madonna, Santa Croce has two chapels he frescoed, Santa Maria Novella has his Crucifix, and the bell tower beside the cathedral is his design.

Proto-Renaissance. 4 works in 4 museums

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Picture: Yair Haklai, CC BY-SA 4.0

Sculptor, 1378 to 1455

Lorenzo Ghiberti

Ghiberti gave almost fifty years to two pairs of bronze doors for the baptistery of Florence. The second pair are the Gates of Paradise, and the originals are in the cathedral museum.

Early Renaissance. 3 works in 2 museums

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Picture: Rufus46, CC BY 3.0

Sculptor, 1386 to 1466

Donatello

The greatest sculptor of the fifteenth century was a Florentine, and the city has kept his work: the bronze David and Saint George in the Bargello, the Magdalene in the cathedral museum, the Judith in the Palazzo Vecchio.

Early Renaissance. 5 works in 3 museums

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Painter, 1395 to 1455

Fra Angelico

Fra Angelico was a friar at San Marco, and painted his own convent. Its museum has the Annunciation at the head of the stairs, a fresco in every cell and his altarpieces from the churches of Florence.

Early Renaissance. 4 works in 1 museum

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Painter, 1397 to 1475

Paolo Uccello

Paolo Uccello was a Florentine obsessed with perspective. The Uffizi has the central panel of his Battle of San Romano, and the cathedral has his painted monument to a soldier and the clock above its door.

Early Renaissance. 3 works in 2 museums

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Painter, 1401 to 1428

Masaccio

Masaccio died at twenty-six, and in six years of work changed painting for good. His frescoes are in the Brancacci Chapel and in Santa Maria Novella, and the Uffizi has an altarpiece.

Early Renaissance. 3 works in 3 museums

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Picture: Commonists, CC BY-SA 4.0

Painter, 1406 to 1469

Filippo Lippi

A friar who ran off with a nun, and the teacher of Botticelli. The Uffizi has his Madonna and Child with Two Angels, the tenderest picture of its century.

Early Renaissance. 3 works in 2 museums

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Picture: Francesco Bini, CC BY-SA 4.0

Painter, 1415 to 1492

Piero della Francesca

The Uffizi has one work by Piero della Francesca, and it is among the most famous portraits of the Renaissance: the Duke and Duchess of Urbino, facing each other in profile.

Early Renaissance. 1 work in 1 museum

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Painter, 1421 to 1497

Benozzo Gozzoli

Gozzoli painted one room that everyone remembers: the chapel of the Medici palace, where the three kings ride to Bethlehem through Tuscany with the Medici in their train.

Early Renaissance. 1 work in 1 museum

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Painter, 1430 to 1516

Giovanni Bellini

The Uffizi has one of Giovanni Bellini's strangest and most beautiful pictures, the Sacred Allegory, whose meaning nobody has settled.

Venetian Renaissance. 1 work in 1 museum

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Picture: Rufus46, CC BY-SA 3.0

Painter and sculptor, 1435 to 1488

Andrea del Verrocchio

The master of the workshop where Leonardo trained. The Bargello has his bronze David, the Uffizi the Baptism he painted with his pupil, and the Palazzo Vecchio his boy with a dolphin.

Early Renaissance. 4 works in 4 museums

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Painter, 1445 to 1510

Sandro Botticelli

Botticelli lived and died in Florence, and the Uffizi has the best of him in two rooms: the Birth of Venus, the Primavera and the Adoration of the Magi in which he painted himself among the Medici.

Early Renaissance. 5 works in 2 museums

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Painter, 1446 to 1523

Pietro Perugino

Perugino kept a workshop in Florence for years. The Uffizi has his portrait of a Florentine craftsman, the Pitti Palace has his Lamentation, and a quiet convent has his Crucifixion on its wall.

Early Renaissance. 3 works in 3 museums

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Painter, 1448 to 1494

Domenico Ghirlandaio

The chronicler of Florence in the time of Lorenzo the Magnificent. His frescoes in Santa Maria Novella and Santa Trinita are sacred stories acted out by the city's bankers, wives and children.

Early Renaissance. 3 works in 3 museums

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Painter, 1452 to 1519

Leonardo da Vinci

Leonardo learned to paint in Florence, and the Uffizi has what he made there as a young man: the Annunciation, the angel he added to his master's Baptism, and the Adoration of the Magi he left unfinished.

High Renaissance. 3 works in 1 museum

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Picture: Livioandronico2013, CC BY-SA 4.0

Painter and sculptor, 1475 to 1564

Michelangelo

Florence made Michelangelo and kept the David. The Accademia has it with the unfinished Prisoners, the Medici Chapels are his from floor to dome, and his first and last sculptures are a short walk apart.

High Renaissance. 6 works in 5 museums

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Painter, 1483 to 1520

Raphael

Raphael spent four years in Florence learning from Leonardo and Michelangelo. The Uffizi has the Madonna of the Goldfinch from those years, and the Pitti Palace has the Madonna of the Chair and La Velata.

High Renaissance. 4 works in 2 museums

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Painter, 1486 to 1530

Andrea del Sarto

The painter Florence called faultless. The Uffizi has his Madonna of the Harpies, and two cloisters in the city hold fresco cycles of his that hardly anyone visits.

High Renaissance. 3 works in 3 museums

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Painter, 1488 to 1576

Titian

The Medici inherited the pictures of the dukes of Urbino, and with them some of the best of Titian: the Venus of Urbino in the Uffizi, and a wall of portraits in the Pitti Palace.

Venetian Renaissance. 4 works in 2 museums

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Painter, 1494 to 1557

Pontormo

The strangest painter of the Florentine Renaissance. His Deposition, in a chapel a few steps from the Ponte Vecchio, is all pink, pale blue and anguish, with no cross and no ground.

Mannerism. 3 works in 2 museums

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Sculptor, 1500 to 1571

Benvenuto Cellini

Goldsmith, sculptor, brawler and author of the most entertaining autobiography of the Renaissance. His bronze Perseus has stood in the Loggia dei Lanzi since 1554.

Mannerism. 2 works in 2 museums

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Painter, 1503 to 1572

Bronzino

The court painter of the first Medici grand duke. His portraits in the Uffizi, cool, polished and unreadable, are how we picture the Florence of Cosimo I.

Mannerism. 3 works in 2 museums

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Picture: Mary Harrsch, CC BY-SA 4.0

Sculptor, 1529 to 1608

Giambologna

A Fleming who became the sculptor of the Medici grand dukes. His Rape of the Sabine Women in the Loggia dei Lanzi and his flying Mercury in the Bargello were copied all over Europe.

Mannerism. 3 works in 3 museums

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Painter, 1571 to 1610

Caravaggio

Caravaggio never worked in Florence, but the Medici collected him early. The Uffizi has his Bacchus, the Medusa painted on a shield and the Sacrifice of Isaac. The Pitti Palace has the Sleeping Cupid.

Baroque. 4 works in 2 museums

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Painter, 1577 to 1640

Peter Paul Rubens

The Pitti Palace has two of Rubens's most personal pictures, the Four Philosophers and the Consequences of War. The Uffizi has two battle scenes for a king of France, each the size of a wall.

Baroque. 3 works in 2 museums

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Painter, 1593 to 1654

Artemisia Gentileschi

The most celebrated woman painter of the seventeenth century made her name in Florence. The Uffizi has her Judith Slaying Holofernes, as violent a picture as any by Caravaggio.

Baroque. 2 works in 2 museums

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Picture: IlSistemone, CC BY-SA 4.0

Painter, 1596 to 1669

Pietro da Cortona

Pietro da Cortona brought the Roman Baroque to Florence. The painted ceilings of the grand dukes' rooms in the Pitti Palace, named for the planets, are his.

Baroque. 2 works in 1 museum

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Picture: Francesco Bini, CC BY-SA 4.0

Painter, 1606 to 1669

Rembrandt

The Uffizi has a self-portrait of Rembrandt's old age, bought by the Medici for their gallery of painters' own likenesses, and a head of a young man long believed to be another.

Dutch Golden Age. 2 works in 1 museum

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Picture: Zairon, CC BY 4.0

Sculptor, 1757 to 1822

Antonio Canova

Canova carved a Venus for Florence to replace the ancient one Napoleon had taken. It is in the Pitti Palace, and his monument to the poet Alfieri is in Santa Croce.

Neoclassicism. 2 works in 2 museums

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