Can You Guess Which Artist Painted These Historic Paintings?

Michelangelo put his signature on the Pietà, his first sculptural masterpiece, but he never signed another work of art. Instead, he would paint himself into them. His most famous "signature" is in "The Last Judgment" fresco that covers an entire wall of the Sistine Chapel.

Leonardo Da Vinci managed to be so many things in one lifetime—painter, inventor, engineer, architect, and scientist. His genius was universal: he is the author of many masterpieces famous worldwide, but that is just the tip of the iceberg. With his intensive studies of nature and anatomy, the ultimate Renaissance man revolutionized both art and science.

Even though Leonardo da Vinci is best known as an artist, he was also a scientist and an inventor. His numerous talents and universal genius make him a true Renaissance man.

Vincent Van Gogh produced his most famous artwork while in a mental hospital. One of the greatest artists in world history, Vincent Van Gogh lived in poverty, struggling with depression and mental illness. In less than 10 years, he painted almost 900 paintings.

Vermeer was a realist painter who specialized in domestic interior scenes of middle-class life; his famous works include "Women with a Water Jug", "Girl with a Pearl Earring" and "the Milkmaid." During his lifetime, Vermeer was a moderately successful provincial genre painter who worked for rich people. At the beginning of his career, he focused more on producing history paintings, creating scenes from the Bible and classical mythology, but later on, he chose to paint everyday life scenes instead because they were more popular at the time.

Delacroix is the leader of the French Romantic School; many critics consider him to be the greatest French Romantic painter in history. His use of color shaped Impressionist and Post-Impressionist styles; his most famous works of art include "Women of Algiers" and "Liberty Leading the People."

Raffaello Sanzio da Urbino, or simply, Raphael, was an Italian artist who created "Transfiguration" and "The Sistine Madonna." However, his greatest work is his fresco sequence in the Raphael Rooms in the Papal Palace.

Jacques Louis David began his career shortly after the Rococo period. This artist is considered to be the leader of the Neoclassical style; his famous works include "The Death of Marat" and "Napoleon Crossing the Alps."

Edvard Munch painted "The Scream," one of the most recognizable works in the history of art. His career and his masterpieces were largely influenced by experimentation, disappointment, and a troubled relationship with his father.

Claude Monet's masterpieces gave a name to the new art movement, Impressionism, that was all about capturing light and natural forms. The French painter was making caricatures of his teachers when he was a child and quickly became famous in his hometown for his sketches of the town’s residents.

Edouard Manet was fascinated by painting at a very young age but his parents always disapproved of his interest. Nevertheless, he eventually went to art school where he studied the old masters of Europe. Later, he started to draw everyday scenes of people, becoming a leading artist during the transition from realism to impressionism.

The founder of Early Netherlandish painting school and one of the most significant representatives of Northern Renaissance art, Jan Van Eyck is famous for painting the altarpiece for the Church of St. Bavon. He is also an author of another masterpiece, "Arnolfini Wedding."

Van Dyck grew up in the shadow of Rubens, another famous Flemish painter, so his genius was often underrated. However, he was an immensely gifted and original artist who completely transformed the art of portrait drawing.

Jean Francois Millet is well-known for his paintings of peasant farmers and rural life. He spent his childhood and youth working on the land; that's how peasant subjects became Millet’s principal concern in art.

Renoir made several thousand paintings during his lifetime. He started off early as a porcelain painter; he worked in a porcelain factory making drawings when he was just a boy. In his free time, he studied drawing and famous works of other painters.

Gustav Klimt is a famous Austrian artist. Perhaps Klimt’s most famous work is 1907's "Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I." This painting was sold at auction in June of that year for $135 million, making it the most money ever paid for a work of art. The mysterious portrait has been the subject of different books and documentaries, such as the film, "Woman in Gold," which stars Helen Mirren as Maria Altmann.

Even though Gustave Caillebotte was an Impressionist, he drew in a much more realistic manner than other artists in the group. The painter was from a rich family and helped Léon Bonnat, Edgar Degas, Claude Monet, and Pierre Auguste Renoir to organize their first group exhibition in Paris in 1874.

Famous painter Georges Seurat took his technique a step beyond Impressionism. He painted in an unusual way - with small strokes of pure color that blended to create a complete picture when viewed from a distance. This method, called Pointillism, can be seen in a lot of his major works, such as "A Sunday on La Grande Jatte."

When Sandro Botticelli began his career, he caught the attention of Lorenzo de'Medici, also known as 'The Magnificent.' Brunelleschi, Donatello, and Michelangelo were also under the patronage of the Medici; together, they were roughly called the Florentine School.

El Greco (his real name is Domenikos Theotokopoulos) was born on the island of Crete when it was a Venetian possession. He was a prominent painter, sculptor and architect of the Spanish Renaissance. His pseudonym El Greco means “The Greek.”

Often called the father of modern art, Francisco Goya painted a lot of royal portraits during his lifetime, as well as a few prominent masterpieces that criticized the social and political problems of his era. Goya mostly learned to paint by imitation. He copied the works of great masters who inspired him, such as Diego Rodríguez de Silva y Velázquez and Rembrandt van Rijn.

Thomas Gainsborough was a well-known English portrait and landscape painter who created most of his works in the second half of the 18th century. Mostly influenced by the Dutch landscape painters, he developed his own style remarkable for its details and use of color.

The artist who created the iconic work "American Gothic," Grant Wood painted in a deliberately primitivizing style, often satirizing his subjects. One of the principal Regionalists of the 1930s, he was born in Iowa and grew up on a farm.

One of the ​greatest American painters of the nineteenth century, Winslow Homer was born in Boston and raised in the rural area. The artist worked as a commercial printmaker for a long time and studied oil painting only briefly. Nevertheless, he is the author of famous "Breezing Up (A Fair Wind)," "The Gulf Stream," and "The Fog Warning."

The prominent French artist, Henri Rousseau, taught himself to draw while working as a toll collector in Paris. He was also a friend of Picasso and a real inspiration to the Paris avant-garde.

Rembrandt lived and worked during the 17th century Dutch Golden Age. Most famous for his 1642 painting, "The Night Watch," he was a real genius who painted portraits and landscapes exploring themes from the Bible and classical antiquity.

Peter Paul Rubens is best known for such works as 'Wolf and Fox Hunt," "The Descent from the Cross," and "The Garden of Love." Rubens was insanely famous during his lifetime; his patrons included royalty, rich people, and churches.

Pieter Bruegel was a pioneer in making peasant scenes and landscapes the focus of large paintings. At that time, almost nobody painted peasants in everyday life; Bruegel’s work gives an important insight into everyday life of people in the 16th century.

Gustave Courbet is well-known for his powerful pictures of peasants and scenes of everyday life. In the 19th century, the prominent French painter shocked the world with his large-scale paintings showing simple scenes of rural life.

The influential French Post-Impressionist painter, Paul Cezanne, paved the way for 20th century Modernism. The artist ultimately showed that color, line, and "form" can be the same thing, and one component simply can't exist without another.

American Artist Edward Hopper is the painter behind the iconic masterpiece, "Nighthawk." He lived in New York City almost all his life, depicting the commonplaces of urban life with still, lonely figures. Trained as an illustrator, he also devoted much of his early career to advertising.

Edgar Degas was fascinated with the subject of dance; more than half of his works depict dancers. However, he often called the ballerinas he painted "little monkey-girls" and took a real pleasure in watching his models contort in agony.

A successful provincial genre painter, Johannes Vermeer was mostly drawing domestic interior scenes of middle-class life and sold a lot of his works during his lifetime.

Caravaggio's works became popular for the tenebrism technique, which uses shadows to emphasize light areas. He was immensely popular during his lifetime and is even considered one of the fathers of modern painting. However, his career was short-lived. Caravaggio killed a man during a brawl and died not long after, in 1610.

Leonardo Da Vinci was a genius: his areas of interest included invention, painting, sculpting, architecture, science, music, mathematics, engineering, literature, anatomy, and more. He is sometimes also credited with the inventions of the parachute, helicopter, ​and tank.

James Abbott McNeil was an influential artist in the late 19th century. He was the son of a railroad engineer who built a railroad from St. Petersburg to Moscow. He spent his childhood in Russia, where his family lived in luxury.

Ivan Aivazovsky was a famous Russian Romantic painter, specializing in seascape and landscape scenes. His talent was obvious from a very early age. Ivan was such a good painter, that influential locals in Simferopol helped him to move to St. Petersburg and enter the Academy of Art.

One of the most important German artists, Caspar David Friedrich was a son of a candlemaker who was drawing mysterious and enchanting landscapes all his life. Caspar David Friedrich became a famous artist shortly after he won a competition organised by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe.

John Singleton Copley became famous for his detailed portraits of important figures in colonial New England. He is also known as the greatest artist of colonial America.

Antoine Watteau was painting in the tradition of Correggio and Rubens typifying the Rococo style. His brief career spurred the revival of interest in color and embraced the artifice of the theater.

Titian was the master of religious art, a popular portraitist, and the creator of unique mythological compositions famous for their unique decorative beauty. One of his earliest works, "Christ Carrying the Cross," was believed to have been Giorgione's work for many years.

Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres was drawing historic painting all his life but by the end of his life, it was Ingres's self portraits, both painted and drawn, that became his most famous and recognizable works of art.

Velázquez was a court painter. Even when the Spanish crown under Philip IV was going broke and was unable to pay its court painters, they still paid Velázquez, who was always the king's favorite. He drew mainly portraits of the royal family and other important court figures.

Frans Hals mostly drew the portraits of disreputable people. According to his biographer, he also drank too much and too often mixed too freely with all of those people he loved to draw.

Jean Honore Fragonard was a French artist whose paintings are remembered for their fluid grace and sensual charm. He was a real virtuoso whose Rococo manner was distinguished by delicate hedonism. His famous works include "The Swing," "A Young Girl Reading," and "The Secret Meeting."

Jean Leon Gerome was mostly creating historical and mythological compositions, such as "Pygmalion" and "Galatea." His paintings were sometimes anecdotal, sometimes melodramatic, and frequently erotic. His latest works are more exotic because they are largely influenced by his trip to Egypt.

Rembrandt was a rich and successful painter. He married his art dealer's cousin who was from a wealthy family, and when he wasn’t busy working on portraits for wealthy clients, he taught many students. All of this helped him to save 13,000 guilders (an enormous sum) and buy a big upscale town house, which is now The Rembrandt House Museum.

Thomas Eakins painted portraits that were so true to life, they could almost be mistaken for photographs. His greatest work is the controversial painting, "The Gross Clinic," created to honor the achievements of surgeon Dr. Samuel D. Gross, who was also a native of Philadelphia.

The Italian artist, Paolo Uccello, is mostly known for his pioneering style in visual art perspective. He is the author of the breathtaking "The Hunt in the Forest" and famous "The Battle of San Romano."

Franz Marc was a talented artist, print maker, and co-founder of the magazine, The Blue Rider. He was in touch with many French artists and famous actors. The artist loved to copy the style of famous painters and did it a lot to learn the different techniques.