Cluin - thanks. That's helpful.

Un(?)fortunately, I don't have the benefit of much art education, so about all I have to rely on is what I've seen - mostly by wandering around the web. Paintings earlier than the 1400s are pretty rare, with the exception of frescoes where the artist may have needed to "fill a space" rather than having the freedom of a large canvas, so what I've seen of the earliest periods may not be too representative of what was done - only of what survived.

It is very distressing to see some of what must have been beautiful work in such poor shape that it's impossible to tell much about the "theories" employed.

Just to give Bobert the satisfaction of "picking the winners," I did a quick look and came up with:

  Escher         7
  van Gogh       7
  Dali           5
  Klee           4
  Rembrandt      4
  Goldsworthy    3
  Rodin          3
  Turner         3
  Cassat         2
  Chihuly        2
  Gaugin         2
  Hopper         2
  Klee, Paul     2
  Michelangelo   2
  Modigliani     2
  Monet          2
  Picasso        2
  Pollock        2
  Wright         2
  Wyeth          2
  134 others ....1 each
  

Naturally, there were a few "hanging chads" where I couldn't really tell what was a vote and what was just a comment.

I'm afraid most of the front-runners wouldn't be my picks, but I've looked at something like 7,000 thumbnails and 5 or 6 hundred blowups in the past couple of months, so I'm still sorting. My tastes tend toward the academic realist school, so for something to hang on the wall I'd likely go with Bouguereau, Ingres, Waterhouse, or some other of those "discredited hacks," but then my screen-saver and my most-used desktop pics came in a brown paper wrapper too. There is that one Penn Browning....

John

John