was Caravaggio; his style of powerful chiaroscuro has been called tenebrism, from the Latin word for "darkness". French baroque artists generally practiced a classical restraint that brought clarity and balance to their pictures. This is seen both in the classical subjects painted by Nicolas Poussin and in the landscapes of Claude Lorrain. Diego Vel�zquez, a consummate master of tone and color, was the greatest Spanish painter of the age. Peter Paul Rubens, the Flemish baroque master, displayed his ability to contrast light and shadow in paintings such as The Descent from the Cross (1611-1614, Cathedral, Antwerpen). An extraordinary number of fine painters emerged in the Netherlands during the 17th century; all, however, were surpassed by Rembrandt. His unique chiaroscuro technique and psychological depth are displayed in paintings such as the 1659
Self-portrait (Iveagh Bequest, Kenwood House, London).
Rococo Painting: art, which flourished in France and Germany in the early 18th century, was in many respects a continuation of baroque. Rococo, however, is a lighter, more playful style. Highly popular were mythological and pastoral scenes, such as those by Francois Boucher and Jean Honore Fragonard. English rococo artist William Hogarth was known for his moralistic narrative works such as Marriage a la Mode (1745).
Neoclassical painting. In the latter half of the 18th century, rococo style was superseded by the more simple and modest neoclassicism. This classical revival in the arts was led by the French painter Jacques-Louis David, whose paintings, such as Death of Socrates (1787,  Metropolitan Museum of Art,  New York City), had its sources in ancient history and classical myth. See Neoclassical Art and Architecture.
Romantic painting closely following neoclassicism was the romantic movement (see Romanticism). The play of the imagination superseded the intellectual approach of the neoclassicists. Romantic landscape painting in England is exemplified by the works of John Constable and Joseph Mallord William Turner. The leading German romantic artist, Caspar David Friedrich, was known for his portrayals of the earth's transformations during dawn and sunset. The French romantic Baron Antoine-Jean Gros was noted for his portraits of Napolean. America's first truly romantic artist was Washington Allston. In mid19th-century landscape painting there appeared a new trend, now defined as luminism, concerned with the atmospheric effects of diffused light.
About the middle of the 19th century in France, the painter Gustave Courbet, rejecting both neoclassicism and romanticism, proclaimed a one-man movement called realism. He believed the artist should realistically portray ordinary people engaged in everyday activities.
Impressionism. Edouard Manet is often referred to as the first modern painter. Manet borrowed themes and compositions from earlier masters and reworked them in his own style, using free, sketchy brushwork. His style was a precursor of impressionism. This style was evolved by painters who were interested in studying the effects of light on objects. The impressionists' disregard for exact details and their use of small, separate touches of pure color contrasted greatly to the prevailing academic technique. Claude Monet was impressionism's leading artist. Camille Pissarro and Pierre Auguste Renoir were also founders of impressionism.Postimpressionism: in the 1880s Georges Seurat developed an outgrowth of impressionism known as divisionism or pointillism. Seurat and his followers modified the loose brushstrokes characteristic of impressionist style into precise dots of pure pigment. Other major postimpressionist artists included the Dutch-born Vincent van Gogh and the French artists Paul Gauguin and Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec. See Postimpressionism. 20th-Century Painting Before World War II At the turn of the 20th century, a group of artists in both France and Germany became interested in aboriginal art. The group, led by Henri Matisse, came to be known as the fauvefauvesquo ""wild beasts".
Expressionism is the name given to a movement started by artists more concerned with recording subjective feelings and responses, via distortions of line and color, than with the faithful representation of reality. In Germany the movement encompassed two groups: Die Brucke (The Bridge), who portrayed the sufferings of humanity in a style somewhat resembling fauvism, and Der Blaue Reiter (The Blue Rider), whose expressionism evolved toward a semiabstract mode of painting. Cubism, which became the most influential of all 20th-century art styles, emphasizes the flatness of the picture plane, or surface, and rejects traditional perspective.
The cubist style was developed by Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque in Paris. A group of Italian artists-Gino Severini, Umberto Boccioni, Carlo Carra, and Giacomo Balla-modified the cubist style in a movement called futurism. During World War I (1914-1918) in Zurich, Switzerland, a group of war resisters chose a nonsense word, dada (French for "hobbyhorse"), to describe their protest activities and their unconventional art. Best known of the dada artists were Marcel Duchamp and Max Ernst. Surrealism emphasized the superiority of the unconscious and the role of dreams in artistic creation. Among the prominent surrealist artists were Ernst, Salvador Dal�, Joan Miro.