Though Michelangelo was a more prolific sculptor, he did paint some of the world's most famous pieces. His best-known pieces were frescoes: murals created by mixing pigments with water and applying the paint to fresh, wet plaster. As the paint and plaster both dry, the pigments become stuck under the layer of calcium carbonate created when the plaster cures. The results are well-preserved paintings that retain their bright colors for many years to come.
El Greco studied and painted in his own version of the Venetian Open technique. He began his paintings with underpainting, painting the canvas with one color, usually a shade of gray. He then used white paint to highlight bright areas, and darker shades to produce forms. El Greco saved coloring for the final steps of his pieces, layering it over the underpainting, along with glaze. His brushstrokes were generally visible in his paintings, although he had the ability to create more polished works.
Leonardo da Vinci introduced a method of painting called chiaroscuro. He used light and color to create shape and depth. He painted more highlights than he actually saw, creating forms that popped against the backgrounds, which also swirled with midrange colors. He did not change the hue to create depth in his paintings, but instead used consistent tone values. For instance, in his painting "Benois Madonna," he painted Mary in a blue dress. To create the illusion of ripples and shadows in the fabric, he used a single blue hue, layered with black or white to create shades and highlights.
Sandro Botticelli used egg tempera paints to create his pieces. Temperas dry very quickly, and so it is quite difficult to blend brushstrokes of different hues or values together to create shape. Instead, Botticelli used lining, oil and water to create different effects. He lined his forms with dark colors to define their shape. He also mixed either oil or water with the temperas to create full colors or transparent glazes.