Starting the Art Hunt
So I sat down at my messy desk thinking "man I wanna know about those old painters and their fancy art stuff." Grabbed my laptop and just typed "top Renaissance artists" into Google. Instantly got slammed with hundreds of names popping up everywhere like fireworks - Michelangelo, Da Vinci, Raphael, Botticelli... my eyes were jumping all over the place!
Drowning in Info
Opened like fifteen tabs at once and started clicking like crazy. Wikipedia pages went on forever with big words I couldn't pronounce. Some fancy art sites kept trying to sell me museum tickets. Even found this old PDF from some university that put me to sleep after three sentences. Started feeling like a detective solving a 500-year-old mystery except I'm in sweatpants eating cold pizza.
Sorting the Mess
Made a messy spreadsheet because my brain was frying. Put three columns:
- Artist Name - spelling always tripped me up (is it Titian or Titan?)
- Weird Fact - like how Caravaggio actually stabbed a dude
- Famous Painting - just wrote whatever picture came up most
Started dumping stuff in there while muttering "this guy painted ceilings? Who does that?" when I saw Michelangelo's Sistine Chapel thing.
Clicking Around
Kept digging through random websites and YouTube videos. Found out Raphael died on his birthday (weird right?) and that Da Vinci had notebooks full of helicopter sketches 400 years early. Saved some janky screenshots of paintings - Mona Lisa kept looking at me funny every time I glanced at her. Got sidetracked reading about paint recipes from the 1500s (egg yolks and crushed bugs... gross!).
Putting It Together
Finally narrowed it down to six artists everyone kept mentioning:
- Michelangelo - David statue dude
- Da Vinci - mysterious smile guy
- Raphael - angel baby painter
- Titian - red hair specialist
- Botticelli - shell painting guy
- Caravaggio - the dramatic light guy with anger issues
Typed it all up in a document with their paintings like "The Last Supper" and "Birth of Venus." Noticed how half these artists had one-name fame like modern celebrities.
Wrapping Up
Cross-checked with a couple library books gathering dust on my shelf. Realized some paintings I thought were Renaissance were actually from later periods (oops). Whole thing took me like four hours because I kept staring at those super detailed paintings wondering "how many brushstrokes was THAT?" Got hungry around hour three and made PB&J while still looking at Fra Angelico paintings. Now I've got this list saved on my desktop between grocery lists and cat memes.
