Eugene Delacroix — Delacroix is credited with bridging the gap between the painterly traditions of the Old Masters and the new-wave artists of the French Romantic movement. His influence is evident in the reverence paid him by the Impressionist and Post-Impressionist artists of the generations that followed, including Renoir, Cézanne, and Matisse, who were all profoundly influenced by his work. An all-embracing artist, Delacroix was at home with styles such as pen, watercolor, pastel, and oil. As a decorative artist, Delacroix remains perhaps the most outstanding artist in French history. His artistic inspiration came chiefly from historical and contemporary events or from literature. His subjects ranged from sumptuous bouquets of flowers to saints, warriors, and mythical goddesses to Arab hunting scenes with ferocious tigers. DVD. 45 minutes.

Kurt Schwitters — Kurt Schwitters is considered one of the leading protagonists of the 20th century. He was a painter, sculptor, architect, poet, and playwright, as well as a utopian romantic, subverting and transforming everything he touched into art. This DVD provides a complete look at the works of the German artist, now best known for his collages and junk sculpture. Schwitters began painting as an expressionist, but in 1919 he turned to collage, incorporating trash such as train tickets and newspapers into his works, which he exploited for their color, texture, and surprise value. The DVD includes many of Schwitters’ most famous creations, filmed during an exhibition of his works at the George Pompidou Museum. DVD. 47 minutes.

Leonardo da Vinci — Leonardo da Vinci was one of the great masters of the Italian Renaissance whose masterpieces include The Last Supper and The Mona Lisa. An acclaimed genius, da Vinci was also an architect, draftsman, engineer, inventor, mathematician, philosopher, and visionary whose research and studies contributed to many developments in modern science. He was ever-prepared to call everything into question or, phoenix-like, reduce to ashes the creations and intellectual efforts that had absorbed him for years, and then start all over again. DVD. 43 minutes.

Maxfield Parrish — Maxfield Parrish was one of the greatest American painters and illustrators of the 20th century. Brilliant blue skies, pastoral landscapes, and captivating figures are his art’s signature characteristics. The scope of his work was enormous, including covers for magazines, theater sets, paintings, and photographs, as well as murals and graphic work ranging from posters to calendars. Throughout his long career, Parrish’s use of the latest technical innovations fostered an exploration of the relationship between fine and commercial art. These advances also allowed reproductions of Parrish’s art to find their way into most American homes during the first three decades of the 20th century. There have been few American artists whose works are so easily recognizable. Although his artwork was dismissed by the critical art world at the time of his death, it has recently enjoyed a renewed interest by contemporary artists and critics. DVD. 45 minutes.

Michelangelo — Michelangelo marked the beginning of the modern artist, one who claims total freedom with no compromise. As sculptor, painter, architect, and poet, he continued the tradition of the early Renaissance and pushed it to the extreme. Although working with princes, lords, and pontiffs, he turned the traditional status of the artist from that of a craftsman subordinated to the wishes of his patron into that of a creator with the ultimate power to make aesthetic decisions, and prepared to risk his career for the sake of individualism and freedom. In 1512, Michelangelo climbed down for the last time from the scaffolding on which he had spent four years of his life painting the Sistine Chapel ceiling, a fresco covering an area of a thousand square meters with more than three hundred figures illustrating the Old Testament Book of Genesis. DVD. 45 minutes.

Toulouse-Lautrec — Toulouse-Lautrec was transformed by his discovery of the Montmartre section in Paris. He devoted his artistic talent to painting this unique microcosm, with its intriguing blend of the vulgar and aristocratic, and his favorite haunts, the Moulin Rouge, the Moulin del la Galette, the Mirliton, the Chat Noir, and the Cabaret of Aristide Bruant. Toulouse-Lautrec is remembered above all as a witty and playful observer of his age. It was in his portraits of the diverse variety of people of Montmartre that he could most freely express himself as a caricaturist. Acclaimed in his lifetime as a poster designer and illustrator, it was only a few years after his death that he became famous as a painter. DVD. 51 minutes.