Zahari Zograf (1810-1853) | Fresco painter

Zahariy Hristovich Dimitrov / Захарий Христович Димитров, better known as Zahari Zograf (or Zahariy Zograf; Захари(й) Зограф) is a famous Bulgarian painter🎨 of the Bulgarian National Revival, noted for his church mural paintings and icons and often regarded as the founder of secular art in Bulgaria due to the introduction of everyday life elements in his work.

Canaletto (1697-1768) | Veduta painter

Giovanni Antonio Canal, popularly known as Canaletto, was born in 1697 in Venice, but resided in England for a large portion of his life.

His father, Bernardo Canal, was a scene painter, and he trained Canaletto from a young age.

His earliest paintings are mostly carefully composed, but freely painted, studies of older artists such as Van Wittel and Luca Carlevaris.

Dante Gabriel Rossetti | Autumn Song, 1848

Know'st thou not at the fall of the leaf

How the heart feels a languid grief

⁠Laid on it for a covering,

⁠And how sleep seems a goodly thing

In autumn at the fall of the leaf?

And how the swift heat of the brain

Falters because it is in vain

Renoir: "La fotografia ha liberato la pittura da molte faccende noiose.."

• "The only way to understand painting is to go and look at it. And if out of a million visitors there is even one to whom art means something, that is enough to justify museums".

• "L'unico modo per capire la pittura è andare a guardarla. E se su un milione di visitatori ce n'è anche uno per cui l'arte significa qualcosa, questo è sufficiente per giustificare i musei".

• "Photography freed painting from a lot of tiresome chores, starting with family portraits".

• "La fotografia ha liberato la pittura da molte faccende noiose, a cominciare dai ritratti di famiglia".

Bulgarian Art History and Sitemap

Pavel Mitkov, 1977 | Impressionist /Abstract painter

The early impetus of Bulgarian traditions in the arts was cut short by the Ottoman occupation in the 14th century, and many early masterpieces were destroyed.

Native artistic life emerged again in Bulgaria during the national revival in the 19th century.

Among the most influential works were the secular and realist paintings of Zahari Zograph in the first half of the century and Hristo Tsokev in the second half.

At the end of the 19th century and beginning of the 20th century, Bulgarian painters such as Anton Mitov and the Czech-born Ivan Mrkvichka produced memorable works, many of them depicting the daily life of the Bulgarian people.