Following the footsteps of Greek artists, El Greco paintings show mastery in Post-Byzantine art. A great majority of the time El Greco spent in Rome was used to develop a style, adopting elements from both Mannerism and Venetian Renaissance.

The best El Greco paintings were produced in Toledo, Spain at a time when El Greco truly blossomed as an artist. The focus of his work was on highly expressive and visionary religious works. The rare times he ventured away from the genre produced compelling portraits, landscape paintings, mythological works and sculptures.

Later El Greco paintings were particularly notable for their undulating forms, epic scale and expressive distortions. For El Greco, color is the most important element in painting. In this regard, he declared that color should have primacy over form. He dramatized rather than described in his more mature works. The strong spiritual emotion in his works directly affected his audience.

Manet paintings are known for their portrayal of everyday scenes of people and city life. A leading artist in the transition from realism to impressionism, Edouard Manet was made famous by his works like The Luncheon on the Grass and Olympia.

A portrait showing a young woman called Victorine Meurent, wearing a black ribbon around her neck and a dashingly blue ribbon in her hair, is one of the most arresting among Manet paintings. A constant model for Edouard, Victorine was also the model for one of the most notorious paintings in the world, also attributed to Edouard.

Olympia is a one of the most famous Manet paintings. Victorine was the model for the prostitute featured in the painting, in all her glory except for a black ribbon around her neck and a satin slipper on her foot. She was completely naked again in The Luncheon on the Grass, but in this painting she was surrounded by two men who were fully clothed while enjoying their picnic together. She was featured as a bullfighter wearing very unsuitable shoes in Mlle V in the Costume of an Espada.