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The French refer to the seventeenth century as the Grand Siècle, or the Great Century. Under the rule of Louis XIII and Louis XIV, the period saw a dramatic increase in French political and military power, the maturation of French courtly life at Versailles, and an unparalleled flourishing of the arts.

During the second half of the eighteenth century, the practice of using oil paint on paper while working outdoors became popular among landscape artists.

At the end of the 1520s, at the time of the siege that brought to an end the last Florentine Republic (1529–1530), the painter Jacopo da Pontormo, (1494–1557) created one of his most moving and groundbreaking paintings, the altarpiece of the Visitation.