Florence is best known for its contribution to the visual arts. It was the birthplace of the Renaissance.

• Raphael (Raffaello Sanzio) (1483–1520), though born in Umbria and in later life living in Rome, Raphael spent four years in Florence, from around 1504 to 1508.
  

• Leonardo da Vinci (Leonardo di ser Piero) (1452–1519) was the typical Renaissance man and, besides being a painter, was also a sculptor, inventor, engineer and so on. As a painter he is considered as being one of the greatest of all time and two of his pictures are almost too popular for their own good: the Mona Lisa and The Last Supper. Very few of his works survive and many do so incomplete or damaged due in many cases to his bend to experiment with new techniques and materials. Though born in Vinci, in Tuscany, and was apprenticed in Florence, he was mostly active in Milan, later moving to France, where he died.

• Cosimo Rosselli (1439–after 1506) was a Pupil of Neri di Bicci and left some frescoes in the Church of Sant’Ambrogio.

• Rosso Fiorentino (Red Florentine) (Giovanni Battista di Jacopo) (1494-1540) was, together with Pontormo, one of the two great exponents of Mannerism in Tuscany. His nickname derives from his hair, said to be red. He was a pupil of Andrea del Sarto and was influenced by Michelangelo and Raphael. He was in Rome when the Imperial troops sacked the city in 1527, and event that made him move to France, securing a position with Francis I. He was, together with Francesco Primaticcio and Niccolò dell’Abate, one of the main painters of the first School of Fontainebleau.

• Pontormo (Also known as Jacopo da Pontormo or Jacopo Pontormo) (Jacopo Carucci) (1494–1557), the Mannerist artist, painted almost all his oeuvre in and around Florence. His neurotic character seems to reflect in his work, where lurid colours, contorted poses and distortion add a sense of unrest which is not present in the work of artists of the Renaissance. His most famous work is are the frescoes at the Brunelleschi’s Capponi Chapel at Santa Felicita. He also left many frescoes at the Carthusian monastery at Galluzzo (Certosa del Galluzzo), just outside Florence. These are now sadly damaged, due to poor restoration: they were removed from the walls and placed on iron backings, the chemical elements in the paint reacted with the iron, resulting in the almost total destruction of the frescoes. Fortunately copies exist, which give us some idea of what the originals looked like.

• Bronzino (also known as Agnolo Bronzino) (Agnolo di Cosimo) (1503–1572), the celebrated court painter of the Medici, has left us many portraits of members of the Grand-Ducal family. He also left religious scenes and allegorical paintings, the latter often of difficult intepretation.

• Alessandro di Cristofano di Lorenzo del Bronzino Allori (1535-1607) was trained by his uncle, Bronzino and was the father of Cristofano Allori.

• Cristofano Allori (1577-1621), the son of Alessandro Allori, took lessons with his father, but soon moved to another studio, dissatisfied with his father’s emphasis on anatomy and subdued colours, moved to another studio. He left some fine paintings.

• Giovanni Domenico Ferretti (1692–1768) was one of the rare Florentine painters practicing the Rococo Style in Florence.