The old masters generally were well enough versed in anatomy that they could paint figures from their imagination, but they also used models when required. Carravagio and Vermeer, for example, had to have used models to paint as realistically as they did.

painting, the expression of ideas and emotions, with the creation of certain aesthetic qualities, in a two-dimensional visual language. The elements of this language—its shapes, lines, colours, tones, and textures—are used in various ways to produce sensations of volume, space, movement, and light on a flat surface.