The Renaissance was a period of time from the 14th to the 17th century in Europe. This era bridged the time between the Middle Ages and modern times. The word "Renaissance" means "rebirth".
The Renaissance began in Florence, Italy, in the 14th century. The term Renaissance Man refers to a person that is an expert and talented in many areas. The true geniuses of the Renaissance were great examples of this. Leonardo da Vinci was a master painter, sculptor, scientist, inventor, architect, engineer, and writer. Michelangelo was also a superb painter, sculptor, and architect.
1304 -Petrarch born; Dante at work on the Divine Comedy.
1305 -“Babylonian Captivity” begins; Pope leaves Rome to settle in Avignon.
1306 - Giotto at work in the Arena Chapel in Padua.
1313- Boccaccio born.
1321 - Dante dies.
1337 - Giotto dies; Hundred Years’ War between France and England (1337-1453).
1347-50 – Black Death strikes Europe.
1348-Boccaccio at work on the Decameron.
1377 – Brunelleschi born.
1378-Papacy returns to Rome; Urban VI elected Pope; Clement VII (antipope) elected at Avington; Great Schism begins.
Modern Western painting begins with Giotto. Giotto di Bondone (1266/7 – January 8, 1337), known as Giotto(Italian: [ˈdʒɔtto]), was an Italian painter and architect from Florence in the late Middle Ages. He is generally considered the first in a line of great artists who contributed to the Italian Renaissance.
From Wikipedia
Masaccio (Italian: [maˈzattʃo]; December 21, 1401 – autumn 1428), born Tommaso di Ser Giovanni di Simone, was the first great painter of the Quattrocento period of the Italian Renaissance. According to Vasari, Masaccio was the best painter of his generation because of his skill at recreating lifelike figures and movements as well as a convincing sense of three-dimensionality.From Wikipedia.
Piero della Francesca (c. 1415 – 12 October 1492) was a painter of the Early Renaissance. As testified by Giorgio Vasari in his Lives of the Artists, to contemporaries he was also known as a mathematician and geometer. Nowadays Piero della Francesca is chiefly appreciated for his art. His painting was characterized by its serene humanism, its use of geometric forms and perspective. His most famous work is the cycle of frescoes "The Legend of the True Cross" in the church of San Francesco in the Tuscan town of Arezzo.
From Wikipedia.
Jan van Eyck(Dutch: [ˈjɑn vɑn ˈɛjk], before c. 1390 – before c. 9 July 1441) was a Flemish painter active in Bruges and one of the most significant Northern Renaissance artists of the 15th century. Van Eyck painted both secular and religious subject matter, including commissioned portraits, donor portraits (with the donor kneeling before a seated Virgin Mary) and both large and portable altarpieces.
From Wikipedia.
Sandro Botticelli
 Alessandro di Mariano di Vanni Filipepi,  better known as Sandro Botticelli (Italian: [ˈsandro bottiˈtʃɛlli]; c. 1445 – May 17, 1510), was an Italian painter of the Early Renaissance. He belonged to the Florentine School under the patronage of Lorenzo de' Medici, a movement that Giorgio Vasari would characterize less than a hundred years later as a "golden age", a thought, suitably enough, he expressed at the head of his Vita of Botticelli. Botticelli's posthumous reputation suffered until the late 19th century; since then his work has been seen to represent the linear grace of Early Renaissance painting. Among his best known works are The Birth of Venus and Primavera.
From Wikipedia.
Hieronymus Bosch
 (/ˌhaɪ.əˈrɒnɨməs ˈbɒʃ/; Dutch: [ɦijeˈɾoːnimʏs ˈbɔs]; born Jheronimus van Aken [jeˈɾoːnimʏs vɑn ˈaːkə(n)]; 1450 – 9 August 1516) was an Early Netherlandish painter. His work is known for its use of fantastic imagery to illustrate moral and religious concepts and narratives.
Leonardo da Vinci
 Leonardo da Vinci ( 1452-1519) is the epitome of the “Renaissance Man”: a versatile and remarkable genius in an age of genius. He applied his natural talents, sharp eye, keen intellect, and endless curiosity not only to painting, sculpture, and architecture, but to almost every significant branch of human knowledge then known all of which benefited from the originality of his thoughts, experiments, and accomplishments.
Michelangello
 Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni (6 March 1475 – 18 February 1564), commonly known as Michelangelo (Italian pronunciation: [mikeˈlandʒelo]), was an Italian sculptor, painter, architect, poet, and engineer of the High Renaissance who exerted an unparalleled influence on the development of Western art. Despite making few forays beyond the arts, his versatility in the disciplines he took up was of such a high order that he is often considered a contender for the title of the archetypal Renaissance man, along with his fellow Italian Leonardo da Vinci.
Raphael
 Raffaello Sanzio da Urbino (April 6 or March 28, 1483 – April 6, 1520[3]), better known simply as Raphael, was an Italian painter and architect of the High Renaissance. His work is admired for its clarity of form and ease of composition and for its visual achievement of the Neoplatonic ideal of human grandeur. Together with Michelangelo and Leonardo da Vinci, he forms the traditional trinity of great masters of that period.
From Wikipedia.
Titian
Tiziano Vecelli or Tiziano Vecellio (c. 1488/1490 – 27 August 1576[2]) known in English as Titian /ˈtɪʃən/ was an Italian painter, the most important member of the 16th-century Venetian school. He was born in Pieve di Cadore, near Belluno (in Veneto), in the Republic of Venice. During his lifetime he was often called da Cadore, taken from the place of his birth. Recognized by his contemporaries as "The Sun Amidst Small Stars" (recalling the famous final line of Dante's Paradiso), Titian was one of the most versatile of Italian painters, equally adept with portraits, landscape backgrounds, and mythological and religious subjects. His painting methods, particularly in the application and use of color, would exercise a profound influence not only on painters of the Italian Renaissance, but on future generations of Western art.
From Wikipedia.
Books for reference and further reading:
• The world’s most influential painters and the artists they inspired by David Gariff. 2008.
• Everyday Life in the Renaissance By Kathryn Hinds. 2004.
• Renaissance: Eyewitness Books by Andrew Langley. 1999.
• Life and Times: Leonardo and the Renaissance by Nathaniel Harris. 1987.
• Your Travel Guide to Renaissance Europe by Nancy Day. 2001.
• Essential History of Art by Laura Payne. 2001.