old master:
(plural: ‘old masters‘ — for the right pronunciation of this phrase, please click here)
Apart from the literal meaning of a teacher/master of old age, an old employer or the old (of age or former) owner of a slave…
a great European painter/artist of the period between 1500 and 1800;
(less commonly) an expert or a senior skilled person in some sport or other activity,
One of the old masters, Michael Angelo
e.g.
Being an old master, a painter saw the invisible intricacies an ordinary person could never understand.
Leonardo da Vinci, Rembrandt van Rijn, Raphael and Michelangelo are some of the old masters whose ‘old masters’ are valued to this day.
There were several old masters whose works of art were ignored in their times, making them almost paupers, but valued to be the best only after their demise.
For a science news article that compares Neanderthals, the human-like beings, with the old masters that shows us how we come across this word in our daily browsing, please click here and for a sports blog post, which has nothing do with art and paintings, in which we see how this phrase has been used to refer to ‘senior sailing teams’ as old masters, and ‘junior sailing teams’ as young guns, please click here.
(an old master, a painting)
Note: ‘Old master’ is more commonly used to refer to the painting the skilled artist/painter draws. And an ‘old master print’ is an original painting made by an old master. For an art news article that shows us how this phrase is being used to refer to the original paintings of the old masters, please click here.
