Albrecht Dürer was the greatest artist of the Northern Renaissance, renowned for his masterful engravings, woodcuts, and paintings. His self-portraits are among the first in Western art to treat the artist as a subject of serious study. Works like Melencolia I and the Four Apostles made him the leading artistic figure of early Reformation Germany.

Alexander Pope was the dominant poet of 18th-century England, celebrated for his satirical wit and technical mastery of the heroic couplet. His works — including The Rape of the Lock, An Essay on Criticism, and The Dunciad — set the standard for Augustan literature. Many of his lines have become proverbial in the English language.

Elizabeth Fry was a pioneering Quaker reformer who transformed prison conditions in Britain in the early 19th century. After visiting Newgate Prison and finding women and children in horrific conditions, she dedicated her life to prison reform, founding a school for prisoners and lobbying Parliament. She appeared on the British £5 note from 2002 to 2016.

Mary Anning was a self-taught fossil collector and palaeontologist who made some of the most important discoveries in early 19th-century science, including the first ichthyosaur skeleton identified in England and a nearly complete plesiosaur. Despite being a working-class woman barred from scientific societies, her specimens shaped the emerging science of geology and evolutionary biology.

Henri Rousseau was a self-taught French artist whose dreamlike jungle scenes and naive compositions made him one of the most original painters of the late 19th century. Though dismissed at first as an amateur, he was championed by Pablo Picasso and became a major influence on Surrealism. The Sleeping Gypsy (1897) is among his most celebrated works.