Alexander Agricola (1445 or 1446 – 15 August 1506) was a Franco-Flemish composer of the Renaissance. A prominent member of the Grande chapelle, the Habsburg musical establishment, he was a renowned composer in the years around 1500, and his music was widely distributed throughout Europe. He composed music in all of the important sacred and secular styles of the time.

As is common with composers of the period, very little is known of his early life. He was born in Ghent, as suggested by a recently discovered epitaph, written in 1538. Most of his life he spent in posts in Italy, France and the Low Countries, though there are gaps where his activities are not known, and he seems to have left many of his posts without permission. He was a singer for Duke Sforza of Milan from 1471 to 1474, during the period when the Milanese chapel choir grew into one of the largest and most famous ensembles in Europe; Loyset Compère, Johannes Martini, Gaspar van Weerbeke, and several other composer-singers were also in Milan during those years.

Guillaume Dufay (Du Fay, Du Fayt) (August 5, 1397? – November 27, 1474) was a Franco-Flemish composer of the early Renaissance. As the central figure in the Burgundian School, he was the most famous and influential composer in Europe in the mid-15th century.

From the evidence of his will, he was probably born in Beersel, in the vicinity of Brussels. Circumstantial evidence claims him to have been born the illegitimate child of an unknown priest and a woman named Marie Du Fayt, though this suggestion is as of yet unproven. Marie moved with her son to Cambrai early in his life, staying with a relative who was a canon of the cathedral there. Soon Dufay's musical gifts were noticed by the cathedral authorities, who evidently gave him a thorough training in music; he studied with Rogier de Hesdin during the summer of 1409, and he was listed as a choirboy in the cathedral from 1409 to 1412. During those years he studied with Nicolas Malin, and the authorities must have been impressed with the boy's gifts because they gave him his own copy of Villedieu’s Doctrinale in 1411, a highly unusual event for one so young. In June 1414, at the age of only 16, he had already been given a benefice as chaplain at St. Géry, immediately adjacent to Cambrai. Later that year he probably went to the Council of Konstanz, staying possibly until 1418, at which time he returned to Cambrai.

Joachim Patinir, also called de Patiner (c. 1480 – 5 October 1524), was a Flemish Northern Renaissance history and landscape painter from the area of modern Wallonia. He was probably the uncle of Herri met de Bles, his follower in establishing a distinct style of panoramic northern Renaissance landscapes.

Originally from Dinant or Bouvignes in present-day Belgium, Patinir became registered as a member of Antwerp's painters’ guild Guild of Saint Luke in 1515, where he spent the rest of his life. He may have studied with Gerard David at Bruges, who had been registered as a guild member in the same year as Patinir. In 1511, Patinir is believed to have travelled to Genoa with David and Adrien Ysenbrandt.