Pliny the Elder presents Amulius as one of the principal painters of the domus aurea:

In 1642, following the death of Guido Reni, Guercino moved his busy workshop to Bologna and become the city's principal painter.

Together with Boucher and Watteau he is one of the principal painters of French Rococo.

As principal painter to Prince Henry, Peake seems to have been charged with showing his patron as a dashing young warrior.

Belle became the principal painter to the Jacobite court, where he and his wife settled and worked.

He was one of his generation's principal painters of the Sienese School.

Biographical catalog of the principal Italian painters: with a table of the contemporary schools of Italy.

He is one of the principal painters of topographical views known as vedute.

In 1785 he was appointed principal painter to the prince of Wales in Scotland.

He was also much employed by Philip V, who made him his principal painter in 1703, and shortly after a chevalier of the order of St. Michael.