There is a deep connection between the arts and architecture. Some painters take their cues from buildings and recreate them in their works of art.

Architectural painting, also called "architecture painting," is a type of genre painting in which the main focus is on architecture, both inside and outside. Even though there was architecture in many of the earliest paintings and illuminations, it was mainly used as a background or to give a painting rhythm. During the Renaissance, architecture like Masaccio's Holy Trinity from the 1420s emphasized depth and perspective.

In Western art, architectural painting as a separate style grew up in Flanders and the Netherlands in the 1600s, and it was at its best in Dutch painting during the 1600s and 1700s. Hans Vredeman de Vries (1527–1607), a Dutch architect and painter, was the first important architectural painter. Students of Hans Vredeman de Vries, both in Flanders and in the Netherlands, include his sons Salomon and Paul and Hendrik van Steenwijk I. The style became popular because of them, and their family and students made it one of the most critical areas of Dutch Golden Age painting.

Throughout the history of painting, showing architecture has been a way to give viewers details and clues about how to understand compositions. Starting mainly in the Renaissance, architectural settings took on a new direction, incorporating new ideas and theories and proving the artist's worth. They then became a tool of propaganda and power in the hands of the people who paid for them, and in the eighteenth century, they gave rise to a new genre in which the city was the only subject.

The most renowned and prolific architecture artists include David Roberts (Scottish, 1796 -1864), Giovanni Paolo Panini (Italian, 1691 -1765), John Singer Sargent (American, 1856 -1925), Joseph Mallord William Turner (British, 1775 -1851), Hubert Robert (French, 1733 -1808), Samuel Prout (British, 1783 -1852), Nicholas Roerich (Russian, 1874 -1947), Marianne North (British, 1830 -1890), Cass Gilbert (American, 1859 -1934), Francesco Guardi (Italian, 1712 -1793), among others.