Events from the year 1538 in art.

• Hans Baldung – Ambrosius Volmar Keller
• Jacopo Bassano – The Supper at Emmaus
• Hans Holbein the younger
  • Christina of Denmark
  • Prince Edward
• Michelangelo – Study for the Colonna Pieta
• Titian – Venus of Urbino

• Antonio Abondio, Italian sculptor, best known as a medallist and as the pioneer of the coloured wax relief portrait miniature (died 1591)
• Durante Alberti, Italian painter, member of family of artists (died 1613)
• Miguel Barroso, Spanish painter (died 1590)
• Benedetto Caliari, Italian painter (died 1598)
• Pablo de Céspedes, Spanish painter, poet, and architect (died 1608)
• Francesco Curia, Italian Renaissance painter (died 1610)
• Hernando de Ávila, Spanish painter and sculptor (died 1595)

• Hans Dürer, German Renaissance painter, illustrator, and engraver (born 1490)
• Albrecht Altdorfer, German painter, pioneer of landscape in art (born 1480)
• Giorgio Gandini del Grano, Italian painter of the Parmesan school of Painting (b. unknown)
• Zhang Lu, Chinese landscape painter during the Ming Dynasty (born 1464)