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:: Augustin, Jacques-Jean-Baptiste...
AUGUSTIN, Jacques-Jean-Baptiste
(b. 1759, Saint-Dié, d. 1832, Paris)
Biography French painter. After receiving instruction in art from Jean Girardet (1709–78) and Jean-Baptiste-Charles Claudot (1733–1805), he went to Paris in 1781, where he won recognition as a miniature painter. The miniatures he painted in the 1790s, for example his portrait of Mme Vanhée, née Dewinck (1792; Paris, Louvre), are among his most animated works; often portraying figures in a landscape setting, they develop the exuberant style of Niclas Lafrensen and Peter Adolf Hall. He also admired the work of Jean-Baptiste Greuze, whose Bacchante (Waddesdon Manor, Bucks, NT) in his own collection he copied in miniature (London, Wallace) and in enamel (Paris, Louvre).
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AUGUSTIN, Jacques-Jean-Baptiste
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AUGUSTIN, Jacques-Jean.
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AUGUSTIN, Jacques-Jean-Baptiste
:: Assereto, Gioachino...
ASSERETO, Gioachino
(b. 1600, Genova, d. 1649, Genova)
Biography
Italian painter. At the age of 12 he studied with Luciano Borzone and c. 1614 entered the Genoese studio of Andrea Ansaldo. Among a number of lost early paintings was a large Temptation of St Anthony done at the age of 16. Several complex compositions with small figures, including the Apotheosis of St Thomas Aquinas (Lille, Musée des Beaux-Arts), the Last Supper (Genoa, Museo Accademia Ligustica di Belle Arti), the Stoning of St Stephen (Lucca, Museo e Pinacoteca Nazionale) and the Crowning of the Virgin (Taggia, Dominican Convent), perhaps date from 1616-26. These are close in style to works such as Bernardo Strozzi's bozzetto (c. 1620, Genoa, Museo Accademia Ligustica di Belle Arti) for an altarpiece of Paradise (destroyed) and to other contemporary works by Ansaldo, Giulio Benso and Giovanni Andrea de' Ferrari, which also derive their figure style from Mannerism.
Assereto's earliest dated painting, SS John the Baptist, Bernard, Catherine, Lucy and George (1626; Recco, S Giovanni Battista), is distinguished by its silvery colour and dramatic contrasts of light and dark, and by the powerful realism and vitality of the individual saints. Here he absorbed Borzone's sfumato technique and skill as a portrait painter, while the crisp contours of the drapery suggest Ansaldo. Assereto's work from c. 1626-36 sparkles with rich colour and detail, as in the strikingly naturalistic and intense Ecstasy of St Francis (1636, Genoa, Cassa di Risparmio). The work of the Lombard Mannerist painters Cerano, Morazzone and Giulio Cesare Procaccini that had influenced Strozzi and Ansaldo before 1620 also had an effect on Assereto's early work. This is apparent in the elongated figures and high-keyed colours of his two octagonal vault frescoes, David and Abimelech and SS John and Peter Healing the Lame Man, in SS Annunziata del Vastato, Genoa. The frescoes were dated c. 1630. Sharp-edged draperies, meticulous ornamental detail and jewel-like colours ranging from lime to pink and orange characterize Assereto's vivid narrative painting Alexander and Diogenes (c. 1630; Berlin, Staatliche Museen) and his altarpiece SS Cosmas and Damian Curing the Sick (Genoa, SS Cosma e Damiano), in which some of the figures resemble those by Orazio de' Ferrari, who may have worked with Assereto in Ansaldo's studio.
:: Araldi Alessandro...
ARALDI, Alessandro
(b. ca. 1460, Parma, d. ca. 1530, Parma)
Biography
Alessandro Araldi is an Italian painter of Parma about whom little is known. He was an assistant to Cristoforo Caselli, and in the Mazzola workshop. He was influenced by Francia and Costa. He borrowed from the moderate Bolognese Classicism.
Araldi Alessandro .
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Alessandro Araldi.
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:: Salzillo, Francisco...
SALZILLO, Francisco
(b. 1707, Murcia, d. 1783, Murcia)
Biography
Salzillo (also spelled Zarcillo, Salsillo, or Salcillo), sculptor, a prolific creator of figures for the Holy Week procession. He is considered by some authorities to be the greatest sculptor in 18th-century Spain and by others as merely an excellent folk artist.
Growing up in provincial Murcia, he received his training from his father, a Neapolitan sculptor who had a studio that produced religious statues. He entered a Dominican monastery as a youth, but on the death of his father in 1727 he left to take charge of the family studio. Remaining in Murcia all his life, he produced an enormous number of polychrome religious figures with the assistance of his brothers and sister.
In Salzillo's work the sacred persons are highly humanized, appealing to the popular audience that demanded pathos and sentimental realism. Much of his best work is in the Salzillo Museum in Murcia.
:: Salviati, Giuseppe...
SALVIATI, Giuseppe
(b. ca. 1520, Castelnuovo di Garfagnana, d. ca. 1575, Venezia)
Biography
Italian painter (originally Giuseppe Porta). He was apprenticed to Francesco Salviati (whose surname he took) in Rome from 1535 and apparently assisted him in the decoration of a number of façades there. The gravitas and sculptural quality of the Roman figural style are reflected in Giuseppe's later work. In 1539, with Francesco, he left Rome, stopping in Florence and Bologna, where he met Giorgio Vasari, and arriving in Venice by 11 July. Giuseppe's earliest known independent works are illustrations for Le sorti, a book on fortune-telling published by Francesco Marcolini (Venice, 1540). The frontispiece, traditionally attributed to him, is copied from an engraving by Marco Dente.
He decided to settle in Venice, and spent most of his successful career in Venice, decorating villas and palazzos, although most of his frescoes have since been lost. He contributed to the decoration in the Biblioteca Marciana, and executed a number of altarpieces that reveal the growing influence of Titian and Veronese on his originally mannerist idiom.
Salviati left in 1541, but Porta stayed on, becoming famous for his decorations on palazzo façades, none of which survive. He also decorated numerous religious buildings, painting vast ceilings of illusionistic figures. For his altarpieces, Porta adopted the traditional Venetian oil technique of modeling figures using multiple layers of paint.
In 1565 Porta returned to Rome to complete the frescoes for the Sala Regia in the Vatican, left unfinished at Salviati's death. The following year he was elected to Florence's Accademia del Disegno and completed his most important commission: a ceiling fresco in Venice's ducal palace, destroyed soon afterward. In later years, he devoted time to other interests, such as his mathematical accomplishments. He published mathematically-oriented treatises on decorative column design.
:: Salviati, Cecchino del...
SALVIATI, Cecchino del
(b. 1510, Firenze, d. 1563, Roma)
Biography
Florentine Mannerist painter, a pupil of Andrea del Sarto. Originally Francesco de' Rossi, he adopted his name from his patron Cardinal Giovanni Salviati, with whom he went to Rome c. 1530 and for whom he painted the work that established his reputation there - the fresco of the Visitation (1538) in S. Giovanni Decollato. In 1539 he travelled to Venice, and from the 1540s led a restless life, working mainly in Florence and Rome, but also visiting Fontainebleau in 1556-57. He was one of the leading fresco decorators of his day, specializing in learned and elaborate multi-figure compositions, typically Mannerist in their artificiality and abstruseness, and similar in style to those of his friend Vasari (although Salviati was an artist of higher caliber). His finest works are perhaps the frescoes on the story of the ancient tyrant Furius Camillus (1543-45) in the Sala dell' Udienza of the Palazzo Vecchio, Florence, intended as an allegory of Cosimo de' Medici's reign.
Salviati also made designs for tapestries and was noted for his portraits, which were Florentine in their direct characterization but north Italian in their richness in colour.
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:: Salucci, Alessandro...
SALUCCI, Alessandro
(b. 1590, Firenze, d. 1655/60, Roma)
Biography
Italian painter, specialized in imaginary architectural perspectives and harbour views, in which the figures were executed by other artists, most notably Jan Miel and Michelangelo Cerquozzi. His pictures were praised by contemporary and near contemporary writers, and during the 17th century were popular with private collectors in both Florence and Rome. However, many of the paintings mentioned in contemporary sources remain untraced.
He is first documented in Rome in 1628, when, with Andrea Sacchi and Pietro da Cortona, he worked on the fresco decorations of the Villa Sacchetti (now Chigi), Castelfusano (near Ostia), to which he contributed personifications of the River Nile and the River Rhône. He became a member of the Accademia di San Luca in Rome in 1634, and after 1635 he was engaged on frescoes depicting sacred subjects in S Maria in Vallicella, Rome. From the mid-1630s onward Salucci collaborated with Miel on the imaginary architectural subjects for which he is best known. The two artists also collaborated between 1640 and 1645 on a series of four important Imaginary Architectural Perspectives. His most typical paintings date from c. 1650-60.
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SALUCCI, Alessandro .
ALESSANDRO SALUCCI
:: Sallaert, Anthonis...
SALLAERT, Anthonis
(b. 1580/90, Bruxelles, d. 1650, Bruxelles)
Biography
Anthonis Sallaert (Sallaerts or Sallarts), Flemish painter, draughtsman and printmaker. He became a master painter in Brussels in 1613 and executed numerous commissions, mostly of a religious nature, for the Archduke Albert's court, the new Jesuit church and the town hall. He also made paintings for churches in the villages around Brussels, notably the cycle of 12 paintings depicting the History of the Church at Alsemberg for Onze-Lieve-Vrouwkerk at Alsemberg (1647-49; in situ). Secular subjects, including mythological themes, occur in his tapestry designs, such as those for the Story of Theseus (c. 1620-35), woven in the Brussels workshop of Jan Raes the Younger (fl 1628-37).
:: Salimbeni, Ventura...
SALIMBENI, Ventura
(b. 1567, Siena, d. 1613, Siena)
Biography
Italian painter, draughstman and engraver. The son of Arcangelo Salimbeni (fl 1567–80/89) and Battista Focari, widow of Eugenio Vanni, he was first taught painting in his native Siena by his father, as was his half-brother Francesco Vanni, with whom he was often confused. Ventura possibly spent some time in northern Italy before going to Rome, where he worked from 1588, collaborating on the fresco decoration of the Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana (the Vatican Library) during the reign of Pope Sixtus V (reg 1585–90). Salimbeni's painting during 1590–91, when he worked in Il Gesu and S Maria Maggiore, Rome, reflects the influence of the Cavaliere d'Arpino, Cherubino Alberti and Andrea Lilli. The few engravings that Salimbeni executed were made in Rome. Of these, seven survive, dated between 1589 and 1594.
In 1595 he returned to Siena where he became one of the last leaders of the Mannerist school, and completed painting cycles for Sienese churches such as Santa Trinita and Santo Spirito. He continued to create paintings for churches throughout Italy, including Assisi and Florence. For almost all of his painting cycles he first created detailed prepatory drawings.
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Salimbeni, Ventura .
Ventura Salimbeni.
:: Saliba, Antonio de...
SALIBA, Antonio de
(b. ca. 1466, Messina, d. ca. 1535, Messina)
Biography
Italian painter, also called Antonello da Messina, nephew of the more famous Antonello da Messina. Although Antonio was apprenticed to his cousin Jacobello d'Antonio in January 1480, his painting more closely imitates that of his uncle, Antonello da Messina. This fact, and the similarity of their names, led to the two artists being confused with each other, a situation perhaps intentionally encouraged by de Saliba who used various forms of his uncle's signature on his works. His paintings flaunt their debt to his uncle's style, incorporating elements introduced by Giovanni Bellini.
In 1497 he returned to Messina and continued to produce smaller works, still inspired by Antonello da Messina, albeit in stiffer, more popular forms (Virgin Enthroned, Castel Ursino, Catania, 1497; Polyptych, Cathedral, Taormina, 1503-04).
Antonello de Saliba
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:: Elsheimer, Adam...
ELSHEIMER, Adam
(b. 1578, Frankfurt/Main, d. 1610, Roma)
Biography
German painter, one of the first masters of the idyllic landscape. He was trained in the dry manner of Flemish realism, but he acquired a liberating interest in light, atmosphere, and color when he settled (1598) in Italy. In Venice he worked with his countryman Rottenhammer, then settled in Rome in 1600. His early Mannerist style gave way to a more direct manner in which he showed great sensitivity to effects of light; his nocturnal scenes are particularly original, bringing out the best in his lyrical temperament, and he is credited with being the first artist to represent the constellations of the night sky accurately (in The Flight into Egypt). He painted a few pictures in which figures predominate, but generally they are fused into a harmonious unity with their landscape settings. They are invariably on a small scale and on copper (the only exception is a self-portrait in the Uffizi, Florence, of doubtful attribution), but although exquisitely executed they have a grandeur out of all proportion to their size.
Elsheimer achieved fame during his lifetime and there are numerous contemporary copies of his works. His paintings were engraved by his pupil and patron, the Dutch amateur artist Count Hendrick Goudt (1573-1648), and Elsheimer himself made a number of etchings. In spite of his popularity he was personally unsuccessful and died in poverty. Sandrart says he suffered from melancholia and was often unable to work; apparently he was imprisoned for debt. Rubens was a friend of Elsheimer and after his death lamented his "sin of sloth, by which he has deprived the world of the most beautiful things"; he also wrote "I have never seen his equal in the realm of small figures, of landscapes, and of so many other subjects."
Although Elsheimer died young and his output was small he played a key role in the development of 17th-century landscape painting, and his influence is apparent in the work of many other 17th-century artists.
:: Eckersberg, Christoffer Wilhelm...
ECKERSBERG, Christoffer Wilhelm
(b. 1783, Blakrog, d. 1853, København)
Biography
Danish painter. After being trained in Copenhagen and studying in Paris (1810-13) under Jacques-Louis David, he continued his studies in Rome (1814), where he executed a masterly portrait of his friend Thorvaldsen (Royal Academy, Copenhagen, 1815). Returning to Copenhagen in 1816, he occupied himself mainly with portraits, minutely rendering the features of his models with a Neoclassic feeling for c1arity and purity of line. He also painted many landscapes, however (as he had done in Rome), and as an influential teacher at the Copenhagen Academy (from 1818) he introduced painting from nature into the curriculum. He also executed some religious themes and subjects from Danish history in Christiansborg Palace.
His pupils included Johan Christian Dahl and Christen Købke. He has been called 'the father of Danish painting' because of the influence he exerted on Danish painters in the second quarter of the 19th century. With Christen Købke he was the leading painter of the Danish 'Golden Age' (c. 1800-1850).
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:: Pintura de Gabriel Metsu...
O quadro "A criança doente" traz um bebê doente e abatido que se esvalece no colo de uma mulher. Do lado deles tem um armário, uma tigela com colher. Atrás, um mapa aberto e um quadro mostrando a cruxificação de Cristo. Possivelmente há mais a ser visto nesta imagem de Gabriel Metsu do que parece à primeira vista. Pode ser que a mulher represente a virtude de Cristo e o amor ao próximo. A obra está exposta no Rijksmuseum, museu nacional dos Países Baixos, localizado em Amsterdã.
Via Blog do Noblat
(Com colaboração de Catharina Mafra)
(Com colaboração de Catharina Mafra)
Veja mais Pintura de Gabriel Metsu em LO SPIRITO BAROQUE
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:: Tassaert, Octave...
TASSAERT, Octave
(b. 1800, Paris, d. 1874, Paris)
Biography
Painter and printmaker, part of a French family of artists of Flemish origin, son of Jean-Joseph-François Tassaert, who worked mainly in Paris, and grandson of Jean-Pierre-Antoine Tassaert, one of the leading portrait sculptors working in Berlin in the late 18th century.
As a child Octave worked with his brother Paul Tassaert (d. 1855), producing engravings, but he later turned to painting and from 1817 to 1825 studied at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris, first under Alexis-François Girard (1787-1870) and then Guillaume Lethiere. In 1823 and 1824 he tried unsuccessfully to win the Prix de Rome, an early failure that greatly disheartened him. For much of his career, until 1849, he continued to work in the graphic arts, as well as painting, producing lithographs and drawings on various subjects: historical scenes from the First Empire, portraits, and mythological and genre scenes. He also produced illustrations for the Romantic novels of Victor Hugo, Alexandre Dumas pere and François-René Chateaubriand.
Though he achieved moderate success at the Salon, it was the graphic work that provided his small income during this period. Later he achieved success as a genre painter, depicting the widespread poverty prevalent in 19th-century Paris.
Octave Tassaert
TASSAERT, Octave
Octave Tassaert 1800-1874
Octave Tassaert - Wikimedia
Octave Tassaert
Octave Tassaert
French Painting from the Musee
Nicolas Francois Octave Tassaert
Octave Tassaert
octave tassaert
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:: Giordano, Luca...
GIORDANO, Luca
(b. 1632, Napoli, d. 1705, Napoli)
Biography
Neapolitan painter, the most important Italian decorative artist of the second half of the 17th century. He was nicknamed `Luca Fa Presto' (Luke work quickly) because of his prodigious speed of execution and huge output.
He began in the circle of Ribera, but his style became much more colorful under the influence of such great decorative painters as Veronese, whose works he saw on his extensive travels. Indeed, he absorbed a host of influences and was said to be able to imitate other artists' styles with ease. His work was varied also in subject-matter, although he was primarily a religious and mythological painter.
He worked mainly in Naples, but also extensively in Florence and Venice, and his work had great influence in Italy. After five years back in Naples, Giordano went to Florence again where he produced one of his most important works, the gallery frescoes in the Palazzo Medici-Riccardi (1682). These airy, luminous frescos provide a foretaste of eighteenth century art.
In 1692 he was called to Spain by Charles II and stayed there for 10 years, painting in Madrid, Toledo, and the Escorial. His last work when he returned to Naples was the ceiling of the Treasury Chapel of S. Martino. In his personal self-confidence and courtliness, and in the open, airy compositions and light luminous colors of his work, Giordano presages such great 18th-century painters as Tiepolo.
:: Luca Giordano - O Sonho de Salomão....
Os primeiros trabalhos do pintor italiano Luca Giordano mostram a influência de Giuseppe Rivera, pintor espanhol de Nápoles, com quem é provável que tenha estudado. Ganhou estilo próprio depois de viagens a Roma, Veneza e Florença. De 1692 a 1702 foi pintor da corte de Carlos II, em Madrid.
A obra "O sonho de Salomão", ocorrido, segundo texto bíblico, em Gabaon, está exposta no Museu de Prado, em Madrid. No sonho, Deus disse a Salomão que pedisse o que quisesse.
Salomão pediu sabedoria para discernir entre o bem e o mal.
(Na verdade o que a maioria das pessoas necessita!!!)
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:: Verkolje, Johannes...
VERKOLJE, Johannes
(b. 1650, Amsterdam, d. 1693, Delft)
Biography
Dutch painter, member of a family of painters. He was the son of a locksmith, specialized in genre scenes set in richly furnished interiors, although he also painted mythological scenes and portraits. His two sons, Nicolaas Verkolje and Johannes Verkolje II (d 1760) were also painters and his followers.
According to Houbraken, he spent six months as the pupil of Jan Andrea Lievens (1644-80), where he completed unfinished mythological and genre pictures by Gerrit Pietersz. van Zijl (1619-65). Verkolje married Judith Voorheul in Delft in 1672 and in the following year joined the city's Guild of St Luke, serving as its dean between 1678 and 1688.
Verkolje's genre scenes, for example the Musical Company (1673; Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum), The Messenger (1674; The Hague, Mauritshuis) and the Elegant Couple (c. 1674; private collection), were influenced by Gabriel Metsu, Gerard Terborch and Caspar Netscher. Verkolje's portraits commanded high prices and were greatly valued for their outstanding finish, a style more polished than that of his predecessors. His work as a mezzotint engraver was equally appreciated and sought after. On the basis of a few mezzotints made between 1680 and 1684 after the work of English artists, it is generally supposed that Verkolje lived in London at that time, although this is unproven.
As a draughtsman, he made precise, small cabinet pieces usually employing pen and ink with brown wash or watercolour heightened with white chalk. Houbraken mentioned Albertus van der Burgh (b 1672), Joan van der Spriet (fl c. 1700) and Willem Verschuuring (1657-1715), among others, as Verkolje's pupils.
VERKOLJE, Johannes
(b. 1650, Amsterdam, d. 1693, Delft)
Biography
Dutch painter, member of a family of painters. He was the son of a locksmith, specialized in genre scenes set in richly furnished interiors, although he also painted mythological scenes and portraits. His two sons, Nicolaas Verkolje and Johannes Verkolje II (d 1760) were also painters and his followers.
According to Houbraken, he spent six months as the pupil of Jan Andrea Lievens (1644-80), where he completed unfinished mythological and genre pictures by Gerrit Pietersz. van Zijl (1619-65). Verkolje married Judith Voorheul in Delft in 1672 and in the following year joined the city's Guild of St Luke, serving as its dean between 1678 and 1688.
Verkolje's genre scenes, for example the Musical Company (1673; Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum), The Messenger (1674; The Hague, Mauritshuis) and the Elegant Couple (c. 1674; private collection), were influenced by Gabriel Metsu, Gerard Terborch and Caspar Netscher. Verkolje's portraits commanded high prices and were greatly valued for their outstanding finish, a style more polished than that of his predecessors. His work as a mezzotint engraver was equally appreciated and sought after. On the basis of a few mezzotints made between 1680 and 1684 after the work of English artists, it is generally supposed that Verkolje lived in London at that time, although this is unproven.
As a draughtsman, he made precise, small cabinet pieces usually employing pen and ink with brown wash or watercolour heightened with white chalk. Houbraken mentioned Albertus van der Burgh (b 1672), Joan van der Spriet (fl c. 1700) and Willem Verschuuring (1657-1715), among others, as Verkolje's pupils.
:: Velde, Willem van de, the Younger...
VELDE, Willem van de, the Younger
(b. 1633, Leiden, d. 1707, London)
Biography
Velde, van de, family of Dutch marine painters and landscapists of the 17th century.
Willem van de Velde the Elder (circa 1611-93)
Dutch marine painter. He was the son of a naval captain, his brother was a skipper of merchant vessels, and he himself spent part of his youth as a sailor before devoting himself to the drawing and painting of ships. His pictures, which are frequently grisailles, contain faithful and detailed portraits of ships (of much value to naval historians) and for a time he was an official artist for the Dutch fleet. In 1672, when the Netherlands were at war with England, he went to London and entered the service of Charles II; why he left his country at a critical moment in its fortunes remains a mystery.
Willem van de Velde the Younger (1633-1707)
Willem's son, he is one of the most illustrious of all marine painters. He was the pupil of his father and Simon de Vlieger. Like his father, he gave very accurate portrayals of ships, but is distinguished from him by his feeling for atmosphere and majestic sense of composition. He left Amsterdam for England with his father in 1672 and in 1674 Charles II gave them a yearly retaining fee of 100 pounds each; the father received his "for taking and making draughts of seafights" and the son "for putting the said draughts into colours for our own particular use". They did not switch their allegiance to England completely; both subsequently painted pictures of naval battles for the Dutch as well as the English market. Willem the Younger's influence, however, was particularly great in England, where the whole tradition of marine painting stemmed from him.
Adriaen van de Velde (1636-72)
Brother of Willem the Younger, was a prolific artist in spite of his short life. His father and Jan Wijnants were his teachers. He painted various types of landscapes (most notably some fresh and atmospheric beach scenes) and also religious and mythological works, portraits, and animal pictures. He also did exceptionally fine etchings of landscapes with cattle and often painted the figures into the landscapes of other artists, notably Hobbema and Ruisdael.
Biography of Willem van de Velde, the Younger
Willem van Velde the Elder (1611-93) and the Younger (1633—1707
Willem van Velde the Elder (1611-93) and the Younger (1633—1707
:: Naldini, Giovanni Battista...
NALDINI, Giovan Battista
(b. ca. 1537, Fiesole, d. 1591, Firenze)
Biography
Italian painter and draughtsman. He was the artistic heir of Jacopo Pontormo, with whom he trained from 1549 to 1556. While maintaining an allegiance to the ideals of Andrea del Sarto and Pontormo, he also worked in the vocabularies of Bronzino and Vasari. From these sources he forged an individual style of drawing indebted to del Sarto in its loose handling of chalk and reminiscent of Pontormo in its schematic figures defined by firm contours and modelled with loose hatching or spots of wash. There are an analogous stylization and an expressive freedom in his treatment of serpentine figures, which are sculptural in form but painterly in detail, arranged in compact compositions with concentrated lights revealing passages of warm yellows, reds and greens. Particularly characteristic is the Christ Carrying the Cross (1566; Florence, S Maria Assunta), which is distinguished in its colouring and expressive figures from the chill linearity and metallic forms of Bronzino, Vasari and Alessandro Allori.
:: Suvée, Jooseph-Benoit...
SUVÉE, Joseph-Benoit
(b. 1743, Brugge, d. 1807, Roma)
Biography
Flemish painter from Bruges. He was always referred to by Jacques-Louis David as 'l'ignare Suvée', and was, like David, a pupil of Vien, and David's lifelong rival for the leadership of Neoclassicism in France. He came from Bruges to Paris and won the Prix de Rome against David in 1771, spending a year at the École des Élèves protégés, and then going to Rome 1772-78, after which he returned to Paris and became Agréé (1779) and Member of the Academy (1780) and Painter to the King. He returned to Rome as Director of the French Academy there, in 1792, but lost his job when David became dictator of the arts. He was imprisoned (like David) under the Terror. 1794-95, but was reappointed to Rome by Napoleon in 1801 and remained there until his death. His works are now largely forgotten, but there are several in Bruges and others in French provincial museums, including Besançon and Lille.
:: Aachen, Hans von...
AACHEN, Hans von
(b. 1552, Köln, d. 1615, Praha)
Biography
German painter, born in Cologne (in spite of his name, which derives from his father's birthplace) and active in the Netherlands, Italy (1574-87), and most notably Prague, where he settled in 1596 as court painter to the emperor Rudolf II. On Rudolf's death (1612) he worked for the emperor Matthias.
His paintings, featuring elegant, elongated figures, are - like those of his colleague Bartholomeus Spranger - leading examples of the sophisticated Mannerist art then in vogue at the courts of Northern Europe, and he was particularly good with playfully erotic nudes (The Triumph of Truth, Alte Pinakothek, Munich, 1598). Engravings after his work gave his style wide infiuence and he ranks as one of the most important German artists of his time.
AACHEN, Hans von
(b. 1552, Köln, d. 1615, Praha)
Biography
German painter, born in Cologne (in spite of his name, which derives from his father's birthplace) and active in the Netherlands, Italy (1574-87), and most notably Prague, where he settled in 1596 as court painter to the emperor Rudolf II. On Rudolf's death (1612) he worked for the emperor Matthias.
His paintings, featuring elegant, elongated figures, are - like those of his colleague Bartholomeus Spranger - leading examples of the sophisticated Mannerist art then in vogue at the courts of Northern Europe, and he was particularly good with playfully erotic nudes (The Triumph of Truth, Alte Pinakothek, Munich, 1598). Engravings after his work gave his style wide infiuence and he ranks as one of the most important German artists of his time.
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:: Peter Paul Rubens...
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Peter Paul Rubens
1577 - 1640
A.k.a. Pieter Pauwel Rubens, South Netherlandish painter and draughtsman, famous during his life and thereafter.
At first Rubens paints mainly biblical and mythological tableaux, while his Antwerp period (1608-1618) is characterized by its abundance of portraits. After Rubens retires to his country estate 't Steen at Elewijt in 1635, he dedicates himself to landscape painting.
Between 1600 en 1608 Rubens travels through Spain and Italy, where he is influenced by the likes of Michelangelo and Raphael. Back in Antwerp in 1609 he marries Isabella Brandt. After her death in 1620 Rubens sets out on his travels once again, marrying Hélène Fourment in 1630.
Rubens is the embodiment of Flemish baroque. His temperament helps him break with the reigning, rigid style of his day. Characteristic of his work are the many voluptuous nudes, chubby to modern standards. Rubens draws more commissions than he can handle; in his workshop others do much of his work for him.
Rubens dies in 1640.
work by Peter Paul Rubens
mercoledì
:: Melozzo Da Forli...
MELOZZO DA FORLI
(b. 1438, Forli, d. 1494, Forli)
Biography
Italian painter from Forli in the Romagna, active mainly in Loreto, Rome, and Urbino. He was an attractive and idiosyncratic painter who achieved a high reputation in his time, but little of his work survives intact and he has been a neglected figure until fairly recently. His style was indebted to Piero della Francesca and he was renowned for his skill in perspective and illusionism; he was, indeed, credited with being the inventor of extreme form of foreshortening known as sotto in sù, of which Mantegna was another great exponent. Melozzo's skill in this field is seen in his fresco of the Ascension (1478-80) for the dome of SS. Apostoli in Rome, fragments of which are in the Quirinal Palace and the Vatican.
sabato
:: David, Jacques Louis...
DAVID, Jacques-Louis
(b. 1748, Paris, d. 1825, Bruxelles)
Biography
French painter, one of the central figures of Neoclassicism. He had his first training with Boucher, a distant relative, but Boucher realized that their temperaments were opposed and sent David to Vien. David went to Italy with the latter in 1776, Vien having been appointed director of the French Academy at Rome, David having won the Prix de Rome. In Italy David was able to indulge his bent for the antique and came into contact with the initiators of the new classical revival, including Gavin Hamilton. In 1780 he returned to Paris, and in the 1780s his position was firmly established as the embodiment of the social and moral reaction from the frivolity of the Rococo. His uncompromising subordination of colour to drawing and his economy of statement were in keeping with the new severity of taste. His themes gave expression to the new cult of the civic virtues of stoical self-sacrifice, devotion to duty, honesty, and austerity. Seldom have paintings so completely typified the sentiment of an age as David's The Oath of the Horatii (Louvre, Paris, 1784), Brutus and his Dead Sons (Louvre, 1789), and The Death of Socrates (Metropolitan Museum, New York, 1787). They were received with acclamation by critics and public alike. Reynolds compared the Socrates with Michelangelo's Sistine Ceiling and Raphael's Stanze, and after ten visits to the Salon described it as 'in every sense perfect'.
David was in active sympathy with the Revolution; he served on various committees and voted for the execution of Louis XVI. His position was unchallenged as the painter of the Revolution. His three paintings of 'martyrs of the Revolution', though conceived as portraits, raised portraiture into the domain of universal tragedy. They were: The Death of Lepeletier (now known only from an engraving), The Death of Marat (Musées Royaux, Brussels, 1793), and The Death of Bora (Musée Calvet, Avignon, unfinished). After the fall of his friend Robespierre (1794), however, he was imprisoned, but was released on the plea of his wife, who had previously divorced him because of his Revolutionary sympathies (she was a royalist). They were remarried in 1796, and David's Intervention of the Sabine Women (Louvre, 1794-99), begun while he was in prison, is said to have been painted to honour her, its theme being one of love prevailing over conflict. It was also interpreted at the time, however, as a plea for conciliation in the civil strife that France suffered after the Revolution and it was the work that re-established David's fortunes and brought him to the attention of Napoleon, who appointed him his official painter.
David became an ardent supporter of Napoleon and retained under him the dominant social and artistic position which he had previously held. Between 1802 and 1807 he painted a series of pictures glorifying the exploits of the Emperor, among them the enormous Consecration of the Emperor Napoleon I and Coronation of the Empress Josephine (Louvre, 1805-07). These works show a change both in technique and in feeling from the earlier Republican works. The cold colours and severe composition of the heroic paintings gave place to a new feeling for pageantry which had something in common with Romantic painting, although he always remained opposed to the Romantic school. With the fall of Napoleon, David went into exile in Brussels, and his work weakened as the possibility of exerting a moral and social influence receded. (Until recently his late history paintings were generally scorned by critics, but their sensuous qualities are now winning them a more appreciative audience.) He continued to be an outstanding portraitist, but he never surpassed such earlier achievements as the great Napoleon Crossing the Alps (Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna, 1800, one of four versions) or the coolly erotic Madame Récamier (Louvre, 1800). His work had a resounding influence on the development of French - and indeed European - painting, and his many pupils included Gérard, Gros, and Ingres.
venerdì
Goya Lucientes, Francisco de...
GOYA Y LUCIENTES, Francisco de
(b. 1746, Fuendetodos, d. 1828, Bordeaux)
Biography
Spanish painter (full name: Francisco José de Goya y Lucientes) and graphic artist. He was the most powerful and original European artist of his time, but his genius was slow in maturing and he was well into his thirties before he began producing work that set him apart from his contemporaries. Born at Fuendetodos in Aragon, the son of a gilder, he served his apprenticeship at Saragossa, then appears to have worked at Madrid for the court painter Francisco Bayeu. In about 1770 he went to Italy but he was back in Saragossa the next year.
In 1773 he married Bayeu's sister, and by 1775 had settled at Madrid. Bayeu secured him employment making cartoons for the royal tapestry factory, and this took up most of his working time from 1775 to 1792. He made sixty-three cartoons (Prado, Madrid), the largest more than 6 m. wide. The subjects range from idyllic scenes to realistic incidents of everyday life, conceived throughout in a gay and romantic spirit and executed with Rococo decorative charm. During these years Goya also found time for portraits and religious works, and his status grew. He was elected to the Academy of San Fernando in 1780 and became assistant director of painting in 1785. In 1789 he was nominated a court painter to the new king, Charles IV.
A more important turning-point in his career than any of these appointments, however, was the mysterious and traumatic illness he experienced in 1792. It left him stone deaf, and while convalescing in 1793 he painted a series of small pictures of 'fantasy and invention' in order, as he said, 'to occupy an imagination mortified by the contemplation of my sufferings'. This marks the beginning of his preoccupation with the morbid, bizarre, and menacing that was to be such a feature of his mature work. It was given vivid expression in the first of his great series of engravings, Los Caprichos (Caprices), issued in 1799. The set (executed c. 1793-98) consists of eighty-two plates in etching reinforced with aquatint, and their humour is constantly overshadowed by an element of nightmare. Technically revealing the influence of Rembrandt, they feature savagely satirical attacks on social customs and abuses of the Church, with elements of the macabre in scenes of witchcraft and diabolism.
In 1795 Goya succeeded Bayeu as director of painting at the Academy of San Fernando and in 1799 he was appointed First Court Painter, producing his most famous portrait group, the Family of Charles IV (Prado), in the following year. The weaknesses of the royal family are revealed with unsparing realism, though evidently without deliberate satirical intent. Goya's early portraits had followed the manner of Mengs, but stimulated by the study of Velázquez's paintings in the royal collection he had developed a much more natural, lively, and personal style, showing increasing mastery of pose and expression, heightened by dramatic contrasts of light and shade. From about the same date as the royal group portrait are the celebrated pair of paintings the Clothed Maja and Naked Maja (Prado), whose erotic nature led Goya to be summoned before the Inquisition. Popular legend has it that they represent the Duchess of Alba, the beautiful widow whose relationship with Goya caused scandal in Madrid.
Goya retained his appointment of court painter under Joseph Buonaparte during the French occupation of Spain (1808-14), but his activity as a painter of court and society decreased, and he was torn between his welcome for the regime as a liberal and his abhorrence as a patriot against foreign military rule. After the restoration of Ferdinand VII in 1814 Goya was exonerated from the charge of having 'accepted employment from the usurper' by claiming he had not worn the medal awarded him by the French, and he painted for the king the two famous scenes of the bloody uprising of the citizens of Madrid against the occupying forces - The Second of May, 1808 and The Third of May, 1808 (Prado). Equally dramatic, and even more savage and macabre, are the sixty-five etchings Los Desastres de la Guerra (The Disasters of War, 1810-14) - nightmare scenes, depicting atrocities committed by both French and Spanish.
Goya virtually retired from public life after 1815, working for himself and friends. He kept the title of court painter but was superseded in royal favour by Vicente López. Towards the end of 1819 he fell seriously ill for the second time (a remarkable self-portrait in the Minneapolis Institute of Arts shows him with the doctor who nursed him). He had just bought a country house in the outskirts of Madrid, the Quinta del Sordo (House of the Deaf Man); and it was here after his recovery in 1820 that he executed fourteen large murals, sometimes known as the Black Paintings, now in the Prado. Painted almost entirely in blacks, greys, and browns, they depict horrific scenes, such as Saturn Devouring One of His Sons, executed with an almost ferocious intensity and freedom of handling.
In 1824 Goya obtained permission from Ferdinand VII to leave the country for reasons of health and settled at Bordeaux. He made two brief visits to Spain, on the first of which (1826) he officially resigned as court painter. In these last years he took up the new medium of lithography (in his series the Bulls of Bordeaux), while his paintings illustrate his progress towards a style which foreshadowed that of the Impressionists.
Goya completed some 500 oil paintings and murals, about 300 etchings and lithographs, and many hundreds of drawings. He was exceptionally versatile and his work expresses a very wide range of emotion. His technical freedom and originality likewise are remarkable — his frescoes in San Antonio de la Florida in Madrid (1798). for example, were evidently executed with sponges. In his own day he was chiefly celebrated for his portraits, of which he painted more than 200; but his fame now rests equally on his other work.
Spanish painter (b. 1746, Fuendetodos, d. 1828, Bordeaux)
Paintings before 1781
Paintings between 1781 and 1790
Paintings between 1791 and 1795
Paintings between 1796 and 1800
Paintings between 1801 and 1805
Paintings between 1806 and 1810
Paintings between 1811 and 1815
Paintings between 1816 and 1828
"Black Paintings" in the Quinta del Sordo (1820-1823)
Graphic works
Paintings before 1781
Paintings between 1781 and 1790
Paintings between 1791 and 1795
Paintings between 1796 and 1800
Paintings between 1801 and 1805
Paintings between 1806 and 1810
Paintings between 1811 and 1815
Paintings between 1816 and 1828
"Black Paintings" in the Quinta del Sordo (1820-1823)
Graphic works
:: Francisco Goya...
Francisco GOYA naît le 30 mars 1746, à Fuendetodos, près de Saragosse, il est le fils de José Goya, maître-doreur et de Gracia Lucientes. Vers 1760, Goya étudie la peinture à Saragosse chez José Luzan.
A Madrid en 1763, il se présente au concours de l'Académie, auquel il échoue. En 1766, il échoue au concours triennal de l'Académie de Madrid.Entre 1767 et 1770, Goya quitte Madrid pour la France, puis l'Italie. Il est à Rome en 1771. En avril, il participe au concours de peinture de l'Académie de Parme ; il obtient six voix mais pas de prix. Il rentre en juin à Saragosse.En 1771, Goya part pour l'Italie, où il reste environ une année. Il passe quelques mois à Rome et prend part au concours de l'académie de Parme, qu'il réussit (Annibal passant les Alpes, 1771). De retour en Espagne, il commence à réaliser une série de gravures à partir de tableaux de Vélasquez, qui est, avec Rembrandt, son modèle.En juillet 1773, Francisco Goya épouse Josefa Bayeu, la sœur de Francisco Bayeu. Il s'installe à Madrid.En 1775, Bayeu procure à Goya une importante commande : des cartons pour la Manufacture Royale de Santa Barbara.En 1780, Goya est nommé académicien de mérite à l'Académie de San Fernando ; ses relations avec son beau-frère Bayeu se détériorent. José Goya, le père de l'artiste, meurt en 1781. Le 2 décembre 1784, Josefa donne naissance à un garçon, Francisco-Javier. En 1785, Goya fait la connaissance du marquis et de la marquise de Penafiel. Le 4 mai 1785, Goya est nommé directeur adjoint de la peinture à l'Académie de San Fernando. Le 25 juin 1786, Goya est nommé peintre du Roi d'Espagne. Le 30 avril 1789, Goya est nommé peintre du roi d'Espagne, par Carlos IV .Mais en 1790, Goya est éloigné de la cour, où il perd ses protecteurs. A l'automne 1792, il voyage à Cadix où il tombe gravement malade et paralysé. Après plusieurs mois de maladie, Goya se remet, mais reste affaibli physiquement et complètement sourd. Son beau-frère Francisco Bayeur meurt en 1795. Goya est nommé directeur de la peinture à l'académie de San Fernando à Madrid. En 1796-1797, on prête à Goya une liaison avec Maria-Cayetana, duchesse d'Albe.En 1797, Goya abandonne sa charge de directeur de la peinture à l'académie de San Fernando, pour raisons de santé. Il commence à graver les " Caprices " (" Los Caprichos ").Entre août et novembre 1798, Goya peint la coupole de la chapelle royale de San Antonio de la Florida.En février 1799, Goya publie le recueil des " Caprices " : les eaux-fortes sont retirées de la vente après quelques jours. Goya est nommé premier peintre de la Cour d'Espagne..Goya peint de nombreux portraits , comme celui de la Famille de Charles IV en 1800, qui confine à la caricature et montre la famille royale sans la moindre idéalisation. Ses portraits doivent beaucoup à la spontanéité, car ils sont sans préparation ni étude,El Pescadoret (coll. Thyssen - Bornemisza, Madrid), La marquise de Santiago (J. Paul Getty Museum), Manuel Osorio de Zuñiga (Metropolitan Museum of Art), Jeune femme avec une mantille (National Gallery of Art de Washington DC), La porteuse d'eau (Budapest Muséum) La duchesse d'Abrantés (Musée du Prado) ou le portrait d'Antonia Zarate (National Gallery of Ireland). L'invasion de l'Espagne par les armées de Napoléon en 1808 et la guerre qui s'ensuit lui inspirent deux puissants chefs-d'œuvre," 2 mai à la Puerta del Sol (Dos de Mayo) et les Fusillades du 3 mai (Tres de Mayo), achevés en 1814 et conservés au musée du Prado : Goya y dénonce avec fougue la violence du conflit, ses répressions sanglantes et le martyre du peuple espagnol. Dans ces deux tableaux, comme dans ses toiles postérieures, Goya peint par touches épaisses de couleurs sombres, illuminées de jaune brillant et rehaussées de rouge."Dans les Désastres de la guerre", série gravée en 1810, il fixe également sa vision désespérée de ces événements et de l'humanité. En 1819, Goya vit avec Leocadia Weiss, une jeune veuve, parente de sa belle-fille, et sa fille Rosario. Le 24 juin 1824, Goya arrive à Bordeaux. Il séjourne à Paris en juillet et, en septembre, s'installe à Bordeaux avec Léocadia Weiss, et sa fille Rosario. En 1826, Goya effectue un court séjour à Madrid, où il revoit Francisco-Javier, âgé de 42 ans, le seul de ses fils qui ait survécu. Goya meurt à Bordeaux le 16 avril 1828.
" La manière d'étaler la couleur, les effets dramatiques et l'emploi de la lumière rappellent le Baroque mais par son esprit , l' œuvre de Goya appartient tout entière au XIXe siècle. Non seulement ses thèmes sont audacieux , inédits, mais certains aspects de sa technique picturale le sont tout autant. On en voit la preuve dans les peintures monochromes, fantastiques dont il s'entoure vers la fin de sa vie, et encore dans son œuvre célèbre, "le 3 mai 1808", où les condamnés tombent sous le feu du peloton d'exécution, non plus au nom d'une justice divine, mais au nom de la liberté..."(C.Wentinck)
giovedì
:: Raffaello Sanzio...
The Sistine Chapel was the official private chapel of the popes, where the Conclave, the body which elected a new pope, also met. The rebuilding of St Peter's made it necessary for other high-level ceremonies to be held in the Chapel. Pope Sixtus IV della Rovere, the uncle of Julius II, had had the Sistine Chapel built, and had commissioned the leading artists in Florence in the late 15th century to adorn it with episodes from the lives of Christ and Moses. He also had imitation tapestries showing the della Rovere coat-of arms painted.On important Church feast days venerable wall-hangings were hung in front of these simulated tapestries. The hangings depicted scenes of Christ's Passion, and, according to one legend, they came originally from Jerusalem. In Leo X's opinion these had become too worn and unsightly and had therefore to be replaced. The timing was clearly excellent, for this replacement gave Leo an opportunity to leave behind a visible sign of his own papacy in the most important chapel in Christendom. The coat-of arms of Leo X, commissioned from Raphael, unmistakably adorns the borders of the new tapestries.
Initially a scholar was presumably commissioned to provide a program for the cycle of tapestries, and instructed to select the scenes that would accord with the key features of the new pope's ecclesiastical policy while remaining in keeping with the decoration already there. Leo expected Raphael to interpret these themes artistically. Presumably, Raphael was commissioned to do this in late 1514 or early 1515; by June 1515 he had received an advance payment. The designs were completed by late 1516, since we have documentary evidence that the final payment was made on 20 December.
The tapestries were woven in the finest tapestry workshop of the day, that of Pieter van Aelst in Brussels. One tapestry was completed by 1517, and seven tapestries were ready to be hung in the Sistine Chapel for the Christmas festivities of 1519. Three others must have arrived shortly before Leo's death in 1521, for the inventory made just after his death lists a total of ten tapestries. During the Sack of Rome in 1527, these works were stolen, and were not returned until the 1550s. Seven of the cartoons - designs drawn to scale - are in the Victoria and Albert Museum, London. The tapestries themselves, all woven by Pieter van Aelst, are now in the Vatican Museums.
The tapestries recount stories from the Acts of the Apostles. Four scenes depict scenes from the life of St Peter. These are The Handing-over of the Keys; The Miraculous Draught of Fishes; The Healing of the Lame Man; and The Death of Ananias. The other six tapestries illustrate scenes from the life of St Paul. They are: The Stoning of St Stephen, which depicts an event St Paul ordered; The Conversion of St Paul; The Blinding of the Sorcerer, Elymas; The Sacrifices in Lystra; St Paul in Prison; and St Paul Preaching in Athens. St Peter and St Paul were both martyred in Rome, a fact that substantiated and legitimated the choice of this city as the seat of the papacy. Leo X was using the program of the tapestries to demonstrate this, and thus to assert that ecclesiastically his immediate predecessors had been right to return to Rome after the so-called Babylonian Captivity in Avignon.
In the task he had set himself Raphael was facing a double challenge. First, he was well aware how important this project was to Leo X. Secondly, he felt overshadowed by Michelangelo's Sistine ceiling, by which he knew he would be measured as an artiSt Michelangelo had achieved impressive and in some cases extreme colour effects.
Raphael remembered his own pictorial effects, as demonstrated in the frescoes of the Stanza di Eliodoro. In his designs he staked everything on the atmospheric effects of the light and colour, enlivened by contrasts and delicate nuances. In this respect, however, the final outcome was a failure, in that he had over-estimated the technical potential of tapestry weaving. All the same, the tapestries were an enormous success when shown in the Sistine Chapel in 1519.
::
Early paintings (up to 1504)
Paintings during the stay in Florence (1505-09)
Paintings during trips to Umbria (1505-08)
Decoration of the Stanze in the Palazzi Pontifici, Vatican
Paintings in Rome (1510-20)
Tapestries and their cartoons
Drawings
Raphael had a remarkable, although brief, career in Rome. The credit for having recognized and fostered his talent is shared by two popes, Julius II, of the della Rovere family, and his immediate successor, Leo X, a Medici. The two popes differed in their character, taste, culture, and political program. Yet they had a common goal: to restore ancient Rome's cultural and political importance under papal leadership.
As early as 1453 Nicholas V had begun reconstructing and extending a 13th-century building in the Vatican. Later, the Borgia pope, Alexander VI, used some of the apartments on the first floor of the north wing, and it was here that his successor, Julius II resided at the beginning of his pontificate. Towards the end of 1507 Julius decided to refurbish the second floor, the so-called Stanze, because he no longer wished to live in the apartments occupied by his predecessor, whom he detested. The artists whom Julius II commissioned to paint frescoes in the new apartments included Perugino and Sodoma. Raphael took over this work on his arrival in Rome in 1509.
Stanza della Segnatura
Stanza di Eliodoro
Stanza dell'Incendio di Borgo
Stanza di Constantino
As early as 1453 Nicholas V had begun reconstructing and extending a 13th-century building in the Vatican. Later, the Borgia pope, Alexander VI, used some of the apartments on the first floor of the north wing, and it was here that his successor, Julius II resided at the beginning of his pontificate. Towards the end of 1507 Julius decided to refurbish the second floor, the so-called Stanze, because he no longer wished to live in the apartments occupied by his predecessor, whom he detested. The artists whom Julius II commissioned to paint frescoes in the new apartments included Perugino and Sodoma. Raphael took over this work on his arrival in Rome in 1509.
Stanza della Segnatura
Stanza di Eliodoro
Stanza dell'Incendio di Borgo
Stanza di Constantino
:: Raffaello Sanzio...
RAFFAELLO Sanzio
(b. 1483, Urbino, d. 1520, Roma)
Biography
Raphael (his full name Raffaello Sanzi or Santi), Italian painter and architect of the Italian High Renaissance. Raphael is best known for his Madonnas and for his large figure compositions in the Vatican in Rome. His work is admired for its clarity of form and ease of composition and for its visual achievement of the Neoplatonic ideal of human grandeur.
Early years at Urbino
Raphael was the son of Giovanni Santi and Magia di Battista Ciarla; his mother died in 1491. His father was, according to the 16th-century artist and biographer Giorgio Vasari, a painter "of no great merit." He was, however, a man of culture who was in constant contact with the advanced artistic ideas current at the court of Urbino. He gave his son his first instruction in painting, and, before his death in 1494, when Raphael was 11, he had introduced the boy to humanistic philosophy at the court.
Urbino had become a centre of culture during the rule of Duke Federico da Montefeltro, who encouraged the arts and attracted the visits of men of outstanding talent, including Donato Bramante, Piero della Francesca, and Leon Battista Alberti, to his court. Although Raphael would be influenced by major artists in Florence and Rome, Urbino constituted the basis for all his subsequent learning. Furthermore, the cultural vitality of the city probably stimulated the exceptional precociousness of the young artist, who, even at the beginning of the 16th century, when he was scarcely 17 years old, already displayed an extraordinary talent.
Apprenticeship at Perugia
The date of Raphael's arrival in Perugia is not known, but several scholars place it in 1495. The first record of Raphael's activity as a painter is found there in a document of Dec. 10, 1500, declaring that the young painter, by then called a "master," was commissioned to help paint an altarpiece to be completed by Sept. 13, 1502. It is clear from this that Raphael had already given proof of his mastery, so much so that between 1501 and 1503 he received a rather important commission - to paint the Coronation of the Virgin for the Oddi Chapel in the church of San Francesco, Perugia (and now in the Vatican Museum, Rome). The great Umbrian master Pietro Perugino was executing the frescoes in the Collegio del Cambio at Perugia between 1498 and 1500, enabling Raphael, as a member of his workshop, to acquire extensive professional knowledge.
In addition to this practical instruction, Perugino's calmly exquisite style also influenced Raphael. The Giving of the Keys to St Peter, painted in 1481-82 by Perugino for the Sistine Chapel of the Vatican Palace in Rome, inspired Raphael's first major work, The Marriage of the Virgin (1504; Brera Gallery, Milan). Perugino's influence is seen in the emphasis on perspectives, in the graded relationships between the figures and the architecture, and in the lyrical sweetness of the figures. Nevertheless, even in this early painting, it is clear that Raphael's sensibility was different from his teacher's. The disposition of the figures is less rigidly related to the architecture, and the disposition of each figure in relation to the others is more informal and animated. The sweetness of the figures and the gentle relation between them surpasses anything in Perugino's work.
Three small paintings done by Raphael shortly after The Marriage of the Virgin - Vision of a Knight, Three Graces, and St Michael - are masterful examples of narrative painting, showing, as well as youthful freshness, a maturing ability to control the elements of his own style. Although he had learned much from Perugino, Raphael by late 1504 needed other models to work from; it is clear that his desire for knowledge was driving him to look beyond Perugia.
Move to Florence
Vasari vaguely recounts that Raphael followed the Perugian painter Bernardino Pinturicchio to Siena and then went on to Florence, drawn there by accounts of the work that Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo were undertaking in that city. By the autumn of 1504 Raphael had certainly arrived in Florence. It is not known if this was his first visit to Florence, but, as his works attest, it was about 1504 that he first came into substantial contact with this artistic civilization, which reinforced all the ideas he had already acquired and also opened to him new and broader horizons. Vasari records that he studied not only the works of Leonardo, Michelangelo, and Fra Bartolomeo, who were the masters of the High Renaissance, but also "the old things of Masaccio," a pioneer of the naturalism that marked the departure of the early Renaissance from the Gothic.
Still, his principal teachers in Florence were Leonardo and Michelangelo. Many of the works that Raphael executed in the years between 1505 and 1507, most notably a great series of Madonnas including The Madonna of the Goldfinch (c. 1505; Uffizi Gallery, Florence), the Madonna del Prato (c. 1505; Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna), the Esterházy Madonna (c. 1505-07; Museum of Fine Arts, Budapest), and La Belle Jardinière (c. 1507; Louvre Museum, Paris), are marked by the influence of Leonardo, who since 1480 had been making great innovations in painting. Raphael was particularly influenced by Leonardo's Madonna and Child with St. Anne pictures, which are marked by an intimacy and simplicity of setting uncommon in 15th-century art. Raphael learned the Florentine method of building up his composition in depth with pyramidal figure masses; the figures are grouped as a single unit, but each retains its own individuality and shape. A new unity of composition and suppression of inessentials distinguishes the works he painted in Florence. Raphael also owed much to Leonardo's lighting techniques; he made moderate use of Leonardo's chiaroscuro (i.e., strong contrast between light and dark), and he was especially influenced by his sfumato (i.e., use of extremely fine, soft shading instead of line to delineate forms and features). Raphael went beyond Leonardo, however, in creating new figure types whose round, gentle faces reveal uncomplicated and typically human sentiments but raised to a sublime perfection and serenity.
In 1507 Raphael was commissioned to paint the Deposition of Christ that is now in the Borghese Gallery in Rome. In this work, it is obvious that Raphael set himself deliberately to learn from Michelangelo the expressive possibilities of human anatomy. But Raphael differed from Leonardo and Michelangelo, who were both painters of dark intensity and excitement, in that he wished to develop a calmer and more extroverted style that would serve as a popular, universally accessible form of visual communication.
Last years in Rome
Raphael was called to Rome toward the end of 1508 by Pope Julius II at the suggestion of the architect Donato Bramante. At this time Raphael was little known in Rome, but the young man soon made a deep impression on the volatile Julius and the papal court, and his authority as a master grew day by day. Raphael was endowed with a handsome appearance and great personal charm in addition to his prodigious artistic talents, and he eventually became so popular that he was called "the prince of painters."
Raphael spent the last 12 years of his short life in Rome. They were years of feverish activity and successive masterpieces. His first task in the city was to paint a cycle of frescoes in a suite of medium-sized rooms in the Vatican papal apartments in which Julius himself lived and worked; these rooms are known simply as the Stanze. The Stanza della Segnatura (1508-11) and Stanza d'Eliodoro (1512-14) were decorated practically entirely by Raphael himself; the murals in the Stanza dell'Incendio (1514-17), though designed by Raphael, were largely executed by his numerous assistants and pupils.
The decoration of the Stanza della Segnatura was perhaps Raphael's greatest work. Julius II was a highly cultured man who surrounded himself with the most illustrious personalities of the Renaissance. He entrusted Bramante with the construction of a new basilica of St. Peter to replace the original 4th-century church; he called upon Michelangelo to execute his tomb and compelled him against his will to decorate the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel; and, sensing the genius of Raphael, he committed into his hands the interpretation of the philosophical scheme of the frescoes in the Stanza della Segnatura. This theme was the historical justification of the power of the Roman Catholic church through Neoplatonic philosophy.
The four main fresco walls in the Stanza della Segnatura are occupied by the Disputa and the School of Athens on the larger walls and the Parnassus and Cardinal Virtues on the smaller walls. The two most important of these frescoes are the Disputa and the School of Athens. The Disputa, showing a celestial vision of God and his prophets and apostles above a gathering of representatives, past and present, of the Roman Catholic church, equates through its iconography the triumph of the church and the triumph of truth. The School of Athens is a complex allegory of secular knowledge, or philosophy, showing Plato and Aristotle surrounded by philosophers, past and present, in a splendid architectural setting; it illustrates the historical continuity of Platonic thought. The School of Athens is perhaps the most famous of all Raphael's frescoes, and one of the culminating artworks of the High Renaissance. Here Raphael fills an ordered and stable space with figures in a rich variety of poses and gestures, which he controls in order to make one group of figures lead to the next in an interweaving and interlocking pattern, bringing the eye to the central figures of Plato and Aristotle at the converging point of the perspectival space. The space in which the philosophers congregate is defined by the pilasters and barrel vaults of a great basilica that is based on Bramante's design for the new St Peter's in Rome. The general effect of the fresco is one of majestic calm, clarity, and equilibrium.
About the same time, probably in 1511, Raphael painted a more secular subject, the Triumph of Galatea in the Villa Farnesina in Rome; this work was perhaps the High Renaissance's most successful evocation of the living spirit of classical antiquity. Meanwhile, Raphael's decoration of the papal apartments continued after the death of Julius in 1513 and into the succeeding pontificate of Leo X until 1517. In contrast to the generalized allegories in the Stanza della Segnatura, the decorations in the second room, the Stanza d'Eliodoro, portray specific miraculous events in the history of the Christian church. The four principal subjects are The Expulsion of Heliodorus from the Temple, The Miracle at Bolsena, The Liberation of St Peter, and Leo I Halting Attila. These frescoes are deeper and richer in colour than are those in the earlier room, and they display a new boldness on Raphael's part in both their dramatic subjects and their unusual effects of light. The Liberation of St Peter, for example, is a night scene and contains three separate lighting effects - moonlight, the torch carried by a soldier, and the supernatural light emanating from an angel. Raphael delegated his assistants to decorate the third room, the Stanze dell'Incendio, with the exception of one fresco, the Fire in the Borgo, in which his pursuit of more dramatic pictorial incidents and his continuing study of the male nude are plainly apparent.
The Madonnas that Raphael painted in Rome show him turning away from the serenity and gentleness of his earlier works in order to emphasize qualities of energetic movement and grandeur. His Alba Madonna (1508; National Gallery, Washington) epitomizes the serene sweetness of the Florentine Madonnas but shows a new maturity of emotional expression and supreme technical sophistication in the poses of the figures. It was followed by the Madonna di Foligno (1510; Vatican Museum) and the Sistine Madonna (1513; Gemäldegalerie, Dresden), which show both the richness of colour and new boldness in compositional invention typical of Raphael's Roman period. Some of his other late Madonnas, such as the Madonna of Francis I (Louvre), are remarkable for their polished elegance. Besides his other accomplishments, Raphael became the most important portraitist in Rome during the first two decades of the 16th century. He introduced new types of presentation and new psychological situations for his sitters, as seen in the portrait of Leo X with Two Cardinals (1517-19; Uffizi, Florence). Raphael's finest work in the genre is perhaps the Portrait of Baldassare Castiglione (1516; Louvre), a brilliant and arresting character study.
Leo X commissioned Raphael to design 10 large tapestries to hang on the walls of the Sistine Chapel. Seven of the ten cartoons (full-size preparatory drawings) were completed by 1516, and the tapestries woven after them were hung in place in the chapel by 1519. The tapestries themselves are still in the Vatican, while seven of Raphael's original cartoons are in the British royal collection and are on view at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. These cartoons represent Christ's Charge to Peter, The Miraculous Draught of Fishes, The Death of Ananias, The Healing of the Lame Man, The Blinding of Elymas, The Sacrifice at Lystra, and St Paul Preaching at Athens. In these pictures Raphael created prototypes that would influence the European tradition of narrative history painting for centuries to come. The cartoons display Raphael's keen sense of drama, his use of gestures and facial expressions to portray emotion, and his incorporation of credible physical settings from both the natural world and that of ancient Roman architecture.
While he was at work in the Stanza della Segnatura, Raphael also did his first architectural work, designing the church of Sant' Eligio degli Orefici. In 1513 the banker Agostino Chigi, whose Villa Farnesina Raphael had already decorated, commissioned him to design and decorate his funerary chapel in the church of Santa Maria del Popolo. In 1514 Leo X chose him to work on the basilica of St Peter's alongside Bramante; and when Bramante died later that year, Raphael assumed the direction of the work, transforming the plans of the church from a Greek, or radial, to a Latin, or longitudinal, design.
Raphael was also a keen student of archaeology and of ancient Greco-Roman sculpture, echoes of which are apparent in his paintings of the human figure during the Roman period. In 1515 Leo X put him in charge of the supervision of the preservation of marbles bearing valuable Latin inscriptions; two years later he was appointed commissioner of antiquities for the city, and he drew up an archaeological map of Rome. Raphael had by this time been put in charge of virtually all of the papacy's various artistic projects in Rome, involving architecture, paintings and decoration, and the preservation of antiquities.
Raphael's last masterpiece is the Transfiguration (commissioned in 1517), an enormous altarpiece that was unfinished at his death and completed by his assistant Giulio Romano. It now hangs in the Vatican Museum. The Transfiguration is a complex work that combines extreme formal polish and elegance of execution with an atmosphere of tension and violence communicated by the agitated gestures of closely crowded groups of figures. It shows a new sensibility that is like the prevision of a new world, turbulent and dynamic; in its feeling and composition it inaugurated the Mannerist movement and tends toward an expression that may even be called Baroque.
Raphael died on his 37th birthday. His funeral mass was celebrated at the Vatican, his Transfiguration was placed at the head of the bier, and his body was buried in the Pantheon in Rome.
:: Raeburn, Sir Henry...
RAEBURN, Sir Henry
(b. 1756, Stockbridge, d. 1823, Edinburgh)
Biography
Leading Scottish portrait painter during the late 18th and early 19th centuries.
In about 1771 Raeburn was apprenticed to the goldsmith James Gilliland and is said to have studied with the Edinburgh portrait painter David Martin briefly in 1775. But for the most part Raeburn was self-taught, progressing from miniature painting to full-scale portraiture. A portrait of George Chalmers (1776; Dunfermline Town Hall) is Raeburn's earliest known portrait, and its faulty drawing and incorrect perspective suggest the artist's lack of formal training. By his marriage to a wealthy widow in 1778, he achieved financial security, and during the next four years he considerably improved his artistic skill. In London in 1785, while en route to a tour of Italy, he met Sir Joshua Reynolds, whose works were already familiar to him from Scottish collections and engravings.
A man of many interests and a good conversationalist, Raeburn became a popular member of the new cultured Edinburgh society. By about 1790 he had painted the portrait of his wife (Countess Mountbatten Collection) and the double portrait of Sir John and Lady Clerk (Sir Alfred Beit Collection), in which the artist experimented with unusual lighting from behind the sitters' heads. During the following decade Raeburn produced some of his most brilliant portraits, such as Sir John Sinclair (c. 1794-95; National Gallery of Scotland, Edinburgh), which foreshadowed The MacNab (c. 1803-13; John Dewar and Sons, Ltd., London), in which tonalities became darker and lighting more contrasted. In 1812 he was elected president of the Edinburgh Society of Artists, becoming a Royal Academician in 1815. He was knighted in 1822 and shortly thereafter was appointed His Majesty's Limner for Scotland.
:: Palagi, Pelagio...
PALAGI, Pelagio
(b. 1775/77, Bologna, d. 1860, Torino)
Biography
Italian painter, architect, designer and collector. At the age of 12 he began to frequent the house in Bologna of his patron Conte Carlo Filippo Aldrovandi Marescotti (1763-1823), whose collections and library provided his early artistic education and engendered his taste for collecting. From 1795 he worked on several decorative schemes with the theatre designer and decorator Antonio Basoli (1774-1848), and it was perhaps in theatre designs that Palagi was first exposed to an eclectic range of motifs from exotic cultures. He was influenced by the linear, mannered style of Felice Giani, with whom he frequented the important evening drawing sessions at the house of the engraver Francesco Rosaspina (1762-1841).
Beginning in 1802, he participated in the informal Accademia della Pace, Bologna, as well as studying at the Accademia Clementina, and was elected to the Accademia Nazionale di Belle Arti of Bologna in 1803. Soon his draughtsmanship took on a bizarre, brooding style akin to that of Piranesi and such early Romantics as Luigi Sabatelli and Henry Fuseli. During this period he began designing funerary monuments, a type of commission that he continued to receive throughout his life. In 1805 he worked with Giani on the decorations of the Palazzo Aldini, Bologna.
He had a self-described "mania for antique things" that affected all aspects of his life. His interest in archaeology began when he moved to Rome in 1806 and soon became a fundamental inspiration in his work. Palagi was interested in Egyptian, Greek, Etruscan, and Roman antiquity, whose motifs he inventively and eclectically combined in his furniture and ornament designs. He was a passionate collector and amassed one of the richest archaeological collections of the 1800s. Palagi owned a considerable collection of bronzes, marble sculptures, Etruscan vases, and gold, silver, and glass objects acquired during his years living in Rome, Milan, and Turin.
:: Mantegna, Andrea...
MANTEGNA, Andrea
(b. 1431, Isola di Cartura, d. 1506, Mantova)
Biography
Mantegna, Andrea (1431-1506), one of the foremost north Italian painters of the 15th century. A master of perspective and foreshortening, he made important contributions to the compositional techniques of Renaissance painting.
Born (probably at Isola di Carturo, between Vicenza and Padua) in 1431, Mantegna became the apprentice and adopted son of the painter Francesco Squarcione of Padua. He developed a passionate interest in classical antiquity. The influence of both ancient Roman sculpture and the contemporary sculptor Donatello are clearly evident in Mantegna's rendering of the human figure. His human forms were distinguished for their solidity, expressiveness, and anatomical correctness.
Mantegna's principal works in Padua were religious. His first great success was a series of frescoes on the lives of St. James and St. Christopher in the Ovetari Chapel of the Church of the Eremitani (1456; badly damaged in World War II). In 1459 Mantegna went to Mantua to become court painter to the ruling Gonzaga family and accordingly turned from religious to secular and allegorical subjects. His masterpiece was a series of frescoes (1465-74) for the Camera degli Sposi (“bridal chamber”) of the Palazzo Ducale. In these works, he carried the art of illusionistic perspective to new limits. His figures depicting the court were not simply applied to the wall like flat portraits but appeared to be taking part in realistic scenes, as if the walls had disappeared. The illusion is carried over onto the ceiling, which appears to be open to the sky, with servants, a peacock, and cherubs leaning over a railing. This was the prototype of illusionistic ceiling painting and was to become an important element of baroque and rococo art.
Mantegna's later works varied in quality. His largest undertaking, a fresco series on the Triumphs of Caesar (1489, Hampton Court Palace, England), displays a rather dry classicism, but Parnassus (1497, Louvre, Paris), an allegorical painting commissioned by Isabelle d'Este, is his freshest, most animated work. His work never ceased to be innovative. In Madonna of Victory (1495, Louvre), he introduced a new compositional arrangement, based on diagonals, which was later to be exploited by Correggio, while his Dead Christ (Pinacoteca di Brera, Milan) was a tour de force of foreshortening that pointed ahead to the style of 16th-century Mannerism.
One of the key artistic figures of the second half of the 15th century, Mantegna was the dominant influence on north Italian painting for 50 years. It was also through him that German artists, notably Albrecht Dürer, were made aware of the artistic discoveries of the Italian Renaissance. He died in Mantua on September 13, 1506.
lunedì
:: Giovanni Battista Tiepolo...
Giovan Battista Tiepolo
1696 - 1770
Giambattista Tiepolo. Italian painter, born in Venice in 1696. Dies in Madrid in 1770.
Tiepolo is a student of Gregorio Lazzarini's. In 1719 he joins the Venetian guild of painters. He soon turns away from the darker hues of the Baroque opting for sunny colorful tableaux instead. His first success testifies to his new style: a series of frescoes on biblical scenes for the episcopal palace in Udine in 1726 show that Tiepolo has joined the tradition of the Venetian Renaissance and follows in the footsteps of such inspirators as Paolo Veronese.
After Udine, Tiepolo starts to turn out a stream of happy, fantastical canvasses and frescoes, often on religious themes, or portraits. Typical of his work is its fresh style and such tricks as painted frames.
The frescoes Tiepolo paints for the Würzburg residence of the Arch Bishop are considered his pièce the resistance and the highlight of the Rococo period, initiated by him, among others. With a crew of co-workers Tiepolo sets out for the German city in 1750 to create monumental murals on non-religious themes on the residence walls and ceilings. The fresco in the hall alone measures 677 m2 and is the largest in Europe.
Back in Italy Tiepolo dedicates himself to commissions by local dignitaries. In 1762 he and his crew, including his son Giandomenico (1727-1804), leave for Madrid to paint frescoes for the Royal Palace. But in Madrid neo-classicism has taken over from the now unfashionable Rococo style and Tiepolo falls into oblivion.
work by Giovan Battista Tiepolo
:: Lucas Cranach the Elder...
Cranach, Lucas sr.
Lucas Cranach the Elder
1472 - 1553
German painter and printmaker, one of the major representatives of the northern Renaissance. Lucas the Elder was the father of Hans and Lucas Cranach the Younger, also painters.
Cranach was the eldest of nine children. His father, Hans Maler, a painter himself, must have given him his first lessons. Lucas adopted the name Cranach when he was already over 30. It refers to his place of birth, the current town Kronach.
He moved to Vienna in 1501, and to Wittenberg in 1505, after he had been appointed to the court of Frederic III, elector of Saxony.
Experts often see a breach of styles after the move to Wittenberg. His Vienna works were full of expression and very dynamic. After the move, his style became more static.
In Wittenberg Cranach met the reformer Martin Luther, whom he portrayed many times. Besides being a painter Cranach also sold medicines and paper, ran a wine pub and printed books. In 1522 he printed the first editions of Luther's German translation of the New Testament.
In 1524 Cranach met Albrecht Dürer, the other great German renaissance artist. Dürer made a portrait of Cranach at that occasion.
Lucas Cranach was a member of the Wittenberg city council and was elected as mayor three times. Perhaps it was a talent for politics that enabled him to work for catholic as well as protestant clients. The protection he received from Frederic may also have been important for his business. Frederic remained catholic but supported the Reformation.
Cranach and his wife Barbara had five children. Together with his sons Hans and Lucas Cranach ran a thriving workshop, that produced several thousand paintings, engravings and prints. Often it is not clear exactly who created what. The workshop and his other occupations provided steady revenues to Cranach, making him the wealthiest civilian of Wittenberg.
Cranach remained in the service of Saxonian electors throughout his life. In the service of John Frederic I he moved to Weimar, where he died in 1553.
The portrait was painted by Lucas Cranach the Younger in 1550.
work by Lucas Cranach the Elder
sabato
:: Bazzani, Giuseppe...
BAZZANI, Giuseppe
(b. 1690, Mantova, d. 1769, Mantova)
Biography
Italian painter. He was the son of the goldsmith Giovanni Bazzani and trained in the studio of Giovanni Canti (1653-1715). Giuseppe was a refined and cultivated artist and as a young man profited from the rich collections of art in Mantua, studying the works of Andrea Mantegna, Giulio Romano, 16th-century Venetian painters, especially Paolo Veronese, and Flemish artists, above all Rubens.
His earliest works, for example the Assumption (private collection), reveal an affinity with contemporary Venetian painters such as Giovanni Battista Piazzetta, Federico Bencovich and Andrea Celesti, but Bazzani rapidly absorbed the influence of Antonio Balestra, Domenico Fetti and most of all Rubens and Veronese. The inspiration of the last two artists is apparent in a number of works that may be dated in the 1720s and early 1730s. These include the Miracles of Pius V, the Conversion of a Heretic and the Healing of a Madwoman (all mid-1720s; Mantua, Museo Palazzo Ducale) painted for the church of S Maurizio in Mantua; paintings of St John the Evangelist, St Mark and St Luke (all late 1720s; Vasto di Goito, parish church); and the Baptism, the Ecstasy of St Aloysius Gonzaga (1729) and the Ecstasy of SS Francis and Anthony (1732; all Borgoforte, parish church). Seven paintings of scenes from the Life of Alexander the Great (Mantua, Museo Palazzo d'Arco), which date from c. 1738, were painted for Giacomo Biondi, one of the artist's first patrons, and are distinguished by their theatrical splendour and awareness of a rich artistic tradition. This period culminated in the Baroque drama of the Delivery of the Keys to St Peter (1739; Goito, parish church), Bazzani's first documented work.
Bazzani absorbed the painterly styles of earlier artists such as Paolo Veronese, Pieter Paul Rubens, and Anthony van Dyck. Bazzani's rapid, sketchy brushstroke may have derived not only from these artists but also from his Italian contemporary, Alessandro Magnasco. Bazzani remained in Mantua throughout his entire artistic career and died there. From 1752 he was professor at the Academy of Fine Arts in Mantua.
:: Gerard Terborch...
Gerard Terborch
(1617-1681)
This Dutch painter was born in 1617 in Zwolle into the family of an artist, Gerard Terborch the Elder, who became his first mentor. Then, in 1634, Gerard was apprenticed to Pieter de Molyn in Haarlem, where he also experienced the influence of Frans Hals. He became a member of the Haarlem St. Lukas Guild in 1635 and soon started off on his 5-years travels, visiting England, Italy and France. In 1635, in London, he probably got acquainted with portraits by Van Dyck; in 1640-41 he visited Italy and Spain, where he was admitted by court and painted King Philip IV. In Spain Velazquez's work made a deep impression on him. In 1646-48, Terborch visited Münster (Westphalia), where he painted “The Treaty of Westphalia” (Peace Treaty of Münster), now in the National Gallery, London, which marked the end of the Thirty Years’ War. The composition of 80 figures combines the features of portrait and historical painting. Gerard Terborch belongs to the few Dutch painters of the European school. He painted genre pictures and portraits, which he dated very seldom. In his early period (1630s-50s) he often depicted the scenes of everyday life of soldiers and entertainers: examples. The picture The Knifegrinder's Family belongs to the same period, it shows the miserable life of an artisan and is the only painting of such character in all his work. In 1654 the painter settled at Deventer. The characters of Terborch works changed, the life of the rich families became his main subject. His pictures are elegant and marked with restraint lyricism, which sign off his work among other Dutch genre painters. The masterpieces of Terborch of The Fatherly Admonition, The Concert, Glass of Lemonade, and others. The artist died in 1681 at Deventer.
Bibliography: Holland Genre Painting. XVII century. by E. Fehner. Moscow. Izobrazitelnoe Iskusstvo. 1979. Painting of Western Europe. XVII century. by E. Rotenberg. Moscow. Iskusstvo. 1989. Painting of Europe. XIII-XX centuries. Encyclopedic Dictionary. Moscow. Iskusstvo. 1999.
TERBORCH, Gerard
(b. 1617, Zwolle, d. 1681, Deventer)
Biography
Terborch (also spelled Ter Borch, or Terburg), Dutch Baroque painter who developed his own distinctive type of interior genre in which he depicted with grace and fidelity the atmosphere of well-to-do, middle-class life in 17th-century Holland.
Terborch's father had been an artist and had visited Rome but from 1621 was employed as a tax collector. Surviving drawings made by the young Terborch in 1625 and 1626 are proudly inscribed and dated by his father. In 1632 Gerard was in Amsterdam, and in 1634 he was a pupil of Pieter de Molyn in Haarlem. He visited England in 1635, Rome in 1640, and from 1646 spent two or three years in Münster, Westphalia, where the peace congress was in session. The masterpiece of this period, The Swearing of the Oath of Ratification of the Treaty of Münster (1648), portrays the delegates of Holland and of Spain assembled to sign the peace treaty. After a stay in Madrid he finally returned to his own country at the end of 1650, and in 1655 he settled in Deventer.
Terborch's works consist almost equally of portraits and genre pieces. His characteristically delicate technique can be appreciated in the portraits, which are painted on a small, almost miniature scale, though many of them are full-length. In colour they tend to be subdued, due largely to the sober costume of the times, but by subtlety of tonal gradations and mastery in rendering diverse surface textures he was able to achieve an extraordinary richness of effect. Particularly characteristic is his manner of rendering satin. His superb colour sense appears to greater advantage in genre subjects, though it is always employed with masterly restraint. In his earlier years he painted many guardroom subjects in the manner of Pieter Codde and Willem Duyster, but later, from about the time when he finally settled in Holland, he painted calm, exquisitely drawn groups, posed easily and naturally against shadowy backgrounds and imbued with an almost aristocratic elegance that is unique among Dutch painters of his time. Among many fine examples of Terborch's art are The Letter, The Concert, and Paternal Admonition.
giovedì
:: Chasseriau, Théodore...
CHASSÉRIAU, Théodore
(b. 1819, Sainte-Barbe de Samana, d. 1856, Paris)
Biography
French painter and printmaker. In 1822 Chassériau moved with his family to Paris, where he received a bourgeois upbringing under the supervision of an older brother. A precociously gifted draughtsman, he entered Ingres's studio at the age of 11 and remained there until Ingres left to head the Académie de France in Rome in 1834. He made his Salon début in 1836 with several portraits and religious subjects, including Cain Accursed (Paris, private collection), for which he received a third-class medal. Among his many submissions in subsequent years were Susanna Bathing (1839, exhibited Salon 1839; Paris, Louvre), a Marine Venus (1838; exhibited Salon 1839; Paris, Louvre) and the Toilet of Esther (1841, exhibited Salon 1842; Paris, Louvre); these three paintings of nude female figures combine an idealization derived from Ingres with a sensuality characteristic of Chassériau.
In the 1840s he conceived an admiration for Delacroix and attempted, with considerable success, to combine Ingres's classical linear grace with Delacroix's Romantic colour. His chief work was the decoration of the Cour des Comptes in the Palais d'Orsay, Paris, with allegorical scenes of Peace and War (1844-48), but these were almost completely destroyed by fire. There are other examples of his decorative work, however, in various churches in Paris. Chassériau was also an outstanding portraitist and painted nudes and North African scenes (he made a visit there in 1846).
:: Bruegel, Pieter the Elder...
BRUEGEL, Pieter the Elder
(b. ca. 1525, Breughel, d. 1569, Bruxelles)
Biography
Pieter Bruegel the Elder (byname Peasant Bruegel, also spelled Brueghel or Breughel), the greatest Netherlandish painter of the 16th century, whose landscapes and vigorous, often witty scenes of peasant life are particularly renowned. He spelled his name Brueghel until 1559, and his sons retained the "h" in the spelling of their names. Since Bruegel signed and dated many of his works, his artistic evolution can be traced from the early landscapes, in which he shows affinity with the Flemish 16th-century landscape tradition, to his last works, which are Italianate. He exerted a strong influence on painting in the Low Countries, and through his sons Jan and Pieter he became the ancestor of a dynasty of painters that survived into the 18th century.
There is but little information about his life. According to Carel van Mander's Het Schilderboeck (Book of Painters), published in Amsterdam in 1604 (35 years after Bruegel's death), Bruegel was apprenticed to Pieter Coecke van Aelst, a leading Antwerp artist who had located in Brussels. The head of a large workshop, Coecke was a sculptor, architect, and designer of tapestry and stained glass who had traveled in Italy and in Turkey. Although Bruegel's earliest surviving works show no stylistic dependence on Coecke's Italianate art, connections with Coecke's compositions can be detected in later years, particularly after 1563, when Bruegel married Coecke's daughter Mayken. In any case, the apprenticeship with Coecke represented an early contact with a humanistic milieu. Through Coecke Bruegel became linked indirectly to another tradition as well. Coecke's wife, Maria Verhulst Bessemers, was a painter known for her work in watercolour or tempera, a suspension of pigments in egg yolk or a glutinous substance, on linen. The technique was widely practiced in her hometown of Mechelen (Malines) and was later employed by Bruegel. It is also in the works of Mechelen's artists that allegorical and peasant thematic material first appear. These subjects, unusual in Antwerp, were later treated by Bruegel.
In 1551 or 1552, Bruegel set off on the customary northern artist's journey to Italy, probably by way of France. From several extant paintings, drawings, and etchings, it can be deduced that he traveled beyond Naples to Sicily, possibly as far as Palermo, and that in 1553 he lived for some time in Rome, where he worked with a celebrated miniaturist, Giulio Clovio, an artist greatly influenced by Michelangelo and later a patron of the young El Greco. The inventory of Clovio's estate shows that he owned a number of paintings and drawings by Bruegel as well as a miniature done by the two artists in collaboration. It was in Rome, in 1553, that Bruegel produced his earliest signed and dated painting, Landscape with Christ and the Apostles at the Sea of Tiberias. The holy figures in this painting were probably done by Maarten de Vos, a painter from Antwerp then working in Italy.
The earliest surviving works, including two drawings with Italian scenery sketched on the southward journey and dated 1552, are landscapes. A number of drawings of Alpine regions, produced between 1553 and 1556, indicate the great impact of the mountain experience on this man from the Low Countries. With the possible exception of a drawing of a mountain valley by Leonardo da Vinci, the landscapes resulting from this journey are almost without parallel in European art for their rendering of the overpowering grandeur of the high mountains. Very few of the drawings were done on the spot, and several were done after Bruegel's return, at an unknown date, to Antwerp. The vast majority are free compositions, combinations of motifs sketched on the journey through the Alps. Some were intended as designs for engravings commissioned by Hiëronymus Cock, an engraver and Antwerp's foremost publisher of prints.
Bruegel was to work for Cock until his last years, but, from 1556 on, he concentrated, surprisingly enough, on satirical, didactic, and moralizing subjects, often in the fantastic or grotesque manner of Hiëronymus Bosch, imitations of whose works were very popular at the time. Other artists were content with a more or less close imitation of Bosch, but Bruegel's inventiveness lifted his designs above mere imitation, and he soon found ways to express his ideas in a much different manner. His early fame rested on prints published by Cock after such designs. But the new subject matter and the interest in the human figure did not lead to the abandonment of landscape. Bruegel, in fact, extended his explorations in this field. Side by side with his mountain compositions, he began to draw the woods of the countryside, turned then to Flemish villages, and, in 1562, to townscapes with the towers and gates of Amsterdam.
The double interest in landscape and in subjects requiring the representation of human figures also informed, often jointly, the paintings that Bruegel produced in increasing number after his return from Italy. All of his paintings, even those in which the landscape appears as the dominant feature, have some narrative content. Conversely, in those that are primarily narrative, the landscape setting often carries part of the meaning. Dated paintings have survived from each year of the period except for 1558 and 1561. Within this decade falls Bruegel's marriage to Mayken Coecke in the Church of Notre-Dame de la Chapelle in Brussels in 1563 and his move to that city, in which Mayken and her mother were living. His residence recently was restored and turned into a Bruegel museum. There is, however, some doubt as to the correctness of the identification.
In Brussels, Bruegel produced his greatest paintings, but only few designs for engravings, for the connection with Hiëronymus Cock may have become less close after Bruegel left Antwerp. Another reason for the concentration on painting may have been his growing success in this field. Among his patrons was Cardinal Antione Perrenot de Granvelle, president of the council of state in the Netherlands, in whose palace in Brussels the sculptor Jacques Jonghelinck had a studio. He and Bruegel had traveled in Italy at the same time, and his brother, a rich Antwerp collector, Niclaes, was Bruegel's greatest patron, having by 1566 acquired 16 of his paintings. Another patron was Abraham Ortelius, who in a memorable obituary called Bruegel the most perfect artist of the century. Most of his paintings were done for collectors.
Bruegel died in 1569 and was buried in Notre-Dame de la Chapelle in Brussels.
Bruegel's artistic evolution
In addition to a great many drawings and engravings by Bruegel, 45 authenticated paintings from a much larger output now lost have been preserved. Of this number, about a third is concentrated in the Vienna Kunsthistorisches Museum, reflecting the keen interest of the Habsburg princes in the 16th and 17th centuries in Bruegel's art.
In his earliest surviving works, Bruegel appears as essentially a landscape artist, indebted to, but transcending, the Flemish 16th-century landscape tradition, as well as to Titian and to other Venetian landscape painters. After his return from Italy, he turned to multifigure compositions, representations of crowds of people loosely disposed throughout the picture and usually seen from above. Here, too, antecedents can be found in the art of Hiëronymus Bosch and of other painters closer in time to Bruegel.
In 1564 and 1565, under the spell of Italian art and especially of Raphael, Bruegel reduced the number of figures drastically, the few being larger and placed closely together in a very narrow space. In 1565, however, he turned again to landscape with the celebrated series known as Labours of the Months. In the five of these that have survived, he subordinated the figures to the great lines of the landscape. Later on, crowds appear again, disposed in densely concentrated groups.
Bruegel's last works often show a striking affinity with Italian art. The diagonal spatial arrangement of the figures in Peasant Wedding recalls Venetian compositions. Though transformed into peasants, the figures in such works as Peasant and Bird Nester (1568) have something of the grandeur of Michelangelo. In the very last works, two trends appear; on the one hand, a combined monumentalization and extreme simplification of figures and, on the other hand, an exploration of the expressive quality of the various moods conveyed by landscape. The former trend is evident in his Hunters in the Snow (1565), one of his winter paintings. The latter is seen in the radiant, sunny atmosphere of The Magpie on the Gallows and in the threatening and sombre character of The Storm at Sea, an unfinished work, probably Bruegel's last painting.
He was no less interested in observing the works of man. Noting every detail with almost scientific exactness, he rendered ships with great accuracy in several paintings and in a series of engravings. A most faithful picture of contemporary building operations is shown in the two paintings of The Tower of Babel (one 1563, the other undated). The Rotterdam Tower of Babel illustrates yet another characteristic of Bruegel's art, an obsessive interest in rendering movement. It was a problem with which he constantly experimented. In the Rotterdam painting, movement is imparted to an inanimate object, the tower seeming to be shown in rotation. Even more strikingly, in The Magpie on the Gallows, the gallows apparently take part in the peasants' dance shown next to them. The several paintings of peasant dances are obvious examples, and others, less obvious, are the processional representations in The Way to Calvary and in The Conversion of St. Paul. The latter work also conveys the sensation of the movement of figures through the constantly changing terrain of mountainous regions. This sensation had appeared first in the early mountain drawings and later, in different form, in The Flight into Egypt (1563). Toward the end of his life, Bruegel seems to have become fascinated by the problem of the falling figure. His studies reached their apogee in a rendering of successive stages of falling in The Parable of the Blind. The perfect unity of form, content, and expression marks this painting as a high point in European art.
The subject matter of Bruegel's compositions covers an impressively wide range. In addition to the landscapes, his repertoire consists of conventional biblical scenes and parables of Christ, mythological subjects as in Landscape with the Fall of Icarus (two versions), and the illustrations of proverbial sayings in The Netherlands Proverbs and several other paintings. His allegorical compositions are often of a religious character, as the two engraved series of The Vices (1556-57) and The Virtues (1559-60), but they included profane social satires as well. The scenes from peasant life are well known, but a number of subjects that are not easy to classify include The Fight Between Carnival and Lent (1559), Children's Games (1560), and Dulle Griet, also known as Mad Meg (1562).
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::Bartolomeo, Fra...
BARTOLOMEO, Fra
(b. 1473, Firenze, d. 1517, Pian' di Mugnone)
Biography
Florentine painter. After training with Cosimo Rosselli, he was deeply influenced by the preaching of Savonarola and entered the Dominican Order in 1500, giving up painting until 1504. His original name was Baccio della Porta, but he changed his name to Fra Bartolomeo when he became a Dominican friar. From then until 1508 he developed parallel with Raphael - though Raphael's was the more imaginative genius - each contributing something to the new High Renaissance type of Madonna with Saints, in which the figure of the Madonna acts not merely as a centre but as a pivot about which the whole composition turns. The two artists also evolved a new treatment, first adumbrated by Leonardo, of the theme of the Madonna and Child with the Infant St John in a Landscape. Raphael, Michelangelo, and Leonardo had all left Florence by 1509 and in the second decade of the century Fra Bartolommeo was rivalled only by Andrea del Sarto as the leading painter in the city, which he left only briefly for visits to Venice in 1508 and Rome in 1514. His style acquired a solemn restraint and monumentality that made him one of the purest representatives of the High Renaissance {The Mystical Marriage of St Catherine, Louvre, Paris, 1511).
Fra Bartolommeo was a brilliant draughtsman and the mystical element in his nature is expressed in his drawings, which escape the tendency to empty rhetoric occasionally shown in his later paintings. His drawings include not only figure studies, but also landscape and nature studies.
:: Andrea del Sarto...
ANDREA DEL SARTO
(b. 1486, Firenze, d. 1530, Firenze)
Biography
Florentine painter. The epithet 'del sarto' (of the tailor) is derived from his father's profession; his real name was Andrea d'Agnolo di Francesco. After an apprenticeship under Piero di Cosimo he soon absorbed the poised and graceful style developed by Fra Bartolommeo and Raphael in Florence during the first decade of the 16th century, and following the departures of Leonardo, Raphael, and Michelangelo (all of whom had left Florence by 1509) he became established with Bartolommeo as the leading painter of the city. Apart from a visit to Fontainebleau in 1518-19 to work for Francis I, Andrea was based in Florence all his life, although he probably visited Rome soon after his return from France, and made short visits elsewhere.
He excelled as a fresco decorator (there are outstanding examples in Florence in SS. Annunziata and the Chiostro dello Scalzo), and he also painted superb altarpieces (The Madonna of the Harpies, Uffizi, Florence, 1517) and portraits (A Young Man, National Gallery, London).
Andrea executed fresco decorations for the Servites, a religious order, in their Church of the Santissima Annunziata at Florence. By 1510 he completed five scenes depicting events in the life of S. Filippo Benizzi, a 13th-century leader of the Servite order. Many commissions followed, including the grisailles (monochromatic frescoes painted in shades of gray) of Saint John the Baptist in the cloister of the Scalzo in Florence.
In 1518 he was summoned to the court of Francis I of France, who entrusted him with money to purchase works of art in Italy. He returned to Florence in 1519 and remained there, using the money for his own purposes. In Florence, Andrea continued his work on the fresco series in the cloister of the Scalzo, which he completed in 1526. In 1525 he painted the Madonna del Sacco, which is generally considered his masterpiece, in the cloister of Santissima Annunziata. He executed his last major work in fresco, the Last Supper (1527) in the refectory of the convent of San Salvi near Florence. Among his other noted works are the Pietà (1524, Pitti Palace) and The Assumption (1530, Pitti Palace).
Andrea's reputation was largely made and marred by Vasari, who said that Andrea's works were 'faultless' but represented him as a weakling completely under the thumb of his wicked wife. In Robert Browning's poem on the painter (1855) and in a psychoanalytic essay by Freud's disciple Ernest Jones (1913) attempts are made to link a supposed lack of vigour in his mellifluous art with these traits of character. This, however, is hardly just and a good deal of Vasari's account of Andrea's private life has been shown to be factually inaccurate (the scandalmongering is mainly in the 1550 edition of his book and was suppressed in the 1568 edition).
Andrea has suffered from being the contemporary of such giants as Michelangelo and Raphael, but he undoubtedly ranks as one of the greatest masters of his time. In grandeur and gracefulness he approaches Raphael, and he had a feeling for colour and atmosphere that was unrivalled among Florentine painters of his period. He also numbers among the finest draughtsmen of the Renaissance (the best collection of his drawings is in the Uffizi). Certain features of his art foreshadow the Mannerist experiments of his great pupils Pontormo and Rosso Fiorentino. The many other artists who trained in his busy workshop include Salviati and Vasari.
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AACHEN, Hans von
(b. 1552, Köln, d. 1615, Praha)
Biography
German painter, born in Cologne (in spite of his name, which derives from his father's birthplace) and active in the Netherlands, Italy (1574-87), and most notably Prague, where he settled in 1596 as court painter to the emperor Rudolf II. On Rudolf's death (1612) he worked for the emperor Matthias.
His paintings, featuring elegant, elongated figures, are - like those of his colleague Bartholomeus Spranger - leading examples of the sophisticated Mannerist art then in vogue at the courts of Northern Europe, and he was particularly good with playfully erotic nudes (The Triumph of Truth, Alte Pinakothek, Munich, 1598). Engravings after his work gave his style wide infiuence and he ranks as one of the most important German artists of his time.
:: Bergognome, Ambrogio
BERGOGNONE, Ambrogio
(b. ca. 1453, Fossano, d. 1523, Milano)
Biography
Ambrogio Bergognone (also Borgognone), originally Ambrogio di Stefano da Fossano, Italian painter of the Lombard school whose use of subdued and subtle colours lead Berenson to nickname him the 'Whistler of the Renaissance'. He was a pupil of Foppa, Leonardo had hardly any influence on him. His youthful Madonnas are deeply perceived and are evidence of the naive piousness of their creator. Together with Foppa he is considered to be the greatest painter of the Milanese School. He painted an altarpiece and frescoes for the convent of the Carthusians at Pavia (1514) and frescoes in the church of S. Simpliciano, Milan.
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:: Rembrandt Harmensz, van Rijn...
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:: Peter Paul Rubens...
document.write(aotd_artist);
Peter Paul Rubens:
Peter Paul Rubens - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
WebMuseum: Rubens, Peter Paul
Peter Paul Rubens - Olga's Gallery
Peter Paul Rubens
Peter Paul Rubens Online
CGFA- Peter Paul Rubens
Peter Paul Rubens (1577 - 1640)
NGA - Sir Peter Paul Rubens
CATHOLIC ENCYCLOPEDIA: Peter Paul Rubens
RUBENS, Peter Paul
rembrandt
anthony van dyck
caravaggio
william shakespeare
jan vermeer
michelangelo
el greco
erasmus
giovedì
:: Sandro Botticelli...
Summary of works by Botticelli
early religious page 1 page 2 late
Cappella Sistina San Barnaba San Marco
allegories Nastagio scenic stories portraits
drawings illustrations for Dante's Divine Comedy
BOTTICELLI, Sandro
(b. 1445, Florence, d. 1510, Florence)
Biography
Florentine painter (original name Alessandro di Mariano Filipepi), neglected for centuries but now probably the best-loved painter of the quattrocento. The name 'Botticelli', meaning 'little barrel', was originally given to an older brother, presumably because he was portly, but it became adopted as the family name.
Sandro trained with Filippo Lippi, who was the most important influence on his style. By temperament he belonged to the current of late 15th-century art which reacted against the scientific naturalism of Masaccio and his followers and revived certain elements of the Gothic style - a delicate sentiment, sometimes bordering on sentimentality, a feminine grace, and an emphasis on the ornamental and evocative capabilities of line. Almost all Botticelli's life was spent in Florence, his only significant journey from the city being in 1481-82, when he worked on the decoration of the Sistine Chapel in the Vatican, where he painted side by side with Perugino, Rosselli, and Ghirlandaio. The fact that he was called to Rome for such a prestigious commission shows that he must have had a considerable reputation, and by this time the most characteristic idiosyncrasies of his style had already gained shape in the celebrated poetic allegory known since Vasari as the Primavera (Uffizi, Florence, c. 1478). There is evidence that the patron who commissioned this and two of his other famous mythological paintings (The Birth of Venus and Pallas and the Centaur, both in the Uffizi) was Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco de Medici (second cousin of Lorenzo the Magnificent), a wealthy Florentine with strong interests in Platonic philosophy. It has been suggested that it was this philosophy that prompted the new idea of large-scale pictures with a secular content; the classical deities represented are not the carefree Olympians of Ovid's tales but the symbolic embodiment of some deep moral or metaphysical truth. Given that the Neo-Platonists regarded Beauty as the visible token of the Divine, there would be no blasphemy in using the same facial type and expression for Venus and for the Holy Virgin.
According to Vasari, Botticelli later fell under the sway of Savonarola's sermons, repented of his 'pagan' pictures, and gave up painting. The final part of this statement is definitely incorrect and the rest is doubtful, but it is certainly true that Botticelli's later paintings (e.g. the Lamentation in the Alte Pinakothek, Munich, and the Mystic Crucifixion in the Fogg Art Museum, Cambridge, Massachusetts) are more obviously 'serious' - solemn, intense, sometimes ecstatic - than his early work. The most telling example is the Mystic Nativity (National Gallery, London, 1500), which bears a cryptic inscription seeming to imply that Botticelli expected the end of the world and the dawn of the millennium.
Botticelli ran a busy studio (his most important pupil was Filippino Lippi) and his surviving output is large for a painter of his period. Apart from religious and mythological pictures, he produced some memorable portraits and also some marvelously delicate drawings - mainly in pen outline - for a lavish manuscript of Dante's Divine Comedy (now divided between the Staatsbibliothek, Berlin, and the Vatican Library). Although little is known of his life, it seems clear that at the peak of his career he was the most popular painter in Florence. His patrons included some of the city's finest churches and most distinguished families, and several of his paintings (particularly those on the theme of the Virgin and Child) exist in several versions or copies, attesting to the vogue they enjoyed. He worked for the great families of Florence, especially the Medici family, for whom he painted portraits, most notably the Giuliano de' Medici (1475-1476, National Gallery of Art, Washington). The Adoration of the Magi (1476-1477, Uffizi, Florence) was painted on commission (though not for the Medicis), and contains likenesses of the Medici family as well as a likeness of himself.
Botticelli also painted religious subjects, especially panels of the Madonna, such as the Madonna of the Magnificat (1480s), Madonna of the Pomegranate (1480s), and Coronation of the Virgin (1490), all in the Uffizi, and Madonna and Child with Two Saints (1485, Staatliche Museen, Berlin). Other religious works include Saint Sebastian (1473-1474, Staatliche Museen) and a fresco, Saint Augustine (1480, Church of the Ognissanti, Florence). In 1481 Botticelli was one of several artists chosen to go to Rome to decorate the walls of the Sistine Chapel in the Vatican. There he executed The Youth of Moses, the Punishment of the Sons of Corah, and the Temptation of Christ.
After Leonardo's return to the city in 1500, however, Botticelli's linear style must have looked archaic and he died in obscurity. His fame was not resurrected until the second half of the 19th century, when the Pre-Raphaelites imitated his wan, elongated types, Ruskin sang his praises, and Walter Pater dedicated to his art one of his most eloquent essays. At the end of the century his work was a major influence on Art Nouveau.
:: Antoniazzo Romano...
ANTONIAZZO ROMANO
(c. 1430-1508/12)
Biography
Antoniazzo Romano (Antonio Aquilio) was a pupil of Benozzo Gozzoli, mainly active in Rome. He was a painter from the Colonna rione (quarter) of Rome who worked in the city for more than forty years and whose figurative style was enriched over the years by Umbrian (Perugino, Melozzo da Forli) and Florentine (Domenico Ghirlandaio, and Fra Angelico) influences. Antoniazzo's importance as an entrepreneur was evidently considerable: he made it his business to associate with painters not yet well-known in Rome, guaranteeing them major commissions, which he was able to obtain to his contacts with patrons. This position was confirmed when in 1478 he became the head of the guild of painters and illuminators of Rome. It was Antoniazzo who revised the guild's statutes.
The first mention of a work by Antoniazzo is in 1464, the year he was commissioned to decorate the funerary chapel of Cardinal Bessarion in the church of Santi Apostoli, completed in 1467. In the centre of the decoration was an icon of the Virgin, now in the Chapel of St Anthony, a copy of the Byzantine icon in the Santa Maria in Cosmedin, the church of the Greeks in Rome. This icon in the Santi Apostoli is one of the most remarkable examples of Antoniazzo's considerable production of Virgins, generally taken from Byzantine models. Antoniazzo was a much sought-after copier of icons.
In 1466 he participated in the decoration of the public rooms of Palazzo San Marco (now Palazzo di Venezia). In the years between 1475 and 1480 Antoniazzo's production of altarpieces and panels with images of the Virgin increased as a result of the encouragement of the cult of the Virgin by Sixtus IV.
Antoniazzo Romano was an important figure in 15th-century Roman painting.
Antoniazzo Romano - Wikipédia
ARTISTA E ESCRITORES
Pintura da Renascença Italiana - Gforum - Digital
:: Bartolomeo Veneto...
BARTOLOMEO VENETO
(active 1502, d. 1531, Torino)
Biography
Italian painter. He worked in Venice, the Veneto and Lombardy in the early decades of the 16th century. Knowledge of him is based largely on the signatures, dates and inscriptions on his works. His early paintings are small devotional pictures; later he became a fashionable portraitist.
His earliest dated painting, a Virgin and Child (1502; private collection), is signed 'Bartolomeo half-Venetian and half-Cremonese'. The inscription probably refers to his parentage, but it also suggests the eclectic nature of his development. This painting is clearly dependent on similar works by Giovanni Bellini and his workshop, but in a slightly later Virgin and Child (1505; Bergamo, Accademia Cararra) the sharp modelling of the Virgin's headdress and the insistent linear accents in the landscape indicate Bartolomeo's early divergence from Giovanni's depiction of light and space. An inscription on his Virgin and Child of 1510 (Milan, Ercolani Collection) states that he was a pupil of Gentile Bellini, an assertion supported by the tightness and flatness of his early style. The influence of Giovanni is still apparent in the composition of the Circumcision (1506; Paris, Musée du Louvre), although the persistent stress on surface patterns and the linear treatment of drapery and outline is closer to Gentile.
Bartolomeo's experience as a painter at the Este court in Ferrara (1505-08) probably encouraged the decorative emphasis of his style. In the half-length Portrait of a Man (c. 1510; Cambridge, Fitzwilliam Museum) the flattened form of the fashionably dressed sitter is picked out against a deep red curtain so that the impression of material richness extends across the entire picture surface. The precise layout and meticulous attention to costume detail are also characteristic of Bartolomeo's style in sacred subjects.
