Italian Baroque Era Painter, 1559-1613 was an Italian painter and architect of the late Mannerist and early Baroque period, trained and active in his early career in Florence, and spending the last nine years of his life in Rome. Lodovico Cardi was born at Villa Castelvecchio di Cigoli, in Tuscany, whence the name by which he is commonly known. Initially, Cigoli trained in Florence under the fervid mannerist Alessandro Allori. Later, influenced by the most prominent of the Contra-Maniera painters, Santi di Tito, as well as by Barocci, Cigoli shed the shackles of mannerism and infused his later paintings with an expressionism often lacking from 16th century Florentine painting. For example, for the Roman patron, Massimo Massimi, he painted an Ecce Homo[1] (now in Palazzo Pitti). Supposedly unbenknownst to any of the painters, two other prominent contemporary painters, Passignano and Caravaggio, had been requested canvases on the same theme. It is unclear if they are completely independent. Cigoli's painting seems to have been made with knowledge of Caravaggio's canvas; however, while Cigoli's work lacks the power of Caravaggio's naturalism, the background shade and sparse foreground shows how much he was moving away from crowded Florentine historical paintings. This work was afterwards taken by Bonaparte to the Louvre, and was restored to Florence in 1815. One of his early paintings was of Cain slaying Abel. He then gained the employ of the Grand-Duke in some works for the Pitti Palace, where he painted a Venus and Satyr and a Sacrifice of Isaac. Other important pictures are St. Peter Healing the Lame Man in St Peter's; Conversion of St. Paul in the church of San Paolo fuori le Mura, and a Story of Psyche in a fresco incorporated in the decorative scheme of the Villa Borghese; a Martyrdom of Stephen, which earned him the name of the "Florentine Correggio", a Stigmata of St. Francis at Florence. Cigoli was made a Knight of Malta at the request of Pope Paul III. Cigoli, a close personal friend of Galileo Galilei, painted a last fresco in the dome of the Pauline chapel of the church of Santa Maria Maggiore in Rome, depicting the Madonna standing upon a pock-marked lunar orb. This is the first extant example of Galileo's discoveries about the physical nature of the moon (as he himself drew it in Sidereus Nuncius) having penetrated the visual arts practice of his day. Until this image, the moon in pictures of the Virgin had always been mythical and smooth, perfectly spherical as described by Platonic & Ptolemaic tradition.   Related Paintings of CIGOLI :. | Portrait of Cosimo I de Medici | St Francis Receives the Stigmata g | Self-Portrait | Ecce Homo f | St.Francis in Prayer |
Related Artists:
Anton mauve
Dutch Painter, 1838-1888 He came from a large family of clergymen in the province of North Holland. At the age of 16 he was apprenticed to the animal painter Pieter Frederik van Os (1808-92): animals (especially sheep, but also cows and horses) became Mauve's preferred theme. He then trained for a few months with Wouterus Verschuur, who gave him his love of horses, in the style, at least, of Paulus Potter and Philips Wouwerman.
PRETI, Mattia
Italian Baroque Era Painter, 1613-1699 Italian painter and draughtsman. Although he was trained and had his first success as a painter in Rome during the 1630s and 1640s, he is traditionally associated with the Neapolitan school. It was in Naples between 1653 and 1660 that he made his most lasting mark (see fig. 1), contributing to the evolution of the exuberant late Baroque style and providing an important source of inspiration to later generations of painters, notably to Francesco Solimena. From 1661 he was based in Malta, where his most substantial undertaking was the decoration of St John's, Valletta. Preti's mature style is intensely dramatic and unites a Caravaggesque realism and expressive chiaroscuro with the grandeur and theatricality of Venetian High Renaissance painting.
Mabel Pryde
(February 12,1871, Edinburgh - July 1918, England.) was an artist, best known for being the wife of artist William Nicholson and mother of artists Ben Nicholson and Nancy Nicholson and the architect Christopher 'Kit' Nicholson. Mabel was the daughter of David Pryde, Headmaster of Edinburgh Ladies College 1870-1891, and Barbara Lauder, whose father William was a brother of the famous Scottish artists Robert Scott Lauder and James Eckford Lauder. Mabel had one brother, the artist James Pryde. As children they lived at 10 Fettes Row, a north-facing Edinburgh house. Pryde trained at the Bushey School of Art under the tutilage of Hubert von Herkomer. Here she met fellow student William Nicholson whom she married in 1893. She introduced Nicholson to her brother James and all three moved to Eight Bells, Denham, Buckinghamshire, where Nicholson and James Pryde would collaborate on the famous series of lithographic posters they disseminated under the pseudonym J. & W. Beggerstaff. Pryde and Nicholson had four children - Ben (1894-1982); Anthony (1897-1918) who was killed in action during the First World War; Annie Mary "Nancy" (1899-1978), and Christopher "Kit" (1904-1948). In July 1918 Pryde died from influenza in during the 1918 flu pandemic and was survived by her husband.