English Pre-Raphaelite Painter, 1828-1882 Rossetti's first major paintings display some of the realist qualities of the early Pre-Raphaelite movement. His Girlhood of Mary, Virgin and Ecce Ancilla Domini both portray Mary as an emaciated and repressed teenage girl. His incomplete picture Found was his only major modern-life subject. It depicted a prostitute, lifted up from the street by a country-drover who recognises his old sweetheart. However, Rossetti increasingly preferred symbolic and mythological images to realistic ones. This was also true of his later poetry. Many of the ladies he portrayed have the image of idealized Botticelli's Venus, who was supposed to portray Simonetta Vespucci. Although he won support from the John Ruskin, criticism of his clubs caused him to withdraw from public exhibitions and turn to waterhum, which could be sold privately. In 1861, Rossetti published The Early Italian Poets, a set of English translations of Italian poetry including Dante Alighieri's La Vita Nuova. These, and Sir Thomas Malory's Morte d'Arthur, inspired his art in the 1850s. His visions of Arthurian romance and medieval design also inspired his new friends of this time, William Morris and Edward Burne-Jones. Rossetti also typically wrote sonnets for his pictures, such as "Astarte Syraica". As a designer, he worked with William Morris to produce images for stained glass and other decorative devices. Both these developments were precipitated by events in his private life, in particular by the death of his wife Elizabeth Siddal. She had taken an overdose of laudanum shortly after giving birth to a stillborn child. Rossetti became increasingly depressed, and buried the bulk of his unpublished poems in his wife's grave at Highgate Cemetery, though he would later have them exhumed. He idealised her image as Dante's Beatrice in a number of paintings, such as Beata Beatrix. These paintings were to be a major influence on the development of the European Symbolist movement. In these works, Rossetti's depiction of women became almost obsessively stylised. He tended to portray his new lover Fanny Cornforth as the epitome of physical eroticism, whilst another of his mistresses Jane Burden, the wife of his business partner William Morris, was glamorised as an ethereal goddess.  Related Paintings of Dante Gabriel Rossetti :. | Proserpine | La Donna della Finestra (mk28) | Portrait of Maria Leathart (mk28) | Water Willow (mk28) | Pandora |
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PROCACCINI, Giulio Cesare
Italian Baroque Era Painter and Sculptor, 1574-1625 ..Painter and sculptor, son of Ercole Procaccini. Having moved to Milan with the rest of the family in the mid-1580s, he trained as a sculptor, perhaps in the workshop of Francesco Brambilla, and then worked (1591-9) for the workshop of Milan Cathedral. The results of this work are difficult to identify, and the most secure attribution is the left term on the altar of St Joseph. There followed a period (1597-1602) of intense sculptural activity for the church of S Maria presso S Celso, for the fa?ade of which he executed two high reliefs in marble, the Visitation and Birth of the Virgin. In 1597 he may have accompanied his brother Camillo to Reggio Emilia, where Camillo added to his earlier fresco decorations for S Prospero. Between 1597 and 1600 Giulio Cesare is documented as working as a sculptor for Cremona Cathedral, to which two sculptures, St Matthew and St John, were delivered, after many delays, in 1625. He also produced the gilded wood Guardian Angel (1597; Cremona, Mus. Civ. Ala Ponzone) for S Monica, Cremona. From Cremona he travelled to Parma,
Wilhelm von Schadow
German Romantic Painter, 1788-1862,Painter, teacher and writer, son of Johann Gottfried Schadow. He studied at the Berlin Akademie from 1805 and in 1806 showed paintings at the annual Akademie exhibition. Under his teacher, Friedrich Georg Weitsch, he quickly became a skilled portrait painter, and by 1810 he was commissioned to paint portraits of members of the Prussian royal family and of the Empress of Austria. Influenced by the English artist John Flaxman, Schadow developed an emphasis on outline. In 1810 Schadow went with his brother Ridolfo Schadow to Rome, where in 1813 he became a member of the Lukasbreder and, in 1814, a Catholic. In 1815-17 he took part, with Peter von Cornelius, Friedrich Overbeck and Philipp Veit, in the commission for frescoes of the Story of Joseph for a room in the Casa Bartholdy (now Berlin, Alte N.G.). In his continuing interest in portraits, Schadow differed from his colleagues. Following the example of Gottlieb Schick and similarly inspired by Raphael, Schadow developed a poetic style of portraiture. In 1819 he returned to Berlin in order to help Karl Friedrich Schinkel with the decoration of the Schauspielhaus. He took over the running of a studio and won a high degree of respect as a painter and teacher.
Edward Simmons
October 27, 1852 ?C November 17, 1931,was an American Impressionist painter, remembered for his mural work. He was born in Concord, Massachusetts, the son of a Unitarian minister. He graduated from Harvard College in 1874, and was a pupil of Lefebvre and Boulanger in Paris, where he took a gold medal. In 1894, Simmons was awarded the first commission of the Municipal Art Society, a series of murals ?? ??Justice,?? ??The Fates?? and ??The Rights of Man?? for the interior of the Criminal Courthouse at 100 Centre Street in Manhattan. This court is the criminal branch of New York Supreme Court where many New Yorkers serve on Jury Duty. Later Simmons decorated the Waldorf-Astoria hotel in New York, the Library of Congress, Washington, D.C., and the Capitol at Saint Paul, Minnesota. In the year 1914 he travelled with Childe Hassam to view the Arizona desert paintings of the rising California artist, Xavier Martinez at his Piedmont studio. Simmons was a member of the Ten American Painters, who, as a group, seceded from the Society of American Artists. He was also considered a contributor to the style known as the American Renaissance, a movement after the American Civil War that stressed the relationship of architecture, painting, sculpture and interior design.