Greek-born Spanish Mannerist Painter, 1541-1614
Considered a representative of late Renaissance Spanish art, El Greco was actually born in Greece, on the island of Crete. After studying in Venice under Titian, El Greco settled in Toledo, Spain in 1577. At the time he was wildly popular, his emotionally religious paintings being just the ticket for the hometown of the Spanish Inquisition. After his death his work was largely ignored until the beginning of the 20th century; now he considered one of the inspired geniuses of Western art. His distinctive style features bold shapes and colors, with elongated and slightly distorted figures.
In Toledo El Greco was in constant demand and liked living large: he maintained a private orchestra to accompany his meals. Related Paintings of El Greco :. | The Modena Triptych | The Annuciation | christ on the mount of olives | The Modena Triptych | the burial of count orgaz | Related Artists:
E.Phillips FoxAustralian Naturalist Painter, 1865-1915
Australian painter and teacher. From 1878 to 1886 he trained at the National Gallery of Victoria Art Schools, Melbourne, and in 1887 left to study in Europe. In Paris he attended the Academie Julian and was taught by Jean-Leon Gereme at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts and by the American artist T. Alexander Harrison (1853-1930). He was involved with the plein-air artists at Etaples, Pas-de-Calais, and in Brittany and also visited Giverny, where from 1883 Monet was living. By 1890 he had moved to England, to the artists' colony at St Ives, Cornwall. In 1892 he returned to Melbourne where he chiefly painted portraits and landscapes. He was a member of the Victorian Artists' Society, exhibiting with them between 1892 and 1900. In 1893 he established the lively Melbourne Art School with Tudor St George Tucker (1862-1906). There an academic training coupled with a modified Impressionist technique was taught, as can be seen in Fox's painting the Art Students . In 1901 he left for London, having been commissioned by the Trustees of the National Gallery of Victoria to paint the Landing of Captain Cook at Botany Bay. After his marriage in 1905 to the artist Ethel Carrick, he and his wife settled in Paris and remained there until 1913.
Charles LebrunFrench Pand art Theorist ,
Paris1619-190
Virtual dictator of the arts in France until the death of Colbert in 1683. He established his reputation by a series of decorative schemes, and his own greatest compositions, which immortalize the achievements of the crown, are at Versailles. He became a founder, rector, chancellor, and finally director of the Academie Royale de Peinture et de Sculpture. He was also director of the Gobelins factory and Premier Peintre (1664). His Tent of Darius (1661), for Louis XIV, is a model of legibility, with the explicit and varied gesture and expression of the figures deriving from ideas expressed by Poussin. Lebrun's influential treatise,
Lippo Memmiactive in Tuscany 1317-1347