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 :. | Portrait of Cardinal Tavera | Epimetheus and Pandora | Details of The Burial of Count Orgaz | The Coronation of the Virgin | Details of The Burial of Count Orgaz |
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REformatorn Martin Luther
1483-1546 avbildad av lucas cranach d.a, tre ar fore sin dod
Sir Thomas Lawrence
1769-1830 British Sir Thomas Lawrence Galleries was a notable English painter, mostly of portraits. He was born in Bristol. His father was an innkeeper, first at Bristol and afterwards at Devizes, and at the age of six Lawrence was already being shown off to the guests of the Bear as an infant prodigy who could sketch their likenesses and declaim speeches from Milton. In 1779 the elder Lawrence had to leave Devizes, having failed in business and Thomas's precocious talent began to be the main source of the family's income; he had gained a reputation along the Bath road. His debut as a crayon portrait painter was made at Oxford, where he was well patronized, and in 1782 the family settled in Bath, where the young artist soon found himself fully employed in taking crayon likenesses of fashionable people at a guinea or a guinea and a half a head. In 1784 he gained the prize and silver-gilt palette of the Society of Arts for a crayon drawing after Raphael's "Transfiguration," and presently beginning to paint in oil.
Gaspare Landi
Italian, 1756-1830,was an Italian painter of the Neoclassic period, active in Rome and his native city of Piacenza. He is said to have been a fun-loving younth, but in 1781 he procured a subsidy to study painting in Rome from patron and distant relative, Marquis Giambattista Landi. At age 25, he moved to Rome to work under Domenico Corvi and Pompeo Battoni. He is considered a rival of Vincenzo Camuccini. Two of his pictures were once in the Pinacoteca at Parma, Diomedes and Ulysses bearing off the Palladium (1783) and the Marriage of Abraham and Sarah. Above one of the altars in the church of the Santa Casa at Loreto there is a later work by this Landi showing the Madonna addolorata. A major work is his large canvas representing the fainting of Christ as he struggles along over the road to Calvary weighted down by the burden of the Cross, Lo Spasimo for San Giovanni at Piacenza. It hung opposite Vincenzo Camuccini's Presentation. Landi became a member of the Accademia di San Luca of Rome in 1805, professor of the theory of painting in 1812, and president of the Academy in 1817. He was also made a Chevalier of the Order of the Iron Crown, of the Order of San Giuseppe, and of a Neapolitan order. About 1820 he returned to Piacenza, intending to remain there, but soon tired of the monotonous existence of a provincial town, and in 1824 reestablished himself at Rome. His last work was an Assumption and was placed in the church of San Francesco di Paola, at Naples. He returned to Piacenza in 1829, where he died.