1657-1747 Italian Francesco Solimena Gallery Francesco Solimena was born in Canale di Serino, near Avellino. He received early training from his father, Angelo Solimena, with whom he executed a Paradise for the cathedral of Nocera (place where he spend a big part of his life) and a Vision of St. Cyril of Alexandria for the church of San Domenico at Solofra. He settled in Naples in 1674, there he worked in the studio of Francesco di Maria and later Giacomo del Po[1]. He apparently had taken the clerical orders, but was patronized early on, and encouraged to become an artist by Cardinal Vincenzo Orsini (later Pope Benedict XIII)[2]. By the 1680s, he had independent fresco commissions, and his active studio came to dominate Neapolitan painting from the 1690s through the first four decades of the 18th century. He modeled his art??for he was a highly conventional painter??after the Roman Baroque masters, Luca Giordano and Giovanni Lanfranco, and Mattia Preti, whose technique of warm brownish shadowing Solimena emulated. Solimena painted many frescoes in Naples, altarpieces, celebrations of weddings and courtly occasions, mythological subjects, characteristically chosen for their theatrical drama, and portraits. His settings are suggested with a few details??steps, archways, balustrades, columns??concentrating attention on figures and their draperies, caught in pools and shafts of light. Art historians take pleasure in identifying the models he imitated or adapted in his compositions. His numerous preparatory drawings often mix media, combining pen-and-ink, chalk and watercolor washes. Francesco Solimena 'A study for the fresco cycle in the Sacristy of San Paolo Maggiore in Naples', Whitfield Fine Art.A typical example of the elaborately constructed allegorical "machines" of his early mature style, fully employing his mastery of chiaroscuro, is the Allegory of Rule (1690) from the Stroganoff collection, which has come to the State Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg. He apparently hoped to see his son Orazio follow a career in the law, for which he received a doctorate (de Domenici), but also became a painter. His large, efficiently structured atelier became a virtual academy, at the heart of cultural life in Naples. Among his many pupils were Francesco de Mura (1696-1784) , Giuseppe Bonito (1707-89), Pietro Capelli, Gaspare Traversi, and most notably Corrado Giaquinto and Sebastiano Conca. The Scottish portraitist Allan Ramsay spent three years in Solimena's studio. Solimena amassed a fortune, was made a baron and lived in sumptuous style founded on his success. Francesco Solimena died at Barra, near Naples, in 1747.  Related Paintings of Francesco Solimena :. | Charles VI and Count Gundaker Althann | Heliodorus Chased from the Temple (mk05) | Rebecca at the Well | Expxulsion of Heliodorus from the Temple | The Massacre of the Giustiniani at Chios |
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Richard Dadd
1817-1886 British Richard Dadd Location English painter. He was the fourth of nine children of Robert Dadd, an apothecary and chemist in Chatham. His mother was Mary Ann Martin. Two of his brothers and one sister were, like Dadd himself, to die insane.
CAMPI, Giulio
Italian Painter, ca.1502-1572 The eldest of a family prominent painters, Campi was born at Cremona. His father Galeazzo (1475-1536) taught him the first lessons in art. In 1522, in Mantua, he studied painting, architecture, and modelling under Giulio Romano. He visited Rome, became an ardent student of the antique, and like Bernardino ?? distantly related to him ?? he combined a Lombard and Roman traditions. He collaborated on some works with Camillo Boccaccino, the son of Boccaccio Boccaccino, with whom Campi may also have received training. Campi is called the "Ludovico Carracci of Cremona" although he preceded the founder of the Eclectics. When but twenty-seven Giulio executed for the church of Sant' Abbondio his masterpiece, a Virgin and Child with Sts. Celsus and Nazarus, a decoration masterly in the freedom of its drawing and in the splendour of its colour. His numerous paintings are grandly and reverently conceived, freely drawn, vigorously coloured, lofty in style, and broadly handled. He was animated in all his work by a deep piety. Numerous of his fresco works are housed in churches of Cremona, Mantua, Milan and in the church of Saint Margaret's, in his native town. Among his chief works are the Descent from the Cross (S. Sigismondo) at Cremona, and the frescoes in the dome of S. Girolamo at Mantua. An altar-piece in S. Sigismondo and his Labours of Hercules were engraved by the celebrated Ghiso, il Mantovano. He died in Cremona in 1572.
Charles landseer,R.A.
1799-1879 Painter, brother of Thomas Landseer. He trained initially with his father John Landseer, then under Benjamin Robert Haydon, and in 1816 he attended the Royal Academy Schools in London. In 1823 he accompanied Sir Charles Stuart de Rothesay (1779-1845) aboard HMS Wellesley on a voyage to Portugal and then to Brazil, in order to negotiate a commercial treaty with Pedro I, Emperor of Brazil (reg 1822-31). Many of the drawings he made on this trip were exhibited in 1828 at the British Institution, and in that year he sent his first painting to the Royal Academy. This was Dorothea, illustrating a scene from Cervantes's Don Quixote. He continued to exhibit at the Academy until his death, showing mostly romanticized history paintings or such literary subjects as Clarissa Harlowe in the Sponging House from Samuel Richardson's novel Clarissa (London, 1748). The English Civil War (1642-51) was of particular interest to him, his devotion to such historical subjects perhaps being attributable to the influence of his years with Haydon. He also painted portraits, genre scenes and animal studies . In 1837 he was elected ARA and in 1845 RA. In 1851, probably due to the influence of his brother Edwin, he succeeded George Jones as Keeper of the Royal Academy Schools. Responsible for instructing the antique class, his tenure was criticized both for the way his position had been obtained and for the deficiency of his teaching, and he retired from the Keepership in 1873 on full salary.