Italian Baroque Era Painter, 1591-1666 best known as Guercino or Il Guercino, was an Italian Baroque painter from the region of Emilia, and active in Rome and Bologna. Guercino is Italian for squinter, a nickname that was given to him because he was cross-eyed. He is especially noted for his many superb drawings. Guercino was born at Cento, a village between Bologna and Ferrara. By the age of 17 he was associated with Benedetto Gennari, a painter of the Bolognese School. By 1615 he moved to Bologna, where his work earned the praise of an elder Ludovico Carracci. He painted two large canvases, Elijah Fed by Ravens and Samson Seized by Philistines, in what appears to be a stark naturalist Caravaggesque style (although it is unlikely he had been able to see any of the Roman Caravaggios first-hand). They were painted for Cardinal Serra, Papal Legate to Ferrara. The Arcadian Shepherds (Et in Arcadia ego) was painted in 1618 contemporary with The Flaying of Marsyas by Apollo in Palazzo Pitti. His first style, he often claimed, was influenced by a canvas of Carracci in Cento. Some of his later pieces approach rather to the manner of his great contemporary Guido Reni, and are painted with more lightness and clearness. Guercino was esteemed very highly in his lifetime. He was then recommended by Marchese Enzo Bentivoglio to the Bolognese Ludovisi Pope, Pope Gregory XV. His two years (1621-23) spent in Rome were very productive. From this stay date his frescoes of Aurora at the casino of the Villa Ludovisi and the ceiling in San Crisogono (1622) of San Chrysogonus in Glory; his portrait of Pope Gregory (now in the Getty Museum, and, what is considered his masterpiece, The Burial of Saint Petronilla or St. Petronilla Altarpiece, for the Vatican (now in the Museo Capitolini). The Franciscan order of Reggio in 1655 paid him 300 ducats for the altarpiece of Saint Luke Displaying a Painting of the Madonna and Child (now in Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City). The Corsini also paid him 300 ducats for the Flagellation of Christ painted in 1657.   Related Paintings of GUERCINO :. | Allegory of Painting and Sculpture sdg | An allegory | Mary Magdalene | Raising of Lazarus hjf | Return of the Prodigal Son klgh |
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Thomas Doughty
1793-1856 Thomas Doughty (July 19, 1793 ?C July 22, 1856) was an American artist of the Hudson River School. "Gilpin's Mill on the Brandywine" attributed to Thomas Doughty circa 1827Born in Philadelphia, Thomas Doughty was the first American artist to work exclusively as a landscapist and was successful both for his skill and the fact that Americans were turning their interest to landscape. He was known for his quiet, often atmospheric landscapes of the rivers and mountains of Pennsylvania, New York, New England, and especially the Hudson River Valley. He taught himself how to paint while aprenticing for a leather manufacturer.
MOLA, Pier Francesco
Italian Baroque Era Painter, 1612-1666 Painter and draughtsman, son of (1) Giovanni Battista Mola. His most characteristic works are small, intensely romantic scenes from mythology, the Bible, and from works by the poet Torquato Tasso, set in landscapes inspired by Venetian art. Yet he also received important public commissions for frescoes and altarpieces, and in his mature work he achieved an impressive synthesis of 17th-century Roman gran maniera painting with the stronger chiaroscuro and richer palette of the 16th-century Venetian style. He was a prolific and versatile draughtsman, who drew for pleasure as well as in preparation for commissions; he was also a witty caricaturist, who mocked himself and his friends as much as more typical targets
Claude Joseph Vernet
Claude-Joseph Vernet (14 August 1714 - 3 December 1789) was a French painter. His son, Antoine Charles Horace Vernet, was also a painter. Vernet was born in Avignon. When only fourteen years of age he aided his father, Antoine Vernet (1689-1753),[1] a skilled decorative painter, in the most important parts of his work. The panels of sedan chairs, however, could not satisfy his ambition, and Vernet started for Rome. The sight of the sea at Marseilles and his voyage thence to Civitavecchia (Papal States' main port on the Tyrrhenian Sea) made a deep impression on him, and immediately after his arrival he entered the studio of a marine painter, Bernardino Fergioni. Slowly Vernet attracted notice in the artistic milieu of Rome. With a certain conventionality in design, proper to his day, he allied the results of constant and honest observation of natural effects of atmosphere, which he rendered with unusual pictorial art. Perhaps no painter of landscapes or sea-pieces has ever made the human figure so completely a part of the scene depicted or so important a factor in his design. In this respect he was heavily influenced by Giovanni Paolo Panini, whom he probably met and worked with in Rome. Vernet's work draws on natural themes, but in a way that is neither sentimental or emotive. The overall effect of his style is wholly decorative.[2] "Others may know better", he said, with just pride, "how to paint the sky, the earth, the ocean; no one knows better than I how to paint a picture". His style remained relatively static throughout his life. His works' attentiveness to atmospheric effects is combined with a sense of harmony that is reminiscent of Claude Lorrain.