Italian 1476-1510 Giorgione Galleries For his home town of Castelfranco, Giorgione painted the Castelfranco Madonna, an altarpiece in sacra conversazione form ?? Madonna enthroned, with saints on either side forming an equilateral triangle. This gave the landscape background an importance which marks an innovation in Venetian art, and was quickly followed by his master Giovanni Bellini and others.Giorgione began to use the very refined chiaroscuro called sfumato ?? the delicate use of shades of color to depict light and perspective ?? around the same time as Leonardo. Whether Vasari is correct in saying he learnt it from Leonardo's works is unclear ?? he is always keen to ascribe all advances to Florentine sources. Leonardo's delicate color modulations result from the tiny disconnected spots of paint that he probably derived from manuscript illumination techniques and first brought into oil painting. These gave Giorgione's works the magical glow of light for which they are celebrated. Most entirely central and typical of all Giorgione's extant works is the Sleeping Venus now in Dresden, first recognized by Morelli, and now universally accepted, as being the same as the picture seen by Michiel and later by Ridolfi (his 17th century biographer) in the Casa Marcello at Venice. An exquisitely pure and severe rhythm of line and contour chastens the sensuous richness of the presentment: the sweep of white drapery on which the goddess lies, and of glowing landscape that fills the space behind her, most harmoniously frame her divinity. The use of an external landscape to frame a nude is innovative; but in addition, to add to her mystery, she is shrouded in sleep, spirited away from accessibility to her conscious expression. It is recorded by Michiel that Giorgione left this piece unfinished and that the landscape, with a Cupid which subsequent restoration has removed, were completed after his death by Titian. The picture is the prototype of Titian's own Venus of Urbino and of many more by other painters of the school; but none of them attained the fame of the first exemplar. The same concept of idealized beauty is evoked in a virginally pensive Judith from the Hermitage Museum, a large painting which exhibits Giorgione's special qualities of color richness and landscape romance, while demonstrating that life and death are each other's companions rather than foes. Apart from the altarpiece and the frescoes, all Giorgione's surviving works are small paintings designed for the wealthy Venetian collector to keep in his home; most are under two foot (60 cm) in either dimension. This market had been emerging over the last half of the fifteenth century in Italy, and was much better established in the Netherlands, but Giorgione was the first major Italian painter to concentrate his work on it to such an extent ?? indeed soon after his death the size of such paintings began to increase with the prosperity and palaces of the patrons.  Related Paintings of Giorgione :. | The Adoration of the Shepherds | Ovadret | The Budapest Portrait of a Young Man | Scenes from the Life of the Virgin s | Adoration of the Magi |
Related Artists:
Jean Baptiste Simeon Chardin
1699-1779 French Jean Baptiste Simeon Chardin Locations Chardin was born in Paris, the son of a cabinetmaker, and rarely left the city. He lived on the Left Bank near Saint-Sulpice until 1757, when Louis XV granted him a studio and living quarters in the Louvre. Chardin entered into a marriage contract with Marguerite Saintard in 1723, whom he did not marry until 1731. He served apprenticeships with the history painters Pierre-Jacques Cazes and Noël-Nicholas Coypel, and in 1724 became a master in the Acad??mie de Saint-Luc. Upon presentation of The Ray in 1728, he was admitted to the Acad??mie Royale de Peinture et de Sculpture. The following year he ceded his position in the Acad??mie de Saint-Luc. In November of 1731 his son Jean-Pierre was baptized, and a daughter, Marguerite-Agn??s, was baptized in 1733. In 1735 his wife Marguerite died, and within two years Marguerite-Agn??s had died as well. The Ray, 1728, Mus??e du Louvre, Paris.Beginning in 1737 Chardin exhibited regularly at the Salon. He would prove to be a dedicated academician, regularly attending meetings for fifty years, and functioning successively as counsellor, treasurer, and secretary, overseeing in 1761 the installation of Salon exhibitions. In 1744 he entered his second marriage, this time to Françoise-Marguerite Pouget. The following year a daughter, Ang??lique-Françoise, was born, but she died in 1746. In 1752 Chardin was granted a pension of 500 livres by Louis XV. At the Salon of 1759 he exhibited nine paintings; it was the first Salon to be commented upon by Denis Diderot, who would prove to be a great admirer and public champion of Chardin work. Beginning in 1761, his responsibilities on behalf of the Salon, simultaneously arranging the exhibitions and acting as treasurer, resulted in a diminution of productivity in painting, and the showing of replicas of previous works. In 1763 his services to the Acad??mie were acknowledged with an extra 200 livres in pension. In 1765 he was unanimously elected associate member of the Acad??mie des Sciences, Belles-Lettres et Arts of Rouen, but there is no evidence that he left Paris to accept the honor.[8] By 1770 Chardin was the Premiere peintre du roi, and his pension of 1,400 livres was the highest in the Academy. In 1772 Chardin son, also a painter, drowned in Venice, a probable suicide. The artist last known oil painting was dated 1776; his final Salon participation was in 1779, and featured several pastel studies. Gravely ill by November of that year, he died in Paris on December 6, at the age of 80.
Roussel Charles
French , 1861-1836
FRANCIABIGIO
Italian High Renaissance Painter, 1484-1525 Italian painter. The son of a Milanese linen-weaver, he had completed his apprenticeship, in Florence, by 18 October 1504. His earliest documented works, for example a Piete (1506) for S Pancrazio, Florence, have not survived. According to Vasari, Franciabigio trained with Mariotto Albertinelli, in whose last work, the signed and dated Crucifixion (1506; Florence, Certosa del Galluzzo, Pin.), he painted the angels (Shearman). In December 1508 the names of Franciabigio and Andrea del Sarto, who sometime between autumn 1506 and 1509 set up a joint workshop, were entered in the registration book of the Arte de' Medici e Speziali, to which painters were required to belong. The Portrait of a Young Man (Paris, Louvre) dates from this period. The work, which was later enlarged, shows the subject half-length, leaning pensively against a balustrade, with strong areas of shadow around the eyes. This is the first in a series of male portraits typical of Franciabigio: the subjects, each of whom wears a hat, are mostly placed in front of a landscape, with their gaze fixed meditatively or piercingly on the onlooker. The religious works from this period, such as the Virgin and Child (1509; Rome, Pal. Barberini), also show a movement away from the style of Albertinelli and Raffaellino del Garbo and begin to reveal instead the influence of Leonardo, Michelangelo and, especially, Raphael. Yet Franciabigio's connection with Andrea del Sarto was the determining factor in his career. When in 1509 it was del Sarto who received the commission to complete the fresco cycle in the atrium of SS Annunziata, Florence, their relationship altered significantly.