Italian 1267-1337 Giotto Galleries Giotto di Bondone (c. 1267 ?C January 8, 1337), better known simply as Giotto, was an Italian painter and architect from Florence. He is generally considered the first in a line of great artists who contributed to the Italian Renaissance. Giotto's contemporary Giovanni Villani wrote that Giotto was "the most sovereign master of painting in his time, who drew all his figures and their postures according to nature. And he was given a salary by the commune [of Florence] in virtue of his talent and excellence." The later 16th century biographer Giorgio Vasari says of him "...He made a decisive break with the ...Byzantine style, and brought to life the great art of painting as we know it today, introducing the technique of drawing accurately from life, which had been neglected for more than two hundred years." Giotto's masterwork is the decoration of the Scrovegni Chapel in Padua, commonly called the Arena Chapel, completed around 1305. This fresco cycle depicts the life of the Virgin and the life of Christ. It is regarded as one of the supreme masterpieces of the Early Renaissance. That Giotto painted the Arena Chapel and that he was chosen by the commune of Florence in 1334 to design the new campanile (bell tower) of the Florence Cathedral are among the few certainties of his biography. Almost every other aspect of it is subject to controversy: his birthdate, his birthplace, his appearance, his apprenticeship, the order in which he created his works, whether or not he painted the famous frescoes at Assisi, and where he was eventually buried after his death.  Related Paintings of Giotto :. | Decorative band with figures | Allegory of Chastity | Verification of the Stigmata | Renunciation of Wordly Goods | The Seven Vices |
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Frederick Sandys
English Pre-Raphaelite Painter, ca.1829-1904 English painter, illustrator and draughtsman. He was the son of Anthony Sands (1804-83), a minor local artist. He began his artistic education with his father and attended the Norwich School of Design from 1846. His precocious talent was recognized by the award of silver medals by the Society of Arts in 1846 and 1847. He moved to London in 1851, when he first exhibited at the Royal Academy, but he continued to spend time at Norwich until the death of his parents in 1883. After publishing in 1857 A Nightmare, a gentle caricature of John Ruskin and his Pre-Raphaelite proteg's William Holman Hunt, John Everett Millais and Dante Gabriel Rossetti and based on Millais's Sir Isumbras at the Ford
Frederick Edwin Church
1826-1900 Frederick Edwin Church Galleries Frederic Edwin Church (May 4, 1826 ?C April 7, 1900) was an American landscape painter born in Hartford, Connecticut. He was a central figure in the Hudson River School of American landscape painters. While committed to the natural sciences, he was "always concerned with including a spiritual dimension in his works". The family wealth came from Church's father, Joseph Church, a silversmith and watchmaker in Hartford, Connecticut.(Joseph subsequently also became an official and a director of The Aetna Life Insurance Company) Joseph, in turn, was the son of Samuel Church, who founded the first paper mill in Lee, Massachusetts in the Berkshires, and this allowed him(Frederic) to pursue his interest in art from a very early age. At eighteen years of age, Church became the pupil of Thomas Cole in Catskill, New York after Daniel Wadsworth, a family neighbor and founder of the Wadsworth Atheneum, introduced the two. In May 1848, Church was elected as the youngest Associate of the National Academy of Design and was promoted to Academician the following year. Soon after, he sold his first major work to Hartford's Wadsworth Atheneum. Church settled in New York where he taught his first pupil, William James Stillman. From the spring to autumn each year Church would travel, often by foot, sketching. He returned each winter to paint and to sell his work. Between 1853 and 1857, Church traveled in South America, financed by businessman Cyrus West Field, who wished to use Church's paintings to lure investors to his South American ventures. Church was inspired by the Prussian explorer Alexander von Humboldt's Cosmos and his exploration of the continent; Humboldt had challenged artists to portray the "physiognomy" of the Andes.
Pablo de Cespedes
(1538 - July 26, 1608) was a Spanish painter, poet, and architect. His father, Alonso Cespedes, was descended of a noble Castilian family, once settled at Ocaña, and the name of his mother, who was a native of Alcolea de Torote, was Olaya de Arroya. Pablo was born and brought up in the house of his father's maternal uncle, Francisco Lopez de Aponte, Canon of Cordoba, where he received a learned education. At the age of eighteen, in 1556, he was sent to the Universidad Complutense in Alcale de Henares, and there, devoted himself to the acquirement of Oriental languages and theology. He later moved to Rome where he studied painting under Federico Zuccari. He was in Rome in February 1559, engaged in conducting certain negotiations for the Archbishop Carranza de Miranda, of Toledo, who then stood charged with heresy before the Inquisition of Valladolid. On the 17th of that month he addressed a letter to the prelate, informing him how his business stood at the Vatican, in which he incautiously reflected on the conduct of the Inquisitor-General Valdez, and the Holy Officeean offence which no Inquisitor-General would forgive. This document and others were seized with the primate's papers; he was therefore denounced by the tribunal, and but for his fortunate absence, would have been imprisoned. It is probable that he did not venture back into Spain for many years, until he had covered his sins with the protecting robes of the Church. He remained in Italy for over 20 years and built a reputation as an artist. His only surviving works from that period are the frescoes he painted in the Bonfili chapel at the Santa Trinite dei Monti church in Rome. He returned to Spain in 1577, and was appointed as the canon of the Cerdoba cathedral. He continued to write books on antiquarian topics such as the architecture of the temple of Solomon. He befriended Arias Montano. In 1604 he composed his Discourse of Ancient and Modern Painting and Sculpture in which he recounts anecdotes of Renaissance masters of Italy.