b.c. 1527, Milan, d.1593, Milan Italian Giuseppe Arcimboldo Galleries Arcimboldo was born in Milan in 1527, the son of Biagio, a painter who did work for the office of the Fabbrica in the Duomo.Arcimboldo was commissioned to do stained glass window designs beginning in 1549, including the Stories of St. Catherine of Alexandria vitrage at the Duomo. In 1556 he worked with Giuseppe Meda on frescoes for the Cathedral of Monza. In 1558, he drew the cartoon for a large tapestry of the Dormition of the Virgin Mary, which still hangs in the Como Cathedral today. In 1562 he became court portraitist to Ferdinand I at the Habsburg court in Vienna, and later, to Maximilian II and his son Rudolf II at the court in Prague. He was also the court decorator and costume designer. King Augustus of Saxony, who visited Vienna in 1570 and 1573, saw Arcimboldo's work and commissioned a copy of his "The Four Seasons" which incorporates his own monarchic symbols. Arcimboldo's conventional work, on traditional religious subjects, has fallen into oblivion, but his portraits of human heads made up of vegetables, fruit and tree roots, were greatly admired by his contemporaries and remain a source of fascination today. Art critics debate whether these paintings were whimsical or the product of a deranged mind.. A majority of scholars hold to the view, however, that given the Renaissance fascination with riddles, puzzles, and the bizarre (see, for example, the grotesque heads of Leonardo da Vinci, a fellow Milanese), Arcimboldo, far from being mentally imbalanced, catered to the taste of his times. Arcimboldo died in Milan, to which he retired after leaving the Habsburg service. It was during this last phase of his career that he produced the composite portrait of Rudolph II (see above), as well as his self-portrait as the Four Seasons. His Italian contemporaries honored him with poetry and manuscripts celebrating his illustrious career. His hidden-face still-lives are a possible influence on his younger Lombard contemporary Caravaggio, whose painting of fruit in the Brera museum in Milan ranks as one of the earliest independent still-lives. When the Swedish army invaded Prague in 1648, during the Thirty Years' War, many of Arcimboldo's paintings were taken from Rudolf II's collection. His works can be found in Vienna's Kunsthistorisches Museum and the Habsburg Schloss Ambras in Innsbruck, the Louvre in Paris, as well as numerous museums in Sweden. In Italy, his work is in Cremona, Brescia, and the Uffizi Gallery in Florence. The Wadsworth Atheneum in Hartford, Connecticut, the Denver Art Museum in Denver, Colorado, the Menil Foundation in Houston, Texas, and the Candie Museum in Guernsey also own paintings by Archimboldo.  Related Paintings of Giuseppe Arcimboldo :. | Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian II. of Austria and his wife Infanta Maria of Spain with their children | Flora | Winter | The Spring | Esquire Summer |
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Ludwig Knaus
German Painter, 1829-1910 was a German genre painter of the younger Desseldorf school. He was born at Wiesbaden and studied from 1845 to 1852 under Sohn and Schadow in Desseldorf. His early works, like "The Gamblers," in the Desseldorf Gallery, are in the manner of that school, being dark and heavy in color. This deficiency was remedied by study at Paris, whither he went in 1852 and enrolled as a pupil of Couture. In 1853 his "Morning after the Kermess" received the second gold Medal of the Salon and made him a celebrated painter. Except for a year's study in Italy he remained in Paris until 1860.New International Encyclopedia His chief works of this period include "The Golden Wedding," "The Baptism," and "The Promenade," purchased for the Luxembourg. From 1861 to 1866 he practiced at Berlin, producing such works as "Boys Playing Cards," "Looking for a Bride" (Wiesbaden Museum), and "His Highness on His Travels." The next eight years of his life saw the production of much of his best work, including "The Children's Festival" (Nation Gallery, Berlin), "In Great Distress," and "The Village Prince." From 1874 to 1883 he was professor at the Academy of Berlin, continuing to reside in that city until his death. Among the most importand works of his last period were: "The Holy Family" and "The Road to Ruin," both painted in 1876 and now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; "Behind the Curtain" (1880), Dresden Gallery; "The Rag Baby" (1880) and "A Village Festival" (1881), both in the Vanderbilt collection, Metropolitan Museum, New York; and "A Duel." During his last period Knaus also painted a series of "Idyls," with nudes in a rather classical style, of which an important example is in the Wiesbaden Museum.
GREBBER, Pieter de
Dutch painter, Haarlem school (b. ca. 1600, Haarlem, d. 1652/53, Haarlem)Dutch painter. Together with Salomon de Bray, he was a pioneer among the Haarlem Classicists
Giovanni Francesco Barbieri Called Il Guercino
Cento 1591-Bologna 1666