Flemish Baroque Era Painter, 1577-1640 Peter Paul Rubens (June 28, 1577 ?C May 30, 1640) was a prolific seventeenth-century Flemish Baroque painter, and a proponent of an exuberant Baroque style that emphasized movement, color, and sensuality. He is well-known for his Counter-Reformation altarpieces, portraits, landscapes, and history paintings of mythological and allegorical subjects. In addition to running a large studio in Antwerp which produced paintings popular with nobility and art collectors throughout Europe, Rubens was a classically-educated humanist scholar, art collector, and diplomat who was knighted by both Philip IV, king of Spain, and Charles I, king of England. Rubens was a prolific artist. His commissioned works were mostly religious subjects, "history" paintings, which included mythological subjects, and hunt scenes. He painted portraits, especially of friends, and self-portraits, and in later life painted several landscapes. Rubens designed tapestries and prints, as well as his own house. He also oversaw the ephemeral decorations of the Joyous Entry into Antwerp by the Cardinal-Infante Ferdinand in 1635. His drawings are mostly extremely forceful but not detailed; he also made great use of oil sketches as preparatory studies. He was one of the last major artists to make consistent use of wooden panels as a support medium, even for very large works, but he used canvas as well, especially when the work needed to be sent a long distance. For altarpieces he sometimes painted on slate to reduce reflection problems. His fondness of painting full-figured women gave rise to the terms 'Rubensian' or 'Rubenesque' for plus-sized women. The term 'Rubensiaans' is also commonly used in Dutch to denote such women.  Related Paintings of Peter Paul Rubens :. | The Battle of the Milvian Bridge,from The Life of Constantine (mk01) | Christ | Henry IV at the Battle of Ivry | The Excbange of Princesses (mk01) | The Horrors of War (mk01) |
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Gaspare Landi
Italian, 1756-1830,was an Italian painter of the Neoclassic period, active in Rome and his native city of Piacenza. He is said to have been a fun-loving younth, but in 1781 he procured a subsidy to study painting in Rome from patron and distant relative, Marquis Giambattista Landi. At age 25, he moved to Rome to work under Domenico Corvi and Pompeo Battoni. He is considered a rival of Vincenzo Camuccini. Two of his pictures were once in the Pinacoteca at Parma, Diomedes and Ulysses bearing off the Palladium (1783) and the Marriage of Abraham and Sarah. Above one of the altars in the church of the Santa Casa at Loreto there is a later work by this Landi showing the Madonna addolorata. A major work is his large canvas representing the fainting of Christ as he struggles along over the road to Calvary weighted down by the burden of the Cross, Lo Spasimo for San Giovanni at Piacenza. It hung opposite Vincenzo Camuccini's Presentation. Landi became a member of the Accademia di San Luca of Rome in 1805, professor of the theory of painting in 1812, and president of the Academy in 1817. He was also made a Chevalier of the Order of the Iron Crown, of the Order of San Giuseppe, and of a Neapolitan order. About 1820 he returned to Piacenza, intending to remain there, but soon tired of the monotonous existence of a provincial town, and in 1824 reestablished himself at Rome. His last work was an Assumption and was placed in the church of San Francesco di Paola, at Naples. He returned to Piacenza in 1829, where he died.
Giulio Quaglio
(1610-1658 or after) was an Italian painter of frescoes. He was a follower of Tintoretto. He is known to have worked in Vienna, Salzburg, and Ljubljana. His son, Giulio the younger, was born in Como and established himself in the Friuli about the end of the 17th century. He is best known for frescoes at the chapel of the Monte di Piete, at Udine. He died in 1720. They are both part of a large family of artists and architects from the town of Laino, between Lake Garda and Lake Como, and which included Giuseppe Quaglio and his sons Lorenzo the younger, Simon, and Domenico; Lorenzo Quaglio the elder; and Giovanni Maria Quaglio and his son.
Arturo Michelena
16 June 1863 - 29 July 1898) was a Venezuelan painter born in Valencia, Carabobo State. He began to paint at a young age under his father's tutelage. Traveled to Paris where he studied in the famous Academie Julian. He was the first Venezuelan artist to succeed overseas and, with Cristebal Rojas (1857-1890) and Marten Tovar y Tovar (1827-1902), one of the most important Venezuelan painters of the 19th century. His first great success occurred in Paris at Le Salon des Artistes Français in 1887. Encouraged by his teacher Jean-Paul Laurens (1838-1921), Michelena presented a canvas titled L'Enfant Malade (The sick boy) which was awarded the Gold Medal, second class, the highest honor a foreign artist could receive at the salon. The painting was quickly considered a masterpiece and was acquired by the Astors in New York in the late 19th century. Later the painting traveled to South Florida when it was acquired by Owens Burns, a business partner of John Ringling, the circus magnate. After Burns' death the painting was stored in the Ringling Museum's vaults where it remained away from public view for more than 60 years. In 2004 Sotheby's rescued the canvas and arranged for it to be included in an auction of Latin American art.