b Pontormo, nr Empoli, 26 May 1494; d Florence, 31 Dec 1556). Italian painter and draughtsman. He was the leading painter in mid-16th-century Florence and one of the most original and extraordinary of Mannerist artists. His eccentric personality, solitary and slow working habits and capricious attitude towards his patrons are described by Vasari; his own diary, which covers the years 1554-6, further reveals a character with neurotic and secretive aspects. Pontormo enjoyed the protection of the Medici family throughout his career but, unlike Agnolo Bronzino and Giorgio Vasari, did not become court painter. His subjective portrait style did not lend itself to the state portrait. He produced few mythological works and after 1540 devoted himself almost exclusively to religious subjects. His drawings, mainly figure studies in red and black chalk, are among the highest expressions of the great Florentine tradition of draughtsmanship; close to 400 survive, forming arguably the most important body of drawings by a Mannerist painter. His highly personal style was much influenced by Michelangelo  Related Paintings of Pontormo, Jacopo :. | Halberdier | Kicking Player | Madonna and Child with St. Joseph and Saint John the Baptist | The Expulsion from Earthly Paradise | St John the Evangelist |
Related Artists:
Giuseppe Abbati
Italian, 1836-1868 Abbati was born in Naples and received early training in painting from his brother Vincenzo. He participated in Garibaldi 1860 campaign, suffering the loss of his right eye at the Battle of Capua. Afterwards he moved to Florence where, at the Caffe Michelangiolo, he met Giovanni Fattori, Silvestro Lega, and the rest of the artists who would soon be dubbed the Macchiaioli. While his early paintings were interiors, he quickly became attracted to the practice of painting landscapes en plein air. His activity as a painter was interrupted during 1866 when he enlisted again in the army for the Third Independence War, during which he was captured by the Austrians and held in Croatia. Returning to civilian life at the end of the year, he moved to Castelnuovo della Misericordia and spent the final year of his life painting in the countryside. Abbati died at the age of thirty-two in Florence after his own dog bit him, infecting him with rabies. Giuseppe Abbati, The Tower of the Palazzo del Podesta, 1865, oil on wood, 39 x 32 cm.His paintings are characterized by a bold treatment of light effects. He often painted a luminous landscape scene as seen through the doorway of a darkened interior, as in the View from the Wine Cellar of Diego Martelli (1866). Some of his late landscapes are in the greatly elongated horizontal format often favored by the Macchiaioli.
Giuseppe Bazzani
Italian Baroque Era Painter, 1690-1769 was an Italian painter of the Rococo. Born in Mantua to a goldsmith, Giovanni Bazzani, early on he apprenticed with the Parmesan painter Giovanni Canti (1653-1715). A fellow pupil was Francesco Maria Raineri. He spent most of his life in Mantua. From 1752, he was faculty, and from 1767, director of the Accademia di Belle Arti of Mantua. While esconced in a declining provincial city, he absorbed international influences. His loose brushstrokes, fervid often dark emotionalism, and tortured poses, which recall at times later expressionism, display stylistic tendencies more typical of Lombardy. Numerous artists, including Fetti, Bencovich, Rubens, and Magnasco are said to have influenced him, although the number and diversity of the artists suggested hints that he had an idiosyncratic and unique synthesis for his time. Among his early works are paintings of the Miracles of Pius V, the Conversion of a Heretic and the Healing of a Madwoman
NEUFCHATEL Nicolas
Flemish-German painter (b. ca. 1527, Hennegau, d. 1590, N??rnberg)