Italian High Renaissance Painter, 1483-1520
Italian painter and architect. As a member of Perugino's workshop, he established his mastery by 17 and began receiving important commissions. In 1504 he moved to Florence, where he executed many of his famous Madonnas; his unity of composition and suppression of inessentials is evident in The Madonna of the Goldfinch (c. 1506). Though influenced by Leonardo da Vinci's chiaroscuro and sfumato, his figure types were his own creation, with round, gentle faces that reveal human sentiments raised to a sublime serenity. In 1508 he was summoned to Rome to decorate a suite of papal chambers in the Vatican. The frescoes in the Stanza della Segnatura are probably his greatest work; the most famous, The School of Athens (1510 C 11), is a complex and magnificently ordered allegory of secular knowledge showing Greek philosophers in an architectural setting. The Madonnas he painted in Rome show him turning away from his earlier work's serenity to emphasize movement and grandeur, partly under Michelangelo's High Renaissance influence. The Sistine Madonna (1513) shows the richness of colour and new boldness of compositional invention typical of his Roman period. He became the most important portraitist in Rome, designed 10 large tapestries to hang in the Sistine Chapel, designed a church and a chapel, assumed the direction of work on St. Peter's Basilica at the death of Donato Bramante, Related Paintings of RAFFAELLO Sanzio :. | The Mass at Bolsena | Gregory IX Approving the Decretals | St Michael and the Dragon sdr | Madonna with the Fish | Portrait of a Woman | Related Artists:
Gaspar Van WittelDutch Baroque Era Painter, ca.1653-1736
was a Dutch landscape painter. Van Wittel learned painting in his hometown of Amersfoort. His first extant works were made in Hoorn in 1672, but he relocated to Rome with his family ca. 1675 and made his career there. In Amersfoort, he likely was exposed to Dutch landscape artists such as Jan van der Heyden and Gerrit Berckheyde. He married in Rome in 1697, and stayed most of his life in that city, though, between 1694 and 1710, he toured Italy and painted in places like Florence, Bologna, Ferrara, Venice, Milan, Piacenza and Naples. He is one of the principal painters of topographical views known as vedute. His son Luigi would become a famous architect and also carries the italianized family name of Vanvitelli. In Luigi's biography is written that his father was born in July 1656,
LIPPI, FilippinoItalian Early Renaissance Painter, ca.1457-1504
Son of Filippo Lippi. He was a painter of altarpieces, cassone panels and frescoes and also an exceptional draughtsman. His success lay in his ability to absorb, without slavishly following, the most popular trends in contemporary painting. He worked in Florence and Rome at a time when patrons were beginning to intermingle personal, religious, social and political ideals in their ambitions for palaces and chapels: with the support of wealthy and erudite patrons, such as Lorenzo de' Medici and Filippo Strozzi, he won important civic and private commissions.
John William Inchbold1830-1888
English painter. He spent his early years in Leeds, where his father was a newspaper proprietor, but came to London around 1846 to study lithography in the firm of Day & Haghe. His obituary in The Athenaeum records that he went on to study at the Royal Academy Schools, but his name does not appear in the registers. He exhibited watercolours at the Society of British Artists in 1849 and 1850 and at the Royal Academy in 1851. At this period his work has a fluidity and a freedom of handling that is closer to Richard Parkes Bonington than to the prevailing style of Victorian watercolours. Around 1852 he came under the influence of the Pre-Raphaelite movement and radically altered his style. His oil painting of the Chapel, Bolton (exh. RA 1853; Northampton, Cent. Mus. & A.G.) is a meticulously rendered view of the abbey ruins in the Pre-Raphaelite manner. This was followed the next year by At Bolton (Leeds, C.A.G.), another view of Bolton Abbey, this time with a deer prominent in the foreground. Both paintings illustrate lines from William Wordsworth's poem 'The White Doe of Ryleston'. Wordsworth was also the inspiration for the small painting Study in March