Italian Early Renaissance Painter, 1445-1510 Italian painter and draughtsman. In his lifetime he was one of the most esteemed painters in Italy, enjoying the patronage of the leading families of Florence, in particular the Medici and their banking clients. He was summoned to take part in the decoration of the Sistine Chapel in Rome, was highly commended by diplomatic agents to Ludovico Sforza in Milan and Isabella d Este in Mantua and also received enthusiastic praise from the famous mathematician Luca Pacioli and the humanist poet Ugolino Verino. By the time of his death, however, Botticelli s reputation was already waning. He was overshadowed first by the advent of what Vasari called the maniera devota, a new style by Perugino, Francesco Francia and the young Raphael, whose new and humanly affective sentiment, infused atmospheric effects and sweet colourism took Italy by storm; he was then eclipsed with the establishment immediately afterwards of the High Renaissance style, which Vasari called the modern manner, in the paintings of Michelangelo and the mature works of Raphael in the Vatican. From that time his name virtually disappeared until the reassessment of his reputation that gathered momentum in the 1890s   Related Paintings of Sandro Botticelli :. | Cestello Annunciation | Saint Corney Lees | Transfiguration,wtih St jerome and St Augustine (mk36) | Domenico Ghirlandaio,The Calling of the first Apostles,Peter and Andrew | Nobilo early St. Maas |
Related Artists:
Marcel Rieder
France (1852 -1925 ) - Painter
Peale, Sarah Miriam
American Painter, 1800-1885 Painter, daughter of James Peale. The most notable of James Peale's painting daughters, she also studied with her uncle Charles Willson Peale and her cousin Rembrandt Peale, from whom she developed her talent for colour and precision in details. As studio assistant to her father, she occasionally introduced into his work bright and intricate fabrics. Her career began in 1817 with the exhibition of Flowers at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. In the 1820s she painted in Baltimore and Philadelphia; in 1824 she was elected to the Pennsylvania Academy. From 1831 to 1846 she maintained her studio in Baltimore where she was a popular portrait painter, producing unpretentious but intelligent and occasionally romantic portraits characterized by a fine concern for materials, as in Mrs Perry Eccleston Noel (c. 1822; Baltimore, Mus. & Lib. MD Hist.). Her sitters included such prominent politicians as Daniel Webster (1842; St Louis, MO Hist. Soc. Mus.) and Abel Park Upshur (1842; Baltimore, Mus. & Lib. MD Hist.). In 1847 Sarah moved to St Louis, MO, where for 32 years she was in great demand. From 1859 her still-lifes won prizes at the St Louis fairs; they were loosely painted works different from the tightly controlled table-top pieces of her father and sister. Sarah's portraiture also changed, from the elegant, precise Neo-classicism learnt from her cousin Rembrandt to a looser,
Alphonse Mucha
1860-1939 Czech Alfons Maria Mucha was born in the town of Ivančice, Moravia (today's region of Czech Republic). His singing abilities allowed him to continue his education through high school in the Moravian capital of Brno, even though drawing had been his first love since childhood. He worked at decorative painting jobs in Moravia, mostly painting theatrical scenery, then in 1879 moved to Vienna to work for a leading Viennese theatrical design company, while informally furthering his artistic education. When a fire destroyed his employer's business in 1881 he returned to Moravia, doing freelance decorative and portrait painting. Count Karl Khuen of Mikulov hired Mucha to decorate Hrusovany Emmahof Castle with murals, and was impressed enough that he agreed to sponsor Mucha's formal training at the Munich Academy of Fine Arts. Poster of Maude Adams as Joan of Arc, 1909Mucha moved to Paris in 1887, and continued his studies at Academie Julian and Academie Colarossi while also producing magazine and advertising illustrations. Around Christmas 1894, Mucha happened to drop into a print shop where there was a sudden and unexpected demand for a new poster to advertise a play starring Sarah Bernhardt, the most famous actress in Paris, at the Theatre de la Renaissance. Mucha volunteered to produce a lithographed poster within two weeks, and on 1 January 1895, the advertisement for Gismonda appeared on the streets of the city. It was an overnight sensation and announced the new artistic style and its creator to the citizens of Paris. Bernhardt was so satisfied with the success of that first poster that she entered into a 6 years contract with Mucha. Mucha produced a flurry of paintings, posters, advertisements, and book illustrations, as well as designs for jewellery, carpets, wallpaper, and theatre sets in what was initially called the Mucha Style but became known as Art Nouveau. Mucha's works frequently featured beautiful healthy young women in flowing vaguely Neoclassical looking robes, often surrounded by lush flowers which sometimes formed haloes behind the women's heads. In contrast with contemporary poster makers he used paler pastel colors. The 1900 Universal Exhibition in Paris diffused the "Mucha style" internationally. He decorated the Bosnia and Herzegovina Pavilion and collaborated in the Austrian one. His Art Nouveau style was often imitated. However, this was a style that Mucha attempted to distance himself from throughout his life; he insisted always that, rather than adhering to any fashionable stylistic form, his paintings came purely from within and Czech art. He declared that art existed only to communicate a spiritual message, and nothing more; hence his frustration at the fame he gained through commercial art, when he wanted always to concentrate on more lofty projects that would ennoble art and his birthplace.