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 :. | Our Lady of John son and salute | Portrat of Giuliano de-Medici | Venus and Mars | Venus with the goddess to the girl gifts | Novella di Nastagio degli Onesti |
Related Artists:
Henri-Nicolas Van Gorp
painted Nina chantant la romance in
John Christian Schetky
(1778-1874) Scottish painter. Schetky came from a cultured family: his father, Johann (1737-1824), was a German composer, and his mother, Maria, was the trumpeter Joseph Reinagle's sister. He took drawing lessons from Alexander Nasmyth and received a good education in Edinburgh before embarking on a Continental tour in 1801. After a spell as a drawing-master at the Royal Military College, Great Marlow, he was appointed Professor of Drawing at the Royal Naval College, Portsmouth, in 1811, a post he held for 25 years. He exhibited regularly at the Royal Academy between 1805 and 1872, his subjects ranging from ship portraits and royal embarkations to reconstructions of earlier sea battles of the time of Nelson. In 1820 he was made Marine Painter in Ordinary to George IV and was granted the same title by Queen Victoria in 1844.
Adolphe Bouguereau
French 1825-1905 French painter. From 1838 to 1841 he took drawing lessons from Louis Sage, a pupil of Ingres, while attending the coll?ge at Pons. In 1841 the family moved to Bordeaux where in 1842 his father allowed him to attend the Ecole Municipale de Dessin et de Peinture part-time, under Jean-Paul Alaux. In 1844 he won the first prize for figure painting, which confirmed his desire to become a painter. As there were insufficient family funds to send him straight to Paris he painted portraits of the local gentry from 1845 to 1846 to earn money. In 1846 he enrolled at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts, Paris, in the studio of Fran?ois-Edouard Picot. This was the beginning of the standard academic training of which he became so ardent a defender later in life. Such early works as Equality (1848; priv. col., see 1984-5 exh. cat., p. 141) reveal the technical proficiency he had attained even while still training. In 1850 he was awarded one of the two Premier Grand Prix de Rome for Zenobia Discovered by Shepherds on the Bank of the River Araxes (1850; Paris, Ecole N. Sup. B.-A.). In December 1850 he left for Rome where he remained at the Villa Medici until 1854, working under Victor Schnetz and Jean Alaux (1786-1864). During this period he made an extensive study of Giotto's work at Assisi and Padua and was also impressed by the works of other Renaissance masters and by Classical art. On his return to France he exhibited the Triumph of the Martyr (1853; Lun?ville, Mus. Lun?ville; see fig. 1) at the Salon of 1854. It depicted St Cecilia's body being carried to the catacombs, and its high finish, restrained colour and classical poses were to be constant features of his painting thereafter. All his works were executed in several stages involving an initial oil sketch followed by numerous pencil drawings taken from life.