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 :. | St Eligius shoeing the detached leg of a horse | Novella di Nastagio degli Onesti | The Birth of Venus | Piero del Pollaiolo Hope (mk36) | Young Man With a Medallion of Cosimo (mk45) |
Related Artists:
Pryanishnikov Illarion
1840-1894,Russian painter. He studied from 1856 to 1866 at the School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture in Moscow and subsequently taught there (1873-94). Among his pupils were Sergey Ivanov and Sergey Korovin. Pryanishnikov was among the fifteen founder-members of the Peredvizhniki (WANDERERS) and contributed two works to their first exhibition. His narrative pictures of the 1860s embodied the critical trend in early Russian Realism and focused on the trials and sorrows of the lower classes; his Jokers (1865; Moscow, Tret yakov Gal.) shows a petty clerk performing stunts for the amusement of some wealthy merchants. The Convoy of Empty Sleds (1871; Kharkiv, Mus. F.A.) conveys a fine sense of the bleak winter landscape. His later work added northern scenery and genre scenes to his repertory as in Saviour Day in the North (1887; Moscow, Tret yakov Gal.) and Return from the Fair (1883; St Petersburg, Rus. Mus.). Pryanishnikov is also known for his hunting scenes. In 1893 he became a member of the St Petersburg Academy of Arts.
Alfred Rethel
1816 Diepenbend/Aachen-1859 Dusseldorf, was a German history painter. Rethel was born in Aachen in 1816. He showed an interest in art in his early life, and at the age of thirteen he executed a drawing which procured his admission to the academy of D??sseldorf. Here he studied for several years, and produced, among other works, a figure of St Boniface, which attracted much attention. At the age of twenty, Rethel moved to Frankfurt, and was selected to decorate the walls of the imperial hall in the Rmer with figures of famous men. At the same period he produced a series of designs illustrative of Old Testament history. Four years later, Rethel was the successful competitor for the work of ornamenting the restored council house of his native city with frescoes depicting prominent events in the career of Charlemagne, but the execution of this work was delayed for some six years. Meanwhile Rethel occupied himself with the production of easel pictures and of drawings. In 1842, he began a striking series of designs dealing with the Crossing of the Alps by Hannibal, in which the weird power which animates his later art becomes first apparent. In 1844 Rethel visited Rome, executing, along with other subjects, an altar-piece for one of the churches of his native land. In 1846, he returned to Aachen, and commenced his Charlemagne frescoes.
May Wilson Preston
American , 1873-1949