1599-1660,Spanish painter. He was apprenticed to Francisco Herrera the Elder before being trained by Francisco Pacheco. His early works were mostly religious or genre scenes. After arriving in Madrid in 1623, he painted a portrait of Philip IV that won him immediate success and an appointment as court painter. His position gave him access to the royal collections, including works by Titian, who exerted the greatest influence on his style. In his portraits from this period, only the faces and hands of the figures are accentuated, and the dark figures stand out against a light background. A visit to Italy (1629 ?C 31) further developed his style, and on his return to Madrid he entered his most productive period. Velazquez created a new type of informal royal portrait for Philip hunting lodge, and his portraits of court dwarfs display the same discerning eye as those of his royal subjects. On a second visit to Rome (1649 ?C 51) he painted a portrait of Pope Innocent X. The powerful head, brilliant combinations of crimson of the curtain, chair, and cope are painted with fluent technique and almost imperceptible brushstrokes that go far beyond the late manner of Titian and announce the last stage in Velazquez development. This portrait was copied innumerable times and won him immediate and lasting renown in Italy. In his last years he created his masterpiece, Las Meninas (The Maids of Honour, 1656). In this casual scene, the artist is shown painting the king and queen in the presence of the infanta Margarita and her attendants; the nearly life size figures are painted in more or less detail according to their relation to the central figure of the infanta and to the source of light, creating a remarkable illusion of reality never surpassed by Velazquez or any other artist of his age. He is universally acknowledged as one of the giants of Western art.   Related Paintings of Velasquez :. | Dwarf Juarez | Dionysus | In Austria Duke Varser | St. John in Bai Temu Si | Juan Sebastian |
Related Artists:
Daret, Jean
Flemish Baroque Era Painter, 1613-1668 French painter. He came from Brussels and trained there before going on the traditional journey to Italy, which not only took him to Rome but also brought him into contact with contemporary masters at Bologna. While in Italy he produced a Self-portrait (1636; St Petersburg, Hermitage), which alludes to both his ideal model and the necessary basis of his work: his right hand rests on a fragment of antique sculpture, while beside his palette in the foreground lie several sheets of drawings.
Franz Xaver Kosler
Vienna 1864-1905
Maurer, Alfred Henry
American Painter, 1868-1932 American painter. He studied at the National Academy of Design, New York, in 1884 and briefly at the Acad?mie Julian, Paris, during 1897. He received critical success with academic paintings of single female figures in interiors and genre scenes of caf? society, which reflected the influence of the work of James Abbott McNeill Whistler and William Merritt Chase, for example At the Caf? (c. 1905; St Petersburg, Hermitage). His long residence in Paris from 1897, his participation in various independent salons and his association with Leo and Gertrude Stein led to his interest in avant-garde art. He may have been one of a group of Americans who studied briefly with Henri Matisse. By 1907 he was producing vigorously painted Fauvist landscapes, such as Landscape with Red Tree