Italian Byzantine Style Painter, ca.1290-1348 Ambrogio Lorenzetti (or Ambruogio Laurati; c. 1290 ?C June 9, 1348) was an Italian painter of the Sienese school. He was active between approximately from 1317 to 1348. His elder brother was the painter Pietro Lorenzetti. His work shows the influence of Simone Martini, although more naturalistic. The earliest dated work of the Sienese painter is a Madonna and Child (1319, Museo Diocesano, San Casciano). His presence was documented in Florentine up until 1321. He would return there after spending a number of years in Siena. The frescoes on the walls of the Hall of the Nine (Sala dei Nove) or Hall of the Peace (Sala della Pace) in the Palazzo Pubblico of Siena are one of the masterworks of early renaissance secular painting. The "nine" was the oligarchal assembly of guild and monetary interests that governed the republic. Three walls are painted with frescoes consisting of a large assembly of allegorical figures of virtues in the Allegory of Good Government . In the other two facing panels, Ambrogio weaves panoramic visions of Effects of Good Government on Town and Country, and Allegory of Bad Government and its Effects on Town and Country (also called "Ill-governed Town and Country"). The better preserved "well-governed town and country" is an unrivaled pictorial encyclopedia of incidents in a peaceful medieval "borgo" and countryside. The first evidence of the existence of the hourglass can be found in one of his paintings. Like his brother, he is believed to have died of bubonic plague 1348. Giorgio Vasari includes a biography of Lorenzetti in his Lives.  Related Paintings of Ambrogio Lorenzetti :. | Allegory of the Good Government | Allegory of Good and Bad Government | Life in the Country | Allegory of Good Governmert (mk08) | Madonna del Latte |
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Jean-Baptiste Deshays
French Baroque Era Painter, 1729-1765 was a French painter of religious and mythological subjects.His first training was under his father, the minor Rouen painter Jean-Dominique Deshays, he then spent a little time under Jean-Baptiste Descamps at his Ecole Gratuite de Dessin. He spent time in Hyacinthe Collin de Vermont's Paris studio from around 1740 to 1749 and Jean Restout II's from late 1749 to 1751. Both these had been pupils of Jean Jouvenet, and painted in the Grand Style of French history painting, a style Deshays adopted as his own. While he was in Restout's studio, Deshays entered the Prix de Rome competition, winning second prize in 1750 with His 1750 Laban Giving his Daughter in Marriage to Jacob won the second prize in the Grand Prix de Rome, and his 1751 Job on the Dung-hill the first prize. Deshays served the compulsory three years training at the Ecole des Eleves Prot??g??s (where he learnt from Carle van Loo, its director, and attracted some religious commissions, including two vast canvases, a Visitation and an Annunciation, for the monastery of the Visitation at Rouen), before going to Rome.
FERNANDES, Vasco
Portuguese painter (active 1500-1542 in Viseu) Portuguese painter. He was the leading painter of northern Portugal during the first half of the 16th century, and it is probable that he received his training abroad. Fernandes is the best-documented Portuguese artist of the period; there are nearly 100 works attributed to him, some of which are securely documented and record his activity either alone or in collaboration with the Viseu painter GASPAR VAZ. Fernandes's most important work was carried out in Lamego and in Viseu, where the term Gr?o ('Great') used in praise of him is first recorded (Ribeiro Botelho Pereira). In 1753 the Director of the Dresden Gallery, Pietro Guarienti, first used the epithet when he referred to Fernandes by the name of Gran Vasco. The many myths about the painter and his work developed from this date and were not clarified until 1846
Hilma af Klint
1862 - 1944,was a Swedish artist and mystic whose paintings were amongst the first abstract art. She belonged to a group called 'The Five' and the paintings or diagrams were a visual representation of complex philosophical ideas. The fourth child of Captain Victor af Klint, a Swedish naval commander, and Mathilda af Klint (n??e Sonntag), Hilma af Klint spent summers with her family at their farm Hammora on the island of Adelsö in Lake Mälaren. In these idylic surroundings Hilma came into contact with nature at an early stage in her life and this deep association with natural forms was to be an inspiration in her work. From her father she adopted an interest in mathematics. In 1880 her younger sister Hermina died and it was at this time that the spiritual dimension of her life began to develop. She showed an early ability in visual art and after the family had moved to Stockholm she studied at the Academy of Fine Arts for five years during which time she learned portraiture and landscape painting . Here she met Anna Cassel, the first of the four women with whom she later worked in 'The Five' (de fem), a group of artists who shared her ideas. Her more conventional painting became the source of her financial income while the 'life's work' remained a quite separate practice.