Belgian Painter, 1806-1865 Belgian painter and sculptor. He was from very humble origins, but his talent for drawing was detected at an early age. He was sent to the Antwerp Academie, where he attended classes given by W. J. Herreyns (1743-1827) and Mathieu Ignace Van Br?e. During a stay in Paris from 1829 to 1832 he came into contact with the Romantic painters, in particular Th?odore G?ricault, who fostered his admiration for Rubens. In 1832 he won the Belgian Prix de Rome and in 1834 left for Italy where the works of Raphael and, above all, Michelangelo made an overwhelming impression on him. In Rome he abandoned the landscapes and scenes from Roman life, for which he showed a certain talent, and embarked on a much more ambitious work, the Greeks and the Trojans Contesting the Body of Patroclus (1835; Brussels, Mus. Wiertz.). The painting proved the turning-point in Wiertz's career. Its frenzied composition and violently contorted figures excited considerable interest in Rome.  Related Paintings of Antoine Wiertz :. | The Lovely Rosine (mk22) | The Premature Burial | Reader of Novels | The Novel Reader (mk19) | self portrait by Antoine Wiertz |
Related Artists:
Cornelis de Wael
Cornelis de Wael (1592-1667) was a Flemish painter of the Baroque period, active mainly in Italy, specifically Genoa. He was born in Antwerp, the son of a painter, and died in Rome.
Thomas Trotter
British 1756-1803
AMBERGER, Christoph
German Painter, ca.1500-1562 German painter and draughtsman. His family came from the Upper Palatinate. He served his apprenticeship in Augsburg, probably with Leonhard Beck, whose daughter Barbara he married. He became a master on 15 May 1530 but rarely signed his work. He was in northern Italy and Venice c. 1525-7. His full-length pendant portraits of a husband and wife (both 1525; Vienna, Ksthist. Mus.) show Venetian influence, and the portrait of Anton Welser (1527; priv. col., see 1980 exh. cat., p. 98) is in the Italian style. According to Sandrart, during the Imperial Diet of 1530 in Augsburg Amberger painted a portrait of Emperor Charles V to the Emperor's satisfaction, but the surviving work (Berlin, Gem?ldegal.) dates from 1532, based on the age given. In the decades that followed, Amberger was the favourite portrait painter of ambitious merchant families, such as the Fugger, who belonged to guilds but were connected with the nobility by family or marriage ties.