Swiss 1827-1901 Arnold Bocklin Locations Arnold Bocklin was born on Oct. 16, 1827, in Basel. He attended the Dusseldorf Academy (1845-1847). At this time he painted scenes of the Swiss Alps, using light effects and dramatic views subjectively to project emotional moods into the landscape. In 1848 this romantic introspection gave way to plein air (open-air) objectivity after he was influenced by Camille Corot, Eugene Delacroix, and the painters of the Barbizon school while on a trip to Paris. But after the February and June revolutions Bocklin returned to Basel with a lasting hatred and disgust for contemporary France, and he resumed painting gloomy mountain scenes. In 1850 Bocklin found his mecca in Rome, and immediately his paintings were flooded by the warm Italian sunlight. He populated the lush southern vegetation, the bright light of the Roman Campagna, and the ancient ruins with lonely shepherds, cavorting nymphs, and lusty centaurs. These mythological figures rather than the landscapes became Bocklins primary concern, and he used such themes as Pan Pursuing Syrinx (1857) to express the polarities of life: warm sunshine contrasts with cool, moist shade, and the brightness of womans spirituality contrasts with mans dark sensuality. When Bocklin returned to Basel with his Italian wife, he completed the painting which brought him fame when the king of Bavaria purchased it in 1858: Pan among the Reeds, a depiction of the Greek phallic god with whom the artist identified. He taught at the Academy of Art in Weimar from 1860 to 1862, when he returned to Rome. Called to Basel in 1866, he painted the frescoes and modeled the grotesque masks for the facade of the Basel Museum. Bocklin resided in Florence from 1874 until 1885, and this was his most active period. He continued to explore the male-female antithesis and painted religious scenes, allegories of Natures powers, and moody studies of mans fate. He ceased working with oils and began experimenting with tempera and other media to obtain a pictorial surface free of brushstrokes. Bocklin spent the next 7 years mostly in Switzerland, with occasional trips to Italy; he devoted much of his energy to designing an airplane. Following a stroke in 1892, he returned to Italy, bought a villa in Fiesole, and died there on Jan. 16, 1901. Many of his late works depict nightmares of war, plague, and death.  Related Paintings of Arnold Bocklin :. | Centaur Fight | The Seated Demon | Das Spiel der Najaden | Faun Whistling to Blackbird | The Isle of the Dead |
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Bicci Di Neri
(1419-1491) was an Italian painter of the Renaissance. A prolific painter of mainly religious themes, he was active mainly in Florence and in the medium of tempera. His father was Bicci di Lorenzo. His grandfather, Lorenzo di Bicci was also a painter in Florence, a pupil of Spinello Aretino. Neri di Bicci's main works include a St. John Gualbert Enthroned, with Ten Saints for the church of Santa Trinita, an Annunciation (1464) in the Florentine Academy, two altarpieces in the Diocesan Museum of San Miniato, a Madonna with Child Enthroned in the Pinacoteca Nazionale of Siena, and a Coronation of the Virgin (1472) in the abbey church at San Pietro a Ruoti (Bucine. He also painter numerous works in the area of Volterra. His journals from the years 1453-1475, including the rates of remuneration for his work, are still preserved in the library of the Uffizi Gallery. They are known as Ricordanze.
Anton Romako
(October 20, 1832 - March 8, 1889) was an Austrian painter. Anton Romako was born in Atzgersdorf (now a district of Liesing, Vienna), as an illegitimate son of factory owner Josef Lepper and his housemaid Elisabeth Maria Anna Romako. He studied painting at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna (1847-49) but his teacher, Ferdinand Georg Waldmeller, considered him talentless. Later, he studied in Munich (1849) under Wilhelm Kaulbach, and subsequently in Venice, Rome and London. In the early 1850s he studied privately in Vienna under Carl Rahl, whose style Romako adopted. In 1854 he began travels to Italy and Spain and in 1857 settled in Rome as the favourite portrait, genre, and landscape painter for the local colony of foreigners. In 1862 Romako married Sophie Köbel, the daughter of architect Karl Köbel, and the pair had five children before Sophie left Romako in 1875 for her lover. In 1876 Romako returned to Vienna but failed to re-establish himself against the style representend by Hans Makart and increasingly relied on the charity of such wealthy patrons as Count Kuefstein. He made study trips to Hungary, Italy and France, and during the years 1882-84 he alternated between Paris and Geneva. Two daughters, Mathilde and Mary, committed suicide in 1887; Romako had never recovered from the shock. His last years were spent living in neglect near Vienna, where he died in poverty in 1889. Romako was buried at the Central cemetery in Vienna. In 1953 a street in Atzgersdorf was named after the painter: Romakogasse. Anton Romako's painting "The battle of Lissa" was selected as a motive for a recent commemorative coin: the 20 euro S.M.S. Erzherzog Ferdinand Max minted on September 15, 2004. His brother, Joseph von Romako, was a Naval Architect-Inspector of Austro-Hungarian Navy.
VASARI, Giorgio
Italian Mannerist Writer and Painter, 1511-1574 Italian painter, architect, and writer. Though he was a prolific painter in the Mannerist style, he is more highly regarded as an architect (he designed the Uffizi Palace, now the Uffizi Gallery), but even his architecture is overshadowed by his writings. His Lives of the Most Eminent Architects, Painters, and Sculptors (1550) offers biographies of early to late Renaissance artists. His style is eminently readable and his material is well researched, though when facts were scarce he did not hesitate to fill in the gaps. In his view, Giotto had revived the art of true representation after its decline in the early Middle Ages, and succeeding artists had brought that art progressively closer to the perfection achieved by Michelangelo.