Italian Rococo Era Painter, 1708-1787 He was born in Lucca, the son of a goldsmith, Paolino Batoni. He moved to Rome in 1727, and apprenticed with Agostino Masucci, Sebastiano Conca and/or Francesco Imperiale (1679-1740). By the early 1740s, however, he started to receive independent commissions. In 1741, he was inducted into the Accademia di San Luca. His celebrated painting, The Ecstasy of Saint Catherine of Siena (1743) illustrates his academic refinement of the late-Baroque style. Another masterpiece, his Fall of Simon Magus was painted initially for the St Peter's Basilica. Batoni became a highly-fashionable painter in Rome, particularly after his rival, the proto-neoclassicist Anton Raphael Mengs, departed for Spain in 1761. Batoni befriended Winckelmann and, like him, aimed in his painting to the restrained classicism of painters from earlier centuries, such as Raphael and Poussin, rather than to the work of the Venetian artists then in vogue. He was greatly in demand for portraits, particularly by the British traveling through Rome , who took pleasure in commissioning standing portraits set in the milieu of antiquities, ruins, and works of art. There are records of over 200 portraits by Batoni of visiting British patrons . Such "Grand Tour" portraits by Batoni came to proliferate in the British private collections, thus ensuring the genre's popularity in the United Kingdom, where Sir Joshua Reynolds would become its leading practitioner. In 1760, the painter Benjamin West, while visiting Rome would complain that Italian artists "talked of nothing, looked at nothing but the works of Pompeo Batoni". In 1769, the double portrait of Joseph II and Leopold II won an Austrian nobility for Batoni. He also portrayed Pope Pius VI. According to a rumor, he bequeathed his palette and brushes to Jacques-Louis David.  Related Paintings of BATONI, Pompeo :. | Portrait of Charles Crowle | Portrait of Princess Giacinta Orsini Buoncampagni Ludovisi | Susanna and the Elders gmg | Sir Gregory Page-Turner dfhf | Sensuality dhg |
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LENS, Andries Cornelis
Flemish painter (b. 1739, Antwerpen, d. 1822, Bruxelles). Flemish painter and writer. He was the son of the flower painter Cornelis Lens (d after 1766) and studied first under Charles Ykens II (1719-53) and then under Balthazar Beschey. In 1756 he was awarded first prize at the Academie of Antwerp and in 1763 was appointed to the staff on the strength of his decoration (destr.) of the refectory of the Alexians at Lier. He also came to the attention of Charles Alexandre, Duke of Lorraine and Bar, Governor-General of the Netherlands
Johann Evangelist
Johann Evangelist Holzer (December 24, 1709 - July 21, 1740) was an Austrian-German painter. Holzer was born in Burgeis, Mals, in the Vinschgau Valley of South Tyrol, as the son of a miller. He was sent to undertake a classical course of study at Marienberg Abbey, but wished to study art; a portrait he painted of Johann Baptist Murr, then the abbot of the abbey, convinced his father to yield to his wishes. He studied under Nikolaus Auer and made rapid progress. At the age of 18 he painted the altarpiece of the Marienberg Abbey church, depicting Saint Joseph as patron of the afflicted, ill, and dying. He then went to Straubing, where he learned under Joseph Anton Merz how to paint frescos, which would become the main source of his later fame. He helped Merz paint the frescos of Oberalteich Abbey, and while in Straubing also painted Saint Anthony of Padua for the Franciscan church there. 1738/39 was in the painting of Eichstätt for the high altar of the Schutzengelkirche It is Holzer's largest painting on canvas (H: 8,36 m; B: 4,28 m) and impresses through movement, gesture, a dynamic composition, and a sophisticated lighting design. Although there are two pictures (side altars) signatures of Bergmeller, they will Holzer, assigned by the archives occupied painter of the high altar painting.
Peter Paul Rubens
Flemish Baroque Era Painter, 1577-1640 Peter Paul Rubens (June 28, 1577 ?C May 30, 1640) was a prolific seventeenth-century Flemish Baroque painter, and a proponent of an exuberant Baroque style that emphasized movement, color, and sensuality. He is well-known for his Counter-Reformation altarpieces, portraits, landscapes, and history paintings of mythological and allegorical subjects. In addition to running a large studio in Antwerp which produced paintings popular with nobility and art collectors throughout Europe, Rubens was a classically-educated humanist scholar, art collector, and diplomat who was knighted by both Philip IV, king of Spain, and Charles I, king of England. Rubens was a prolific artist. His commissioned works were mostly religious subjects, "history" paintings, which included mythological subjects, and hunt scenes. He painted portraits, especially of friends, and self-portraits, and in later life painted several landscapes. Rubens designed tapestries and prints, as well as his own house. He also oversaw the ephemeral decorations of the Joyous Entry into Antwerp by the Cardinal-Infante Ferdinand in 1635. His drawings are mostly extremely forceful but not detailed; he also made great use of oil sketches as preparatory studies. He was one of the last major artists to make consistent use of wooden panels as a support medium, even for very large works, but he used canvas as well, especially when the work needed to be sent a long distance. For altarpieces he sometimes painted on slate to reduce reflection problems. His fondness of painting full-figured women gave rise to the terms 'Rubensian' or 'Rubenesque' for plus-sized women. The term 'Rubensiaans' is also commonly used in Dutch to denote such women.