Italian Painter, ca.1459-1517
Italian painter. He belonged to the generation between Giovanni Bellini and Giorgione and was one of the leading painters of early Renaissance Venice. His major works, several of which are signed, are almost all church altarpieces, usually depicting the Virgin and Child enthroned with saints; he also produced a large number of smaller half-length Madonnas. His autograph paintings are executed with great sensitivity and consummate craftsmanship. Fundamental to his artistic formation was the style that Bellini had evolved by the 1470s and 1480s; other important influences were Antonello da Messina and Alvise Vivarini. Although Cima was always capable of modest innovation, his style did not undergo any radical alteration during a career of some 30 years, and his response to the growing taste for Giorgionesque works from the early 16th century remained superficial. He seems to have maintained a sizeable workshop, Related Paintings of CIMA da Conegliano :. | Madonna of the Orange Tree | Recreation by our Gallery | Madonna of the Orange Tree dfg | Madonna Enthroned with the Child, St Francis and four Angels (detail) sd | The Annunciation (detail) dsg | Related Artists:
Albert BaertsoenBelgian, 1866-1922.Belgian painter and etcher. The son of a successful mill-owner and an excellent musician, he was a pupil and friend of Gustave Den Duyts (1850-97), and later, at the Ghent Acad?mie, of Jean Delvin (1853-1922). He was involved in the exhibiting society LEssor in Brussels as well as the triennial salons held in Brussels, Antwerp and Ghent in rotation. Among his earliest important works are The Scheldt at Dendermonde (1887; Ghent, Mus. S. Kst.), which he painted beside Isidore Meyers (1836-1917) and Franz Courtens in a Realist style characteristic of the Dendermonde school. In 1889-90 he attended the studio of Alfred Roll in Paris, where he met Jacques-Emile Blanche and Charles Cottet, and became particularly closely associated with Frits Thaulow, Emile-Ren? M?nard and Edmond Aman-Jean. He exhibited regularly at the Salon in Paris. Although Baertsoen is considered to be one of the first Belgian Impressionists, he belonged to no particular school. He was more than a descriptive landscape painter, for he sought to evoke through the depiction of the natural world a mood of melancholy and resignation. He painted silent streets, rocks, rivers and canals in Bruges, Li?ge, Nieuwpoort, Diksmuide and in London, where he stayed during World War I. His most important paintings, however, were inspired by his native town, Ghent, of which he built up a remarkable portrait over the years in such works as Barges in the Snow (1901) and Ghent in the Evening (1903; both Brussels, Mus. A. Mod.). A broad, spontaneous technique, great delicacy of nuance, deep sincerity as well as a certain meditative quality characterize his work, which is limited in quantity. Baertsoen played an important role in Belgian cultural life of his period and was elected to the Acad?mie Royale des Beaux-Arts in 1919.
El GrecoGreek-born Spanish Mannerist Painter, 1541-1614
Considered a representative of late Renaissance Spanish art, El Greco was actually born in Greece, on the island of Crete. After studying in Venice under Titian, El Greco settled in Toledo, Spain in 1577. At the time he was wildly popular, his emotionally religious paintings being just the ticket for the hometown of the Spanish Inquisition. After his death his work was largely ignored until the beginning of the 20th century; now he considered one of the inspired geniuses of Western art. His distinctive style features bold shapes and colors, with elongated and slightly distorted figures.
In Toledo El Greco was in constant demand and liked living large: he maintained a private orchestra to accompany his meals.
Franz Xaver WinterhalterGerman 1805-1873
Franz Xaver Winterhalter Galleries
German painter and lithographer. He trained as a draughtsman and lithographer in the workshop of Karl Ludwig Scheler (1785-1852) in Freiburg im Breisgau and went to Munich in 1823, sponsored by the industrialist Baron Eichtal. In 1825 he began a course of study at the Akademie and was granted a stipend by Ludwig I, Grand Duke of Baden. The theoretical approach to art of the Akademie under the direction of Peter Cornelius was unfamiliar to him, as in Freiburg he had been required to paint in a popular style. He found the stimulus for his future development in the studio of Joseph Stieler, a portrait painter who was much in demand and who derived inspiration from French painting. Winterhalter became his collaborator in 1825. From Stieler he learnt to make the heads of figures emerge from shadow and to use light in the modelling of faces. He moved to Karlsruhe in 1830 with his brother Hermann Winterhalter (1808-92), who had also trained with Scheler and had followed him to Munich.