French 1600-1682 Claude Lorrain Galleries In Rome, not until the mid-17th century were landscapes deemed fit for serious painting. Northern Europeans, such as the Germans Elsheimer and Brill, had made such views pre-eminent in some of their paintings (as well as Da Vinci in his private drawings or Baldassarre Peruzzi in his decorative frescoes of vedute); but not until Annibale Carracci and his pupil Domenichino do we see landscape become the focus of a canvas by a major Italian artist. Even with the latter two, as with Lorrain, the stated themes of the paintings were mythic or religious. Landscape as a subject was distinctly unclassical and secular. The former quality was not consonant with Renaissance art, which boasted its rivalry with the work of the ancients. The second quality had less public patronage in Counter-Reformation Rome, which prized subjects worthy of "high painting," typically religious or mythic scenes. Pure landscape, like pure still-life or genre painting, reflected an aesthetic viewpoint regarded as lacking in moral seriousness. Rome, the theological and philosophical center of 17th century Italian art, was not quite ready for such a break with tradition. In this matter of the importance of landscape, Lorrain was prescient. Living in a pre-Romantic era, he did not depict those uninhabited panoramas that were to be esteemed in later centuries, such as with Salvatore Rosa. He painted a pastoral world of fields and valleys not distant from castles and towns. If the ocean horizon is represented, it is from the setting of a busy port. Perhaps to feed the public need for paintings with noble themes, his pictures include demigods, heroes and saints, even though his abundant drawings and sketchbooks prove that he was more interested in scenography. Lorrain was described as kind to his pupils and hard-working; keenly observant, but an unlettered man until his death. The painter Joachim von Sandrart is an authority for Claude's life (Academia Artis Pictoriae, 1683); Baldinucci, who obtained information from some of Claude's immediate survivors, relates various incidents to a different effect (Notizie dei professoni del disegno). John Constable described Claude Lorrain as "the most perfect landscape painter the world ever saw", and declared that in Claude??s landscape "all is lovely ?C all amiable ?C all is amenity and repose; the calm sunshine of the heart"  Related Paintings of Claude Lorrain :. | The Departure of Hagar and Ishmael | Moses Rescued from the Waters | Landscape with Hagar and the Angel | Landschaft mit Apollo, den Musen und einem Flubgott | Landscape with the Finding of Moses sdfg |
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Denis Dighton
1792?C1827
Jan Antonisz. van Ravesteyn
(1572(?) - buried June 21, 1657) was a successful painter to the Dutch court in The Hague. Van Ravensteyn was born in The Hague. It is unknown who taught him how to paint, but he was a follower of the Delft portrait painter Michiel Jansz van Mierevelt. Van Ravesteyn is mentioned there in the city archives 1597. From 1598 until his death he lived in the Hague, where in 1598 he became a member of the Guild of St. Luke of the Hague. In 1604 he married Anna Arentsz van Berendrecht and in the same year he was mentioned as a good painter by Karel van Mander (though his earliest dated works are from 1611). In 1608 he bought a house on the Molstraat and in 1628 he moved in the Molstraat. In 1640 his wife was buried and in the same year his daughter Marie married one of his pupils, the painter Adriaen Hanneman. In 1654 he moved to the Nobelstraat next to the house of his daughter. In 1656 he left the guild with a group of dissatified painter friends and was one of the founders of the Confrerie Pictura. He was a Catholic and his name occurs often as a witness in the records of the church in the Molstraat, such as for the marriage of his daughter Agnes in 1641 with Willem van Culemborgh. His portrait was painted by Sir Anthony van Dyck and he produced Schutterstuk works. His workshop produced many portraits for the royal house of Nassau and he competed with Miereveld for several commissions. Van Ravesteyn was in turn, the teacher of Dirck Abrahamsz., Leendert Barthouts, Johannes Harmensz. Borsman, Aelbert Dircksz. Coeppier, Pieter Craen, Jacob Dirksz. van den Enden, Fransise de Goltz, Adriaen Hanneman, Barent Jansz., Thomas Ouwater, Clement Ram, Jan Rassenbourch, Frederick Sonnius, Dirck Verlaer, Jan Pous Voet and Pauwels Willemsz.
Ivan Argunov
Russian Rococo Era Painter , 1727/1729-1802 Russian painter and teacher. He came from a family of serfs, belonging to the Counts Sheremetev, that produced several painters and architects. In about 1746-7 he was a pupil of Georg Christoph Grooth (1716-49), who painted portraits of the Sheremetev family. With Grooth, Argunov worked on the decoration of the court church at Tsarskoye Selo (now Pushkin). A full-length icon of St John of Damascus (1749; Pushkin, Pal.-Mus.), in Rococo style, is distinguished by its secular, decorative character. The Dying Cleopatra (1750; Moscow, Tret'yakov Gal.) is typical of Rococo decorative painting of the mid-18th century, with its striking combination of light, soft tones. Argunov subsequently painted in a quite different style, mainly producing portraits, of which about 60 are known. Among the first of these are pendant portraits of Ivan Lobanov-Rostovsky and his wife (1750 and 1754; St Petersburg, Rus. Mus.), in which the sitters are idealized, as in ceremonial court portraits.