English Pre-Raphaelite Painter, 1828-1882 Rossetti's first major paintings display some of the realist qualities of the early Pre-Raphaelite movement. His Girlhood of Mary, Virgin and Ecce Ancilla Domini both portray Mary as an emaciated and repressed teenage girl. His incomplete picture Found was his only major modern-life subject. It depicted a prostitute, lifted up from the street by a country-drover who recognises his old sweetheart. However, Rossetti increasingly preferred symbolic and mythological images to realistic ones. This was also true of his later poetry. Many of the ladies he portrayed have the image of idealized Botticelli's Venus, who was supposed to portray Simonetta Vespucci. Although he won support from the John Ruskin, criticism of his clubs caused him to withdraw from public exhibitions and turn to waterhum, which could be sold privately. In 1861, Rossetti published The Early Italian Poets, a set of English translations of Italian poetry including Dante Alighieri's La Vita Nuova. These, and Sir Thomas Malory's Morte d'Arthur, inspired his art in the 1850s. His visions of Arthurian romance and medieval design also inspired his new friends of this time, William Morris and Edward Burne-Jones. Rossetti also typically wrote sonnets for his pictures, such as "Astarte Syraica". As a designer, he worked with William Morris to produce images for stained glass and other decorative devices. Both these developments were precipitated by events in his private life, in particular by the death of his wife Elizabeth Siddal. She had taken an overdose of laudanum shortly after giving birth to a stillborn child. Rossetti became increasingly depressed, and buried the bulk of his unpublished poems in his wife's grave at Highgate Cemetery, though he would later have them exhumed. He idealised her image as Dante's Beatrice in a number of paintings, such as Beata Beatrix. These paintings were to be a major influence on the development of the European Symbolist movement. In these works, Rossetti's depiction of women became almost obsessively stylised. He tended to portray his new lover Fanny Cornforth as the epitome of physical eroticism, whilst another of his mistresses Jane Burden, the wife of his business partner William Morris, was glamorised as an ethereal goddess.  Related Paintings of Dante Gabriel Rossetti :. | Beata Beatrix | Mariana | Arthur-s Tomb | Ecce Ancilla Domini | Fazio's Mistress |
Related Artists:
Bertha Worms
painted Missing Naples in 1895
HAMEN, Juan van der
Spanish painter (b. 1596, Madrid, d. 1631, Madrid). was a Spanish painter, a master of the still life paintings, also called bodegones. During his lifetime, he was prolific and versatile, painting allegories, landscapes, and large-scale works for churches and convents. However, today he is remembered mostly for his still lifes. In the 1620s, He popularized still life painting in Madrid. Juan van der Hamen y Leon was baptized on 8 April 1596 in Madrid, therefore, he must have been born there just days before that date. He was the son of Jehan van der Hamen, a Flemish courtier, who had moved to Madrid from Brussels before 1586, and Dorotea Whitman Gemez de Leon, a half-Flemish mother of noble Toledan ancestry . Van der Hamen and his two brothers Pedro and Lorenzo (both of whom were writers) emphasized their Spanish roots by using all or part of their maternal grandmother's family name, Gemez de Leon. The painter's father, Jan van der Hamen, had come to Spain, as an archer, to the court of Philip II were he settled, married, and his children were born. According to 18th-century sources, the artist's father had also been a painter, but there is no evidence for this. Juan van der Hamen inherited his father's honorary positions at court and also served as unsalaried painter of the king. Van der Hamen's artistic activity in the service of the crown is first recorded on 10 September 1619, when he was paid for painting a still-life for the country palace of El Pardo, to the north of Madrid. Noted for his versatility, Juan van der Hamen painted religious history paintings; allegories, landscapes, low-life subjects, portraits and still-lifes but the last two categories brought him the greatest fame. He served at the courts of Philip III and Philip IV and established the popularity of the new genre of still-life in Madrid in the 1620s. A prolific artist, van der Hamen painted all his works during the first decade of the reign of Philip IV. It is known that he painted more still lifes in 1622 than in any other period of his life. He also reached great personal fame as a portraitist, being this field, the one that provided him with greater personal success, since still life was considered a lesser genre. He executed a portrait of Philip IV and worked during the 1620s in a series of portraits of the principal intellectuals and writers of his time, including: Lope de Vega, Francisco de Quevedo, Luis de Gengora, Jose de Valdivieso, Juan Perez de Montalbon, Juan Ruiz de Alarcen and Francisco de Rioja. On van der Hamen's death, twenty of these portraits were inventoried as a single item among his belongings. The portrait of his older brother, Lorenzo van der Hamen, probably belonged to this series. The series itself was a focal point for philosophic speculation on the art of portraiture by some of the most distinguished minds of the time, who frequently praised Juan van der Hamen in verse and prose. Among Van der Hamen portraits, there is one of a dwarf, painted around 1623 in a powerful naturalistic style. This painting (Madrid, Museo del Prado) anticipated the later made by Velezquez. In 1626, van der Hamen painted cardinal Francesco Barberini, after a previous portrait by Velezquez had failed to please the sitter. Well satisfied with his work Cardinal Barberini acquired three further works from him. As a religious painter Juan van der Hamen worked for several religious institutions in and around Madrid and Toledo, like the Monastery of the Descalzas Reales, in Madrid, for which he painted altars. Few of these paintings are extant. The best surviving examples of his religious work are in the cloister of the Royal Convent of La Encarnacion in Madrid, painted in 1625 in a naturalistic tenebristic style. Juan van der Hamen was also a pioneer in the field of flower painting. Van der Hamen probably began painting floral arrangements in response to the flower pieces of Flemish artists, such as Jan Brueghel, who were regarded as exemplary masters in the field and whose works were much sought after in Spain. One good example of his work as a flower painter is his Offering to Flora , a visual poem that parallels the lyric verse of his time, in which he united his skills as portraitist and flower painter to produce one of the most beautiful paintings of the allegory of spring.
Hendrick Danckerts
(c.1625 - 1680) was a Dutch Golden Age landscape painter and engraver. Danckerts was born in The Hague, where he learned his trade and remained until 1653.He visited England for the first time in 1650.In 1653 he went to Italy, where he stayed for five years. He then moved to England where he entered the service of Charles II and the Duke of York. He painted Italianate landscapes, especially views of harbors and royal residences. He also produced portraits and devotional pictures and made engravings after the Italian old masters in the Royal Collection. He left England in 1679due to the public hostility towards Roman Catholics after the Popish Plot controversy. He died soon after in Amsterdam.