Greek-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.  Related Paintings of El Greco :. | virgin with santa ines and santa tecla | St Sebastian | The Modena Triptych | The Burial of Count Orgaz | The Purification of the Temple |
Related Artists:
Georg Volmar
Swiss, 1770-1831
Marten van Cleve
Flemish, 1527-1581,Brother of Hendrik van Cleve III. His presumed date of birth is derived from a document of 2 April 1567 in which he declared his age to be 40. In 1551-2 he became a master in the Antwerp Guild of St Luke and, according to van Mander, followed his brother into the studio of Frans Floris. If this is correct, it was probably c. 1553-5, for motifs drawn from Floris's work appear in Marten van Cleve's paintings executed during these years. Marten married Maria de Greve on 7 January 1556, apparently setting up his own studio at about the same time. Apprentices are regularly recorded from 1558 onwards, and it is probable that his own sons, Gillis II, Marten the younger, Joris and Nicolaas, also worked in the studio. Throughout the 1560s and 1570s Marten van Cleve's workshop was very productive, but the majority of works painted consisted of copies of his own originals. Van Mander's statement that the artist collaborated with a number of landscape painters, including his brother Hendrik III, Gillis van Coninxloo III, Gillis Mostaert and Jacob Grimmer, is confirmed by 17th-century inventories.
Gavin Hamilton
Scottish Neoclassical Painter, 1723-1798,Scottish painter, archaeologist and dealer, active in Italy. He was educated at Glasgow University and in 1748 arrived in Rome to study portrait painting under Agostino Masucci. He lodged with the architects James Stuart and Nicholas Revett; they probably encouraged him to visit Herculaneum and the recently discovered archaeological site of Pompeii, which had a profound effect on his subsequent career. Convinced that 'the ancients have surpassed the moderns, both in painting and sculpture', Hamilton undertook a systematic study of Classical antiquities during the 1750s and 1760s. In 1751 he was briefly in Scotland, where he painted a full-length portrait of Elizabeth Gunning, Duchess of Hamilton (Lennoxlove, Lothian), in a conventional style derived from van Dyck. He returned to Rome in 1752 and remained there, with the exception of short visits to England, for the rest of his life. In 1755 he was introduced by Anton Raphael Mengs to Johann Joachim Winckelmann, who was to become one of the leading theorists of Neo-classicism. In the same year Hamilton entertained Robert Adam, who studied in Rome from 1755 to 1757. He was to know and encourage almost all the British artists who worked in Rome during the second half of the 18th century. Henry Fuseli, who was not an uncritical admirer, wrote of Hamilton in 1805,