1657-1747 Italian Francesco Solimena Gallery Francesco Solimena was born in Canale di Serino, near Avellino. He received early training from his father, Angelo Solimena, with whom he executed a Paradise for the cathedral of Nocera (place where he spend a big part of his life) and a Vision of St. Cyril of Alexandria for the church of San Domenico at Solofra. He settled in Naples in 1674, there he worked in the studio of Francesco di Maria and later Giacomo del Po[1]. He apparently had taken the clerical orders, but was patronized early on, and encouraged to become an artist by Cardinal Vincenzo Orsini (later Pope Benedict XIII)[2]. By the 1680s, he had independent fresco commissions, and his active studio came to dominate Neapolitan painting from the 1690s through the first four decades of the 18th century. He modeled his art??for he was a highly conventional painter??after the Roman Baroque masters, Luca Giordano and Giovanni Lanfranco, and Mattia Preti, whose technique of warm brownish shadowing Solimena emulated. Solimena painted many frescoes in Naples, altarpieces, celebrations of weddings and courtly occasions, mythological subjects, characteristically chosen for their theatrical drama, and portraits. His settings are suggested with a few details??steps, archways, balustrades, columns??concentrating attention on figures and their draperies, caught in pools and shafts of light. Art historians take pleasure in identifying the models he imitated or adapted in his compositions. His numerous preparatory drawings often mix media, combining pen-and-ink, chalk and watercolor washes. Francesco Solimena 'A study for the fresco cycle in the Sacristy of San Paolo Maggiore in Naples', Whitfield Fine Art.A typical example of the elaborately constructed allegorical "machines" of his early mature style, fully employing his mastery of chiaroscuro, is the Allegory of Rule (1690) from the Stroganoff collection, which has come to the State Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg. He apparently hoped to see his son Orazio follow a career in the law, for which he received a doctorate (de Domenici), but also became a painter. His large, efficiently structured atelier became a virtual academy, at the heart of cultural life in Naples. Among his many pupils were Francesco de Mura (1696-1784) , Giuseppe Bonito (1707-89), Pietro Capelli, Gaspare Traversi, and most notably Corrado Giaquinto and Sebastiano Conca. The Scottish portraitist Allan Ramsay spent three years in Solimena's studio. Solimena amassed a fortune, was made a baron and lived in sumptuous style founded on his success. Francesco Solimena died at Barra, near Naples, in 1747.  Related Paintings of Francesco Solimena :. | Portrait of Charles VI, Holy Roman Emperor | Bathseba im Bade | The Martyrdom of Sts Placidus and Flavia | Dido Receiveng Aeneas and Cupid Disguised as Ascanius | Dido Receiving Aeneas and Cupid Disguised as Ascanius |
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Edward William Cooke
British Painter, 1811-1880 was an English painter and gardener. Cooke was born in London. His father George and uncle, William Bernard, were both well-known engravers and Cooke was raised in their wide artistic circle. He was a precocious draughtsman and a skilled engraver from an early age, displayed an equal preference for marine subjects and published his 'Shipping and Craft' C a series of accomplished engravings C when he was 18, in 1829. He benefited from the advice of many of his father's associates, notably Clarkson Stanfield (whose principal marine follower he became) and David Roberts. Cooke began painting in oils in 1833, took formal lessons from James Stark in 1834 and first exhibited at the Royal Academy and British Institution in 1835, by which time his style was essentially formed. He went on to travel and paint with great industry at home and abroad, indulging his love of the 17th-century Dutch marine artists with a visit to Holland in 1837. He returned regularly over the next 23 years, studying the effects of the coastal landscape and light, as well as the works of the country's Old Masters, resulting in highly successful paintings. These included 'Beaching a Pink at Scheveningen' (National Maritime Museum, London), which he exhibited in 1855 at the Royal Academy, of which he was an Associate from 1851. He went on to travel in Scandinavia, Spain, North Africa and, above all, to Venice.") Cooke was "particularly attracted by the Isle of Wight, and on his formative visit of 1835 he made a thorough study of its fishing boats and lobster pots; above all he delighted in the beaches strewn with rocks of various kinds, fishing tackle, breakwaters and small timber-propped jetties He also had serious natural history and geological interests, being a Fellow of the Linnean Society, Fellow of the Geological Society and Fellow of the Zoological Society,
Justus Suttermans
(b Antwerp, bapt 28 Sept 1597; d Florence, 24 April 1681). Flemish painter Flemish painter,He is chiefly notable for his portraits of members of the Medici family as he was his court painter. His work can be found in both the Palatina Gallery and the Uffizi Gallery in Florence, and in many other galleries around the globe. During his lifetime he was feted as the finest portrait painter in Italy. He studied early on in Flanders and Antwerp, possibly with artists such as Villem de Vos, a nephew of the painter Marten de Vos and also Frans Pourbus the younger. He was eventually invited to Florence under the patronage of the Medici Family where he studied Italian portraitists such as Il Guercino, the Spanish Diego Velazquez and France's Pierre Mignard.
STUBBS, George
English Romantic Painter, 1724-1806 English painter, draughtsman and printmaker. His study of anatomy enabled him to paint horses, dogs and wild animals with unsurpassed truth to nature, while his innate sense of design enabled him to achieve graceful, rhythmic compositions. His contemporary reputation was chiefly based on portraits of horses and dogs; but he also painted human portraits, conversation pieces and imaginative subjects with animals.