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 | Charles VI and Count Gundaker Althann | Bathseba im Bade | judit med holofernes huvud | LAssomption et le Couronnement de la Vierge |
Related Artists:
Louise Rayner
Victorian Women Artists,English 1832 - 1924. He was a British watercolor artist. Her parents, Samuel Rayner and Anne Rayner (nee Manser) were both noted artists, the former Samuel having been accepted for exhibition at the Royal Academy when he was 15. Four of Louise's sisters - Ann ("Nancy"), Margaret, Rose and Frances - and her brother Richard were also artists. The family lived in Matlock Bath and Derby before moving to London in 1842. Louise studied painting from 15, with the guidance of her father and later with artist friends such as George Cattermole, Edmund Niemann, David Roberts and Frank Stone. Her first exhibited work was entitled The Interior of Haddon Chapel, shown at the Royal Academy in 1852, the first of a series of oils. From 1860, however, her medium was watercolour, which she exhibited for over 50 years via organisations including the Society of Lady Artists, Royal Academy, Royal Watercolour Society and the Royal Society of British Artists. She lived in Chester but travelled extensively, painting British scenes, during the summers in 1870s and 1880s. Her paintings are very detailed and highly picturesque populated street scenes capturing the "olde worlde" character of British towns and cities. Her paintings are very popular today as prints and on jigsaw puzzles. Around 1910 she moved with her sister to Tunbridge Wells, and later to St Leonards, where she died in 1924.
Agustin Riancho Y Gomez De Porras
Spanish , Entrambasmestas, Cantabria 1841 - Ontaneda, Cantabria 1929.
Philippe-Augustin Immenraet
1627-1679 Flemish Philippe Augustin Immenraet Gallery