1598-1664 Spanish Francisco de Zurbaran Galleries Spanish baroque painter, active mainly at Llerena, Madrid, and Seville. He worked mostly for ecclesiastical patrons. His early paintings, including Crucifixion (1627; Art Inst., Chicago), St. Michael (Metropolitan Mus.), and St. Francis (City Art Museum, St. Louis), often suggest the austere simplicity of wooden sculpture. The figures, placed close to the picture surface, are strongly modeled in dramatic light against dark backgrounds, indicating the influence of Caravaggio. They were clearly painted as altarpieces or devotional objects. In the 1630s the realistic style seen in his famous Apotheosis of St. Thomas Aquinas (1631; Seville) yields to a more mystical expression in works such as the Adoration of the Shepherds (1638; Grenoble); in this decade he was influenced by Ribera figural types and rapid brushwork. While in Seville, Zurbur??n was clearly influenced by Velazquez. After c.1640 the simple power of Zurbaran work lessened as Murillo influence on his painting increased (e.g., Virgin and Child with St. John, Fine Arts Gall., San Diego, Calif.). There are works by Zurbar??n in the Hispanic Society of America, New York City; the National Gallery, Washington, D.C.; and the Philadelphia Museum of Art..  Related Paintings of Francisco de Zurbaran :. | St Agatha | st. jacobo de la marca | almanzor | peter tothe apostle appears | margarita |
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Isaac Oliver
French-born English Miniaturist, ca.1560-1617 was a French-born English portrait miniature painter. Born in Rouen, he moved to London in 1568 with his Huguenot parents Peter and Epiphany Oliver to escape the Wars of Religion in France. He then studied miniature painting under Nicholas Hilliard; and developed a naturalistic style, which was largely influenced by Italian and Flemish art. He later married Sara, daughter of the well-known portrait painter Marcus Gheeraerts the Elder (c. 1520 ?C c. 1590) and his wife Susannah de Critz in 1602 after his first wife, Elizabeth, had died in 1599 ?C the mother of his eldest child: Peter Oliver, who was also a famous "limner". Susannah was the daughter of Troilus de Critz, a goldsmith from Antwerp, and close relative of John de Critz, the Queen's Serjeant-Painter. She was also the older sister or cousin of Magdalen de Critz who married Marcus Gheeraerts the Younger (1562 ?C 1635). After the death of Elizabeth I, he became a painter of James I's court,
Alesso Baldovinetti
(October 14, 1427??August 29, 1499) was an Italian early Renaissance painter. Baldovinetti was born in Florence to a family of a rich merchant. In 1448 he was registered as a member of the Guild of St. Luke: "Alesso di Baldovinetti, dipintore." He was a follower of the group of scientific realists and naturalists in art which included Andrea del Castagno, Paolo Uccello and Domenico Veneziano. Tradition says that he assisted in the decorations of the church of S. Egidio, however no records confirm this. These decoration were carried out during the years 1441 - 1451 by Domenico Veneziano and in conjunction with Andrea del Castagno. That he was commissioned to complete the series at a later date (1460) is certain. In 1462 Alesso was employed to paint the great fresco of the Annunciation in the cloister of the Annunziata basilica. The remains as we see them give evidence of the artist's power both of imitating natural detail with minute fidelity and of spacing his figures in a landscape with a large sense of air and distance; and they amply verify two separate statements of Vasari concerning him: that "he delighted in drawing landscapes from nature exactly as they are, whence we see in his paintings rivers; bridges, rocks, plants, fruits, roads, fields, cities, exercise grounds, and an infinity of other such things," and that he was an inveterate experimentalist in technical matters. His favourite method in wall-painting was to lay in his compositions in fresco and finish them a secco with a mixture of yolk of egg and liquid varnish. This, says Vasari, was with the view of protecting the painting from damp; but in course of time the parts executed with this vehicle scaled away, so that the great secret he hoped to have discovered turned out a failure. In 1463 he furnished a cartoon of the Nativity, which was executed in tarsia by Giuliano de Maiano in the sacristy of the cathedral and still exists. From 1466 date the groups of four Evangelists and four Fathers of the Church in fresco, together with the Annunciation on an oblong panel, which still decorate the Portuguese chapel in the basilica of San Miniato, and are given in error by Vasari to Piero Pollaiuolo. A fresco of the risen Christ between angels inside a Holy Sepulchre in the chapel of the Rucellai family, also still existing, belongs to 1467. In 1471 Alesso undertook important works for tile church of Santa Tr??nita on the commission of Bongianni Gianfigliazzi. First, to paint an altar-piece of the Virgin and Child with six saints; this was finished in 1472: next, a series of frescoes from the Old Testament which was to be completed according to contract within five years, but actually remained on hand for fully sixteen. In 1497 the finished series, which contained many portraits of leading Florentine citizens, was valued at a thousand gold forms by a committee consisting of Cosimo Rosselli, Benozzo Gozzoli, Perugino and Filippino Lippi; only some defaced fragments of it now remain.
Willem Bastiaan Tholen
was a Dutch painter, draftsman and printmaker, born in Amsterdam, 13 Feb 1860, died in The Hague, 5 Dec 1931. He came from an artistic family, who lived in Kampen from 1864. There he developed at an early age a lasting love of the Zuiderzee. In Kampen he became friendly with the young Jan Voerman; they entered the Amsterdam academy together in 1876, where Tholen studied under August Allebe. Subsequently he learned technical drawing at the Polytechnische School in Delft until 1878. Thereafter he spent three months in the studio of Paul Gabriël in Brussels, from whom he received his first real instruction in painting. In the following years Gabriël's advice was of particular importance for Tholen, as they worked together en plein air for many summers near Kampen and Giethoorn, among other places. In Gouda (1878-9) and Kampen (1880-85) he taught draftsmanship in order to support himself but after 1885 concentrated entirely on his own work. From 1887 he lived in The Hague, where he became friendly with the painters of The Hague school. He took an active part in the artistic life of The Hague and was a member of the Pulchri Studio.