Italian High Renaissance Painter, ca.1430-1516 (b ?1431-6; d Venice, 29 Nov 1516). Painter and draughtsman, son of (1) Jacopo Bellini. Although the professional needs of his family background may have encouraged him to specialize at an early date in devotional painting, by the 1480s he had become a leading master in all types of painting practised in 15th-century Venice. Later, towards the end of his long life, he added the new genres of mythological painting and secular allegory to his repertory of subject-matter. His increasing dominance of Venetian art led to an enormous expansion of his workshop after c. 1490; and this provided the training-ground not only for his numerous shop-hands and imitators (generically known as Belliniani) but probably also for a number of major Venetian painters of the next generation. Throughout his career, Giovanni showed an extraordinary capacity for absorbing a wide range of artistic influences, both from within Venetian tradition and from outside. He also oversaw a technical revolution in the art of painting, involving the gradual abandonment of the traditional Italian use of egg tempera in favour of the technique of oil painting pioneered in the Netherlands. It was thanks to Giovanni Bellini that the Venetian school of painting was transformed during the later 15th century from one mainly of local significance to one with an international reputation. He thus set the stage for the triumphs of Venetian painting in the 16th century and for the central contribution that Venice was to make to the history of European art.  Related Paintings of Giovanni Bellini :. | Naked Young Woman in Front of the Mirror | The Virgin and the Child with Two Saints | St Francis in the Wilderness (mk08) | The Virgin and Child Between Peter and Sebastian (mk05) | Die Tugend |
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CRANACH, Lucas the Elder
German painter (b. 1472, Kronach, d. 1553, Weimar). German painter and engraver. The son of a painter, he settled in Wittenberg c.1504 and was court painter successively under three electors of Saxony. There he maintained a flourishing workshop and was twice burgomaster. Cranach was a close friend of Martin Luther, whose doctrine he upheld in numerous paintings and woodcuts, and he has been called the painter of the Reformation. He was a rapid and prolific painter, and the work turned out by his studio is uneven in quality. Naïve and fanciful, often awkward in draftsmanship, it has, nonetheless, freshness and originality and a warm, rich palette. His portraits are particularly successful. Among his best-known works are Repose in Egypt (Gemäldgalerie, Staatliche Mus., Berlin-Dahlem); Judgment of Paris (Staatliche Kunsthalle, Karlsruhe); Adam and Eve (Courtauld Inst., London); and Crucifixion (Weimar). The latter contains figures of Luther and Cranach. His many famous protraits include those of Elector John Frederick and Self-Portrait (Uffizi). Cranach was also an accomplished miniaturist. He produced a few copperplates and designs for woodcuts. His son and pupil Lucas Cranach, the Younger, 1515C86,
WEYDEN, Rogier van der
Netherlandish Northern Renaissance Painter, ca.1400-1464 major early Flemish master, known also as Roger de la Pasture. He is believed to have studied with Robert Campin. His early works also show the influence of Jan van Eyck. Van Eyck, however, had been a master at objective rendering of detail, whereas Roger in his work portrayed emotions with an assurance that has not been surpassed. His ability to depict piety is reflected in the early masterpiece Descent from the Cross (c.1435; Prado); he depicted with significant restraint the profound grief of the mourners grouped around the tragic figure of Jesus. His composition strongly affected later representations of the theme. Roger became City Painter in Brussels in 1436. He then produced a series of undated altarpieces including the Last Judgment (hospital, Beaune), the Braque Triptych (Louvre), Crucifixion with Donors (Vienna), and Adoration of the Magi (Berlin), which vary in execution from a stress on sumptuous details to a more sculptural rendering of the figures. Roger is believed to have made a pilgrimage to Italy in the holy year 1450. Whether this supposed excursion had any effect on his style is much debated. It has been shown that his Entombment (Uffizi) bears an affinity to the Tuscan treatment of the subject, particularly by Fra Angelico, and that Roger's Virgin and Child with Saints (Frankfurt) has a strong resemblance to the Italian religious art of the day. His style is, however, highly individual. His religious paintings and his portraits are characterized by a straightforward monumentality. The portraits, such as that of a young lady (National Gall. of Art, Washington, D.C.) and of Francesco d'Este (Metropolitan Mus.) exhibit a simple clarity of contour and psychological penetration. Other notable works are his St. Luke Painting the Virgin, of which a version or replica is in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, the Crucifixion
Gustave Loiseau
French, 1865-1935 French painter. He was apprenticed first to a butcher and in 1880 to a house painter. It was not until 1887, when he received a small inheritance, that he was able to devote himself to painting. He spent a year studying modelling and design at the Ecole des Arts D?coratifs in Paris and then entered the studio of the French landscape painter Fernand Just Quignon (b 1854) for six months in 1889. After settling in 1890 in Pont-Aven in Brittany, where he met the painters Maxime Maufra and Henri Moret (1856-1913), he produced such carefully executed works as the Green Rocks (1893; Geneva, Petit Pal.). It was not until 1894, however, that he met Gauguin on the latter return from Tahiti, and though he did not accept Gauguin synthetist ideas the encounter led to a stronger structure and freer brushstrokes in his subsequent work.