Italian 1492-1546 Giulio Romano was born in Rome. In his native city, as a young assistant in Raphael's studio, he worked on the frescos in the Vatican loggias to designs by Raphael and in Raphael's Stanze in the Vatican painted a group of figures in the Fire in the Borgo (L'incendio di Borgo) fresco. He also collaborated on the decoration of the ceiling of the Villa Farnesina. After the death of Raphael in 1520, he helped complete the Vatican frescoes of the life of Constantine as well as Raphael's Coronation of the Virgin and the Transfiguration in the Vatican. In Rome, Giulio decorated the Villa Madama for Cardinal Giuliano de' Medici, afterwards Clement VII. The crowded Giulio Romano frescoes lack the stately and serene simplicity of his master. In the Palazzo Te, MantuaAfter the Sack of Rome in 1527 and the death of Leo X, artistic patronage in Rome slackened. Vasari tells how Baldassare Castiglione was delegated by Federico Gonzaga to procure Giulio to execute paintings and architectural and engineering projects for the duchy of Mantua. His masterpiece of architecture and fresco painting in that city is the suburban Palazzo Te, with its famous illusionistic frescos (c. 1525?C1535). He also helped rebuild the ducal palace in Mantua, reconstructed the cathedral, and designed the nearby Church of San Benedetto. Sections of Mantua that had been flood-prone were refurbished under Giulio's direction, and the duke's patronage and friendship never faltered: Giulio's annual income amounted to more than 1000 ducats. His studio became a popular school of art.  Related Paintings of Giulio Romano :. | Virgin and Child with the Infant St John | The Giants Hurled Down from Olympus | The Triumph o Titus and Vespasian (mk05) | The Adoration of the Shepherds | La nativite de l'enfant jesus avec l'adoration des bergers entre Saint Jean l'Evangeliste et Saint Longin |
Related Artists:
TOMMASO DA MODENA
Italian Painter, ca.1325-1379
WEST, Benjamin
American Neoclassical Painter, 1738-1820 American historical painter who worked in England. He was born in Springfield, Pa., in a house that is now a memorial museum at Swarthmore College. After some instruction from a local artist named William Williams, he set up as a portrait painter in Philadelphia at 18, subsequently moving to New York City. In 1760 he went to Europe, where he remained for the rest of his life. For three years he studied in Italy. Working under the tutelage of Anton Mengs, he was also inspired by the classical research of Johann Winckelmann. He then settled in London, becoming a leader of the neoclassical movement. Under the patronage of George III, commissions came to him in great numbers, and in 1772 he was appointed historical painter to the king. A founder of the Royal Academy, he succeeded Sir Joshua Reynolds as its president in 1792. West executed more than 400 canvases, chiefly historical, mythological, and religious subjects painted on a heroic scale. He had many pupils and was a generous friend and adviser to younger artists, particularly American painters studying in England, among whom were Washington Allston, Samuel Morse, Charles Willson Peale, Gilbert Stuart, and John Singleton Copley. His influence on American painting of the period was predominant. Among West's best-known works are Death of General Wolfe (Grosvenor Gall., London) and Penn's Treaty with the Indians (Pa. Acad. of the Fine Arts). In these paintings he created a new departure in historical painting by clothing his figures in the costume of their period instead of the traditional classical garb.
Jozef Israels
1824-1911 Dutch Jozef Israels Gallery Israels has often been compared to Jean-François Millet. As artists, even more than as painters in the strict sense of the word, they both, in fact, saw in the life of the poor and humble a motive for expressing with peculiar intensity their wide human sympathy; but Millet was the poet of placid rural life, while in almost all Israels' pictures there is some piercing note of woe. Edmond Duranty said of them that they were painted with gloom and suffering. He began with historical and dramatic subjects in the romantic style of the day. By chance, after an illness, he went to recruit his strength at the fishing-town of Zandvoort near Haarlem, and there he was struck by the daily tragedy of life. Thenceforth he was possessed by a new vein of artistic expression, sincerely realistic, full of emotion and pity. Among his more important subsequent works are The Zandvoort Fisherman (in the Amsterdam gallery), The Silent House (which gained a gold medal at the Brussels Salon, 1858) and Village Poor (a prize at Manchester). In 1862 he achieved great success in London with his Shipwrecked, purchased by Mr Young, and The Cradle, two pictures that the Athenaeum magazine described as the most touching pictures of the exhibition.