b.c. 1527, Milan, d.1593, Milan Italian Giuseppe Arcimboldo Galleries Arcimboldo was born in Milan in 1527, the son of Biagio, a painter who did work for the office of the Fabbrica in the Duomo.Arcimboldo was commissioned to do stained glass window designs beginning in 1549, including the Stories of St. Catherine of Alexandria vitrage at the Duomo. In 1556 he worked with Giuseppe Meda on frescoes for the Cathedral of Monza. In 1558, he drew the cartoon for a large tapestry of the Dormition of the Virgin Mary, which still hangs in the Como Cathedral today. In 1562 he became court portraitist to Ferdinand I at the Habsburg court in Vienna, and later, to Maximilian II and his son Rudolf II at the court in Prague. He was also the court decorator and costume designer. King Augustus of Saxony, who visited Vienna in 1570 and 1573, saw Arcimboldo's work and commissioned a copy of his "The Four Seasons" which incorporates his own monarchic symbols. Arcimboldo's conventional work, on traditional religious subjects, has fallen into oblivion, but his portraits of human heads made up of vegetables, fruit and tree roots, were greatly admired by his contemporaries and remain a source of fascination today. Art critics debate whether these paintings were whimsical or the product of a deranged mind.. A majority of scholars hold to the view, however, that given the Renaissance fascination with riddles, puzzles, and the bizarre (see, for example, the grotesque heads of Leonardo da Vinci, a fellow Milanese), Arcimboldo, far from being mentally imbalanced, catered to the taste of his times. Arcimboldo died in Milan, to which he retired after leaving the Habsburg service. It was during this last phase of his career that he produced the composite portrait of Rudolph II (see above), as well as his self-portrait as the Four Seasons. His Italian contemporaries honored him with poetry and manuscripts celebrating his illustrious career. His hidden-face still-lives are a possible influence on his younger Lombard contemporary Caravaggio, whose painting of fruit in the Brera museum in Milan ranks as one of the earliest independent still-lives. When the Swedish army invaded Prague in 1648, during the Thirty Years' War, many of Arcimboldo's paintings were taken from Rudolf II's collection. His works can be found in Vienna's Kunsthistorisches Museum and the Habsburg Schloss Ambras in Innsbruck, the Louvre in Paris, as well as numerous museums in Sweden. In Italy, his work is in Cremona, Brescia, and the Uffizi Gallery in Florence. The Wadsworth Atheneum in Hartford, Connecticut, the Denver Art Museum in Denver, Colorado, the Menil Foundation in Houston, Texas, and the Candie Museum in Guernsey also own paintings by Archimboldo.  Related Paintings of Giuseppe Arcimboldo :. | Giuseppe Arcimboldo's art | Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian II. of Austria and his wife Infanta Maria of Spain with their children | Autumn | Vegetables in a Bowl or The Vegetable Gardener | Spring |
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Dirck van Baburen
b.c. 1595, Utrecht, Netherlands. d.Feb. 21, 1624, Utrecht Dutch Dirck van Baburen Gallery
Julio Romero de Torres
was a Spanish painter. He was born and died in Cerdoba, Spain, where he lived most of his life. His father was the famous painter Rafael Romero Barros and his mother was Rosario de Torres Delgado. Julio learned about art from his father who was the director, curator and founder of Cerdoba's Museo Provincial de Bellas Artes and an impressionist painter. He took an interest in art at a young age and started studying at the School of Fine Arts when he was 10. He went to Madrid to work and study in 1906. He also traveled all over Europe to study and he picked up a symbolist style, for which he is best known. A museum dedicated to the work of de Torres is situated at Plaza del Potro 1 Cordoba 14002. He spent most of his life living in Cerdoba and Madrid and both places had influences on his paintings. He combined many different styles when he painted because he had many different influences including realism, which was a popular style at that time and impressionism, which he picked up from living in Cerdoba and from his father. While in Cerdoba he became part of the late 19th century intellectual movement that was based on the Royal Academy of Science, Arts and Literature. Julio Romero also won many awards in his lifetime. In 1895 he won an honorable mention at the National Exhibition and later won third place in 1899 and 1904. El Retablo del Amor by Julio Romero de Torres, painted in 1910.In 1914 he relocates to Madrid, where he makes contact with the intellectual and artistic environment of the time together with his brother Enrique. He became a regular at the cafe Nuevo Levante and his paintings began to reflect the philosophical currents of the times, represented by such writers of the times as Ramen del Valle-Inclen and Ruben Dareo. When the war broke out in 1914 Julio Romero fought for the allies as a pilot
CARRACCI, Annibale
Italian Baroque Era Painter, 1560-1609 Painter, draughtsman and printmaker, brother of Agostino Carracci. Since his lifetime, he has been considered one of the greatest Italian painters of his age. His masterpiece, the ceiling (1597-1601) of the Galleria Farnese, Rome, merges a vibrant naturalism with the formal language of classicism in a grand and monumental style.