German painter (b. 1497, Augsburg, d. 1543, London). Hans Holbein the Younger, born in Augsburg, was the son of a painter, Hans Holbein the Elder, and received his first artistic training from his father. Hans the Younger may have had early contacts with the Augsburg painter Hans Burgkmair the Elder. In 1515 Hans the Younger and his older brother, Ambrosius, went to Basel, where they were apprenticed to the Swiss painter Hans Herbster. Hans the Younger worked in Lucerne in 1517 and visited northern Italy in 1518-1519. On Sept. 25, 1519, Holbein was enrolled in the painters' guild of Basel, and the following year he set up his own workshop, became a citizen of Basel, and married the widow Elsbeth Schmid, who bore him four children. He painted altarpieces, portraits, and murals and made designs for woodcuts, stained glass, and jewelry. Among his patrons was Erasmus of Rotterdam, who had settled in Basel in 1521. In 1524 Holbein visited France. Holbein gave up his workshop in Basel in 1526 and went to England, armed with a letter of introduction from Erasmus to Sir Thomas More, who received him warmly. Holbein quickly achieved fame and financial success. In 1528 he returned to Basel, where he bought property and received commissions from the city council, Basel publishers, Erasmus, and others. However, with iconoclastic riots instigated by fanatic Protestants, Basel hardly offered the professional security that Holbein desired. In 1532 Holbein returned to England and settled permanently in London, although he left his family in Basel, retained his Basel citizenship, and visited Basel in 1538. He was patronized especially by country gentlemen from Norfolk, German merchants from the Steel Yard in London, and King Henry VIII and his court. Holbein died in London between Oct. 7 and Nov. 29, 1543. With few exceptions, Holbein's work falls naturally into the four periods corresponding to his alternate residences in Basel and London. His earliest extant work is a tabletop with trompe l'oeil motifs (1515) painted for the Swiss standard-bearer Hans Baer. Other notable works of the first Basel period are a diptych of Burgomaster Jakob Meyer zum Hasen and his wife, Dorothea Kannengiesser (1516); a portrait of Bonifacius Amerbach (1519); an unsparingly realistic Dead Christ (1521); a Madonna and Child Enthroned with Two Saints (1522); several portraits of Erasmus, of which the one in Paris (1523 or shortly after), with its accurate observation of the scholar's concentrated attitude and frail person and its beautifully balanced composition, is particularly outstanding; and woodcuts, among which the series of the Dance of Death (ca. 1521-1525, though not published until 1538) represents one of the high points of the artist's graphic oeuvre. Probably about 1520 Holbein painted an altarpiece, the Last Supper, now somewhat cut down, which is based on Leonardo da Vinci's famous painting, and four panels with eight scenes of the Passion of Christ (possibly the shutters of the Last Supper altarpiece), which contain further reminiscences of Italian painting, particularly Andrea Mantegna, the Lombard school, and Raphael, but with lighting effects that are characteristically northern. His two portraits of Magdalena Offenburg, as Laïs of Corinth and Venus with Cupid (1526),   Related Paintings of HOLBEIN, Hans the Younger :. | The Passion | The Passion (detail) sf | Darmstadt Madonna (detail) sg | The Passion (detail) sf | The Oberried Altarpiece (detail) sg |
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Giovanni di Paolo
Italian Early Renaissance Painter, ca.1403-1483,major Italian painter of the Sienese school. Typical of the Sienese painters of his era, he paid scant attention to the artistic innovations made in nearby Florence, but often depended on the style established by the Sienese masters of the 14th cent. Fortunately, Giovanni di Paolo was endowed with great imagination. His first dated work (1426) was the Pecci altarpiece (major panels in Siena; predella panels in the Walters Art Gall., Baltimore). He produced a tremendous number of works during his long career. Many paintings have remained in Siena, but there are probably more examples of his art in the United States. The Metropolitan Museum has several of his paintings; among them is a delightful scene of Paradise; in the Philip Lehman collection is the exquisite Creation of the World. The Madonna and Child in a Landscape (Mus. of Fine Arts, Boston) exemplifies his inclination toward pure fantasy and disregard for the laws of perspective. Giovanni di Paolo is best represented by six highly expressive scenes from the life of St. John the Baptist (Art Inst., Chicago).
Konstantinos Volanakis
(Greek, b. Heraklion, Crete, 1837- d. 29 June 1907) was a Greek painter, considered one of the best of the 19th century. Born to a wealthy family, he went to Trieste, Italy, in 1856 where he took up painting. He studied in the Munich Academy. He is one of the foremost representatives of the Munich School, a Greek artistic movement of the 19th century. Michalis Oikonomou, another Greek painter, was one of his pupils. He died in 1907. His works are today exhibited in major museums in Greece and abroad.
David Rijckaert
David Ryckaert III, sometimes called The Younger (2 December 1612 (baptised) - 11 November 1661) was a Flemish painter. A member of the Ryckaert family of artists, he was born and raised in Antwerp, the city in which he conducted his career and in which he died. He was the son of David Ryckaert II, grandson of David Ryckaert I, and nephew of Martin Ryckaert. David Ryckaert was a pupil of his homonymous father; his work was influenced by the styles of Adriaen Brouwer and both David Teniers the Elder and David Teniers the Younger. Ryckaert is noted for large and often humorous genre pictures of farmers and landlords, and powerfully coloured still lifes. He also painted a range of other subjects, including religious pictures; his The Temptation of Saint Anthony (1650) is in the collection of the Palazzo Pitti in Florence.