Flemish Baroque Era Painter, 1593-1678 Jacob Jordeans was born on May 19, 1593, the first of eleven children, to the wealthy linen merchant Jacob Jordaens Sr. and Barbara van Wolschaten in Antwerp. Little is known about Jordaens's early education. It can be assumed that he received the advantages of the education usually provided for children of his social class. This assumption is supported by his clear handwriting, his competence in French and in his knowledge of mythology. Jordaens familiarity with biblical subjects is evident in his many religious paintings, and his personal interaction with the Bible was strengthened by his later conversion from Catholicism to Protestantism. Like Rubens, he studied under Adam van Noort, who was his only teacher. During this time Jordaens lived in Van Noort's house and became very close to the rest of the family. After eight years of training with Van Noort, he enrolled in the Guild of St. Luke as a "waterscilder", or watercolor artist. This medium was often used for preparing tapestry cartoons in the seventeenth century. although examples of his earliest watercolor works are no longer extant. In the same year as his entry into the guild, 1616, he married his teacher's eldest daughter, Anna Catharina van Noort, with whom he had three children. In 1618, Jordaens bought a house in Hoogstraat (the area in Antwerp that he grew up in). He would then later buy the adjoining house to expand his household and workspace in 1639, mimicking Rubens's house built two decades earlier. He lived and worked here until his death in 1678. Jordaens never made the traditional trip to Italy to study classical and Renaissance art. Despite this, he made many efforts to study prints or works of Italian masters available in northern Europe. For example, Jordaens is known to have studied Titian, Veronese, Caravaggio, and Bassano, either through prints, copies or originals (such as Caravaggio's Madonna of the Rosary). His work, however, betrays local traditions, especially the genre traditions of Pieter Bruegel the Elder, in honestly depicting Flemish life with authenticity and showing common people in the act of celebratory expressions of life. His commissions frequently came from wealthy local Flemish patrons and clergy, although later in his career he worked for courts and governments across Europe. Besides a large output of monumental oil paintings he was a prolific tapestry designer, a career that reflects his early training as a "watercolor" painter. Jordaens' importance can also be seen by his number of pupils; the Guild of St. Luke records fifteen official pupils from 1621 to 1667, but six others were recorded as pupils in court documents and not the Guild records, so it is probable that he had more students than officially recorded. Among them were his cousin and his son Jacob. Like Rubens and other artists at that time, Jordaens' studio relied on his assistants and pupils in the production of his paintings. Not many of these pupils went on to fame themselves,however a position in Jordaens's studio was highly desirable for young artists from across Europe.  Related Paintings of Jacob Jordaens :. | The Family of the Arist (mk08) | Silenus and Bacchantes. | Self portrait with his Family and Father-in-Law Adam van Noort | The Childhood of Zeus | Triumph of Bacchus |
Related Artists:
palais royal

BELLINI, Jacopo
Italian Gothic Era Painter, ca.1400-1470 Born in Venice, Jacopo had been a pupil of Gentile da Fabriano. In 1411-1412 he was in Foligno, where with Gentile he worked at the Palazzo Trinci frescoes. In 1423 Bellini was in Florence, where he knew the new works by Brunelleschi, Donatello and Masaccio. In 1424 he opened a workshop in Venice, which he ran right up until his death. Many of his greatest works, including the enormous Crucifixion in the cathedral of Verona (1436), have disappeared. From c. 1430 is the panel with Madonna and Child, in the Accademia Carrara, once attributed to Gentile da Fabriano. In 1441, at Ferrara, where he was at the service of Leonello d'Este together with Leon Battista Alberti, he executed a portrait of that Marquess, now lost. Of this period the Madonna dell'Umilt??, probably commissioned by one of the brothers of Leonello. The influence from Masolino da Panicale towards more modern, early Renaissance themes is visible in the Madonna with Child (dated 1448) in the Pinacoteca di Brera: for the first time, perspective is present and the figure are more monumental. Later he contributed with works now lost to the Venetian churches of San Giovanni Evangelista (1452) and St. Mark (1466). From 1459 is a Madonna with Blessing Child in the Gallerie dell'Accademia. Later he sojourned in Padua, where he trained a young Andrea Mantegna in perspective and classicist themes and where, in 1460, he finished a portrait of Erasmo Gattamelata, now lost. Of his late phase, a ruined Crucifix in the Museum of Verona and an Annunciation in Sant'Alessandro of Brescia remain.
Wilhelm Busch
1832 Wiedensahl/Hannover-1908,was a German caricaturist, painter and poet who is known for his satirical picture stories. After studying first mechanical engineering and then art in Dusseldorf, Antwerpen and Munich, he turned to drawing caricatures. One of his first picture stories, Max and Moritz (published in 1865), was a huge success. Max and Moritz as well as many of his other picture stories are regarded as one of the main precursors of the modern comic strip. Max and Moritz, for instance, has been an inspiration for the Katzenjammer Kids. Wilhelm Busch also wrote a number of poems in a similar style to his picture stories. Besides that he produced more than 1,000 oil paintings that weren't sold before his death in 1908. He was also active as a sculptor.