Dutch Baroque Era Painter, 1596-1656 Jan van Goyen was born in Leiden on Jan. 13, 1596. Apprenticed from the age of 10, he had several masters. About 1617 he went to Haarlem to study with Esaias van de Velde, an important innovator in the Haarlem movement of realistic landscape painting. Van Goyen's works between 1621 and 1625 are sometimes hard to distinguish from those of his teacher. They are colorful, detailed views of villages and roads, usually busy with people, as in Winter (1621). It was Van Goyen's usual practice to sign or monogram and date his paintings. He traveled extensively through the Netherlands and beyond, recording his impressions in sketchbooks, occasionally with dates and often depicting recognizable scenes. Thus the chronology of his development is clear. His paintings of the late 1620s show a steady advance from the strong colors and scattered organization of his early works toward tonality and greater simplicity and unity of composition. By 1630 he was painting monochromes in golden brown or pale green; he played a leading part in the tonal phase of Dutch landscape painting. In 1631 Van Goyen settled in The Hague, where he became a citizen in 1634. The simplicity, airiness, and unification of his compositions continued to increase in his abundant production of dune landscapes, river views, seascapes, town views, and winter landscapes. The River View (1636) displays a river so open and extensive as to suggest the sea, with reflections that prolong the vast and luminous sky. In its monumentalization of humble structures and its composition built on a firm scaffolding of horizontal and vertical forces, it forecast at this early date developments that dominated landscape painting in the 1650s and later. In the Village and Dunes (1647) the traditional double-diagonal composition still exists, but it is dominated by horizontal and vertical accents. Stronger contrasts of light and dark replace the earlier tonality. In the last year of his life Van Goyen produced an eloquent new style, in which powerful forms stand out against the radiant sky and water in an exquisitely balanced composition (Evening Calm; 1656). The commission in 1651 to paint a panoramic view of The Hague for the Burgomaster's Room shows the high regard in which Van Goyen was held. He was enormously productive; well over 1,000 of his paintings still exist, and almost as many drawings.   Related Paintings of Jan van Goyen :. | Hollandische Flachlandschaft. | View of Dordrecht across the river Merwede | Peasant Huts with Sweep Well | slottet montfort | Hollandische Flachlandschaft |
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Hans von Kulmbach
(real name Hans Suess or Hans Seß) was born around 1480 in Kulmbach, Franconia and died previous to Dec. 3, 1522 in Nuremberg. Hans von Kulmbach was the artist who created the Krakew St. John's Altar. Kulmbach probably arrived in Nuremberg around 1505. He received instruction by Jacopo de' Barbari, who for a time worked in Nuremberg. Von Kulmbach then apprenticed with Albrecht Derer and after Derer retired from painting altarpieces in 1510 Kulmbach took over most of his commissions. Kulmbach had his own workshop in Nuremberg and at times worked in Krakew. He also created artworks for emperor Maximilian I and for Margrave Casimir Hohenzollern von Brandenburg-Kulmbach. His best works were stained-glass windows in churches, such as the Maximilian stained-glass, Margrave stained-glass at St. Sebald in Nuremberg, the Welser stained-glass at the Frauenkirche and the Nikolaus altar at Lorenzkirche. In 1511 he finished the St. Mary's altar at Skałka in Krakew. The Catherine and St. John's altar also in Krakew, are among his best works.
Alfred wilson cox
1830-c.1885
PRETI, Mattia
Italian Baroque Era Painter, 1613-1699 Italian painter and draughtsman. Although he was trained and had his first success as a painter in Rome during the 1630s and 1640s, he is traditionally associated with the Neapolitan school. It was in Naples between 1653 and 1660 that he made his most lasting mark (see fig. 1), contributing to the evolution of the exuberant late Baroque style and providing an important source of inspiration to later generations of painters, notably to Francesco Solimena. From 1661 he was based in Malta, where his most substantial undertaking was the decoration of St John's, Valletta. Preti's mature style is intensely dramatic and unites a Caravaggesque realism and expressive chiaroscuro with the grandeur and theatricality of Venetian High Renaissance painting.