(b Copenhagen, 1716; d Hannover, 4 March 1776). German painter of Danish birth. He trained with his father, Johann Georg Ziesenis (1681-1748); he became a German citizen in 1743 and subsequently was appointed court painter to Herzog Christian von Pfalz-Zweibrecken in Zweibrecken and, later, Mannheim. In the early 1750s he overcame his technical shortcomings by studying Flemish art, particularly the work of Rubens and van Dyck. He also introduced a new genre, the private court portrait. His portrait of Karl Philipp Theodor, Kurferst von der Pfalz (1757; Munich, Alte Pin.) is original in its intimate view of a nobleman posed at leisure in casual dress, seated in his private study.  Related Paintings of Johann Georg Ziesenis :. | Portrait of Princess Frederika Sophia Wilhelmina | Portrait of Stadholder Willem V | Portrait of Stadholder Willem V | Enkedronning Juliane Marie | Portrait of Stadholder Willem V |
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BASTIANI, Lazzaro
Italian painter, Venetian school (b. 1449, Venezia, d. 1512, Venezia) Italian painter. He is first recorded in 1449, as a painter in Venice and in 1460 he was paid for an altarpiece in S Samuele there. Although no extant work is securely documented, several are signed and two are dated. The influence of Andrea del Castagno is clear in his early works, of the 1460s: the signed mosaic of St Sergius (Venice, S Marco), the Archangel Gabriel (Padua, Mus. Civ.) and the signed Piet? (Venice, S Antonino). Also assigned to this period are the Adoration of the Magi (New York, Frick), the polyptych of St Francis (Matera, S Francesco), the St Jerome.
Lemaire, Jean
1763-64, oil on canvas, The Hermitage, St. Petersburg
Erastus Salisbury Field
1805-1900 American painter. He studied with Samuel F. B. Morse in New York during the winter of 1824-5. On his return to the rural isolation of Leverett, MA, he painted his earliest known work, the portrait of his grandmother Elizabeth Billings Ashley (Springfield, MA, Mus. F.A.). His career as an itinerant portrait painter began in 1826, most of his commissions coming through a network of family associations in western Massachusetts and Connecticut. The portraits of 1836-40 are considered his best. From 1841 he lived mainly in New York, where he expanded his subject-matter to include landscapes and American history pictures. There he presumably studied photography, for on his return to Massachusetts he advertised himself as a daguerreotypist. His few portraits painted after 1841 are copied from his own photographs and lack the expressive characterization and decorative power of his earlier work. From 1865 to 1885 his paintings were based primarily on biblical and patriotic themes. The Historical Monument of the American Republic (1867-88; Springfield, MA, Mus. F.A.) stands alone in American folk art in size (2.82*3.89 m), scope and imaginative vision. Inspired by plans for a national celebration of the centennial of the USA in 1876, Field painted an architectural fantasy of eight towers linked by railway bridges and trains at the tops, with the history of the USA in low-relief sculpture on the exterior surfaces of the towers. Field added two more towers to the painting in 1888 and thereafter retired.