1856-1925 John Singer Sargent Locations John Singer Sargent (January 12, 1856 ?C April 14, 1925) was the most successful portrait painter of his era. During his career, he created roughly 900 oil paintings and more than 2,000 watercolors, as well as countless sketches and charcoal drawings. His oeuvre documents worldwide travel, from Venice to the Tyrol, Corfu, the Middle East, Montana, Maine, and Florida. Before Sargent??s birth, his father FitzWilliam was an eye surgeon at the Wills Hospital in Philadelphia. After his older sister died at the age of two, his mother Mary (n??e Singer) suffered a mental collapse and the couple decided to go abroad to recover. They remained nomadic ex-patriates for the rest of their lives. Though based in Paris, Sargent??s parents moved regularly with the seasons to the sea and the mountain resorts in France, Germany, Italy, and Switzerland. While she was pregnant, they stopped in Florence, Italy because of a cholera epidemic, and there Sargent was born in 1856. A year later, his sister Mary was born. After her birth FitzWilliam reluctantly resigned his post in Philadelphia and accepted his wife??s entreaties to remain abroad. They lived modestly on a small inheritance and savings, living an isolated life with their children and generally avoiding society and other Americans except for friends in the art world. Four more children were born abroad of whom two lived past childhood. Though his father was a patient teacher of basic subjects, young Sargent was a rambunctious child, more interested in outdoor activities than his studies. As his father wrote home, ??He is quite a close observer of animated nature.?? Contrary to his father, his mother was quite convinced that traveling around Europe, visiting museums and churches, would give young Sargent a satisfactory education. Several attempts to give him formal schooling failed, owning mostly to their itinerant life. She was a fine amateur artist and his father was a skilled medical illustrator. Early on, she gave him sketchbooks and encouraged drawing excursions. Young Sargent worked with care on his drawings, and he enthusiastically copied images from the Illustrated London News of ships and made detailed sketches of landscapes. FitzWilliam had hoped that his son??s interest in ships and the sea might lead him toward a naval career. At thirteen, his mother reported that John ??sketches quite nicely, & has a remarkably quick and correct eye. If we could afford to give him really good lessons, he would soon be quite a little artist.?? At age thirteen, he received some watercolor lessons from Carl Welsch, a German landscape painter. Though his education was far from complete, Sargent grew up to be a highly literate and cosmopolitan young man, accomplished in art, music, and literature. He was fluent in French, Italian, and German. At seventeen, Sargent was described as ??willful, curious, determined and strong?? (after his mother) yet shy, generous, and modest (after his father). He was well-acquainted with many of the great masters from first hand observation, as he wrote in 1874, ??I have learned in Venice to admire Tintoretto immensely and to consider him perhaps second only to Michael Angelo and Titian.??  Related Paintings of John Singer Sargent :. | Sargent MonetPainting | Portrait of the 9th Duke of Marlborough with his family | The Daughters of Edward Darley Boit | John Seymour Lucas | The Brook |
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Theophanes the Cretan
active 1527-1559,was a leading icon painter of the Cretan school in the first half of the sixteenth century, and in particular the most important figure in Greek wall-painting of the period. He was born in Heraklion (date unknown), and no doubt trained there, but all his known work was done in mainland Greece. Frescoes bearing his signature survive in the Greek monasteries of Mt. Athos, especially Stavronikita monastery and Lavra, and Meteora which has his earliest dated work, from 1527. He also did many panel icons, either for iconostases or small portable works. Theophanes was active from about 1527-48, and trained his sons and several pupils, often themselves Cretan. By 1535 both he and his two sons had become monks in the Lavra monastery of Mount Athos, where many of his best works remain. Theophanes returned to Crete before his death in 1559. Two detached wallpaintings attributed to Theophanes are in the Hermitage Museum in Saint Petersburg. Like most Cretan painters of this date, his work shows some influence from Western painting, but less in his case than with many artists. Some faces are personalised or looking out to the viewer, and his figures are modelled to convey volume. His work is more conscious of visual perspective than older Byzantine artists, but he does not use the geometrical perspective schemes by then standard in the West. He uses traditional Byzantine compositions, in a rather austere and powerful manner. He should not be confused with Theophanes the Greek (Feofan Grek), an icon painter who worked in Muscovite Russia in the late fourteenth century.
Frank Dillon
painted The Colossal Pair, Thebes in 1856
piero ligorio
Ligorio was born in Naples. In 1534 he moved to Rome, where he developed his interest in antiquities, and was named superintendent to the ancient monuments by the Popes Pius IV and Paul IV. In 1549 he began excavations in the Hadrian's Villa at Tivoli and designed his masterwork, the water works at Villa d'Este, for Cardinal Ippolito II d'Este. He also played a role in designing the fountains at Villa Lante in Bagnaio, working alongside Vignola. His Mannerist taste is present also in the Casina Pio IV (also known as Villa Pia) at the Vatican (1559?C1562). In 1568 he was fired by Paul V for having criticized Michelangelo's work in St. Peter's Basilica, and moved to Ferrara, where he was guest of Duke Alfonso II d'Este. As a scholar of antiquities, one of his most famous published works is a map of ancient Rome (Antiquae Urbis Imago) from 1561. He died in Ferrara in 1583.