Crtona 1441-1523
.Italian painter of the Umbrian school, who probably studied with Piero della Francesca. He worked in Cortona, where some of his paintings have remained. Subsequently he worked in the Cathedral of Perugia, in Volterra, and at Monte Oliveto before undertaking (1499) the decoration of the Cappella Nuova in the Orvieto Cathedral. There he represented the apocalyptic series of the Story of the Anti-Christ, the End of the World, the Resurrection of the Bodies, Paradise, and the Inferno, as well as figurations from antique poems and the Divine Comedy. The infernal scenes are remarkable for their imaginative evocation of fiends and tortures of Hell. Michelangelo was influenced by his powerful treatment of anatomy and the vivid realism he used for dramatic ends. Signorelli's paintings in the Vatican, where he went in 1508, were later sacrificed to make way for some of Raphael's work. Related Paintings of Luca Signorelli :. | Crucifixion | Martyrdom of St Sebastian | The Virgins | Empedocles | Madonna and Child | Related Artists:
John ThomsonJohn Thomson (14 June 1837 - 29 September 1921) was a pioneering Scottish photographer, geographer and traveller. He was one of the first photographers to travel to the Far East, documenting the people, landscapes and artifacts of eastern cultures. Upon returning home, his work among the street people of London cemented his reputation, and is regarded as a classic instance of social documentary which laid the foundations for photojournalism. He went on to become a portrait photographer of High Society in Mayfair, gaining the Royal Warrant in 1881.
The son of William Thomson, a tobacco spinner and retail trader, and his wife Isabella, Thomson was born the eighth of nine children in Edinburgh in the year of Queen Victoria's accession. After his schooling in the early 1850s, he was apprenticed to a local optical and scientific instrument manufacturer, thought to be James Mackay Bryson. During this time, Thomson learned the principles of photography and completed his apprenticeship around 1858.
During this time he also undertook two years of evening classes at the Watt Institution and School of Arts (formerly the Edinburgh School of Arts, later to become Heriot-Watt University). He received the "Attestation of Proficiency" in Natural Philosophy in 1857 and in Junior Mathematics and Chemistry in 1858. In 1861 he became a member of the Royal Scottish Society of Arts, but by 1862 he had decided to travel to Singapore to join his older brother William, a watchmaker and photographer.
HONDECOETER, Gillis Claesz. dDutch painter (b. ca. 1575, Antwerpen, d. 1638, Amsterdam)
Gavin HamiltonScottish Neoclassical Painter, 1723-1798,Scottish painter, archaeologist and dealer, active in Italy. He was educated at Glasgow University and in 1748 arrived in Rome to study portrait painting under Agostino Masucci. He lodged with the architects James Stuart and Nicholas Revett; they probably encouraged him to visit Herculaneum and the recently discovered archaeological site of Pompeii, which had a profound effect on his subsequent career. Convinced that 'the ancients have surpassed the moderns, both in painting and sculpture', Hamilton undertook a systematic study of Classical antiquities during the 1750s and 1760s. In 1751 he was briefly in Scotland, where he painted a full-length portrait of Elizabeth Gunning, Duchess of Hamilton (Lennoxlove, Lothian), in a conventional style derived from van Dyck. He returned to Rome in 1752 and remained there, with the exception of short visits to England, for the rest of his life. In 1755 he was introduced by Anton Raphael Mengs to Johann Joachim Winckelmann, who was to become one of the leading theorists of Neo-classicism. In the same year Hamilton entertained Robert Adam, who studied in Rome from 1755 to 1757. He was to know and encourage almost all the British artists who worked in Rome during the second half of the 18th century. Henry Fuseli, who was not an uncritical admirer, wrote of Hamilton in 1805,