Italian painter (b. 1395, Pisa, d. 1455, Roma). known professionally as Antonio di Puccio Pisano or Antonio di Puccio da Cereto, also erroneously called Vittore Pisano by Giorgio Vasari, was one of the most distinguished painters of the early Italian Renaissance and Quattrocento. He was acclaimed by poets such as Guarino da Verona and praised by humanists of his time who compared him to such illustrious names as Cimabue, Phidias and Praxiteles. He is known for his resplendent frescoes in large murals, elegant portraits, small easel pictures, and many brilliant drawings. He is the most important commemorative portrait medallist in the first half of the 15th century. He was employed by the Doge of Venice, the Pope in the Vatican and the courts of Verona, Ferrara, Mantua, Milan, Rimini, and by the King of Naples. He stood in high esteem of the Gonzaga and Este families. He had many of his works wrongly ascribed to other artists such as Piero della Francesca, Albrecht Derer and Leonardo da Vinci, to name a few. While most of his paintings have perished, a good many of his drawings and medals have survived. His life is somewhat shrouded in mystery. He was born between 1380 and 1395 and died between 1450 and 1455 (probably between 14 July and 8 October 1455). He was a native of Pisa but spent his early years in San Vigilio sul Lago in the territory of Verona. He was probably given his early training by a Veronese painter (perhaps Altichiero or Stefano da Verona) as his early style is in the tradition of veronese painting. Between 1415 and 1420, he was the assistant of the renowned painter and illuminator Gentile da Fabriano from whom he acquired his refined, delicate, detailed style. Pisanello also acquired from him a taste for precious materials and beautiful fabrics that can be found in his later paintings. The frescoes in the Doge's Palace at Venice, on which they worked together, have perished as well as the frescoes in the Basilica of St. John Lateran and the palaces of Mantua and Pavia. In 1422, he was reported to be in Mantua in the service of young Ludovico Gonzaga, son of the Marchese of Mantua Gianfrancesco Gonzaga. He continued to work for the Gonzaga family till the 1440s. Giorgio Vasari, an artist and biographer of the Italian Renaissance, states that Pisanello also worked in the workshop of Andrea del Castagno, author of the painted equestrian monument of Niccole da Tolentino (1456) in the Cathedral in Florence. He must also have known Paolo Uccello, the painter of the Battle of San Romano with its many horses. Pisanello's love of drawing horses probably finds its origin in this relationship. But as there is so much unknown of his life, this attribution by Vasari is not reliable and may only be a legend. His Madonna and Quail, now in the Museo di Castelvecchio in Verona, is signed by "Antonius Pisanus". It is tentatively dated at c. 1420. The style is a blend of the styles of Gentile da Fabriano and Stefano da Verona. This might show that Pisanello was also a pupil of the latter in Verona. Pisanello stayed again in Verona in 1424. However, according to some scholars, he painted frescoes about hunting and fishing and jousts in Pavia the same year. These were commissioned by the Duke of Milan Filippo Maria Visconti. There is no trace of these frescoes left. Back in Mantua with the Gonzagas between 1424 and 1426, he painted one of his important surviving works: the fresco Annunciation in San Fermo, Verona. It was used to embellish the funeral monument of Nicole di Brenzoni by the Florentine sculptor Nanni di Bartolo. When Gentile da Fabriano died in Rome between August and October 1427, his work at the Basilica of St. John Lateran was unfinished. Pisanello completed the frescoes of his former master between 1431 and 1432. All these frescoes were destroyed when the basilica was rebuilt in the 17th century by Francesco Borromini. The Kupferstichkabinet in Berlin has a pale sketch of this fresco, drawn by Borromini. While in Rome, he became more and more influenced by the classical style of Renaissance art. His drawings are generally prized as jewels of the quattrocento, and are wonderful examples of the elegant garb of the time, including spectacular hats. In contrast with his contemporaries, his drawings are not drafts for future paintingings but are autonomous work of art. He compiled several books of drawings, detailed and accurate studies of fauna and flora drawn with a poetic naturalism, and elegant costumes. Pisanello traveled to several Italian cities and was introduced to a number of courts. He stayed for a while in Florence. In this period he painted two important portraits: Emperor Sigismund, now in the Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna (but the attribution is still contested) and Portrait of a Man (now in the Palazzo Rosso, Genoa). He returned to Verona between 1433 and 1438. His fresco masterpiece from this period is Saint George and the Princess of Trebizond (1436-38) at the Pellegrini Chapel, Sant'Anastasia, Verona. It had to be restored after water seepage badly damaged the fresco at the end of the 19th century. He prepared for this painting with a large number of drawings. Many of these famous drawings are on display in the Louvre, Paris. From 1435, Pisanello became more and more interested in portraiture and medalmaking. He was introduced to Leonello d'Este, Marquess of Ferrara. His famous Portrait of an Este Princess dates from this period. His Vision of Saint Eustace, now at the National Gallery in London, long ascribed to Albrecht Derer because of its perfection of this very fine panel, shows most animals in profile or defined poses with miniature-like delicacy. The story in this small painting (egg tempera on wood) is probably only a pretext for showing "noble" animals (horses, hunting dogs, stag, bear...) and the most noble creature of all: the hunting courtier. In 1438, the Council of Basel negotiated with the Byzantine Emperor John VIII Palaiologos. On this occasion Pisanello struck a commemorative medal of the emperor. He also made some drawings with portraits of the emperor and his retinue (on display at the Louvre, Paris), suggesting   Related Paintings of PISANELLO :. | Portrait of a Princess of the House of Este vhh | The Virgin and Child with Saints George and Anthony Abbot sgh | Portrait of Leonello d este | Madonna with a Quail | Young Lady of the Este Family (Mk45) |
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Paul-Albert Besnard
(2 June 1849 --4 December 1934) was a French painter and printmaker. He was born in Paris and studied at the École des Beaux-Arts, studied with Jean Bremond and was influenced by Alexandre Cabanel. He won the Prix de Rome in 1874 with the painting Death of Timophanes Until about 1880 he followed the academic tradition, but then broke away completely, and devoted himself to the study of colour and light as conceived by the Impressionists. The realism of this group never appealed to his bold imagination, but he applied their technical method to ideological and decorative works on a large scale, such as his frescoes at the Sorbonne, the Ecole de Pharmacie, the ceiling of the Comedie-Française (main theatre in Paris), the Salle des Sciences at the Hôtel de Ville, the mairie of the Ier arrondissement, and the chapel of Berck hospital, for which he painted twelve Stations of the Cross in an entirely modern spirit. A great virtuoso, he achieved brilliant successes alike in watercolour, pastel, oil and etching, both in portraiture, in landscape and in decoration. His close analysis of light can be studied in his picture La femme qui se chauffe at the Luxembourg in Paris, one of a large group of nude studies of which a later example is Une Nymphe au bord de la mer; and in the work produced during and after a visit to India in 1911. A large panel, Peace by Arbitration, was completed seven days before the outbreak of war in 1914.
KNELLER, Sir Godfrey
German-born English Baroque Era Painter, 1646-1723 English painter and draughtsman of German birth. He was the leading portrait painter in England during the late 17th century and the early 18th, and, as such, the chief recorder of court society for almost 40 years. He popularized the kit-cat format for portraits and was also the founding governor in 1711 of the first proper academy of art in England. His older brother Johann [John] Zachary Kneller (b L?beck, 1642; d London, 1702), with whom he was close, was also a painter; his works include watercolour miniatures and still-lifes,
Michael Sweerts
Flemish 1618-1664 Michiel Sweerts (September 29, 1618 - 1664), also known as Michael Sweerts, was a Flemish painter of the Baroque period, active in Rome (1645-1656) in the style of the Bamboccianti. The Bamboccianti were known for depicting genre scenes of daily life. Born in Brussels, he arrived in Rome in the mid 1640s, and rapidly moved into the circle of Flemish painters that had arrayed around Pieter van Laer, and that resided near Santa Maria del Popolo. In 1647, he attended meetings of the Accademia di San Luca, although not as a member. By 1659, he had returned to Brussels, where he joined the painter's guild. He appears to have become mentally unstable in his last years. In Amsterdam, he joined the Jesuits as a "lay Brother" rather than a priest, and sailed from Marsaille to the East with a missionary group. Travelling to Jerusalem, and from there to Goa, where after causing tribulations to those around him, he died. Sweerts is an enigmatic and difficult artist to categorize, since he seems to have absorbed a variety of influences to create an eclectic hybrid that can be described as a Netherlandish genre adaptation of an early tenebrist styles: a blend of Vermeer's genre of painting and Caravaggio-influenced full bodied figures.