Flemish Baroque Era Painter, 1577-1640 Peter Paul Rubens (June 28, 1577 ?C May 30, 1640) was a prolific seventeenth-century Flemish Baroque painter, and a proponent of an exuberant Baroque style that emphasized movement, color, and sensuality. He is well-known for his Counter-Reformation altarpieces, portraits, landscapes, and history paintings of mythological and allegorical subjects. In addition to running a large studio in Antwerp which produced paintings popular with nobility and art collectors throughout Europe, Rubens was a classically-educated humanist scholar, art collector, and diplomat who was knighted by both Philip IV, king of Spain, and Charles I, king of England. Rubens was a prolific artist. His commissioned works were mostly religious subjects, "history" paintings, which included mythological subjects, and hunt scenes. He painted portraits, especially of friends, and self-portraits, and in later life painted several landscapes. Rubens designed tapestries and prints, as well as his own house. He also oversaw the ephemeral decorations of the Joyous Entry into Antwerp by the Cardinal-Infante Ferdinand in 1635. His drawings are mostly extremely forceful but not detailed; he also made great use of oil sketches as preparatory studies. He was one of the last major artists to make consistent use of wooden panels as a support medium, even for very large works, but he used canvas as well, especially when the work needed to be sent a long distance. For altarpieces he sometimes painted on slate to reduce reflection problems. His fondness of painting full-figured women gave rise to the terms 'Rubensian' or 'Rubenesque' for plus-sized women. The term 'Rubensiaans' is also commonly used in Dutch to denote such women.  Related Paintings of Peter Paul Rubens :. | Philip IV in Brown and Siver (mk01) | Elijah and the Angel | Descent from the Cross | Immaculate Conception | Venus,Mars and Cupid (mk01) |
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Anne Vallayer-Coster
French Rococo Era Painter, 1744-1818,was an eighteenth-century French painter. Known as a prodigy artist at a young age, she achieved fame and recognition very early in her career, being admitted to the Royal Academy in 1770, at the age of twenty-six. Despite the negative reputation that still-life painting had at this time, Vallayer-Coster??s highly developed skills, especially in the depiction of flowers, soon generated a great deal of attention from collectors and other artists. Her precocious talent and the rave reviews?? earned her the attention of the court, where Marie Antoinette took a particular interest in Vallayer-Coster's paintings. Regardless of her closeness to the ancient regime and France's hated monarch she survived the bloodshed of the French Revolution. However, the fall of the French monarchy, which were her primary patrons, caused her banishment into the shadows. Anne Vallayer-Coster was a woman in a man??s world. It is unknown what she thought of contemporaries who admitted her to the confraternity, and made her an honorary ??man??. Her life was determinedly private, dignified and hard-working. Occasionally she attempted other genres, but for the usual reasons her success at figure painting was limited
Vittorio Matteo Corcos
Italian, 1859-1933
Joachim Wtewael
1566-1638 Flemish Joachim Wtewael Galleries Dutch painter and draughtsman. He was one of the last exponents of MANNERISM. From c. 1590 until 1628, the year of his latest known dated paintings, he employed such typical Mannerist formal devices as brilliant decorative colour, contrived spatial design and contorted poses. He sometimes combined such artifice with naturalism, and this amalgam represents the two approaches Dutch 16th- and 17th-century theorists discussed as uyt den geest (from the imagination) and naer t leven (after life). Wtewaels activity reflects the transition from Mannerism to a more naturalistic style in Dutch art. Slightly over 100 of his paintings and about 80 drawings are known. Subjects from the Bible and mythology predominate; he also painted several portraits, including a Self-portrait (1601; Utrecht, Cent. Mus.).