Italian Early Renaissance Painter, ca.1422-1492 Italian painter and theorist. His work is the embodiment of rational, calm, monumental painting in the Italian Early Renaissance, an age in which art and science were indissolubly linked through the writings of Leon Battista Alberti. Born two generations before Leonardo da Vinci, Piero was similarly interested in the scientific application of the recently discovered rules of perspective to narrative or devotional painting, especially in fresco, of which he was an imaginative master; and although he was less universally creative than Leonardo and worked in an earlier idiom, he was equally keen to experiment with painting technique. Piero was as adept at resolving problems in Euclid, whose modern rediscovery is largely due to him, as he was at creating serene, memorable figures, whose gestures are as telling and spare as those in the frescoes of Giotto or Masaccio. His tactile, gravely convincing figures are also indebted to the sculpture of Donatello, an equally attentive observer of Classical antiquity. In his best works, such as the frescoes in the Bacci Chapel in S Francesco, Arezzo, there is an ideal balance between his serene, classical compositions and the figures that inhabit them, the whole depicted in a distinctive and economical language. In his autograph works Piero was a perfectionist, creating precise, logical and light-filled images (although analysis of their perspective schemes shows that these were always subordinated to narrative effect). However, he often delegated important passages of works (e.g. the Arezzo frescoes) to an ordinary, even incompetent, assistant.   Related Paintings of Piero della Francesca :. | Brera madonna | Polyptych of Perugia | The Resurrection. | The Battle of Heraclius and Chosroes | Die Konigin von Saba betet das Kreuzesholz and Ausschnitt |
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John Kensett
1816-1872 John Kensett Art Galleries Artist John Frederick Kensett was born on March 22, 1816 in Cheshire, Connecticut, and died on December 14, 1872 in New York City. He attended school at Cheshire Academy, and studied engraving with his immigrant father, Thomas Kensett, and later with his uncle, Alfred Dagget. He worked as engraver in the New Haven area until about 1838, after which he went to work as a bank note engraver in New York City. In 1840, along with Asher Durand and John William Casilear, Kensett traveled to Europe in order to study painting. There he met and traveled with Benjamin Champney. The two sketched and painted throughout Europe, refining their talents. During this period, Kensett developed an appreciation and affinity for 17th century Dutch landscape painting. Kensett and Champney returned to the United States in 1847. After establishing his studio and settling in New York, Kensett traveled extensively throughout the Northeast and the Colorado Rockies as well as making several trips back to Europe. Kensett is best known for his landscape of upstate New York and New England and seascapes of coastal New Jersey, Long Island and New England. He is most closely associated with the so-called "second generation" of the Hudson River School. Along with Sanford Robinson Gifford, Fitz Hugh Lane, Jasper Francis Cropsey, Martin Johnson Heade and others, the works of the "Luminists," as they came to be known, were characterized by unselfconscious, nearly invisible brushstrokes used to convey the qualities and effects of atmospheric light. It could be considered the spiritual, if not stylistic, cousin to Impressionism. Such spiritualism stemmed from Transcendentalist philosophies of sublime nature and contemplation bringing one closer to a spiritual truth. In 1851 Kensett painted a monumental canvas of Mount Washington that has become an icon of White Mountain art. Mount Washington from the Valley of Conway was purchased by the American Art Union, made into an engraving by James Smillie, and distributed to 13,000 Art Union subscribers throughout the country. Other artists painted copies of this scene from the print. Currier and Ives published a similar print in about 1860. This single painting by Kensett helped to popularize the White Mountain region of New Hampshire. Kensett's style evolved gradually, from the traditional Hudson River School manner in the 1850s into the more refined Luminist style in his later years. By the early 1870s Kensett was spending considerable time at his home on Contentment Island, on Long Island Sound near Darien, Connecticut.
elisabeth vigee-lebrun
Élisabeth-Louise Vigee-Le Brun, född 16 april 1755 i Paris, död 30 mars 1842 i Louveciennes, 20 kilometer väster om Paris, var en fransk målare som i huvudsak målade porträtt. Vigee-Lebrun utförde tilldragande, idealiserande porträtt och var för en tid hovmålare hos drottning Marie Antoinette. Vigee-Lebrun var tvungen att lämna Frankrike pågrund av den franska revolutionen 1789 och efter det var hon verksam i Ryssland, Italien och Storbritannien. Efter att Napoleons kommit till makten återvände hon till Frankrike. Hon besökte Schweiz 1807 där hon i Geneve blev invald som hedersmedlem i Societe pour l'Avancement des Beaux-Arts. Vigee-Le Brun lämnade ett arv av 660 porträttmålningar och 200 landskapsmålningar. Dessa finns i privata samlingar i Europa och USA men även i stora museer som Eremitaget, National Gallery i London, Metropolitan Museum of Art i New York och National Gallery of Art i Washington, D.C..
Ambrosius Benson
(c.1495/1500, Ferrara or Milan - 1550, Flanders) was an Italian painter who became a part of the Northern Renaissance. While many surviving paintings have been attributed, there is very little known of him from records, and he tended not to sign his work. He is believed to be responsible for mainly religious art, but also painted portraits on commission. He sometime painted from classical sources, often setting the figures in modern-dress, or a contemporary domestic setting. In his lifetime he was successful; he had a large workshop, his work was sold internationally and he was especially popular in Spain. Benson became popular as a source for pastiche with 19th century painters, who are sometimes known as the "followers of Benson". In particular his many variations of the Magdalen and Sibilla Persica, were further copied and became popular with contemporary buyers. Many have retained their relative value and held in the National Gallery, London and command high prices at Sotheby's