Italian Mannerist Painter, 1494-ca.1556 Italian painter and draughtsman. He was the leading painter in mid-16th-century Florence and one of the most original and extraordinary of Mannerist artists. His eccentric personality, solitary and slow working habits and capricious attitude towards his patrons are described by Vasari; his own diary, which covers the years 1554-6, further reveals a character with neurotic and secretive aspects. Pontormo enjoyed the protection of the Medici family throughout his career but, unlike Agnolo Bronzino and Giorgio Vasari, did not become court painter. His subjective portrait style did not lend itself to the state portrait. He produced few mythological works and after 1540 devoted himself almost exclusively to religious subjects. His drawings, mainly figure studies in red and black chalk, are among the highest expressions of the great Florentine tradition of draughtsmanship; close to 400 survive, forming arguably the most important body of drawings by a Mannerist painter.   Related Paintings of Pontormo :. | Moses Receiving the Tables | Madonna and Child with St. Joseph and Saint John the Baptist | Holy Family | Noli me tangere. | Asian strength mountain Germany Rhode Mei Diqi |
Related Artists:
Simon Hollosy
1857-1918 Hungarian Simon Hollosy Gallery Simon Hollosy (Romanian: Simion Corbu); (2 February 1857, Maramarossziget, now Sighetu Marmatiei - 8 May 1918, Tecso, now Tiachiv) was a Hungarian painter. He was considered one of the greatest Hungarian representatives of 19th century Naturalism and Realism. Holl??sy came from an Armenian family who settled in Maramarossziget (present-day Sighetu Marmaţiei, Romania). He frequently worked abroad. He criticized training at the Academy and founded a private school in 1886 where he gathered young talents around him who were interested in realistic protrayal. He opened the way to new styles by relying on his personality and by pointing out the merits of French pictures (Courbet) exhibited in Munich. He abandoned the academic style in order to follow new trends in French painting. Encouraged by Istvan Reti and Janos Thorma, his pupils and friends, he spent the summer of 1896 in Nagyb??nya (present-day Baia Mare, Romania) with his school, which played an important role in Hungarian painting as the cradle of the Nagybanya school. He soon settled down in Nagybanya. With its style (sunny landscapes), his school determined Hungarian painting for decades. Leaving the Nagyb??nya colony in 1901, he spent the summers in Tecso with his students from 1902. During winters he was in Munich to run his school there. He was not productive as an artist: he was in search of atmospheres and his productivity was confined to teaching. His large scale plan of "Rakoczi March" with a lot of figures got as far sketches because he kept on changing his mind. The landscapes painted in Tecso include "Landscape in T??cső", "Landscape with Stacks and Sunset with Stacks", where he applied elements of plein air and impressionism. His self-portrait (1916) is one of his most harrowing pictures.
Gaspare Diziani
(1689 - 17 August 1767) was an Italian painter of the late-Baroque or Roccoco period, active mainly in the Veneto but also in Dresden and Munich. His earliest training was in his native town of Belluno with Antonio Lazzarini, then moved to Venice, to the studio of Gregorio Lazzarini and later that of Sebastiano Ricci. He was seven years older, but otherwise his career was contemporary with the Lazzarini and Ricci fellow-pupil, Giovanni Battista Tiepolo. Between 1710-1720, he painted a group of eight pictures that included the Mary Magdalene for the church of San Stefano in Belluno, and Entry into Jerusalem for San Teodoro in Venice. He also painted three frescoes on the Life of Saint Helena in the Scuola del Vin next to the church of San Silvestro. Dizianies celerity and technical assurance are evident preparatory oil sketches, with color applied in rapid and spirited strokes. He was also working as a scenery painter for the theater and opera in Venice, Munich (1717), and later in Dresden, working with Alessandro Mauro. Diziani was invited to Rome by Cardinal Ottoboni in 1726, to paint a emagnificent decoration for the church of San Lorenzo in Damaso. The decoration is now known only through an engraving by Claude Vasconi. The Sala dei Pastelli in Ca' Rezzonico has an sotto in su allegorical ceiling fresco presenting Triumph of Poetry (Poetry surrounded by Painting, Architecture, Music and Sculpture).
George Scharf
1820-1895 British art critic, was born in London, the son of George Scharf, a Bavarian miniature painter who settled in England in 1816 and died in 1860. He studied in the schools of the Royal Academy. In 1840 he accompanied Sir Charles Fellows to Asia Minor, and in 1843 acted as draughtsman to a government expedition to the same country. After his return he devoted himself with great industry and success to the illustration of books relating to art and antiquity, of which the best known are Macaulay's Lays of Ancient Rome (1847); Milman's Horace, (1849); Kugler's Handbook of Italian Painting (1851); and Dr Smith's classical dictionaries. He also engaged largely in lecturing and teaching, and took part in the formation of the Greek, Roman and Pompeian courts at the Crystal Palace. He acted as art secretary to the great Manchester Art Treasures Exhibition of 1857, and in that year was appointed secretary and director to the newly founded National Portrait Gallery. The remainder of his life was given to the care of that institution. Scharf acquired an unrivalled knowledge of all matters relating to historic portraiture, and was the author of many learned essays on the subject. In 1885