Spanish Painter, ca.1531-1588 was a portrait painter of the Spanish Renaissance and one of the pioneers of the great tradition of Spanish portrait painting. Alonso Senchez Coello spent his childhood in Benifair de les Valls, until the death of his father when he was around ten years old. He was educated in Portugal at his grandfather's home. Coello's years in Portugal and his family name of Portuguese origin led to a long-standing belief that he was in fact Portuguese. His grandfather (after whom he was named) was in the service of King John III of Portugal who sent the young painter to study with Anthonis Mor (also known as Antonio Moro) in Flanders around 1550. He was under the service of Antoine de Granville, bishop of Arras, learning from Mor. While studying in Flanders, Coello also spent time copying some of Titian's works. In 1552, the painter went to Lisbon with Anthonis Mor when Charles V commissioned Mor to paint the Portuguese royal family. For a few years, Senchez Coello remained in Portugal working for the court of the heir to the throne, John, Crown Prince of Portugal. After the prince's death, Senchez Coello moved to the Spanish court of Philip II, having been recommended by the widow of John, Juana, who was the sister of the Spanish king. In 1555, S??nchez Coello was in Valladolid working for the Spanish court, and when Mor left Spain in 1561, Senchez Coello took his former master's place as Court Painter. Senchez Coello married Louisa Reyaltes in either 1560 or 1561 in Valladolid, and they had seven children. Coello's daughter, Isabel Senchez (1564-1612),   Related Paintings of SANCHEZ COELLO, Alonso :. | Infantas Isabel Clara Eugenia and Catalina Micaela sa | Still-life with Quince, Cabbage, Melon and Cucumber | Portrait of Isabella Clara Eugenia | The Infanta Isabella Clara Eugenia | Philip II Holding a Rosary |
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Allan Ramsey
1713-1784 Rococo,Scottish
Anton Raphael Mengs
1728-1779 Dutch Anton Raphael Mengs Gallery Mengs was born in 1728 at Usti nad Labem (German: Aussig) in Bohemia on 12 March 1728; he died in Rome 29 June 1779. His father, Ismael Mengs, a Danish painter, established himself finally at Dresden, whence in 1741 he took his son to Rome. In Rome, his fresco painting of Parnassus at Villa Albani gained him a reputation as a master painter. The appointment of Mengs in 1749 as first painter to Frederick Augustus, elector of Saxony did not prevent his spending much time in Rome, where he had married Margarita Quazzi who had sat for him as a model in 1748, and abjured the Protestant faith, and where he became in 1754 director of the Vatican school of painting, nor did this hinder him on two occasions from obeying the call of Charles III of Spain to Madrid. There Mengs produced some of his best work, and specially the ceiling of the banqueting-hall of the Royal Palace of Madrid, the subject of which was the Triumph of Trajan and the Temple of Glory. Among his pupils there was Agust??n Esteve. After the completion of this work in 1777, Mengs returned to Rome, and there he died, two years later, in poor circumstances, leaving twenty children, seven of whom were pensioned by the king of Spain. His portraits and autoportraits recall an attention to detail and insight, often lost from the grand manner paintings. Besides numerous paintings in the Madrid gallery, the Ascension and St Joseph at Dresden, Perseus and Andromeda at Saint Petersburg, and the ceiling of the Villa Albani must be mentioned among his chief works. In 1911, Henry George Percy, 7th Duke of Northumberland, possessed a Holy Family, and the colleges of All Souls and Magdalen, at Oxford, possessed altar-pieces by Mengs's hand. In his writings, in Spanish, Italian and German, Mengs has put forth his eclectic theory of art, which treats of perfection as attainable by a well-schemed combination of diverse excellences Greek design, with the expression of Raphael, the chiaroscuro of Correggio, and the colour of Titian. He would have fancied himself the first neoclassicist, while in fact he may be the last flicker of Baroque art. Or in the words of Wittkower, In the last analysis, he is as much an end as a beginning. His intimacy with Johann Joachim Winckelmann, who constantly wrote at his dictation, has enhanced his historical importance, for he formed no scholars, and the critic must now concur in Goethe's judgment of Mengs in Winckelmann und sein Jahrhundert; he must deplore that so much learning should have been allied to a total want of initiative and poverty of invention, and embodied with a strained and artificial mannerism. Mengs was famous for his rivalry with the contemporary Italian painter Pompeo Batoni.
Henry F. Farny
French-born American Painter and Printmaker, 1847-1916