Italian Early Renaissance Painter, 1445-1510 Italian painter and draughtsman. In his lifetime he was one of the most esteemed painters in Italy, enjoying the patronage of the leading families of Florence, in particular the Medici and their banking clients. He was summoned to take part in the decoration of the Sistine Chapel in Rome, was highly commended by diplomatic agents to Ludovico Sforza in Milan and Isabella d Este in Mantua and also received enthusiastic praise from the famous mathematician Luca Pacioli and the humanist poet Ugolino Verino. By the time of his death, however, Botticelli s reputation was already waning. He was overshadowed first by the advent of what Vasari called the maniera devota, a new style by Perugino, Francesco Francia and the young Raphael, whose new and humanly affective sentiment, infused atmospheric effects and sweet colourism took Italy by storm; he was then eclipsed with the establishment immediately afterwards of the High Renaissance style, which Vasari called the modern manner, in the paintings of Michelangelo and the mature works of Raphael in the Vatican. From that time his name virtually disappeared until the reassessment of his reputation that gathered momentum in the 1890s   Related Paintings of Sandro Botticelli :. | Holy Trinity | Annunciation (mk36) | The Return of Judith | Details of Lament fro Christ Dead,with st jerome,St Paul and St Peter (mk36) | St Jerome in Penitence |
Related Artists:
Edward Wadsworth
British 1889-1949 Edward Wadsworth Gallery 1949). English painter. He was raised in a northern industrial environment that was to appear with great forcefulness in his Vorticist work. He studied engineering in Munich from 1906 to 1907 and, like many other Vorticists (see VORTICISM), Wadsworth interest in the machine showed itself at an early age. He also studied art at the Knirr School in Munich in his spare time, before attending Bradford School of Art; he then studied through a scholarship at the Slade School of Art (1908-12) in London. Early paintings like Harrogate Corporation Brickworks (1908; untraced) show a growing interest in industrial subjects. Under the impact of the Post-Impressionists, he turned for a while to portraiture, beach scenes and still-lifes. His work was included in the final month of the Second Post-Impressionist Exhibition held at the Grafton Galleries in 1912, and in the summer of the same year he joined the Omega Workshops, although his alliance with Roger Fry was short-lived. Wadsworth new friendship with Wyndham Lewis led to an abrupt departure from Omega in October, when several of his works were included in Frank Rutter Post-Impressionist and Futurist exhibitions at the Doro Gallery in London. His painting L Omnibus (c. 1913; untraced; see 1974 exh. cat., no. 12) announced his involvement with motorized themes that clearly derived from Futurism.
Koller, Rudolf
Swiss Painter, 1828-1905 Swiss painter. He studied in Zurich under such artists as Johann Jakob Ulrich before going to D?sseldorf in 1846 to work with Carl Ferdinand Sohn. In 1847 he was in Paris where he shared a studio with Arnold B?cklin. Two years later he went to Munich where he worked with a group of artists called the 'Schweizer', whose leader was Johann Gottfried Steffan. He returned to Zurich in 1851 and painted mainly pastoral landscapes (e.g. Waterfall near Zurich, c. 1851; Zurich, Graph. Samml. Eidgen?ss. Tech. Hochsch.) evoking prevailing romantic sensibilities. His later paintings combine realist subject-matter with a carefully arranged and executed classical composition. He frequently chose rustic farm scenes containing animals, whom he believed represented a dignified and pure image of nature that was to be treated with respect. He was often considered to be the 19th-century counterpart to Paulus Potter whose paintings of animals were emulated at the time. His works are similar to those of Rosa Bonheur, as seen in Cows in the Roman Countryside (1869; Berne, Kstmus.). His most celebrated painting is the St Gotthard Mailcoach (1873; Zurich, Ksthaus), which depicts a coach at full speed attempting to stop suddenly for a herd of cattle obstructing the narrow road. After 1870, problems with his eyesight forced him to paint less, yet even late in life he was still capable of producing such lyrical paintings as Horses at the Drinking Fountain (1890; Le Locle, Mus. B.-A.).
Homer Watson
Canadian Painter, 1855-1936 Canadian painter. The son of a mill-owner, he was born in a region of rural southern Ontario, which he painted throughout his life. In 1874 he moved to Toronto to work at the Notman Photographic Studios; he also spent many hours copying paintings in the Toronto Normal School in order to improve his technique. In 1876 he visited New York, where he was impressed with the carefully composed paintings of the Hudson River school and the rural scenes of George Inness, who encouraged Watson to pursue his career. The following year he returned to Doon to work up his New York sketches into finished paintings. A work of this early period, Landscape with River (1878; Toronto, A.G. Ont.),