1283-1344 Italian Simone Martini Locations He was a major figure in the development of early Italian painting and greatly influenced the development of the International Gothic style. It is thought that Martini was a pupil of Duccio di Buoninsegna, the leading Sienese painter of his time. His brother-in-law was the artist Lippo Memmi. Very little documentation survives regarding Simone's life, and many attributions are debated by art historians. Simone Martini died while in the service of the Papal court at Avignon in 1344. Simone was doubtlessly apprenticed from an early age, as would have been the normal practice. Among his first documented works is the Maest?? of 1315 in the Palazzo Pubblico in Siena. A copy of the work, executed shortly thereafter by Lippo Memmi in San Gimignano, testifies to the enduring influence Simone's prototypes would have on other artists throughout the fourteenth century. Perpetuating the Sienese tradition, Simone's style contrasted with the sobriety and monumentality of Florentine art, and is noted for its soft, stylized, decorative features, sinuosity of line, and unsurpassed courtly elegance. Simone's art owes much to French manuscript illumination and ivory carving: examples of such art were brought to Siena in the fourteenth century by means of the Via Francigena, a main pilgrimage and trade route from Northern Europe to Rome. Simone's major works include the Maest?? (1315) in the Palazzo Pubblico in Siena, St Louis of Toulouse Crowning the King at the Museo di Capodimonte in Naples (1317), the S. Caterina Polyptych in Pisa (1319) and the Annunciation and two Saints at the Uffizi in Florence (1333), as well as frescoes in the Chapel of St. Martin in the lower church of the Basilica of San Francesco d'Assisi. Francis Petrarch became friend with Simone while in Avignon, and two of his sonnets make reference to a portrait of Laura de Noves he supposedly painted for the poet.   Related Paintings of Simone Martini :. | Jesus crucified like back | Her Madona of the Sign | Blessing Christ | The annunciation with Two Saints | Christ Discovered in the Temple |
Related Artists:
Demont-Breton Virginie
French Painter ,1859-Wissant 1935
Ivan Khrutsky
1810-1885 Russian Ivan Khrutsky Gallery was a Russian-Polish painter known by his still-lives and portraits. He was born Ivan Fomich Khrutsky into a family descended from Polish gentry in the village of Ula, Vitebsk Gubernia (currently Belarus). In 1827, Khrutsky came to St. Petersburg and in 1830 entered the Imperial Academy of Arts. His first known works are dated 1832. The paintings gradually gathered public and critical acclaim. Khrutsky also worked as an interior designer, and became a popular amongst the wealthy home owners. In 1836, Khrutsky was awarded the Major Silver medal of the Academy for his still-lifes. Khrutsky also executed nice genre pictures and portraits. Old Woman Knitting a Sock, brought him the Minor Gold medal of the Academy. In 1839 he was awarded the title of the Academician. After his father??s death in 1840 Khrutsky left St. Petersburg forever and settled in the family estate Zakharenichi (Zacharniczy), Polotsk region. This period was one of commissioned religious art, mostly from Lithuania. Besides religious paintings he also worked on portraits, such as I.I. Glazunov's, Joseph Semashko's, Mikolaj Malinowski's and others. He died in 1885.
Jackson Pollock
l912--1956,U.S. painter. He grew up in California and Arizona. In the early 1930s he studied in New York City under Thomas Hart Benton, and later he was employed on the WPA Federal Art Project. In 1945 he married the artist Lee Krasner. Two years later, after several years of semiabstract work stimulated by psychotherapy, Pollock began to lay his canvas on the floor and pour or drip paint onto it in stages. This process permitted him to record the force and scope of his gestures in trajectories of enamel or aluminum paint that veiled the figurative elements found in his earlier work. The results were huge areas covered with complex and dynamic linear patterns that fuse image and form and engulf the vision of the spectator in their scale and intricacy. Pollock believed that art derived from the unconscious and judged his work and that of others on its inherent authenticity of personal expression. He became known as a leading practitioner of Abstract Expressionism, particularly the form known as action painting. Championed by critic Clement Greenberg and others, he became a celebrity. When he died in a car crash at 44, he was one of the few American painters to be recognized during his lifetime and afterward as the peer of 20th-century European masters of modern art.