1599-1660,Spanish painter. He was apprenticed to Francisco Herrera the Elder before being trained by Francisco Pacheco. His early works were mostly religious or genre scenes. After arriving in Madrid in 1623, he painted a portrait of Philip IV that won him immediate success and an appointment as court painter. His position gave him access to the royal collections, including works by Titian, who exerted the greatest influence on his style. In his portraits from this period, only the faces and hands of the figures are accentuated, and the dark figures stand out against a light background. A visit to Italy (1629 ?C 31) further developed his style, and on his return to Madrid he entered his most productive period. Velazquez created a new type of informal royal portrait for Philip hunting lodge, and his portraits of court dwarfs display the same discerning eye as those of his royal subjects. On a second visit to Rome (1649 ?C 51) he painted a portrait of Pope Innocent X. The powerful head, brilliant combinations of crimson of the curtain, chair, and cope are painted with fluent technique and almost imperceptible brushstrokes that go far beyond the late manner of Titian and announce the last stage in Velazquez development. This portrait was copied innumerable times and won him immediate and lasting renown in Italy. In his last years he created his masterpiece, Las Meninas (The Maids of Honour, 1656). In this casual scene, the artist is shown painting the king and queen in the presence of the infanta Margarita and her attendants; the nearly life size figures are painted in more or less detail according to their relation to the central figure of the infanta and to the source of light, creating a remarkable illusion of reality never surpassed by Velazquez or any other artist of his age. He is universally acknowledged as one of the giants of Western art.   Related Paintings of Velasquez :. | Our Lady of Dai Guanzhong map | The spirit of Christ and supervision | Vulcan s smelter | Philip IV | St. Thomas s confusing |
Related Artists:
Paul Peel
(7 November 1860 - 3 October 1892) was a Canadian academic painter. Having won a medal at the 1890 Paris Salon, he became one of the first Canadian artists to receive international recognition in his lifetime. Peel was born in London, Ontario, and received his art training from his father from a young age. Later he studied under William Lees Judson and at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts under Thomas Eakins. He later moved to Paris, France where he received art instruction at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts under Jean-Leon Gerôme and at the Academie Julian under Benjamin Constant, Henri Doucet and Jules Lefebvre. In 1882 he married Isaure Verdier and had two children with her: a son (Robert Andre, in 1886) and a daughter (Emilie Marguerite, in 1888). Peel travelled widely in Canada and in Europe, exhibiting as a member of the Ontario Society of Artists and the Royal Canadian Academy. He also exhibited at international shows like the Paris Salon, where he won a bronze medal in 1890 for his painting After the Bath. He was known for his often sentimental nudes and for his pictures of children.
Pieter Vanderlyn
Dutch-born American Colonial Era Painter, ca.1687-1778 American colonial painter, b. Holland. He reached New York c.1718 and became a portrait painter and land speculator and practiced other trades, settling in Kingston, N.Y. The portrait most certainly ascribed to him is that of Mrs. Petrus Vas, his mother-in-law. John Vanderlyn was his grandson.
COPPO DI MARCOVALDO
Italian Byzantine Style Painter, ca.1225-1274