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 :. | Pope Innocent X | Dwarf Juarez | Juan Sebastian | Dionysus | Christ on the Cross |
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Jan Sanders van Hemessen
1500-1566 Dutch Jan Sanders Van Hemessen Gallery was a Flemish Northern Renaissance painter. He was born in Hemiksem, then called Hemessen or Heymissen. Following studies in Italy, in 1524 he settled in Antwerp. A mannerist, his images focused on human failings such as greed and vanity. Like his daughter, Catarina van Hemessen, he also painted portraits.
Lorenzo Lippi
1606-65 Italian painter and poet. He was trained by Matteo Rosselli, with whom he worked for many years in close partnership. His collaboration was sometimes anonymous but is documented from 1622, when they decorated the ceiling of the Sala della Stufa (Florence, Pitti), to 1631-2, when they worked together on lunettes portraying St Francis Adoring the Child and St Catherine in Prison (Florence, S Gaetano). In 1630 Lippi was enrolled in the Accademia del Disegno but appears not to have had his own workshop until after 1634, although he worked independently before then. The earliest paintings attributable to him are, both in facial types and in the soft, rich folds of the drapery, close in style to the work of Rosselli. Examples include canvases of the Apostles James, John and Matthew, and Christ Blessing (all 1628; Vaglia, S Pietro), and the Virgin Handing the Child to St Francis (1629; Florence, S Salvatore di Camaldoli). In the 1630s Lippi painted decorative and theatrical compositions, mainly on literary and biblical themes, which remained indebted to Rosselli, for example Samson and Delilah (1632; Stockholm, Nmus.) and the Virgin in Glory with Saints (1634; Ronta, nr Barberino di Mugello, S Michele). Shortly afterwards he produced works
ALTICHIERO da Zevio
Italian Gothic Era Painter, ca.1330-1390 Altichiero da Verona (also called Aldighieri da Zevio; c. 1330 ?C c. 1390) was an Italian painter of the Gothic style. A follower of Giotto, Altichiero is credited with founding the Veronese school. He worked in Verona and Padua ?? works by him survive in the church of Sant'Anastasia in Verona and in the basilica of Sant'Antonio and the Oratorio di San Giorgio in Padua (where the credit for the work has been generally shared with Jacopo d'Avanzi, about whom little is known). Altichiero was probably born somewhere near Zevio. He became an important member of the della Scala's household, and around 1364 painted a series of frescoes based upon Flavius Josephus's The Wars of the Jews at the della Scala palace of Sala del Podest??. There are frescoes by him in the Basilica of Saint Anthony of Padua. In conjunction with D'Avanzo Veronese, he frescoed the chapel of St. James for which he was paid 792 ducats. The first seven frescoes on the life of St. James the Elder were by Altichiero.