(September 19, 1772, Valencia, Spain CJuly 22, 1850, Madrid, Spain) was a Spanish painter, considered the best portrait painter of his time. Vicente Lepez y Portaña was born in Valencia on September 19, 1772. His parents were Cristebal Lepez Sanchordi and Manuela Portaña Meer. Vicente Lepez began formally studying painting in Valencia at the age of thirteen, he was a disciple of father Antonio de Villanueva, a Franciscan monk, and he studied at the Academy of San Carlos in his native city. He was seventeen when he won first prize in drawing and coloring receiving a scholarship to study in the prestigious Academia Real de Bellas Artes de San Fernando in Madrid. For the following three years in Madrid, he apprenticed with the Valencian painter, Mariano Salvador Maella. Vicente Lepez returned to Valencia in 1794 and subsequently became vice-director of painting at the Academy where he had studied as a boy. In 1795 he married Maria Piquer, they had two sons: Bernardo Lepez Piquer and Luis (1802-1865), who were also painters, following their father's style but with little accomplishments. In 1801 Lepez was named President of the Academy of San Carlos.  Related Paintings of Vicente Lopez y Portana :. | King Charles IV of Spain and his family pay a visit to the University of Valencia in 1802 | La infanta Luisa Carlota de Borbon | Portrat des Francisco de Goya | Equestrian portrait of Ferdinand VII of Spain | Portrait of Maria Francisca de Assis de Braganca |
Related Artists:
COLLANTES, Francisco
Spanish Baroque Era Painter, 1599-1656 Spanish painter. He was probably a pupil of Vicente Carducho, but there is nothing to support this idea. His evident familiarity with contemporary Italian art indicates that he visited Rome and Naples, and this might explain the absence of documentation on him in Spain. Collantes enjoyed considerable prestige, and his paintings were acquired in 1634 for the decoration of the Buen Retiro Palace in Madrid; some of them may have been specially painted for this setting. His name appears frequently in the inventories of collectors in Madrid throughout the 17th century. It is impossible to date Collantes's undated paintings with any accuracy. However, his work shows two very clear and different lines of development. His canvases of large, intensely naturalistic figures, with tenebrist lighting effects , are close in style to those of Jusepe Ribera. In them the intense, energetic figures are sometimes set against landscape backgrounds, for example in St Humphrey (1645-50; Madrid, Prado) and St John the Baptist , but, still following Ribera, the naturalistic elements are emphasized. He also specialized in landscapes and in biblical or mythological subjects, compositions with minute figures set against wide landscapes or architecture with strong light effects. These are the works for which he is best known and which are the most important, since he was one of the few landscape painters in Spain in the 17th century.
Garofalo
1481-1559 Italian Garofalo Gallery Italian painter. Active mainly in Ferrara and the district around the Po delta, he was one of the most outstanding figures in Emilian classicism during the first half of the 16th century. In 1497 Garofalo father paid Boccaccio Boccaccino to teach his son the rudiments of painting. Garofalo first works were directly influenced by the Cremonese painter, to whom they were formerly even attributed. They consist of a series of small paintings depicting the Virgin and Child. The example in the Ca d Oro in Venice must have been Garofalo first painting and reveals not only the lessons learned from Boccaccino, but also signs of the influence of Domenico Panetti (c. 1460-before 1513), traditionally recorded as his first master. Another Virgin and Child (Assisi, Perkins priv. col.) shows signs of the early influence of Lorenzo Costa the elder, while the example in the Nationalmuseum, Copenhagen, shows a similarity with the early works of his contemporary, Lodovico Mazzolino. A particularly important project in Ferrara during the earliest years of the 16th century, involving numerous highly skilled artists, was the fresco decoration of the oratory of the Concezione. The frescoes (Ferrara, Pin. N.) represent a significant development in the city art. Garofalo hand has been identified in the Presentation in the Temple, in which he reveals a familiarity not only with local art, but also with the high points of Bolognese classicism, whose greatest exponents were Francesco Francia and Lorenzo Costa the elder. Around 1505, Garofalo works show a close familiarity with artistic developments in Bologna, in particular the mature style of Costa and the decoration in 1505-6, by Francesco Francia, Costa, Aspertini and others, of the oratory of S Cecilia in S Giacomo Maggiore. Garofalo Virgin Enthroned between SS Martin and Rosalia (Florence, Uffizi), created for Codigoro Cathedral, should be seen within this context, whereas the small altarpiece for the Arcivescovado, Ferrara, although executed at the same time, shows early, if faint, signs of the influence of Venetian painting of the period.
Ludovico Cigoli
Italian Baroque Era Painter , 1559-1613 was an Italian painter and architect of the late Mannerist and early Baroque period, trained and active in his early career in Florence, and spending the last nine years of his life in Rome. Lodovico Cardi was born at Villa Castelvecchio di Cigoli, in Tuscany, whence the name by which he is commonly known. Initially, Cigoli trained in Florence under the fervid mannerist Alessandro Allori. Later, influenced by the most prominent of the Contra-Maniera painters, Santi di Tito, as well as by Barocci, Cigoli shed the shackles of mannerism and infused his later paintings with an expressionism often lacking from 16th century Florentine painting. For example, for the Roman patron, Massimo Massimi, he painted an Ecce Homo (now in Palazzo Pitti). Supposedly unbenknownst to any of the painters, two other prominent contemporary painters, Passignano and Caravaggio, had been requested canvases on the same theme. It is unclear if they are completely independent. Cigoli's painting seems to have been made with knowledge of Caravaggio's canvas; however, while Cigoli's work lacks the power of Caravaggio's naturalism, the background shade and sparse foreground shows how much he was moving away from crowded Florentine historical paintings. This work was afterwards taken by Bonaparte to the Louvre, and was restored to Florence in 1815. One of his early paintings was of Cain slaying Abel.