Dutch Post-Impressionist Painter, 1853-1890 Vincent Willem van Gogh (30 March 1853 ?C 29 July 1890) was a Dutch Post-Impressionist artist. Some of his paintings are now among the world's best known, most popular and expensive works of art. Van Gogh spent his early adult life working for a firm of art dealers. After a brief spell as a teacher, he became a missionary worker in a very poor mining region. He did not embark upon a career as an artist until 1880. Initially, Van Gogh worked only with sombre colours, until he encountered Impressionism and Neo-Impressionism in Paris. He incorporated their brighter colours and style of painting into a uniquely recognizable style, which was fully developed during the time he spent at Arles, France. He produced more than 2,000 works, including around 900 paintings and 1,100 drawings and sketches, during the last ten years of his life. Most of his best-known works were produced in the final two years of his life, during which time he cut off part of his left ear following a breakdown in his friendship with Paul Gauguin. After this he suffered recurrent bouts of mental illness, which led to his suicide. The central figure in Van Gogh's life was his brother Theo, who continually and selflessly provided financial support. Their lifelong friendship is documented in numerous letters they exchanged from August 1872 onwards. Van Gogh is a pioneer of what came to be known as Expressionism. He had an enormous influence on 20th century art, especially on the Fauves and German Expressionists.  Related Paintings of Vincent Van Gogh :. | Lane in Voyer d'Argenson Park at Asnieres (nn04) | Still life:Bloaters on a Piece of Yellow Paper (nn04) | Wheat Field with Crows (nn04) | Stilleben mit Rosen und Sonnenblumen | Trees adn Undergrowth (nn04) |
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ANTONIAZZO ROMANO
[Italian Early Renaissance Painter, 1430-ca.1510 Antoniazzo was born in the Colonna quarter of Rome. He was influenced at first by the decorative manner of Benozzo Gozzoli and Beato Angelico, as well as by the local painters of Lazio. His first recorded work is from 1461, a replica (untraced) of the miraculous Virgin and Child of St. Luke in the Basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore of Rome, for the seignior of Pesaro, Alessandro Sforza. From 1464 he worked for the papal court, producing at first a triptych of the Virgin and Child with Saints in Rieti. In 1467 he completed the decoration of the funerary chapel of Cardinal Bessarion in the church of Santi Apostoli of Rome, not far from his birthplace. In the centre of the decoration was an icon of the Virgin, now in the Chapel of St Anthony, a copy of the Byzantine icon in the Santa Maria in Cosmedin, the church of the Greeks in Rome. This icon in the Santi Apostoli is one of the most remarkable examples of Antoniazzo's considerable production of Virgins, generally taken from Byzantine models: he was indeed a much sought-after copier of icons. Later he worked to a series of frescoes in the Monastery of Tor de' Specchi in Rome, featuring stories of the life of S. Francesca Romana, and to the decoration of the public rooms of the Palazzo Venezia. In the 1470s Antoniazzo worked to the decoration of the Vatican Palace with artists like Perugino, Melozzo da Forl?? and Ghirlandaio. Through their influence his figures acquired gentler expressions and their garments were ornamented with decorative patterns, though always retaining several Medieval features. Together with Melozzo he worked to frescoes in Santa Maria sopra Minerva, and subsequently painted for that church a famous Annunciation (1482). The painting shows the Dominican Juan de Torquemada (cardinal) (d. 1468) presenting poor girls dowered by the guild of the Annunciation that he founded to the Virgin Mary. In the years between 1475 and 1480 Antoniazzo's production of altarpieces and panels with images of the Virgin increased as a result of the encouragement of the cult of the Virgin by Pope Sixtus IV. His later works show an increasing mannerism in their features, which were later imitated by several painters, whose works had been often attributed to the master. Antoniazzo was one of the three founders of the Compagnia di San Luca, the guild of painters and illuminators in Rome, and signed the statutes in 1478.
RING, Ludger tom, the Younger
German Painter, 1522-1584
SAENREDAM, Pieter Jansz
Dutch Baroque Era Painter, 1597-1665,Painter and draughtsman, son of Jan Saenredam. His paintings of churches and the old town halls in Haarlem, Utrecht and Amsterdam must have been appreciated by contemporary viewers principally as faithful representations of familiar and meaningful monuments. Yet they also reveal his exceptional sensitivity to aesthetic values; his paintings embody the most discriminating considerations of composition, colouring and craftsmanship. His oeuvre is comparatively small, the paintings numbering no more than 60, and each is obviously the product of careful calculation and many weeks of work. Their most striking features, unusual in the genre, are their light, closely valued tonalities and their restrained, restful and delicately balanced compositions. These pictures, always executed on smooth panels, are remarkable for their sense of harmony and, in some instances, serenity. Here, perhaps, lies a trace of filial fidelity to the Mannerist tradition of refinement and elegance, of lines never lacking in precision and grace. But Mannerist figures and the more comparable components of strap- and scrollwork embellishment lack the tension and clarity of Saenredam's designs, which also have a completeness reminiscent of the fugues of Gerrit Sweelinck (1566-?1628).