1.
Antonis Mor
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For the musician, see Anthony More. Sir Anthonis Mor, also known as Anthonis Mor van Dashorst and Antonio Moro was a Netherlandish portrait painter, much in demand by the courts of Europe. He has also referred to as Antoon, Anthonius, Anthonis or Mor van Dashorst. Mor was born in Utrecht, Netherlands, by some estimation between 1516 and 1520, little is known about his early life, except that his artistic education commenced under Jan van Scorel. His earliest known work is a portrait which is currently in a collection in Stockholm, a group of Knights of St. Between 1549 and 1550 Prince Philip II of Spain traveled around the Netherlands to present himself as the future ruler, Anthonis Mor painted his portrait in Brussels in 1549. He probably visited Italy, where he copied works by Titian. In the middle of 1550 Anthonis Mor left for Lisbon with a commission from Maria of Hungary to portray the Portuguese branch of the family. Mor probably traveled via Valladolid, where he painted the portraits of Maximilian II and his wife Maria of Austria, their daughter Anna, in Lisbon, Mor portrayed King João, Queen Catharina, Prince João and Philip’s future wife, Princess Maria of Portugal. Little more is known about Mors stay in Portugal, but he was back in Brussels by November 1553. After the sudden death of the king of England, Edward VI, in July 1553, the engagement between Philip and his Portuguese princess was broken and negotiations started for a marriage with the successor to the English throne, Mary Tudor. During these negotiations, Anthonis Mor was sent to England to paint a portrait of Mary and this portrait was much appreciated in England and Mor made at least three versions, which became much the best-known likeness of the queen. On 20 December 1553, Philip officially appointed Mor as painter in his service, in October 1555, Charles V abdicated from the throne. During the ceremonies and festivities surrounding the coronation of his son Philip as king of Spain, unfortunately, many of these paintings are lost or only known through copies. Following the death of Mary Tudor in 1558, King Philip was remarried in June 1559 to Isabella de Valois and this portrait appears to have been lost. Also from this period dates the only known self-portrait of Mor, now in the Uffizi Gallery and it seems likely that Anthonis Mor accompanied King Philip on his return to Spain in 1559. That Mor stayed at the Spanish court is confirmed by the letters which Philip regularly sent to Mor after he had left again in 1561, in his letters, Philip requested Mors return to court several times, but the painter never complied with his repeated requests. Among the works which Mor supposedly painted in Spain are the Portrait of Juana of Austria, a much-praised work from this period is the Portrait of Pejerón, the fool of the Earl of Benavente and the Duke of Alba
2.
Mary of Hungary (governor of the Netherlands)
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Mary of Austria, also known as Mary of Hungary, was queen consort of Hungary and Bohemia as the wife of King Louis II, and was later Governor of the Habsburg Netherlands. The daughter of Queen Joanna and King Philip I of Castile, Mary married King Louis II of Hungary and their marriage was happy but short and childless. Upon her husbands death following the Battle of Mohács in 1526, Queen Mary governed Hungary as regent in the name of the new king, her brother, as governor of the Netherlands, Mary faced riots and a difficult relationship with the Emperor. Throughout her tenure she continuously attempted to ensure peace between the Emperor and the King of France, after her final resignation, the frail Queen moved to Castile, where she died. Having inherited the Habsburg lip and not very feminine looks, Mary was not considered physically attractive and her portraits, letters, and comments by her contemporaries do not assign her the easy Burgundian charm possessed by her grandmother, Duchess Mary of Burgundy, and her aunt Margaret. Nevertheless, she proved to be a determined and skillful politician, as well as a patron of literature, music. Born in Brussels on 15 September 1505, between ten and eleven in the morning, Archduchess Mary of Austria was the child of King Philip I. Her birth was difficult, the Queens life was in danger. On 20 September, she was baptized by Nicolas Le Ruistre, Bishop of Arras, and named after her grandmother, Mary of Burgundy. Her godfather was her grandfather, Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian I. On 17 March 1506, Emperor Maximilian promised to marry her to the first son born to King Vladislaus II of Hungary, at the same time, the two monarchs decided that a brother of Mary would marry Vladislaus daughter Anne. Three months later, Vladislaus wife, Anne of Foix-Candale, gave birth to a son, Queen Anne died in childbirth and the royal physicians made great efforts to keep the sickly Louis alive. After the death of Marys father in September 1506, her mothers health began to deteriorate. Mary, Isabella, and Eleanor were educated together at their aunts court in Mechelen and their music teacher was Henry Bredemers. Mary was summoned to the court of her grandfather Maximilian in 1514, on 22 July 1515, Mary and Louis were married in St. Stephens Cathedral, Vienna. At the same time, Louis sister Anne was betrothed to an as yet unspecified brother of Mary, due to their age, it was decided that the newly married couple would not live together for a few more years. Anne eventually married Marys brother Ferdinand and came to Vienna, where the double sisters-in-law were educated together until 1516 and that year, Marys father-in-law died, making Louis and Mary king and queen of Hungary and Bohemia. Mary moved to Innsbruck, where she was educated until 1521, Maximilian encouraged her interest in hunting, while childhood lessons prompted an interest in music
3.
Portugal
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Portugal, officially the Portuguese Republic, is a country on the Iberian Peninsula in Southwestern Europe. It is the westernmost country of mainland Europe, to the west and south it is bordered by the Atlantic Ocean and to the east and north by Spain. The Portugal–Spain border is 1,214 kilometres long and considered the longest uninterrupted border within the European Union, the republic also includes the Atlantic archipelagos of the Azores and Madeira, both autonomous regions with their own regional governments. The territory of modern Portugal has been settled, invaded. The Pre-Celts, Celts, Carthaginians and the Romans were followed by the invasions of the Visigothic, in 711 the Iberian Peninsula was invaded by the Moors, making Portugal part of Muslim Al Andalus. Portugal was born as result of the Christian Reconquista, and in 1139, Afonso Henriques was proclaimed King of Portugal, in the 15th and 16th centuries, Portugal established the first global empire, becoming one of the worlds major economic, political and military powers. Portugal monopolized the trade during this time, and the Portuguese Empire expanded with military campaigns led in Asia. After the 1910 revolution deposed the monarchy, the democratic but unstable Portuguese First Republic was established, democracy was restored after the Portuguese Colonial War and the Carnation Revolution in 1974. Shortly after, independence was granted to almost all its overseas territories, Portugal has left a profound cultural and architectural influence across the globe and a legacy of over 250 million Portuguese speakers today. Portugal is a country with a high-income advanced economy and a high living standard. It is the 5th most peaceful country in the world, maintaining a unitary semi-presidential republican form of government and it has the 18th highest Social Progress in the world, putting it ahead of other Western European countries like France, Spain and Italy. Portugal is a pioneer when it comes to drug decriminalization, as the nation decriminalized the possession of all drugs for use in 2001. The early history of Portugal is shared with the rest of the Iberian Peninsula located in South Western Europe, the name of Portugal derives from the joined Romano-Celtic name Portus Cale. Other influences include some 5th-century vestiges of Alan settlements, which were found in Alenquer, Coimbra, the region of present-day Portugal was inhabited by Neanderthals and then by Homo sapiens, who roamed the border-less region of the northern Iberian peninsula. These were subsistence societies that, although they did not establish prosperous settlements, neolithic Portugal experimented with domestication of herding animals, the raising of some cereal crops and fluvial or marine fishing. Chief among these tribes were the Calaicians or Gallaeci of Northern Portugal, the Lusitanians of central Portugal, the Celtici of Alentejo, a few small, semi-permanent, commercial coastal settlements were also founded in the Algarve region by Phoenicians-Carthaginians. Romans first invaded the Iberian Peninsula in 219 BC, during the last days of Julius Caesar, almost the entire peninsula had been annexed to the Roman Republic. The Carthaginians, Romes adversary in the Punic Wars, were expelled from their coastal colonies and it suffered a severe setback in 150 BC, when a rebellion began in the north
4.
Giorgio Vasari
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Vasari was born in Arezzo, Tuscany. Recommended at an age by his cousin Luca Signorelli, he became a pupil of Guglielmo da Marsiglia. He was befriended by Michelangelo whose painting style would influence his own, in 1529, he visited Rome where he studied the works of Raphael and other artists of the Roman High Renaissance. Vasaris own Mannerist paintings were admired in his lifetime than afterwards. In 1547 he completed the hall of the chancery in Palazzo della Cancelleria in Rome with frescoes that received the name Sala dei Cento Giorni and he was consistently employed by members of the Medici family in Florence and Rome, and worked in Naples, Arezzo and other places. He also helped to organize the decoration of the Studiolo, now reassembled in the Palazzo Vecchio, aside from his career as a painter, Vasari was also successful as an architect. In Florence, Vasari also built the long passage, now called Vasari Corridor, the enclosed corridor passes alongside the River Arno on an arcade, crosses the Ponte Vecchio and winds around the exterior of several buildings. He also renovated the medieval churches of Santa Maria Novella and Santa Croce, at both he removed the original rood screen and loft, and remodelled the retro-choirs in the Mannerist taste of his time. In Santa Croce, he was responsible for the painting of The Adoration of the Magi which was commissioned by Pope Pius V in 1566 and it was recently restored, before being put on exhibition in 2011 in Rome and in Naples. Eventually it is planned to return it to the church of Santa Croce in Bosco Marengo, in 1562 Vasari built the octagonal dome on the Basilica of Our Lady of Humility in Pistoia, an important example of high Renaissance architecture. In Rome, Vasari worked with Giacomo Barozzi da Vignola and Bartolomeo Ammanati at Pope Julius IIIs Villa Giulia, the Lives also included a novel treatise on the technical methods employed in the arts. The book was rewritten and enlarged in 1568, with the addition of woodcut portraits of artists. The work has a consistent and notorious bias in favour of Florentines, and tends to attribute to them all the developments in Renaissance art – for example, Venetian art in particular, is systematically ignored in the first edition. Between the first and second editions, Vasari visited Venice and while the edition gave more attention to Venetian art. Vasaris biographies are interspersed with amusing gossip, with a few exceptions, however, Vasaris aesthetic judgement was acute and unbiased. He did not research archives for exact dates, as art historians do, and naturally his biographies are most dependable for the painters of his own generation. Modern criticism – with new materials opened up by research – has corrected many of his traditional dates and attributions. Vasari includes a sketch of his own biography at the end of the Lives, according to the historian Richard Goldthwaite, Vasari was one of the earliest authors to use the term competition in its economic sense
5.
Florence
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Florence is the capital city of the Italian region of Tuscany and of the Metropolitan City of Florence. It is the most populous city in Tuscany, with 383,083 inhabitants, Florence was a centre of medieval European trade and finance and one of the wealthiest cities of the time. It is considered the birthplace of the Renaissance, and has called the Athens of the Middle Ages. A turbulent political history includes periods of rule by the powerful Medici family, from 1865 to 1871 the city was the capital of the recently established Kingdom of Italy. The Historic Centre of Florence attracts 13 million tourists each year and it was declared a World Heritage Site by UNESCO in 1982. The city is noted for its culture, Renaissance art and architecture, the city also contains numerous museums and art galleries, such as the Uffizi Gallery and the Palazzo Pitti, and still exerts an influence in the fields of art, culture and politics. Due to Florences artistic and architectural heritage, it has been ranked by Forbes as one of the most beautiful cities in the world, in 2008, the city had the 17th highest average income in Italy. Florence originated as a Roman city, and later, after a period as a flourishing trading and banking medieval commune. According to the Encyclopædia Britannica, it was politically, economically, and culturally one of the most important cities in Europe, the language spoken in the city during the 14th century was, and still is, accepted as the Italian language. Starting from the late Middle Ages, Florentine money—in the form of the gold florin—financed the development of all over Europe, from Britain to Bruges, to Lyon. Florentine bankers financed the English kings during the Hundred Years War and they similarly financed the papacy, including the construction of their provisional capital of Avignon and, after their return to Rome, the reconstruction and Renaissance embellishment of Rome. Florence was home to the Medici, one of European historys most important noble families, Lorenzo de Medici was considered a political and cultural mastermind of Italy in the late 15th century. Two members of the family were popes in the early 16th century, Leo X, catherine de Medici married king Henry II of France and, after his death in 1559, reigned as regent in France. Marie de Medici married Henry IV of France and gave birth to the future king Louis XIII, the Medici reigned as Grand Dukes of Tuscany, starting with Cosimo I de Medici in 1569 and ending with the death of Gian Gastone de Medici in 1737. The Etruscans initially formed in 200 BC the small settlement of Fiesole and it was built in the style of an army camp with the main streets, the cardo and the decumanus, intersecting at the present Piazza della Repubblica. Situated along the Via Cassia, the route between Rome and the north, and within the fertile valley of the Arno, the settlement quickly became an important commercial centre. Peace returned under Lombard rule in the 6th century, Florence was conquered by Charlemagne in 774 and became part of the Duchy of Tuscany, with Lucca as capital. The population began to again and commerce prospered
6.
Frans Floris
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Frans Floris, Frans Floris the Elder or Frans Floris de Vriendt was a Flemish painter mainly known for his history paintings and portraits. He played an important role in the movement in Northern Renaissance painting referred to as Romanism, the Romanists had typically travelled to Italy to study the works of leading Italian High Renaissance artists such as Michelangelo, Raphael and their followers. Their art assimilated these Italian influences into the Northern painting tradition, Frans Floris was born in Antwerp. He was the scion of a prominent artist family which went with the name ‘de Vriendt’. One of Frans ancestors became in 1406 a master of the Brussels stonemasons guild, a family member, Jan Florisz. de Vriendt, left his native Brussels and settled in Antwerp in the mid-15th century. His patronymic name ‘Floris’ became the family name in subsequent generations. The original form ‘de Vriendt’ can, however, still be found in documents until the late 16th century. The most famous one is Cornelis who was an architect and sculptor and was one of the designers of the Antwerp City Hall, jacob Floris was a painter of stained-glass windows and Jan Floris was a potter. Jan traveled to Spain to practice his art there and died young, documentary evidence about the life of Frans Floris is scarce. Most of what we know about the youth and training of Frans Floris is based on the early biographer Karel van Manders biography of the artist, at ten pages long it is one of the most detailed biographies in van Manders Het Schilder-boeck published in 1604. According to van Mander, Frans Floris was the son of the stonecutter Cornelis I de Vriendt, like his brothers, Frans began as a student of sculpture, but later he gave up sculpture for painting. Floris went to Liège where he studied with the prominent painter Lambert Lombard, the choice for Lombard as a teacher was surprising since Antwerp was a cultural centre with many outstanding painters. He may have chosen Lombard as his brother Cornelis was good friends with Lombard and it is also possible that Frans trained as a painter in Antwerp before studying under Lombard. Floris became a master in the Antwerp Guild of Saint Luke in 1539–40, Lombard encouraged Frans Floris to study in Italy. He traveled to Rome probably as early as 1541 or 1542 and became fascinated with Italian contemporary painting and he kept a notebook of sketches, which his pupils would later etch. Floris visited other cities in Italy including Mantua and Genoa, upon his return to Antwerp around 1545, Frans Floris opened a workshop on the Italian model. He became the leading painter and was called the ‘Flemish Raphael’. He also painted 14 large panels for the duke of Aarschots palace of Beaumont and he also moved in the circle of the leading humanists such as Abraham Ortelius, Christophe Plantin, Lucas de Heere, Lambert Lombard, Dominicus Lampsonius and Hieronymus Cock
7.
Royal Museum of Fine Arts Antwerp
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The Royal Museum of Fine Arts Antwerp is a museum in Antwerp, Belgium, founded in 1810, houses a collection of paintings, sculptures and drawings from the fourteenth to the twentieth centuries. This collection is representative of the production and the taste of art enthusiasts in Antwerp, Belgium. The museum is closed for renovation until the end of 2017, the neoclassical building housing the collection is one of the primary landmarks of the Zuid district of Antwerp. The majestic building was designed by Jacob Winders and Frans van Dijk, built beginning in 1884, opened in 1890, the building stands in gardens bounded by the Leopold de Waalplaats, the Schildersstraat, the Plaatsnijdersstraat, and the Beeldhouwersstraat. The museums collection began with the artworks owned by the Antwerp Guild of Saint Luke, when the guild disbanded, its gallery of paintings went to the Academy of Fine Arts, which had been founded in 1663 with the involvement of David Teniers. The gallery had works by Peter Paul Rubens, Jacob Jordaens, during French occupations in 1794 and 1796, art was looted from churches and other buildings in Antwerp, the pieces that were later recovered became part of the museums collection. By 1817 the museum listed 127 items in its catalogue, mostly dating to the mid-16th and 17th centuries, william I of the Netherlands helped the museum in various ways. In 1823 he donated three paintings, including a work by Titian—Pope Alexander IV presents Jacopo Pesaro to Saint Peter—which became the museums first foreign piece. He decreed a grant of 20,000 guilders to build the collections contemporary art in 1827, only in 1873 did the museum begin to acquire living artists works. A significant bequest from a mayor of Antwerp, Florent van Ertborn. Van Ertborn had collected Early Netherlandish art at a time when it was out of favour and these works included Jan van Eycks Saint Barbara and Madonna at the Fountain and Rogier van der Weydens Portrait of Philip de Croy and the Seven Sacraments Altarpiece. Also in the bequest were paintings by Hans Memling, Dieric Bouts, Joachim Patinir, Quinten Massys, Jean Fouquet, Simone Martini, Antonello da Messina, at the end of 2011 the museum closed to the public for major renovations
