1.
1608 in art
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Events from the year 1608 in art. August - Caravaggio is arrested and imprisoned for his part in a brawl and he subsequently escapes and flees Malta. Hendrick Avercamp moves from Amsterdam to Kampen, mesrop of Khizan paints a Gospel
2.
Baroque
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The style began around 1600 in Rome and Italy, and spread to most of Europe. The aristocracy viewed the dramatic style of Baroque art and architecture as a means of impressing visitors by projecting triumph, power, Baroque palaces are built around an entrance of courts, grand staircases, and reception rooms of sequentially increasing opulence. However, baroque has a resonance and application that extend beyond a reduction to either a style or period. It is also yields the Italian barocco and modern Spanish barroco, German Barock, Dutch Barok, others derive it from the mnemonic term Baroco, a supposedly laboured form of syllogism in logical Scholastica. The Latin root can be found in bis-roca, in informal usage, the word baroque can simply mean that something is elaborate, with many details, without reference to the Baroque styles of the 17th and 18th centuries. The word Baroque, like most periodic or stylistic designations, was invented by later critics rather than practitioners of the arts in the 17th, the term Baroque was initially used in a derogatory sense, to underline the excesses of its emphasis. In particular, the term was used to describe its eccentric redundancy and noisy abundance of details, although it was long thought that the word as a critical term was first applied to architecture, in fact it appears earlier in reference to music. Another hypothesis says that the word comes from precursors of the style, Giacomo Barozzi da Vignola and he did not make the distinctions between Mannerism and Baroque that modern writers do, and he ignored the later phase, the academic Baroque that lasted into the 18th century. Long despised, Baroque art and architecture became fashionable between the two World Wars, and has remained in critical favour. In painting the gradual rise in popular esteem of Caravaggio has been the best barometer of modern taste, William Watson describes a late phase of Shang-dynasty Chinese ritual bronzes of the 11th century BC as baroque. The term Baroque may still be used, usually pejoratively, describing works of art, craft, the appeal of Baroque style turned consciously from the witty, intellectual qualities of 16th-century Mannerist art to a visceral appeal aimed at the senses. It employed an iconography that was direct, simple, obvious, germinal ideas of the Baroque can also be found in the work of Michelangelo. Even more generalised parallels perceived by some experts in philosophy, prose style, see the Neapolitan palace of Caserta, a Baroque palace whose construction began in 1752. In paintings Baroque gestures are broader than Mannerist gestures, less ambiguous, less arcane and mysterious, more like the stage gestures of opera, Baroque poses depend on contrapposto, the tension within the figures that move the planes of shoulders and hips in counterdirections. Baroque is a style of unity imposed upon rich, heavy detail, Baroque style featured exaggerated lighting, intense emotions, release from restraint, and even a kind of artistic sensationalism. There were highly diverse strands of Italian baroque painting, from Caravaggio to Cortona, the most prominent Spanish painter of the Baroque was Diego Velázquez. The later Baroque style gradually gave way to a more decorative Rococo, while the Baroque nature of Rembrandts art is clear, the label is less often used for Vermeer and many other Dutch artists. Flemish Baroque painting shared a part in this trend, while continuing to produce the traditional categories
3.
El Greco
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Doménikos Theotokópoulos, most widely known as El Greco, was a painter, sculptor and architect of the Spanish Renaissance. El Greco was a nickname, a reference to his Greek origin, El Greco was born in Crete, which was at that time part of the Republic of Venice, and the center of Post-Byzantine art. He trained and became a master within that tradition before traveling at age 26 to Venice, in 1570 he moved to Rome, where he opened a workshop and executed a series of works. During his stay in Italy, El Greco enriched his style elements of Mannerism. In 1577, he moved to Toledo, Spain, where he lived and worked until his death, in Toledo, El Greco received several major commissions and produced his best-known paintings. El Grecos dramatic and expressionistic style was met with puzzlement by his contemporaries, El Greco has been characterized by modern scholars as an artist so individual that he belongs to no conventional school. He is best known for tortuously elongated figures and often fantastic or phantasmagorical pigmentation, El Grecos father, Geórgios Theotokópoulos, was a merchant and tax collector. Nothing is known about his mother or his first wife, also Greek, El Grecos older brother, Manoússos Theotokópoulos, was a wealthy merchant and spent the last years of his life in El Grecos Toledo home. El Greco received his training as an icon painter of the Cretan school. In 1563, at the age of twenty-two, El Greco was described in a document as a master, meaning he was already a master of the guild and presumably operating his own workshop. Three years later, in June 1566, as a witness to a contract, most scholars believe that the Theotokópoulos family was almost certainly Greek Orthodox, although some Catholic sources still claim him from birth. One of his uncles was an Orthodox priest, and his name is not mentioned in the Catholic archival baptismal records on Crete, prevelakis goes even further, expressing his doubt that El Greco was ever a practicing Roman Catholic. Important for his biography, El Greco, still in Crete, painted his Dormition of the Virgin near the end of his Cretan period. Three other signed works of Doménicos are attributed to El Greco, in 1563, at the age of twenty-two, El Greco was already an enrolled master of the local guild, presumably in charge of his own workshop. He left for Venice a few later, and never returned to Crete. His Dormition of the Virgin, of before 1567 in tempera, the painting combines post-Byzantine and Italian Mannerist stylistic and iconographic elements, and incorporates stylistic elements of the Cretan School. It was natural for the young El Greco to pursue his career in Venice, though the exact year is not clear, most scholars agree that El Greco went to Venice around 1567. Knowledge of El Grecos years in Italy is limited and this may mean he worked in Titians large studio, or not
4.
View of Toledo
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View of Toledo, is one of the two surviving landscapes painted by El Greco. The other, View and Plan of Toledo lies at Museo Del Greco, Toledo, View of Toledo is among the best known depictions of the sky in Western art, along with Vincent van Goghs The Starry Night and the landscapes of William Turner and Monet, among others. Most notable is the color contrast between the dark and somber skies above and the glowing green hills below. While influenced by the Mannerist style, El Grecos expressive handling of color, in this painting, he takes liberties with the actual layout of Toledo insofar as certain building locations are re-arranged. However, the location of the Castle of San Servando, on the right, is accurately depicted, El Grecos signature appears in the lower-right corner. Landscape paintings were rare among Spanish paintings of the Renaissance and Baroque periods, the Council of Trents ban against landscape painting lends credence to the idea that this work may stand as the first Spanish landscape painting of its time. It is thought that this paintings enigmatic symbolism could be related to the mysticism that infused the city during the period, metropolitan Museum of Art – View of Toledo Essay on this painting from the book Beauty and Terror by Brian A. Oard Painting of El Greco
5.
Caravaggio
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Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio was an Italian painter active in Rome, Naples, Malta, and Sicily between 1592 and 1610. His paintings, which combine a realistic observation of the human state, in scarcely a year or so’s sojourn in Naples, he rapidly established himself once more as the most prominent painter, exploiting high-ranking connections. It was not long before these connections gave him an opening to travel on in 1607 to Malta, governed by the Order of Knights Hospitallers, Caravaggio probably hoped that the Knights would provide a channel whereby he could obtain a pardon from the Papacy. Once more his talents made an instant impression, along with the support of noble patrons and his hopes dashed, he contrived to escape and flee once, which before the end of 1608 led to his cancellation from the rolls of the Order. He made for Syracuse in Sicily, where he was received as a guest by a friend from his Roman days, the painter’s face was disfigured and rumours started to circulate of his death. Various commentators have formulated opinions about his state from works supposedly executed at this period. In fact, Caravaggio’s end is shrouded in mystery, mystery that is rendered only denser by conflicting hypotheses, some speak of a natural death from a persistent fever, others of an assassination by emissaries of the Knights of Malta. The loss of the paintings put the deal and his future in doubt, there is evidence that dogged by a serious fever, he was tended by a local religious confraternity near Porto Ercole, then in the Grand Duchy of Tuscany, but succumbed. His death was certified by them as taking place on 18 July 1610, if the story to this point is exact, it is likely he was buried in a paupers’ common grave. As to the place, though this continues to be contested. Famous while he lived, Caravaggio was forgotten almost immediately after his death, despite this, his influence on the new Baroque style that eventually emerged from the ruins of Mannerism was profound. The 20th-century art historian André Berne-Joffroy claimed, What begins in the work of Caravaggio is, quite simply, modern painting. Caravaggio was born in Milan where his father, Fermo, was an administrator and architect-decorator to the Marchese of Caravaggio. His mother, Lucia Aratori, came from a family of the same district. In 1576 the family moved to Caravaggio to escape a plague which ravaged Milan, Caravaggios mother died in 1584, the same year he began his four-year apprenticeship to the Milanese painter Simone Peterzano, described in the contract of apprenticeship as a pupil of Titian. Following his initial training under Simone Peterzano, in 1592 Caravaggio left Milan for Rome, in flight after certain quarrels, in Rome, where there was a demand for paintings to fill the many huge new churches and palazzos being built at the time. It was also a period when the Church was searching for an alternative to Mannerism in religious art that was tasked to counter the threat of Protestantism. Caravaggios innovation was a radical naturalism that combined close observation with a dramatic, even theatrical
6.
The Calling of St Matthew (Caravaggio)
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The Calling of Saint Matthew is a masterpiece by Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio, depicting the moment at which Jesus Christ inspires Matthew to follow him. It was completed in 1599–1600 for the Contarelli Chapel in the church of the French congregation, San Luigi dei Francesi in Rome and it hangs alongside two other paintings of Matthew by Caravaggio, The Martyrdom of Saint Matthew and The Inspiration of Saint Matthew. Over a decade before, Cardinal Matthieu Cointerel had left in his will funds and specific instructions for the decoration of a chapel based on themes related to his namesake, St Matthew. The dome of the chapel was decorated with frescoes by the late Mannerist artist Cavalier DArpino, Caravaggios former employer, the Calling hangs opposite The Martyrdom of Saint Matthew. While the Martyrdom was probably the first to be started, the Calling was, by report, the commission for these two lateral paintings — the Calling and the Martyrdom — is dated July 1599, and final payment was made in July 1600. Between the two, at the altar, is The Inspiration of Saint Matthew. The painting depicts the story from the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus saw a man named Matthew at his seat in the house, and said to him, Follow me. Caravaggio depicts Matthew the tax collector sitting at a table with four other men, Jesus Christ and Saint Peter have entered the room, and Jesus is pointing at Matthew. A beam of light illuminates the faces of the men at the table who are looking at Jesus Christ, there is some debate over which man in the picture is Saint Matthew, as the surprised gesture of the bearded man at the table can be read in two ways. Most writers on the Calling assume Saint Matthew to be the bearded man and this theory is strengthened when one takes into consideration the other two works in this series, The Inspiration of Saint Matthew, and the The Martyrdom of Saint Matthew. The bearded man who models as Saint Matthew appears in all three works, with him playing the role of Saint Matthew in both the Inspiration and the Martyrdom. A more recent interpretation proposes that the man is in fact pointing at the young man at the end of the table. In this reading, the man is asking Him. in response to Christs summons. Other writers describe the painting as deliberately ambiguous, in this painting, the gloom and the canvassed window appears to situate the table indoors. Christ brings the light to the dark space of the sitting tax-collectors. This painting records the collision of two worlds — the ineluctable power of the faith, and the mundane, foppish. Jesus spears him with a beam of light, with an apparent effortless hand gesture he exerts an inescapable sublime gravity, Jesus bare feet are classical simplicity in contrast with the dandified accountants, being barefoot may also symbolize holiness, as if one is on holy ground. Similarly to his treatment of Paul in the Conversion on the Way to Damascus, around the man to become Matthew are either the unperceptive or unperturbed bystanders
7.
The Martyrdom of Saint Matthew (Caravaggio)
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The Martyrdom of Saint Matthew is a painting by the Italian master Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio. It was the first of the three to be installed in the chapel, in July 1600, the painting shows the martyrdom of Saint Matthew the Evangelist, author of the Gospel of Matthew. According to tradition, the saint was killed on the orders of the king of Ethiopia while celebrating Mass at the altar, the king lusted after his own niece, and had been rebuked by Matthew, for the girl was a nun, and therefore the bride of Christ. The commission, caused Caravaggio considerable difficulty, as he had never painted so large a canvas, nor one with so many figures. The first version revealed by the x-rays is in the Mannerist style of the most admired artist in Rome at the time, Giuseppe Cesari and it must have seemed static and distanced. The second version turned to Raphael for a model, adding a crowd of onlookers displaying fear and pity, at this point Caravaggio left off the Martydom and turned his attention to the companion piece, the Calling. This drew on his own earlier genre-pieces, Cardsharps and The Fortune Teller, apparently re-inspired, or perhaps with renewed self-confidence, Caravaggio turned back to the Martydom, but this time working in his own idiom. This painting marks the moment when the Mannerist orthodoxy of the late 16th century – rational, intellectual, federico Zuccari, one of the most eminent painters in Rome and a champion of Mannerism, came to see, and sniffed that it was nothing. But the younger artists were totally won over, and Caravaggio became suddenly the most famous artist in Rome and it takes concentration to understand that the confused melee is a victory of sainthood. Saint Matthew appears to recoil as he falls before the naked fury of his executioner, burning in the glare of light, who readies his sword to strike. Around the saint are persons showing varied emotions, as required by Contarelli, terror, awe, confusion about the image can be alleviated by understanding that Matthew is not quailing in fear at the executioners strike, instead he reaches for the angels gift. The executioners grasp and the reach are two parallel paths. Only Matthew is privy to the angelic visitation, viewed as such, this is a painting not about a moment of general terror, but the death of a saint as the personal handshake of the divine. Italian Baroque painting and sculpture of the time commonly depicted martyrdoms not as moments of fear and they were, and are, dark and narrow. The figure in the background, about left-centre and behind the assassin, is a self-portrait by Caravaggio, conversion on the Way to Damascus
8.
Federico Barocci
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Federico Barocci was an Italian Renaissance painter and printmaker. His original name was Federico Fiori, and he was nicknamed Il Baroccio and his work was highly esteemed and influential, and foreshadows the Baroque of Rubens. He was born at Urbino, Duchy of Urbino, and received his earliest apprenticeship with his father, Ambrogio Barocci and he was then apprenticed with the painter Battista Franco in Urbino. He accompanied his uncle, Bartolomeo Genga to Pesaro, then in 1548 to Rome, where he was worked in the pre-eminent studio of the day, that of the Mannerist painters, Taddeo and Federico Zuccari. After passing four years at Rome, he returned to his native city, during this second sojourn, while completing the decorations for the Vatican, Barocci fell ill with intestinal complaints. He suspected that a salad which he had eaten had been poisoned by jealous rivals, fearing his illness was terminal, he left Rome in 1563, four years later he was said to experience a partial remission after prayers to the Virgin. Barocci henceforth often complained of health, though he remained productive for nearly four decades more. While he is described by contemporaries as personally somewhat morose and hypochondriacal, his paintings are lively and brilliant. Although he continued to have major commissions from afar, he never returned to Rome. The Ducal Palace can be seen in the background of his paintings, while Barocci was removed from Rome, the fulcrum of artistic fame and influence, he continued to innovate in his style. At some point he may have seen colored chalk/pastel drawings by Correggio, in pastels and in oil sketches Baroccis soft, opalescent renderings evoke the ethereal. Such studies were part of a complex process Barocci used to complete his altarpieces, an organized series of steps leading up to the final product ensured its speed and success in execution. Barocci did innumerable sketches, gestural, compositional, figural studies, lighting studies, perspective studies, color studies, nature studies, today, over 2,000 drawings by him are extant. Every detail of his subsequent cartoons for canvases was worked out in this way, a good example is his famed Madonna del Popolo. It is a vortex of color and vitality, made possible by the variety of people, poses, perspectives, natural details, colors, lighting. There are many surviving drawings for the Madonna del Popolo, from sketches to color studies of heads. Despite this painstaking process, Baroccis genius kept the brushstrokes passionate and liberated, and a spiritual light seems to flicker as a jewel across faces, hands, drapery, Baroccis embrace of the Counter Reformation would shape his long and fruitful career. By 1566, he joined a lay order of Capuchins, an offshoot of Franciscans and he may have been influenced by Saint Philip Neri, whose Oratorians sought to reconnect the spiritual realm with the lives of everyday people
9.
Karel van Mander
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Karel van Mander or Carel van Mander I was a Flemish painter, poet, art historian and art theoretician, who established himself in the Dutch Republic in the latter part of his life. He is mainly remembered as a biographer of Early Netherlandish painters, as an artist and art theoretician he played a significant role in the spread and development of Northern Mannerism in the Dutch Republic. It is not certain who wrote this sketch and various candidates have been proposed. Most recently it has argued that it was written by his son Karel van Mander the Younger. His son would have relied on information that Karel van Mander had written himself as well as on his own recollections. The information in the sketch is not entirely reliable but is still regarded as the best source of information on van Manders life. Van Mander was born into a family in Meulebeke, in the County of Flanders. He studied under Lucas de Heere in Ghent, and in 1568-1569 under Pieter Vlerick in Kortrijk, the next five years he devoted to the writing of religious plays for which he also painted the scenery. Then followed three years in Rome and his biographical sketch refers to van Mander as the discoverer of caves in Rome. This may be a reference to the Catacombs of Rome although the meaning of the reference is unclear. In Rome he may also have come into contact with fellow Fleming Bartholomeus Spranger and his patrons in Rome included several cardinals. On his return journey he passed through Vienna, where, together with Spranger, van Mander settled in Meulebeke in 1578 where he was active as a painter and writer. He married an 18-year-old local girl, with whom he had a son, in 1580 he left for Kortrijk due to religious troubles caused by Catholic zealots in Meulebeke. Karel van Mander had at some point become a Mennonite and was therefore a target of these zealots. In Kortrijk he got a commission for an altar piece, in Kortrijk another son was born. He left Kortrijk for Bruges in 1582 because of an outbreak of the plague, in Bruges, he worked with the painter Paul Weyts. Here he worked for 20 years on a commission by the Haarlem city fathers to inventory their art collection, the city of Haarlem had confiscated all Catholic religious art after the satisfactie van Haarlem, which gave Catholics equal rights to Protestants, had been overturned in 1578. Van Mander used his work on the commission in his Schilder-boeck, while in Haarlem he continued to paint, concentrating his energy on his favourite genre, historical allegories
10.
Andrea Vaccaro
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Andrea Vaccaro was an Italian painter of the Baroque period. Vaccaro was in his one of the most successful painters in Naples. Very successful and valued in his lifetime, Vaccaro and his workshop produced many works for local patrons as well as for export to Spanish religious orders. Very little is known for certain about Andrea Vaccaros early life, Andrea Vaccaro was born in Naples as the son of Pietro Baccaro and Gioanna di Glauso. His father practiced a legal profession, Vaccaro first applied himself to the study of literature. Where it was believed that he apprenticed with the late-Mannerist painter Girolamo Imparato, it is now known that Imparato died in 1607. Andrea Vaccaro was at the age of 16 apprenticed to Giovanni Tommaso Passaro, no works from this early phase of his career have been preserved. On 16 February 1628, Angela Geronima, a child of the young artist and this suggests that he had already established a family by this time. No further information about this first marriage is available and his paintings from shortly after 1620 show the influence of Caravaggio and his Neapolitan followers. He reportedly painted a copy of Caravaggios Flagellation, at one time, both the copy and original hung together in San Domenico Maggiore. Not all scholars accept that the copy was in fact painted by Vacarro, after 1630 Vaccaro came into contact with the work of Guido Reni, Anthony van Dyck and Pietro Novelli. He produced copies of the work of artists for Neapolitan collectors and Flemish art dealers in Naples such as Gaspar Roomer. It is believed he was active as an art dealer. Vaccaro contracted his marriage to the 24-year old Anna Criscuolo on 17 April 1639. A year later, on 13 March 1640, their son Tomaso Domenico Nicola was born and he would later be known as the painter Nicola Vaccaro. Vaccaro became very successful and almost every collection in Naples boasted at least one painting by him, Vaccaro also had patrons in other parts of Italy. From 1635 he started exporting religious canvases to Spain for religious orders and he was further patronized by the Spanish Viceroy of Naples, Gaspar de Bracamonte. In 1656 the plague devastated Naples decimating half of the population, including the artists Bernardo Cavallino, Vacarro continued to receive many commissions, including one for frescos in the Theatine church of San Paolo Maggiore in Naples, the sole fresco commission in his career
11.
Caravaggisti
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The Caravaggisti were stylistic followers of the 16th-century Italian Baroque painter Caravaggio. His influence on the new Baroque style that emerged from Mannerism was profound. Caravaggio never established a workshop as most other painters did, nor did he ever set out his underlying philosophical approach to art, the psychological realism which can only be deduced from his surviving work. But it can be directly or indirectly in the work of Rubens, Jusepe de Ribera, Bernini. Famous while he lived, Caravaggio himself was forgotten almost immediately after his death, many of his paintings were reascribed to his followers, such as The Taking of Christ, which was attributed to Honthorst until 1990. It was only in the 20th century that his importance to the development of Western art was rediscovered, in the 1920s Roberto Longhi once more placed him in the European tradition, Ribera, Vermeer, La Tour and Rembrandt could never have existed without him. And the art of Delacroix, Courbet and Manet would have utterly different. The influential Bernard Berenson stated, With the exception of Michelangelo, at the height of his popularity in Rome during the late 1590s and early 17th century, Caravaggios dramatic new style influenced many of his peers in the Roman art world. The first Caravaggisti included Mario Minniti, Giovanni Baglione, Leonello Spada, in the next generation there were Carlo Saraceni, Bartolomeo Manfredi and Orazio Borgianni. Gentileschi, despite being older, was the only one of these artists to live much beyond 1620. His daughter Artemisia Gentileschi was also close to Caravaggio, and one of the most gifted of the movement, yet in Rome and in Italy it was not Caravaggio, but the influence of Annibale Carracci, blending elements from the High Renaissance and Lombard realism, which ultimately triumphed. In May 1606 after the killing of Ranuccio Tomassoni, Caravaggio fled to Naples with a sentence on his head. While there he completed several commissions, two major ones being the Madonna of the Rosary, and The Seven Works of Mercy. The Caravaggisti movement there ended with an outbreak of plague in 1656, but at the time Naples was a possession of Spain. The Netherlands Institute for Art History lists 128 artists labelled Caravaggisten, in the early 17th century Catholic artists from the Netherlands travelled to Rome as students and were profoundly influenced by the work of Caravaggio. In the following generation the effects of Caravaggio, although attenuated, are to be seen in the work of Vermeer, Rembrandt, Rubens was likely one of the first Flemish artists to be influenced by Caravaggio. During the period 1600-1608, Rubens resided in Italy and he settled in Mantua at the court of Duke Vincenzo I Gonzaga but also spent time in Rome. During his stay in Rome in 1601 he became acquainted with Caravaggio’s work and he later made a copy of Caravagios Entombment of Christ and recommended his patron, the Duke of Mantua, to purchase The Death of the Virgin
12.
Tenebrism
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The technique was developed to add drama to an image through a spotlight effect, and was popular during the Baroque period of painting. The artist Caravaggio is generally credited with the invention of the style, although this technique was used earlier by various artists, such as Albrecht Dürer, Tintoretto. The term is applied to artists from the seventeenth century onward. Artemisia Gentileschi, one of the few artists of the Baroque. El Greco painted three versions of a composition with a boy, a man, and a monkey grouped in darkness around a single flame. Among the most well-known tenebrist artists are, Italian and Dutch followers of Caravaggio, Francisco Ribalta, Jusepe de Ribera, Tenebrism is most often applied to seventeenth-century Spanish painters. It is sometimes applied to other painters including Georges de La Tour, who painted many images lit by a single candle, Gerrit van Honthorst. In Flanders Adam de Coster was recognized as a leading tenebrist who excelled in scenes in which a single candle has its light blocked by an object. The term is not often used of Adam Elsheimer, although he was an important innovator in painting night-scenes with a few lighted areas and his dark areas are always full of detail and interest. Later, similar compositions were painted by Joseph Wright of Derby and other artists of the Romantic Movement, more details Art Lexicon Jusepe de Ribera, 1591-1652, a full text exhibition catalog from The Metropolitan Museum of Art, which includes material on Ribera and Tenebrism
13.
Guido Ubaldo Abbatini
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Guido Ubaldo Abbatini was an Italian painter of the Baroque period, active mainly in Rome and Usigni. Guido Ubaldo Abbatini was a pupil of the painter Giuseppe Cesari and he was born in Città di Castello and died in Rome. He painted the ceiling of the chapel of Santa Theresa in Santa Maria della Vittoria in Rome, dizionario degli architetti, scultori, pittori, intagliatori in rame ed in pietra, coniatori di medaglie, musaicisti, niellatori, intarsiatori d’ogni etá e d’ogni nazione. Gaetano Schiepatti, Digitized by Googlebooks, Jan 24,2007, dictionary of Painters and Engravers, Biographical and Critical. York St. #4, Covent Garden, London, Original from Fogg Library, Digitized May 18,2007, George Bell, media related to Guido Ubaldo Abbatini at Wikimedia Commons
14.
Willem Outgertsz Akersloot
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Akersloot was a Dutch Golden Age engraver. According to the RKD he signed his works with the monogram A in a double square and he was a pupil of Jan van de Velde and is known for his landscape illustrations engraved after other artists such as Pieter de Molijn, Pieter Saenredam and Adriaen van de Venne. He also worked in Paris in 1620 and he was possibly also the pupil of Jacob van der Schuere, whose portrait he engraved. He was the son of Outgert Ariss Akersloot, who signed Salomon de Brays petition to the city council in 1631 for a new reorganization of the Haarlem Guild of St. Luke
15.
Filippo d'Angeli
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Filippo dAngeli was an Italian painter of the Baroque period, active mainly in Florence and Naples, painting battles scenes with small figures. Ralph Nicholson Wornum, ed. Biographical catalogue of the principal Italian painters, woodfall & Kinder, Angel Court, Skinner Street, London, Digitized by Googlebooks from Oxford University copy on Jun 27,2006
16.
Gioacchino Assereto
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Gioacchino Assereto was an Italian painter of the early Baroque period and one of the most prominent history painters active in Genoa in the first half of the 17th century. He initially apprenticed at age 12 with Luciano Borzone and from circa 1614 in the studio of Giovanni Andrea Ansaldo and he attended the Nude Academy instituted by Giancarlo Doria. In 1639 Assereto he travelled to Rome where he visited the studios of various painters and he likely met Genoese artists working in Rome, such as Luca Saltarello, Giovanni Maria Bottalla, Giovanni Benedetto Castiglione and Giovanni Andrea Podestà. His stay in Rome was important as it brought him in contact with the realism of the followers of Caravaggio. In the 1640s Assereto was active as a fresco painter, the artist was very successful in Genoa and in his later years many copies of his work were produced in his studio, some by his son Giuseppe Assereto. The artist was in his lifetime praised by the contemporary Genoese biographer Raffaele Soprani as incomparable, the rather vain artist shared this view. Most of Asseretos works depict religious and history subjects, although he produced some portraits. Throughout the decade in which he was a student, Assereto produced many works in a Baroque idiom and he incorporated drama and emotion in his paintings with the aid of the chiaroscuro and sfumato techniques. He continued to improve his technique and style during his twenties and thirties, during his visit to Rome in 1639 he discovered a flourishing interest in realism and Caravaggism. His interest in realism and encouraged him to continue with his description of heads and hands. It may also have revealed to him the possibilities of compositions that depend on chiaroscuro rather than on colour, the work also shows the influence of northern Caravaggesque painters such as Gerrit van Honthorst and Matthias Stom. In the 1640s he devoted himself to a study of the works of Rubens. As a result his compositions became more lively and agitated and he also introduced a greater emotional involvement in his works through the use of lights and colours that reveal the knowledge of the Venetian school. His Ecce Homo shows in the broad and phlegmatic figure of Christ the influence of the Ecce Homo painted by Anthony van Dyck in Genoa circa 1625. His late works often depict figures at three-quarter-length and are characterised by a sober realism and these works have been compared to works by Velázquez and Murillo. An example is Esau sells his birthright, Gioacchino Assereto was also active as a fresco painter. In the 1640s he painted frescoes for the Palazzo Granello and commissioned works for the SantAgostino church, only fragments of these frescoes have been preserved. Raffaele Soprani, Le vite de pittori, scoltori et architetti genovesi, pp. 167–173, roberto Longhi, LAssereto, in Dedalo, VII, p.362,1926
17.
Genoa
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Genoa is the capital of the Italian region of Liguria and the sixth-largest city in Italy. In 2015,594,733 people lived within the administrative limits. As of the 2011 Italian census, the Province of Genoa, over 1.5 million people live in the wider metropolitan area stretching along the Italian Riviera. Genoa has been nicknamed la Superba due to its glorious past, part of the old town of Genoa was inscribed on the World Heritage List in 2006. The citys rich history in notably its art, music. It is the birthplace of Christopher Columbus, Niccolò Paganini, Giuseppe Mazzini, Genoa, which forms the southern corner of the Milan-Turin-Genoa industrial triangle of north-west Italy, is one of the countrys major economic centres. The city has hosted massive shipyards and steelworks since the 19th century, the Bank of Saint George, founded in 1407, is among the oldest in the world and has played an important role in the citys prosperity since the middle of the 15th century. Today a number of leading Italian companies are based in the city, including Fincantieri, Selex ES, Ansaldo Energia, Ansaldo STS, Edoardo Raffinerie Garrone, Piaggio Aerospace, the Genoa area has been inhabited since the fifth or fourth millennium BC. In ancient times this area was frequented and inhabited by Ligures, Phoenicians, Phocaeans, Greeks, and Etruscans. The city cemetery, dating from the 6th and 5th centuries BC, testifies to the occupation of the site by the Greeks, but the fine harbour probably saw use much earlier, perhaps by the Etruscans. In the 5th century BC was founded the first oppidum at the foot of the today called the Castle Hill which now is inside the medieval old town. The ancient Ligurian city was known as Stalia, so referred to by Artemidorus Ephesius and Pomponius Mela, Ligurian Stalia was overshadowed by the powerful Marseille and Vada Sabatia, near modern Savona. Stalia had an alliance with Rome through a foedus aequum in the course of the Second Punic War, the Carthaginians accordingly destroyed it in 209 BC. The town was rebuilt and, after the Carthaginian Wars ended in 146 BC. it received municipal rights, the original castrum thenceforth expanded towards the current areas of Santa Maria di Castello and the San Lorenzo promontory. Trades included skins, wood, and honey, goods were shipped to the mainland, up to major cities like Tortona and Piacenza. Among the archeological remains from the Roman period, an amphitheatre was also found, another theory traces the name to the Etruscan word Kainua which means New City and still another from the Latin word ianua, related to the name of the God Janus, meaning door or passage. The latter is in reference to its position at the centre of the Ligurian coastal arch. The Latin name, oppidum Genua, is recorded by Pliny the Elder as part of the Augustean Regio IX Liguria, after the fall of the Western Roman Empire, the Ostrogoths occupied Genoa
