1.
Christ and the Woman Taken in Adultery (Bruegel)
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Christ and the Woman Taken in Adultery is a small panel painting in grisaille by the Netherlandish Renaissance printmaker and painter Pieter Bruegel the Elder. It is signed and dated 1565, Jesus and the woman taken in adultery is a biblical episode from John 7, 53-8,11 where Jesus encounters an adulteress brought before Pharisees and scribes, which has been depicted by many artists. Such a crime was punishable by death by stoning, however, in the scene, Jesus stoops to write he that is without sin among you, a number of the unthrown stones lay on the floor to the left of the woman. Bruegel depicts the woman as one of the few figures in the scene. However, the earliest documented work by Bruegel was grisaille wings for an altarpiece in 1550/51 and this was in Mechelen, where he is documented between September 1550 and October 1551 assisting Peeter Baltens on an altarpiece, painting the wings. The painting was not sold by the artist, and seems to be the one inherited by his son Jan Brueghel the Elder. An engraving was published in 1579 by Paul Perret, who was lent the painting for the purpose. There are a number of copies, some attributed to the artists sons, perhaps made after the engraving. A version attributed to Breuegels son Pieter Brueghel the Younger of c.1600 is in the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the work was stolen from the Courtauld Gallery on 2 February 1982. Because of its value and fame, it proved unsaleable on the open market, during that interim, it likely acted as collateral for the criminals. Braham Helen, The Princes Gate Collection, Courtauld Institute Galleries, London 1981, ISBN 0-904563-04-9 Hagen, Rose-Marie & Hagen, dutch and Flemish Paintings, The Collection of Willem, Baron Van Dedem. ISBN 0-7112-2010-7 Media related to Christ and the Woman Taken in Adultery by Pieter Bruegel at Wikimedia Commons
2.
Pieter Bruegel the Elder
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He also painted no portraits, the other mainstay of Netherlandish art. After his training and travels to Italy, he returned in 1555 to settle in Antwerp and he does the same with the fantastic and anarchic world developed in Renaissance prints and book illustrations. He is sometimes referred to as Peasant Bruegel, to him from the many later painters in his family. From 1559, he dropped the h from his name and signed his paintings as Bruegel, the two main early sources for Bruegels biography are Lodovico Guicciardinis account of the Low Countries and Karel van Manders 1604 Schilder-boeck. Guicciardini recorded that Bruegel was born in Breda, but van Mander specified that Bruegel was born in a village near Breda called Brueghel, nothing at all is known of his family background. Van Mander seems to assume he came from a peasant background, in keeping with the over-emphasis on Bruegels peasant genre scenes given by van Mander and many art historians. Breda was already a significant centre as the base of the House of Orange-Nassau, with a population of some 8,000, from the fact that Bruegel entered the Antwerp painters guild in 1551, it is inferred that he was born between 1525 and 1530. His master, according to van Mander, was the Antwerp painter Pieter Coecke van Aelst, between 1545 and 1550 he was a pupil of Pieter Coecke, who died on 6 December 1550. Bruegel possibly got this work via the connections of Mayken Verhulst, maykens father and eight siblings were all artists or married an artist, and lived in Mechelen. In 1551 Bruegel became a master in the Guild of Saint Luke of Antwerp. He set off for Italy soon after, probably by way of France. He visited Rome and, rather adventurously for the period, by 1552 he had reached Reggio Calabria at the tip of the mainland. He probably continued to Sicily, but by 1553 was back in Rome, there he met the miniaturist Giulio Clovio, whose will of 1578 lists paintings by Bruegel, in one case a joint work. These works, apparently landscapes, have not survived, but marginal miniatures in manuscripts by Clovio are attributed to Bruegel, with one exception, Bruegel did not work the plates himself, but produced a drawing which Cocks specialists worked from. In 1563 he was married in Brussels, where he lived for the rest of his life, while Antwerp was the capital of Netherlandish commerce as well as the art market, Brussels was the centre of government. Van Mander tells a story that his mother-in-law pushed for the move to him from his established servant girl mistress. By now painting had become his main activity, and his most famous come from these years. His paintings were sought after, with patrons including wealthy Flemish collectors and Cardinal Granvelle, in effect the Habsburg chief minister
3.
Andrea del Sarto
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Andrea del Sarto was an Italian painter from Florence, whose career flourished during the High Renaissance and early Mannerism. Though highly regarded during his lifetime as an artist senza errori, his renown was eclipsed after his death by that of his contemporaries, Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo and Raphael. Andrea del Sarto was born Andrea dAgnolo di Francesco di Luca di Paolo del Migliore in Florence on 16 July 1486, since his father, Agnolo, was a tailor, he became known as del Sarto. Since 1677 some have attributed the surname Vannucchi with little documentation, by 1494 Andrea was apprenticed to a goldsmith, and then to a woodcarver and painter named Gian Barile, with whom he remained until 1498. According to his late biographer Vasari, he apprenticed to Piero di Cosimo. Andrea and an older friend Franciabigio decided to open a joint studio at a lodging together in the Piazza del Grano, the first product of their partnership may have been the Baptism of Christ for the Florentine Compagnia dello Scalzo, the beginning of a monochrome fresco series. By the time the partnership was dissolved, Sartos style bore the stamp of individuality, from 1509 to 1514 the Servite Order employed Del Sarto, Franciabigio and Andrea Feltrini in a programme of frescoes at Basilica della Santissima Annunziata di Firenze. Sarto completed seven frescoes in the forecourt or atrium before the Servite church, five of which illustrated the Life and miracles of Filippo Benizzi, a Servite saint who died in 1285. He executed them rapidly, depicting the saint healing a leper through the gift of his undertunic, predicting the bad end of some blasphemers, and restoring a girl possessed with a devil. The two final frescoes of the series depicted the healing of a child at the bed of Filippo Benizzi. All five frescoes were completed before the close of 1510, the Servites convinced him to do two more frescoes in the forecourt, though of a different subject matter, a Procession of the Magi finished in 1511 and a Nativity of the Virgin. These paintings met with respect, the correctness of the contours being particularly admired, towards 1512 he painted an Annunciation in the monastery of S. Gallo and a Marriage of Saint Catherine. By 1514 Andrea had finished his last two frescoes, including his masterpiece, the Birth of the Virgin, which fuses the influence of Leonardo, Ghirlandaio and Fra Bartolomeo. By November 1515 he had finished at the Scalzo the Allegory of Justice and the Baptist preaching in the desert, followed in 1517 by John Baptizing, and other subjects. Before the end of 1516, a Pietà of Del Sartos composition and this led to an invitation from François I, in 1518, and he journeyed to Paris in June of that year, along with his pupil Andrea Squarzzella, leaving his wife, Lucrezia, in Florence. According to Giorgio Vasari, Andreas pupil and biographer, Lucrezia wrote to Andrea, the King assented, but only on the understanding that his absence from France was to be short. He then entrusted Andrea with a sum of money to be expended in purchasing works of art for the French Court. By Vasaris account, Andrea took the money and used it to buy himself a house in Florence, thus ruining his reputation, the story inspired Robert Brownings poem-monologue Andrea del Sarto Called the Faultless Painter, but is now believed by some historians to be apocryphal
4.
Fresco
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Fresco is a technique of mural painting executed upon freshly-laid, or wet lime plaster. Water is used as the vehicle for the pigment to merge with the plaster, and with the setting of the plaster, the fresco technique has been employed since antiquity and is closely associated with Italian Renaissance painting. Buon fresco pigment mixed with water of temperature on a thin layer of wet, fresh plaster, for which the Italian word for plaster. Because of the makeup of the plaster, a binder is not required, as the pigment mixed solely with the water will sink into the intonaco. The pigment is absorbed by the wet plaster, after a number of hours, many artists sketched their compositions on this underlayer, which would never be seen, in a red pigment called sinopia, a name also used to refer to these under-paintings. Later, new techniques for transferring paper drawings to the wall were developed. The main lines of a drawing made on paper were pricked over with a point, the paper held against the wall, if the painting was to be done over an existing fresco, the surface would be roughened to provide better adhesion. This area is called the giornata, and the different day stages can usually be seen in a large fresco, buon frescoes are difficult to create because of the deadline associated with the drying plaster. Once a giornata is dried, no more buon fresco can be done, if mistakes have been made, it may also be necessary to remove the whole intonaco for that area—or to change them later, a secco. An indispensable component of this process is the carbonatation of the lime, the eyes of the people of the School of Athens are sunken-in using this technique which causes the eyes to seem deeper and more pensive. Michelangelo used this technique as part of his trademark outlining of his central figures within his frescoes, in a wall-sized fresco, there may be ten to twenty or even more giornate, or separate areas of plaster. After five centuries, the giornate, which were nearly invisible, have sometimes become visible, and in many large-scale frescoes. Additionally, the border between giornate was often covered by an a secco painting, which has fallen off. One of the first painters in the period to use this technique was the Isaac Master in the Upper Basilica of Saint Francis in Assisi. A person who creates fresco is called a frescoist, a secco or fresco-secco painting is done on dry plaster. The pigments thus require a medium, such as egg. Blue was a problem, and skies and blue robes were often added a secco, because neither azurite blue nor lapis lazuli. By the end of the century this had largely displaced buon fresco
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.
French language
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French is a Romance language of the Indo-European family. It descended from the Vulgar Latin of the Roman Empire, as did all Romance languages, French has evolved from Gallo-Romance, the spoken Latin in Gaul, and more specifically in Northern Gaul. Its closest relatives are the other langues doïl—languages historically spoken in northern France and in southern Belgium, French was also influenced by native Celtic languages of Northern Roman Gaul like Gallia Belgica and by the Frankish language of the post-Roman Frankish invaders. Today, owing to Frances past overseas expansion, there are numerous French-based creole languages, a French-speaking person or nation may be referred to as Francophone in both English and French. French is a language in 29 countries, most of which are members of la francophonie. As of 2015, 40% of the population is in Europe, 35% in sub-Saharan Africa, 15% in North Africa and the Middle East, 8% in the Americas. French is the fourth-most widely spoken mother tongue in the European Union, 1/5 of Europeans who do not have French as a mother tongue speak French as a second language. As a result of French and Belgian colonialism from the 17th and 18th century onward, French was introduced to new territories in the Americas, Africa, most second-language speakers reside in Francophone Africa, in particular Gabon, Algeria, Mauritius, Senegal and Ivory Coast. In 2015, French was estimated to have 77 to 110 million native speakers, approximately 274 million people are able to speak the language. The Organisation internationale de la Francophonie estimates 700 million by 2050, in 2011, Bloomberg Businessweek ranked French the third most useful language for business, after English and Standard Mandarin Chinese. Under the Constitution of France, French has been the language of the Republic since 1992. France mandates the use of French in official government publications, public education except in specific cases, French is one of the four official languages of Switzerland and is spoken in the western part of Switzerland called Romandie, of which Geneva is the largest city. French is the language of about 23% of the Swiss population. French is also a language of Luxembourg, Monaco, and Aosta Valley, while French dialects remain spoken by minorities on the Channel Islands. A plurality of the worlds French-speaking population lives in Africa and this number does not include the people living in non-Francophone African countries who have learned French as a foreign language. Due to the rise of French in Africa, the total French-speaking population worldwide is expected to reach 700 million people in 2050, French is the fastest growing language on the continent. French is mostly a language in Africa, but it has become a first language in some urban areas, such as the region of Abidjan, Ivory Coast and in Libreville. There is not a single African French, but multiple forms that diverged through contact with various indigenous African languages, sub-Saharan Africa is the region where the French language is most likely to expand, because of the expansion of education and rapid population growth
7.
Painting
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Painting is the practice of applying paint, pigment, color or other medium to a solid surface. The medium is commonly applied to the base with a brush, but other implements, such as knives, sponges, Painting is a mode of creative expression, and the forms are numerous. Drawing, gesture, composition, narration, or abstraction, among other aesthetic modes, may serve to manifest the expressive, Paintings can be naturalistic and representational, photographic, abstract, narrative, symbolistic, emotive, or political in nature. A portion of the history of painting in both Eastern and Western art is dominated by motifs and ideas. In art, the term painting describes both the act and the result of the action, the term painting is also used outside of art as a common trade among craftsmen and builders. What enables painting is the perception and representation of intensity, every point in space has different intensity, which can be represented in painting by black and white and all the gray shades between. In practice, painters can articulate shapes by juxtaposing surfaces of different intensity, thus, the basic means of painting are distinct from ideological means, such as geometrical figures, various points of view and organization, and symbols. In technical drawing, thickness of line is ideal, demarcating ideal outlines of an object within a perceptual frame different from the one used by painters. Color and tone are the essence of painting as pitch and rhythm are the essence of music, color is highly subjective, but has observable psychological effects, although these can differ from one culture to the next. Black is associated with mourning in the West, but in the East, some painters, theoreticians, writers and scientists, including Goethe, Kandinsky, and Newton, have written their own color theory. Moreover, the use of language is only an abstraction for a color equivalent, the word red, for example, can cover a wide range of variations from the pure red of the visible spectrum of light. There is not a register of different colors in the way that there is agreement on different notes in music. For a painter, color is not simply divided into basic, painters deal practically with pigments, so blue for a painter can be any of the blues, phthalocyanine blue, Prussian blue, indigo, cobalt, ultramarine, and so on. Psychological and symbolical meanings of color are not, strictly speaking, colors only add to the potential, derived context of meanings, and because of this, the perception of a painting is highly subjective. The analogy with music is quite clear—sound in music is analogous to light in painting, shades to dynamics and these elements do not necessarily form a melody of themselves, rather, they can add different contexts to it. Modern artists have extended the practice of painting considerably to include, as one example, collage, some modern painters incorporate different materials such as sand, cement, straw or wood for their texture. Examples of this are the works of Jean Dubuffet and Anselm Kiefer, there is a growing community of artists who use computers to paint color onto a digital canvas using programs such as Adobe Photoshop, Corel Painter, and many others. These images can be printed onto traditional canvas if required, rhythm is important in painting as it is in music
8.
Brunaille
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A Brunaille is a painting executed entirely or primarily in shades of brown. Such a painting is described as having been painted en brunaille, Brunaille has its roots in 12th century stained glass made for Cistercian monasteries, which prohibited the use of colored art in 1134. However, it was only in the early 17th century that the French term “brunaille” was coined to describe pictures painted in shades of brown, Brunaille are less common than paintings executed in grey, though more common than those in green
9.
Oil painting
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Oil painting is the process of painting with pigments with a medium of drying oil as the binder. Commonly used drying oils include linseed oil, poppy seed oil, walnut oil, the choice of oil imparts a range of properties to the oil paint, such as the amount of yellowing or drying time. Certain differences, depending on the oil, are visible in the sheen of the paints. An artist might use different oils in the same painting depending on specific pigments and effects desired. The paints themselves also develop a particular consistency depending on the medium, the oil may be boiled with a resin, such as pine resin or frankincense, to create a varnish prized for its body and gloss. Its practice may have migrated westward during the Middle Ages, Oil paint eventually became the principal medium used for creating artworks as its advantages became widely known. In recent years, water miscible oil paint has come to prominence and, to some extent, water-soluble paints contain an emulsifier that allows them to be thinned with water rather than paint thinner, and allows very fast drying times when compared with traditional oils. Traditional oil painting techniques often begin with the artist sketching the subject onto the canvas with charcoal or thinned paint, Oil paint is usually mixed with linseed oil, artist grade mineral spirits, or other solvents to make the paint thinner, faster or slower-drying. A basic rule of oil paint application is fat over lean and this means that each additional layer of paint should contain more oil than the layer below to allow proper drying. If each additional layer contains less oil, the painting will crack. This rule does not ensure permanence, it is the quality and type of oil leads to a strong. There are many media that can be used with the oil, including cold wax, resins. These aspects of the paint are closely related to the capacity of oil paint. Traditionally, paint was transferred to the surface using paintbrushes. Oil paint remains wet longer than other types of artists materials, enabling the artist to change the color. At times, the painter might even remove a layer of paint. This can be done with a rag and some turpentine for a time while the paint is wet, Oil paint dries by oxidation, not evaporation, and is usually dry to the touch within a span of two weeks. It is generally dry enough to be varnished in six months to a year, art conservators do not consider an oil painting completely dry until it is 60 to 80 years old
10.
Physical model
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Physical model is a smaller or larger physical copy of an object. The object being modelled may be small or large, the geometry of the model and the object it represents are often similar in the sense that one is a rescaling of the other, in such cases the scale is an important characteristic. However, in cases the similarity is only approximate or even intentionally distorted. Sometimes the distortion is systematic with e. g. a fixed scale horizontally, physical models allow visualization, from examining the model, of information about the thing the model represents. A model can be an object such as an architectural model of a building. Uses of a model include visualization of internal relationships within the structure or external relationships of the structure to the environment. Other uses of models in this sense are as toys, instrumented physical models are the most effective way of investigating fluid flows such as around hydraulic structures. These models are scaled in terms of geometry and important forces, for example using Froude number or Reynolds number scaling. A physical model of something large is usually smaller, and of something very small is larger, a physical model of something that can move, like a vehicle or machine, may be completely static, or have parts that can be moved manually, or be powered. A physical model may show inner parts that are not visible. The purpose of a model on a smaller scale may be to have a better overview, for testing purposes. A physical model of an animal shows the physical composition without it walking or flying away, and without danger. A soft model of an animal is popular among children and some adults as cuddly toy. some models can be used in different ways as of like prototypes for cars. A model of a person may e. g. be a doll, a statue, and in fiction a robotic humanoid, e. g. the mechas in the movie A. I. A model is a 3D alternative for a 2D representation such as a drawing or photograph, or in the case of a globe, scale model Mathematical model Model organism Model nation Metamodeling Model airplane Model car Model railway Model rocket Model house
11.
Engraving
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Engraving is the practice of incising a design onto a hard, usually flat surface by cutting grooves into it. Wood engraving is a form of printing and is not covered in this article. Engraving was an important method of producing images on paper in artistic printmaking, in mapmaking. Other terms often used for printed engravings are copper engraving, copper-plate engraving or line engraving, hand engraving is a term sometimes used for engraving objects other than printing plates, to inscribe or decorate jewellery, firearms, trophies, knives and other fine metal goods. Traditional engravings in printmaking are also engraved, using just the same techniques to make the lines in the plate. Each graver is different and has its own use, engravers use a hardened steel tool called a burin, or graver, to cut the design into the surface, most traditionally a copper plate. Modern professional engravers can engrave with a resolution of up to 40 lines per mm in high grade work creating game scenes, dies used in mass production of molded parts are sometimes hand engraved to add special touches or certain information such as part numbers. In addition to engraving, there are engraving machines that require less human finesse and are not directly controlled by hand. They are usually used for lettering, using a pantographic system, there are versions for the insides of rings and also the outsides of larger pieces. Such machines are used for inscriptions on rings, lockets. Gravers come in a variety of shapes and sizes that yield different line types, the burin produces a unique and recognizable quality of line that is characterized by its steady, deliberate appearance and clean edges. The angle tint tool has a curved tip that is commonly used in printmaking. Florentine liners are flat-bottomed tools with multiple lines incised into them, ring gravers are made with particular shapes that are used by jewelry engravers in order to cut inscriptions inside rings. Flat gravers are used for work on letters, as well as wriggle cuts on most musical instrument engraving work, remove background. Knife gravers are for line engraving and very deep cuts, round gravers, and flat gravers with a radius, are commonly used on silver to create bright cuts, as well as other hard-to-cut metals such as nickel and steel. Square or V-point gravers are typically square or elongated diamond-shaped and used for cutting straight lines, V-point can be anywhere from 60 to 130 degrees, depending on purpose and effect. These gravers have very small cutting points, other tools such as mezzotint rockers, roulets and burnishers are used for texturing effects. Burnishing tools can also be used for stone setting techniques
12.
Drawing
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Drawing is a form of visual art in which a person uses various drawing instruments to mark paper or another two-dimensional medium. A drawing instrument releases small amount of material onto a surface, the most common support for drawing is paper, although other materials, such as cardboard, plastic, leather, canvas, and board, may be used. Temporary drawings may be made on a blackboard or whiteboard or indeed almost anything, the medium has been a popular and fundamental means of public expression throughout human history. It is one of the simplest and most efficient means of communicating visual ideas, the wide availability of drawing instruments makes drawing one of the most common artistic activities. In addition to its artistic forms, drawing is frequently used in commercial illustration, animation, architecture, engineering. A quick, freehand drawing, usually not intended as a work, is sometimes called a sketch. An artist who practices or works in technical drawing may be called a drafter, Drawing is one of the major forms of expression within the visual arts. It is generally concerned with the marking of lines and areas of tone onto paper/other material, traditional drawings were monochrome, or at least had little colour, while modern colored-pencil drawings may approach or cross a boundary between drawing and painting. In Western terminology, drawing is distinct from painting, even though similar media often are employed in both tasks, dry media, normally associated with drawing, such as chalk, may be used in pastel paintings. Drawing may be done with a medium, applied with brushes or pens. Drawing is often exploratory, with emphasis on observation, problem-solving. Drawing is also used in preparation for a painting, further obfuscating their distinction. Drawings created for these purposes are called studies, there are several categories of drawing, including figure drawing, cartooning, doodling, free hand and shading. There are also many drawing methods, such as drawing, stippling, shading, the surrealist method of entopic graphomania. A quick, unrefined drawing may be called a sketch, in fields outside art, technical drawings or plans of buildings, machinery, circuitry and other things are often called drawings even when they have been transferred to another medium by printing. Drawing as a Form of Communication Drawing is one of the oldest forms of human expression and these drawings, known as pictograms, depicted objects and abstract concepts. The sketches and paintings produced in prehistoric times were eventually stylised and simplified, Drawing in the Arts Drawing is used to express ones creativity, and therefore has been prominent in the world of art. Throughout much of history, drawing was regarded as the foundation for artistic practise, initially, artists used and reused wooden tablets for the production of their drawings
13.
Hans Memling
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Hans Memling was a German painter who moved to Flanders and worked in the tradition of Early Netherlandish painting. He then worked at Bruges, County of Flanders by 1465 and he may have been wounded at the Battle of Nancy, sheltered and cured by the Hospitallers at Bruges and to show his gratitude he refused payment for a picture he had painted for them. Memling did paint for the Hospitallers in 1479 and 1480, in 1477, when he was believed dead, he was under contract to create an altarpiece for the gild-chapel of the booksellers of Bruges. Critical opinion has been unanimous in assigning this altarpiece to Memling. The purchase of his pictures by an agent of the Medici demonstrates that he had a considerable reputation, the oldest allusions to pictures connected to Memling point to his relations with the Burgundian court, which was held in Brussels. The inventories of Margaret of Austria, drawn up in 1524, allude to a triptych of the God of Pity by Rogier van der Weyden and he may have been apprenticed to van der Weyden in Bruges, where he afterwards dwelt. Yet the whole piece was assigned to the former in the Zambeccari collection at Bologna, Memlings painting of the Baptist in the gallery of Munich is the oldest form in which Memlings style is displayed. The subsequent Last Judgment in Gdańsk shows that Memling preserved the tradition of sacred art used earlier by Rogier van der Weyden in the Beaune Altarpiece, Memlings portraits, in particular, were popular in Italy. Memlings portrait style influenced the work of numerous late-15th-century Italian painters and he was popular with Italian customers as shown in the preference given to them by such purchasers as Cardinal Grimani and Cardinal Bembo at Venice, and the heads of the house of Medici at Florence. Memlings reputation was not confined to Italy or Flanders, the Madonna and Saints, the Virgin and Child, and the four attributed portraits in the Uffizi Gallery of Florence, show that his work was widely appreciated in the 16th century. The masterpiece of Memlings later years, the Shrine of St Ursula in the museum of the hospital of Bruges, is supposed to have been ordered and finished in 1480. The delicacy of finish in its figures, the variety of its landscapes and costume. Near the close of Memlings career he was supported by his workshop. The registers of the guild at Bruges give the names of two apprentices who served their time with Memling and paid dues on admission to the guild in 1480 and 1486. Erwin Panofsky in his 1953 Early Netherlandish Painting, says of Memling and his works give the impression of derivativeness. Old St. Johns Hospital, Bruges Christ Giving His Blessing and they are characterized by guls with hooked lines radiating from a central body, and probably came from Anatolia or Armenia. This article incorporates text from a now in the public domain, Chisholm, Hugh
14.
Donor portrait
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A donor portrait or votive portrait is a portrait in a larger painting or other work showing the person who commissioned and paid for the image, or a member of his, or her, family. Donor portraits are very common in works of art, especially paintings, of the Middle Ages and Renaissance. Often, even late into the Renaissance, the portraits, especially when of a whole family, will be at a much smaller scale than the principal figures. By the mid-15th century donors began to be integrated into the main scene, as bystanders. The purpose of donor portraits was to memorialize the donor and his family, to do so during prayer is in accord with late medieval concepts of prayer, fully developed by the Modern Devotion. This process may be intensified if the praying beholder is the donor himself, when a whole building was financed, a sculpture of the patron might be included on the facade or elsewhere in the building. If they are on different sides, the males are normally on the left for the viewer, in family groups the figures are usually divided by gender. Groups of members of confraternities, sometimes with their wives, are also found, additional family members, from births or marriages, might be added later, and deaths might be recorded by the addition of small crosses held in the clasped hands. Although none have survived, there is evidence of donor portraits in small chapels from the Early Christian period. Their scale and composition are alone among large-scale survivals, also in Ravenna, there is a small mosaic of Justinian, possibly originally of Theoderic the Great in the Basilica of SantApollinare Nuovo. For example, a chapel at Mals in South Tyrol has two fresco donor figures from before 881, one lay and the other of a cleric holding a model building. In subsequent centuries bishops, abbots and other clergy were the donors most commonly shown, other than royalty, in these the portrait may adopt a praying pose, or may pose more like the subject in a purely secular portrait. The Wilton Diptych of Richard II of England was a forerunner of these, in some of these diptychs the portrait of the original owner has been over-painted with that of a later one. The person presenting might be a courtier making a gift to his prince, a later convention was for figures at about three-quarters of the size of the main ones. This innovation, however, did not appear in Venetian painting until the turn of the next century, normally the main figures ignore the presence of the interlopers in narrative scenes, although bystanding saints may put a supportive hand on the shoulder in a side-panel. But in devotional subjects such as a Madonna and Child, which were likely to have been intended for the donors home. Before the 15th century a physical likeness may not have often attempted, or achieved. In an often-quoted passage, John Pope-Hennessy caricatured 16th-century Italian donors, the elders in the story of Suzannah were some of the few figures respectable Venetians were unwilling to impersonate
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Giotto
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Giotto di Bondone, known mononymously as Giotto and Latinized as Giottus, was an Italian painter and architect from Florence in the late Middle Ages. He is generally considered the first in a line of artists who contributed to the Renaissance. Giottos masterwork is the decoration of the Scrovegni Chapel in Padua, also known as the Arena Chapel and this fresco cycle depicts the Life of the Virgin and the Life of Christ. It is regarded as one of the masterpieces of the Early Renaissance. That Giotto painted the Arena Chapel and that he was chosen by the Commune of Florence in 1334 to design the new campanile of Florences Cathedral are among the few certainties of his biography. Tradition holds that Giotto was born in a farmhouse, perhaps at Colle di Romagnano or Romignano, since 1850, a tower house in nearby Colle Vespignano has borne a plaque claiming the honor of his birthplace, an assertion commercially publicized. However, recent research has suggested that he was born in Florence. His fathers name was Bondone, and he is described in surviving records as a person of good standing. Most authors accept that Giotto was his name, but it is likely to have been an abbreviation of Ambrogio or Angelo. The year of his birth is calculated from the fact that Antonio Pucci, however, the word seventy fits into the rhyme of the poem better than would have a longer and more complex age, so it is possible that Pucci used artistic license. In his Lives, Giorgio Vasari states that Giotto was a shepherd boy, the great Florentine painter Cimabue discovered Giotto drawing pictures of his sheep on a rock. They were so lifelike that Cimabue approached Giotto and asked if he could take him on as an apprentice, Cimabue was one of the two most highly renowned painters of Tuscany, the other being Duccio, who worked mainly in Siena. Vasari recounts a number of stories about Giottos skill as a young artist. He tells of one occasion when Cimabue was absent from the workshop, later when Cimabue returned, he tried in vain several times to brush the fly off. The messenger departed ill pleased, not doubting that he had made a fool of. The messenger brought other artists drawings back to the Pope in addition to Giottos, many scholars today are uncertain about Giottos training, and consider Vasaris account that he was Cimabues pupil as legend, citing earlier sources which suggest that Giotto was not Cimabues pupil. About 1290, Giotto married Ciuta, the daughter of Lapo del Pela of Florence, the marriage produced four daughters and four sons, one of whom became a painter. By 1301, Giotto owned a house in Florence, and when he was not traveling he would return there and live in comfort with his family
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Scrovegni Chapel
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The Scrovegni Chapel, is a church in Padua, Veneto, Italy. It contains a cycle by Giotto, completed about 1305. The nave is 20.88 metres long,8.41 metres wide, the apse area is composed of a square area and a pentagonal area. The church was dedicated to Santa Maria della Carità at the Feast of the Annunciation,1303, Giottos fresco cycle focuses on the life of the Virgin Mary and celebrates her role in human salvation. A motet by Marchetto da Padova appears to have composed for the dedication on 25 March 1305. The chapel is known as the Arena Chapel because it was built on land purchased by Enrico Scrovegni that abutted the site of a Roman arena. The space was where a procession and sacred representation of the Annunciation to the Virgin had been played out for a generation before the chapel was built. The Arena Chapel was commissioned from Giotto by the affluent Paduan banker, in the early 1300s Enrico purchased from Manfredo Dalesmanini the area on which the Roman arena had stood. Here he had his luxurious palace built, as well as a chapel annexed to it, the chapels project was twofold, to serve as the familys private oratory and as a funerary monument for himself and his wife. Enrico commissioned Giotto, the famous Florentine painter, to decorate his chapel, a number of 14th-century sources testify to Giottos presence at the Arena Chapels site. Giottos work thus falls in the period from 25 March 1303 to 25 March 1305, Giotto painted the chapels inner surface following a comprehensive iconographic and decorative project which Giuliano Pisani identified in his book I volti segreti di Giotto. Le rivelazioni della Cappella degli Scrovegni as being the work of the Augustinian theologian, Giotto, who was born around 1267, was 36–38 years old when he worked at Enrico Scrovegnis chapel. He had a team of about 40 collaborators, and they calculated that 625 work days were necessary to paint the chapel, a work day meant that portion of each fresco that could be painted before the plaster dried and was no longer fresh. In January 1305, friars from the nearby Church of the Eremitani filed a complaint to their bishop, Scrovegni was transforming his private oratory into a church with a bell tower, thus producing unfair competition with the Eremitanis activities. We do not know what happened next, but it is likely that, as a consequence of this complaint, the monumental apse, both are visible on a model of the church painted by Giotto on the counter-facade. The apse was the section where Enrico Scrovegni had meant to have his tomb, the presence of frescoes dating to after 1320 supports the demolition hypothesis proposed by Giuliano Pisani. The apse, the most significant area in all churches, is where Enrico and his wife and this apse presents a narrowing of the space which gives a sense of its being incomplete and inharmonious. The main focus of the artists work is constituted by six monumental scenes on the side walls of the chancel that depict the last period of Marys earthly life
17.
Robert Campin
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Robert Campin, now usually identified with the Master of Flémalle, was the first great master of the Flemish Primitives. Campins identity and the attribution of the paintings in both the Campin and Master of Flémalle groupings has been a matter of controversy for decades. Campin was highly successful during his lifetime, and thus his activities are well documented, but he did not sign or date his works. A corpus of work attached to the unidentified Master of Flémalle, Campin was active by 1406 as a master painter in Tournai, in todays Belgium, and became that citys leading painter for 30 years. He had attained citizenship by 1410, and may have studied under Jan van Eyck and his fame had spread enough by 1419 that he led a large and profitable workshop. He became involved in the revolt of the Brotherhoods in the early 1420s, yet he maintained his standing and workshop until his death in 1444. He was successful in his lifetime, and the recipient of a number of civic commissions, Campin taught both Rogier van der Weyden and Jacques Daret. He was a contemporary of Jan van Eyck, and they met in 1427, campins best known work is the Mérode Altarpiece of c 1425-28. In 1408 he had purchased the house that he had been leasing since 1406 near the Tournai Cathedral, in 1410 he bought into the full citizenship. Records show a number of commissions from individuals and guilds, as well as from ecclesiastical. Campin owned several houses, purchased city bonds and invested in mortgages, between 1423 and 1429, the city government was dominated by the guilds. Campin was the deputy dean of the guild of goldsmiths and painters in 1423/24 and 1425, in 1427 he represented the guild on the city council. After restoration of the oligarchy of full citizens, the leaders of the guild regime, Campin was ordered to make a pilgrimage to Saint-Gilles and pay the fine. Campin was married to Ysabel de Stocquain and he had an affair with Laurence Polette, for which he was prosecuted in 1432 and sentenced to banishment for a year. Margaret of Burgundy, wife of the Count of Holland and sister of John the Fearless, Duke of Burgundy intervened on his behalf, short time after the verdict Campin’s apprentices Rogier van der Weyden and Jacques Daret were accepted as masters into the guild of painters. However, the dated Werl Altarpiece shows he continued to work and he died in his adopted city of Tournai in 1444. Although heavily indebted to 14th century manuscript illumination, Campin displayed greater powers of realistic observation than any other painter before him. He was one of the first to experiment with the use of oil-based colours, in lieu of egg-based tempera, Campin used the new technique to convey strong, rounded characters by modelling light and shade in compositions of complex perspectives
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Jan van Eyck
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Jan van Eyck was a Flemish/Netherlandish painter active in Bruges. He is often considered one of the founders of Early Netherlandish painting school, the few surviving records of his early life indicate that he was born c. After Johns death in 1425 he was employed in Lille as court painter to Philip the Good, Duke of Burgundy, until 1429 before moving to Bruges, where he lived until his death. Apart from the Ghent Altarpiece and the miniatures of the Turin-Milan Hours, about 20 surviving paintings are confidently attributed to him. Ten, including the Ghent altarpiece, are dated and signed with a variation of his motto, ALS IK KAN always written in Greek characters, Van Eyck painted both secular and religious subject matter, including altarpieces, single panel religious figures and commissioned portraits. His work includes single panels, diptychs, triptychs, and polyptych panels and he was well paid by Philip, who sought that the painter was secure financially and had artistic freedom and could paint whenever he pleased. Van Eycks work comes from the International Gothic style, but he soon eclipsed it, through his developments in the use of oil paint he achieved a new level of virtuosity. Van Eyck was highly influential and his techniques and style were adopted and refined by the Early Netherlandish painters, little is known of Jan van Eycks early life and neither the date nor place of his birth is documented. This suggests a date of birth of 1395 at the latest, however, his apparent age in the London probable self-portrait of 1433 suggests to most scholars a date closer to 1380. He was identified in the late 1500s as having been born in Maaseik and this claim is still considered credible on etymological grounds, considering that Van Eyck means of Eyck which is an old variant spelling of eik. He had a sister Margareta, and at least two brothers, Hubert and Lambert, both painters, but the order of their births has not been established. Another significant, and rather younger, painter who worked in Southern France and it is not known where Jan was educated, but he had knowledge of Latin and used the Greek and Hebrew alphabets in his inscriptions, indicating that he was schooled in the classics. This level of education was rare among painters, and would have made him attractive to the cultivated Philip. Van Eyck served John of Bavaria-Straubing, ruler of Holland, Hainault, by this time van Eyck had assembled a small workshop and was involved in redecorating the Binnenhof palace in The Hague. After Johns death in 1425 he moved to Bruges and came to the attention of Philip the Good c and his emergence as a collectable painter generally follows his appointment to Philips court, and from this point his activity in the court is comparatively well documented. He served as court artist and diplomat, and a was a member of the Tournai painters guild. On 18 October 1427, the Feast of St. Luke, he travelled to Tournai to attend a banquet in his honour, also attended by Robert Campin, a court salary freed him from commissioned work, and allowed a large degree of artistic freedom. Over the following decade van Eycks reputation and technical ability grew, unlike most of his peers his reputation never diminished and he remained well regarded over the following centuries
19.
Triptych
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A triptych is a work of art that is divided into three sections, or three carved panels that are hinged together and can be folded shut or displayed open. It is therefore a type of polyptych, the term for all multi-panel works, the middle panel is typically the largest and it is flanked by two smaller related works, although there are triptychs of equal-sized panels. The form can also be used for pendant jewelry, despite its connection to an art format, the term is sometimes used more generally to connote anything with three parts, particularly if they are integrated into a single unit. The triptych form arises from early Christian art, and was a standard format for altar paintings from the Middle Ages onwards. Its geographical range was from the eastern Byzantine churches to the Celtic churches in the west, renaissance painters such as Hans Memling and Hieronymus Bosch used the form. Triptych forms also allow ease of transport, from the Gothic period onward, both in Europe and elsewhere, altarpieces in churches and cathedrals were often in triptych form. One such cathedral with an altarpiece triptych is Llandaff Cathedral, the Cathedral of Our Lady in Antwerp, Belgium, contains two examples by Rubens, and Notre Dame de Paris is another example of the use of triptych in architecture. One can also see the form echoed by the structure of many stained glass windows. Although strongly identified as a form, triptychs outside that context have been created, some of the best-known examples being works by Hieronymus Bosch, Max Beckmann. The then highest price paid for an artwork at auction was $142.4 million for a 1969 triptych, Three Studies of Lucian Freud. The record was broken in May 2015 by $179.4 million for Pablo Picassos 1955 painting Les Femmes d’Alger, the format has migrated and been used in other religions, including Islam and Buddhism. Likewise, Tibetan Buddhists have used it in traditional altars, a photographic triptych is a common style used in modern commercial artwork. The photographs are arranged with a plain border between them. The work may consist of images that are variants on a theme
20.
Ghent Altarpiece
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The panels are organised in two registers, each with two sets of wings, all of which are foldable and contain inner and outer panel paintings. The upper register of the panels contains form the central Deësis of Christ the King, Virgin Mary. They are immediarly flanked, in the panels by music playing angels, and, on the far outermost panels. The central panel of the register shows a gathering of saints, sinners, clergy. There are several groupings of figures, overseen by the dove of the Holy Spirit, Art historians generally agree that the overall structure was designed by Hubert in the early to mid 1420s, and that the panels were painted by his younger brother Jan between 1430 and 1432. The altarpiece was commissioned by the merchant and Ghent mayor Jodocus Vijd, the altarpieces installation was officially celebrated on 6 May 1432. It was much later moved for security reasons to the principal cathedral chapel, a now lost inscription on the frame stated that Hubert van Eyck maior quo nemo repertus started the altarpiece, but that Jan van Eyck—calling himself arte secundus —completed it in 1432. The panels were threatened during outbreaks of iconoclasm, and have been damaged by fire, at times, some were sold and others were looted during war. A number of panels were taken by the German occupying forces during World War I, in 1934 two panels, The Just Judges and Saint John the Baptist, were stolen. The Saint John the Baptist panel was returned soon after, in 1945, the altarpiece was returned from Germany after spending much of World War II hidden in a salt mine, which greatly damaged the paint and varnish. The Belgian art restorer Jef Van der Veken produced a copy of the The Just Judges, the panels are organised in two registers, each with two sets of wings, all of which are foldable and contain inner and outer panel paintings. The upper register of the panels contains form the central Deësis of Christ the King, Virgin Mary. They are immediarly flanked, in the panels by music playing angels, and, on the far outermost panels. The central panel of the register shows a gathering of saints, sinners, clergy. There are several groupings of figures, overseen by the dove of the Holy Spirit, Art historians generally agree that the overall structure was designed by Hubert in the early to mid 1420s, and that the panels were painted by his younger brother Jan between 1430 and 1432. The altarpiece was commissioned by the merchant and Ghent mayor Jodocus Vijd, the altarpieces installation was officially celebrated on 6 May 1432. It was much later moved for security reasons to the principal cathedral chapel, a now lost inscription on the frame stated that Hubert van Eyck maior quo nemo repertus started the altarpiece, but that Jan van Eyck—calling himself arte secundus —completed it in 1432. Attribution to the van Eyck brothers has been established through the amount of surviving documentary evidence attached to the commission
21.
Illuminated manuscript
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An illuminated manuscript is a manuscript in which the text is supplemented with such decoration as initials, borders and miniature illustrations. Comparable Far Eastern and Mesoamerican works are described as painted, islamic manuscripts may be referred to as illuminated, illustrated or painted, though using essentially the same techniques as Western works. This article covers the technical, social and economic history of the subject, for an art-historical account, the earliest surviving substantive illuminated manuscripts are from the period 400 to 600, produced in the Kingdom of the Ostrogoths and the Eastern Roman Empire. The significance of these works lies not only in their inherent artistic and historical value, had it not been for the monastic scribes of Late Antiquity, most literature of Greece and Rome would have perished in Europe. As it was, the patterns of textual survivals were shaped by their usefulness to the severely constricted literate group of Christians, the majority of surviving manuscripts are from the Middle Ages, although many survive from the Renaissance, along with a very limited number from Late Antiquity. The majority of manuscripts are of a religious nature. However, especially from the 13th century onward, a number of secular texts were illuminated. Most illuminated manuscripts were created as codices, which had superseded scrolls, a very few illuminated manuscript fragments survive on papyrus, which does not last nearly as long as vellum or parchment. Most medieval manuscripts, illuminated or not, were written on parchment, beginning in the late Middle Ages manuscripts began to be produced on paper. Illuminated manuscripts continued to be produced in the early 16th century, Manuscripts are among the most common items to survive from the Middle Ages, many thousands survive. They are also the best surviving specimens of medieval painting, indeed, for many areas and time periods, they are the only surviving examples of painting. There are a few examples from later periods, the type of book that was most often heavily and richly illuminated, sometimes known as a display book, varied between periods. In the first millennium, these were most likely to be Gospel Books, such as the Lindisfarne Gospels, the Romanesque period saw the creation of many huge illuminated complete Bibles – one in Sweden requires three librarians to lift it. Many Psalters were also illuminated in both this and the Gothic period. Finally, the Book of Hours, very commonly the personal book of a wealthy layperson, was often richly illuminated in the Gothic period. Other books, both liturgical and not, continued to be illuminated at all periods, the Byzantine world also continued to produce manuscripts in its own style, versions of which spread to other Orthodox and Eastern Christian areas. See Medieval art for other regions, periods and types, reusing parchments by scraping the surface and reusing them was a common practice, the traces often left behind of the original text are known as palimpsests. The Gothic period, which saw an increase in the production of these beautiful artifacts, also saw more secular works such as chronicles
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Watercolor painting
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Watercolor or watercolour, also aquarelle, a diminutive of the Latin for water, is a painting method in which the paints are made of pigments suspended in a water-based solution. Watercolor refers to both the medium and the resulting artwork, the traditional and most common support—material to which the paint is applied—for watercolor paintings is paper. Other supports include papyrus, bark papers, plastics, vellum, or leather, fabric, wood, Watercolor paper is often made entirely or partially with cotton, which gives a good texture and minimizes distortion when wet. Watercolors are usually translucent, and appear luminous because the pigments are laid down in a form with few fillers obscuring the pigment colors. Watercolors can also be made opaque by adding Chinese white, in East Asia, watercolor painting with inks is referred to as brush painting or scroll painting. In Chinese, Korean, and Japanese painting it has been the dominant medium, india, Ethiopia, and other countries have long watercolor painting traditions as well. Fingerpainting with watercolor paints originated in mainland China, however, its continuous history as an art medium begins with the Renaissance. The German Northern Renaissance artist Albrecht Dürer, who painted several fine botanical, wildlife, an important school of watercolor painting in Germany was led by Hans Bol as part of the Dürer Renaissance. Despite this early start, watercolors were used by Baroque easel painters only for sketches, copies or cartoons. Notable early practitioners of watercolor painting were Van Dyck, Claude Lorrain, Giovanni Benedetto Castiglione, however, botanical illustration and wildlife illustration perhaps form the oldest and most important traditions in watercolor painting. Botanical illustrations became popular during the Renaissance, both as hand-tinted woodblock illustrations in books or broadsheets and as tinted ink drawings on vellum or paper. Wildlife illustration reached its peak in the 19th century with such as John James Audubon. Several factors contributed to the spread of watercolor painting during the 18th century, Watercolor artists were commonly brought with the geological or archaeological expeditions, funded by the Society of Dilettanti, to document discoveries in the Mediterranean, Asia, and the New World. This example popularized watercolors as a form of personal tourist journal, the confluence of these cultural, engineering, scientific, tourist, and amateur interests culminated in the celebration and promotion of watercolor as a distinctly English national art. William Blake published several books of hand-tinted engraved poetry, provided illustrations to Dantes Inferno, from the late 18th century through the 19th century, the market for printed books and domestic art contributed substantially to the growth of the medium. Satirical broadsides by Thomas Rowlandson, many published by Rudolph Ackermann, were extremely popular. Among the important and highly talented contemporaries of Turner and Girtin, were John Varley, John Sell Cotman, Anthony Copley Fielding, Samuel Palmer, William Havell, the Swiss painter Louis Ducros was also widely known for his large format, romantic paintings in watercolor. These societies provided annual exhibitions and buyer referrals for many artists, in particular, the graceful, lapidary, and atmospheric watercolors by Richard Parkes Bonington created an international fad for watercolor painting, especially in England and France in the 1820s
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Matthew Paris
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Matthew Paris, known as Matthew of Paris, was a Benedictine monk, English chronicler, artist in illuminated manuscripts and cartographer, based at St Albans Abbey in Hertfordshire. He wrote a number of works, mostly historical, which he scribed and illuminated himself, some were written in Latin, some in Anglo-Norman or French verse. His Chronica Majora is a source, though modern historians recognise that Paris was not always reliable. He tended to glorify Emperor Frederick II and denigrate the Pope, however, in his Historia Anglorum, Paris displays a highly negative view of Frederick, going as far as to describe him as a tyrant who committed disgraceful crimes. In spite of his surname and knowledge of the French language, Paris was of English birth and he may have studied at Paris in his youth after early education at St Albans School. The first we know of Matthew Paris is that he was admitted as a monk to St Albans in 1217. He was clearly at ease with the nobility and even royalty and his life was mainly spent in this religious house. Apart from these missions, his activities were devoted to the composition of history. After admission to the order in 1217, he inherited the mantle of Roger of Wendover, Paris revised Rogers work, adding new material to cover his own tenure. This Chronica Majora is an important historical document, especially for the period between 1235 and 1259. Equally interesting are the illustrations Paris created for his work, the Dublin MS contains interesting notes, which shed light on Paris involvement in other manuscripts, and on the way his own were used. The lending of his manuscripts to aristocratic households, apparently for periods of weeks or months at a time, Paris manuscripts mostly contain more than one text, and often begin with a rather random assortment of prefatory full-page miniatures. Some have survived incomplete, and the elements now bound together may not have been intended to be so by Paris. Unless stated otherwise, all were given by Paris to his monastery, the monastic libraries were broken up at the Dissolution. These MS seem to have appreciated, and were quickly collected by bibliophiles. Many of his manuscripts in the British Library are from the Cotton Library, corpus Christi College, Cambridge, Mss 26 and 16,362 x 244/248 mm. ff 141 +281, composed 1240–53. His major historical work, but less heavily illustrated per page than others and these two volumes contain annals from the creation of the world up to the year 1253. There are 100 marginal drawings, some maps and an itinerary, and full-page drawings of William I
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Anglo-Saxon art
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By the time of the Conquest the move to the Romanesque style is nearly complete. Anglo-Saxon art survives mostly in illuminated manuscripts, Anglo-Saxon architecture, a number of very fine ivory carvings, Anglo-Saxon taste favoured brightness and colour, and an effort of the imagination is often needed to see the excavated and worn remains that survive as they once were. Perhaps the best known piece of Anglo-Saxon art is the Bayeux Tapestry which was commissioned by a Norman patron from English artists working in the traditional Anglo-Saxon style and these two styles mixed and developed together and by the following century the resulting Anglo-Saxon style had reached maturity. The final phase of Anglo-Saxon art is known as the Winchester School or style, though it was produced in many centres in the south of England, elements of this begin to be seen from around 900, but the first major manuscripts only appear around the 930s. The following lines revert to a style more typical of Frankish manuscripts of the period. It is, in the chronology, the last English manuscript in which developed trumpet spiral patterns are found. The Anglo-Saxon metalwork produced in the Salzburg area of modern Austria has a counterpart in the Cutbercht Gospels in Vienna. By the 10th century Insular elements were relegated to decorative embellishments in England, the first plant ornament, with leaves and grapes, was already seen in an initial in the Leningrad Bede, which can probably be dated to 746. The other large initial in the manuscript is the first historiated initial in the whole of Europe, for some long time scrolls, especially in metal, bone or ivory, are prone to have an animal head at one end and a plant element at the other. Several ambitious projects of illumination are unfinished, such as the Old English Hexateuch, the illustrations give Old Testament scenes an entirely contemporary setting and are valuable images of Anglo-Saxon life. Æthelstan promoted Dunstan, an illuminator, eventually to Archbishop of Canterbury, and also Æthelwold. Illumination in a new style appears in a manuscript of the biographies by Bede of St Cuthbert given by Æthelstan to the monastery in Chester-le-Street about 937. There is a portrait of the king presenting his book to the saint. This is the first real portrait of an English king, and heavily influenced by Carolingian style, however the initials in the text combine Carolingian elements with animal forms in inventive fashion. Anglo-Saxon culture was coming into increasing contact with, and exchanging influences with, decoration included cloisonné, in gold and garnet for high-status pieces. It was probably his work which brought into contact with the royal family. Even the imprecise details given, mostly by Goscelin, are valuable evidence of what Anglo-Saxon metalwork was like. One 11th century lay goldsmith was even a thegn, like Spearhafoc, Mannigs biography, with some precise details, is given in the chronicle maintained by his abbey
25.
Andrea Mantegna
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Andrea Mantegna was an Italian painter, a student of Roman archeology, and son-in-law of Jacopo Bellini. Like other artists of the time, Mantegna experimented with perspective and his flinty, metallic landscapes and somewhat stony figures give evidence of a fundamentally sculptural approach to painting. He also led a workshop that was the producer of prints in Venice before 1500. Mantegna was born in Isola di Carturo, Republic of Venice close to Padua, second son of a carpenter, at the age of eleven he became the apprentice of Francesco Squarcione, Paduan painter. Squarcione, whose vocation was tailoring, appears to have had a remarkable enthusiasm for ancient art. All the while, he continued undertaking works on commission for which his pupils no less than himself were made available, as many as 137 painters and pictorial students passed through Squarciones school, which had been established towards 1440 and which became famous all over Italy. Padua was attractive for artists coming not only from Veneto but also from Tuscany, such as Paolo Uccello, Filippo Lippi, Mantegnas early career was shaped indeed by impressions of Florentine works. At the time, Mantegna was said to be a favorite pupil, Squarcione taught him Latin and instructed him to study fragments of Roman sculpture. The master also preferred forced perspective, the results of which may account for some of Mantegnas later innovations. However, at the age of seventeen, Mantegna separated himself from Squarcione and he later claimed that Squarcione had profited from his work without paying the rights. His first work, now lost, was an altarpiece for the church of Santa Sofia in 1448. After a series of coincidences, Mantegna finished most of the work alone, though Ansuino and this series was almost entirely lost in the 1944 allied bombings of Padua. The most dramatic work of the cycle was the work set in the worms-eye view perspective. The sketch of the St. Stephen fresco survived and is the earliest known preliminary sketch which still exists to compare to the corresponding fresco, the drawing shows proof that nude figures were used in the conception of works during the Early Renaissance. In the preliminary sketch, the perspective is less developed and closer to a more average viewpoint however, despite the authentic look of the monument, it is not a copy of any known Roman structure. Luke and other saints for the church of S. Giustina, as the young artist progressed in his work, he came under the influence of Jacopo Bellini, father of the celebrated painters Giovanni Bellini and Gentile Bellini, and of a daughter Nicolosia. In 1453 Jacopo consented to a marriage between Nicolosia and Mantegna, trained as he had been in the study of marbles and the severity of the antique, Mantegna openly avowed that he considered ancient art superior to nature as being more eclectic in form. As a result, the painter exercised precision in outline, privileging the figure, overall, Mantegnas work thus tended towards rigidity, demonstrating an austere wholeness rather than graceful sensitivity of expression
26.
Polidoro da Caravaggio
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Polidoro Caldara was born in Caravaggio, in what is now Lombardy. He then joined Raphaels large workshop, in about 1517, Polidoro fled to Naples, and from there to Messina, where he was very successful. According to tradition, he was about to return there to the mainland of Italy when he was robbed and murdered by an assistant, Tonno Calabrese. They are very individual in style, extremely free in technique, the Christ bearing the Cross shows considerable Northern influence, probably reflecting the traditionally strong links between Sicily and the Netherlands. One of his pupils is Deodato Guinaccia and they were authors of the facade decoration in classicising Graffito, usually in grisaille, of several Roman houses, like those ones in Borgo and in Parione. Being always visible to the public, whilst they lasted the palace facades were very known and influential. There are also many surviving drawings of high quality, according to Vasari, Polidoro was firmly resolved to return to Rome after completing significant projects in Messina. In order to make preparations for this trip, he withdrew all of his savings from the bank for the trip to Rome. Upon discovering this, one of Polidoros workmen, along with accomplices, resolved to put the master to death on the following night. On the night following, they set upon Polidoro while he was slumbering deeply, upon receiving intelligence of the assistants alleged involvement, he was captured on the authority of the Count of Messina, and tortured until he confessed to the crime. Polidoro Caldara - Catholic Encyclopedia article Artcyclopedia Vasaris Life
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Sculpture
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Sculpture is the branch of the visual arts that operates in three dimensions. It is one of the plastic arts, a wide variety of materials may be worked by removal such as carving, assembled by welding or modelling, or molded, or cast. However, most ancient sculpture was painted, and this has been lost. Those cultures whose sculptures have survived in quantities include the cultures of the ancient Mediterranean, India and China, the Western tradition of sculpture began in ancient Greece, and Greece is widely seen as producing great masterpieces in the classical period. During the Middle Ages, Gothic sculpture represented the agonies and passions of the Christian faith, the revival of classical models in the Renaissance produced famous sculptures such as Michelangelos David. Relief is often classified by the degree of projection from the wall into low or bas-relief, high relief, sunk-relief is a technique restricted to ancient Egypt. Relief sculpture may also decorate steles, upright slabs, usually of stone, techniques such as casting, stamping and moulding use an intermediate matrix containing the design to produce the work, many of these allow the production of several copies. The term sculpture is used mainly to describe large works. The very large or colossal statue has had an enduring appeal since antiquity, another grand form of portrait sculpture is the equestrian statue of a rider on horse, which has become rare in recent decades. The smallest forms of life-size portrait sculpture are the head, showing just that, or the bust, small forms of sculpture include the figurine, normally a statue that is no more than 18 inches tall, and for reliefs the plaquette, medal or coin. Sculpture is an important form of public art, a collection of sculpture in a garden setting can be called a sculpture garden. One of the most common purposes of sculpture is in form of association with religion. Cult images are common in cultures, though they are often not the colossal statues of deities which characterized ancient Greek art. The actual cult images in the innermost sanctuaries of Egyptian temples, of which none have survived, were rather small. The same is true in Hinduism, where the very simple. Some undoubtedly advanced cultures, such as the Indus Valley civilization, appear to have had no monumental sculpture at all, though producing very sophisticated figurines, the Mississippian culture seems to have been progressing towards its use, with small stone figures, when it collapsed. Other cultures, such as ancient Egypt and the Easter Island culture, from the 20th century the relatively restricted range of subjects found in large sculpture expanded greatly, with abstract subjects and the use or representation of any type of subject now common. Today much sculpture is made for intermittent display in galleries and museums, small sculpted fittings for furniture and other objects go well back into antiquity, as in the Nimrud ivories, Begram ivories and finds from the tomb of Tutankhamun
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Roman art
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Roman art refers to the visual arts made in Ancient Rome and in the territories of the Roman Empire. Roman art includes architecture, painting, sculpture and mosaic work, sculpture was perhaps considered as the highest form of art by Romans, but figure painting was also very highly regarded. Roman coins were an important means of propaganda, and have survived in enormous numbers, other perishable forms of art have not survived at all. Stylistic eclecticism and practical application are the hallmarks of much Roman art, though very little remains of Greek wall art and portraiture, certainly Greek sculpture and vase painting bears this out. These forms were not likely surpassed by Roman artists in fineness of design or execution. As another example of the lost Golden Age, he singled out Peiraikos, whose artistry is surpassed by only a very few. ”The adjective vulgar is used here in its original meaning, the Greek antecedents of Roman art were legendary. In the mid-5th century BC, the most famous Greek artists were Polygnotos, noted for his murals, and Apollodoros. In sculpture, Skopas, Praxiteles, Phidias, and Lysippos were the foremost sculptors, Ancient Greek treatises on the arts are known to have existed in Roman times though are now lost. Many Roman artists came from Greek colonies and provinces, the high number of Roman copies of Greek art also speaks of the esteem Roman artists had for Greek art, and perhaps of its rarer and higher quality. One exception is the Roman bust, which did not include the shoulders, the traditional head-and-shoulders bust may have been an Etruscan or early Roman form. Where Greek artists were highly revered in their society, most Roman artists were anonymous, there is no recording, as in Ancient Greece, of the great masters of Roman art, and practically no signed works. Roman culture assimilated many cultures and was for the most part tolerant of the ways of conquered peoples, Roman art was commissioned, displayed, and owned in far greater quantities, and adapted to more uses than in Greek times. Wealthy Romans were more materialistic, they decorated their walls with art, their home with decorative objects, when Constantine moved the capital of the empire to Byzantium, Roman art incorporated Eastern influences to produce the Byzantine style of the late empire. When Rome was sacked in the 5th century, artisans moved to, of the vast body of Roman painting we now have only a very few pockets of survivals, with many documented types not surviving at all, or doing so only from the very end of the period. A succession of dated styles have been defined and analysed by modern art historians beginning with August Mau, there are a number of other parts of painted rooms surviving from Rome and elsewhere, which somewhat help to fill in the gaps of our knowledge of wall-painting. Nothing remains of the Greek paintings imported to Rome during the 4th and 5th centuries, in sum, the range of samples is confined to only about 200 years out of the about 900 years of Roman history, and of provincial and decorative painting. Most of this painting was done using the secco method. There is evidence from mosaics and a few inscriptions that some Roman paintings were adaptations or copies of earlier Greek works
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Early Netherlandish painting
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Their work follows the International Gothic style and begins approximately with Robert Campin and Jan van Eyck in the early 1420s. It lasts at least until the death of Gerard David in 1523, the major Netherlandish painters include Campin, van Eyck, Rogier van der Weyden, Dieric Bouts, Petrus Christus, Hans Memling, Hugo van der Goes and Hieronymus Bosch. These artists made significant advances in natural representation and illusionism, and their subjects are usually religious scenes or small portraits, with narrative painting or mythological subjects being relatively rare. Landscape is often richly described but relegated as a background detail before the early 16th century, the painted works are generally oil on panel, either as single works or more complex portable or fixed altarpieces in the form of diptychs, triptychs or polyptychs. The period is noted for its sculpture, tapestries, illuminated manuscripts, stained glass. Assisted by the system, panels and a variety of crafts were sold to foreign princes or merchants through private engagement or market stalls. A majority were destroyed during waves of iconoclasm in the 16th and 17th centuries, Early northern art in general was not well regarded from the early 17th to the mid-19th century, and the painters and their works were not well documented until the mid-19th century. Art historians spent almost another century determining attributions, studying iconography, attribution of some of the most significant works is still debated. These artists became a driving force behind the Northern Renaissance. In this political and art-historical context, the north follows the Burgundian lands which straddled areas that encompass parts of modern France, Germany, Belgium, the Netherlandish artists have been known by a variety of terms. Late Gothic is a designation which emphasises continuity with the art of the Middle Ages. In the early 20th century, the artists were variously referred to in English as the Ghent-Bruges school or the Old Netherlandish school. In this context, primitive does not refer to a lack of sophistication. When the Burgundian dukes established centres of power in the Netherlands, in the 19th century the Early Netherlandish artists were classified by nationality, with Jan van Eyck identified as German and van der Weyden as French. Scholars were at times preoccupied as to whether the schools genesis was in France or Germany, in the 14th century, as Gothic art gave way to the International Gothic era, a number of schools developed in northern Europe. Early Netherlandish art originated in French courtly art, and is tied to the tradition. Modern art historians see the era as beginning with 14th-century manuscript illuminators and this patronage continued in the low countries with the Burgundian dukes, Philip the Good and his son Charles the Bold. The demand for illuminated manuscripts declined towards the end of the century, following van Eycks innovations, the first generation of Netherlandish painters emphasised light and shadow, elements usually absent from 14th-century illuminated manuscripts
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Maarten van Heemskerck
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Maerten van Heemskerck or Marten Jacobsz Heemskerk van Veen was a Dutch portrait and religious painter, who spent most of his career in Haarlem. He was a pupil of Jan van Scorel, and adopted his teachers Italian-influenced style and he spent the years 1532–6 in Italy. He produced many designs for engravers, and is known for his depictions of the Wonders of the World. Heemskerck was born in the village of Heemskerk, North Holland and he was the son of a farmer called Jacob Willemsz. According to his biography by Karel van Mander, he began his training with the painter Cornelius Willemsz in Haarlem. Heemskerck then went to lodge at the home of the curate of the Sint-Bavokerk. They knew each other because Foppesz owned land in Heemskerk, the artist painted him in a now famous family portrait, considered the first of its kind in a long line of Dutch family paintings. His other works for Foppesz included two life size figures symbolising the Sun and the Moon on a bedstead, and a picture of Adam and his next home was in the house of a goldsmith, Justus Cornelisz, on the edge of Haarlem. Before setting off for Italy on a Grand Tour in 1532 and he travelled around the whole of northern and central Italy, stopping at Rome, where he had letters of introduction from van Scorel to the influential Dutch cardinal William of Enckenvoirt. Giorgio Vasari, who saw the battle-pieces which Heemskerk then produced, said they were well composed, while in Rome where he made numerous drawings of classical sculpture and architecture, many of which survive in two sketchbooks now in the Kupferstichkabinett Berlin. He was to use them as source material throughout the rest of his career, among these are the Capitoline Brutus, van Heemskerck being the first known artist to make a sketch of this now famous bust. On his return to the Netherlands in 1536, he settled back at Haarlem, where he became president of the Haarlem Guild of Saint Luke, married twice, the alteration in his style, brought about by his experience of Italy was not universally admired. According to van Mander, in the opinion of some of the best judges he had not improved it, except in one particular and he painted large altarpieces for his friend, the art maecenas and later martyr of the Protestant Reformation, Cornelis Muys. Muys had returned from a period in France to the Netherlands in 1538 and this lucrative and high-profile work in Delft earned Heemskerck a commission for an altarpiece in the Nieuwe Kerk for their Guild of St. Luke. In 1553 he became curate of the Sint-Bavokerk, where he served for 22 years, in 1572 he left Haarlem for Amsterdam, to avoid the siege of Haarlem which the Spaniards laid to the place. He was one of the first Netherlandish artists to make drawings specifically for reproduction by commercial printmakers and he employed a technique incorporating cross-hatching and stippling, intended to aid the engraver. Heemskerck produced designs for a set of engravings, showing eight and they were engraved by Philip Galle and published in 1572. Many works by van Heemskerck survive, an altar-piece executed for the St
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Hendrik Goltzius
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Hendrick Goltzius, was a German-born Dutch printmaker, draftsman, and painter. He was the leading Dutch engraver of the early Baroque period, or Northern Mannerism, noted for his sophisticated technique and the exuberance of his compositions. According to A. Hyatt Mayor, Goltzius was the last professional engraver who drew with the authority of a good painter, in middle age he also began to produce paintings. Goltzius was born near Venlo in Bracht or Millebrecht, a then in the Duchy of Julich. His family moved to Duisburg when he was 3 years old, after studying painting on glass for some years under his father, he learned engraving from the Dutch polymath Dirck Volckertszoon Coornhert, who then lived in Cleves. In 1577 he moved with Coornhert to Haarlem in the Dutch Republic, in the same town, he was also employed by Philip Galle to engrave a set of prints of the history of Lucretia. He returned to Haarlem in August 1591, considerably improved in health and his portraits, though mostly miniatures, are masterpieces of their kind, both on account of their exquisite finish, and as fine studies of individual character. Of his larger heads, his life-size self-portrait is probably the most striking example, Goltzius brought to an unprecedented level the use of the swelling line, where the burin is manipulated to make lines thicker or thinner to create a tonal effect from a distance. He also was a pioneer of dot and lozenge technique, where dots are placed in the middle of lozenge shaped spaces created by cross-hatching to further refine tonal shading, hollstein credits 388 prints to him, with a further 574 by other printmakers after his designs. In his command of the burin, Goltzius is said to rival Dürer and he made engravings of Bartholomeus Sprangers paintings, thus increasing the fame of the latter – and his own. Goltzius began painting at the age of forty-two, some of his paintings can be found in Vienna and he also executed a few chiaroscuro woodcuts. He was the stepfather of engraver Jacob Matham and he died, aged 58, in Haarlem. A Hyatt Mayor, Prints and People, Metropolitan Museum of Art/Princeton,1971, cohn, An Interpretation of Four Woodcut Landscape by Hendrick Goltzius, Print Quarterly, XXXI, June 2014, pp. 144–155. Liedtke, Walter A. Flemish paintings in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, new York, The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Web Gallery of Art Retrieved 19-08-2008 Works and literature on Hendrick Goltzius Goltzius engravings from the De Verda collection2
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Adriaen van de Venne
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Van de Venne was born in Delft. According to Houbraken he learned Latin in Leiden and he learned to paint from the master goldsmith and painter Simon de Valk, and afterwards learned engraving from Jeronimus van Diest, a good painter of grisailles. He then moved to Middelburg in 1614 where he was influenced by Jan Brueghel the Elder and Pieter Brueghel the Elder, when he painted this picture, the Twelve Years Truce was in effect since 1609. The influence of Jan Brueghel the Elder is particularly evident in this allegory of religious fanaticism and this work made him famous during his lifetime, and remained popular throughout the 18th century after his death. Van de Venne also worked as an illustrator and print designer. Van de Venne moved to The Hague and joined the Guild of Saint Luke in 1625, taking the position of dean in 1637. He was a member of Confrerie Pictura, a group bent on improving the independent status. Gallery Gallery Laurens J. Bol, series of articles on van de Venne in Tableau, Filippo Baldinuccis Artists in biographies by Filippo Baldinucci, 1610–1670, p
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Rembrandt
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Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn was a Dutch draughtsman, painter, and printmaker. A prolific and versatile master across three media, he is considered one of the greatest visual artists in the history of art. Having achieved youthful success as a painter, Rembrandts later years were marked by personal tragedy. Yet his etchings and paintings were popular throughout his lifetime, his reputation as an artist remained high, Rembrandts portraits of his contemporaries, self-portraits and illustrations of scenes from the Bible are regarded as his greatest creative triumphs. His self-portraits form a unique and intimate biography, in which the artist surveyed himself without vanity and his reputation as the greatest etcher in the history of the medium was established in his lifetime, and never questioned since. Few of his paintings left the Dutch Republic whilst he lived, but his prints were circulated throughout Europe, because of his empathy for the human condition, he has been called one of the great prophets of civilization. Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn was born on 15 July 1606 in Leiden, in the Dutch Republic and he was the ninth child born to Harmen Gerritszoon van Rijn and Neeltgen Willemsdochter van Zuijtbrouck. His family was quite well-to-do, his father was a miller, religion is a central theme in Rembrandts paintings and the religiously fraught period in which he lived makes his faith a matter of interest. His mother was Roman Catholic, and his father belonged to the Dutch Reformed Church, unlike many of his contemporaries who traveled to Italy as part of their artistic training, Rembrandt never left the Dutch Republic during his lifetime. He opened a studio in Leiden in 1624 or 1625, which he shared with friend, in 1627, Rembrandt began to accept students, among them Gerrit Dou in 1628. In 1629, Rembrandt was discovered by the statesman Constantijn Huygens, as a result of this connection, Prince Frederik Hendrik continued to purchase paintings from Rembrandt until 1646. He initially stayed with an art dealer, Hendrick van Uylenburgh, Saskia came from a good family, her father had been a lawyer and the burgemeester of Leeuwarden. When Saskia, as the youngest daughter, became an orphan, Rembrandt and Saskia were married in the local church of St. Annaparochie without the presence of Rembrandts relatives. In the same year, Rembrandt became a burgess of Amsterdam and he also acquired a number of students, among them Ferdinand Bol and Govert Flinck. In 1635 Rembrandt and Saskia moved into their own house, renting in fashionable Nieuwe Doelenstraat, in 1639 they moved to a prominent newly built house in the upscale Breestraat, today known as Jodenbreestraat in what was becoming the Jewish quarter, then a young upcoming neighborhood. The mortgage to finance the 13,000 guilder purchase would be a cause for later financial difficulties. Rembrandt should easily have been able to pay the house off with his income, but it appears his spending always kept pace with his income. It was there that Rembrandt frequently sought his Jewish neighbors to model for his Old Testament scenes, in 1640, they had a second daughter, also named Cornelia, who died after living barely over a month
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Jan van Goyen
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Jan Josephszoon van Goyen was a Dutch landscape painter. Van Goyen was a prolific artist, approximately twelve hundred paintings. Jan van Goyen was the son of a shoemaker and started as an apprentice in Leiden, like many Dutch painters of his time, Jan van Goyen studied art in the town of Haarlem with Esaias van de Velde. At age 35, he established a permanent studio at Den Haag, despite his market innovations, he always sought more income, not only through related work as an art dealer and auctioneer but also by speculating in tulips and real estate. Although the latter was usually a safe avenue of investing money, paulus Potter rented one of his houses. Though he seems to have kept a workshop, his only registered pupils were Nicolaes van Berchem, Jan Steen, the list of painters he influenced is much longer. In 1652 and 1654 he was forced to sell his collection of paintings and graphic art and he died in 1656 in The Hague, still unbelievably 18,000 guilders in debt, forcing his widow to sell their remaining furniture and paintings. Van Goyens troubles also may have affected the business prospects of his student and son-in-law Jan Steen. Typically, a Dutch painter of the 17th century will fall one of four categories. Dutch painting was highly specialized and rarely could an artist hope to achieve greatness in more than one area in a lifetime of painting, Jan van Goyen would be classified primarily as a landscape artist with an eye for the genre subjects of everyday life. He painted many of the canals in and around Den Haag as well as the surrounding countryside of Delft, Rotterdam, Leiden. Other popular Dutch landscape painters of the sixteenth and seventeenth century were Jacob van Ruisdael, Aelbert Cuyp, Hendrick Avercamp, Ludolf Backhuysen, Meindert Hobbema, Jan van Goyen would begin a painting using a support primarily of thin oak wood. To this panel, he would scrub on several layers of an animal hide glue. With a blade, he would then scrape over the surface a thin layer of tinted white lead to act as a ground. The ground was tinted brown, sometimes reddish, or ochre in colour. Next, van Goyen would loosely and very rapidly sketch out the scene to be painted with pen and this walnut ink drawing can be clearly seen in some of the thinly painted areas of his work. For a guide, he would have turned to a detailed drawing, the scene would have been drawn from life outdoors and then kept in the studio as reference material. Drawings by artists of the time were rarely works of art in their own right as they are viewed today
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Sistine Chapel
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The Sistine Chapel is a chapel in the Apostolic Palace, the official residence of the Pope, in Vatican City. Originally known as the Cappella Magna, the chapel takes its name from Pope Sixtus IV, since that time, the chapel has served as a place of both religious and functionary papal activity. Today it is the site of the Papal conclave, the process by which a new pope is selected, the fame of the Sistine Chapel lies mainly in the frescos that decorate the interior, and most particularly the Sistine Chapel ceiling and The Last Judgment by Michelangelo. In a different climate after the Sack of Rome, he returned, the fame of Michelangelos paintings has drawn multitudes of visitors to the chapel ever since they were revealed five hundred years ago. At the time of Pope Sixtus IV in the late 15th century, there were 50 occasions during the year on which it was prescribed by the Papal Calendar that the whole Papal Chapel should meet. Of these 50 occasions,35 were masses, of which 8 were held in Basilicas, in general St. Peters and these included the Christmas Day and Easter masses, at which the Pope himself was the celebrant. The other 27 masses could be held in a smaller, less public space, the Cappella Maggiore derived its name, the Greater Chapel, from the fact that there was another chapel also in use by the Pope and his retinue for daily worship. At the time of Pope Sixtus IV, this was the Chapel of Pope Nicholas V, the Cappella Maggiore is recorded as existing in 1368. The proportions of the present chapel appear to follow those of the original. The first mass in the Sistine Chapel was celebrated on 15 August 1483, the Sistine Chapel has maintained its function to the present day, and continues to host the important services of the Papal Calendar, unless the Pope is travelling. There is a permanent choir, the Sistine Chapel Choir, for whom much original music has been written, one of the functions of the Sistine Chapel is as a venue for the election of each successive pope in a conclave of the College of Cardinals. On the occasion of a conclave, a chimney is installed in the roof of the chapel, if white smoke appears, created by burning the ballots of the election, a new Pope has been elected. The conclave also provided for the cardinals a space in which they can hear mass, and in which they can eat, sleep, and pass time attended by servants. From 1455, conclaves have been held in the Vatican, until the Great Schism, canopies for each cardinal-elector were once used during conclaves—a sign of equal dignity. After the new Pope accepts his election, he would give his new name, at this time, until reforms instituted by Saint Pius X, the canopies were of different colours to designate which Cardinals had been appointed by which Pope. Its exterior is unadorned by architectural or decorative details, as is common in many Italian churches of the Medieval, subsidence and cracking of masonry such as must also have affected the Cappella Maggiore has necessitated the building of very large buttresses to brace the exterior walls. The accretion of other buildings has further altered the appearance of the Chapel. The building is divided into three stories of which the lowest is a tall basement level with several utilitarian windows
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Antonio Verrio
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The Italian-born Antonio Verrio was responsible for introducing Baroque mural painting into England and served the Crown over a thirty-year period. Verrio, born in Lecce, Kingdom of Naples, started his career in Lecce and was a pupil of Giovanni Andrea Coppola, several works by Verrio still exist in the Apulian city, including S. Francesco Saverio appare al Beato Marcello Mastrilli – his first known signed work. Around 1665, Verrio moved to the region of Toulouse where he was commissioned to decorate the Château Bonrepos and he then settled in Toulouse itself where he worked for the Carmes Déchaussées and the Capucins. Today two of his paintings, Le Mariage de la Vierge et Saint-Félix de Cantalice, are in the collection of the Musée des Augustins there. Around 1670, Verrio moved to Paris where he developed an aristocratic clientele, in March 1672, Verrio crossed the Channel on the recommendation of Ralph Montagu, who had been English Ambassador Extraordinary in Paris since 1669. Thanks to Montagu, Verrio made his English debut working for such as the 1st Earl of Arlington and the 1st Duke of Lauderdale. By 1675, Verrio had painted the allegorical portrait of the king known as The Sea Triumph of Charles II. Soon afterwards he was engaged to decorate the North Range of Windsor Castle, where he collaborated with the architect Hugh May and the sculptor Grinling Gibbons. This was the most important commission of his career, twenty ceilings. On its completion, in 1684, Verrio was appointed ‘Chief, only three ceilings have survived the redecoration of the castle commissioned by George IV during the 1820s. On the succession of James II, Verrio continued his service and decorated Whitehall Palace. In March 1685, he was also appointed ‘Keeper of the Great Garden in St James’s Park’, at the Glorious Revolution, Verrio received no royal protection from William III and had to leave the court. Verrio, who had worked for the nobility while he was employed by Charles and James and he spent the next decade at Burghley House, the property of the 5th Earl of Exeter, and Chatsworth, the property of the 4th Earl of Devonshire. Both are very fine examples of English Baroque decoration, and Burghley contains Verrio’s masterpiece, by 1699, William finally overrode the Test Act and invited Verrio back to court. After having worked at Windsor again, Verrio undertook the decoration of Hampton Court Palace for William, at his death, in 1702, Verrio continued his royal service and painted for Queen Anne his last royal commission in the Queen’s Drawing Room. In 1705, Verrio was granted by the queen an annual pension of £200, before his death, on 15 June 1707, Verrio painted a series of portraits including his self-portrait, now in the National Portrait Gallery. Verrio influenced younger artists such as Louis Laguerre and James Thornhill, in France, his work can be seen in Toulouse at the musée des Augustins and at Saint Exupères church and in Paris, where he painted some of the vaults of the Hôtel Brûlart. In Italy, his paintings can be found in churches and in the provincial museum of Lecce
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Hampton Court Palace
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Hampton Court Palace is a royal palace in the town of East Molesey, Richmond upon Thames, Greater London, England,11.7 miles south west and upstream of central London on the River Thames. Redevelopment began to be carried out in 1515 for Cardinal Thomas Wolsey, in 1529, as Wolsey fell from favour, the King seized the palace for himself and later enlarged it. Along with St Jamess Palace, it is one of two surviving palaces out of the many owned by King Henry VIII. In the following century, King William IIIs massive rebuilding and expansion project, work ceased in 1694, leaving the palace in two distinct contrasting architectural styles, domestic Tudor and Baroque. While the palaces styles are an accident of fate, a unity exists due to the use of pink bricks, King George II was the last monarch to reside in the palace. In addition, London Buses routes 111,216,411, the structure and grounds are cared for by an independent charity, Historic Royal Palaces, which receives no funding from the Government or the Crown. In addition the palace continues to display a number of works of art from the Royal Collection. The palaces Home Park is the site of the annual Hampton Court Palace Festival, Thomas Wolsey, Archbishop of York, Chief Minister and favourite of Henry VIII, took over the site of Hampton Court Palace in 1514. It had previously been a property of the Order of St John of Jerusalem, over the following seven years, Wolsey spent lavishly to build the finest palace in England at Hampton Court. Wolsey rebuilt the manor house to form the nucleus of the present palace. Today, little of Wolseys building work remains unchanged, the first courtyard, the Base Court, was his creation, as was the second, inner gatehouse which leads to the Clock Court which contained his private rooms. The Base Court contained forty-four lodgings reserved for guests, while the court contained the very best rooms – the state apartments – reserved for the King. Henry VIII stayed in the apartments as Wolseys guest immediately after their completion in 1525. Perpendicular Gothic owed nothing historically to the Renaissance style, yet harmonised well with it and this blending of styles was realised by a small group of Italian craftsmen working at the English court in the second and third decades of the sixteenth century. They specialised in the adding of Renaissance ornament to otherwise straightforward Tudor buildings and it was one of these, Giovanni da Maiano who was responsible for the set of eight relief busts of Roman emperors which were set in the Tudor brickwork. Wolsey was only to enjoy his palace for a few years, in 1528, knowing that his enemies and the King were engineering his downfall, he passed the palace to the King as a gift. Wolsey died two years later in 1530, within six months of coming into ownership, the King began his own rebuilding and expansion. Henry VIIIs court consisted of one thousand people, while the King owned over sixty houses and palaces
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Pablo Picasso
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Pablo Ruiz y Picasso, also known as Pablo Picasso, was a Spanish painter, sculptor, printmaker, ceramicist, stage designer, poet and playwright who spent most of his adult life in France. Picasso demonstrated extraordinary artistic talent in his years, painting in a naturalistic manner through his childhood. During the first decade of the 20th century, his style changed as he experimented with different theories, techniques, Picassos work is often categorized into periods. Much of Picassos work of the late 1910s and early 1920s is in a neoclassical style and his later work often combines elements of his earlier styles. Ruiz y Picasso were included for his father and mother, respectively, born in the city of Málaga in the Andalusian region of Spain, he was the first child of Don José Ruiz y Blasco and María Picasso y López. His mother was of one quarter Italian descent, from the territory of Genoa, though baptized a Catholic, Picasso would later on become an atheist. Picassos family was of middle-class background and his father was a painter who specialized in naturalistic depictions of birds and other game. For most of his life Ruiz was a professor of art at the School of Crafts, Picasso showed a passion and a skill for drawing from an early age. According to his mother, his first words were piz, piz, a shortening of lápiz, from the age of seven, Picasso received formal artistic training from his father in figure drawing and oil painting. Ruiz was an academic artist and instructor, who believed that proper training required disciplined copying of the masters. His son became preoccupied with art to the detriment of his classwork, the family moved to A Coruña in 1891, where his father became a professor at the School of Fine Arts. On one occasion, the father found his son painting over his sketch of a pigeon. In 1895, Picasso was traumatized when his sister, Conchita. After her death, the moved to Barcelona, where Ruiz took a position at its School of Fine Arts. Picasso thrived in the city, regarding it in times of sadness or nostalgia as his true home, Ruiz persuaded the officials at the academy to allow his son to take an entrance exam for the advanced class. This process often took students a month, but Picasso completed it in a week, the student lacked discipline but made friendships that would affect him in later life. His father rented a room for him close to home so he could work alone, yet he checked up on him numerous times a day. Picassos father and uncle decided to send the young artist to Madrids Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando, at age 16, Picasso set off for the first time on his own, but he disliked formal instruction and stopped attending classes soon after enrolment
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Guernica (Picasso)
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Guernica is a mural-sized oil painting on canvas by Spanish artist Pablo Picasso completed in June 1937. The painting, which uses a palette of gray, black, standing at 3.49 meters tall and 7.76 meters wide, the large mural shows the suffering of people wrenched by violence and chaos. Prominent in the composition are a horse, a bull. The painting was created in response to the bombing of Guernica, the touring exhibition was used to raise funds for Spanish war relief. The painting became famous and widely acclaimed, and it helped bring attention to the Spanish Civil War. At the time, Picasso was living in Paris, where he had been named Honorary Director-in-Exile of the Prado Museum and he had last visited Spain in 1934 and never returned. His initial sketches for the project, on which he worked somewhat dispassionately from January until late April, immediately upon hearing reports of the 26 April bombing of Guernica, the poet Juan Larrea visited Picasso and urged him to make the bombing his subject. However, it was only on 1 May, having read George Steers eyewitness account of the bombing, Guernica is a town in the province of Biscay in Basque Country. During the Spanish Civil War, it was regarded as the bastion of the Republican resistance movement. The Republican forces were made up of assorted factions with differing goals, the Nationalists, led by General Francisco Franco, sought a return to pre-Republican Spain, based on law, order, and traditional Catholic values. At about 16,30 on Monday,26 April 1937, warplanes of the German Condor Legion, commanded by Colonel Wolfram von Richthofen, germany, at this time led by Hitler, had lent material support to the Nationalists. Later, intense aerial bombardment became a preliminary step in the Blitzkrieg tactic. The 250s toppled a number of houses and destroyed the water mains, the incendiaries now could spread and become effective. The materials of the houses, tile roofs, wooden porches, most inhabitants were away because of a holiday, a majority of the rest left town immediately at the beginning. A small number perished in shelters that were hit, guernicas location was at a major crossroads 10 kilometers from the front lines and between the front lines and Bilbao, the capital of Bizkaia. Any Republican retreat towards Bilbao and any Nationalist advance towards Bilbao had to pass through Guernica, during 25 April, many of the demoralized troops from Marquina fell back on Guernica, which lay 10 kilometers behind the lines. Wolfram von Richthofens war diary entry for 26 April 1937 states, K/88 was targeted at Guernica in order to halt, the following day, Richthofen wrote in his war diary, Guernica burning. The nearest military target of any consequence was a factory on the outskirts of the town, the factory went through the attack unscathed
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Globalization
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Globalization or globalisation is the action or procedure of international integration arising from the interchange of world views, products, ideas, and other aspects of culture. Advances in transportation and in telecommunications infrastructure have been factors in globalization, generating further interdependence of economic. Large-scale globalization began in the 1820s, in the late 19th century and early 20th century, the connectivity of the worlds economies and cultures grew very quickly. The term globalization is recent, only establishing its current meaning in the 1970s, further, environmental challenges such as global warming, cross-boundary water and air pollution, and overfishing of the ocean are linked with globalization. Globalizing processes affect and are affected by business and work organization, economics, socio-cultural resources, academic literature commonly subdivides globalization into three major areas, economic globalization, cultural globalization, and political globalization. The term globalization is derived from the word globalize, which refers to the emergence of a network of economic systems. One of the earliest known usages of the term as a noun was in a 1930 publication entitled Towards New Education, a related term, corporate giants, was coined by Charles Taze Russell in 1897 to refer to the largely national trusts and other large enterprises of the time. By the 1960s, both began to be used as synonyms by economists and other social scientists. Economist Theodore Levitt is widely credited with coining the term in an article entitled Globalization of Markets, However, the term globalization was in use well before this and had been used by other scholars as early as 1981. Levitt can be credited with popularizing the term and bringing it into the mainstream audience in the later half of the 1980s. Due to the complexity of the concept, research projects, articles, sociologists Martin Albrow and Elizabeth King define globalization as all those processes by which the people of the world are incorporated into a single world society. Globalization can be located on a continuum with the local, national and regional, without reference to such expansive spatial connections, there can be no clear or coherent formulation of this term. A satisfactory definition of globalization must capture each of these elements, extensity, intensity, velocity and it pertains to the increasing ease with which somebody on one side of the world can interact, to mutual benefit, with somebody on the other side of the world. The ideological dimension, according to Steger, is filled with a range of norms, claims, beliefs and they have also argued that four different forms of globalization can be distinguished that complement and cut across the solely empirical dimensions. According to James, the oldest dominant form of globalization is embodied globalization, a second form is agency-extended globalization, the circulation of agents of different institutions, organizations, and polities, including imperial agents. Object-extended globalization, a form, is the movement of commodities. He calls the transmission of ideas, images, knowledge, and information across world-space disembodied globalization and he asserted that the pace of globalization was quickening and that its impact on business organization and practice would continue to grow. Economist Takis Fotopoulos defined economic globalization as the opening and deregulation of commodity, capital and he used political globalization to refer to the emergence of a transnational elite and a phasing out of the nation-state
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Fulbright Fellowship
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The program was established to increase mutual understanding between the people of the United States and other countries through the exchange of persons, knowledge, and skills. It is one of the most prestigious scholarships in the world, the Fulbright Program provides 8,000 grants annually to undertake graduate study, advanced research, university lecturing, and classroom teaching. The Fulbright Program is administered by cooperating organizations like the Institute of International Education and it operates in over 160 countries around the world. The U. S. Department of States Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs sponsors the Fulbright Program from an appropriation from the U. S. Congress. Additional direct and in-kind support comes from governments, foundations, corporations. In each of 49 countries, a bi-national Fulbright Commission administers, in countries without a Fulbright Commission but that have an active program, the Public Affairs Section of the U. S. Embassy oversees the Fulbright Program. More than 360,000 persons have participated in the program since it began, fifty-four Fulbright alumni have won Nobel Prizes, eighty-two have won Pulitzer Prizes. In 1945, Senator J. William Fulbright proposed a bill to use the proceeds from selling surplus U. S. government war property to international exchange between the U. S. and other countries. The bill devised a plan to forgo the debts foreign countries amassed during the war and it was through the belief that this program would be an essential vehicle to promote peace and mutual understanding between individuals, institutions and future leaders wherever they may be. If we do not want to die together in war, we must learn to live together in peace. On August 1,1946, President Harry S. Truman signed the bill into law, since it began, the program has operated on a bi-national basis, each country active in the Fulbright Program has entered into an agreement with the U. S. government. The first countries to sign agreements were Cuba in 1947 and Burma, the Philippines, Educational exchange can turn nations into people, contributing as no other form of communication can to the humanizing of international relations. The Fulbright Program works two ways, U. S. citizens may receive funding to go to a foreign country, citizens may come to the U. S. Fulbright grants are offered in almost all academic disciplines except clinical medical research involving patient contact. Fulbright grantees fields of study span the arts, humanities, social sciences, mathematics, natural and physical sciences. Student Program offers fellowships for U. S. graduating seniors, graduate students, young professionals and artists to research, study, the Fulbright Foreign Student Program enables graduate students, young professionals and artists from abroad to conduct research and study in the United States. Some scholarships are renewed after the year of study. This program is currently on hiatus, the Fulbright-mtvU Fellowships award up to four U. S. students the opportunity to study the power of music as a cultural force abroad. Fellows conduct research for one year on projects of their own design about a chosen musical aspect
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Photorealism
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Photorealists use a photograph or several photographs to gather the information to create their paintings and it can be argued that the use of a camera and photographs is an acceptance of Modernism. By the time the Photorealists began producing their bodies of work the photograph had become the means of reproducing reality. Though Photorealists share some aspects of American realists, such as Edward Hopper, Photorealists were much more influenced by the work of Pop artists and were reacting against Abstract Expressionism. However, whereas the Pop artists were primarily pointing out the absurdity of much of the imagery, the association of Photorealism to Trompe Loeil is a wrongly attributed comparison, an error in observation or interpretation made by many critics of the 1970s and 1980s. Trompe Loeil paintings attempt to fool the eye and make the viewer think he is seeing an actual object, when observing a Photorealist painting, the viewer is always aware that they are looking at a painting. The word Photorealism was coined by Louis K. Meisel in 1969 and it is also sometimes labeled as Super-Realism, New Realism, Sharp Focus Realism, or Hyper-Realism. The definition for the ORIGINATORS was as follows, The Photo-Realist uses the camera, the Photo-Realist uses a mechanical or semimechanical means to transfer the information to the canvas. The Photo-Realist must have the ability to make the finished work appear photographic. The artist must have exhibited work as a Photo-Realist by 1972 to be considered one of the central Photo-Realists, the artist must have devoted at least five years to the development and exhibition of Photo-Realist work. Photorealist painting cannot exist without the photograph, in Photorealism, change and movement must be frozen in time which must then be accurately represented by the artist. Photorealists gather their imagery and information with the camera and photograph, once the photograph is developed the artist will systematically transfer the image from the photographic slide onto canvases. Usually this is either by projecting the slide onto the canvas or by using traditional grid techniques. The resulting images are often direct copies of the photograph but are usually larger than the original photograph or slide. In the UK, photorealist approaches were favoured by artists including Mike Gorman. The introduction of these European painters to a wider US audience was brought about through the 1982 Superhumanism exhibition at the Arnold Katzen Gallery, though the height of Photorealism was in the 1970s the movement continues and includes several of the original photorealists as well as many of their contemporaries. According to Meisel and Chases Photorealism at the Millennium, only eight of the original photorealists were still creating photorealist work in 2002, ten including John Baeder, newer Photorealists are building upon the foundations set by the original photorealists. Examples would be the influence of Richard Estes in works by Anthony Brunelli or the influence of Ralph Goings, however, this has led many to move on from the strict definition of photorealism as the emulation of the photograph. Photorealism is also no longer simply an American art movement, with new technology in cameras and digital equipment, artists are able to be far more precision-oriented
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Wet-on-wet
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Wet-on-wet, or alla prima, is a painting technique, used mostly in oil painting, in which layers of wet paint are applied to previously administered layers of wet paint. This technique requires a fast way of working, because the work has to be finished before the first layers have dried and it may also be referred to as direct painting or the French term au premier coup. In contrast, work performed using alla prima can be carried out in one or more sessions, in the medium of watercolors, wet-on-wet painting requires a certain finesse in embracing unpredictability. Highly translucent and prone to accidents, watercolor paint will bloom in unpredictable ways that, depending on the frame of mind. Among the many Baroque painters who favored an alla prima technique were Diego Velázquez, in the Rococo era, connoisseurs appreciated bold alla prima painting, as exemplified in the works of artists such as Jean-Honoré Fragonard, Francesco Guardi, and Thomas Gainsborough. Since the mid-19th century, the use of commercially produced pigments in portable tubes has facilitated an easily accessible variety of colors to be used for rapid, complete paintings, using this technique, popularized for the construction of imaginative landscapes, only take a relatively short period of time. Alexander and Ross could produce a landscape in under half an hour on their respective television shows, The Magic of Oil Painting. Ross distributed a smooth basecoat of thinned paint, usually white, along the canvas before painting started so the canvas would always be wet, forms of wet on wet painting have been in use in industrial applications for some years. Process used sulphurised linseed oil and was used for years to paint United States Postal Service vans. With the development of quick-drying primers, it was used by Rank Xerox to paint parts for their copiers, the original clear on base system for automotive metallic finishes used an air drying base. This system, using a flash primer as well, was used for cycle finishes well before it was used for cars
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Studio
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A studio is an artists or workers workroom, or the catchall term for an artist and their employees who work within that studio. The term is used for the workroom of dancers, often specified to dance studio. The word studio is derived from the Italian, studio, from Latin, studium, from studere, the French term for studio, atelier, in addition to designating an artists studio is used to characterize the studio of a fashion designer. Atelier also has the connotation of being the home of an alchemist or wizard, the studio of a successful artist, especially from the 15th to the 19th centuries, characterized all the assistants, thus the designation of paintings as from the workshop of. An art studio is called an atelier, especially in earlier eras. In contemporary, English language use, atelier can also refer to the Atelier Method, the above-mentioned method calls upon that zeal for study to play a significant role in the production which occurs in a studio space. A studio is more or less artful to the degree that the artist who occupies it is committed to the education in his or her formal discipline. A versatile and creative mind will embrace the opportunity of such practice to innovate and experiment, thus the method raises and maintains an art studio space above the level of a mere production facility or workshop. Safety is or may be a concern in studios, with some painting materials required to be handled, stored, or used properly to prevent poisoning, chemical burns, or fire. Media related to atelier at Wikimedia Commons In educational studios, students learn to develop related to design. In specific, educational studios are studio settings where large numbers of students learn to draft, educational studios are colloquially referred to as studio by students, who are known for staying up late hours into the night doing projects and socializing. The studio environment is characterized by 2 types in education, The workspace where students do usually visually-centered work in an open environment and this time and space is beyond that of instructional time and faculty guidance is not available. It allows for students to each other, help each other. A type of class that takes the above-mentioned workshop space, and it differentiates itself based on a topic of instruction, isolated space, instructor led/included, and an added focus of directed criticism. A great take on this type of studio classroom is described by Carleton University. Studio pottery is made by an individual working on his own in his studio. Production studios are those studios which act as centres for the production in any of the arts, in radio and television production studio is the place where programs and radio commercial and television advertising are recorded for further emission. Animation studios, like movie studios, may be production facilities, animation studios are a fast rising entity and they include established firms such as Walt Disney and Pixar
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Vitreous enamel
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Vitreous enamel, also called porcelain enamel, is a material made by fusing powdered glass to a substrate by firing, usually between 750 and 850 °C. The powder melts, flows, and then hardens to a smooth, durable vitreous coating on metal, so in technical terms fired enamelware is an integrated layered composite of glass and metal. Enamelling is an old and widely adopted technology, for most of its history mainly used in jewelry, enamelled and enamelling are the preferred spellings in British English, while enameled and enameling are preferred in American English. The term enamel is most often restricted to work on metal, enamelled glass is also called painted, and overglaze decoration to pottery is often called enamelling. The word enamel comes from the Old High German word smelzan via the Old French esmail, or from a Latin word smaltum, used as a noun, an enamel is usually a small decorative object coated with enamel. Since the 19th century the term also to industrial materials and many metal consumer objects, such as some cooking vessels, dishwashers, laundry machines, sinks. The ancient Egyptians applied enamels to stone objects, pottery, and sometimes jewellery, the ancient Greeks, Celts, Georgians, and Chinese also used enamel on metal objects. Enamel powder could be produced in two ways, either by powdering coloured glass, or by mixing colourless glass powder with pigments such as a metallic oxide, designs were either painted freehand or over the top of outline incisions, and the technique probably originated in metalworking. Once painted, enamelled glass vessels needed to be fired at a high enough to melt the applied powder. Ancient Persians used this method for colouring and ornamenting the surface of metals by fusing over it brilliant colours that are decorated in an intricate design and called it Meenakari. Gold has been used traditionally for Meenakari Jewellery as it holds the enamel better, lasts longer, initially, the work of Meenakari often went unnoticed as this art was traditionally used as a backing for the famous kundan or stone-studded jewellery. This also allowed the wearer to reverse the jewellery as also promised a special joy in the secret of the hidden design, the Byzantine enamel style was widely adopted by the barbarian peoples of Migration Period northern Europe. The Byzantines then began to use cloisonné more freely to create images, the champlevé technique was considerably easier and very widely practiced in the Romanesque period. In Gothic art the finest work is in basse-taille and ronde-bosse techniques, from either Byzantium or the Islamic world, the cloisonné technique reached China in the 13-14th centuries. The first written reference to cloisonné is in a book from 1388, cloisonné remained very popular in China until the 19th century and is still produced today. Starting from the century, the Japanese also produced large quantities of very high technical quality. A resurgence in enamel-based art took place near the end of the 20th century in the Soviet Union, led by artists like Alexei Maximov, in Australia, abstract artist Bernard Hesling brought the style into prominence with his variously sized steel plates. Enamel was first applied commercially to sheet iron and steel in Austria, industrialization increased as the purity of raw materials increased and costs decreased
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