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Portrait miniature
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A portrait miniature is a miniature portrait painting, usually executed in gouache, watercolour, or enamel. They were especially valuable in introducing people to other over distances. Soldiers and sailors might carry miniatures of their loved ones while traveling, the first miniaturists used watercolour to paint on stretched vellum. During the second half of the 17th century, vitreous enamel painted on copper became increasingly popular, in the 18th century, miniatures were painted with watercolour on ivory, which had now become relatively cheap. As small in size as 40 mm ×30 mm, portrait miniatures were used as personal mementos or as jewellery or snuff box covers. The portrait miniature developed from the manuscript, which had been superseded for the purposes of book illustration by techniques such as woodprints. Lucas Horenbout was another Netherlandish miniature painter at the court of Henry VIII and these might be paintings, or finished drawings with some colour, and were produced by François Clouet, and his followers. Following these men we find Simon Renard de St. André, others whose names might be mentioned were Joseph Werner, and Rosalba Carriera. The colours are opaque, and gold is used to heighten the effect and they are often signed, and have frequently also a Latin motto upon them. Hilliard worked for a while in France, and he is identical with the painter alluded to in 1577 as Nicholas Belliart. Hilliard was succeeded by his son Lawrence Hilliard, his technique was similar to that of his father, but bolder, Isaac Oliver and his son Peter Oliver succeeded Hilliard. Isaac was the pupil of Hilliard, Peter was the pupil of Isaac. The two men were the earliest to give roundness and form to the faces they painted and they signed their best works in monogram, and painted not only very small miniatures, but larger ones measuring as much as 10 in ×9 in. They copied for Charles I of England on a small scale many of his famous pictures by the old masters, other miniaturists at about the same date included Balthazar Gerbier, George Jamesone, Penelope Cleyn and her brothers. Samuel Cooper was a nephew and student of the elder Hoskins and he spent much of his time in Paris and Holland, and very little is known of his career. His work has a breadth and dignity, and has been well called life-size work in little. His portraits of the men of the Puritan epoch are remarkable for their truth to life and he painted upon card, chicken skin and vellum, and on two occasions upon thin pieces of mutton bone. The use of ivory was not introduced until long after his time and his work is frequently signed with his initials, generally in gold, and very often with the addition of the date
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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
3.
Simon Vouet
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Simon Vouet was a French painter and draftsman, who today is perhaps best remembered for helping to introduce the Italian Baroque style of painting to France. Simon Vouet was born on January 9,1590 in Paris and his father Laurent was a painter in Paris and taught him the rudiments of art. Simons brother Aubin Vouet and his grandson Ludovico Dorigny were also painters, Simon began his painting career as a portrait painter. At a young age he travelled to England and was part of the entourage of the Baron de Sancy, from there he went to Venice and was in Rome in 1614. He spent a period of time in Italy, from 1613 to 1627. He was mostly in Rome where the Baroque style was emerging during these years and he received a pension from the King of France and his patrons included the Barberini family, Cassiano dal Pozzo, Paolo Giordano Orsini and Vincenzo Giustiniani. He also visited other parts of Italy, Venice, Bologna, Genoa, Vouets immense success in Rome led to his election as president of the Accademia di San Luca in 1624. In 1626 he married Virginia da Vezzo who modelled Madonnas for Vouets religious commissions, despite his success in Rome, Vouet suddenly returned to France in 1627, following pressing recommendations from the Duc de Béthunes and a summons from the King. Vouets new style was distinctly Italian, importing the Italian Baroque style into France, in 1632, he worked for Cardinal Richelieu at the Palais-Royal and the Château de Malmaison. In Paris, Vouet was the dominating force in French painting, producing numerous public altarpieces. Vouets other students included Valentin de Boulogne, Charles Alphonse du Fresnoy, Pierre Mignard, Eustache Le Sueur, Nicolas Chaperon, Claude Mellan, Vouet was also a friend of Claude Vignon. A number of Vouets decorative schemes have been lost but are recorded in engravings by Claude Mellan,1990, retrospective of Simon Vouets work at the Galeries nationales of the Grand Palais. 2002-2003, Simon Vouet ou léloquence sensible at the Musée des Beaux-Arts de Nantes, 2008-2009, Simon Vouet, les années italiennes, Musée des Beaux-Arts de Nantes, in collaboration with the Musée des Beaux-Arts et darchéologie de Besançon
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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
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Samuel Bernard
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Samuel Bernard, Count of Coubert, was a French noble and financier. Of Dutch origin, Samuel Bernard was the son of the painter and engraver Samuel-Jacques Bernard and his family was Protestant, but his father, according to the apocryphal memoirs of the Marquise de Créquy, had embraced the sect of Arminius had been forced into exile. He created the French Guinea Company, according to Saint-Simon, Bernard returned dazzled from this walk, and Desmarets secured from him all the funding that he needed. Samuel Bernard was ennobled in 1699 by Louis XIV, and created Count of Coubert by Louis XV in 1725. On December 29,1719, he had acquired the land of Coubert with its château. He also had a magnificent home constructed in Paris at 46 rue du Bac, in 1731, he purchased the land of Glisolles in Normandie. Samuel Bernard was first married to Magdelaine Clergeau, then remarried in 1720 to Miss de Saint-Chamans and he had several children, Samuel-Jacques Bernard, Count of Coubert, who was superintendent of finance, landholding, and business for the queen. Gabriel Bernard de Rieux, who married the daughter of comte de Boulainvilliers, bonne Félicité Bernard, who married Mathieu-François Molé, président à mortier of the Parliament of Paris. Marie-Anne-Louise Fontaine, who married Antoine Alexis Panneau dArty, a tax official from 1737 to 1743. Françoise-Thérèse Fontaine, who married Mr. Vallet de La Touche, asiento Works by or about Samuel Bernard in libraries
6.
Mezzotint
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Mezzotint is a printmaking process of the intaglio family, technically a drypoint method. It was the first tonal method to be used, enabling half-tones to be produced without using line- or dot-based techniques like hatching, cross-hatching or stipple. Mezzotint achieves tonality by roughening the plate with thousands of little dots made by a tool with small teeth. In printing, the pits in the plate hold the ink when the face of the plate is wiped clean. A high level of quality and richness in the print can be achieved, the mezzotint printmaking method was invented by the German amateur artist Ludwig von Siegen. His earliest mezzotint print dates to 1642 and is a portrait of Countess Amalie Elisabeth of Hanau-Münzenberg and this was made by working from light to dark. The rocker seems to have been invented by Prince Rupert of the Rhine, a cavalry commander in the English Civil War, who was the next to use the process. Sir Peter Lely saw the potential for using it to publicise his portraits, the process was especially widely used in England from the mid-eighteenth century, to reproduce portraits and other paintings. Since the mid-nineteenth century it has relatively little used. Robert Kipniss and Peter Ilsted are two notable 20th-century exponents of the technique, M. C, British mezzotint collecting was a great craze from about 1760 to the Great Crash of 1929, also spreading to America. The favourite period to collect was roughly from 1750 to 1820, leading collectors included William Eaton, 2nd Baron Cheylesmore and the Irishman John Chaloner Smith. This became the most common method, the whole surface of a metal, usually copper, plate is roughened evenly, manually with a rocker, or mechanically. If the plate were printed at this point it would show as solid black, a burnisher has a smooth, round end, which flattens the minutely protruding points comprising the roughened surface of the metal printing plate. Areas smoothed completely flat will not hold ink at all, such areas will print white, by varying the degree of smoothing, mid-tones between black and white can be created, hence the name mezzo-tinto which is Italian for half-tone or half-painted. This is called working from dark to light, or the subtractive method, alternatively, it is possible to create the image directly by only roughening a blank plate selectively, where the darker parts of the image are to be. This is called working from light to dark, or the additive method, the first mezzotints by Ludwig von Siegen were made in this way. Especially in this method, the mezzotint can be combined with other techniques, such as engraving, on areas of the plate not roughened. The plate is put through a printing press next to a sheet of paper
7.
Anthony van Dyck
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Sir Anthony van Dyck was a Flemish Baroque artist who became the leading court painter in England, after enjoying great success in Italy and Flanders. He also painted biblical and mythological subjects, displayed outstanding facility as a draughtsman, the Van Dyke beard is named after him. Antoon van Dyck was born to parents in Antwerp. By the age of fifteen he was already an accomplished artist, as his Self-portrait, 1613–14. He was admitted to the Antwerp painters Guild of Saint Luke as a master by February 1618. His influence on the young artist was immense, Rubens referred to the nineteen-year-old van Dyck as the best of my pupils. At the same time the dominance of Rubens in the small and declining city of Antwerp probably explains why, despite his periodic returns to the city, van Dyck spent most of his career abroad. In 1620, at the instigation of George Villiers, Marquess of Buckingham, van Dyck went to England for the first time where he worked for King James I of England, receiving £100. After about four months he returned to Flanders, but moved on in late 1621 to Italy and he was already presenting himself as a figure of consequence, annoying the rather bohemian Northern artists colony in Rome, says Giovan Pietro Bellori, by appearing with the pomp of Zeuxis. He was mostly based in Genoa, although he travelled extensively to other cities. In 1627, he went back to Antwerp where he remained for five years, a life-size group portrait of twenty-four City Councillors of Brussels he painted for the council-chamber was destroyed in 1695. He was evidently very charming to his patrons, and, like Rubens, well able to mix in aristocratic and court circles, by 1630 he was described as the court painter of the Habsburg Governor of Flanders, the Archduchess Isabella. In this period he produced many religious works, including large altarpieces. King Charles I was the most passionate and generous collector of art among the British monarchs, and saw art as a way of promoting his elevated view of the monarchy. In 1628, he bought the collection that the Gonzagas of Mantua were forced to dispose of. In 1626, he was able to persuade Orazio Gentileschi to settle in England, later to be joined by his daughter Artemisia and some of his sons. Rubens was a target, who eventually came on a diplomatic mission, which included painting, in 1630. He was very well-treated during his visit, during which he was knighted
8.
House of Bethune
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The House of Béthune, or House of Bethune as it is usually written in English, is a French noble house dating back to about 1000 CE. Later branches included hereditary princes, dukes, marquesses, counts, viscounts and barons as well as cardinals and archbishops. Robert I, called Faisseux, Lord of Béthune, Richebourg and Carency and Advocate of Arras, was the first of the house of Bethune, Robert II, elder son of Robert I, 2nd Lord. Robert III, elder son of Robert II, 3rd Lord, baudouin, younger son of Robert I, became Lord of Carency and founder of a separate branch. Robert IV, son of Robert III, 4th Lord, Guillaume I, son of Robert IV, 5th Lord. Robert V, called Le Roux, 6th Lord, was son of Guillaume I, Robert VI, eldest son of Robert V, 7th Lord. Guillaume II, second son of Robert V, 8th Lord, bauduoin or Baldwin, third son of Robert V, a close companion of King Richard I of England, he married Hawise of Aumale and thus became Count of Aumale. Jean, fourth son of Robert V, was Bishop of Cambrai, conon, fifth son of Robert V, a poet who served on the Fourth Crusade and settled at Adrianople, now Edirne, becoming Regent of the Latin Empire. Daniel, eldest son of Guillaume II, 9th Lord, Robert VII, second son of Guillaume II and 10th Lord, died in Sardinia while on the Seventh Crusade. Mathilde or Maud or Mahaut, daughter and heiress of Robert VII, married Guy, Count of Flanders and became mother of Robert III, Count of Flanders, the principal honours and lands of the Béthune family went with Mathilde to the Counts of Flanders. A younger son of Guillaume II was Lord of Loker and his family later achieved prominence in France. Adam, son of Robert III, in 1099 went as a knight on the First Crusade with Robert II, Count of Flanders and was rewarded with the seigneurie of Bessan, now Beit Shean, in the Kingdom of Jerusalem. His family spread through Palestine and Cyprus, marrying other Frankish settlers as well as Armenians and his descendant Richilde de Bessan married Baldwin of Ibelin and their daughter Eschive dIbelin married Aimery, King of Cyprus and of Jerusalem. Guillaume III, a son of Guillaume II, was Lord of Loker. Guillaume IV, a son of Guillaume III, was Lord of Loker. Guillaume V, eldest son of Guillaume IV, was Lord of Loker, married Jeanne de Nesle, daughter of Jeanne, Countess of Ponthieu and Aumale and former Queen Consort of Castille and León. Guillaume VI, son of Guillaume V, was Lord of Loker and Hébuterne, Jean I, younger son of Guillaume VI, was Lord of Vendeuil. He married Jeanne, daughter of Enguerrand VI, Lord of Coucy, Robert VIII, elder son of Jean I, left three daughters as co-heiresses, among them Jeanne, Viscountess of Meaux, who looked after Joan of Arc during her captivity
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Raphael
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Raffaello Sanzio da Urbino, known as Raphael, was an Italian painter and architect of the High Renaissance. His work is admired for its clarity of form, ease of composition, together with Michelangelo and Leonardo da Vinci, he forms the traditional trinity of great masters of that period. Raphael was enormously productive, running a large workshop and, despite his death at 37. Many of his works are found in the Vatican Palace, where the frescoed Raphael Rooms were the central, the best known work is The School of Athens in the Vatican Stanza della Segnatura. After his early years in Rome much of his work was executed by his workshop from his drawings and he was extremely influential in his lifetime, though outside Rome his work was mostly known from his collaborative printmaking. Raphael was born in the small but artistically significant central Italian city of Urbino in the Marche region and his poem to Federico shows him as keen to show awareness of the most advanced North Italian painters, and Early Netherlandish artists as well. In the very court of Urbino he was probably more integrated into the central circle of the ruling family than most court painters. Under them, the court continued as a centre for literary culture, growing up in the circle of this small court gave Raphael the excellent manners and social skills stressed by Vasari. Castiglione moved to Urbino in 1504, when Raphael was no longer based there but frequently visited, Raphael mixed easily in the highest circles throughout his life, one of the factors that tended to give a misleading impression of effortlessness to his career. He did not receive a humanistic education however, it is unclear how easily he read Latin. His mother Màgia died in 1491 when Raphael was eight, followed on August 1,1494 by his father, Raphael was thus orphaned at eleven, his formal guardian became his only paternal uncle Bartolomeo, a priest, who subsequently engaged in litigation with his stepmother. He probably continued to live with his stepmother when not staying as an apprentice with a master and he had already shown talent, according to Vasari, who says that Raphael had been a great help to his father. A self-portrait drawing from his teenage years shows his precocity and his fathers workshop continued and, probably together with his stepmother, Raphael evidently played a part in managing it from a very early age. In Urbino, he came into contact with the works of Paolo Uccello, previously the court painter, and Luca Signorelli, according to Vasari, his father placed him in the workshop of the Umbrian master Pietro Perugino as an apprentice despite the tears of his mother. The evidence of an apprenticeship comes only from Vasari and another source, an alternative theory is that he received at least some training from Timoteo Viti, who acted as court painter in Urbino from 1495. An excess of resin in the varnish often causes cracking of areas of paint in the works of both masters, the Perugino workshop was active in both Perugia and Florence, perhaps maintaining two permanent branches. Raphael is described as a master, that is to say fully trained and his first documented work was the Baronci altarpiece for the church of Saint Nicholas of Tolentino in Città di Castello, a town halfway between Perugia and Urbino. Evangelista da Pian di Meleto, who had worked for his father, was named in the commission
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Philippe de Champaigne
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Philippe de Champaigne was a Brabançon-born French Baroque era painter, a major exponent of the French school. He was a member of the Académie de peinture et de sculpture. Born of a family in Brussels, during the reign of the Archduke Albert and Isabella. In 1621 he moved to Paris, where he worked with Nicolas Poussin on the decoration of the Palais du Luxembourg under the direction of Nicolas Duchesne, whose daughter he married. According to Houbraken, Duchesne was angry at Champaigne for becoming more popular than he was at court, and it was only after he received news of Duchesnes death that he returned to marry his daughter. After the death of his protector Duchesne, Champaigne worked for the Queen Mother, Marie de Medicis and he made several paintings for the Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris, dating from 1638. He also drew cartoons for tapestries. He was made first painter of the Queen with a pension of 1200 pounds and he also decorated the Carmelite Church of Faubourg Saint-Jacques, one of the favorite churches of the Queen Mother. He also worked for Cardinal Richelieu, for whom he decorated the Palais Cardinal, Champaigne was the only artist who was allowed to paint Richelieu enrobed as a cardinal, which he did eleven times. He was a member of the Académie de peinture et de sculpture in 1648. Later in his life, he came under the influence of Jansenism, Champaigne produced a very large number of paintings, mainly religious works and portraits. Influenced by Rubens at the beginning of his career, his style became more austere. Philippe de Champaigne remains an exceptional painter thanks to the brilliance of the colors in his paintings and he portrayed the entire French court, the French high nobility, royalty, high members of the church and the state, parliamentarians and architects, and other notable people. In depicting their faces, he refused to show a transitory expression and his pupils were his nephew Jean Baptiste de Champaigne, William Faithorne, Jean Morin, and Nicolas de Plattemontagne. During his last period Champaigne painted mainly religious subjects and family members and he died in Paris in 1674. Selected works Portraits PhilippeDeChampaigne. org,98 works by Philippe de Champaigne ScholarsResource. com, Paintings of Philippe de Champaigne
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Guido Reni
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Guido Reni was an Italian painter of high-Baroque style. Born in Bologna into a family of musicians, Guido Reni was the son of Daniele Reni, as a child of nine, he was apprenticed under the Bolognese studio of Denis Calvaert. Soon after, he was joined in studio by Albani. He may also have trained with a painter by the name of Ferrantini, when Reni was about twenty years old, the three Calvaert pupils migrated to the rising rival studio, named Accademia degli Incamminati, led by Lodovico Carracci. They went on to form the nucleus of a prolific and successful school of Bolognese painters who followed Lodovicos cousin Annibale Carracci to Rome, like many other Bolognese painters, Renis painting was thematic and eclectic in style. By late 1601, Reni and Albani had moved to Rome to work with the led by Annibale Carracci in fresco decoration of the Farnese Palace. During 1601–1604, his patron was Cardinal Paolo Emilio Sfondrati. By 1604–1605, he received an independent commission for an altarpiece of the Crucifixion of St. Peter, after a few year sojourn in Bologna, he returned to Rome to become one of the premier painters during the papacy of Paul V. From 1607–1614, he was one of the painters patronized by the Borghese family, Renis frescoed ceiling of the large central hall of garden palace, Casino dellAurora located in the grounds of the Palazzo Pallavicini-Rospigliosi, is considered his masterpiece. The casino was originally a pavilion commissioned by Cardinal Scipione Borghese, the massive fresco is framed in quadri riportati and depicts Apollo in his Chariot preceded by Dawn bringing light to the world. The work is restrained in classicism, copying poses from Roman sarcophagi, there is little concession to perspective, and the vibrantly colored style is antithetical to the tenebrism of Caravaggios followers. Payments showed that he was paid in 247 scudi and 54 baiocchi upon completion on 24 September 1616, the two families were in rather bad relations, and the reason for such friction was their constant quest for temporal power. Also the Popes brother, Antonio Barberini, was a cardinal, in those days, the main church of the Capuchins in Rome was St. Nicholas, rather small and dating back to the Middle Ages. The Archangel Michael trampling Satan, wears a late Roman military cloak,1636, held in Santa Maria della Concezione dei Cappuccini, Rome. According to a legend, Reni became aware that Cardinal Giovanni Battista Pamphilj had slandered him, so, Reni, sensing an opportunity, decided to avenge himself by means of his own talent, at the same time pleasing his client, who belonged to the opposing family. According to existing portraits of him, Cardinal Pamphilj had a face, with thin hair, a scanty beard and a somewhat strange look in his eyes. Therefore, the face that Archangel Michael crushes under his foot looks almost identical to that of Giovanni Battista Pamphilj and this turned out even more embarrassing a few years later, when in 1644 the cardinal was elected Pope Innocent X. According to rumor, the chapel of Montecavallo was assigned to Reni to paint
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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
13.
Giovanni Benedetto Castiglione
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Giovanni Benedetto Castiglione was an Italian Baroque artist, painter, printmaker and draftsman, of the Genoese school. He is best known now for his engravings, and as the inventor of the printmaking technique of monotyping. He was known as Il Grechetto in Italy and in France as Le Benédette and he may have studied with Sinibaldo Scorza. He may have trained under the Genoese Bernardo Strozzi and he lived in Rome from 1634 to about 1645, then returned to Genoa. He also traveled to Florence and Naples He was back in Rome in 1647, before moving in 1651 to be court artist in Mantua for Duke Carlo II and he had various brushes with the law in his lifetime. The turbulence that characterised his life overshadowed his artistic brilliance, much of what is known about the artist is derived not from fulfilled commissions, but from court documents. He painted portraits, historical pieces and landscapes, but chiefly excelled in fairs, markets, noahs ark and the animals entering the Ark was a favorite subject of his. He returned to the subjects over and over again. He also executed a number of etchings, diogenes searching for a Man is one of the principal of these, others are about religious themes. Some are moralistic stories such as that of the leading the blind. The etchings are remarkable for light and shade, and have earned for Castiglione the name of a second Rembrandt. He was exposed to Rembrandts etching by 1630, in about 1648 he invented the monotype, the only printmaking technique to be an Italian invention, making over twenty over the succeeding years. His most popular and influential prints were a series of heads, mostly of vaguely Oriental males. These were produced in great numbers, Castiglione was renowned for his ability to paint animals, mostly barn animals, and this was often a dominant motif in his paintings. It has been suggested that it was Jan Roos who convinced Castiglione to enliven his religious and mythological compositions with animal, in Mantua, he received his name of Grechetto, from the classic air of his pastoral depictions. In his later years, he was afflicted by gout. He also influenced Anton Maria Vassallo, among those who engraved after him were Giovanni Lorenzo Bertolotto in Genoa, the Venetian Anton Maria Zanetti, Michele lAsne, Louis de Chatillon, and Coreneille Coemans. His paintings are to be found in Rome, Venice, Naples, Florence, the Presepio for the church of San Luca, Genoa, ranks among his most celebrated paintings, and the Louvre contains eight characteristic examples
14.
Antonio da Correggio
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In his use of dynamic composition, illusionistic perspective and dramatic foreshortening, Correggio prefigured the Rococo art of the 18th century. He is considered a master of chiaroscuro, antonio Allegri was born in Correggio, Italy, a small town near Reggio Emilia. His date of birth is uncertain, otherwise little is known about Correggios early life or training. It is, however, often assumed that he had his first artistic education from his fathers brother, after a trip to Mantua in 1506, he returned to Correggio, where he stayed until 1510. To this period is assigned the Adoration of the Child with St. Elizabeth and John, by 1516, Correggio was in Parma, where he spent most of the remainder of his career. Here, he befriended Michelangelo Anselmi, a prominent Mannerist painter, in 1519 he married Girolama Francesca di Braghetis, also of Correggio, who died in 1529. One of his sons, Pomponio Allegri, became an undistinguished painter, from this period are the Madonna and Child with the Young Saint John, Christ Leaving His Mother and the lost Madonna of Albinea. Correggios first major commission was the decoration of the private dining salon of the mother-superior of the convent of St Paul called the Camera di San Paolo at Parma. Here he painted an arbor pierced by oculi opening to glimpses of playful cherubs, below the oculi are lunettes with images of feigned monochromic marble. The fireplace is frescoed with an image of Diana, the iconography of the scheme is complex, combining images of classical marbles with whimsical colorful bambini. While it recalls the secular frescoes of the palace of the Villa Farnesina in Rome. He then painted the illusionistic Vision of St. John on Patmos for the dome of the church of San Giovanni Evangelista. Three years later he decorated the dome of the Cathedral of Parma with a startling Assumption of the Virgin, the recession and movement implied by the figures presage the dynamism that would characterize Baroque painting. Other masterpieces include The Lamentation and The Martyrdom of Four Saints, the Lamentation is haunted by a lambence rarely seen in Italian painting prior to this time. The Martyrdom is also remarkable for resembling later Baroque compositions such as Berninis Truth and Ercole Ferratas Death of Saint Agnes, aside from his religious output, Correggio conceived a now-famous set of paintings depicting the Loves of Jupiter as described in Ovids Metamorphoses. The voluptuous series was commissioned by Federico II Gonzaga of Mantua, however, they were given to the visiting Holy Roman Emperor Charles V and thus left Italy within years of their completion. Danaë, now in Romes Borghese Gallery, depicts the maiden as she is impregnated by a curtain of gilded divine rain. Her lower torso semi-obscured by sheets, Danae appears more demure and gleeful than Titians 1545 version of the same topic, the picture once called Antiope and the Satyr is now correctly identified as Venus and Cupid with a Satyr
15.
Public domain
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The term public domain has two senses of meaning. Anything published is out in the domain in the sense that it is available to the public. Once published, news and information in books is in the public domain, in the sense of intellectual property, works in the public domain are those whose exclusive intellectual property rights have expired, have been forfeited, or are inapplicable. Examples for works not covered by copyright which are therefore in the domain, are the formulae of Newtonian physics, cooking recipes. Examples for works actively dedicated into public domain by their authors are reference implementations of algorithms, NIHs ImageJ. The term is not normally applied to situations where the creator of a work retains residual rights, as rights are country-based and vary, a work may be subject to rights in one country and be in the public domain in another. Some rights depend on registrations on a basis, and the absence of registration in a particular country, if required. Although the term public domain did not come into use until the mid-18th century, the Romans had a large proprietary rights system where they defined many things that cannot be privately owned as res nullius, res communes, res publicae and res universitatis. The term res nullius was defined as not yet appropriated. The term res communes was defined as things that could be enjoyed by mankind, such as air, sunlight. The term res publicae referred to things that were shared by all citizens, when the first early copyright law was first established in Britain with the Statute of Anne in 1710, public domain did not appear. However, similar concepts were developed by British and French jurists in the eighteenth century, instead of public domain they used terms such as publici juris or propriété publique to describe works that were not covered by copyright law. The phrase fall in the domain can be traced to mid-nineteenth century France to describe the end of copyright term. In this historical context Paul Torremans describes copyright as a coral reef of private right jutting up from the ocean of the public domain. Because copyright law is different from country to country, Pamela Samuelson has described the public domain as being different sizes at different times in different countries. According to James Boyle this definition underlines common usage of the public domain and equates the public domain to public property. However, the usage of the public domain can be more granular. Such a definition regards work in copyright as private property subject to fair use rights, the materials that compose our cultural heritage must be free for all living to use no less than matter necessary for biological survival
16.
Michael Bryan (art historian)
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Michael Bryan was an English art historian, art dealer and connoisseur. He was involved in the purchase and resale of the great French Orleans Collection of art, selling it on to a British syndicate, Bryan was born in Newcastle upon Tyne, Northumberland, and educated at the Royal Grammar School under Dr. Moyce. In June 1784, he married Juliana Talbot, the sister of Charles Talbot, the 15th Earl of Shrewsbury, Bryan moved back to London in 1790 establishing himself as an authority and dealer in Fine Art. In 1793 or 1794, he went to the continent in search of fine pictures. Among other places he visited Holland, and remained there until an order arrived from the French government to stop all English citizens then resident there and he was, amongst many others, detained at Rotterdam. It was here that he met Jean-Joseph de Laborde who, in 1798, Bryan, in effect, became a middleman for the purchase, and contacted the Duke of Bridgewater, who authorised him to open negotiations. The collection was displayed in Bryans private art gallery in Pall Mall, London, in 1801 Bryan obtained, through the Duke of Bridgewater, the kings permission to visit Paris in order to purchase art from the cabinet of Monsieur Robit to bring back to England. Among other fine pictures, he returned with two by the baroque Spanish artist Murillo - The infant Christ as the Good Shepherd, in 1804 Bryan retired from the art world, and settled at his brothers home in Yorkshire, where he remained until 1811. In 1812 Bryan again visited London, and commenced writing his magnum opus - the Biographical and Critical Dictionary of Painters and Engravers in 2 volumes, the first part appeared in May 1813, and concluded in 1816. He owned a gallery in Londons Savile Row, which became a gathering place for artists. In 1818 he became involved with some speculative art purchases which proved a failure, on 14 February 1821, Bryan suffered a severe paralytic stroke, dying at Portman Square, London on 21 March of the same year. Bryans dictionary of painters and engravers ( London, Cambridge, New York and Bombay Edition of 1903 -1905, Volume 11903 Volume 2 Volume 3 Volume 4 Volume 51905 Bryan, Bryans dictionary of painters and engravers revised and enlarged by George C
17.
Netherlands Institute for Art History
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The Netherlands Institute for Art History or RKD is located in The Hague and is home to the largest art history center in the world. The center specializes in documentation, archives, and books on Western art from the late Middle Ages until modern times, all of this is open to the public, and much of it has been digitized and is available on their website. The main goal of the bureau is to collect, categorize, via the available databases, the visitor can gain insight into archival evidence on the lives of many artists of past centuries. The library owns approximately 450,000 titles, of which ca.150,000 are auction catalogs, there are ca.3,000 magazines, of which 600 are currently running subscriptions. Though most of the text is in Dutch, the record format includes a link to library entries and images of known works. The RKD also manages the Dutch version of the Art and Architecture Thesaurus, the original version is an initiative of the Getty Research Institute in Los Angeles, California. Their bequest formed the basis for both the art collection and the library, which is now housed in the Koninklijke Bibliotheek. Though not all of the holdings have been digitised, much of its metadata is accessible online. The website itself is available in both a Dutch and an English user interface, in the artist database RKDartists, each artist is assigned a record number. To reference an artist page directly, use the code listed at the bottom of the record, usually of the form, https, for example, the artist record number for Salvador Dalí is 19752, so his RKD artist page can be referenced. In the images database RKDimages, each artwork is assigned a record number, to reference an artwork page directly, use the code listed at the bottom of the record, usually of the form, https, //rkd. nl/en/explore/images/ followed by the artworks record number. For example, the record number for The Night Watch is 3063. The Art and Architecture Thesaurus also assigns a record for each term, rather, they are used in the databases and the databases can be searched for terms. For example, the painting called The Night Watch is a militia painting, the thesaurus is a set of general terms, but the RKD also contains a database for an alternate form of describing artworks, that today is mostly filled with biblical references. To see all images that depict Miriams dance, the associated iconclass code 71E1232 can be used as a search term. Official website Direct link to the databases The Dutch version of the Art and Architecture Thesaurus
18.
Virtual International Authority File
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The Virtual International Authority File is an international authority file. It is a joint project of national libraries and operated by the Online Computer Library Center. The project was initiated by the US Library of Congress, the German National Library, the National Library of France joined the project on October 5,2007. The project transitions to a service of the OCLC on April 4,2012, the aim is to link the national authority files to a single virtual authority file. In this file, identical records from the different data sets are linked together, a VIAF record receives a standard data number, contains the primary see and see also records from the original records, and refers to the original authority records. The data are available online and are available for research and data exchange. Reciprocal updating uses the Open Archives Initiative Protocol for Metadata Harvesting protocol, the file numbers are also being added to Wikipedia biographical articles and are incorporated into Wikidata. VIAFs clustering algorithm is run every month, as more data are added from participating libraries, clusters of authority records may coalesce or split, leading to some fluctuation in the VIAF identifier of certain authority records
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This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Bryan, Michael (1886). "Bernard, Samuel". In Graves, Robert Edmund. Bryan's Dictionary of Painters and Engravers (A–K). I (3rd ed.). London: George Bell & Sons.
