sabato

:: Berchem, Nicolaes (Claesz)...





BERCHEM, Nicolaes (Claesz.)
(b. 1620, Haarlem, d. 1683, Amsterdam)

Biography
Dutch painter of pastoral landscapes in the
Italianate manner, principally active in Haarlem. He was the son of the still-life painter Pieter Claesz. and it is not known why he adopted a different surname. Claesz. was his first teacher, but although Berchem tried his hand at most subjects, no still-lifes by him are known. He visited Italy in the 1640s and perhaps again in the 1650s and became, with Jan Both, the most highly regarded exponent of the Italianate landscape.
Successful and well rewarded in his lifetime, he had numerous pupils and his influence on 18th century English and French landscape painters was very considerable, Gainsborough and
Watteau being among the artists who particularly admired his work.

::

venerdì

:: Blanchard, Jacques....

















BLANCHARD, Jacques
(b. 1600, Paris, d. 1638, Paris)

Biography
French painter. Nothing seems to be known of his work before he left for Rome at the age of twenty-four. After two years he moved to Venice, where he remained for two more years. It was there that his style was formed. He then went to Turin, where he worked for the Dukes of Savoy, before returning to France 1628. It is from the brief but productive period after his return that all his dated works survive. They show him to stand quite apart from his contemporaries, not only in his painting style but also in his choice of sensual subject-matter, for example the
Bacchanal at Nancy.
The chief influences were the sixteenth century painters, especially
Titian and Tintoretto with their rich, warm colours, and Veronese, whose blond and silvery colour and limpid light he used most effectively in his small religious and mythological subjects. The several versions of Charity, depicted as a young woman with two or three children, are excellent examples of his tenderness of colour handling, and of a softness of sentiment nearer to the 18th than to the 17th century. He was also a sensitive portrait painter, and played a leading part in French painting of the 1630s.

:: Baciccio...






























BACICCIO
(b. 1639, Genova, d. 1709, Roma)

Biography
Italian painter, born in Genoa (Giovanni Battista Gaulli) and active mainly in Rome, where he settled in 1657 and became a protégé of
Bernini. He achieved success as a painter of altarpieces and portraits (he painted each of the seven popes from Alexander VII to Clement XI), but is remembered mainly for his decorative work and above all for his Adoration of the Name of Jesus (1674-9) on the ceiling of the nave of the Gesu. This is one of the supreme masterpieces of illusionistic decoration, ranking alongside Pozzo's slightly later ceiling in S. Ignazio. The stucco figures that are so brilliantly combined with the painted decoration (from the ground it is not always possible to tell which is which) are the work of Bernini's pupil Antonio Raggi (1624-86).

giovedì

:: Caffiéri, Jean-Jacques...























CAFFIÉRI, Jean-Jacques
(b. 1725, Paris, d. 1792, Paris)

Biography
French sculptor, part of a French family of artists of Italian descent. Most of the family members were employed as sculptors in the naval yards (Le Havre and Brest). Jean-Jacques Caffiéri, became one of the most eminent sculptors of the second half of the 18th century, producing monumental works as well as small-scale allegorical groups and some of the liveliest and most elegant portrait busts of the time.
Jean-Jacques Caffiéri was the son of Jacques Caffiéri (1678-1755). He trained with his father and later with
Jean-Baptiste Lemoyne II, whose lively portrait style he absorbed. In 1748 he won the Prix de Rome with the bas-relief Cain Killing Abel, and in 1749 he left for Rome; he remained in Italy until 1753, possibly travelling to Naples in that year, where he was disappointed in his desire to participate in the sculptural decoration of Luigi Vanvitelli's royal palace at Caserta. While in Italy he modelled a number of portrait busts, most notably those of the Abbé Leblanc (1751) and Benedict XIV (1751), but his principal Roman work was the large stucco high-relief group of the Trinity crowning the pediment of the high altar of S. Luigi dei Francesi, which was commissioned in 1752 by the French ambassador, the Abbé de Canilliac. Executed with the advice of Charles-Joseph Natoire, the director of the Académie de France in Rome, it shows the influence of the Roman Baroque.
Though later to be touched by fashionable sentimentalism, Caffiéri remained basically a Baroque sculptor and his "morceau de reception" at the Académie in 1759, the almost awkwardly vigorous River, shows his true character. His facility was proclaimed, and in the following thirty years he was to be considerably employed, by the Crown for the Invalides, as well as for the 'grands hommes' series, by Madame du Barry, and - most memorably - by the Comedie Francaise on busts of dramatists. In the midst of letter-writing, pleas for pensions, complaints about lodgings, Caffieri continued to press for further commissions from the Crown, itself none too firmly placed after the fall of the Bastille. He remained devoted to this source of patronage and as late as 1791 was writing directly to the king urging the commissioning of a statue of Lebrun.

lunedì

:: Bray, Salomon...

















BRAY, Salomon de
(b. 1597, Amsterdam, d. 1664, Amsterdam)

Biography
Dutch painter of biblical and allegorical scenes, poet and architect. Salomon de Bray was born in Amsterdam in 1597 as the son of Simon de Bray and Marie Jansdr. His father was originally from Lier in the Southern Netherlands. Salomon must have moved to Haarlem before 1617, as he is referred to in that year as a 'friend' of a rhetoric association called De Wijngaardranken. That is the only year in which he is known to have been a member. His brother Simon, an attorney, was a member from 1616 to 1622 or possibly longer.
In 1621, Theodoor Rodenburg compiled a memorandum for King Christian IV of Denmark in which he mentions that Salomon had studied under Hendrick
Goltzius and Cornelis Cornelisz van Haarlem. The document reveals that De Bray was 'willing to leave Haarlem and move here to Copenhagen'. Rodenburg took a painting of a woman (a 'vrouwenbeeldt') by De Bray as a sample of the artist's work, but we do not know what the king himself thought of it. Nor is it known whether Salomon actually did go to Denmark.
De Bray was a member of the first chapter of the Haarlem Calivermen. On 4 May 1625, the banns were published announcing his marriage to Anna Westerbaen, the daughter of a rope maker from The Hague. Anna was the sister of the portraitist Jan Westerbaen and the poet and physician Jacob Westerbaen, who had married into a wealthy family. Salomon and Anna had at least ten children, three of whom grew up to be the painters
Joseph, Jan and Dirck, who was also a bookbinder and woodcutter. Salomon de Bray was a Catholic, as he himself pointed out in a letter to a priest, which he signed together with Pieter Soutman and Claas van Bouckhorst. Salomon assured the clergyman that he could reply to them quite frankly, as all three were 'Catolycke persoonen'. De Bray was an active member of St Luke's and played a particularly prominent role in a campaign to reorganise the guild in the 1630s.
Salomon de Bray painted
history pieces, the majority of them relatively small, as well as portraits and landscapes. His most prestigious commission was the project for Huis ten Bosch. He must also have produced several altarpieces for secret Catholic churches {schuilkerken), and in August 1663, he received a visit from Balthasar de Monconys, who bought a painting of Hermaphroditus from him.
De Bray was also active as a designer of silverwork, as a poet, an architect and a town planner. Two design drawings for silverware are known: one for a silver drinking horn, which has itself survived, and one for a dish. He evidently also designed religious objects, as the will his son Jan de Bray drew up in 1664 refers to 'drawings of chalices and monstrances made by Mr Salomon de Bray'. In 1627, the Amsterdam publisher Jacob Aertsz Colom produced an anthology of poetry and verse dedicated to 'the honourable and gracious' Margarita Kick, who, according to the preface, was Salomon's niece. In 1631, De Bray published 'Architectura Moderna ofte Bouwinge van onsen tyt', a volume containing numerous design engravings, the majority by Hendrick de Keyser. De Bray wrote the accompanying commentary as well as an introduction that amounted to a treatise on architecture. His 'Bedenckingen over het uytleggen en vergrooten der stadt Haarlem', which appeared in 1661, set out his views on the proposed expansion of Haarlem.
Though De Bray consistently described himself as an architect as well as a painter, little is known about his work in this field. The earliest reference to his involvement in an architectural project dates from 1627, when he was paid for his design for the Zijipoort, one of Haarlem's city gates. He was also involved in the planning of alterations to Haarlem Town Hall and the castle in Warmond, and the building of the municipal orphanage in Nijmegen.
De Bray was a close acquaintance of the composer Cornelis Padbrué, who published a book of music called the Kusies in 1631. The second edition contained madrigals to poems by De Bray's brother-in-law Jacob Westerbaen, a musical arrangement for a poem by Salomon de Bray and a composition by Pieter de Grebber.
In 1658, De Bray was asked to produce the Dutch translation of Italian terms for the publication of Scamozzi's architectural treatise, which he did on the basis of four engravings. On this occasion the publisher, Cornelis Danckertsz, described him as 'conversant in Greek, Latin, French and Italian'." In 1637, De Bray paid a visit to Nijmegen to view Johannes Smetius's famed collection of archaeological artefacts. De Bray was apparently quite fastidious about his work. He dated the majority of his drawings to the day, while the preface to his poems also commends him for his precision. Rodenburg's memorandum vouches for his 'unimpeachable conduct'.
Salomon de Bray died on 11 May 1664, probably in a plague epidemic. He was buried three days later in the church of St Bavo. The disease claimed much of his family. His youngest son Jacob was buried on 27 April, barely a fortnight earlier. The funeral of his son Jacob was held on 18 May and was followed five days later by those of his daughters Juliana and Margaretha. Salomon's wife, Anna Westerbaen, had been buried the previous year, on 3 March 1663.

:: Bor, Paulus...












BOR, Paulus
(b. 1605, Amersfoort, d. 1669, Amersfoort)

Biography
Dutch painter. He came from a prominent and wealthy Catholic family. In 1577 his grandfather Bor Jansz. was a member of the Treffelicxte, a group of the most exceptional citizens of Amersfoort. His father, also named Paulus Bor, was a textile merchant. Coming from a wealthy family he probably did not need to paint for an income. This might explain his preference for subjects rarely painted by other artists, such as Ovide' tale of
Cydippe, in the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, and also why his depictions of single and sometimes melancholic female figures strike us as unusual.
Nothing is known about Paulus Bor's youth. He went to Italy in 1623. The earliest record of him is a document from 1623, which says he was living in a house in the parish of Sant' Andrea dell Fratte in Rome with three other painters, whose names are no longer known. In 1624 and 1625, he shared a home in Piazza di Spagna and subsequently one in Strada dell'Olmo with the Hoorn painter Jan Linsen and the Italian Michelangelo
Cerquozzi. In Rome Paulus Bor was one of the founders of a group of artists known as the 'bentvueghels'. He is portrayed with his companions in a drawing at the museum in Rotterdam. Bacchus, the god of wine, is seated in the middle, with Bor and his friend Jan Linsen on either side. Bor's name is given as 'Paolus Borro Alias Orlando', Jan Linsen's as 'Joan Linsen, Alias Hermafrodito'.
In 1626, Bor was back in Amersfoort, where he was a member of the Brotherhood of St Luke. A short time later, in 1628, he painted a very large family portrait (120 x 320 cm) with no fewer than thirteen people. This picture is now in the Pieters en Blokland Gasthuis in Amersfoort. After his return to the Netherlands, his pictures do reflect the prevailing local Caravaggesque style, but are more classicizing, and are reminiscent of painters elsewhere in the Netherlands, such as Pieter de
Grebber in Haarlem and Caesar van Everdingen in The Hague.
In 1632, Paulus Bor married Aleijda van Crachtwijck. Their combined assets in property and documents at the time of their marriage amounted to 10,000 guilders, which gives us some idea of the extent of their wealth. The couple had several children.
In the meantime Bor had made such progress that Jacob van
Campen engaged him to work on the decoration of Frederik Hendrik's palace at Honselaarsdijk, which has unfortunately since been destroyed. The two Amersfoort artists remained in touch with one another until Van Campen's death in 1657. Due to the close contact of the artists, some of Campen's classicist works have been confused with those of Bor.
In 1656, Bor, who was a Catholic, became regent of the almshouse 'De Armen de Poth'. He painted an overmantel for one of its rooms, which can still be seen there today. Paulus Bor died on 10 August 1669. His friends attending the funeral marked the occasion in the spirit of the deceased, it would seem, by downing a barrel of wine.

:: Bega, Cornelis...












BEGA, Cornelis
(b. ca. 1631, Haarlem, d. 1664, Haarlem)

Biography
Dutch painter, draughtsman and etcher. He was born into prosperous circumstances; his mother, Maria Cornelis, inherited half the estate (gold, silver, paintings, drawings and prints) and all of the red chalk drawings of her father,
Cornelis Cornelisz. van Haarlem, a renowned Mannerist artist. Bega's father was Pieter Jansz. Begijn (d 1648), a gold- and silversmith. Like other family members, Bega was probably Catholic. Houbraken's claim that Bega studied with Adriaen van Ostade is likely to be correct; this was probably before 24 April 1653, when Bega joined Vincent Laurentsz. van der Vinne in Frankfurt for a journey through Germany, Switzerland and France. Bega had returned to Haarlem by 1 September 1654, at which time he joined the Guild of St Luke; he was already a competent draughtsman, as indicated by his first extant dated work, Interior with a Nursing Mother (1652; Frankfurt am Main, Städelsches Kunstinstitut), and by a remarkable double portrait (Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum) drawn by him and Leendert van der Cooghen in 1654.
He painted the same kind of peasant genre scenes as his master Adraen van Ostade, but his work is far inferior. Bega's principal subjects were taverns, domestic interiors, and villages, with characters ranging from nursing mothers and prostitutes to gamblers and alchemists. Between about 1660 and 1664, his genre scenes became more colorful, less populated, more emotionally expressive, and more focused on the fine details of object textures.
Among those influenced by Bega was Jan Steen. Later European artists imitated Bega's style and borrowed characters from his dramas. Bega also drew, etched, and made counterproofs in a variety of materials. His life was probably cut short by the plague
.

:: Barroco...


Arte e contexto

Velho sentado de Rembrandt van Rijn, 1652: contemplação e introspecção
O barroco trouxe o crescimento das classes médias e a inclinação dos artistas por gêneros, até então, considerados menoresAs denominadas “categorias menores” são visivelmente utilizadas na pintura por inúmeros artistas do período. São representações do cotidiano e da natureza morta. Assim, pela primeira vez na história da arte, essas categorias assumiram um lugar de destaque, ficando no mesmo patamar dos gêneros considerados superiores da pintura, cujos temas eram extraídos da Bíblia, da História Clássica e da Mitologia. Os artistas barrocos se interessavam também por esses temas, principalmente quando eram encomendados pela aristocracia e pela Igreja. Mas jamais deixaram de olhar para as “categorias menores”.Tanto a renascença quanto o barroco, ambos movimentos complexos do ponto de vista estilístico, não constituíram processos artítiscos singulares e unificados. Atingiram diferentes lugares e épocas. O mesmo ocorreu com outros estilos daquele tempo - o maneirismo e o rococó. Todos eles, muitas vezes, entrelaçaram-se com o barroco. Por isso, não apenas o barroco descreveu as artes dos séculos XVI a XVIII. Mas uma coisa é certa: o barroco foi um estilo artístico dominante, que coloriu em graus variados todos os outros estilos.O contexto histórico era um momento de mudanças: a luta pelo poder entre os Estados europeus e correntes intelectuais, como as últimas fases da contra-reforma, o iluminismo e os primórdios da ciência moderna. Época marcada por conflitos como a Guerra dos Trinta Anos (1618-48) e cujo final seria assinalado pela eclosão da Revolução Francesa, em 1789.PejorativoOs termos barroco e rococó foram empregados, pela primeira vez, no bojo de um espírito depreciativo. A palavra barroco é originária de uma expressão portuguesa, cujo significado era pérola em estado irregular. Outros historiadores asseguram que a palavra é oriunda do italiano “barroco”, cujo significado seria obstáculo na lógica escolástica medieval. Em outro caso, a palavra circulou em sentido metafórico como no italiano e francês no século XVI, significando qualquer idéia enrolada ou um processo tortuoso e intricado de pensamento.Somente em 1771, o “Dictionnaire de Travaux” deu significado ao barroco (outro dicionário referia-se ao seu uso como sinônimo de excêntrico ou bizarro) como sendo “na pintura, um quadro ou figura em que as regras de proporção são observadas, sendo tudo representado com o capricho do artista”.Como o contexto histórico era totalitário - a doutrina do direito divino dos reis - ou marcado pelo ceticismo, isso não quer dizer, segundo alguns historiadores, que o barroco fosse conscientemente fomentado por mecenas católicos e monárquicos, como um instrumento deliberado de política, uma conseqüência inevitável dessas sociedades. E também não foi, como muitos pensam, uma invenção dos jesuítas. O barroco, para determinada corrente de pensadores, foi uma criação dos artistas e encontrou sua expressão tanto em pequenas obras particulares, quanto nas grandes pinturas e esculturas de caráter público, embora essas fossem as suas manifestações mais típicas.Estudiosos do período também assinalam que “a atitude da Igreja para com a arte barroca, sobretudo a realidade da vida das ordens religiosas, era ainda austera, talvez por motivos tanto de economia como de princípio”. A riqueza dos altares e decorações barrocas que enchem até hoje as igrejas católicas só começaram a ser introduzidas na segunda metade do século XVII e ao longo do século XVIII.
FIQUE POR DENTRO - Características da pintura barrocaO barroco foi um período estilístico e filosófico da história da sociedade ocidental que compreende desde meados do século XVI até o século XVIII. Foi inspirado no fervor religioso e na passionalidade da contra-reforma. O termo barroco advém da palavra portuguesa homônima, que significa ´pérola imperfeita´ ou, por extensão, jóia falsa. A palavra foi rapidamente introduzida nas línguas francesa e italiana. Estilo grandioso, monumental, retorcido, substituindo a unidade geométrica e o equilíbrio renascentista. Acentuado contraste claro-escuro (expressão dos sentimentos). Um recurso que visava a intensificar a sensação de profundidade. A escolha de cenas no seu momento de maior intensidade dramática foi outro efeito perseguido pelos artistas barrocos. Os rostos das personagens revelam emoções violentas e atingem uma dramaticidade desconhecida no Renascimento. A Itália foi um dos centros do estilo barroco. Dentre os pintores mais representativos de outros países temos os espanhóis Velazquez e Rubens e o holandês Rembrandt. Na escultura as características são o predomínio de linhas curvas, dos ondulados das vestes e do uso do dourado.

domenica

:: Borgianni, Orazio...








BORGIANNI, Orazio
(b. 1574, Roma, d. 1616, Roma)

Biography
Recently discovered documents have shed new light on the career of Orazio Borgianni, who worked in Rome and Spain at the turn of the seventeenth century. He is recorded in Spain by 1598, although he might have arrived a year earlier, and continued to work there until c. 1605-06. Under the influence of works by
El Greco and Jacopo Tintoretto, in Spain Borgianni executed The Crucifixion (Museo Provincial de Belles Artes, Cadiz) and The Stigmatisation of Sr Francis (Museo del Prado, Madrid).
Once back in Rome, he increasingly responded to the work of
Caravaggio, adopting an almost horrific realism and employing violent contrasts of light and shade, characteristics apparent in such paintings as the David Beheading Goliath (after 1607; Real Academia de San Fernando, Madrid). In 1608 Borgianni created one of the most deeply felt religious pictures of the time. The Virgin Appearing to St Francis (Sezze Romano, now partially destroyed), probably for San Francesco a Ripa, and in c. 1614, following a Caravaggesque penchant for still-life details, The Holy Family with the Infant St John the Baptist (Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Antica, Rome). A series of nine paintings for the high altar and the two lateral altars of the convent church of Porta Coeli, Valladolid, probably painted c. 1612 in Rome and sent to Spain, represents one of Borgianni's most important and extensive commissions.
Among the painter's last works is a series of etchings after
Raphael's Logge in the Vatican Palace, published in 1615. Besides religious subjects, Borgianni also painted several important portraits, including that of the poet Giovanni Battista Guarini (1605, lost), and the Portrait of an Architect (Alte Pinakothek, Munich).

:: Bigot, Trophime...








BIGOT, Trophîme
(b. ca. 1600, Arles, d. 1650, Avignon)

Biography
Bigot, who was probably born in Arles, has just one picture certainly attributed to him, and it survives only as an engraving made towards the end of the seventeenth century. It is a Christ in the Carpenter's Shop. Round this lost painting was grouped a whole series of Caravaggesque pictures, apparently French in origin although derived from
Honthorst in colour and general composition. Recent research has proved that this group is not coherent. Two large pictures painted for (and still in) the Church of Santa Maria in Aquiro, Rome, are documented as being a certain "Maestro Jacopo", although they were formerly attributed to Bigot.
A Doctor Weighing Urine (Ashmolean Museum, Oxford) is an example of the unusual subjects Bigot sometimes favoured.
The theory that there were two painters of the same name is borne out by the fact that the other Trophîme Bigot (who was born in Arles in 1579 and also worked there and in Aix-en-Provence) had a totally different style, as a signed picture by him demonstrates. It is inconceivable that the pictures listed under Trophîme Bigot were painted by this second artist, whose
Mannerist pictures were produced for churches in and around Arles.

:: Bassano Leandro...























BASSANO, Leandro
(b. 1557, Bassano del Grappa, d. 1622, Venezia)

Biography
Italian painter, one of the four sons of
Jacopo Bassano. He worked in the Venetian studio of the family under Francesco, his elder brother who ran the Venetian branch of the workshop. Francesco committed suicide a few months after his father's death, then Leandro took over the workshop. He was the chief portrait painter of the family, and his portraits are closely allied to those of Tintoretto. Leandro both acquired some distinction and popularity working in Venice, he was knighted by the Doge in 1595 or 1596 (thereafter he sometimes added 'Eques' to his signature).

:: Gian Lorenzo Bernini...