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ALTDORFER, Albrecht
(b. ca. 1480, Regensburg, d. 1538, Regensburg)
Biography
German painter and graphic artist working in Regensburg, of which town he was a citizen from 1505 onwards, the leading artist, the guiding spirit of the so-called Danube School.
His training is unknown, but his early work was influenced by Cranach and Dürer's art too was known to him through the woodcuts and engravings. Mingled with these German impresions was a knowledge of the art of Mantegna, perhaps through the mediation of Michael Pacher.
Yet in spite of these varied influences Altdorfer's style always remained personal. Most of his paintings are religious works, but he was one of the first artists to show an interest in landscape as an independent genre. He was the first European to paint forests, sunsets, and picturesque ruins, in which he represented man as part of nature, allied with trees, rocks, mountains, and clouds and often resembling them. In works such as the altar for St Florian near Linz (1518) or the Christ Taking Leave of His Mother (National Gallery, London) he achieved a wonderful unity of mood between action and landscape, and two pure landscape paintings (without any figures) by him are known (National Gallery, London, and Alte Pinakothek, Munich). His patrons included the emperor Maximilian and Louis X, Duke of Bavaria, for whom he painted the celebrated Battle of Issos (Alte Pinakothek, Munich, 1529), which formed part of a large series of famous battle-pieces from Classical antiquity. With its dazzling light effects, teeming figures, and brilliant colours, it is one of the finest examples of Altdorfer's rich imaginative powers.
The fantastic element that pervaded his paintings was also prominent in his drawings, most of which were done with black and white lines on brown or blue-gray paper. His engravings and woodcuts, usually miniatures, were distinguished by their playful imaginativeness, the most important being 40 plates entitled The Fall and Redemption of Man. In 1530 he began using the new medium of etching to produce nine landscapes and a series of fanciful tankards intended as work models for goldsmiths.
From 1526 until his death Altdorfer was employed as town architect of Regensburg. No architectural work by him is known, but his interest in architecture and his skill in handling intricate problems of perspective are demonstrated by his Birth of the Virgin (Alte Pinakothek, Munich).
ALBERTINELLI, Mariotto
(b. 1474, Firenze, d. 1515, Firenze)
Biography
Florentine painter, trained by Cosimo Rosselli, in whose studio he met Fra Bartolomeo. The two went into partnership in 1508, but soon after this Albertinelli temporarily abandoned painting to become an innkeeper, saying (according to Vasari) that he was fed up with criticism and wanted a 'less difficult and more cheerful craft'. Vasari also says he was a 'restless man, a follower of Venus, and a good liver.' His paintings are elegant but rather insipid. His best work is the Visitation (1503) in the Uffizi Gallery, Florence.
MAGNASCO, Alessandro
(b. 1667, Genova, d. 1749, Genova)
Biography
Italian painter, called Il Lissandrino. He was born and died in Genoa, but spent most of his working life in Milan. Son of a minor Genoese painter, Alessandro Magnasco trained in his home town before moving to Milan when he was still young. There he worked for many years in Filippo Abbiati's studio. His meeting with Sebastiano Ricci marked a turning-point in his art. Their acquaintance was renewed during a stay in Florence (1703-09) at the court of Grand Duke Ferdinand of Tuscany.
Soon afterwards, Magnasco gave up painting large figures (he only produced a handful of these in his later years) and instead concentrated on his unmistakable canvases with fantastic landscapes or interiors peopled with weird characters. At the start he stuck to windswept countryside and ruins with beggars. But during his second and longer stay in Milan (1709-35), he turned to the type of work for which he is now known - highly individual melodramatic scenes set in storm-tossed landscapes, ruins, convents, and gloomy monasteries, peopled with small elongated figures of monks, nuns, gypsies, mercenaries, witches, beggars, and inquisitors. His brushwork is nervous and flickering and his lighting effects macabre.
His output was extremely well received in Milanese scholarly circles. He was very prolific and his work is rarely dated or datable. The critical jury is still out as to any deeper meaning of these canvases, which mingle the macabre with the burlesque, simple description with powerful melodrama.
Magnasco went back to Genoa in old age and it is there that we find his last, visionary and transfigured works. His art later influenced Marco Ricci and Francesco Guardi.
Alessandro Magnasco Online
Italian Baroque painter and etcher of the Neapolitan school remembered for his wildly romantic or "sublime" landscapes, marine paintings, and battle pictures. He was also an accomplished poet, satirist, actor, and musician.
Rosa studied painting in Naples, coming under the influence of the Spanish painter and engraver José de Ribera. Rosa went to Rome in 1635 to study, but he soon contracted malaria. He returned to Naples, where he painted numerous battle and marine pictures and developed his peculiar style of landscape - picturesquely wild scenes of nature with shepherds, seamen, soldiers, or bandits - the whole infused with a romantic poetic quality.
His reputation as a painter preceded his return to Rome in 1639. Already famous as an artist, he also became a popular comic actor. During the Carnival of 1639 he rashly satirized the famous architect and sculptor Gian Lorenzo Bernini, thereby making a powerful enemy. For some years thereafter the environment of Florence was more comfortable for him than that of Rome. In Florence he enjoyed the patronage of Cardinal Giovanni Carlo de' Medici. Rosa's own house became the centre of a literary, musical, and artistic circle called the Accademia dei Percossi; here also Rosa's flamboyant personality found expression in acting. In 1649 he returned and finally settled in Rome. Rosa, who had regarded his landscapes more as recreation than as serious art, now turned largely to religious and historical painting. In 1660 he began etching and completed a number of successful prints. His satires were posthumously published in 1710.
MAFFEI, Francesco
(b. ca. 1600, Vicenza, d. 1660, Vicenza)
Biography
Italian painter, active mainly in the Veneto.
He had a refreshingly individualistic style, carrying on the great painterly tradition of Tintoretto and Bassano, reinforced by the example of Liss, Feti, and Strozzi, to which he added his own note of mysterious and sometimes bizarre fantasy. He painted mythological scenes and also allegorical portraits of local officials.
AVERCAMP, Hendrick
(b. 1585, Amsterdam, d. 1634, Kampen)
Biography
Dutch painter, active in Kampen, the most famous exponent of the winter landscape. He was deaf and dumb and known as `de Stomme van Kampen' (the mute of Kampen). His paintings are colourful and lively, with carefully observed skaters, tobogganers, golfers, and pedestrians. Avercamp's work enjoyed great popularity and he sold his drawings, many of which are tinted with watercolour, as finished pictures to be pasted into the albums of collectors (an outstanding collection is at Windsor Castle). His nephew and pupil Barent Avercamp carried on his style in an
CHARLES LE BRUNCharles Le Brun - Wikipedia,WebMuseum: Le Brun, CharlesCharles Le Brun (1619–1690) é um pintor francês do século XVII. Trabalhou para Luis XIV, notadamente no Palácio de Versailles, em Paris.
BABUREN, Dirck van
(b. ca. 1590, Utrecht, d. 1624, Utrecht)
Biography
Dutch painter (original name Theodor Baburen) who was a leading member of the Utrecht school, which was influenced by the dramatic chiaroscuro style of the Italian painter Caravaggio.
After studying painting with a portraitist and history painter in Utrecht, Baburen traveled to Rome about 1612. His most important Italian commission was the decoration of a chapel in the Church of San Pietro in Montorio, Rome (1615-20), which included his Entombment (1617).
In 1620 Baburen returned to Utrecht, where he shared a studio with Hendrick Terbrugghen in about 1622-23. The influence of Caravaggio may be seen in his Christ Crowned with Thorns (two versions, at the Franciscan House, Weert, Netherlands, and at Drury-Lowe Collection, Locko Park, England), based on a lost painting by the master. Baburen was especially fond of genre scenes (subjects from everyday life), such as The Procuress (1622; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston). A certain coarseness in conception, irregular compositional rhythms, and less atmospheric quality distinguish Baburen's art from that of his greater contemporaries, but his manner of painting can be said to be broad and forceful.
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