Italian Early Renaissance Painter, ca.1387-1455 Italian painter, illuminator and Dominican friar. He rose from obscure beginnings as a journeyman illuminator to the renown of an artist whose last major commissions were monumental fresco cycles in St Peter's and the Vatican Palace, Rome. He reached maturity in the early 1430s, a watershed in the history of Florentine art. None of the masters who had broken new ground with naturalistic painting in the 1420s was still in Florence by the end of that decade. The way was open for a new generation of painters, and Fra Angelico was the dominant figure among several who became prominent at that time, including Paolo Uccello, Fra Filippo Lippi and Andrea del Castagno. By the early 1430s Fra Angelico was operating the largest and most prestigious workshop in Florence. His paintings offered alternatives to the traditional polyptych altarpiece type and projected the new naturalism of panel painting on to a monumental scale. In fresco projects of the 1440s and 1450s, both for S Marco in Florence and for S Peter's and the Vatican Palace in Rome, Fra Angelico softened the typically astringent and declamatory style of Tuscan mural decoration with the colouristic and luminescent nuances that characterize his panel paintings. His legacy passed directly to the second half of the 15th century through the work of his close follower Benozzo Gozzoli and indirectly through the production of Domenico Veneziano and Piero della Francesca. Fra Angelico was undoubtedly the leading master in Rome at mid-century, and had the survival rate of 15th-century Roman painting been greater, his significance for such later artists as Melozzo da Forli and Antoniazzo Romano might be clearer than it is.  Related Paintings of ANGELICO Fra :. | View of the Convent of San Marco | St Lawrence Receives the Treasures of the Church | The Naming of St. John the Baptist | Prophets | Saint Anthony the Abbot Tempted by a Lump of Gold |
Related Artists:
Ridolfo Schadow
1786-1822 Rome,Sculptor, son of Johann Gottfried Schadow. He trained in his father's studio in Berlin, exhibiting statues and reliefs at the Berlin Akademie exhibitions between 1802 and 1810. Work from this period included both mythological and religious subjects, such as the plaster relief The Flood (c. 1804; Berlin, Alte N.G.). In 1810, with his brother Wilhelm Schadow, Ridolfo moved to Rome, in 1811 taking over the Roman sculpture studio of Christian Daniel Rauch. Schadow's first Roman work, a statue of Paris (destr.; several copies, e.g. bronze, 1820; Potsdam, Schloss Charlottenhof) was exhibited at the Berlin Akademie in 1812, and it reveals the influence of the Danish sculptor Bertel Thorvaldsen. Although homesickness and lack of confidence drove Schadow briefly back to Berlin, he soon returned to Rome, along with Rauch. From this point Schadow's work is markedly individual: he brought a realistic, genre treatment to his figures, which drew on both classical tradition and the formal language of idealizing early 19th-century painting. He chose subjects that offered scope for idealization within a realistic context, as in the seated figures of a Woman Fastening her Sandals (marble, 1813; Munich, Bayer. Nmus.), a Woman Spinning (marble, 1816; Cologne, Wallraf-Richartz-Mus.) and a Girl with Doves (Innocence) (marble, 1820; Berlin, Alte N.G.). Under the influence of his brother Wilhelm and of Friedrich Overbeck, Schadow converted to Catholicism in 1814. His early death interrupted work on the plaster model for a sculptural group,
GIUNTA PISANO
Italian painter, Pisan school (active c. 1229-c. 1254 in Pisa).
VELDE, Willem van de, the Younger
Dutch painter (b. 1633, Leiden, d. 1707, London). was a Dutch marine painter. Willem van de Velde was baptised on 18 December 1633 in Leiden, Holland, Dutch Republic. A son of Willem van de Velde the Elder, also a painter of sea-pieces, Willem van de Velde, the younger, was instructed by his father, and afterwards by Simon de Vlieger, a marine painter of repute at the time, and had achieved great celebrity by his art before he came to London. In 1673 he moved to England, where he was engaged by Charles II, at a salary of £100, to aid his father in "taking and making draughts of sea-fights", his part of the work being to reproduce in color the drawings of the elder van de Velde. He was also patronized by the Duke of York and by various members of the nobility. He died on 6 April 1707 in London, England. Most of Van de Velde's finest works represent views off the coast of Holland, with Dutch shipping. His best productions are delicate, spirited and finished in handling, and correct in the drawing of the vessels and their rigging. The numerous figures are tellingly introduced, and the artist is successful in his renderings of sea, whether in calm or storm.