Italian Mannerist Painter, 1532-1625 The best known of the sisters, she was trained, with Elena, by Campi and Gatti. Most of Vasari's account of his visit to the Anguissola family is devoted to Sofonisba, about whom he wrote: 'Anguissola has shown greater application and better grace than any other woman of our age in her endeavours at drawing; she has thus succeeded not only in drawing, colouring and painting from nature, and copying excellently from others, but by herself has created rare and very beautiful paintings'. Sofonisba's privileged background was unusual among woman artists of the 16th century, most of whom, like Lavinia Fontana (see FONTANA (ii),(2)), FEDE GALIZIA and Barbara Longhi (see LONGHI (i), (3)), were daughters of painters. Her social class did not, however, enable her to transcend the constraints of her sex. Without the possibility of studying anatomy, or drawing from life, she could not undertake the complex multi-figure compositions required for large-scale religious or history paintings. She turned instead to the models accessible to her, exploring a new type of portraiture with sitters in informal domestic settings. The influence of Campi, whose reputation was based on portraiture, is evident in her early works, such as the Self-portrait (Florence, Uffizi). Her work was allied to the worldly tradition of Cremona, much influenced by the art of Parma and Mantua, in which even religious works were imbued with extreme delicacy and charm. From Gatti she seems to have absorbed elements reminiscent of Correggio, beginning a trend that became marked in Cremonese painting of the late 16th century. This new direction is reflected in Lucia, Minerva and Europa Anguissola Playing Chess (1555; Poznan, N. Mus.) in which portraiture merges into a quasi-genre scene, a characteristic derived from Brescian models.  Related Paintings of ANGUISSOLA Sofonisba :. | Mountain Forest | The Painter before his Picture | Portrait of Susanne Fourment (mk08) | Early Spring in the Vienna Woods | amfora |
Related Artists:
Lucas van Uden
(18 October 1595 - 4 November 1672) was a Flemish Baroque painter specializing in landscapes. Lucas van Uden was born in Antwerp, where he entered the guild of St. Luke in 1626-27. Although he was never part of Peter Paul Rubens's studio, his works are partly indebted to that master. Van Uden even made copies of Rubens's works on several occasions. His technique, however, owes as much to earlier painters like Joos de Momper and Jan Brueghel the Elder. General characteristics are a tonally-green recessive view punctuated by slender trees and populated by incidental pastoral and peasant figures. Many of Van Uden's figures were either copied from Rubens or painted by David Teniers the Younger. He is often associated with fellow landscape painter Jan Wildens.
Jacopo Bellini
active in Florence 1423-Venice 1470
Stanislaw Witkiewicz
(8 May 1851 in Pašiaušė - 5 September 1915 in Lovran) was a Polish painter, architect, writer and art theoretician. Witkiewicz was born in the Lithuanian village of Pašiaušė (Polish: Poszawsze) in Samogitia, at that time, in the partitioned Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth lands ruled by the Russian Empire. Witkiewicz studied in Saint Petersburg, 1869-71, then in Munich, 1872-75. He created the Zakopane Style (styl zakopiaki) (also known as Witkiewicz Style (styl witkiewiczowski)) in architecture. He was strongly associated with Zakopane and promoted it in the art community. His son, Stanisław Ignacy Witkiewicz, became a famous painter, playwright, novelist and philosopher, also known (from the conflation of his surname and middle name) by the mononymous pseudonym "Witkacy." The son's godmother was the internationally famous actress Helena Modjeska (Helena Modrzejewska), whom the elder Witkiewicz in 1876 had nearly accompanied to California in the United States. Witkiewicz had strong views against formal education: "school is completely at odds with the psychological make-up of human beings". He applied this principle in his son's upbringing and was disappointed when the 20-year-old Witkacy chose to enroll at the Academy of Fine Arts in Krakew. In 1908, suffering from tuberculosis, the elder Witkiewicz left his family in Zakopane and relocated to Lovranno, a fashionable resort in what was then Austria-Hungary, which today is in Croatia. He died there in 1915.