Italian Painter, 1698-1767
Italian painter. He was one of a group of artists working in Bergamo and Brescia who observed reality with an unusual freshness and directness. He painted religious subjects and portraits but was most distinguished as a painter of genre and low-life scenes. These included many pictures of beggars and vagabonds ( pitocchi), hence his nickname 'il Pitocchetto'. He married in Milan in 1717 but settled in Brescia in 1721. In 1723 he received a horse in payment for three altarpieces and four frescoes for the parish church of Rino di Sonico; they were mediocre works executed in an unadventurous blend of Lombard and Venetian traditions derived from contemporary Venetian painters working in Brescia. Ceruti's early portraits and genre scenes are less conventional and more intensely felt; in 1724 he signed and dated the strikingly naturalistic portrait of Giovanni Maria Fenaroli Related Paintings of CERUTI, Giacomo :. | Portrait of a Man kjg | Evening at the Piazza jj | Cardinal Richelieu mjkh | Portrait of Bishop Jean-Pierre Camus ,mnk | Annunciation klj | Related Artists:
DUJARDIN, KarelDutch Baroque Era Painter, ca.1622-1678
Dutch painter and etcher. He studied with Berchem and in Italy. Dujardin was particularly successful in painting landscapes with figures and animals, and he made some 51 fine etchings of similar subjects.
LA TOUR, Georges deFrench Baroque Era Painter, 1593-1652
French painter. He was well known in his lifetime, especially for his depictions of candlelit subjects, then was forgotten until the 20th century, when the identification of works previously misattributed established his reputation as a giant of French painting. His early works were painted in a realistic manner and influenced by the dramatic chiaroscuro of Caravaggio. The paintings of La Tour's maturity are marked by a startling geometric simplification of the human form and by the depiction of interior scenes lit only by the glare of candles or torches. His religious paintings done in this manner have a monumental simplicity and a stillness that expresses both contemplative quiet and wonder. Little is known of his life, and only four or five of his paintings are dated.
Ellen Bernard ThompsonAmerican , 1876-1936