Italian Rococo Era Painter, 1697-1768
Italian painter, etcher and draughtsman. He was the most distinguished Italian view painter of the 18th century. Apart from ten years spent in England he lived in Venice, and his fame rests above all on his views (vedute) of that city; some of these are purely topographical, others include festivals or ceremonial events. He also painted imaginary views (capriccios), although the demarcation between the real and the invented is never quite clearcut: his imaginary views often include realistically depicted elements, though in unexpected surroundings, and in a sense even his Venetian vedute are imaginary. He never merely re-created reality. He was highly successful with the English, helped in this by the British connoisseur JOSEPH SMITH, whose own large collection of Canaletto works was sold to King George III in 1762. The British Royal Collection has the largest group of his paintings and drawings. Related Paintings of Canaletto :. | The Thames and the City fcf | Return of the Bucentoro to the Molo on Ascension Day d | The Feast Day of St Roch fd | The Bucintoro Returning to the Molo on Ascension Day fg | Arrival of the French Ambassador in Venice (detail) f | Related Artists:
ASPERTINI, AmicoItalian Painter, ca.1474-1552
He was born in Bologna to a family of painters (Guido Aspertini and Giovanni Antonio Aspertini, his father), and studied under masters such as Lorenzo Costa and Francesco Francia. He is briefly documented in Rome between 1500-1503, returning to Bologna and painting in a style influenced by Pinturicchio. In Bologna in 1504, he joined Francia and Costa in painting frescoes for the newly restored Oratory of Santa Cecilia in San Giacomo Maggiore, a work commissioned by Giovanni II Bentivoglio.
In 1507-09, he painted a fresco cycle in San Frediano in Lucca. Asperini painted in 1508-1509 the splendid frescoes in the Chapel of the Cross in the Basilica di San Frediano in Lucca. Aspertini was also one of two artists chosen to decorate a triumphal arch for the entry into Bologna of Pope Clement VII and Emperor Charles V in 1529.
He died in Bologna.
Giorgio Vasari describes Aspertini as having an eccentric personality, who, half-insane, worked so rapidly with both hands that chiaroscuro was split, chiaro in one hand, scuro in the other. He quotes Aspertini as complaining that all other Bolognese colleagues were copying Raphael. Aspertini also painted façade decorations (all lost), and altarpieces, many of which are often eccentric and charged in expression. For example, his Bolognese Pieta appears to occur in an other-worldy electric sky.
Antonio da FirenzeItalian Early Renaissance Painter, ca.1445-1510
Josef DanhauserJosef Danhauser (August 19, 1805, Laimgrube (now a part of Mariahilf or Neubau) - May 4, 1845) was an Austrian painter, one of the main artists of Biedermeier period, together with Ferdinand Georg Waldmeller, Peter Fendi, among others. His works, not very appreciated in his days, dealt with very moralising subjects and they had a clear influence of William Hogarth.
Joseph Danhauser was born in Vienna in 1805, the eldest son of sculptor and furniture manufacturer Joseph Ulrich Danhauser and his wife Johanna (nee Lambert).
He took his first painting lessons with his father and he later assisted the Vienna Academy of Fine Arts. He studied with Johann Peter Krafft and made his first exhibition 1826.
Invited by Johann Ladislaus Pyrker, patriarch of Venice, he visited the city of Doges, where he started to study the Italian masters. He came back to Vienna via Trieste in 1827, visiting Prague. That very year he painted Ludwig van Beethoven's death mask, roughly 12 hours after his death and a water-colour representing his deathbed. In 1828, he spent some time in Eger, with an invitation of this Hungarian city archbishop Pyrker. He solicited him for some pictures for the gallery of the Archdiocese.
After his father's death in 1829, his brothers and he managed his furniture factory during the Biedermeier movement, being the precursors of modern design. That made him put his painting career aside.
In 1833, he responded to a second invitation from Eger's archbishop and he painted The martyr of Saint John for a new basilica in the city and he received the Vienna Academy prize for his picture Die Verstobung der Hagar and he specialised in Genre works. In 1838, he was appointed vice-rector of the Academy and married Josephine Streit, who was the daughter of a physician and with whom he had three children, Josef, Marie and Julie, born in 1839, 1841 and 1843 respectively.
Josef Danhauser was appointed professor of historical Painting at the Academy in 1841, but he left this occupation and he travelled around Germany and the Netherlands with the textile maker, art aficionado and art sponsor Rudolf von Arthaber. In this journey, he was very interested in the Dutch School and the format of his works was littler. He died of typhus in Vienna in 1845. They named a street with his name in Vienna in 1862.