Spanish Baroque Era Painter, 1599-1660 Spanish painter. He was one of the most important European artists of the 17th century, spending his career from 1623 in the service of Philip IV of Spain. His early canvases comprised bodegones and religious paintings, but as a court artist he was largely occupied in executing portraits, while also producing some historical, mythological and further religious works. His painting was deeply affected by the work of Rubens and by Venetian artists, especially Titian, as well as by the experience of two trips (1629-31 and 1649-51) to Italy. Under these joint influences he developed a uniquely personal style characterized by very loose, expressive brushwork. Although he had no immediate followers, he was greatly admired by such later painters as Goya and Manet  Related Paintings of Diego Velazquez :. | The Feast of Bacchus | The Toilet of Venus | Coronation of the Virgin | Philip IV in Armour (df01) | Portrat des Infanten Philipp Prosper |
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TRAVERSI, Gaspare
Italian Painter, ca.1722-1770 Italian painter. He was apprenticed to the elderly Francesco Solimena, whose late style, a reinterpretation of the Baroque art of Mattia Preti, influenced his earliest works. At the same time he studied the naturalist painters of the 17th century: Preti himself, Giovanni Battista Caracciolo, Jusepe de Ribera, Filippo Vitale and Francesco Fracanzano. Classical art also attracted him, and in the 1740s he began to make journeys to Rome to study the influential works of Bolognese and Roman classicism: paintings by Guido Reni, Guercino and the Carracci family, and by Carlo Maratti. During one of these visits he copied two pictures by Maratti, then in S Isidoro, Rome: the Flagellation and a Crucifixion . In the following year he was in Naples; three canvases of scenes from the Life of the Virgin (Naples, S Maria dell'Aiuto), one of which is signed and dated 1749
WIT, Jacob de
Dutch Rococo Era Painter, 1695-1754 Dutch painter, draughtsman, etcher and writer. He was the leading 18th-century Dutch decorative painter, specializing in Rococo ceiling and room decorations and groups of putti painted naturalistically in colour or as imitation reliefs in grisaille. His preparatory drawings for ceiling decorations were collected during his own lifetime, but he also executed independent finished drawings specifically for collectors
BASSA, Ferrer
Spanish painter active 1324-1348 His workshop was in Calle Cucurulla, Barcelona, and commissions from a variety of patrons, mostly royal, are documented. In 1324 he was paid for painting two chapels and two crosses for the church at Sitges. Between c. 1333 and c. 1335 he illuminated a book on the Usages of Barcelona and Customs of Catalonia for Alfonso IV of Aragon, and in 1335 he was paid for an altarpiece. Further payments, in 1339 and 1340, were for two altarpieces for the chapel of the Aljaferea Palace (a Moorish palace) in Saragossa. About 1340 he received a commission for an altarpiece of St Hilary for the diocese of Lleida (Sp. Lerida). In 1341 Bassa had begun work on three altarpieces for the Episcopal See at Lleida, commissioned by Ot de Montacada (c. 1290-1341). In 1342 Peter IV (the Ceremonious) of Aragon asked his wife, Maria of Navarre, to send him a Book of Hours illuminated by Ferrer Bassa, and in the same year the artist was also paid for a commission by Queen Constanza of Mallorca. In 1343 and 1344 he was paid for an altarpiece and other works for the chapel of the Aljaferea Palace in Saragossa and for an altarpiece for the chapel of the royal palace at Barcelona. In 1344 Bassa was commissioned to decorate the S Miguel Chapel, then the cell of the abbess in the Pedralbes Monastery, Barcelona, although he only started work in 1346. He was involved in further royal commissions in 1345, including an altarpiece for the chapel of the castle at Perpignan.