Italian Early Renaissance Painter, 1449-1494 Florentine painter, whose family name was Bigordi. He may have studied painting and mosaics under Alesso Baldovinetti. Ghirlandaio was an excellent technician. Keenly observant of the contemporary scene, he depicted many prominent Florentine personalities within his religious narrative paintings. Among his earliest frescoes are the Madonna with the Vespucci Family and the Last Supper (Church of the Ognissanti, Florence). He painted scenes from the life of Santa Fina (collegiate church in San Gimigniano) and frescoes in the Palazzo Vecchio, Florence. In 1481, Pope Sixtus IV called him to Rome, along with Botticelli, to decorate the Sistine Chapel. He painted the Calling of the First Apostles, a scene close in spirit to Masaccio. He returned to Florence to work on the frescoes in the Sassetti Chapel in Santa Trinita. He introduced Sassetti, Corsi, Poliziano, the Medici, and many other contemporaries as participants in the life of St. Francis. Ghirlandaio's most famous achievement is his fresco cycle of the life of Mary and St. John the Baptist for the choir of Santa Maria Novella. Michelangelo served an apprenticeship with him at this time and probably worked on these frescoes. Other examples of his art are the Adoration of the Magi (Uffizi); another Adoration (Hospital of the Innocents); a mosaic of the Annunciation for the Cathedral; a portrait of Francesco Sassetti and his son (Metropolitan Mus.);   Related Paintings of GHIRLANDAIO, Domenico :. | Preaching of St John the Baptist | St Barbara sdfgs | An old man with a boy's portrait | Madonna in Glory with Saints | Obsequies of St Fina |
Related Artists:
Merson, Luc-Olivier
French Painter, 1846-1920 French painter and illustrator. He was the son of the painter and art critic Charles-Olivier Merson (1822-1902) and trained initially at the Ecole de Dessin in Paris under Gustave Adolphe Chassevent (1818-1901) and then at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts under Isidore-Alexandre-Augustin Pils. He made his d?but at the Salon in 1867 and won the Grand Prix de Rome in 1869 with the melodramatic work, the Soldier of Marathon (1869; Paris, Ecole N. Sup. B.-A.). As a prizewinner he then spent five years in Italy, where he was impressed and influenced by the works of the Italian Primitives, as is apparent in such works as St Edmund, King and Martyr (1871; Troyes, Mus. B.-A. & Arch?ol.), with its muted colours and rigid composition. In the Salon of 1875 he exhibited Sacrifice for the Country, St Michael, which had been commissioned as a design for a Gobelins tapestry for the Salle des Ev?ques in the Panth?on, Paris. Soon afterwards he was chosen to decorate the Galerie de St Louis in the Palais de Justice, Paris, with scenes from the life of Louis IX. This resulted in two large works, Louis Opening the Doors of the Gaols on his Accession and Louis Condemning Sire Enguerrand de Coucy (both 1877). He also used historical, often religious, subjects for his smaller-scale works, as in St Francis of Assisi Preaching to the Fish (1880; Nantes, Mus. B.-A.).
BEERT, Osias
Flemish Baroque Era Painter, ca.1580-1624 Flemish painter. In 1596 he went to study with Andries van Baseroo and in 1602 became a master in the Antwerp Guild of St Luke; these two dates suggest his probable date of birth. Beert married Marguerite Ykens on 8 January 1606. Contemporary documents describe him as a cork merchant. The esteem enjoyed by Beert is indicated by the large number of pupils he had, including, in 1610, Frans van der Borch; in 1615, Frans Ykens; in 1616, Paulus Pontius; and, in 1618, Jan Willemssen. Beert's son, Osias Beert the younger (1622-78), was also a painter and became a master in 1645.
edward hopper
American painter, printmaker and illustrator. He was brought up in a town on the Hudson River, where he developed an enduring love of nautical life. When he graduated from Nyack Union High School in 1899, his parents, although supportive of his artistic aspirations, implored him to study commercial illustration rather than pursue an economically uncertain career in fine art. He studied with the Correspondence School of Illustrating in New York City (1899-1900). He continued to study illustration at the New York School of Art (1900-1906), under Arthur Keller (1866-1925) and Frank Vincent Du Mond (1865-1951), but began to study painting and drawing after a year. Hopper began in the portrait and still-life classes of William Merrit Chase, to whose teaching he later referred only infrequently and disparagingly. He preferred the classes he took with Kenneth Hayes Miller and especially those of Robert Henri. Hopper s skill won his fellow students respect, as well as honours in the school where, by 1905, he was teaching Saturday classes.