Italian Early Renaissance Painter, 1420-1497 Italian Renaissance painter. Early in his career he assisted Lorenzo Ghiberti on the east doors of the Baptistery in Florence and Fra Angelico on frescoes in Florence, Rome, and Orvieto. His reputation today rests on the breathtaking fresco cycle The Journey of the Magi (1459 C 61) in the chapel of Florence's Medici-Riccardi Palace. His work as a whole was undistinguished, however. He painted several altarpieces and a series of 25 frescoes of Old Testament scenes   Related Paintings of GOZZOLI, Benozzo :. | Scenes from the Life of St Francis (Scene 10, north wall) dry | View of the Church of Sant'Agostino sdg | Scenes from the Life of St Francis (Scene 5, north wall) g | Martyrdom of St Sebastian | Triumph of St Thomas Aquinas fg |
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Frantisek Kupka
Czech Abstract Painter, 1871-1957,was a Czech painter and graphic artist. He was a pioneer and co-founder of the early phases of the abstract art movement and orphic cubism (orphism). Kupka's abstract works arose from a base of realism, but later evolved into pure abstract art. Frantisek Kupka was born in Opocno, eastern Bohemia (now Czech Republic). From 1889 to 1892, he studied at the Prague Art Academy. At this time, he painted historical and patriotic themes. In Kupka enrolled at the Akademie der Bildenden Kunste in Vienna, Vienna, where he concentrated on symbolic and allegorical subjects. He exhibited at the Kunstverein, Vienna, in 1894. His involvement with theosophy and Eastern philosophy dates from this period. By spring 1894, Kupka had settled in Paris; there he attended the Academie Julian briefly and then studied with Jean-Pierre Laurens at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts. Kupka worked as an illustrator of books and posters and, during his early years in Paris, became known for his satirical drawings for newspapers and magazines. In 1906, he settled in Puteaux, a suburb of Paris, and that same year exhibited for the first time at the Salon d'Automne. Kupka was deeply impressed by the first Futurist Manifesto, published in 1909 in Le Figaro. Kupka's 1909 painting "Piano Keyboard/Lake" marked a break in his representational style; his work became increasingly abstract around 1910 C11, reflecting his theories of motion, color, and the relationship between music and painting (orphism). In 1911, he attended meetings of the Puteaux group. In 1912, he exhibited at the Salon des Independants in the Cubist room, although he did not wish to be identified with any movement. Creation in the Plastic Arts, a book Kupka completed in 1913, was published in Prague in 1923. In 1931, he was a founding member of Abstraction-Creation. In 1936, his work was included in the exhibition "Cubism and Abstract Art" at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, and in an important show with another excellent Czech painter Alphonse Mucha at the Jeu de Paume in Paris. A retrospective of his work took place at the Galerie Manes in Prague in 1946. The same year, Kupka participated in the Salon des Realites Nouvelles, where he continued to exhibit regularly until his death. During the early 1950s, he gained general recognition and had several solo shows in New York. Between 1919 and 1938 Kupka was financially supported by his good friend, art collector and industrialist Jindich Waldes who accumulated a substantial collection of his art. Kupka died in Puteaux, France. Kupka had a strong interest in color theory; around 1910 he began developing his own color wheels, adapting a format previously explored by Sir Isaac Newton and Hermann von Helmholtz. This work in turn led Kupka to execute a series of paintings he called "Discs of Newton" (1911-12).
Simone Martini
1283-1344 Italian Simone Martini Locations He was a major figure in the development of early Italian painting and greatly influenced the development of the International Gothic style. It is thought that Martini was a pupil of Duccio di Buoninsegna, the leading Sienese painter of his time. His brother-in-law was the artist Lippo Memmi. Very little documentation survives regarding Simone's life, and many attributions are debated by art historians. Simone Martini died while in the service of the Papal court at Avignon in 1344. Simone was doubtlessly apprenticed from an early age, as would have been the normal practice. Among his first documented works is the Maest?? of 1315 in the Palazzo Pubblico in Siena. A copy of the work, executed shortly thereafter by Lippo Memmi in San Gimignano, testifies to the enduring influence Simone's prototypes would have on other artists throughout the fourteenth century. Perpetuating the Sienese tradition, Simone's style contrasted with the sobriety and monumentality of Florentine art, and is noted for its soft, stylized, decorative features, sinuosity of line, and unsurpassed courtly elegance. Simone's art owes much to French manuscript illumination and ivory carving: examples of such art were brought to Siena in the fourteenth century by means of the Via Francigena, a main pilgrimage and trade route from Northern Europe to Rome. Simone's major works include the Maest?? (1315) in the Palazzo Pubblico in Siena, St Louis of Toulouse Crowning the King at the Museo di Capodimonte in Naples (1317), the S. Caterina Polyptych in Pisa (1319) and the Annunciation and two Saints at the Uffizi in Florence (1333), as well as frescoes in the Chapel of St. Martin in the lower church of the Basilica of San Francesco d'Assisi. Francis Petrarch became friend with Simone while in Avignon, and two of his sonnets make reference to a portrait of Laura de Noves he supposedly painted for the poet.
CRETI, Donato
Italian painter, Bolognese school (b. 1671, Bologna, d. 1749, Bologna) Italian painter and draughtsman. His individual and poetic art represents, with that of Marcantonio Franceschini, the last significant expression of the classical-idealist strain in Bolognese painting. His activity was almost wholly confined to Bologna, where he painted decorative frescoes, altarpieces and easel pictures for private collectors. Two qualities are paramount: a perfected finesse of handling and poetic suggestiveness of situation and mood. He sought the ideal beauty of the individual figure and was thus at his best in meditative pictures with few figures; his subjects combine grace of form and precision of contour with flesh that attains the surface delicacy of porcelain and colours that have a mineral-like refulgence.