Italian Baroque Era Painter, 1591-1666 best known as Guercino or Il Guercino, was an Italian Baroque painter from the region of Emilia, and active in Rome and Bologna. Guercino is Italian for squinter, a nickname that was given to him because he was cross-eyed. He is especially noted for his many superb drawings. Guercino was born at Cento, a village between Bologna and Ferrara. By the age of 17 he was associated with Benedetto Gennari, a painter of the Bolognese School. By 1615 he moved to Bologna, where his work earned the praise of an elder Ludovico Carracci. He painted two large canvases, Elijah Fed by Ravens and Samson Seized by Philistines, in what appears to be a stark naturalist Caravaggesque style (although it is unlikely he had been able to see any of the Roman Caravaggios first-hand). They were painted for Cardinal Serra, Papal Legate to Ferrara. The Arcadian Shepherds (Et in Arcadia ego) was painted in 1618 contemporary with The Flaying of Marsyas by Apollo in Palazzo Pitti. His first style, he often claimed, was influenced by a canvas of Carracci in Cento. Some of his later pieces approach rather to the manner of his great contemporary Guido Reni, and are painted with more lightness and clearness. Guercino was esteemed very highly in his lifetime. He was then recommended by Marchese Enzo Bentivoglio to the Bolognese Ludovisi Pope, Pope Gregory XV. His two years (1621-23) spent in Rome were very productive. From this stay date his frescoes of Aurora at the casino of the Villa Ludovisi and the ceiling in San Crisogono (1622) of San Chrysogonus in Glory; his portrait of Pope Gregory (now in the Getty Museum, and, what is considered his masterpiece, The Burial of Saint Petronilla or St. Petronilla Altarpiece, for the Vatican (now in the Museo Capitolini). The Franciscan order of Reggio in 1655 paid him 300 ducats for the altarpiece of Saint Luke Displaying a Painting of the Madonna and Child (now in Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City). The Corsini also paid him 300 ducats for the Flagellation of Christ painted in 1657.   Related Paintings of GUERCINO :. | St Augustine Washing the Feet of the Redeemer kg | The Cumaean Sibyl with a Putto | Astrologia | Hersilia Separating Romulus from Tatius (mk05) | Return of the Prodigal Son |
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Reza Abbasi
(1565 - 1635) was the most renowned Persian miniaturist, painter and calligrapher of the Isfahan School, which flourished during the Safavid period under the patronage of Shah Abbas I. He is considered to be one of the foremost Persian artists of all time. He received his training in the atelier of his father, Ali Asghar, and was received into the workshop of Shah Abbas I at a young age. At the age of about 38 he received the honorific title of Abbasi from his patron, but soon left the Shah's employ, apparently seeking greater freedom to associate with simple people. In 1610 he returned to the court and continued in the employ of the Shah until his death. His specialty was the Persian miniature, with a preference for naturalistic subjects often portrayed in an effeminate and impressionistic manner,a style which came to be popular during the late Safavid court.
Jacques-Emile Blanche
(1 January 1861 - 20 September 1942) was a French painter born in Paris. His father was a successful psychiatrist who ran a fashionable clinic, and Blanche was brought up in the rich Parisian neighborhood of Passy in a house that had belonged to the Princesse de Lamballe. Although he received some instruction in painting from Henri Gervex, he may be regarded as self-taught. He became a very successful portrait painter, with a style derived from 18th-century English painters such as Thomas Gainsborough as well as Edouard Manet and John Singer Sargent. He worked in London, where he spent time from 1870 on, as well as Paris, where he exhibited at the Salon and the Sociate Nationale des Beaux-Arts. One of his closest friends was Marcel Proust, who helped edit several of Blanche's publications. He also knew Henry James and is mentioned in Gertrude Stein's The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas. Among the painter's most famous works are portraits of his father, Marcel Proust (Private collection, Paris), the poet Pierre Louÿs, the Thaulow family (Musee d'Orsay, Paris), Aubrey Beardsley (National Portrait Gallery, London), and Yvette Guilbert. He was the author of the unreliable Portraits of a Lifetime: the late Victorian era: the Edwardian pageant: 1870-1914 (London: J.M. Dent, 1937) and More Portraits of a Lifetime, 1918-1938 (London: J.M. Dent, 1939).
Shalva Kikodze
Shalva Kikodze (Georgian: შალვა ქიქოძე) (1894 - 1921) was a Georgian expressionist painter, graphic artist and theatre decorator. Together with Lado Gudiashvili and David Kakabadze, he is considered a key figure in Georgian art of the early 20th century. He was born in a remote Georgian village Bakhvi, Guria, then part of the Russian Empire. From 1914 to 1918, he studied at Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture. In 1916, he took part in an expedition to the Georgian village Nabakhtevi and made copies of the 15th-century murals from the local church. He stayed in his motherland for a short period of 1918-1920, and worked chiefly as a theater decorator for Jabadari Theater in Tbilisi. Afterwards he moved to Paris, where he, together with his fellow painters, Gudiashvili and Kakabadze, held an exhibition in 1921. He died in Freiburg, Germany, on November 7, 1921