Italian 1476-1510 Giorgione Galleries For his home town of Castelfranco, Giorgione painted the Castelfranco Madonna, an altarpiece in sacra conversazione form ?? Madonna enthroned, with saints on either side forming an equilateral triangle. This gave the landscape background an importance which marks an innovation in Venetian art, and was quickly followed by his master Giovanni Bellini and others.Giorgione began to use the very refined chiaroscuro called sfumato ?? the delicate use of shades of color to depict light and perspective ?? around the same time as Leonardo. Whether Vasari is correct in saying he learnt it from Leonardo's works is unclear ?? he is always keen to ascribe all advances to Florentine sources. Leonardo's delicate color modulations result from the tiny disconnected spots of paint that he probably derived from manuscript illumination techniques and first brought into oil painting. These gave Giorgione's works the magical glow of light for which they are celebrated. Most entirely central and typical of all Giorgione's extant works is the Sleeping Venus now in Dresden, first recognized by Morelli, and now universally accepted, as being the same as the picture seen by Michiel and later by Ridolfi (his 17th century biographer) in the Casa Marcello at Venice. An exquisitely pure and severe rhythm of line and contour chastens the sensuous richness of the presentment: the sweep of white drapery on which the goddess lies, and of glowing landscape that fills the space behind her, most harmoniously frame her divinity. The use of an external landscape to frame a nude is innovative; but in addition, to add to her mystery, she is shrouded in sleep, spirited away from accessibility to her conscious expression. It is recorded by Michiel that Giorgione left this piece unfinished and that the landscape, with a Cupid which subsequent restoration has removed, were completed after his death by Titian. The picture is the prototype of Titian's own Venus of Urbino and of many more by other painters of the school; but none of them attained the fame of the first exemplar. The same concept of idealized beauty is evoked in a virginally pensive Judith from the Hermitage Museum, a large painting which exhibits Giorgione's special qualities of color richness and landscape romance, while demonstrating that life and death are each other's companions rather than foes. Apart from the altarpiece and the frescoes, all Giorgione's surviving works are small paintings designed for the wealthy Venetian collector to keep in his home; most are under two foot (60 cm) in either dimension. This market had been emerging over the last half of the fifteenth century in Italy, and was much better established in the Netherlands, but Giorgione was the first major Italian painter to concentrate his work on it to such an extent ?? indeed soon after his death the size of such paintings began to increase with the prosperity and palaces of the patrons.  Related Paintings of Giorgione :. | Storm | Der Mosesknabe vor dem Pharao | Tempest | Concerr Champetre (mk08) | Portrait of a Venetian Gentleman |
Related Artists:
FONTANA, Lavinia
Italian Painter, 1552-1614 Daughter of Prospero Fontana. She was trained by her father and followed his Mannerist style. Her first recorded works, which date from 1575, were small paintings for private devotion, such as the Holy Family (Dresden, Gemeldegal.). By 1577 she had become established as a portrait painter in Bologna. Works of this date include the Self-portrait at the Harpsichord (Rome, Gal. Accad. S Luca) and the portrait of Senator Orsini (Bordeaux, Mus. B.-A.). Her portrait style reflects the formality of central Italian models as well as the naturalistic tendencies of the north Italian tradition. The elegantly costumed Orsini is shown seated at a table, with a suite of rooms opening behind him, a setting recalling such Florentine portraits of the 1530s as Agnolo Bronzino's Bartolommeo Panciatichi (Florence, Uffizi). Lavinia used a similar setting for other portraits, including the Gozzadini Family (1584; Bologna, Pin. N.). Female sitters are also shown in elaborate dress, with particular attention paid to details of embroidery and jewels, and they are often accompanied by small dogs
Albrecht Altdorfer
German 1480-1538 Albrecht Altdorfer Galleries He most often painted religious scenes, but is mainly famous as the first frequent painter of pure landscape, and also compositions dominated by their landscape. Taking and developing the landscape style of Lucas Cranach the Elder, he shows the hilly landscape of the Danube valley with thick forests of drooping and crumbling firs and larches hung with moss, and often dramatic colouring from a rising or setting sun. His Landscape with footbridge (National Gallery, London) of 1518-20 is claimed to be the first pure landscape in oil. He also made many fine finished drawings, mostly landscapes, in pen and watercolour. His best religious scenes are intense, sometimes verging on the expressionistic, and often depict moments of intimacy between Christ and his mother, or others. His most famous religious artwork is the The Legend of St. Sebastian and the Passion of Christ that decorated the altar in the St. Florian monastery in Linz, Austria. He often distorts perspective to subtle effect. His donor figures are often painted completely out of scale with the main scene, as in paintings of the previous centuries. He also painted some portraits; overall his painted oeuvre was not large.
Jan Dirksz Both
Dutch 1610-1652 Jan Dirksz Both (between 1610 and 1618, Utrecht - Aug 9 1652, Utrecht), brother of Andries Both, was a Dutch painter. From 1634 to 1637 he was taught by Bloemaert and the painter Gerard van Honthorst before travelling to Rome ca. 1637. There he met the French painter Claude Lorrain, with whom he collaborated on a series of landscape paintings. His landscapes are typically peopled by peasants driving cattle or travellers gazing on Roman ruins in the light of the evening sun The everyday life of the streets of Rome became a favourite theme in his works. On his return to Utrecht after the death of his brother in 1642, he stopped producing genre pieces and focused instead on pictures of Italian landscapes bathed in a warm, golden light. This theme was adopted by several other Dutch painters, the Italianites.