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 :. | The Three Philosophers dh | adoration of the shepherds | Concert Champetre | Madonna and Child with SS.ANTHONY AND rOCK | The Three Philosophers |
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ANTONIAZZO ROMANO
[Italian Early Renaissance Painter, 1430-ca.1510 Antoniazzo was born in the Colonna quarter of Rome. He was influenced at first by the decorative manner of Benozzo Gozzoli and Beato Angelico, as well as by the local painters of Lazio. His first recorded work is from 1461, a replica (untraced) of the miraculous Virgin and Child of St. Luke in the Basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore of Rome, for the seignior of Pesaro, Alessandro Sforza. From 1464 he worked for the papal court, producing at first a triptych of the Virgin and Child with Saints in Rieti. In 1467 he completed the decoration of the funerary chapel of Cardinal Bessarion in the church of Santi Apostoli of Rome, not far from his birthplace. In the centre of the decoration was an icon of the Virgin, now in the Chapel of St Anthony, a copy of the Byzantine icon in the Santa Maria in Cosmedin, the church of the Greeks in Rome. This icon in the Santi Apostoli is one of the most remarkable examples of Antoniazzo's considerable production of Virgins, generally taken from Byzantine models: he was indeed a much sought-after copier of icons. Later he worked to a series of frescoes in the Monastery of Tor de' Specchi in Rome, featuring stories of the life of S. Francesca Romana, and to the decoration of the public rooms of the Palazzo Venezia. In the 1470s Antoniazzo worked to the decoration of the Vatican Palace with artists like Perugino, Melozzo da Forl?? and Ghirlandaio. Through their influence his figures acquired gentler expressions and their garments were ornamented with decorative patterns, though always retaining several Medieval features. Together with Melozzo he worked to frescoes in Santa Maria sopra Minerva, and subsequently painted for that church a famous Annunciation (1482). The painting shows the Dominican Juan de Torquemada (cardinal) (d. 1468) presenting poor girls dowered by the guild of the Annunciation that he founded to the Virgin Mary. In the years between 1475 and 1480 Antoniazzo's production of altarpieces and panels with images of the Virgin increased as a result of the encouragement of the cult of the Virgin by Pope Sixtus IV. His later works show an increasing mannerism in their features, which were later imitated by several painters, whose works had been often attributed to the master. Antoniazzo was one of the three founders of the Compagnia di San Luca, the guild of painters and illuminators in Rome, and signed the statutes in 1478.
Aelbrecht Bouts
( 1450s, Leuven - March 1549, Leuven) was a Netherlandish painter. His first name is sometimes spelled eAlberte, eAelberte or eAlbrechte. He was born into a family of painters. Aelbrechtes father was Dieric Bouts the Elder (ca.1415-1475), and his brother was Dieric Bouts the Younger (ca.1448-1490). Jan Bouts (ca.1478-ca. 1530), son of Dieric Bouts the Younger, also became a painter. Dieric Bouts the Younger inherited his fatheres shop in 1475, while Aelbrecht established his own workshop, also in Leuven. Whereas Dieric the Younger continued in his father's style, Aelbrecht developed his own unmistakable style with strong colors, rich texture and fine details. Bob Jones University Museum and Gallery (Greenville, South Carolina), the Cleveland Museum of Art, the Fitzwilliam Museum (Cambridge), Harvard University Art Museums, The Honolulu Academy of Arts, the Hood Museum of Art (Hanover, New Hampshire), the Norton Simon Museum (Pasadena, California), the Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium, the Czartoryski Museum and the Staatsgalerie Stuttgart are among the public collections having paintings by Aelbrecht Bouts.
Gustave Boulanger
(1824-88) was a French figure painter known for his Neo-Grec style. He was born at Paris, studied with Delaroche and Jollivet, and in 1849 took the Prix de Rome. His paintings are prime examples of academic art of the time, particularly history painting. Boulanger had visited Italy, Greece, and North Africa, and his paintings reflect his attention to culturally correct details and skill in rendering the female form. His works include a Moorish Cafe (1848), Cæsar at the Rubicon (1865), the Promenade in the Street of Tombs, Pompeii (1869), and The Slave Market (1888). The recipient of many medals, he became a member of the Institut de France in 1882.