Italian Rococo Era Painter, 1696-1770 Giovanni Battista Tiepolo was born in Venice on March 5, 1696. His father, who was part owner of a ship, died when Tiepolo was scarcely a year old, but the family was left in comfortable circumstances. As a youth, he was apprenticed to Gregorio Lazzarini, a mediocre but fashionable painter known for his elaborately theatrical, rather grandiose compositions. Tiepolo soon evolved a more spirited style of his own. By the time he was 20, he had exhibited his work independently, and won plaudits, at an exhibition held at the church of S. Rocco. The next year he became a member of the Fraglia, or painters guild. In 1719 he married Cecilia Guardi, whose brother Francesco was to become famous as a painter of the Venetian scene. They had nine children, among them Giovanni Domenico and Lorenzo Baldassare, who were also painters. In the 1720s Tiepolo carried out many large-scale commissions on the northern Italian mainland. Of these the most important is the cycle of Old Testament scenes done for the patriarch of Aquileia, Daniele Dolfin, in the new Archbishop Palace at Udine. Here Tiepolo abandoned the dark hues that had characterized his early style and turned instead to the bright, sparkling colors that were to make him famous.  Related Paintings of Giovanni Battista Tiepolo :. | Die Enthauptung Johannes des Taufers | Last Communion of St Lucy | Joseph received the hand of Pharaoh, Central | Queen Zenobia talk to their soldiers | Queen Zenbia before Emperor Aurelian |
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Jacopo Vignali
Italian painter who died on 03 August 1664 Italian painter. At an early age he entered the studio of Matteo Rosselli in Florence, and his first works, Virgin and Saints (1616; Florence, S Brigida, Santuario della Madonna del Sasso) and the ceiling painting Love of the Fatherland (1616; Florence, Casa Buonarroti), were influenced by Rosselli and Ludovico Cigoli. In 1616 he enrolled at the Accademia del Disegno in Florence, becoming an academician in 1622. In the 1620s he moved away from Rosselli's influence and developed a style distinguished by dramatic light effects, rich colour and painterly technique and by the expression of deep emotion. The decade opened with the Investiture of St Benedict (1620; Florence, Semin. Maggiore), one of a series of works painted in honour of St Benedict for the Confraternit? di S Benedetto Bianco, to which Vignali had belonged since 1614. Having learnt the technique of fresco painting from Rosselli, he also began to work in that medium and was involved in the decoration of the Casa Buonarroti throughout the decade, the ceiling fresco Jacob's Dream dating from 1621.
Marie Spartali Stillman
English Pre-Raphaelite Painter, 1844-1927 was a British Pre-Raphaelite painter of Greek descent, arguably the greatest female artist of that movement. During a sixty-year career she produced over one hundred works, contributing regularly to galleries in Great Britain and the United States. Maria Spartali was the youngest daughter of Michael Spartali, a wealthy merchant and Greek consul-general based in London, and his wife Euphrosyne. She and her cousins Maria Zambaco and Aglaia Coronio were known collectively among friends as "the Three Graces", after the Charites of Greek mythology (Aglaia, Euphrosyne and Thalia), as all three were noted beauties of Greek heritage. Swinburne said of Spartali: "She is so beautiful that I want to sit down and cry". Spartali studied under Ford Madox Brown for several years from 1864, with his children Lucy, Catherine and Oliver. She modelled for: Brown; Burne-Jones (The Mill); Julia Margaret Cameron; Rossetti (A Vision of Fiammetta, Dante's Dream, The Bower Meadow); Spencer Stanhope; and Whistler (La Princesse du Pays de la Porcelaine). In 1871, against her parents' wishes, she married American journalist and painter William J. Stillman. She was his second wife, his first having committed suicide two years before. His job as a foreign correspondent resulted in the couple dividing their time between London and Florence from 1878 to 1883, and then Rome from 1889 to 1896.
Leo Putz
Germany (1869 -1940 ) - Painter