Spanish Painter and Print engraver , 1591-1652 Information concerning the life and personality of Jusepe de Ribera is sparse. He was born the son of a shoemaker in Jetiva, Valencia Province. He appears to have gone to the city of Valencia while still a boy, but nothing is known of his possible artistic training there. As an adolescent, he traveled to Italy and spent time in Lombardy. Next he was in Parma, from which, it is said, he was driven by the contentious jealousy of local artists. He located himself in Rome until an accumulation of debts forced him to flee. Finally he settled in Naples, where in 1616 he married Caterina Azzolino, the daughter of a painter, by whom he had seven children between the years 1627 and 1636. The Academy of St. Luke in Rome elected Ribera to membership in 1625, and 6 years later the Pope conferred upon him the Order of Christ. It is understandably speculated that Ribera revisited Rome for these events. Being sought after in Naples by the Church and the various Spanish viceroys who ruled there in the name of the Spanish monarchy, he dismissed the idea of returning to his homeland. He was quoted as saying that he was honored and well paid in Naples and that Spain was a cruel stepmother to its own children and a compassionate mother to foreigners. Nevertheless, he generally added his nationality when he signed his works. This practice inspired the Italians to nickname him "the Little Spaniard" (Lo Spagnoletto). The last decade of Ribera's life was one of personal struggle. He suffered from failing health, the taunts of other artists that his fame was "extinct," and difficulty in collecting payments due him. Nevertheless, he kept it from being a tragic defeat by continuing to paint until the very year of his death in Naples. Actually, he was the victim of the local politics and finances. Naples was in the throes of a severe economic depression for which the foreign rulers, the patrons of Ribera, were naturally blamed, and the desperate citizenry was rioting in the streets. It is significant that Ribera continued to receive commissions in such a time, even if there was a dearth of payments. Ribera was inventive in subject matter, ranging through visionary spectacles, biblical themes, genre, portraits, mythological subjects, and portraits of ascetics and penitents.   Related Paintings of Jose de Ribera :. | Christophorus mit dem Jesuskind | Franz von Assisi und der Engel mit der Wasserflasche | Hl. Bruno, der Kartauser | Die Bubende Hl. Maria Magdalena als Thais, Fragment | Taste |
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Henriette Ronner-Knip
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Moritz von Schwind
Austrian Romantic Painter, 1804-1871 Austrian painter and illustrator. He studied at the Akademie der Bildende K?nste in Vienna (1821-3), where he was influenced by the Biedermeier genre painter Peter Krafft and the Nazarene painter Ludwig Ferdinand Schnorr von Carolsfeld. He made copies after the Old Masters at the Belvedere in Vienna, exploring especially D?rer, Albrecht Altdorfer, Raphael and Titian, which completed his early, largely autodidactic experience of art. His friendship with Franz Schubert, the poet and playwright Franz Grillparzer and the painters Ferdinand and Friedrich Olivier, as well as the cultural environment of Biedermeier Vienna in his years there between 1823 and 1828, shaped his spiritual development as a painter. His love of music inspired his later 'symphonic' compositions and flowing linear rhythms. Extensive reading of the work of Romantic writers such as Achim von Arnim, Clemens von Brentano, Ludwig Tieck, Friedrich Heinrich von Hagen and the brothers Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm helped prepare his mature pictorial themes of fairytales, legends and sagas. He was unsuccessful as a painter and eked out a meagre livelihood by drawing naturalistic genre scenes for engravers, while occasionally selling a painting. Walk before the City Gate
Moran, Thomas
American Hudson River School Painter, 1837-1926 American painter and printmaker of English birth. His brothers Edward (1829-1901), John ( 1831-1902) and Peter (1841-1914) were also active as artists. His family emigrated from England and in 1844 settled in Philadelphia where Moran began his career as an illustrator. He was guided by his brother Edward, an associate of the marine painter James Hamilton, whose successful career afforded an example for Moran. Between the ages of 16 and 19 Moran was apprenticed to the Philadelphia wood-engraving firm Scattergood & Telfer; he then began to paint more seriously in watercolour and expanded his work as an illustrator. In the 1860s he produced lithographs of the landscapes around the Great Lakes. While in London in 1862 (the first of many trips to England), he was introduced to the work of J. M. W. Turner, which remained a vital influence on him throughout his career. Moran owned a set of the Liber studiorum and was particularly impressed by Turner's colour and sublime conception of landscape. With his wife, Mary Nimmo Moran (1842-99), an etcher and landscape painter, he participated in the Etching Revival, scraping fresh and romantic landscapes and reproductive etchings