(Valladolid, 1553 - 26 October 1608, Madrid) Spanish painter, one of the best representatives of the Spanish school of court painters. He worked for Philip II and Philip III. The Museo del Prado contains examples of his severe portraiture style. Juan Pantoja de La Cruz was, born 1553 in Valladolid. Very little is known of his formative years as a painter. He was a pupil of the court painter Alonso Senchez Coello in Madrid and he must have assisted his master in complying with his duties as painter of the Spanish King, Philip II. Pantoja probably continued to work in his master studio after completing his training. He married in 1585 beginning to paint for the court around that time. After Sanchez Coello's death in 1588, Pantoja took over his master workshop and became court painter to Philip II of Spain. Pantoja kept working for the court and the nobility, painting portraits of Prince Philip, the future Philip III, in 1592 and 1594. Among his most well known works is the portrait of Philip II wearing a cape and hat all in black, painted around 1594 for the Escorial. This portrait is one of the best representations of the idea of Spanish majesty, based on the remoteness of the monarch. On Philip II's death in 1598, Philip III confirmed Pantoja's status as court painter. When the court settled in Valladolid in 1601, Pantoja moved to the new capital, remaining in this city, several years.  Related Paintings of Juan Pantoja de la Cruz :. | von Spanien | Infantin Anna | Portrait of Margarita de Austria | Infantin Anna (1601-1666), Konigin von Frankreich, Bildnis in ganzer Figur mit einem Lowenaffchen | Portrait of Margarita de Austria |
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Steven van Herwijck
(Utrecht c. 1530-London 1565/67), was a Netherlandish sculptor and gem engraver famous for his portrait medallions and medals. It has recently been suggested that he is the "famous paynter Steven" mentioned in an inventory of 1590, who has traditionally been identified as Steven van der Meulen. Van Herwijck worked in Italy in 1557 and returned to Utrecht in 1558, when he was made a Master of the artists' Guild of St. Luke. His earliest surviving medals, of George van Egmond, Bishop of Utrecht, and Engelken Tols, date from this year. In 1559 he relocated to Antwerp. Nine medals survive of his work there, including a portrait of Jacobus Fabius. Fleeing religious persecution, he went to Poland in 1561 where he made medallions of King Sigismund II and other members of the Polish royal family.
RENI, Guido
Italian Baroque Era Painter, 1575-1642 Italian painter, draughtsman and etcher. He was one of the greatest and most influential of the 17th-century Italian painters, whose sophisticated and complex art dominated the Bolognese school. A classicizing artist, deeply influenced by Greco-Roman art and by Raphael but also by the mannered elegance of Parmigianino's paintings, he sought an ideal beauty; his work was especially celebrated for its compositional and figural grace. In his religious art he was concerned with the expression of intense emotion, often charged with pathos; according to his biographer Malvasia, he boasted that he 'could paint heads with their eyes uplifted a hundred different ways' to give form to a state of ecstasy or divine inspiration.
Giovanni Gerolamo Savoldo
Italian Mannerist Painter , c. 1480 - aft.1548 was an Italian High Renaissance painter. Savoldo was born in Brescia, but little is known about his early years. Some sources claim he was known as Girolamo Bresciano. By 1506 he was in Parma, and by 1508, he had joined the Florentine painter??s guild. In this period he finished the Rest at the Flight from Egypt (Augsburg), the Elijah Harassed by a Crow (National Gallery of Art, Washington), and a Deposition. In 1515 he painted the Portrait of a Clad Warrior, wrongly identified with Gaston de Foix. Also from the same period his the Temptings of St. Anthony, which appears to show the influence of the Flemish Hieronymus Bosch. The works was appreciated by the commissioners from Venice, where Savoldo relocated before 1520. On June 15, 1524 he signed a contract for an altarpiece for the church of San Domenico in Pesaro (now in the Brera, Milan). In 1527, he completed a St. Hieronymus for the Brescian family Averoldi, probably the one at National Gallery of London. From the 1530s dates a Nativity at the National Gallery in Washington DC, which seems influenced by the lambent contemporary, Correggio painting on the same topic. In 1533 Savoldo painted a Madonna with Four Saints in the church of Santa Maria in Organo, while in 1537-1538 he executed the altarpiece for the main altar of Santa Croce, Brescia.