(June 25, 1560 - September 8, 1627) was a Spanish Baroque painter, a pioneer of realism in Spain. His still lifes, also called bodegones were painted in a strikingly austere style, especially when compared to similar works in Netherlands and Italy. Senchez Coten was born in the town of Orgaz, near Toledo, Spain. He was a friend and perhaps pupil of Blas de Prado, an artist famous for his still lifes whose mannerist style with touches of realism, the disciple developed further. Cotan began by painting altar pieces and religious works. For approximately twenty years, he pursued a successful career in Toledo as an artist, patronized by the city's aristocracy, painting religious scenes, portraits and still lifes. These paintings found a receptive audience among the educated intellectuals of Toledo society. Senchez Cotan executed his notable still lifes around the turn of the seventeenth century, before the end of his secular life. An example (seen above) is Quince, Cabbage, Melon and Cucumber (1602, in the San Diego Museum of Art). On August 10, 1603, Juan Sanchez Cotan, then in his forties, closed up his workshop at Toledo to renounce the world and enter the Carthusian monastery Santa Maria de El Paular. He continued his career painting religious works with singular mysticism. In 1612 he was sent to the Granada Charterhouse, he decided to become a monk, and in the following year he entered the Carthusian monastery at Granada as a laybrother. The reasons for this are not clear, though such action was not unusual in Cotan's day.  Related Paintings of Juan Sanchez Cotan :. | Portrait of Two Children | Il Tamigi col ponte di Westminster nel fondo (mk21) | jungfru marias kykogang | Girl and Dog | The Nightmatch (mk33) |
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Charles Laval
(1862-1894) was a French painter born March 17, 1862 in Paris and who died April 27, 1894. He is associated with the Synthetic movement and Pont-Aven School, and he was a contemporary and friend of Paul Gauguin and Vincent van Gogh. Gauguin created a portrait of him in 1886 looking at one of Gauguin's Ceramic sculptures, entitled "Still Life with Profile of Laval". Paul Gauguin and Laval both came to Pension Gloanec in Pont-Aven in 1886 and became friends. In search of an exoticism that could provide the key to art, Gauguin and Laval went to Panama in 1887. To gain some subsidies, Laval performs academic portraits (all lost), using his experience received from Leon Bonnat. A series of mishaps caused Laval and Gauguin to leave the Central America for the island of Martinique.
Joseph Heintz
1564-1609 Swiss Painter, draughtsman, architect and artistic adviser, son of Daniel Heintz. He began his training as a painter c. 1579 with Hans Bock I (c. 1550-c. 1623) in Basle. His first surviving drawings (1580) show something akin to Holbein manner in his stained-glass window designs. After completing his apprenticeship he went c. 1584 to Rome, where he studied the works of antiquity, and those of Raphael, Michelangelo, Polidoro da Caravaggio and others. In 1587 he went via Florence to Venice, absorbing the works of Tintoretto, Titian and Veronese. In autumn 1591 the Holy Roman Emperor Rudolf II summoned him as portraitist and court painter to Prague but soon sent him back to Italy, where he drew ancient statues in addition to producing his own work and acting as art agent for the Emperor. In 1592-5 he stayed mainly in Rome, then returned to Prague. In the following years he worked indefatigably as a draughtsman, painter, architect and artistic adviser, moving between Augsburg and Prague.
Giovanni Segantini
Italian Art Nouveau Painter, 1858-1899 Italian painter and draughtsman. An exponent of DIVISIONISM, he was the only Italian painter of the late 19th century to have enjoyed an unbroken international reputation, especially in Germany and Austria.