b. 1472, Kronach, d. 1553, Weimar. German painter and printmaker. He took his name from the town of his birth. Little is known about his early life or training. In Vienna (c. 1501 ?C 04) he painted some notable portraits and landscapes characteristic of the Danube school. From 1505 to 1550 he was court painter in Wittenberg, where he achieved great success and wealth painting portraits, mythological subjects, and altarpieces for Protestant and Catholic churches. He attracted so many young artists to Wittenberg that the town became an art centre. A friend of Martin Luther, Cranach became known as the chief pictorial propagandist of the Protestant cause in Germany. He produced numerous engravings and more than 100 woodcuts, notably for the first German edition of the New Testament (1522). After his death, his style was perpetuated by his son, Lucas the Younger (1515 C 86).  Related Paintings of Lucas Cranach the Elder :. | Korsfastelsescen with the conv hovitsmannen | Portrait of Elector Frederick the Wise in his Old Age | Details of Dr.Johannes Cupinian (mk45) | courtesans | Bentivoglio Altarpiece |
Related Artists:
Gaudenzio Ferrari
1741-1546 Italian Gaudenzio Ferrari Location Italian painter and sculptor. He probably received his training at Varallo at the beginning of the 1490s, a lively period in the town artistic life, when extensive works were being carried out at the sacromonte. His master was Gian Stefano Scotto ( fl 1508), none of whose works has as yet been identified but who, judging from the early work of his pupil, may have been influenced by Lombard artists. Gaudenzio early works, such as a painting on panel of the Crucifixion (Varallo, Mus. Civ. Pietro Calderini), were influenced by the poetic art of Bramantino and by the northern Italian classicizing style of the Milanese painter Bernardo Zenale. His early, but self-assured, Angel of the Annunciation (c. 1500; Vercelli, Mus. Civ. Borgogna), painted for the Convento delle Grazie, Vercelli, suggests that these sources were soon enriched by his response to the tender Renaissance style of Pietro Perugino (active at the Certosa di Pavia, 1496-9). Gaudenzio is also recorded at Vercelli in the first known documentary reference to him, the contract for a polyptych commissioned by the Confraternit? di Sant Anna in 1508, with Eusebio Ferrari acting as guarantor. There remain four paintings of scenes from the Life of St Anne and God the Father (Turin, Gal. Sabauda) and two of the Annunciation (London, N.G.). In these works Gaudenzio style is more controlled, possibly as a result of a journey to central Italy in c. 1505.
Jean Alaux
(1785 - 2 March 1864) was a French history painter and Director of the French Academy in Rome from 1846-52. Alaux was born in Bordeaux, the son of a painter, and the second of four brothers who were all themselves painters. he received his first lessons in art from his father, but went on to formal training with Pierre Lacour, then Pierre-Narcisse Guerin. He was admitted to the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris in 1807. From 1808 he entered works for the Prix de Rome but his energies were diverted when his elder brother, Jean-Francois Alaux (1783-1858), asked him to help with a large "neorama" (a type of Panorama) he was working on. Jean eventually won the Prix de Rome's first prize in 1815, with a work entitled "Briseis weeping over the body of Patroclus", a scene inspired by The Iliad of Homer. He subsequently became a pensionnaire at the French Academy in Rome from 1816 to 1820 (later becoming its director).
Antonio Fontanesi
23 February 1818 - 17 April 1882) was an Italian painter who lived in Meiji period Japan between 1876 and 1878. He introduced European oil painting techniques to Japan, and exerted a significant role in the development of modern Japanese yega (Western style) painting. He is known for his works in the romantic style of the French Barbizon school. Fontanesi was born in Reggio Emilia, Emilia-Romagna, and trained with the landscape painters Prospero Minghetti and Vincenzo Carnevali. From 1841 to 1846 he made theatre sets and began painting landscapes. In 1850, he moved to Geneva, where he stayed until 1865. His main area of interest was landscape painting, which he expanded on after visiting the 1855 Exposition Universelle in Paris. He participated in important artistic exhibitions, displaying his works in Lyon, Turin, Milan, Florence, Genoa and the Triennial Exhibition of Fine Art in Bologna. He was nominated professor at the Academy of Lucca, but moved to Turin when a chair as a landscape professor was created specially for him at the Accademia Albertina in Turin from 1869 to 1876.