Flemish Baroque Era Painter, 1577-1640 Peter Paul Rubens (June 28, 1577 ?C May 30, 1640) was a prolific seventeenth-century Flemish Baroque painter, and a proponent of an exuberant Baroque style that emphasized movement, color, and sensuality. He is well-known for his Counter-Reformation altarpieces, portraits, landscapes, and history paintings of mythological and allegorical subjects. In addition to running a large studio in Antwerp which produced paintings popular with nobility and art collectors throughout Europe, Rubens was a classically-educated humanist scholar, art collector, and diplomat who was knighted by both Philip IV, king of Spain, and Charles I, king of England. Rubens was a prolific artist. His commissioned works were mostly religious subjects, "history" paintings, which included mythological subjects, and hunt scenes. He painted portraits, especially of friends, and self-portraits, and in later life painted several landscapes. Rubens designed tapestries and prints, as well as his own house. He also oversaw the ephemeral decorations of the Joyous Entry into Antwerp by the Cardinal-Infante Ferdinand in 1635. His drawings are mostly extremely forceful but not detailed; he also made great use of oil sketches as preparatory studies. He was one of the last major artists to make consistent use of wooden panels as a support medium, even for very large works, but he used canvas as well, especially when the work needed to be sent a long distance. For altarpieces he sometimes painted on slate to reduce reflection problems. His fondness of painting full-figured women gave rise to the terms 'Rubensian' or 'Rubenesque' for plus-sized women. The term 'Rubensiaans' is also commonly used in Dutch to denote such women.  Related Paintings of Peter Paul Rubens :. | Marchesa Brigida Spinola Doria | Arachne Punished by Minerva (mk27) | The queen with the Captain of Lush | Christ and Saint John with Angels | The Rape of the Daughters of Leucippus |
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Paul Berthon
A truly gifted illustrator and poster artist , French , 1872-1909 French designer and lithographer. He began his training in Villefranche, where he studied painting, and in 1893 he moved to Paris, entering the Ecole Normale d'Enseignement du Dessin. There he became a pupil and disciple of Eug?ne-Samuel Grasset, the Professor of Decorative Arts, and was also influenced by Luc Olivier Merson. Berthon's main output consisted of posters and decorative panels. However, he also produced bookbindings and furniture designs, both of which he exhibited at the Salon in 1895; designs for ceramics for Villeroy & Boch in the late 1890s; and a few designs for the covers of such magazines as L'Image (July 1897) and Poster (May 1899). His work is in an Art Nouveau style, and he adopted that movement's plant and figural motifs, especially the motif of the femme fatale, and also its long sinuous lines.
Leo von Klenze
German Architect and Painter, 1784-1864,was a German neoclassicist architect, painter and writer. Court architect of Bavarian King Ludwig I, Leo von Klenze was one of the most prominent representatives of Greek revival style. Von Klenze studied architecture in Berlin and Paris. Between 1808 and 1813 he was a court architect of Jerome Bonaparte, King of Westphalia. Later he moved to Bavaria and in 1816 began to work as court architect of Ludwig I. The King's passion for Hellenism shaped the architectural style of von Klenze. He built many neoclassical buildings in Munich, including the Ruhmeshalle and Monopteros temple. On Konigsplatz he designed probably the best known modern Hellenistic architectural ensemble. Near Regensburg he built the Walhalla temple, named after Valhalla, the home of gods in Norse mythology. When Greece won its independence, Ludwig I's son Otto became the country's first king. Von Klenze was invited to Athens to submit plans of city reconstruction in the style of Ancient Greece. Russian Emperor Nicholas I commissioned von Klenze to design a building for the New Hermitage, a public museum that housed Greek, Roman, and Egyptian antiquities. Von Klenze also designed and arranged museum galleries in Munich, including the Glyptothek and Alte Pinakothek. Von Klenze was not only an architect, but also an accomplished painter and draughtsman. In many of his paintings ancient buildings were depicted. Those served as models for his own architectural projects. Klenze studied ancient architecture during his travels to Italy and Greece. He also participated in excavations of ancient buildings in Athens and submitted projects for the restoration of the Acropolis. Klenze collected works of important contemporary German painters. He sold his collection, including 58 landscapes and genre paintings, to King Ludwig I in 1841.
Emma Brownlow King
British, 1832-1905