French Baroque Era Painter, 1594-1665
French painter and draughtsman, active in Italy. His supreme achievement as a painter lies in his unrivalled but hard-won capacity to subordinate dramatic narrative and the expression of extreme states of human passions to the formal harmony of designs based on the beauty and precision of abstract forms. The development of his art towards this end was focused on the search for a point of equilibrium and synthesis between the forces of the Classical and the Baroque around which most critical debate in Rome was concentrated during the 1630s. Poussin did not aspire to the classicism of Raphael's idealized human forms or Michelangelo's re-embodiment of the physical splendours of the antique world, nor did he attempt to vie with the bravura and energy of Annibale Carracci's treatment of Classical mythology in the Galleria of the Palazzo Farnese in Rome. Equally he was not concerned with the illusionistic effects and heightened emotionalism of Baroque artists such as Pietro da Cortona and Lanfranco. He was concerned above all with interpreting his subject-matter, whether Classical or religious, and telling a story with the greatest possible concentration of emotional response, Related Paintings of POUSSIN, Nicolas :. | Rebecca at the Well st | St Cecilia af | Landscape with the Funeral of Phocion af | The Empire of Flora (detail) afd | The Triumph of Neptune (detail) af | Related Artists:
Nicolaes Knupfer(1609 - 1655) was a Dutch Golden Age painter.
Knepfer was trained in Leipzig, where according to Houbraken he was apprenticed to Emanuel Nysen. He then moved to Magdeburg where he found work making brushes for artists. He stayed there until 1630, and then moved to Utrecht to work with Abraham Bloemaert. He lived with him for two years and then established his own studio in Utrecht, where in 1637 he became a visiting member of the Guild of St. Luke. He worked on the decorations of the castle Kronborg in Denemarken, and painted figures in the landscapes of Jan Both and Jan Baptist Weenix. Knepfer was a successful teacher, whose students were great painters after him, such as Jan Steen, Gabriel Metsu, Ary de Vois, and Pieter Crijnse Volmarijn.
George Gower1540-1596
English
George Gower Gallery
Little is known about his early life except that he was a grandson of Sir John Gower of Stettenham, Yorkshire.
His earliest documented works are the two 1573 companion portraits of Sir Thomas Kytson and his wife Lady Kytson, now in the Tate Gallery in London.
Gower painted a self-portrait in 1579 (right) that shows his coat of arms and his artist's tools of his trade. An allegorical device shows a balance with an artist's dividers outweighing the family coat of arms, "a startling claim in England where a painter was still viewed as little more than an artisan."
The Armada portrait of Elizabeth I by George Gower c. 1588Gower was appointed to the position of Serjeant Painter to Queen Elizabeth in 1581. This allowed him to paint most of England??s aristocracy. The post also made him responsible for painted decoration at the royal residences, and on coaches and furniture. Among his works were a fountain (now destroyed) and the astronomical clock, both at Hampton Court Palace. He also inspected portraits of the Queen by other artists prior to their official release.
Gower's best-known work is the version of the Armada Portrait of Elizabeth now at Woburn Abbey, painted to commemorate the 1588 defeat of the Spanish Armada. (A cut down version of this painting in the National Portrait Gallery (United Kingdom) is attributed to Gower; the "Drake" version is by a different hand.)
michele di matteo lambertiniactive in Bologna 1416-1469