1615-1673 Italian Salvator Rosa Galleries Salvatore Rosa (1615 - March 15, 1673) was an Italian Baroque painter, poet and printmaker, active in Naples, Rome and Florence. As a painter, he is best known as an "unorthodox and extravagant" and a "perpetual rebel" proto-Romantic. His life and writings were equally colorful. He continued apprenticeship with Falcone, helping him complete his battlepiece canvases. In that studio, it is said that Lanfranco took notice of his work, and advised him to relocate to Rome, where he stayed from 1634-6. Returning to Naples, he began painting haunting landscapes, overgrown with vegetation, or jagged beaches, mountains, and caves. Rosa was among the first to paint "romantic" landscapes, with a special turn for scenes of picturesque often turbulent and rugged scenes peopled with shepherds, brigands, seamen, soldiers. These early landscapes were sold cheaply through private dealers. This class of paintings peculiarly suited him. He returned to Rome in 1638-39, where he was housed by Cardinal Francesco Maria Brancaccio, bishop of Viterbo. For the Chiesa Santa Maria della Morte in Viterbo, Rosa painted his first and one of his few altarpieces with an Incredulity of Thomas. While Rosa had a facile genius at painting, he pursued a wide variety of arts: music, poetry, writing, etching, and acting. In Rome, he befriended Pietro Testa and Claude Lorraine. During a Roman carnival play he wrote and acted in a masque, in which his character bustled about Rome distributing satirical prescriptions for diseases of the body and more particularly of the mind. In costume, he inveighed against the farcical comedies acted in the Trastevere under the direction of Bernini. While his plays were successful, this also gained him powerful enemies among patrons and artists, including Bernini himself, in Rome. By late 1639, he had had to relocate to Florence, where he stayed for 8 years. He had been in part, invited by a Cardinal Giancarlo de Medici. Once there, Rosa sponsored a combination of studio and salon of poets, playwrights, and painters --the so called Accademia dei Percossi ("Academy of the Stricken"). To the rigid art milieu of Florence, he introduced his canvases of wild landscapes; while influential, he gathered few true pupils. Another painter poet, Lorenzo Lippi, shared with Rosa the hospitality of the cardinal and the same circle of friends. Lippi encouraged him to proceed with the poem Il Malmantile Racquistato. He was well acquainted also with Ugo and Giulio Maffei, and housed with them in Volterra, where he wrote four satires Music, Poetry, Painting and War. About the same time he painted his own portrait, now in the National Gallery, London.  Related Paintings of Salvator Rosa :. | L ombre de Samuel apparaissant a Saul chez la pythonisse d Endor. | Seascape at Sunset | Jason Charming the Dragon, | The Ruined Bridge | self portrait as a philosopher |
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Antoine Vestier
(1740 - 1824) was a French miniaturist and painter of portraits, born at Avallon in Burgundy, who trained in the atelier of Jean-Baptiste Pierre. He showed his work at the Salon de la Correspondance, Paris, before being admitted to the Academie Royale de Peinture et de Sculpture in 1785, when a portrait of the painter Gabriel-François Doyen, pwas his morceau de reception. Among his sitters was the royal beniste, Jean-Henri Riesener (1786, Musee de Versailles).
Jan Mostaert
(c. 1475 -1555/1556) was a Dutch painter of portraits and religious subjects, though his most famous creation was the "West Indies Landscape". Although little is known of him, Mostaert was born and lived in Haarlem for most of his life. He worked as portraitist for Margaret of Austria, Regent of the Netherlands. Much of his work was destroyed in the great fire of Haarlem in 1576, and some paintings once attributed to him are now attributed to Adriaen Isenbrant. Mostaert was born in or about 1475 in Haarlem, Netherlands, to a famous noble family. Said to be handsome, eloquent and polite, Mostaert honed his craft under the guidance of Jacob van Haarlem, who may have actually been the anonymous "Master of the Brunswick Diptych". He is also said to be linked to the early Haarlem School of Painting. Mostaert's name first appeared in city records in 1498, the year he married and bought a house in his birthplace. He is also mentioned in Haarlem archives from 1527 to 1554. In 1500 Mostaert was commissioned to paint the shutters for a receptacle housing the relics of Saint Bavo in the Groote Kerk, Haarlem. From this date he began to be listed in the records of the Haarlem Guild of St. Luke, and continued to be frequently listed until 1549. He became deacon of the painters' guild in 1507, and again in 1543 and 1544. His earliest works are noticeably influenced by Geertgen tot Sint Jans, an earlier Haarlem artist. Some believed that Mostaert was actually apprenticed to tot Sint Jans but it is doubtful that the artist had any apprentices or workshop assistants during his career. From tot Sint Jans, Mostaert adopted a refined style and thoughtful compositions for his works, as well as the stiff, angular look of his figures. St. ChristopherBetween 1510 and 1516 Mostaert developed a delicate style where his doll-like figures inhabited bright, blue-skied landscapes, as for example in his "Adoration of the Magi" (c. 1510-15). His refined brushwork is precise, with an almost religious attention to detail. Also of note is the landscape, which demonstrates his leanings towards more romantic views with expansive hills. During the 1520s Mostaert was also influenced by Joachim Patinir's take on landscapes. Mostaert's "St. Christopher", a painting with a landscape that features a river receding into an expansive and hilly background, was once even attributed to Patinir. Mostaert's portrait work of this earlier period includes a piece entitled "Portrait of Abel van den Coulster" (c. 1500-10), in which an elegant, thin-faced man is situated in equally elegant surroundings. Mostaert was known for copying original portraits for some of his courtly commissions but, as is the case with the "Portrait of Abel", he also painted figures from life and added aristocratic touches. He was known for presenting his portrait sitters in three-quarter-length and placing their hands on cushions.
Berswordt Altar
German Gothic Era Painter, active ca.1400]