Italian High Renaissance Painter, ca.1485-1576 Italian painter active in Venice. As a young man he was taught by the Bellini family and worked closely with Giorgione. His early works are so similar in style to Giorgione's as to be indistinguishable, but soon after Giorgione's early death Titian established himself as the leading painter of the Republic of Venice. Among his most important religious paintings is the revolutionary and monumental Assumption (1516 ?C 18) for Santa Maria dei Frari, in which the Virgin ascends to heaven in a blaze of colour accompanied by a semicircle of angels. Titian was also interested in mythological themes, and his many depictions of Venus display his work's sheer beauty and inherent eroticism. Bacchus and Ariadne (1520 ?C 23), with its pagan abandon, is one of the greatest works of Renaissance art. Titian was sought after for his psychologically penetrating portraits, which include portrayals of leading Italian aristocrats, religious figures, and Emperor Charles V. He reached the height of his powers in The Rape of Europa (c. 1559 ?C 62), one of several paintings done for Philip II of Spain. He was recognized as supremely gifted in his lifetime, and his reputation has never declined.  Related Paintings of Titian :. | Francois I King of France (mk05) | Sundenfall | Danae | Christ Carrying the Cross | Portrait of a Man |
Related Artists:
Paris Bordone
Italian 1500-1571 Italian painter and draughtsman. He is best known for his strikingly beautiful depictions of women, both in portraits and in cabinet paintings. He also excelled in rendering monumental architectural settings for narrative, both religious and secular, possibly initiating a genre that would find great currency during the mid-16th century, especially in Venice, France and the Netherlands. His favoured media were oil and fresco, the latter being used on both interiors and faades. Although he was not generally sought after by Venetian patrons during his career, as his art was eclipsed by that of Titian, Paolo Veronese and Jacopo Tintoretto, Bordone was regarded in the mid-16th century as an accomplished artist (Pino; Sansovino). He worked for the moneyed lite of northern Italy and Bavaria, for the royalty of France and Poland, and had works commissioned to be sent to Spain and to Flanders. Despite knowledge of the important patrons for whom he worked, the chronology of Bordones oeuvre is by no means clear. Dating on stylistic grounds is confounded by the diverse sources on which he drew, ranging from the Emilian, Lombard and Venetian to the French and northern European, depending on the patron. Due to the ease with which prints circulated during Bordones career, it is difficult to ascertain whether influences were derived at first hand or from printed images. Such difficulties in assigning dates are further exacerbated by his use of the same figure study for numerous paintings evidently executed decades apart. Reliance on the testimony of Vasari, who interviewed Bordone in 1566, in conjunction with the extant documents, the few signed and dated paintings and, to a lesser extent, period fashion provides only a rough outline of his activity. Due to the lack of agreement among scholars regarding chronology, the following account is based mainly on the documentary evidence.
Georges de La Tour
1593-1652 French Georges de La Tour Galleries His early work shows influences from Caravaggio, probably via his Dutch followers, and the genre scenes of cheats??as in The Fortune Teller ??and fighting beggars clearly derive from the Dutch Caravaggisti, and probably also his fellow-Lorrainer, Jacques Bellange. These are believed to date from relatively early in his career. La Tour is best known for the nocturnal light effects which he developed much further than his artistic predecessors had done, and transferred their use in the genre subjects in the paintings of the Dutch Caravaggisti to religious painting in his. Unlike Caravaggio his religious paintings lack dramatic effects. He painted these in a second phase of his style, perhaps beginning in the 1640s, using chiaroscuro, careful geometrical compositions, and very simplified painting of forms. His work moves during his career towards greater simplicity and stillness ?? taking from Caravaggio very different qualities than Jusepe de Ribera and his Tenebrist followers did. He often painted several variations on the same subjects, and his surviving output is relatively small. His son Etienne was his pupil, and distinguishing between their work in versions of La Tour's compositions is difficult. The version of the Education of the Virgin, in the Frick Collection in New York is an example, as the Museum itself admits. Another group of paintings (example left), of great skill but claimed to be different in style to those of de La Tour, have been attributed to an unknown "Hurdy-gurdy Master". All show older male figures (one group in Malibu includes a female), mostly solitary, either beggars or saints. After his death in 1652, La Tour's work was largely forgotten until rediscovered by Hermann Voss, a German scholar, in 1915. In 1935 an exhibition in Paris began the revival in interest among a wider public. In the twentieth century a number of his works were identified once more, and forgers tried to help meet the new demand; many aspects of his œuvre remain controversial among art historians.
May Wilson Preston
American , 1873-1949