Spanish Baroque Era Painter, 1599-1660 Spanish painter. He was one of the most important European artists of the 17th century, spending his career from 1623 in the service of Philip IV of Spain. His early canvases comprised bodegones and religious paintings, but as a court artist he was largely occupied in executing portraits, while also producing some historical, mythological and further religious works. His painting was deeply affected by the work of Rubens and by Venetian artists, especially Titian, as well as by the experience of two trips (1629-31 and 1649-51) to Italy. Under these joint influences he developed a uniquely personal style characterized by very loose, expressive brushwork.  Related Paintings of VELAZQUEZ, Diego Rodriguez de Silva y :. | Detail of Smelt factory | Bishop | Dean | The boy | Filipu |
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Diego Quispe Tito
(1611-1681) was a Peruvian painter. He is considered the leader of the Cuzco School of painting. The son of a noble Inca family, Quispe Tito was born in Cuzco, and worked throughout his life in the district of San Sebastien; his house is still extant, and shows his coat of arms on its door. His earliest signed painting is an Immaculate Conception from 1627, gilded in a fashion typical of the Cuzco school. The work's elongated forms reveal a knowledge of Mannerism; where Quispe Tito learned the style is unknown, but it is hypothesized that he encountered it in the work of Italian Jesuit Bernardo Bitti, who was active at the time in Cuzco. In addition, he is believed to have known Luis de Riaño in his youth, and may have derived some elements of his style from the older artist; de Riaño, a painter from Lima, had trained in the workshop of Angelino Medoro, and so would have provided another source of Italian influence. Quispe Tito also was influenced in his work by engravings from Flanders; indeed, his best-known work, the 1681 Signs of the Zodiac in Cuzco Cathedral, is a series of copies of Flemish engravings in which each zodiac sign is tied to a parable from the life of Christ. These engravings were designed for distribution in Peru, where worship of the sun, moon, and stars was still practiced in some quarters; they were designed to encourage worship of Christ and His miracles in place of the zodiac. A further series, depicting scenes from the life of John the Baptist and dating to 1663, was also produced on Flemish models.
Jean-Honore Fragonard
French Rococo Era Painter, 1732-1806 was a French painter and printmaker whose late Rococo manner was distinguished by remarkable facility, exuberance, and hedonism. One of the most prolific artists active in the last decades of the Ancien Regime, Fragonard produced more than 550 paintings , of which only five are dated. Among his most popular works are genre paintings conveying an atmosphere of intimacy and veiled eroticism. He was born at Grasse, Alpes-Maritimes, the son of François Fragonard, a glover, and Françoise Petit. He was articled to a Paris notary when his father's circumstances became strained through unsuccessful speculations, but showed such talent and inclination for art that he was taken at the age of eighteen to François Boucher, who, recognizing the youth's rare gifts but disinclined to waste his time with one so inexperienced, sent him to Chardin's atelier. Fragonard studied for six months under the great luminist, then returned more fully equipped to Boucher, whose style he soon acquired so completely that the master entrusted him with the execution of replicas of his paintings. Though not yet a pupil of the Academy, Fragonard gained the Prix de Rome in 1752 with a painting of "Jeroboam Sacrificing to the Golden Calf", but before proceeding to Rome he continued to study for three years under Charles-Andre van Loo. In the year preceding his departure he painted the "Christ washing the Feet of the Apostles" now at Grasse cathedral. On September 17, 1756, he took up his abode at the French Academy in Rome, then presided over by Charles-Joseph Natoire. While at Rome, Fragonard contracted a friendship with a fellow painter, Hubert Robert. In 1760, they toured Italy together, executing numerous sketches of local scenery. It was in these romantic gardens, with their fountains, grottos, temples and terraces, that Fragonard conceived the dreams which he was subsequently to render in his art. He also learned to admire the masters of the Dutch and Flemish schools (Rubens, Hals, Rembrandt, Ruisdael), imitating their loose and vigorous brushstrokes. Added to this influence was the deep impression made upon his mind by the florid sumptuousness of Giovanni Battista Tiepolo, whose works he had an opportunity to study in Venice before he returned to Paris in 1761. In 1765 his "Coresus et Callirhoe" secured his admission to the Academy. It was made the subject of a pompous (though not wholly serious) eulogy by Diderot, and was bought by the king, who had it reproduced at the Gobelins factory. Hitherto Fragonard had hesitated between religious, classic and other subjects; but now the demand of the wealthy art patrons of Louis XV's pleasure-loving and licentious court turned him definitely towards those scenes of love and voluptuousness with which his name will ever be associated, and which are only made acceptable by the tender beauty of his color and the virtuosity of his facile brushwork;
Jacob Heinrich Elbfas
Swedish, born circa 1600-1664,was a portrait painter Elbfas was educated in Strasbourg in a tradition drawing back to Renaissance portraits. He established himself in Sweden from 1622 and from 1628 in Stockholm where he became a guild master. During the period 1634-1640 he worked as a court painter for Queen Maria Eleonora. His was frequently employed by the Swedish nobility and his influence on Swedish art was considerable until a new generation of artists were invited by Queen Christina during the 1640s.