1599-1660,Spanish painter. He was apprenticed to Francisco Herrera the Elder before being trained by Francisco Pacheco. His early works were mostly religious or genre scenes. After arriving in Madrid in 1623, he painted a portrait of Philip IV that won him immediate success and an appointment as court painter. His position gave him access to the royal collections, including works by Titian, who exerted the greatest influence on his style. In his portraits from this period, only the faces and hands of the figures are accentuated, and the dark figures stand out against a light background. A visit to Italy (1629 ?C 31) further developed his style, and on his return to Madrid he entered his most productive period. Velazquez created a new type of informal royal portrait for Philip hunting lodge, and his portraits of court dwarfs display the same discerning eye as those of his royal subjects. On a second visit to Rome (1649 ?C 51) he painted a portrait of Pope Innocent X. The powerful head, brilliant combinations of crimson of the curtain, chair, and cope are painted with fluent technique and almost imperceptible brushstrokes that go far beyond the late manner of Titian and announce the last stage in Velazquez development. This portrait was copied innumerable times and won him immediate and lasting renown in Italy. In his last years he created his masterpiece, Las Meninas (The Maids of Honour, 1656). In this casual scene, the artist is shown painting the king and queen in the presence of the infanta Margarita and her attendants; the nearly life size figures are painted in more or less detail according to their relation to the central figure of the infanta and to the source of light, creating a remarkable illusion of reality never surpassed by Velazquez or any other artist of his age. He is universally acknowledged as one of the giants of Western art.   Related Paintings of Velasquez :. | The spirit of Christ and supervision | Bishop Maximilian | Female Textile | Yage Arab League are many | Carlos Prince Buster |
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Workshop of Anton von Maron
Anton von Maron (January 8, 1733 - March 3, 1808) was an Austrian painter, active in Rome. Von Maron was born in Vienna, but moved at a young age to Rome. There, he studied under Anton Raphael Mengs, and became an accomplished portrait painter. He married a sister of Mengs, Therese Maron, who was a painter in her own right. He lived the rest of his life in Rome, and died there in 1808.
LANFRANCO, Giovanni
Italian painter (b. 1582, Parma, d. 1647, Roma). Italian painter and draughtsman. A major figure in the development of the Roman Baroque in the 1620s, he painted many altarpieces and some cabinet pictures, but was notable above all for a number of dome frescoes that are indebted to the works of Correggio; most celebrated is the Assumption of the Virgin (1625-7) in the dome of S Andrea della Valle, Rome. He also influenced the development of art in Naples, where, between 1634 and 1646, he executed a series of vast fresco commissions that look forward to the art of Luca Giordano and Francesco Solimena. A vast number of Lanfranco's preparatory drawings survive, the majority of which are now in the Museo e Gallerie Nazionali di Capodimonte, Naples. Broadly speaking they are of two types: small (up to 200*250 mm) compositional sketches, either in brown pen, with or without brown wash, on white or beige fine paper, or in red chalk, sometimes with red wash, or, more rarely, in black chalk or a combination of both red and black; and slightly larger
ISENBRANT, Adriaen
Flemish Northern Renaissance Painter, ca.1500-1551