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 :. | Money Booth | Juan Sebastian | The Louise Asia gram raises | The Water-seller of Seville | Female Textile |
Related Artists:
Hendrick the Brugghen
1588-1629 Dutch painter and draughtsman. He was, with Gerrit van Honthorst and Dirck van Baburen, one of the leading painters in the group of artists active in Utrecht in the 1620s who came to be known as the UTRECHT CARAVAGGISTI, since they adapted Caravaggio's subject-matter and style to suit the Dutch taste for religious and secular paintings. Ter Brugghen was an important innovator for later Dutch 17th-century genre painting; his recognition as an unorthodox,
Alfred Bastien
(16 September 1873e7 June 1955) was a Belgian artist, academic and soldier. He attended the Academie Royale des Beaux-Arts in Ghent, where he studied with Jean Delvin. He then enrolled in the Academie Royale des Beaux-Arts in Brussels, where he studied with Jean-François Portaels. He won the Prix Godecharle there in 1897. He traveled to Paris, where he enrolled in the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris. He was in Paris when hostilities broke out in what would become the First World War.
Alexandre-Francois Caminade
Alexandre-Francois Caminade (December 14, 1783 - May 1862) was a French painter. Caminade was born and died in Paris. He was a portraitist and a religious painter. He was Jacques Louis David's pupil. See also, Larousse article at Cyclopedia of Painters and Paintings, eds. John Desnison Champlin and Charles Callahan Perkins