Renoir Art Blog

Lacking the favor of the king, El Greco was obliged to remain in Toledo, where he had been received in 1577 as a great painter. According to Hortensio Félix Paravicino, a 17th-century Spanish preacher and poet, “Crete gave him life and the painter’s craft, Toledo a better homeland, where through Death he began to achieve eternal life.” In 1585, he appears to have hired an assistant, Italian painter Francisco Preboste, and to have established a workshop capable of producing altar frames and statues as well as paintings. On March 12, 1586 he obtained the commission for The Burial of the Count of Orgaz, now his best-known work. The decade 1597 to 1607 was a period of intense activity for El Greco. During these years he received several major commissions, and his workshop created pictorial and sculptural ensembles for a variety of religious institutions. Among his major commissions of this period were three altars for the Chapel of San José in Toledo (1597–1599); three paintings (1596–1600) for the Colegio de Doña María de Aragon, an Augustinian monastery in Madrid, and the high altar, four lateral altars, and the painting St. Ildefonso for the Capilla Mayor of the Hospital de la Caridad (Hospital of Charity) at Illescas (1603–1605).The minutes of the commission of The Virgin of the Immaculate Conception (1607–1613), which were composed by the personnel of the municipality, describe El Greco as “one of the greatest men in both this kingdom and outside it”.

Between 1607 and 1608 El Greco was involved in a protracted legal dispute with the authorities of the Hospital of Charity at Illescas concerning payment for his work, which included painting, sculpture and architecture; this and other legal disputes contributed to the economic difficulties he experienced towards the end of his life.In 1608, he received his last major commission: for the Hospital of Saint John the Baptist in Toledo.

El Greco made Toledo his home. Surviving contracts mention him as the tenant from 1585 onwards of a complex consisting of three apartments and twenty-four rooms which belonged to the Marquis de Villena. It was in these apartments, which also served as his workshop, that he passed the rest of his life, painting and studying. He lived in considerable style, sometimes employing musicians to play whilst he dined. It is not confirmed whether he lived with his Spanish female companion, Jerónima de Las Cuevas, whom he probably never married. She was the mother of his only son, Jorge Manuel, born in 1578, who also became a painter, assisted his father, and continued to repeat his compositions for many years after he inherited the studio. In 1604, Jorge Manuel and Alfonsa de los Morales gave birth to El Greco’s grandson, Gabriel, who was baptized by Gregorio Angulo, governor of Toledo and a personal friend of the artist.

Matthias Grünewald or “Mathis” (as first name), “Gothart” or “Neithardt” (as surname), (c. 1470 – August 31, 1528), was an important German Renaissance painter of religious works, who ignored Renaissance classicism to continue the expressive and intense style of late medieval Central European art into the 16th century.

Only ten paintings—several consisting of many panels—and thirty-five drawings survive, all religious, although many others were lost at sea in the Baltic on their way to Sweden as war booty. His reputation was obscured until the late nineteenth century, and many of his paintings were attributed to Albrecht Dürer, who is now seen as his stylistic antithesis. His largest and most famous work is the Isenheim Altarpiece in Colmar, Alsace.

The details of his life are unusually unclear for a painter of his significance at this date, despite the fact that his commissions show that he had reasonable recognition in his own lifetime. His real name remains uncertain, but was definitely not Grünewald; this was a mistake by the 17th-century writer, Joachim von Sandrart, who confused him with another artist. He is documented as “Master Mathis” or “Mathis the Painter” (Mathis der Maler), and as using as surname both Gothart and Neithardt – this last may have been his surname, or more likely that of his wife. He was probably born in Würzburg in the 1470s. It is possible he was a pupil of Hans Holbein the Elder. From about 1500 he seems to have lived at Seligenstadt, when not working elsewhere.

His first dated painting is probably in Munich, dated 1503 on a much later note which apparently records an older inscription. From about 1510 to 1525 he served in the Rhineland as court painter, architect—or at least supervisor of building works—and hydraulic engineer to two successive Prince-Archbishops of Mainz, Uriel von Gemmingen and Albert of Brandenburg (whose face he used for a St Erasmus in Munich). He left this post possibly because of sympathies either with the Peasants’ War, in which Seligenstadt was particularly caught up, or Lutheranism (he had some Lutheran pamphlets and papers at his death). Grünewald died in Halle, probably in 1528, or perhaps 1531.

Art historian Max Dvořák was the first scholar to connect El Greco’s art with Mannerism and Antinaturalism.Modern scholars characterize El Greco’s theory as “typically Mannerist” and pinpoint its sources in the Neo-Platonism of the Renaissance. Jonathan Brown believes that El Greco endeavored to create a sophisticated form of art;according to Nicholas Penny “once in Spain, El Greco was able to create a style of his own — one that disavowed most of the descriptive ambitions of painting”.

In his mature works El Greco demonstrated a characteristic tendency to dramatize rather than to describe.The strong spiritual emotion transfers from painting directly to the audience. According to Pacheco, El Greco’s perturbed, violent and at times seemingly careless-in-execution art was due to a studied effort to acquire a freedom of style.El Greco’s preference for exceptionally tall and slender figures and elongated compositions, which served both his expressive purposes and aesthetic principles, led him to disregard the laws of nature and elongate his compositions to ever greater extents, particularly when they were destined for altarpieces. The anatomy of the human body becomes even more otherworldly in El Greco’s mature works; for The Virgin of the Immaculate Conception El Greco asked to lengthen the altarpiece itself by another 1.5 feet (0.46 m) “because in this way the form will be perfect and not reduced, which is the worst thing that can happen to a figure’”. A significant innovation of El Greco’s mature works is the interweaving between form and space; a reciprocal relationship is developed between the two which completely unifies the painting surface. This interweaving would re-emerge three centuries later in the works of Cézanne and Picasso.

Another characteristic of El Greco’s mature style is the use of light. As Jonathan Brown notes, “each figure seems to carry its own light within or reflects the light that emanates from an unseen source”. Fernando Marias and Agustín Bustamante García, the scholars who transcribed El Greco’s handwritten notes, connect the power that the painter gives to light with the ideas underlying Christian Neo-Platonism.

Francesco Guardi was born in Venice into a family of lesser nobility from Trentino. His father Domenico (born in 1678) and his brothers Niccolò and Gian Antonio were also painters, the latter inheriting the family workshop after the father’s death in 1716. They probably all contributed as a team to some of the larger commissions later attributed to Francesco. His sister Maria Cecilia married the pre-eminent Veneto-European painter of his epoch, Giovanni Battista Tiepolo.

In 1735, Guardi moved to the workshop of Michele Marieschi, where he remained until 1743. His first certain works is from 1738, for a parish at Vigo d’Anuania, in Trentino. In this period he worked alongside his better-known brother, Gian Antonio. The first work signed by Francesco is a Saint Adoring the Eucarist (circa 1739).

His works in this period included landscapes as well as figure representations. His early vedutas show influence both from Canaletto and Luca Carlevarijs. On February 15, 1757 he married Maria Mattea Pagani, the daughter of painter Matteo Pagani. In the same year his brother Gian Antonio died and his first son, Vincenzo, was born. His second son, Giacomo, was born in 1764.

In 1763 he worked in Murano, in the church of San Pietro Martire, finishing a Miracle of a Dominican Saint clearly influenced by Alessandro Magnasco in its quasi-expressionistic style.

Francesco Guardi’s most important later works include the Doge’s Feasts, a series of twelve canvases celebrating the ceremonies held in 1763 for the election of Doge Alvise IV Mocenigo. In his later years, Canaletto’s influence on his art diminished, as showed by the Piazzetta in the Ca’ d’Oro of Venice. In circa 1778, he painted the severe Holy Trinity Appearing to Sts. Peter and Paul in the parish church of Roncegno.

In 1782 Guardi was commissioned by the Venetian government six canvases to celebrate the visit of the Russian Archdukes in the city, of which only two remain, and two others for that of Pope Pius VI. On September 12 of that year he was admitted to the Fine Art Academy of Venice.

A stronger attention to colours is present in late works such as the Concerto of 80 Orphans of 1782, now in Munich, in the Façade of Palace with Staircase in the Accademia Carrara of Bergamo.

Guardi died at Venice in 1793.

Only religious works are included in his small surviving corpus, the most famous being the Isenheim Altarpiece, completed 1515, now in the Musée d’Unterlinden, Colmar. Its nine images on twelve panels contain scenes of the Annunciation, Mary bathing Christ, Crucifixion, Entombment of Christ, Resurrection, Temptation of St. Anthony and saints. As was common in the preceding century, there are different views, depending on the arrangement of the wings; but the three views available here are exceptional. The third view discloses a carved and gilded wood altarpiece in the centre. As well as being by far his greatest surviving work, the altarpiece contains most of his surviving painting by area, being 2.65 metres high and over 5 metres wide at its fullest extent.

His other works are in Germany, except for a small Crucifixion in Washington and another in Basel, Switzerland. He was asked in about 1510 to paint four saints in grisaille for the outside of the wings of Dürer’s Heller Altarpiece in Frankfurt. Dürer’s work was destroyed by fire and only survives in copies, but fortunately the wings have survived. There are also the late Tauberbischofsheim altarpiece in Karlsruhe, and the Establishment of the Santa Maria Maggiore in Rome (1517-1519), Freiburg, Augustinermuseum. A large panel of Saint Erasmus and Saint Maurice in Munich probably dates from 1521-24, and was apparently part of a larger altarpiece project, the rest of which has not survived. Other works are in Munich, Karlsruhe, and Rhineland churches. Altogether four somber and awe-filled Crucifixions survive. The visionary character of his work, with its expressive colour and line, is in stark contrast to Albrecht Dürer’s works. His paintings are known for their dramatic forms, vivid colors, and depiction of light.

Like most Hudson River School artists, Gifford traveled extensively to find scenic landscapes to sketch and paint. In addition to exploring New England, upstate New York and New Jersey, Gifford made extensive trips abroad. He first traveled to Europe from 1855 to 1857, to study European art and sketch subjects for future paintings. During this trip Gifford also met and traveled extensively with Albert Bierstadt and Worthington Whittredge.

In 1858, he traveled to Vermont, “apparently” with his friend and fellow painter Jerome Thompson. Details of their visit were carried in the contemporary Home Journal. Both artists submitted paintings of Mount Mansfield, Vermont’s tallest peak, to the National Academy of Design’s annual show in 1859. (See “Mt. Mansfield paintings controversy” below.) ‘Thompson’s work, “Belated Party on Mansfield Mountain,” is now owned by the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York,’ according to the report. ^[4]

Thereafter, he served in the Union Army as a corporal in the 7th Regiment of the New York Militia upon the outbreak of the Civil War. A few of his canvases belonging to New York City’s Seventh Regiment and the Union League Club of New York[1] are testament to that troubled time.

During the summer of 1867, Gifford spent most of his time painting on the New Jersey coast, specifically at Sandy Hook and Long Branch, according to an auction Web site. “The Mouth of the Shrewsbury River,” one noted canvas from the period, is a dramatic scene depicting a series of telegraph poles extending into an atmospheric distance underneath ominous storm clouds.

Another journey, this time with Jervis McEntee and his wife, took him across Europe in 1868. Leaving the McEntees behind, Gifford traveled to the Middle East, including Egypt in 1869. Then in the summer of 1870 Gifford ventured to the Rocky Mountains in the western United States, this time with Worthington Whittredge and John Frederick Kensett. At least part of the 1870 travels were as part of a Hayden Expedition, led by Ferdinand Vandeveer Hayden.

Georg Flegel (1566 – 23 March, 1638, Frankfurt-am-Main) was a German painter, best known for his still life works.Flegel was born in Olmütz (Olomouc), Moravia. Around 1580 he moved to Vienna, where he became the assistant to Lucas van Valckenborch I, a painter and draughtsman. Flegel and his employer later moved to Frankfurt, which at the time was an important art-dealing city. As an assistant, he inserted items such as fruit, flowers, and table utensils into Valckenborch’s works.

In a period of about 30 years (c. 1600-1630), he produced 110 watercolor pictures, mostly still life images which often depicted tables set for meals and covered with food, flowers, and the occasional animal. Among his students were his own two sons, Friedrich (1596/1597-1616) and Jacob (probably Leonhard, 1602-1623), as well as the artist Jacob Marrel.

References

• Anne-Dore Ketelsen-Volkhardt: Georg Flegel. 1566 – 1638.. Deutscher Kunstverlag, München/Berlin 2003, ISBN 3422063781
• Kurt Wettengl: Georg Flegel (1566 – 1638), Stilleben : [Publikation zur Ausstellung "Georg Flegel (1566 - 1638), Stilleben" des Historischen Museums Frankfurt am Main in Zusammenarbeit mit der Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt vom 18. Dezember bis 13. Februar 1994]. Hatje, Stuttgart 1993, ISBN 3-7757-0472-8
• Parrots in still life painting (in German

Born on Sept. 5, 1774, in Greifswald, Caspar David Friedrich was the son of a soap manufacturer. His mother died when he was 7; and when he was 13, his favorite brother died while the two boys were ice-skating, for which Caspar David suffered a lifelong sense of guilt. The painter’s familiarity with death and his melancholy disposition were further affirmed by a suicide attempt.

Friedrich began studying drawing in 1788; in 1794 he entered the art academy in Copenhagen, one of the most liberal in Europe, notably in its unusual emphasis on drawing from nature rather than from older art. His teachers were masters of Danish neoclassicism, but they also transmitted the concepts of early English romanticism, notably Henry Fuseli’s theories, before Friedrich left for Dresden in 1798.

Friedrich’s early landscapes and engravings are much like his teachers’ works, but constant sketching after nature released him from neoclassic formulations, and a careful realistic rendering asserted itself in vast, spacious landscapes at times populated by small isolated figures or heroic ruins. By 1806 he had developed an independent formal and iconological vocabulary.

Pieta by Cosme Tura

1474
Oil on panel, 44,5 x 86 cm
Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna

Portrait of a Young Man by Cosme Tura

1450-52
Tempera on panel, 30 x 21 cm
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Saint Jerome by Cosme Tura

1474
Oil on panel, 100 x 57 cm
National Gallery, London

After Dinner at Ornans by Gustave Courbet

1849
Oil on canvas, 195 x 257 cm
Musee des Beaux-Arts, Lille

Thanks to his friends, Courbet was finally able to realize his dream of painting a large-scale composition that would cement his reputation. Exhibited at the 1849 Salon, After Dinner at Ornans is set around a table in Caravaggesque fashion. It shows Courbet’s father, R間is, to the left, along with three regular visitors to the household: Urbain Cuenot in the background, propped on his elbow, Adolphe Marlet with his back turned and lighting a pipe, and Alphonse Promayet playing his instrument. The painting is life size and combines a strongly rural atmosphere with a touch of willful sentimentality. Widely praised, it was purchased by the French State in the person of Charles Blanc, the Director of the Beaux-Arts.

This genre scene of imposing dimensions testifies to the debt Courbet owed to an entire tradition of realistic French painting, from the Le Nain brothers to Chardin. Presenting an image of country life at once serene, reassuring and musical, it gave him his first success at the Salon. It earned Courbet a gold medal, which meant that he no longer needed to submit his paintings to the Salon jury.

St Peter and St John the Baptist (Griffoni Polyptych) by Francesco del Cossa

1473
Tempera and gold on panel, 112 x 55 cm
Pinacoteca di Brera, Milan

The reconstruction of the polyptych, dismembered in the 18th century, is not unambiguous. It seems certain that the central panel was the painting of St Vincent Ferrer while on his sides were St Peter and St John the Baptist. Paintings of St Lucy and St John the Baptist were probably located on the upper part of the sides while a Crucifixion tondo was in the upper central position. The predella was executed by Ercole de’ Roberti.

Burial at Ornans by Gustave Courbet

1849-50
Oil on canvas, 315 x 668 cm
Musee d’Orsay, Paris

Courbet had no sooner finished The Stonebreakers than he began the epic Burial at Ornans and had to invite half the village into his studio to complete it. Courbet could not reconstitute the entire scene in his studio for lack of space; there were simply too many “walk-on parts” to allow this. “Fifty life-size figures, with a background of landscape and sky, on a canvas twenty feet wide and ten feet high,” he proudly announced to Champfleury; this was the format customarily used for battle-scenes. In the Salon entry registers, Courbet noted that it was “A picture of human figures, a historical record of a burial at Ornans.” He had some hesitations about how to place the cortege relative to the tomb, but the definitive composition showed a country burial at the moment of leave-taking. The men, for the most part, take this fairly calmly but the grief in the women is more melodramatic, while the cure and the pallbearers wear an expression of routine detachment.

Fall of Phaeton by Sebastiano Ricci

1703-04
Oil on canvas
Museo Civico, Belluno

In Greek mythology Phaeton was the son of Helios, the sun-god. Helios drove his golden chariot, a ‘quadriga’ yoked to a team of four horses abreast, daily across the sky. Phaeton persuaded his unwilling father to allow him for one day to drive his chariot across the skies. Because he had no skill he was soon in trouble, and the climax came when he met the fearful Scorpion of the zodiac. He dropped the reins, the horses bolted and caused the earth itself to catch fire. In the nick of time Jupiter, father of the goods, put a stop to his escapade with a thunderbolt which wrecked the chariot and sent Phaeton hurtling down in flames into the River Eridanus (according to some, the Po). He was buried by nymphs. Phaetons’s reckless attempt to drive his father’s chariot made him the symbol of all who aspire to that which lies beyond their capabilities.

Undoubtedly Sebastiano Ricci’s dashing virtuoso technique had its roots in the Baroque. In his hands, however, it was translated into an explosive, light-hearted energy.

Dream of Aesculapius by Sebastiano Ricci

c. 1710
Oil on canvas, 62 x 101 cm
Gallerie dell’Accademia, Venice

After a long period of study of the greatest figures of late seventeenth century Italian painting, from Pietro da Cortona and Baciccio in Rome to the Carracci in Bologna, Luca Giordano in Florence and Magnasco in Milan, Sebastiano Ricci achieved a voice of his own characterized by a sparklingly fluent Rococo brilliance which was to gain the artist acceptance in London (1712-1716), and Paris (1716). Especially in paintings of small dimensions Sebastiano Ricci freed himself from all trace of his complex artistic training. Thus in the Dream of Aesculapius every detail of the bed chamber is rendered in the dancing rhythm of his line and the free and easy pictorial style. In the subdued glow of the setting, the scene seems like an animated ballet, fixed for ever in the wonder of bright, spirited colour.

Lady in a Brown Robe by George Romney

c. 1785
Oil on canvas, 65 x 65 cm
Tate Gallery, London

Other works by the artist

Adoration of the Shepherds by Bronzino

1535-40
Oil on wood, 65,3 x 46,7 cm
Museum of Fine Arts, Budapest

This poetic painting was comissioned by Filippo d’Averardo Salviati.

Allegorical Portrait of Dante by Bronzino

c. 1530
Oil on wood, 127 x 120 cm
National Gallery of Art, Washington

This is one of Bronzino’s finest works from the early 1530s. It shows the painter’s admiration for the famous poet. The book in Dante’s hand is open at the introduction to Canto XXV of the Paradise.

Allegory of Happiness by Bronzino

1564
Oil on copper, 40 x 30 cm
Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence

The painting was commissioned by the Prince Regent Francesco de’ Medici.

This complex allegory represents Happiness (in the centre) with Cupid, flanked by Justice and Prudence. At her feet are Time and Fortune, with the wheel of destiny and the enemies of peace lying humiliated on the ground. Above the head of Happiness is Fame sounding a trumpet, and Glory holding a laurel garland. This Happiness, with the cornucopia, is a triumph of pink and blue; the naked bodies of the figures are smooth, almost stroked by the colour as if they were precious stones – round and well-defined those of the young women, haggard and leaden that of the old man.

Bia, The Illegitimate Daughter of Cosimo I de Medici by Bronzino

c. 1542
Oil on wood, 63 x 48 cm
Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence

The painting portrays Bia, one of the two illegitimate daughters of Cosimo I, who died in 1542 when she was only five years old. It is one of the loveliest portraits executed by Bronzino for the Medici family. The girl, who wears a medallion with the profile of Cosimo around her neck, is portrayed with an expression of lucid fixity, in perfect accord with the enchanted happiness of childhood, and her very slight smile creates a magical air of suspense. The background, abstract as in many other portraits by Bronzino, is of an almost enamelled lapis lazuli.

Summer by Giuseppe Arcimboldo

1573
Oil on canvas, 76 x 64 cm
Musée du Louvre, Paris

The painting is one of the series representing the four seasons, all in the Louvre. There exists several other versions of the series in other museums (e.g. in Vienna).

The Fire by Giuseppe Arcimboldo

1566
Oil on wood, 66,5 x 51 cm
Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna

The painting is one of the series representing the four elements

Altarpiece of the Church Fathers by Michael Pacher

c. 1483
Wood, 212 x 200 cm (central), 216 x 91 cm (each side)
Alte Pinakothek, Munich

The picture shows the internal panels of the Altarpiece of the Doctors of the Church: Sts Augustine and Gregory on the central panel, Sts Jerome and Ambrose on the side panels.

The Altarpiece of the Church Fathers was created in 1483 for the Neustift Monastery near Brixen. With it Pacher reached a point at which the borders between painting and sculpture in the north were no longer clearly distinct, the altarpiece translates the subject of a carved shrine into panel painting. It thereby follows on from Rogier van der Weyden’s Deposition from the Cross (Prado, Madrid), but goes far beyond the earlier painting in its optical missing of the two genres.

The altarpiece is a depiction of the four great Fathers of the Church. On the far left, Jerome is portrayed as a cardinal with the lion from whose paw he drew the thorn. Next comes Augustine, accompanied by a child in a reference to one of the legends surrounding his life: one day by walking by the sea sunk in thought, the saint came across a child scooping up water with a spoon. In reply to his enquiry as to the sense of his activity, the child replied that it was just as pointless as Augustine’s own attempts to understand the holy essence of the Trinity with his rational mind. Third comes Pope Gregory the Great, who is seen delivering Emperor Trajan from Purgatory, and finally, on the right, the archbishop Ambrose, busy writing. The dove of Holy Ghost appears beside all four saints as a symbol of their divine inspiration.

The foreshortened floor tiles combine with the apparently projecting baldachins to confuse the eye, as real and pictorial space seem to overlap, The virtuosity of the foreshortening is not matched by the modelling of the figures, however, who acquire their volume primarily from the suggestive power of the vaulted canopy above them.

Painting: Waterloo Bridge, overcast

Artist: Claude Monet

Medium: Oil on canvas

Size: 65.5 x 100.5 cm

Location: Ordrupgaard Museum

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Monet Painting The Bridge over the Water-Lily Pond

Painting: Water-Lily Pond, Symphony in Rose

Artist: Claude Monet

Year: 1900

Medium: oil on canvas

Size: 90 x 100 cm

Location: Musee d Orsay, Paris France.

The appearance of water irises in the foreground indicates that the painter was not in a boat but on terra firma, where the other 1900 views of the japanese footbridge would be painted.

“Whereas you are philosophically seeking the world in itself, I am simply focusing my efforts on a maximurm of appearences in close correlations with unknown realities.”
Claude Monet

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