Italian Baroque Era Painter, 1577-1621 was an Italian portrait painter of the late Florentine Mannerist school. Allori was born at Florence and received his first lessons in painting from his father, Alessandro Allori, but becoming dissatisfied with the hard anatomical drawing and cold coloring of the latter, he entered the studio of Gregorio Pagani (1558-1605) who was one of the leaders of the late Florentine school, which sought to unite the rich coloring of the Venetians with the Florentine attention to drawing. Allori also appears to have worked under Cigoli. His pictures are distinguished by their close adherence to nature and the delicacy and technical perfection of their execution. His technical skill is shown by the fact that several copies he made of Correggio's works were thought to be duplicates by Correggio himself. His extreme fastidiousness limited the number of his works. Several specimens are to be seen at Florence and elsewhere. The finest of his works is his Judith with the Head of Holofernes. It exists in two copies in the Pitti Palace in Florence and in the Queen's Gallery in London.  Related Paintings of Cristofano Allori :. | Judith with the Head of Holofernes | Judith with the Head of Holofernes | Portrait of a Man in Black | Judith with the Head of Holofernes | Cosimo II |
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Philip Reinagle
1802-1835 British Philip Reinagle Gallery Philip Reinagle entered the schools of the Royal Academy in 1769, and afterwards became a pupil of Allan Ramsay (1713-1784), whom he assisted in the numerous portraits of George III and Queen Charlotte. He exhibited first at the Royal Academy in 1773, sending portraits almost exclusively until 1785, when the monotonous work of producing replicas of royal portraits appears to have given him a distaste for portraiture, and to have led him to abandon it for animal painting. He became very successful in his treatment of sporting dogs, especially spaniels, of birds, and of dead game. In 1787, however, he sent to the academy a 'View taken from Brackendale Hill, Norfolk,' and from that time his exhibited works were chiefly landscapes. He was elected an associate of the Royal Academy in 1787, but did not become an academician until 1812, when he presented as his diploma picture 'An Eagle and a Vulture disputing with a Hyaena'. He likewise exhibited frequently at the British Institution. Reinagle was also an accomplished copyist of the Dutch masters, and his reproductions of the cattle-pieces and landscapes of Paul Potter, Ruysdael, Hobbema, Berchem, Wouwerman, Adnaan van de Velde, Karel Dujardin, and others have often been passed off as originals. He also made some of the drawings for Robert John Thornton's New Illustration of the Sexual System of Linnaeus, 1799-1807, and for his Philosophy of Botany, 1809-10 ; but his best drawings for book illustration were those of dogs for William Taplin's Sportsman's Cabinet, 1803, which were admirably engraved by John Scott.[1] Reinagle died at 5 York Place, Chelsea, London, on 27 Nov. 1833, aged 84. A drawing by him, 'Fox-hunting the Death', is in the collection of the Victoria and Albert Museum. Reinagle's daughter Frances Arabella was married to John Levett-Yeats, grandson of the English merchant and planter Francis Levett. His son, Ramsey Richard Reingate, was also an artist, and followed his father's style.
James Seymour
British Painter , ca.1702-1752 English painter and draughtsman. The son of James Seymour (d 1739), a dealer in pictures and precious metals, Seymour was among the first English painters to specialize exclusively in sporting subject-matter. Though he possibly received some informal drawing instruction from the topographer Francis Place, Seymour was essentially a self-taught artist whose education was based on the study of pictures that passed through his father's hands; one of his earliest known works is a sketch of a horse's head after van Dyck (sold London, Christie's, 16 June 1970). His early 'genius to drawing of horses' was, according to George Vertue, compromised by 'modish extravagances' through living 'gay high and loosely' and because he 'never studied enough to paint or colour well'. Elsewhere, however, it was recorded that by 1739 he was 'reckoned the finest draughtsman in his way [of horses, hounds etc.] in the whole world' (Universal Spectator, 1739), and he was certainly preferred to his chief rival, John Wootton, by many sporting patrons. Among his employers was William Jolliffe MP, of Ammerdown. Though many of his paintings are either derivative of Wootton or simply inept, or both, others are characterized by a self-conscious stylistic naivety in which meticulous attention to detail and eerily static compositions combine to create curiously memorable images of some apparent sophistication.
Francesco Curradi
Italian Baroque Era Painter, 1570-1661 son of Taddeo Curradi. He produced many devotional works and had a large clientele. At their best, the works are distinguished by lucid draughtsmanship, simple compositions and elegant, melancholy figures. Curradi was trained in the studio of Giovan Battista Naldini and in 1590 matriculated from the Accademia del Disegno, Florence. His first independent works include a Virgin and Child with Saints (1597; Volterra, S Lino) and a Birth of the Virgin (1598; Volterra Cathedral), both signed and dated. These paintings reflect the new clarity and directness introduced into Florentine painting by such artists as Santi di Tito and Jacopo Ligozzi. Subsequent works include a Crucifixion (1600) and a Virgin and Saints (1602; both Legnaia, S Angelo). In these the influence of Naldini yielded to that of Lodovico Cigoli and his circle, while the mildness of expression in the figures was inspired by Domenico Passignano. An album of 87 red chalk drawings, with scenes from the Life of St Mary Magdalene dei Pazzi (1606; Florence, convent of the Carmelites at Careggi) distinguished by their precision and clear, characteristically Florentine compositions, contributed to the iconography of this popular Counter-Reformation saint. In 1607 Curradi was commissioned to portray her mortal remains, and this painting, together with the drawings,