Italian 1494-1557 Jacopo Pontormo Galleries Italian painter and draughtsman. He was the leading painter in mid-16th-century Florence and one of the most original and extraordinary of Mannerist artists. His eccentric personality, solitary and slow working habits and capricious attitude towards his patrons are described by Vasari; his own diary, which covers the years 1554-6, further reveals a character with neurotic and secretive aspects. Pontormo enjoyed the protection of the Medici family throughout his career but, unlike Agnolo Bronzino and Giorgio Vasari, did not become court painter. His subjective portrait style did not lend itself to the state portrait. He produced few mythological works and after 1540 devoted himself almost exclusively to religious subjects. His drawings, mainly figure studies in red and black chalk, are among the highest expressions of the great Florentine tradition of draughtsmanship; close to 400 survive, forming arguably the most important body of drawings by a Mannerist painter. His highly personal style was much influenced by Michelangelo, though he also drew on northern art, primarily the prints of Albrecht Derer.  Related Paintings of Jacopo Pontormo :. | St Quentin | Lady with a Basket of Spindles | The birth of the Baptist | Portrat des Niccolo Ardinghelli | generation Prevlaka and Tolstoy |
Related Artists:
Jan Weissenbruch
painted Johan Hendrik Louis Meijer in 1850 - 1866
John Downman
English Painter, ca.1750-1824, English painter and draughtsman. He became a pupil of Benjamin West in 1768 and entered the Royal Academy Schools, London, the following year. In 1770 and 1772 he exhibited portraits at the Royal Academy and showed his first subject picture in 1773. He left for a period of study in Italy and was in Rome with Joseph Wright of Derby from 1773 to 1774. When he next exhibited at the Royal Academy (1777) he was living in Cambridge, but from 1778 to 1804 his considerable annual contribution to the Academy exhibitions was sent from various London addresses. His very popular small portraits were often shown in groups of six or nine. His occasional subject pictures were based on themes from mythology, Classical history, poetry and the theatre. They included a scene from As You Like It (untraced) painted for John Boydell's Shakespeare Gallery. Downman became ARA in 1795 and travelled widely in later life, marrying in Exeter in 1806 and sending works to the Royal Academy (1805-12 and 1816-19) from all over the country.
Willem Pieterszoon Buytewech
(1591/1592, Rotterdam - September 23, 1624, Rotterdam) was a Dutch painter, draughtsman and etcher of the Golden Age. He is often considered the "inventor" of Dutch genre painting. For his preference of irony, his contemporaries named him Gheestige Willem (Jolly or spiritual William). Buytewech was the son of Pieter Jacobsz, a cobbler and candlemaker. He learned his trade in Haarlem, where he became a member of the artists' guild (Haarlem Guild of St. Luke) in 1612, together with Hercules Segers and Esaias van de Velde.[1] Frans Hals, who was a member of this guild since 1610, had much influence on Buytenwech's work, as shown by the many drawings that the latter made after Hals's paintings. After his marriage on November 10, 1613 with Aeltje van Amerongen, of a patrician family, he returned to Rotterdam. There Hendrik Martenszoon Sorgh was one of his pupils. Buytewech was primarily a graphic artist, mostly of landscapes and genre pieces, but occasionally also of biblical and allegorical themes. Of his paintings only eight have survived to this date, all genre pieces, most depicting merry companies. Willem Buytewech's Merry CompanyHe died at the age of only 32 or 33 of unrecorded causes. His son Willem Willemsz Buytewech (1625-1670), born after his death, would become a painter as well.