Italian Early Renaissance Painter, 1445-1510
Italian painter and draughtsman. In his lifetime he was one of the most esteemed painters in Italy, enjoying the patronage of the leading families of Florence, in particular the Medici and their banking clients. He was summoned to take part in the decoration of the Sistine Chapel in Rome, was highly commended by diplomatic agents to Ludovico Sforza in Milan and Isabella d Este in Mantua and also received enthusiastic praise from the famous mathematician Luca Pacioli and the humanist poet Ugolino Verino. By the time of his death, however, Botticelli s reputation was already waning. He was overshadowed first by the advent of what Vasari called the maniera devota, a new style by Perugino, Francesco Francia and the young Raphael, whose new and humanly affective sentiment, infused atmospheric effects and sweet colourism took Italy by storm; he was then eclipsed with the establishment immediately afterwards of the High Renaissance style, which Vasari called the modern manner, in the paintings of Michelangelo and the mature works of Raphael in the Vatican. From that time his name virtually disappeared until the reassessment of his reputation that gathered momentum in the 1890s Related Paintings of Sandro Botticelli :. | Hans Memling,Man with a Medal (mk36) | Detail of Venus and Mars | Miracles of Saint Zenobius | Portrait of Smeralda Brandini (mk36) | Leontium and Ternissa | Related Artists:
Ignacio Zuloaga y ZabaletaJuly 26, 1870 - October 31, 1945
Spanish Basque painter. He studied in Paris in 1891, coming under the influence of Impressionism and of the group of Catalan painters around Santiago Rusieol. His visit to Andalusia in 1892 provided the key to his later work, leading him to replace the grey tonalities of his Paris paintings with more brightly coloured images of Spanish folkloric subjects and of male or female figures in regional dress, for example Merceditas (1911/13; Washington, DC, N.G.A.). Zuloaga turned to Castilian subjects in works such as Segoviano and Toreros de Pueblo (both 1906; both Madrid, Mus. A. Contemp.) after the defeat suffered by Spain in the Spanish-American War of 1898; like the group of writers known as the Generation of 98, with whom he was associated and who were among his most articulate supporters, he sought to encourage the regeneration of his country culture but with a critical spirit..
John RuskinEnglish Romantic Writer and Painter, 1819-1900
English art critic. Born into a wealthy family, Ruskin was largely educated at home. He was a gifted painter, but the best of his talent went into his writing. His multivolume Modern Painters (1843 C 60), planned as a defense of painter J.M.W. Turner, expanded to become a general survey of art. In Turner he saw "truth to nature" in landscape painting, and he went on to find the same truthfulness in Gothic architecture. His other writings include The Seven Lamps of Architecture (1849) and The Stones of Venice (1851 C 53). He was also a defender of the Pre-Raphaelites. In 1869 he was elected Oxford's first Slade professor of fine art; he resigned in 1879 after James McNeill Whistler won a libel suit against him.
geoffrey chaucerBorn: c. 1340
Birthplace: London, England
Died: 1400
Best Known As: The author of The Canterbury Tales