Italian Early Renaissance Painter, 1445-1510 Alessandro di Mariano di Vanni Filipepi, better known as Sandro Botticelli or Il Botticello ("The Little Barrel"; March 1, 1445 ?C May 17, 1510) was an Italian painter of the Florentine school during the Early Renaissance (Quattrocento). Less than a hundred years later, this movement, under the patronage of Lorenzo de' Medici, was characterized by Giorgio Vasari as a "golden age", a thought, suitably enough, he expressed at the head of his Vita of Botticelli. His posthumous reputation suffered until the late 19th century; since then his work has been seen to represent the linear grace of Early Renaissance painting, and The Birth of Venus and Primavera rank now among the most familiar masterpieces of Florentine art. Details of Botticelli's life are sparse, but we know that he became an apprentice when he was about fourteen years old, which would indicate that he received a fuller education than did other Renaissance artists. Vasari reported that he was initially trained as a goldsmith by his brother Antonio. Probably by 1462 he was apprenticed to Fra Filippo Lippi; many of his early works have been attributed to the elder master, and attributions continue to be uncertain. Influenced also by the monumentality of Masaccio's painting, it was from Lippi that Botticelli learned a more intimate and detailed manner. As recently discovered, during this time, Botticelli could have traveled to Hungary, participating in the creation of a fresco in Esztergom, ordered in the workshop of Fra Filippo Lippi by Vitez J??nos, then archbishop of Hungary. By 1470 Botticelli had his own workshop. Even at this early date his work was characterized by a conception of the figure as if seen in low relief, drawn with clear contours, and minimizing strong contrasts of light and shadow which would indicate fully modeled forms.  Related Paintings of BOTTICELLI, Sandro :. | The Annunciation gfhfghgf | The Cestello Annunciation dfg | The Adoration of the Magi dfg | Scenes from the Life of Moses | The Virgin Adoring the Child |
Related Artists:
C.A. Lorentzon

Gwen John
Welsh 1876-1939 Gwen John was born in Haverfordwest, Wales, the second of four children of Edwin William John and his wife Augusta (nee Smith). Edwin John was a solicitor whose dour temperament cast a chill over his family, and Augusta was often absent from the children due to ill health, leaving her two sisters??stern Salvationists??to take her place in the household. Despite the considerable tension in the family (who became known as "those turbulent Johns") the children's interest in literature and art was encouraged. Following the mother??s premature death in 1884, the family moved to Tenby in Pembrokeshire, Wales. Although she painted and drew from an early age, her earliest surviving work dates from her nineteenth year. From 1895?C98, she studied at the Slade School of Art, where her younger brother, Augustus John, had begun his studies in 1894. During this period they shared living quarters, and further reduced their expenses by subsisting on a diet of nuts and fruit. Even as a student, Augustus' brilliant draughtsmanship and personal glamour made him a celebrity, and stood in contrast to Gwen's quieter gifts and reticent demeanour. While he greatly admired her art, Augustus offered her advice which she ignored; he urged her to take a "more athletic attitude to life", and cautioned her against what he saw as the "unbecoming and unhygienic negligence" of her mode of living, but her entire life was marked by a disregard for her physical well-being. In 1898 she made her first visit to Paris with two friends from the Slade, and while there she studied under James McNeill Whistler at the Academie Carmen. She returned to London in 1899, and spent the next four years in austere circumstances. When she exhibited her work for the first time in 1900, at the New English Art Club (NEAC), her address was a derelict building where she was living illegally.
Abraham van den Tempel
(1622?C1672) was a Dutch Golden Age painter. He probably learned painting from his father, also a painter, but who died when he was still quite young, in 1636. That is the same year that he moved to Amsterdam, where he stayed until 1647, whereupon he moved to Leiden. According to Houbraken he was the son of a Mennonite preacher in Leeuwarden who was a respected art teacher. His father was Lambert Jacobsz (or Jacobszoon), who had taught Govert Flinck and Jacob Adriaensz Backer in their youth, both of whom were artists from Mennonite families. Abraham took the name Tempel because when he studied in Leiden, he lived in a house there with a relief of a Tempel in the keystone. He became a pupil of Jacob Backer, and studied mathematics at Leiden University. He met with great success with the Leiden city council, earning several generous commissions, including a series of three large allegorical paintings on the cloth industry of Leiden for the Cloth Hall which still hang in their original place today in the Stedelijk Museum De Lakenhal. Sir William Davidson of Curriehill, Conservator of the Cloth Staple at Veere (with his son Charles), 1664.He became master of the Guild of St. Luke in 1657 and in 1659 he was chartermaster. In 1660 he returned to Amsterdam. His pupils were Frans van Mieris the Elder, Carel de Moor, Michiel van Musscher, Ary de Vois, and Isaac Paling