Favourite Artists / Painters - the 'Art' Thread

[Francisco Montana]

Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio

Better known as simply, Caravaggio.

Caravaggio (1573-1610). Probably the most revolutionary artist of his time, the Italian painter Caravaggio abandoned the rules that had guided a century of artists before him. They had idealized the human and religious experience.

He was born Michelangelo Merisi on Sept. 28, 1573, in Caravaggio, Italy. As an adult he would become known by the name of his birthplace. Orphaned at age 11, he was apprenticed to the painter Simone Peterzano of Milan for four years. At some time between 1588 and 1592, Caravaggio went to Rome and worked as an assistant to painters of lesser skill. About 1595 he began to sell his paintings through a dealer. The dealer brought Caravaggio to the attention of Cardinal Francesco del Monte.

Through the cardinal, Caravaggio was commissioned, at age 24, to paint for the church of San Luigi dei Francesi. In its Contarelli Chapel Caravaggio's realistic naturalism first fully appeared in three scenes he created of the life of St. Matthew. The works caused public outcry, however, because of their realistic and dramatic nature.

Despite violent criticism, his reputation increased and Caravaggio began to be envied. He had many encounters with the law during his stay in Rome. He was imprisoned for several assaults and for killing an opponent after a disputed score in a game of court tennis. Caravaggio fled the city and kept moving between hiding places. He reached Naples, probably early in 1607, and painted there for a time, awaiting a pardon by the pope. Here there was a in his painting style. The dark and urgent nature of his paintings at this time must have reflected Caravaggio's desperate state of mind.

Early in 1608 Caravaggio went to Malta and was received as a celebrated artist. Fearful of pursuit, he continued to flee for two more years, but his paintings of this time were among the greatest of his career. After receiving a pardon from the pope, he was wrongfully arrested and imprisoned for two days. A boat that was to take him to Rome left without him, taking his belongings. Misfortune, exhaustion, and illness overtook him as he helplessly watched the boat depart. He collapsed on the beach and died a few days later on July 18, 1610.

It's his use of 'false light' that attracted me, just look at the detail and bear in mind there were only candles as reference in those days. All of his backgrounds are deep and dark with brilliant 'godlike' light bearing down on the subject.







If you are interested (who wouldn't be!) in viewing his entire collection, this google link is a great starting point.

http://images.google.com/images?q=ca...&start=20&sa=N

ENJOY!

[therussian]

Ah...I have no idea. I love David, but I also love Bottocelli. Anyway, if theyre Italian, I like them (except for Da Vinci, he is way too over rated)

[Søren]

Frederic Leighton

Following text courtesy of : http://www.artrenewal.org/articles/2...ghton/bio1.asp

FREDERIC LEIGHTON WAS BORN on the 31st December 1830 in Scarborough, Yorkshire, a town this writer has known and liked all his life. He was the son of a medical man Frederic Septimus Leighton (1799-1892), and his wife Augusta Susan Nash, daughter George Augustus Nash of Edinburgh. His paternal grandfather was Sir James Boniface Leighton (1769-1843), who had been physician to two Tsars of Russia, Alexander I, and Nicholas I. Alexandra Leighton, the elder sister of Frederic, was the goddaughter of the Tsarina of the same name. The Russian Imperial connections of James Leighton had made him financially independent, and on his death his son inherited this fortunate position.

Frederic Septimus then promptly retired, due some reports say to his increasing deafness, and others due to the delicate health of his wife. The Leighton family then embarked on a peripatetic life around Europe lasting almost twenty years. Initially they stayed in Paris, then moved to Germany, followed by Italy. Leighton, throughout his life, like that other cosmopolitan artist J. W. Waterhouse, loved, and was influenced by Italian art and culture. Young Leighton was a natural linguist, and was soon fluent in French, German, and Italian. In 1842, he enrolled in the Berlin Academy of Art, having been economical with the truth about his age. He followed this with a period of artistic instruction in Frankfurt.

The family then moved to Florence, where young Leighton - it seems odd to call him Fred - had further artistic tuition, and doubtless was fascinated by the artistic greatness around him. He received instruction from, amongst others, Servolini, and the American sculptor Hiram Powers. Powers it was who famously on being asked by Leighton senior if his son should become an artist, replied “that Nature had made him one already”, adding he may “go as far as he wishes." It is interesting to speculate if Leighton’s own interest in sculpture as a tool in the preparation of his paintings, and as an artistic end in itself, was a result of his relationship with Powers. The move to Italy had been prompted by the political instability in the German states in the mid 1840s, the situation which also caused the emigration of the parents of Hubert Herkomer. In 1849, the Leighton family felt the social unrest had subsided sufficiently to allow them to return to Frankfurt. Here the young artist embarked on three years rigorous study under the guidance of Johan Edward Steinle (1810-1886). He benefited from both the stability of this time, and the instruction from Steinle, whom he always referred to afterwards as his master, and who remained his confidant until his death.

In 1851, the Leighton family returned to London, and, visited that seminal Victorian event The Great Exhibition in Hyde Park. The Leighton parents must have felt the need for a base in England, because they bought a house in Bath. Young Fred, then twenty-one years old, was by now sufficiently independent, to return to Italy on his own. Initially he stayed in Rome, where it seems he was not happy. It was at this time that he met Robert and Elizabeth Barrett Browning, who became lifelong friends, and even more importantly Adelaide Sartoris an attractive sophisticated older woman who became his greatest friend and mentor. Leighton became part of an extensive artistic circle, including Thackeray (William Makepiece Thackeray 1811-1863 novelist and satirist), George Sand (nom de plume of Armandine Lucile Aurore Dupin 1804-1878 pioneer feminist, writer, and mistress of Chopin), George Hemming Mason (1818-1872 landscape painter), Mrs Kemble, Gérôme (1824-1904 historical genre painter), and Bouguereau (Adolphe-William Bouguereau 1825-1905 the great nineteenth century French painter, and opponent of Impressionism).

It was at this time that Leighton started work on his famous picture Cimabue’s Celebrated Madonna, which first brought him to the attention of the art-loving public. It also showed many characteristics of his art which persisted until the end of his life. The picture was meticulously planned, highly finished, skillfully painted, showed great talent in composition, and was very static. It was shown at the RA exhibition in 1855, when concern about its size was expressed by the Hanging Committee - it is over 17 feet long (520.5 cm). It was bought by Queen Victoria, at the prompting of Prince Albert, for 600 guineas making an auspicious start to the painter’s career. Leighton did not regard the Queen’s purchase in an entirely favourable light, feeling that it would provoke a reaction from the critics, and he was proved right. The following year his exhibits at the Academy exhibition received a severe mauling from the art press, and for a few years he was unable to repeat his initial success. In 1858 Leighton showed The Fisherman and the Syren. This painting is another expression of the femme fatale theme found so compelling by nineteenth century English artists. It is notable for another reason. It is the only Leighton nude I have seen which could be described as erotic. The Syren is beautiful, with glowing flesh tones and a very sexy figure - to lapse in to modern day vernacular. The painting is in Bristol City Art Gallery.

In 1861 Elizabeth Barrett Browning died at her home in Florence, to the great distress of her famous husband who asked Leighton to design her tomb, in the Cimiterio Accatolico. It is very handsome monument to a great human being.

In the early 1860s Leighton met Ruskin, and G. F. Watts who painted his portrait on a number of occasions, less than convincingly I think - than the artists’ self-portrait in the Uffizi Gallery which is much superior. This I find surprising as, for instance, Watt’s portrait of Edward Burne-Jones is superb. Watts and Leighton became close friends, and remained so until the latter’s death. At this time the painter, as well as keeping up his busy working life, travelled extensively in Europe and the Near East, mainly alone, but sometimes with Adelaide Sartoris. In 1864 he became Associate of the Royal Academy. Two years later Leighton moved from his previous residence at 2 Orme Square, Bayswater, to Leighton House, which was designed for him by George Aitcheson RA, though the artist himself supervised the construction of the house.

Some of the pictures he painted in the 1860s are amongst the most accomplished things he did, for instance the smaller decorative ones, like the Odalisque, In 1868 Leighton made a further visit to Egypt, followed by a tour of the country in the company of Ferdinand de Lesseps (1805-1894) the originator, and the prime mover in the construction of the Suez Canal. In 1870 the Winter Exhibitions of Old Masters commenced at the Royal Academy mainly at the instigation of Leighton. Throughout the 1870s Leighton continued to work relentlessly, and to live an extremely active life. In 1873 he, once more, traveled to Egypt, and, perhaps as a result of this, there followed a number of Orientally-inspired pictures, including The Egyptian Slinger and The Moorish Garden. He had also collected some Persian tiles, which were the inspiration for the famous Arab Hall at Leighton House.

In 1878, Sir Francis Grant, the President of the Royal Academy, and emphatically not an admirer of our man died. Frederic Leighton, aided amongst others by his friend the Prince of Wales, was elected the new President, a role he was to hold for the next eighteen years. In 1879 Adelaide Sartoris died, a considerable blow for the artist, but she had lived to see here protégé achieve the leading role in English art. In the early 1880s the painter met Ada Alice Pullen, a cockney girl who was attempting to support herself and her younger sisters by working as an artists’ model. Leighton was very fond of Dorothy Dene the (stage name of Ada Pullen), and painted many pictures using her as his model throughout the 1880s. Her sisters Edith Ellen, Henrietta Sarah (Hetty), and Isabell Helena (Lena), also sat to him. Dorothy had aspirations to a career as an actress, which the painter did his best to assist, but she was not successful. Leighton used to visit these pretty, vivacious sisters in their small home, and this must have provided a welcome relief from his classical paintings, ceremonial and administrative duties the RA, and high profile social life. George Bernard Shaw knew the artist and his favourite model, and there has been speculation that they provided the inspiration for Professor Higgins and Eliza Doolittle in Pygmalion.

From the early 1890s Leighton’s health gradually started to decline, though his artistic standards did not deteriorate. His father 1892 died in his ninety third year. In truth the PRA had travelled, painted, worked and lived at a frenetic pace for many years, and was now having to pay the price for a life lived in such a way. At the beginning of 1895, his health deteriorated further, and the heart condition angina was diagnosed. A restful holiday in a warm climate was the treatment recommended by his doctors. In the absence of the President his duties were assumed by his old friend Sir John Millais, unhappily himself no longer enjoying the robust health which had been such a feature of his life. Leighton was, unfortunately, chronically hyper-active and unable to live life at a slower pace. In the Summer he returned to London and his duties at Burlington House. In the early Autumn, he set off on his travels again, going first to Worcester, where he stayed for a few days, then taking the ferry to Ireland. From Dublin he went to Killarney, and then up the West Coast to Donegal. This does not sound very restful to me. It is also to be remembered that he took the tools of his profession with him, and in 1998, an oil sketch of a Head of a Girl painted during this holiday was sold at Sotheby’s. I say a sketch, but it is an exuberant production of a talented artist enjoying the handling of paint.

On January 1st 1896, it was announced that Sir Frederic Leighton was to be ennobled as Baron Leighton of Stretton. His patent bore the date January 24th, and on the afternoon of Saturday 25th January he died at Leighton House after a few days of extreme pain and distress which had ultimately made the use of Morphine necessary. He was, therefore, only a peer for one day. With him at the end were his sisters Alexandra, Mrs Orr Sutherland, and Augusta Mrs Matthews, as well as his great friend Val Prinsep RA.

Nausicca



Flaming June

[therussian]

Hey! My uncle has the that first painting hanging in his foyer! I always wondered who painted it.

[Valus]

Courtesy of http://www.ibiblio.org/wm/paint/auth/rembrandt/
Rembrandt


Rembrandt HARMENSZOON VAN RIJN (b. July 15, 1606, Leiden, Neth.--d. Oct. 4, 1669, Amsterdam), Dutch painter, draftsman, and etcher of the 17th century, a giant in the history of art. His paintings are characterized by luxuriant brushwork, rich colour, and a mastery of chiaroscuro. Numerous portraits and self-portraits exhibit a profound penetration of character. His drawings constitute a vivid record of contemporary Amsterdam life. The greatest artist of the Dutch school, he was a master of light and shadow whose paintings, drawings, and etchings made him a giant in the history of art.

Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn was born on July 15, 1606, in Leiden, the Netherlands. His father was a miller who wanted the boy to follow a learned profession, but Rembrandt left the University of Leiden to study painting. His early work was devoted to showing the lines, light and shade, and color of the people he saw about him. He was influenced by the work of Caravaggio and was fascinated by the work of many other Italian artists. When Rembrandt became established as a painter, he began to teach and continued teaching art throughout his life.

In 1631, when Rembrandt's work had become well known and his studio in Leiden was flourishing, he moved to Amsterdam. He became the leading portrait painter in Holland and received many commissions for portraits as well as for paintings of religious subjects. He lived the life of a wealthy, respected citizen and met the beautiful Saskia van Uylenburgh, whom he married in 1634. She was the model for many of his paintings and drawings. Rembrandt's works from this period are characterized by strong lighting effects. In addition to portraits, Rembrandt attained fame for his landscapes, while as an etcher he ranks among the foremost of all time. When he had no other model, he painted or sketched his own image. It is estimated that he painted between 50 and 60 self-portraits.

In 1636 Rembrandt began to depict quieter, more contemplative scenes with a new warmth in color. During the next few years three of his four children died in infancy, and in 1642 his wife died. In the 1630s and 1640s he made many landscape drawings and etchings. His landscape paintings are imaginative, rich portrayals of the land around him. Rembrandt was at his most inventive in the work popularly known as The Night Watch, painted in 1642. It depicts a group of city guardsmen awaiting the command to fall in line. Each man is painted with the care that Rembrandt gave to single portraits, yet the composition is such that the separate figures are second in interest to the effect of the whole. The canvas is brilliant with color, movement, and light. In the foreground are two men, one in bright yellow, the other in black. The shadow of one color tones down the lightness of the other. In the center of the painting is a little girl dressed in yellow.

Rembrandt had become accustomed to living comfortably. From the time he could afford to, he bought many paintings by other artists. By the mid-1650s he was living so far beyond his means that his house and his goods had to be auctioned to pay some of his debts. He had fewer commissions in the 1640s and 1650s, but his financial circumstances were not unbearable. For today's student of art, Rembrandt remains, as the Dutch painter Jozef Israels said, "the true type of artist, free, untrammeled by traditions."

The number of works attributed to Rembrandt varies. He produced approximately 600 paintings, 300 etchings, and 1,400 drawings. Some of his works are: St. Paul in Prison (1627); Supper at Emmaus (1630); The Anatomy Lesson of Dr. Nicolaes Tulp (1632); Young Girl at an Open Half-Door (1645); The Mill (1650); Aristotle Contemplating the Bust of Homer (1653); The Return of the Prodigal Son (after 1660); The Syndics of the Drapers' Guild (1662); and many portraits.

The Night Watch

[Francisco Montana]

MICHELANGELO
(b. 1475, Caprese, d. 1564, Roma)

Ok, here's my over all favourite artist. Caravaggio is my favourite painter, but Michelangelo was far more than just a painter. He was sculptor, painter, architect, and poet.

Michelangelo (full name: Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni) was born at Caprese, a village in Florentine territory, where his father, named Ludovico Buonarroti Simoni was the resident magistrate. A few weeks after Michelangelo's birth the family returned to Florence, and, in 1488, after overcoming parental opposition he was formally apprenticed to Domenico Ghirlandaio for a term of three years. Later in life Michelangelo tried to suppress this fact, probably to make it seem that he had never had an ordinary workshop training; for it was he more than anyone else who introduced the idea of the 'Fine Arts' having no connection with the craft that painting had always previously been. His stay in the Ghirlandaio shop must also have coincided with his beginning to work as a sculptor in the Medici Garden, where antiques from their collection were looked after by Bertoldo. Although this connection drew him into the Medici circle as a familiar, the account by Vasari of an established 'school' is now discredited. It must, however, have been Ghirlandaio who taught him the elements of fresco technique, and it was probably also in that shop that he made his drawings after the great Florentine masters of the past (copies after Giotto and Masaccio; now in the Louvre, in Munich, and in Vienna). Michelangelo produced at least two relief sculptures by the time he was 16 years old, the Battle of the Centaurs and the Madonna of the Stairs (both 1489-92, Casa Buonarroti, Florence), which show that he had achieved a personal style at a very early age.

In 1492, Lorenzo de' Medici died. Michelangelo then studied anatomy with the help of the Prior of the Hospital of Sto Spirito, for whom he appears to have carved a wooden crucifix for the high altar. A wooden crucifix found there (now in the Casa Buonarroti) has been attributed to him by some scholars. The next few years were marked by the expulsion of the Medici and the gloomy Theocracy set up under Savonarola, but Michelangelo avoided the worst of the crisis by going to Bologna and, in 1496, to Rome. He settled for a time in Bologna, where in 1494 and 1495 he executed several marble statuettes for the Arca (Shrine) di San Domenico in the Church of San Domenico.

In Rome he carved the first of his major works, the Bacchus (Florence, Bargello) and the St Peter's Pietà, which was completed by the turn of the century. It is highly finished and shows that he had already mastered anatomy and the disposition of drapery, but above all it shows that he had solved the problem of the representation of a full-grown man stretched out nearly horizontally on the lap of a woman, the whole being contained in a pyramidal shape.

The Pietà made his name and he returned to Florence in 1501 as a famous sculptor, remaining there until 1505. During these years he was extremely active, carving the gigantic David (1501-4, now in the Accademia), the Bruges Madonna (Bruges, Notre Dame), and beginning the series of the Twelve Apostles for the Cathedral which was commissioned in 1503 but never completed (the St Matthew now in the Accademia is the only one which was even blocked in). At about this time he painted the Doni Tondo of the Holy Family with St John the Baptist (Florence, Uffizi) and made the two marble tondi of the Madonna and Child (Florence, Bargello; London, Royal Academy).

After the completion of the David in 1504 he began to work on the cartoon of a huge fresco in the Council Hall of the new Florentine Republic, as a pendant to the one already commissioned from Leonardo da Vinci. Both remained unfinished and the grandiose project of employing the two greatest living artists on the decoration of the Town Hall of their native city came to nothing. Of Michelangelo's fresco, which was to represent the Battle of Cascina, an incident in the Pisan War, we now have a few studies by him and copies of a fragment of the whole full-scale cartoon which once existed (the best copy is the painting in Lord Leicester's Collection, Holkham, Norfolk). The cartoon, which is known as the Bathers, was for many years the resort of every young artist in Florence and, by its exclusive stress on the nude human body as a sufficient vehicle for the expression of alt emotions which the painter can depict, had an enormous influence on the subsequent development of Italian art - especially Mannerism - and therefore on European art as a whole. This influence is more readily detectable in his next major work, the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. In fact, however, the Battle of Cascina was left incomplete because the Signoria of Florence found it expedient to comply with a request from the masterful Pope Julius II, who was anxious to have a fitting tomb made in his lifetime.

The Julius Monument was, in Michelangelo's own view, the Tragedy of the Tomb. This was partly because Michelangelo and Julius had the same ardent temperament - they admired each other greatly - and very soon quarrelled, and partly because after the death of Julius in 1513, Michelangelo was under constant pressure from successive Popes to abandon his contractual obligations and work for them while equally under pressure from the heirs of Julius, who even went so far as to accuse him of embezzlement. The original project for a vast free-standing tomb with forty figures was substantially reduced by a second contract (1513), drawn up after Julius's death; under this contract the Moses, which is the major figure on the extant tomb, was prepared as a subsidiary figure. Two others, the Slaves in the Louvre, were made under this contract but were subsequently abandoned. The third contract (1516) was followed by a fourth (1532), and a fifth and final one in 1542, under the terms of which the present miserably mutilated version of the original conception was carried out by assistants, under Michelangelo's supervision, in S. Pietro in Vincoli (Julius's titular church) in 1545. Michelangelo was then 70 and had spent nearly forty years on the tomb.

Meanwhile, the original quarrel of 1506 with Julius was made up and Michelangelo executed a colossal bronze statue of the Pope as an admonition to the recently conquered Bolognese (who destroyed it as soon as they could, in 1511). In 1508, back in Rome, he began his most important work, the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel in the Vatican for Julius, who, as usual, was impatient to see it finished. Dissatisfied with the normal working methods and with the abilities of the assistants he had engaged, Michelangelo determined to execute the whole of this vast work virtually alone. Working under appalling difficulties (amusingly described in one of his own poems), most of the time leaning backwards and never able to get far enough away from the ceiling to be able to see what he was doing, he completed the first half (the part nearer to the door) in 1510. The whole enormous undertaking was completed in 1512, Michelangelo being by then so practised that he was able to execute the second half more rapidly and freely. It was at once recognized as a supreme work of art, even at the moment when Raphael was also at work in the Vatican Stanze. From then on Michelangelo was universally regarded as the greatest living artist, although he was then only 37 and this was in the lifetimes of Leonardo and Raphael (who was even younger). From this moment, too, dates the idea of the artist as in some sense a superhuman being, set apart from ordinary men, and for the first time it was possible to use the phrase 'il divino Michelangelo' without seeming merely blasphemous.

The Sistine Ceiling is a shallow barrel vault divided up by painted architecture into a series of alternating large and small panels which appear to be open to the sky. These are the Histories. Each of the smaller panels is surrounded by four figures of nude youths - the Slaves, or Ignudi - who are represented as seated on the architectural frame and who are not of the same order of reality as the figures in the Histories, since their system of perspective is different. Below them are the Prophets and Sibyls, and still lower, the figures of the Ancestors of Christ. The whole ceiling completes the chapel decoration by representing life on earth before the Law: on the walls is an earlier cycle of frescoes, painted in 1481-82, representing the Life of Moses (i.e. the Old Dispensation) and the Life of Christ (the New Dispensation). The Histories begin over the altar and work away from it (though they were painted in the reverse direction): the first scene represents God alone, in the Primal Act of Creation, and the story continues through the rest of the Creation to the Fall, the Flood, and the Drunkenness of Noah, representing the human soul at its furthest from God. The whole conception owes much to the Neoplatonic philosophy current in Michelangelo's youth in Florence, perhaps most in the idea of the Ignudi, perfect human beauty, on the level below the Divine story. Below them come the Old Testament Prophets and the Seers of the ancient world who foretold the coming of Christ; while the four corners have scenes from the Old Testament representing Salvation. The Prophet Jonah is above the altar, since his three days in the whale were held to prefigure the Resurrection. On the lowest parts - and very freely painted - are the human families who were the Ancestors of Christ. There can be no doubt that the splendour of the conception and the size of the task distracted Michelangelo from the Tomb, but he at once returned to it as soon as the ceiling was finished, from 1513 to 1516, when he returned to Florence to work for the Medici. (For details on the frescoes in the Sistine Chapel take a guided tour.)

His new master was Pope Leo X, the younger son of Lorenzo de Medici, who had known Michelangelo from boyhood; he now commissioned him to complete the façade of S. Lorenzo, the family church in Florence. Michelangelo wasted four years on this and it came to nothing. In 1520 he began planning the Medici Chapel, a funerary chapel in honour of four of the Medici - two of them by no means the most glorious of their family. The chapel is attached to S. Lorenzo. Leo X died in 1521 and it was not until after the accession of another Medici Pope, Clement VII, in 1523 that the project was resumed. Work began in earnest in 1524 and at the same time he was commissioned to design the Laurenziana Library in the cloister of the same church. Both these buildings are turning-points in architectural history, but the sculptural decoration of the chapel (an integral part of the architecture) was never completed, although the figures of Giuliano and Lorenzo de' Medici set over their tombs, eternally symbolizing the Active and the Contemplative Life, above the symbols of Time and Mortality - Day and Night, Dawn and Evening - are among his finest creations. The unfinished Madonna was meant to be the focal point of the chapel.

In 1527, the Medici were again expelled from Florence, and Michelangelo, who was politically a Republican in spite of his close ties with the Medici, took an active part in the 1527-29 war against the Medici up to the capitulation in 1530 (although in a moment of panic he had fled in 1529) and supervised Florentine fortifications. During the months of confusion and disorder in Florence, when he was proscribed for his participation in the struggle, it would appear that he was hidden by the Prior of S. Lorenzo. A number of drawings on the walls of a concealed crypt under the Medici Chapel have been attributed to him, and ascribed to this period. After the reinstatement of the Medici he was pardoned, and set to work once more on the Chapel which was to glorify them until, in 1534, he left Florence and settled in Rome for the thirty years remaining to him.

He was at once commissioned to paint his next great work, the Last Judgement on the altar wall of the Sistine Chapel, which affords the strongest possible contrast with his own Ceiling. He began work on it in 1536. In the interval there had been the Sack of Rome and the Reformation, and the confident humanism and Christian Neoplatonism of the Ceiling had curdled into the personal pessimism and despondency of the Judgement. The very choice of subject is indicative of the new mood, as is the curious fact that the mouth of Hell gapes over the altar itself where, during services, stands a crucifix symbolizing Christ standing between Man and Doom. It was unveiled in 1541 and caused a sensation equalled only by his own work of thirty years earlier, and was the only work by him to be as much reviled as praised, and only narrowly to escape destruction, though it did not escape the mutilation of having many of the nude figures 'clothed' after his death. Most of the ideas of Mannerism are traceable implicitly or explicitly in the Judgement and, more than ever, it served to imprint the idea that the scope of painting is strictly limited to the exploitation of the nude, preferably in foreshortened - and therefore difficult - poses. Paul III, who had commissioned the Judgement, immediately commissioned two more frescoes for his own chapel, the Cappella Paolina; these were begun in 1542 and completed in 1550. They represent the Conversion of St Paul and the Crucifixion of St Peter.

Michelangelo was now 75 years old. Earlier. in 1538-39, plans were under way for the remodeling of the buildings surrounding the Campidoglio (Capitol) on the Capitoline Hill, the civic and political heart of the city of Rome. Although Michelangelo's program was not carried out until the late 1550s and not finished until the 17th century, he designed the Campidoglio around an oval shape, with the famous antique bronze equestrian statue of the Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius in the center. For the Palazzo dei Conservatori he brought a new unity to the public building façade, at the same time that he preserved traditional Roman monumentality. However, since 1546 he had been increasingly active as an architect; in particular, he was Chief Architect to St Peter's and was doing more there than had been done for thirty years. This was the greatest architectural undertaking in Christendom, and Michelangelo did it, as he did all his late works, solely for the glory of God. <

In his last years he made a number of drawings of the Crucifixion, wrote much of his finest poetry, and carved the Pietà (now in Florence Cathedral Museum) which was originally intended for his own tomb, as well as the nearly abstract Rondanini Pietà (Milan, Castello). This last work, in which the very forms of the Dead Christ actually merge with those of His Mother, is charged with an emotional intensity which contemporaries recognized as Michelangelo's 'terribilità'. He was working on it to within a few days of his death, in his 89th year, on 18 February 1564. There is a whole world of difference between it and the 'beautiful' Pietà in St Peter's, carved some sixty-five years earlier.

Unlike any previous artist, Michelangelo was the subject of two biographies in his own lifetime. The first of these was by Vasari, who concluded the first (1550) edition of his 'Vite' with the Life of one living artist, Michelangelo. In 1553 there appeared a 'Life of Michelangelo' by his pupil Ascanio Condivi (English translations 1903, 1976 and 1987); this is really almost an autobiography, promoted by Michelangelo to correct some errors of Vasari and to shift the emphasis in what Michelangelo regarded as a more desirable direction. Vasari, however, became more and more friendly with Michelangelo and was also his most devoted and articulate admirer, so that the very long Life which appears in Vasari's second edition (1568), after Michelangelo's death, gives us the most complete biography of any artist up to that time and is a trustworthy guide to the feelings of contemporaries about the man who can lay claim to be the greatest sculptor, painter and draughtsman that has ever lived, as well as one of the greatest architects and poets. He is the archetype of genius.

Pure fresco was his preferred painting technique; he despised oil-painting, though the now authenticated unfinished Entombment (London, National Gallery) is in oil over a tempera underpainting. The Doni Tondo is in tempera. In sculpture, his usual method was to outline his figure on the front of the block and, as he himself wrote, to 'liberate the figure imprisoned in the marble', by working steadily inwards, with perhaps a few more finished details. Occasionally he made drawings for parts of a figure, and a few small wax models survive as well as one large one, made for the guidance of assistants working on the Medici Chapel figures. The four abandoned Slaves intended for a later version of the Julius Tomb (Florence, Accademia) and the two marble tondi left unfinished in 1505 provide fine examples of his direct carving technique and his consistent use of various sizes of claw chisel. No modelli exist for any paintings or frescoes, and only one cartoon (London, British Museum), made to help Condivi, has survived.

Apart from the works mentioned above, there are others in Florence (Bargello, Santo Spirito - the house of his family, which contains relics of him - and Palazzo della Signoria) and in Siena, Rome (Santa Maria sopra Minerva), and St Petersburg (The Hermitage). There are also some 500 drawings by him, the majority of which are in Windsor (Royal Collection), Florence (Casa Buonarroti), and Paris.


(the face of David)


(The full David)


(While showing this piece, Michelangelo was wandering around the audience and over heard many attribute the work to one of his rivals. In a fit of rage, he went up to the Pieta and proceeded to carve his name into the sash you see running across her chest. Later, he would be ashamed of this act, and it was the last peice he ever signed.)


(The Last Judgement)


(Part of the Sistine Chapel cieling)


(This is the entire Sistine Chapel cieling he painted. Talk about murals! He painted that whole thing!)

And finally, here's an example of his architural abilities.


(Michelangelo's Dome, Basilica di San Pietro)


(Inside the dome! Awesome.)




For further viewing, this site is really quite nice.

http://www.michelangelo.com/buonarroti.html

[Punkus]

I am not what one could call an "aficionado" of art; music is more my style.

However, this thread is here and I feel it is my duty to contribute the name of an artist whom I personally enjoy very, very much: Thomas Moran.

I suppose he isn't quite as quintessential as say Michaelangelo or Rembrant(I love Rembrant's paintings very much also), when I look at Moran's works I am awed. Admittedly this is partly due to my love for the outdoors and natural beauty. Still, his work in my opinion at least rivals similar works of other painters on similar subject matter; the way he is able to use light and color to make his painting both majestic and magnificently beautiful is quite a pleasure to behold. Combine this ability with the material of the very beautiful American West, and you have painting which seem to demand their own orchestral accompaniment.

I embellished a bit, but I do like Moran's works. Especially his watercolors.

If you have not seen his works, I would suggest paintings such as Mountain of the Holy Cross and Green River Cliffs to begin with.


Mountain of the Holy Cross

[Libertine]

The sistine chapel is amazing, one of the greatest feats of art in the world, i love it :tumbsup:
I take it this includes Scupters as well as Canvas artists yes?

I really like Da Vinci's works, and have done before Dan Browen tried to make them out to be something they are not - to me the only significance of what Da Vinci did is that he did it amazingly.

[Søren]

Claude Lorrain

Text courtesy of jmw-turner which's text is in turn courtesy of Microsoft Encarta.

Claude, who was also known by his pseudonym Le Lorrain, or as Claude
Lorraine, was born in the duchy of Lorraine (from which his name is derived). He traveled to Rome before he was 20 years old and, with the exception of one trip back to France from 1625 to 1627, he lived in Rome all his life. His principal teacher was the Italian painter Agostino Tassi, who taught him the elements of landscape, seascape, and perspective. He was also influenced by the German painter Adam Elsheimer, whose strong depiction of light Claude adapted and refined, and by the Italian painters Annibale Carracci and Domenichino, whose monumental landscapes led him to enlarge his scale. The gradual evolution of Claude's style falls into three main periods. In the first, his landscapes often featured slanting light and employed other experimental lighting effects. He also painted idealized scenes of seaports, usually with ships at anchor in a harbour flanked by palaces. In Harbour Scene (1634, Hermitage, St Petersburg) he shows the sun on the horizon, and characteristically uses the sun to give the painting depth. Forgeries of his work began to appear in the 1630s, and to aid to their identification Claude began
compiling his Liber Veritatis ("Book of Truth"; British Museum, London) in about 1635. In it he sketched drawings of almost all his paintings, creating a record of his work. In the second phase, which began after 1640, his paintings became more tranquil, bathed in a warm, even light. Their subject matter is drawn from Classical or biblical sources, as in Landscape: The Marriage of Isaac and Rebekah (1648, National Gallery, London). During the 1660s, the third phase, although Claude continued to work in his prior mode, some of his works showed a tendency towards a more visionary, symbolic style, with a colour range of cool, silvery tones and a renewed use of dramatic lighting.

Claude died in Rome on November 23, 1682. His art influenced later Dutch, French, and especially English landscape painters through the middle of the 19th century. J. M. W. Turner was especially indebted to Claude and was inspired by his compositions.

The Embarkation of St. Ursula

Landscape with Arscanius Shooting a Wild Stag

[Fenris]

Salvadore Dalì



Salvador Felipe Jacinto Dalí I Domenech was born at 8:45 on the morning of May 11, 1904 in the small agricultural town of Figueres, Spain. Figueres is located in the foothills of the Pyrenees, only sixteen miles from the French border in the principality of Catalonia. The son of a prosperous notary, Dalí spent his boyhood in Figueres and at the family's summer home in the coastal fishing village of Cadaques where his parents built his first studio. As an adult, he made his home with his wife Gala in nearby Port Lligat. Many of his paintings reflect his love of this area of Spain.

The young Dalí attended the San Fernando Academy of Fine Arts in Madrid. Early recognition of Dalí's talent came with his first one-man show in Barcelona in 1925. He became internationally known when three of his paintings, including The Basket of Bread (now in the Museum's collection), were shown in the third annual Carnegie International Exhibition in Pittsburgh in 1928.

The following year, Dalí held his first one-man show in Paris. He also joined the surrealists, led by former Dadaist Andre Breton. That year, Dalí met Gala Eluard when she visited him in Cadaques with her husband, poet Paul Eluard. She became Dalí's lover, muse, business manager, and chief inspiration.

Dalí soon became a leader of the surrealist movement. His painting, The Persistance of Memory, with the soft or melting watches is still one of the best-known surrealist works. But as the war approached, the apolitical Dalí clashed with the surrealists and was "expelled" from the surrealist group during a "trial" in 1934. He did however, exhibit works in international surrealist exhibitions throughout the decade but by 1940, Dalí was moving into a new style that eventually became known as his "classic" period, demonstrating a preoccupation with science and religion.

Dalí and Gala escaped from Europe during World War II, spending 1940-48 in the United States. These were very important years for the artist. The Museum of Modern Art in New York gave Dali his first major retrospective exhibit in 1941. This was followed in 1942 by the publication of Dali's autobiography, The Secret Life of Salvador Dalí.

As Dalí moved away from Surrealism and into his classic period, he began his series of 19 large canvases, many concerning scientific, historical or religous themes. Among the best known of these works are The Hallucinogenic Toreador, and The Discovery of America by Christopher Columbus in the museum's collection, and The Sacrament of the Last Supper in the collection of the National Gallery in Washington, D.C.

In 1974, Dalí opened the Teatro Museo in Figueres, Spain. This was followed by retrospectives in Paris and London at the end of the decade. After the death of his wife, Gala, in 1982, Dalí's health began to fail. It deteriorated further after he was burned in a fire in his home in Pubol in 1984. Two years later, a pace-maker was implanted. Much of this part of his life was spent in seclusion, first in Pubol and later in his apartments at Torre Galatea, adjacent to the Teatro Museo. Salvador Dalí died on January 23, 1989 in Figueres from heart failure with respiratory complications.

As an artist, Salvador Dalí was not limited to a particular style or media. The body of his work, from early impressionist paintings through his transitional surrealist works, and into his classical period, reveals a constantly growing and evolving artist. Dalí worked in all media, leaving behind a wealth of oils, watercolors, drawings, graphics, and sculptures, jewels and objects of all descriptions.

Whether working from pure inspiration or on a commissioned illustration, Dalí's matchless insight and symbolic complexity are apparent. Above all, Dalí was a superb draftsman. His excellence as a creative artist will always set a standard for the art of the twentieth century.

http://www.salvadordalimuseum.org/hi...biography.html

[RexNecros]

I am removing all posts myself, thankyou....

[Britisocialist]

Hmmm....... my favourite is Edward Munch's 'The Scream'

EDIT: Anyone who posts it will get rep points.

[Ghoulem]

[Mathias]

Hmmm....... my favourite is Edward Munch's 'The Scream'

EDIT: Anyone who posts it will get rep points.

rep points please

[Britisocialist]

rep points please

I kept my promise.

[imb39]

My favourite artist, the best Britain has produced by far, Turner:










Simply amazing stuff. He was so far ahead of his time, or more accurately, those fancy 'modern' artists know didly squat!

But, my total favourite picture of all time is:

[Tostig]

Turner is simply fantastic. I was fortunate enough to see a few of his pieces last time I was up in London. In addition to those you've posted I feel the need to add The Burning of the Houses of Parliament, if only because it is on my philosophy book:


At the moment I'm especially interested by El Greco, since I saw an exhibition of his works a while ago:

[RexNecros]

Lord Leighton's Flaming June

[RexNecros]

Diego Velázquez’ Pope "Innocent" X
That guy looks like he will roast me at the stake himself...

[.Socrates]

I've taken an interest in George Hunt's work. He's an artist from Nashville, Tennessee. Bought one of his shirts, very nice stuff.

Red Coat Blues


I am a Man


Standing at the Crossroads


Them Weary Blues


Can't find any of his really good stuff, like, "Blues Yoga" and others.