Spanish 1618-1682 Bartolome Esteban Murillo Galleries Murillo began his art studies under Juan del Castillo in Seville. Murillo became familiar with Flemish painting; the great commercial importance of Seville at the time ensured that he was also subject to influences from other regions. His first works were influenced by Zurbaran, Jusepe de Ribera and Alonso Cano, and he shared their strongly realist approach. As his painting developed, his more important works evolved towards the polished style that suited the bourgeois and aristocratic tastes of the time, demonstrated especially in his Roman Catholic religious works. In 1642, at the age of 26 he moved to Madrid, where he most likely became familiar with the work of Velazquez, and would have seen the work of Venetian and Flemish masters in the royal collections; the rich colors and softly modeled forms of his subsequent work suggest these influences. He returned to Seville in 1645. In that year, he painted thirteen canvases for the monastery of St. Francisco el Grande in Seville which gave his reputation a well-deserved boost. Following the completion of a pair of pictures for the Seville Cathedral, he began to specialise in the themes that brought him his greatest successes, the Virgin and Child, and the Immaculate Conception. After another period in Madrid, from 1658 to 1660, he returned to Seville. Here he was one of the founders of the Academia de Bellas Artes (Academy of Art), sharing its direction, in 1660, with the architect, Francisco Herrera the Younger. This was his period of greatest activity, and he received numerous important commissions, among them the altarpieces for the Augustinian monastery, the paintings for Santa Mar??a la Blanca (completed in 1665), and others.  Related Paintings of Bartolome Esteban Murillo :. | Rest on the Fight ingo Egypt | San Antonio | Saint Catherine of Alexandria | Holy Family and the birds | San Seta |
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SACCHI, Andrea
Italian painter, Roman school (b. 1599, Nettuno, d. 1661, Roma).Italian painter and designer. He occupied an important position, midway between Annibale Carracci and Carlo Maratti, in the development of a more restrained, less decorative painting in 17th-century Rome, a trend that culminated in the 18th century with Pompeo Batoni. Sacchi trained with Francesco Albani, Carracci's student, and taught Maratti. His often expressed devotion to the art of Raphael and Carracci and his criticism of the views of Pietro da Cortona and Gianlorenzo Bernini made him, with Nicolas Poussin and Alessandro Algardi, one of the most significant representatives of a stylistic and aesthetic opposition to the more flamboyant, extrovert aspects of the High Baroque. Sacchi did not, however, share Poussin's passionate interest in Classical antiquity, nor was his mature work as cerebral. Yet his mature style, less richly coloured than his early manner and more restrained emotionally,
Edvard Munch
Norwegian 1863-1944 Edvard Munch Locations Edvard Munch (pronounced , December 12, 1863 ?C January 23, 1944) was a Norwegian Symbolist painter, printmaker, and an important forerunner of expressionistic art. His best-known composition, The Scream is one of the pieces in a series titled The Frieze of Life, in which Munch explored the themes of life, love, fear, death, and melancholy. Edvard Munch was born in a rustic farmhouse in the village of Adalsbruk in Loten, Norway to Christian Munch, the son of a prominent priest. Christian was a doctor and medical officer, who married Laura Cathrine Bjølstad, a woman half his age, in 1861. Edvard had an older sister, Johanne Sophie (born 1862), and three younger siblings: Peter Andreas (born 1865), Laura Cathrine (born 1867), and Inger Marie (born 1868). Both Sophie and Edvard appear to have gotten their art talent from their mother. Edvard Munch was related to painter Jacob Munch (1776?C1839) and historian Peter Andreas Munch (1810?C1863). The family moved to Kristiania (now Oslo) in 1864 when Christian Munch was appointed medical officer at Akershus Fortress. Edvard??s mother died of tuberculosis in 1868, as did Munch's favorite sister Johanne Sophie in 1877. After their mother's death, the Munch siblings were raised by their father and by their aunt Karen. Often ill for much of the winters and kept out of school, Edvard would draw to keep himself occupied. He also received tutoring from his school mates and his aunt. Christian Munch also instructed his son in history and literature, and entertained the children with vivid ghost stories and tales of Edgar Allan Poe. Christian??s positive behavior toward his children, however, was overshadowed by his morbid pietism. Munch wrote, ??My father was temperamentally nervous and obsessively religious??to the point of psychoneurosis. From him I inherited the seeds of madness. The angles of fear, sorrow, and death stood by my side since the day I was born.?? Christian reprimanded his children by telling them that their mother was looking down from heaven and grieving over their misbehavior. The oppressive religious milieu, plus Edvard??s poor health and the vivid ghost stories, helped inspire macabre visions and nightmares in Edvard, who felt death constantly advancing on him. One of Munch's younger sisters was diagnosed with mental illness at an early age. Of the five siblings only Andreas married, but he died a few months after the wedding. Munch would later write, "I inherited two of mankind's most frightful enemies??the heritage of consumption and insanity." Christian Munch??s military pay was very low, and his attempts at developing a private side practice failed, keeping his family in perrenial poverty. They moved frequently from one sordid flat to another. Munch??s early drawings and watercolors depicted these interiors, and the individual objects such as medicine bottles and drawing implements, plus some landscapes. By his teens, art dominated Munch??s interests. At thirteen, Munch has his first exposure to other artists at the newly formed Art Association, were he admired the work of the Norwegian landscape school, and where he returned to copy the paintings, and soon he began to paint in oils.
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,