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 :. | Window, smiling boy | Grapes and melon eater | Baptism of Jesus | Holy Family and the birds | Saint Catherine of Alexandria |
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Nantes 1861-Ponce-sur-Loir,Sarthe 1918
Arkady Alexandrovich Rylov
Arkady Alexandrovich Rylov (Russian, 29 January [O.S. 17 January] 1870 - June 22, 1939) was a Russian and Soviet Symbolist painter. Biography Rylov was born in the village Istobenskoye, Vyatka gubernia. He was brought in the family of his stepfather, a notary (Rylov's father had a psychiatric illness). He moved to Saint Petersburg and studied at the Technical Design School of Baron Schtiglitz (1888-1891), then at the Imperial Academy of Arts under Arkhip Kuindzhi (1894-1897). In the Blue Expanse, 1918Rylov was a member of the Mir iskusstva movement and its spin-off Union of Russian Artists also a member of the Association of Artists of the Revolutionary Russia. He was a chairman of the Kuindzhi Society.
BENSON, Ambrosius
Flemish Northern Renaissance Painter, ca.1495-1550 South Netherlandish painter of Italian birth. In 1518 he acquired Bruges citizenship, and in 1519 he was admitted to the guild of painters and saddlemakers there as an independent master, with the comment that he was 'from Lombardy'. He may have been from Ferrara, although he was originally called Ambrogio Benzone, taking his first name from the patron saint of Milan, the capital of Lombardy. He was probably attracted to Bruges by its commercial and artistic reputation. Initially he worked in the studio of Gerard David, by whom he was profoundly influenced, but after a few months the relationship went wrong and the younger painter brought a case against David. Benson's first marriage was to Anna Ghyselin, who bore him two sons, Willem Benson (1521/2-1574) and Jan Benson (before 1530-before 1581), both of whom became artists. From his second marriage, to Josyne Michiels, a daughter Anna was born, and he had two other daughters from various extra-marital relationships. Benson was an affluent and successful man: he owned several houses, for one of which he gave eight paintings in half payment (which gives some idea of the value of his works at the time). Benson twice received commissions from city magistrates to decorate their new county hall and was a member of the city council on three occasions; he also held important offices within the painters' guild, including dean (1537-8 and 1543-4) and governor (1540-41). His pupils included his two sons, and Joachim Spaers (1541) and Jacob Vinson (Fynson; 1549).