Italian Painter, 1698-1767 Italian painter. He was one of a group of artists working in Bergamo and Brescia who observed reality with an unusual freshness and directness. He painted religious subjects and portraits but was most distinguished as a painter of genre and low-life scenes. These included many pictures of beggars and vagabonds ( pitocchi), hence his nickname 'il Pitocchetto'. He married in Milan in 1717 but settled in Brescia in 1721. In 1723 he received a horse in payment for three altarpieces and four frescoes for the parish church of Rino di Sonico; they were mediocre works executed in an unadventurous blend of Lombard and Venetian traditions derived from contemporary Venetian painters working in Brescia. Ceruti's early portraits and genre scenes are less conventional and more intensely felt; in 1724 he signed and dated the strikingly naturalistic portrait of Giovanni Maria Fenaroli  Related Paintings of CERUTI, Giacomo :. | The Miracles of the Penitent St Mary jhj | Still-Life with a Skull jg | The Supper at Emmaus khk | Ex Voto | Portrait of Robert Arnauld d'Andilly lkhk |
Related Artists:
CARRIERA, Rosalba fg
Italian Rococo Era Painter, 1675-1757
h. olrik

WATTEAU, Antoine
(1684?C1721). French painter of Flemish descent, b. Valenciennes. Until 1704 poverty forced him to work in the shops of mediocre artists, where he produced genre and devotional subjects. In 1704?C8 he studied in the studio of Claude Gillot, an adept painter of scenes of theatrical life, which later became the subject of some of Watteau's finest paintings, such as Love in the Italian Theatre and Love in the French Theatre (both: Berlin). In 1708?C9 Watteau worked with the decorator Claude Audran. Watteau attracted the attention of eminent patrons in his last years, including the comte de Caylus, his biographer, and in 1717 he was made a full member of the Acad??mie royale. The Embarkation for Cythera (1717; Louvre) is characteristic of his art; it is a delicate, courtly fantasy, represented in warm and shimmering pastel tones that place him among the great colorists of all time. A lyric, Giorgionesque quality pervades his airy, gay, and sensuous scenes, which have a poignancy that none of his followers attained. Out of the most fleeting aspects of life he created an enduring and individual art. His exquisite paintings influenced fashion and garden design in the 18th cent. Other outstanding works include Gilles (Louvre), Perspective (Mus. of Fine Arts, Boston), Mezzetin (Metropolitan Mus.), and Gersaint's Shop Sign (1719; Berlin).