Greek-born Spanish Mannerist Painter, 1541-1614
Considered a representative of late Renaissance Spanish art, El Greco was actually born in Greece, on the island of Crete. After studying in Venice under Titian, El Greco settled in Toledo, Spain in 1577. At the time he was wildly popular, his emotionally religious paintings being just the ticket for the hometown of the Spanish Inquisition. After his death his work was largely ignored until the beginning of the 20th century; now he considered one of the inspired geniuses of Western art. His distinctive style features bold shapes and colors, with elongated and slightly distorted figures.
In Toledo El Greco was in constant demand and liked living large: he maintained a private orchestra to accompany his meals. Related Paintings of El Greco :. | The Adoration of the Name of Jesus | St Luke | The Vision of St.John | Portrait of a Cardinal | The Purification of the Temple | Related Artists:
bernhard strigelBernhard Strigel (c. 1461 ?C 1528) was a German portrait and historical painter of the Swabian school, the most important of a family of artists established at Memmingen. He was born at Memmingen and was probably a pupil of Zeitblom at Ulm. He stood in high favor with the Emperor Maximilian I, in whose service he repeatedly journeyed to Augsburg, Innsbruck, and Vienna.
Giovanni Antonio Boltraffiowas an Italian painter of the High Renaissance from Lombardy, who worked in the studio of Leonardo da Vinci.[2] Boltraffio and Bernardino Luini are the strongest artistic personalities to emerge from Leonardo's studio. According to Giorgio Vasari, he was of an aristocratic family and was born in Milan.
His major painting of the 1490s is the Resurrection (painted with fellow da Vinci pupil Marco d'Oggiono and now in the Gemäldegalerie, Berlin). A Madonna and Child in the Museo Poldi Pezzoli of Milan, is one of the high points of the Lombard Quattrocento.
His portraits, often in profile, and his half-length renderings of the Madonna and Child are Leonardesque in conception, though the clean hard edges of his outlines lack Leonardo's sfumato.
In Bologna, where he remained in 1500-1502, he found sympathetic patrons in the Casio family, of whom he painted several portraits and for whom he produced his masterwork, the Pala Casio for the Church of the Misericordia (Louvre Museum); it depicts a Madonna and Child with John the Baptist and Saint Sebastian and two Kneeling Donors, Giacomo Marchione de' Pandolfi da Casio and his son, the Bolognese poet Girolamo Casio[3], who mentioned Boltraffio in some of his sonnets. Boltraffio's portrait of Girolamo Casio is at the Pinacoteca di Brera, Milan.
SPADA, LionelloItalian Baroque Era Painter, 1576-1622
Italian painter, active mainly in Emilia. His signature was an L placed across a sword [Ital. spada=sword]. His work shows influence of the grand manner of the Carracci, as in The Burning of Heretical Books (San Domenico, Bologna), and of Caravaggio's naturalism, seen in dramatic religious and genre scenes such as The Way to Calvary (Parma). In his late works his manner became softer and warmer under Correggio's influence. An example is The Marriage of St. Catherine (Parma).