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 :. | Saint Francis Receiving the Stigmata | Apostle St James the Less | Christ as Saviour | The Madonna of Chrity | Picasso Les Demoiselles d Avignon |
Related Artists:
Willem van Nieulandt
(1584-1635) was a Dutch Golden Age painter and engraver from Antwerp. His father Adrien van Nieulandt the elder was born to a family of artists of Flemish origin from Antwerp. He probably moved with his family to Amsterdam in 1589 after the Siege of Antwerp, because they were Protestants. His three sons Willem van Nieulandt II (named for his uncle, also a painter), Adriaen van Nieulandt the younger, and Jacob van Nieulandt all became painters. According to Houbraken, Willem was a pupil of Roelant Savery in Amsterdam, and he left him to travel to Rome, where he became a student of Paulus Bril. He specialized in painting artistic ruins of monuments, arches, and temples, many of which he then engraved himself. He returned to Amsterdam (via Antwerp) in 1607, and became a respected poet there as well as Italianate painter.
Frans Francken II
Flemish Baroque Era Painter, 1581-1642 was a Flemish Baroque painter and the best-known member of the large Francken family of artists. Many of his works are small historical, allegorical and biblical cabinet paintings with the focus on figures. He also invented or popularized several new themes that became popular in Flemish painting, such as genre scenes populated by monkeys (later imitated by David Teniers the Younger) and Kunstkamer paintings displaying a wealth of natural and artistic treasures against a neutral wall. Francken frequently collaborated with other artists, adding figures to works by Tobias Verhaecht and Abraham Govaerts.
Giorgio Vasari
1511-74 Italian painter, architect, and writer. Though he was a prolific painter in the Mannerist style, he is more highly regarded as an architect (he designed the Uffizi Palace, now the Uffizi Gallery), but even his architecture is overshadowed by his writings. His Lives of the Most Eminent Architects, Painters, and Sculptors (1550) offers biographies of early to late Renaissance artists. His style is eminently readable and his material is well researched, though when facts were scarce he did not hesitate to fill in the gaps. In his view, Giotto had revived the art of true representation after its decline in the early Middle Ages, and succeeding artists had brought that art progressively closer to the perfection achieved by Michelangelo.