1657-1747 Italian Francesco Solimena Gallery Francesco Solimena was born in Canale di Serino, near Avellino. He received early training from his father, Angelo Solimena, with whom he executed a Paradise for the cathedral of Nocera (place where he spend a big part of his life) and a Vision of St. Cyril of Alexandria for the church of San Domenico at Solofra. He settled in Naples in 1674, there he worked in the studio of Francesco di Maria and later Giacomo del Po[1]. He apparently had taken the clerical orders, but was patronized early on, and encouraged to become an artist by Cardinal Vincenzo Orsini (later Pope Benedict XIII)[2]. By the 1680s, he had independent fresco commissions, and his active studio came to dominate Neapolitan painting from the 1690s through the first four decades of the 18th century. He modeled his art??for he was a highly conventional painter??after the Roman Baroque masters, Luca Giordano and Giovanni Lanfranco, and Mattia Preti, whose technique of warm brownish shadowing Solimena emulated. Solimena painted many frescoes in Naples, altarpieces, celebrations of weddings and courtly occasions, mythological subjects, characteristically chosen for their theatrical drama, and portraits. His settings are suggested with a few details??steps, archways, balustrades, columns??concentrating attention on figures and their draperies, caught in pools and shafts of light. Art historians take pleasure in identifying the models he imitated or adapted in his compositions. His numerous preparatory drawings often mix media, combining pen-and-ink, chalk and watercolor washes. Francesco Solimena 'A study for the fresco cycle in the Sacristy of San Paolo Maggiore in Naples', Whitfield Fine Art.A typical example of the elaborately constructed allegorical "machines" of his early mature style, fully employing his mastery of chiaroscuro, is the Allegory of Rule (1690) from the Stroganoff collection, which has come to the State Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg. He apparently hoped to see his son Orazio follow a career in the law, for which he received a doctorate (de Domenici), but also became a painter. His large, efficiently structured atelier became a virtual academy, at the heart of cultural life in Naples. Among his many pupils were Francesco de Mura (1696-1784) , Giuseppe Bonito (1707-89), Pietro Capelli, Gaspare Traversi, and most notably Corrado Giaquinto and Sebastiano Conca. The Scottish portraitist Allan Ramsay spent three years in Solimena's studio. Solimena amassed a fortune, was made a baron and lived in sumptuous style founded on his success. Francesco Solimena died at Barra, near Naples, in 1747.  Related Paintings of Francesco Solimena :. | St Francis before the Pope | The Trinity, the Madonna and St Dominic | Portrait of Charles VI, Holy Roman Emperor | Descent from the Cross | Rebecca and Eleazer |
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Giovanni Gerolamo Savoldo
Italian Mannerist Painter , c. 1480 - aft.1548 was an Italian High Renaissance painter. Savoldo was born in Brescia, but little is known about his early years. Some sources claim he was known as Girolamo Bresciano. By 1506 he was in Parma, and by 1508, he had joined the Florentine painter??s guild. In this period he finished the Rest at the Flight from Egypt (Augsburg), the Elijah Harassed by a Crow (National Gallery of Art, Washington), and a Deposition. In 1515 he painted the Portrait of a Clad Warrior, wrongly identified with Gaston de Foix. Also from the same period his the Temptings of St. Anthony, which appears to show the influence of the Flemish Hieronymus Bosch. The works was appreciated by the commissioners from Venice, where Savoldo relocated before 1520. On June 15, 1524 he signed a contract for an altarpiece for the church of San Domenico in Pesaro (now in the Brera, Milan). In 1527, he completed a St. Hieronymus for the Brescian family Averoldi, probably the one at National Gallery of London. From the 1530s dates a Nativity at the National Gallery in Washington DC, which seems influenced by the lambent contemporary, Correggio painting on the same topic. In 1533 Savoldo painted a Madonna with Four Saints in the church of Santa Maria in Organo, while in 1537-1538 he executed the altarpiece for the main altar of Santa Croce, Brescia.
Pieter Jansz. Saenredam
(June 9 1597 - buried May 31 1665) was a painter of the Dutch Golden Age, known for his distinctive paintings of whitewashed church interiors. Saenredam was born in Assendelft, the son of the Northern Mannerist printmaker and draughtsman Jan Pietersz Saenredam (1565-1607), a follower of Goltzius whose sensuous naked goddesses are in great contrast with the work of his son. In 1612 he moved to Haarlem, where he became a pupil of Frans de Grebber and lived for the rest of his life. In 1614 he became a member of the Haarlem Guild of St. Luke. He died in Haarlem. A contemporary of the painter-architects Jacob van Campen, Salomon de Bray, and Pieter Post, he is noted for his surprisingly modern paintings of church interiors, the great bulk of his production. Saenredam achieved this modern look by using very even light, subtlely modulated, and by removing detailed depiction of textures, in meticulously measured and drawn sketches. He would make these sketches in pencil, pen, and chalk, then and add in watercolor to help give the sketch texture and color. The sketches are detailed, conveying the interior atmosphere through the clever use of light and graduated shadows. Saenredam often deliberately omitted people and church furniture from work, thus focusing more attention on buildings and their architectural forms. Only after having made precise measurements, and precise sketches and drawings of the churches, he would take them to his studio where he started to create his paintings, often after a delay of many years. His emphasis on even light and geometry is brought out by comparing his works with those of the rather younger Emanuel de Witte, who included people, contrasts of light and such clutter of church furniture as remained in Calvinist churches, all usually ignored by Saenredam. Unlike de Witte's, Saenredam's views are usually roughly aligned with a main axis of the church.
William Marlow
(1740 - 14 January 1813) was a British landscape and marine painter and etcher. Marlow was born in Southwark in London, and studied for 5 years under the marine painter Samuel Scott, and also at the St. Martin's Lane Academy, London. He became a member of the Incorporated Society of Artists, and from 1762 to 1764 contributed to their exhibitions in Spring Gardens. He was employed in painting views of country houses. From 1765 to 1768, on the advice of the Duchess of Northumberland, he travelled in France and Italy. On his return to Britain he renewed his contributions to the Society of Artists, and took up residence in Leicester Square, London - he was made a Fellow of the Society in 1771. In 1788 he moved to Twickenham, and started to exhibit at the Royal Academy, showing works regularly until 1796, and again, for the last time, in 1807, when he exhibited Twickenham Ferry by Moonlight. Marlow died in Twickenham on 14 January 1813.