Italian Rococo Era Painter, 1712-ca.1793 The records of his parish in Venice show that Francesco Guardi was baptized on Oct. 5, 1712. His father, Domenico, who died when Francesco was 4, had a workshop. Francesco and his elder brother, Gian Antonio, worked in a small studio, carrying out such orders as they could get for almost anything the client wanted:mythological pictures, genre, flower pieces, battle scenes, altarpieces, and even, on rare occasions, frescoes. They did not hesitate to copy compositions by other artists, but what they borrowed they always transformed into something more capricious, less stable, more fragmentary in the refraction of light. Francesco did not emerge as an independent personality until 1760, when his brother died. Then, 48 years old, he married, established his own studio, and devoted himself chiefly to painting views of Venice. For the most part he worked in obscurity, ignored by his contemporaries. He was not even admitted to the Venetian Academy until he was 72 years old. Guardi and Canaletto have always been compared to one another because the buildings they chose to paint were often the same. But the way each artist painted them is very different. Canaletto's world is constructed out of line. It provides solid, carefully drawn, three-dimensional objects that exist within logically constructed three-dimensional space. Guardi's world is constructed out of color and light. The objects in it become weightless in the light's shimmer and dissolve in a welter of brushstrokes; the space, like the forms in space, is suggested rather than described. Canaletto belonged essentially to the Renaissance tradition that began with Giotto and, as it grew progressively tighter and more controlled, pointed the way to neoclassicism. Guardi belonged to the new baroque tradition that grew out of the late style of Titian and, as it became progressively looser and freer, pointed the way toward impressionism. Such differences appear even in Guardi's early view paintings, where he was obviously trying to copy Canaletto, such as the Basin of San Marco. The famous buildings are there, but they are far in the background, insubstantial, seeming to float. In front is a fleet of fishing boats, their curving spars seeming to dance across the surface of the canvas. What is important for Guardi is not perspective but the changing clouds and the way the light falls on the lagoon. Guardi became increasingly fascinated by the water that surrounds Venice. In late works, such as the famous Lagoon with Gondola, buildings and people have been stripped away until there is nothing but the suggestion of a thin line of distant wharfs, a few strokes to indicate one man on a gondola, a long unbroken stretch of still water, and a cloudless sky. Guardi also painted the festivals that so delighted visitors to the city, such as the Marriage of Venice to the Sea. This was a symbolic ceremony in which the doge, in the great gilded galley of the head of state, surrounded by a thousand gondolas, appeared before all Venice, in Goethe's image, "raised up like the Host in a monstrance." Of all Guardi's paintings the most evocative are his caprices, the landscapes born out of his imagination though suggested by the ruined buildings on the lonely islands of the Venetian lagoon. A gentle melancholy clings to such scenes.   Related Paintings of GUARDI, Francesco :. | The Doge on the Bucintoro near the Riva di Sant Elena | Gondola | Il Ridotto (The Foyer) dgh | Landscape with a Fisherman s Tent | Doge Alvise IV Mocenigo Appears to the People in St Mark's Basilica in 1763 |
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Scarsellino
(1550 (or 1551) - 1620), was an Italian Late-Renaissance - Mannerist painter of the School of Ferrara. He was born and died in Ferrara; however, he traveled and worked extensively across Italy, encountering many influences. He was born to an artist father, the less-talented Sigismondo Scarsella. Apparently he lived in Venice for 4 years around 1570, though it is not known if he was affiliated to a particular studio. His early works show the influences of various contemporary styles and painters including the venetian schools and locally Dosso Dossi. A number of his works now are at the Galleria Borghese in Rome, The Bathing Venus, Diana and Endymion and Venus and Adonis. Scarsellino worked alongside the brothers Carracci in the Palazzo dei Diamanti in Ferrara. However, unlike the Carracci, Scarsellino's paintings have a decorative quality, and lack monumentality. World War II bombing of Dresden destroyed two of his paintings: Flight into Egypt and Holy Family at Work.
Adrien Lavieille
(March 29, 1848, Montmartre - February 5, 1920, Chartres) was a French painter. Portrait of Adrien Lavieille in 1879, by his wife, Marie Adrien Lavieille. Oil on canvas (private collection).Son of the landscape painter Eugene Lavieille, and nephew of the wood engraver Jacques Adrien Lavieille, he was a painter of the country : near Paris, in Brittany, near Cancale and on the riverside of the Vilaine in the south of Rennes, in Touraine, at Saint-Jean-de-Monts in Vendee, where he was invited by a friend, the painter and engraver Auguste Lepere, around Vendôme where he sojourned in the home of his daughter, Andree Lavieille, so a painter, and of his son-in-law, the man of letters, Paul Tuffrau. He also painted in Montmartre, where he lived during his youthful days, and, as his father, at Moret-sur-Loing, near Fontainebleau. Parallelly to his painter's activities, Adrien Lavieille executed, during his life, for money's reasons, works of restoration and decoration : basilica Saint-Martin in Tours (where he worked with the painter Pierre Fritel), Palais de Justice of Rennes, Château de Vaux-le-Vicomte, Hôtel de Lauzun, quai d'Anjou in Paris. In 1878, he married the painter Marie Petit.
Joachim von Sandrart
(12 May 1606 - 14 October 1688) was a German Baroque art-historian and painter, active in Amsterdam during the Dutch Golden Age. Sandrart was born in Frankfurt, but the family originated from Mons. According to Houbraken (who used his Teutsche Akademie as a primary source), he learned to read and write from the son of Theodor de Bry, Johann Theodoor de Brie and his associate Matthäus Merian, but at age 15 was so eager to learn more of the art of engraving, that he walked from Frankfurt to Prague to become a pupil of Gillis Sadelaar (also known as Aegidius Sadeler of the Sadeler family). Sadelaar in turn urged him to paint, whereupon he travelled to Utrecht in 1625 to become a pupil of Gerrit van Honthorst, and through him he met Rubens when he brought a visit to Honthorst in 1627, to recruit him for collaboration on part of his Marie de' Medici cycle. Honthorst took Sandrart along with him when he travelled to London. There he worked with Honthorst and spent time making copies of Holbein portraits for the portrait gallery of Henry Howard, 22nd Earl of Arundel. Making all of those copies only served to arouse more curiosity in the young adventurer, and in 1627 Sandrart booked a passage on a ship from London to Venice, where he was welcomed by Jan Lis (whose Bentvueghels bent name was "Pan"), and Nicolaas Ringnerus. He then set out for Bologna, where he was met by his cousin on his father's side Michael le Blond, a celebrated engraver. With him, he crossed the mountains to Florence, and from there on to Rome, where they met Pieter van Laer (whose bent name was "Bamboccio"). Sandrart became famous as a portrait-painter. After a few years he undertook a tour of Italy, traveling to Naples, where he drew studies of Mount Vesuvius, believed to be the entrance to the Elysian fields described by Virgil. From there he traveled to Malta and beyond, searching for literary sights to see and paint, and wherever he went he paid his way by selling portraits. Only when he was done traveling did he finally return to Frankfurt, where he married Johanna de Milkau. Afraid of political unrest and plague, he moved to Amsterdam with his wife in 1637.