Italian Rococo Era Painter, 1696-1770 Giovanni Battista Tiepolo was born in Venice on March 5, 1696. His father, who was part owner of a ship, died when Tiepolo was scarcely a year old, but the family was left in comfortable circumstances. As a youth, he was apprenticed to Gregorio Lazzarini, a mediocre but fashionable painter known for his elaborately theatrical, rather grandiose compositions. Tiepolo soon evolved a more spirited style of his own. By the time he was 20, he had exhibited his work independently, and won plaudits, at an exhibition held at the church of S. Rocco. The next year he became a member of the Fraglia, or painters guild. In 1719 he married Cecilia Guardi, whose brother Francesco was to become famous as a painter of the Venetian scene. They had nine children, among them Giovanni Domenico and Lorenzo Baldassare, who were also painters. In the 1720s Tiepolo carried out many large-scale commissions on the northern Italian mainland. Of these the most important is the cycle of Old Testament scenes done for the patriarch of Aquileia, Daniele Dolfin, in the new Archbishop Palace at Udine. Here Tiepolo abandoned the dark hues that had characterized his early style and turned instead to the bright, sparkling colors that were to make him famous.  Related Paintings of Giovanni Battista Tiepolo :. | Eteokles und Polyneikes | Neptune Bestowing Gifts upon Venice | John the Baptist Preaching | Rinaldo Abandoning Armida | Angelica Carving Medoro's Name on a Tree |
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Henri De Braekeleer
Belgian Painter, 1840-1888 Belgian painter, was born at Antwerp. He was trained by his father, a genre painter, and his uncle, Baron Henri Leys, and devoted himself to scenes of everyday Antwerp life. The first pictures he exhibited, The Laundry (Van Cutsem collection, Brussels), and The Coppersmith's Workshop (Vleeshouwer collection, Antwerp), were shown. at the Antwerp exhibition in 1861. He received the gold medal at Brussels in 1872 for The Geographer and The Lesson (both in the Brussels gallery); the gold medal at Vienna in 1873 for The Painter's Studio and Grandmother's Birthday ; and the medal of honor at the Exposition Universelle at Amsterdam for The Pilot House. Among his more notable works are A Shoemaker (1862), A Tailor's Workroom (1863), A Gardener (1864, Antwerp gallery), Interior of a Church (1866), Interior, Flanders (1867), Woman Spinning (1869), Man Reading (1871), Theruedu Serment, Antwerp (1875), A Copperplate Printer, The Sailor's Return, The Man at the Window (Couteaux collection, Brussels), The Horn-blower (Couteaux collection), Man Retouching a Picture (Couteaux collection), The Potters (Marlier collection, Brussels), Staircase in the Hydraulic House at Antwerp (Marlier collection), and The Brewer's House at Antwerp (Marlier collection). The last, better known as A Man Sitting, is generally regarded as his masterpiece. As a lithographer and etcher, his work resembles that of Henri Leys.
Marguerite Gerard
Marguerite Gerard (28 January 1761 in Grasse - 18 May 1837 in Paris) was a French painter and etcher. She was the daughter of Marie Gilette and perfumer Claude Gerard. At 8 years-old she became the sister-in-law of Jean-Honore Fragonard, and when she was 14 she became his pupil, and she often worked with him. She was also the aunt of the artist Alexandre-Évariste Fragonard.
Juan Fernandez de Navarrete
Spanish painter 1526-1579 was a Spanish Mannerist painter, born at Logroño. An illness in infancy deprived Navarrete of his hearing, but at a very early age he began to express his wants by sketching objects with a piece of charcoal. He received his first instructions in art from Fray Vicente de Santo Domingo, a Hieronymite monk at Estella, and also with Becerra. He visited Naples, Rome, Florence and Milan. Pellegrino Tibaldi met him in Rome in 1550. According to most accounts he was for a considerable time the pupil and assistant of Titian at Venice. In 1568 Philip II of Spain summoned him to Madrid with the title of king's painter and a salary, and employed him to execute pictures for the Escorial. During the 1560s and 1570s the huge monastery-palace of El Escorial was still under construction and Philip II was experiencing difficulties in finding good artists for the many large paintings required to decorate it. Titian was very old, and died in 1576, and Tintoretto, Veronese and Anthonis Mor all refused to come to Spain. Philip had to rely on the lesser talent of Navarrete, whose gravedad y decoro ("seriousness and decorum") the king approved. For eleven years until his death Navarrete worked largely on El Escorial. The most celebrated of the works he produced there are a "Nativity" (in which, as in the well-known work on the same subject by Correggio, the light emanates from the infant Saviour), a "Baptism of Christ" (now Prado), and "Abraham Receiving the Three Angels" (one of his last works, dated 1576).