1575-1642 Italian Guido Reni Galleries Born in Bologna into a family of musicians, Guido Reni was the son of Daniele Reni and Ginevra de?? Pozzi. As a child of nine, he was apprenticed under the Bolognese studio of Denis Calvaert. Soon after, he was joined in that studio by Albani and Domenichino. He may also have trained with a painter by the name of Ferrantini. When Reni was about twenty years old, the three Calvaert pupils migrated to the rising rival studio, named Accademia degli Incamminati (Academy of the "newly embarked", or progressives), led by Lodovico Carracci. They went on to form the nucleus of a prolific and successful school of Bolognese painters who followed Annibale Carracci to Rome. Like many other Bolognese painters, Reni's painting was thematic and eclectic in style. By late 1601, Reni and Albani had moved to Rome to work with the teams led by Annibale Carracci in fresco decoration of the Farnese Palace. During 1601-1604, his main patron was cardinal Sfondrato. By 1604-1605, he received an independent commission for an altarpiece of the Crucifixion of St. Peter. After a few year sojourn in Bologna, he returned to Rome to become one of the premier painters during the papacy of Paul V (Borghese). From 1607-1614, he was one of the painters patronized by Borghese. Abduction of Deianira, 1620-1621.Reni's frescoed ceiling of the large central hall of garden palace, Casino dell'Aurora located in the grounds of the Palazzo Pallavicini-Rospigliosi, is considered his masterpiece. The casino was originally a pavilion commissioned by Cardinal Scipione Borghese; the rear portion overlooks the Piazza Montecavallo and Palazzo del Quirinale. The massive fresco is framed in quadri riportati and depicts Apollo in his Chariot preceded by Dawn (Aurora) bringing light to the world. The work is restrained in classicism, copying poses from Roman Sarcophagi, and showing far more simplicity and restraint than Carracci's riotous Triumph of Bacchus and Ariadne[5] in the Farnese. Reni in this painting is allies himself more with the sterner Cavaliere d'Arpino,Lanfranco, and Albani "School" of mytho-historic painting, and less with the more crowded frescoes characteristic of Pietro da Cortona. There is little concession to perspective, and the vibrantly colored style is antithetical to the tenebrism of Caravaggio's followers. Payments showed that he was paid in 247 scudi and 54 baiocchi upon completion on 24 September 1616. He also frescoed in Paoline Chapel of Santa Maria Maggiore in Rome as well as the Aldobrandini wings of the Vatican. According to rumor, the pontifical chapel of Montecavallo (Chapel of the Annuciation) was assigned to Reni to paint. However, because he felt underpaid by the ministers, the artist left for Bologna, leaving the role of the preeminent artist in Rome to Domenichino.  Related Paintings of Guido Reni :. | Atalante and Hippomenes | Susannah and the Elders | Der Raub der Helena | Kreuzigung des Hl. Petrus | Saint Sebastian |
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Orest Kiprensky
1782-1836 Russian Orest Kiprensky Galleries Orest was born in the village of Koporye near Saint Petersburg on 24 March [O.S. 13 March] 1782. He was an illegitimate son of a landowner Alexey Dyakonov, hence his name, derived from Kypris, one of the Greek names for the goddess of love. He was raised in the family of Adam Shvalber, a serf. Although Kiprensky was born a serf, he was released from the serfdom upon his birth and later his father helped him to enter a boarding school at the Imperial Academy of Arts in Saint Petersburg in 1788 (when Orest was only six years old). He studied at the boarding school and the Academy itself until 1803. He lived at the Academy for three more years as a pensioner to fulfill requirements necessary to win the Major Gold medal. Winning the first prize for his work Prince Dmitri Donskoi after the Battle of Kulikovo (1805) enabled the young artist to go abroad to study art in Europe. A year before his graduation, in 1804, he painted the portrait of Adam Shvalber, his foster father (1804), which was a great success. The portrait so impressed his contemporaries, that later members of the Naples Academy of Arts took it for the painting by some Old Master - Rubens or van Dyck. Kiprensky had to ask the members of the Imperial Academy of Arts for letters supporting his authorship. Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Orest Kiprensky After that, Kiprensky lived in Moscow (1809), Tver 1811, Saint Petersburg 1812, in 1816-1822 he lived in Rome and Napoli. In Italy he met a local girl Anne Maria Falcucci (Mariucci), to whom he became attached. He bought her from her dissolute family and employed as his ward. On leaving Italy, he sent her to a Roman Catholic convent. In 1828, Kiprensky came back to Italy, as he got a letter from his friend Samuel Halberg, informing him that they had lost track of Mariucci. Kiprensky found Mariucci, who had been transferred to another convent. In 1836 he eventually married her. He had to convert into Roman Catholicism for this marriage to happen. He died by pneumonia in Rome later that year.
Cornelis Saftleven
(c. 1607, Gorinchem - 1 June 1681, Rotterdam) was a Dutch Golden Age painter He was born into a family of artists, and learned to paint from his father Herman, along with his brothers Abraham and Herman Saftleven the Younger. He lived for a time in Utrecht with his brother. Saftleven's subject matter covered various subjects, including genre works, portraits, beach scenes, and biblical and mythological themes. Some consider his images of Hell to be his most individual contribution to Dutch painting
William Parrott
English Painter, 1813-ca.1869