Italian 1494-1557 Jacopo Pontormo Galleries Italian painter and draughtsman. He was the leading painter in mid-16th-century Florence and one of the most original and extraordinary of Mannerist artists. His eccentric personality, solitary and slow working habits and capricious attitude towards his patrons are described by Vasari; his own diary, which covers the years 1554-6, further reveals a character with neurotic and secretive aspects. Pontormo enjoyed the protection of the Medici family throughout his career but, unlike Agnolo Bronzino and Giorgio Vasari, did not become court painter. His subjective portrait style did not lend itself to the state portrait. He produced few mythological works and after 1540 devoted himself almost exclusively to religious subjects. His drawings, mainly figure studies in red and black chalk, are among the highest expressions of the great Florentine tradition of draughtsmanship; close to 400 survive, forming arguably the most important body of drawings by a Mannerist painter. His highly personal style was much influenced by Michelangelo, though he also drew on northern art, primarily the prints of Albrecht Derer.  Related Paintings of Jacopo Pontormo :. | Madonna and Child with | Madonna and Child with the Young St John | Portrat einer Dame mit Spindelkorbchen | Joseph in Egypt | Altargemalde der Capponi-Kapelle in Santa Felicita in Florenz |
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Lavinia Fontana
Italian Painter, 1552-1614 Daughter of Prospero Fontana. She was trained by her father and followed his Mannerist style. Her first recorded works, which date from 1575, were small paintings for private devotion, such as the Holy Family (Dresden, Gemeldegal.). By 1577 she had become established as a portrait painter in Bologna. Works of this date include the Self-portrait at the Harpsichord (Rome, Gal. Accad. S Luca) and the portrait of Senator Orsini (Bordeaux, Mus. B.-A.). Her portrait style reflects the formality of central Italian models as well as the naturalistic tendencies of the north Italian tradition. The elegantly costumed Orsini is shown seated at a table, with a suite of rooms opening behind him, a setting recalling such Florentine portraits of the 1530s as Agnolo Bronzino's Bartolommeo Panciatichi (Florence, Uffizi). Lavinia used a similar setting for other portraits, including the Gozzadini Family (1584; Bologna, Pin. N.). Female sitters are also shown in elaborate dress, with particular attention paid to details of embroidery and jewels, and they are often accompanied by small dogs
CUYP, Benjamin Gerritsz.
b. 1612, Dordrecht, d. 1652, Dordrecht Dordrecht,,Painter, half-brother of Jacob Cuyp. Houbraken stated that he studied with his half-brother Jacob. Benjamin entered the Guild of St Luke on 27 January 1631, at the same time as his brother Gerrit Gerritsz. the younger. In 1641 Benjamin gave evidence in a medical affair, which has prompted speculation that he may have trained as a doctor, but in 1643 he is twice recorded in The Hague as a painter, living with other artists.
Kurt Schwitters
German Dadaist Painter and Sculptor, 1887-1948 German painter, sculptor, designer and writer. He studied at the Kunstakademie in Dresden (1909-14) and served as a clerical officer and mechanical draughtsman during World War I. At first his painting was naturalistic and then Impressionistic, until he came into contact with Expressionist art, particularly the art associated with Der Sturm, in 1918. He painted mystical and apocalyptic landscapes, such as Mountain Graveyard (1912; New York, Guggenheim), and also wrote Expressionist poetry for Der Sturm magazine. He became associated with the DADA movement in Berlin after meeting Hans Arp, Raoul Hausmann, Hannah H?ch and Richard Huelsenbeck, and he began to make collages that he called Merzbilder. These were made from waste materials picked up in the streets and parks of Hannover, and in them he saw the creation of a fragile new beauty out of the ruins of German culture. Similarly he began to compose his poetry from snatches of overheard conversations and randomly derived phrases from newspapers and magazines. His mock-romantic poem An Anna Blume, published in Der Sturm in August 1919, was a popular success in Germany. From this time 'Merz' became the name of Schwitters's one-man movement and philosophy. The word derives from a fragment of the word Kommerz, used in an early assemblage (Merzbild, 1919; destr.; see Elderfield, no. 42), for which Schwitters subsequently gave a number of meanings, the most frequent being that of 'refuse' or 'rejects'. In 1919 he wrote: 'The word Merz denotes essentially the combination, for artistic purposes, of all conceivable materials, and, technically, the principle of the equal distribution of the individual materials .... A perambulator wheel, wire-netting, string and cotton wool are factors having equal rights with paint'; such materials were indeed incorporated in Schwitters's large assemblages and painted collages of this period, for example Construction for Noble Ladies (1919; Los Angeles, CA, Co. Mus. A.; see fig. 1; see also COLLAGE). Schwitters's essential aestheticism and formalism alienated him from the political wing of German Dada led by Huelsenbeck, and he was ridiculed as 'the Caspar David Friedrich of the Dadaist Revolution'. Although his work of this period is full of hints and allusions to contemporary political and cultural conditions, unlike the work of George Grosz or John Heartfield it was not polemical or bitterly satirical.