Spanish Painter and Print engraver , 1591-1652 Information concerning the life and personality of Jusepe de Ribera is sparse. He was born the son of a shoemaker in Jetiva, Valencia Province. He appears to have gone to the city of Valencia while still a boy, but nothing is known of his possible artistic training there. As an adolescent, he traveled to Italy and spent time in Lombardy. Next he was in Parma, from which, it is said, he was driven by the contentious jealousy of local artists. He located himself in Rome until an accumulation of debts forced him to flee. Finally he settled in Naples, where in 1616 he married Caterina Azzolino, the daughter of a painter, by whom he had seven children between the years 1627 and 1636. The Academy of St. Luke in Rome elected Ribera to membership in 1625, and 6 years later the Pope conferred upon him the Order of Christ. It is understandably speculated that Ribera revisited Rome for these events. Being sought after in Naples by the Church and the various Spanish viceroys who ruled there in the name of the Spanish monarchy, he dismissed the idea of returning to his homeland. He was quoted as saying that he was honored and well paid in Naples and that Spain was a cruel stepmother to its own children and a compassionate mother to foreigners. Nevertheless, he generally added his nationality when he signed his works. This practice inspired the Italians to nickname him "the Little Spaniard" (Lo Spagnoletto). The last decade of Ribera's life was one of personal struggle. He suffered from failing health, the taunts of other artists that his fame was "extinct," and difficulty in collecting payments due him. Nevertheless, he kept it from being a tragic defeat by continuing to paint until the very year of his death in Naples. Actually, he was the victim of the local politics and finances. Naples was in the throes of a severe economic depression for which the foreign rulers, the patrons of Ribera, were naturally blamed, and the desperate citizenry was rioting in the streets. It is significant that Ribera continued to receive commissions in such a time, even if there was a dearth of payments. Ribera was inventive in subject matter, ranging through visionary spectacles, biblical themes, genre, portraits, mythological subjects, and portraits of ascetics and penitents.   Related Paintings of Jose de Ribera :. | Der Hl. Franz von Assisi und der Engel mit der Wasserflasche | Andreas, Apostel | St Jerome | Bubender Hl. Hieronymus San Jeronimo penitente. | Christophorus mit dem Jesuskind |
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WATTEAU, Louis-Joseph
French Painter, 1731-1798 Nephew of Antoine Watteau. He trained in Paris with Jacques Dumont, and at the Academie Royale, where in 1751 he was awarded first prize for painting. In 1755 he settled in Lille; there he became assistant teacher at the school of drawing, but was dismissed, because of what was considered a scandalous innovation, the introduction of study of the nude, as in Paris. He then returned to Valenciennes for some 15 years; around 1770 he became assistant teacher to Louis-Jean Gueret, director of the school of drawing in Lille, whom he succeeded in the post in 1778. On Watteau's initiative, an annual Salon, at which he himself exhibited regularly, was established in Lille in 1773.
Otto Muller
1874-1930 was a German painter and printmaker of the Die Br??cke expressionist movement. Otto Mueller was born in Liebau (now Lubawka, Kamienna G??ra County), Kreis Landeshut, German Silesia. Between 1890-1892 he was trained in lithography in Görlitz and Breslau. From 1894 to 1896 he studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Dresden and continued his study in Munich 1898. He left Munich's academy after Franz von Stuck classified him as untalented. His early works are influenced by impressionism, Jugendstil and symbolism. When he settled to Berlin in 1908, he turned more and more to the expressionism. During this time there were meetings with Wilhelm Lehmbruck, Rainer Maria Rilke and Erich Heckel. In 1910, he joined 'Die Br??cke', a Dresden-based group of Expressionist artists. He was member of the group until it disbanded in 1913 due to artistic differences. At the same time Mueller also had contact with the artists group of the 'Blaue Reiter'. During the World War I he fought as a German soldier in France and Russia. After the war he became professor at the academy of arts (Akademie der Bildenden Kunste) in Breslau where he taught until his death on September 24, 1930. Johnny Friedlaender and Isidor Ascheim were among his pupils there. Altogether his printmaking amounted to 172 prints, in woodcut, etching and lithography. In 1937 the Nazis seized 357 of his works from German museums, since the pictures were considered as degenerate art. Mueller was one of the most lyrical of German expressionist painters. The central topic in Mueller's works is the unity of humans and nature, whereas his paintings are focused on a harmonious simplification of form, colour and contours.
Antonio da Firenze
Italian Early Renaissance Painter, ca.1445-1510