b Caprese 1475 d Rome 1564 Born: March 6, 1475 Caprese, Italy Died: February 18, 1564 Rome, Italy Italian artist Michelangelo was one of the greatest sculptors of the Italian Renaissance and one of its greatest painters and architects. Early life Michelangelo Buonarroti was born on March 6, 1475, in Caprese, Italy, a village where his father, Lodovico Buonarroti, was briefly serving as a Florentine government agent. The family moved back to Florence before Michelangelo was one month old. Michelangelo's mother died when he was six. From his childhood Michelangelo was drawn to the arts, but his father considered this pursuit below the family's social status and tried to discourage him. However, Michelangelo prevailed and was apprenticed (worked to learn a trade) at the age of thirteen to Domenico Ghirlandaio (1449?C1494), the most fashionable painter in Florence at the time. After a year Michelangelo's apprenticeship was broken off. The boy was given access to the collection of ancient Roman sculpture of the ruler of Florence, Lorenzo de' Medici (1449?C1492). He dined with the family and was looked after by the retired sculptor who was in charge of the collection. This arrangement was quite unusual at the time. Early works Michelangelo's earliest sculpture, the Battle of the Centaurs (mythological creatures that are part man and part horse), a stone work created when he was about seventeen, is regarded as remarkable for the simple, solid forms and squarish proportions of the figures, which add intensity to their violent interaction. Soon after Lorenzo died in 1492, the Medici family fell from power and Michelangelo fled to Bologna. In 1494 he carved three saints for the church of San Domenico. They show dense forms, in contrast to the linear forms which were then dominant in sculpture. Rome After returning to Florence briefly, Michelangelo moved to Rome. There he carved a Bacchus for a banker's garden of ancient sculpture. This is Michelangelo's earliest surviving large-scale work, and his only sculpture meant to be viewed from all sides. In 1498 the same banker commissioned Michelangelo to carve the Piet?? now in St. Peter's. The term piet?? refers to a type of image in which Mary supports the dead Christ across her knees. Larger than life size, the Piet?? contains elements which contrast and reinforce each other: vertical and horizontal, cloth and skin, alive and dead, female and male. Florence On Michelangelo's return to Florence in 1501 he was recognized as the most talented sculptor of central Italy. He was commissioned to carve the David for the Florence Cathedral. Michelangelo's Battle of Cascina was commissioned in 1504; several sketches still exist. The central scene shows a group of muscular soldiers climbing from a river where they had been swimming to answer a military alarm. This fusion of life with colossal grandeur henceforth was the special quality of Michelangelo's art. From this time on, Michelangelo's work consisted mainly of very large projects that he never finished. He was unable to turn down the vast commissions of his great clients which appealed to his preference for the grand scale. Pope Julius II (1443?C1513) called Michelangelo to Rome in 1505 to design his tomb, which was to include about forty life-size statues. Michelangelo worked on the project off and on for the next forty years. Sistine Chapel In 1508 Pope Julius II commissioned Michelangelo to decorate the ceiling of the chief Vatican chapel, the Sistine. The traditional format of ceiling painting contained only single figures. Michelangelo introduced dramatic scenes and an original framing system, which was his earliest architectural design. The chief elements are twelve male and female prophets (the latter known as sibyls) and nine stories from Genesis. Michelangelo stopped for some months halfway along. When he returned to the ceiling, his style underwent a shift toward a more forceful grandeur and a richer emotional tension than in any previous work. The images of the Separation of Light and Darkness, and Ezekiel illustrate this greater freedom and mobility. After the ceiling was completed in 1512, Michelangelo returned to the tomb of Julius and carved a Moses and two Slaves. His models were the same physical types he used for the prophets and their attendants in the Sistine ceiling. Julius's death in 1513 halted the work on his tomb. Pope Leo X, son of Lorenzo de' Medici, proposed a marble facade for the family parish church of San Lorenzo in Florence to be decorated with statues by Michelangelo. After four years of quarrying and designing the project was canceled. Medici Chapel In 1520 Michelangelo was commissioned to execute the Medici Chapel for two young Medici dukes. It contains two tombs, each with an image of the deceased and two allegorical (symbolic) figures: Day and Night on one tomb, and Morning and Evening on the other. A library, the Biblioteca Laurenziana, was built at the same time on the opposite side of San Lorenzo to house Pope Leo X's books. The entrance hall and staircase are some of Michelangelo's most astonishing architecture, with recessed columns resting on scroll brackets set halfway up the wall and corners stretched open rather than sealed. Poetry Michelangelo wrote many poems in the 1530s and 1540s. Approximately three hundred survive. The earlier poems are on the theme of Neoplatonic love (belief that the soul comes from a single undivided source to which it can unite again) and are full of logical contradictions and intricate images. The later poems are Christian. Their mood is penitent (being sorrow and regretful); and they are written in a simple, direct style. Last Judgment In 1534 Michelangelo left Florence for the last time, settling in Rome. The next ten years were mainly given over to painting for Pope Paul III (1468?C1549).   Related Paintings of Michelangelo Buonarroti :. | The Deluge | Ignudo | Frescoes above the entrance wall | Martyrdom of St Peter | Study |
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John Frederick Herring
British 1795-1865 was a painter, sign maker and coachman in Victorian England.John F. Herring, Sr. is the painter of the 1848 "Pharoah's Chariot Horses" (archaic spelling "Pharoah"). He amended his signature "SR" (senior) in 1836, with the growing fame of his teenage son John Frederick Herring, Jr.Herring, born in London in 1795, was the son of a London merchant of Dutch parentage, who had been born overseas in America. The first eighteen years of Herring's life were spent in London, England, where his greatest interests were drawing and horses.In the year 1814, at the age of 18, he moved to Doncaster in the north of England, arriving in time to witness the Duke of Hamilton's "William" win the St. Leger Stakes horserace. By 1815, Herring had married Ann Harris; his sons John Frederick Herring, Jr., Charles Herring, and Benjamin Herring were all to become artists, while his two daughters, Ann and Emma, both married painters. In Doncaster, England, Herring was employed as a painter of inn signs and coach insignia on the sides of coaches,and his later contact with a firm owned by a Mr. Wood led to Herring's subsequent employment as a night coach driver. Herring spent his spare time painting portraits of horses for inn parlors, and he became known as the "artist coachman" (at the time).Herring's talent was recognized by wealthy customers, and he began painting hunters and racehorses for the gentry. In 1830, John Frederick Herring, Senior left Doncaster for Newmarket, England, where he spent three years before moving to London, England. During this time, Herring might have received tuition from Abraham Cooper. In London, Herring experienced financial difficulties and was given financial assistance by W. T. Copeland, who commissioned many paintings, including some designs used for the Copeland Spode bone china. In 1840-1841, Herring visited Paris, painting several pictures, on the invitation of the Duc d'Orleans.
Harold Gilman
(11 February 1876 - 12 February 1919) was a painter of interiors, portraits and landscapes, and a founder-member of the Camden Town Group. Though born in Rode, Somerset, Gilman spent his early years at Snargate Rectory, in the Romney Marshes in Kent, where his father was the Rector. He was educated in Kent at Abingdon, Rochester and Tonbridge schools, and for one year at Brasenose College in Oxford University. Although he developed an interest in art during a childhood convalescence period, Gilman did not begin his artistic training until after his non-collegiate year at Oxford University (cut short by ill health) and after working in the Ukraine as a tutor to a British family in Odessa (1895). In 1896 he entered the Hastings School of Art to study painting, but in 1897 transferred to the Slade School of Fine Art in London, where he remained from 1897 to 1901, and where he met Spencer Gore. In 1904 he went to Spain and spent over a year studying Spanish masters (Velezquez and Goya as well as Whistler were major early influences). At this time he met and married the American painter Grace Cornelia Canedy. The couple settled in London (apart from a visit to her family in Chicago, when Gilman ducked pressure to join the Canedy family business). They had two daughters (one in London, one in Chicago).
pehr hillestrom
Pehr Hilleström (1732-1816) var en svensk målare och vävare, professor vid Konstakademiens läroverk från 1794 och dess direktör från 1810. I unga år var han en av Sveriges främsta gobelängvävare men övergick sedan till måleri. Han är mest känd för sina vardagsskildringar av sin tids levnadssätt. Han målade pigor och tjänstefolk som arbetar, överklassen i de fina salarna, enkelt folk i stugorna och bilder från olika bruksmiljöer. Genom det räknas han som den största skildraren av den gustavianska samtiden. Pehr Hilleström är far till konstnären Carl Petter Hilleström och farfars farfars far till Gustaf Hilleström. Pehr Hilleström föddes i 1732 Väddö, Roslagen, troligtvis den 18 november. Han växte upp under fattiga omständigheter på Väddö prästgård vid sin farbror som var kyrkoherde där. Han var son till en militär och äldst i en syskonskara på 12 barn. Hans far råkade redan 1719 i rysk fångenskap men hade 1723 lyckats återvända till Sverige och då tagit sin tillflykt till brodern på Väddö. 1743 flyttade familjen Hilleström från Roslagen till Stockholm, där Pehr, 10 år gammal, sattes i lära hos tapet- och landskapsmålaren Johan Philip Korn (1727-1796) samt mellan åren 1744-1747 även hos den invandrade tyske solfjädermålaren Christian Fehmer. Utöver detta fick han även undervisning vid kungliga ritareakademin där Guillaume Thomas Taraval (1701-1750) och Jean Eric Rehn (1717-1793) var läromästare. Efter inrådan från Carl Hårleman sattes Hilleström 1745 i lära hos Jean Louis Duru (-1753). Duru var hautelissevävare och hade kallats till Sverige för att göra textila utsmyckningen av Stockholms slott. Tanken var att Hilleström skulle utbildas till Durus medhjälpare. 1749 visade Hilleström upp ett första läroprov som visades upp för deputationen som gillade det så mycket så att han fick en belöning på 180 daler kopparmynt. När Duru dog i slutet av 1753 så fick Hilleström fullborda den påbörjade kappan för tronhimmelen i det kungliga audiensrummet. Han var då så skicklig att det knappt kunde märkas någon skillnad mellan hans och hans lärares arbete. Lönen var blygsam men vid 1756 års riksdag fick han samma årslön som Duru hade haft, och han fick en beställning på ett vävt porträtt av Hårleman utfört i hautelisse. Åren 1757-58 var Hilleström på en längre och för tidens konstnärer sedvanlig studieresa till utlandet. Färden gick till Paris, Belgien och Holland, bland annat med en vidareutbildning i gobelängteknikerna som mål. I Paris blir Hilleström erbjuden att studera måleri i François Bouchers atelj??, men störst intryck tog han där av genre- och stillebenmålaren Jean-Baptiste-Sim??on Chardin, som undervisade honom vid franska målarakademien. Väl hemma i Stockholm fortsatte han visserligen att göra tapeter, mattor, stolsöverdrag och dylikt för hovet. Men så småningom fylldes slottet behov av vävnader samtidigt som Hilleström fortsatte studera måleri.