Italian Baroque Era Painter, 1613-1699 Italian painter and draughtsman. Although he was trained and had his first success as a painter in Rome during the 1630s and 1640s, he is traditionally associated with the Neapolitan school. It was in Naples between 1653 and 1660 that he made his most lasting mark (see fig. 1), contributing to the evolution of the exuberant late Baroque style and providing an important source of inspiration to later generations of painters, notably to Francesco Solimena. From 1661 he was based in Malta, where his most substantial undertaking was the decoration of St John's, Valletta. Preti's mature style is intensely dramatic and unites a Caravaggesque realism and expressive chiaroscuro with the grandeur and theatricality of Venetian High Renaissance painting.   Related Paintings of PRETI, Mattia :. | Concert ilyu | Maltese painter | St. George on Horseback af | Vanity | Sophonisba Receiving the Goblet af |
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Francois Dumont
(1751-1831) was a French painter of portrait miniatures Dumont was born at Lunville (Meurthe), and was left an orphan when quite young, with five brothers and sisters to support. He was for a while a student under Jean Girardet, and then, on. the advice of a Lunville Academician, Madame Coster, set up a studio for himself. In 1784 he journeyed to Rome, returning after four years careful study, and in 1788 was accepted as an Academician and granted an apartment in the Louvre. He married the daughter of Antoine Vestier, the miniature painter, and had two sons, Aristide and Bias, both of whom became painters. Dumont was one of the three greatest miniature painters of France, painting portraits of Louis XVI, Marie Antoinette, Louis XVIII and Charles X, and of almost all the important persons of his day. His own portrait was engraved both by Francis Audouin and by Jean-Charles Tardieu. He resided the greater part of his life in Paris, and there he died. A younger brother, Tony Dumont, was also a miniature painter, a pupil of his brother, a frequent exhibitor and the recipient of a medal from the Academy in 1810. Each artist signed with the surname only, and there is some controversy concerning the attribution to each artist of his own work. Tony was an expert violinist and delighted in painting portraits of persons who were playing upon the violin. Many of Dumont's finest paintings came into the collection of J. P. Morgan, but others are in the Louvre, presented by the heir of Bias Dumont. The work of both painters is distinguished by breadth, precision and a charming scheme of coloring, and the unfinished works of the elder brother are amongst some of the most beautiful miniatures ever produced.
Allan Ramsay
1713-1784 British Allan Ramsay Galleries Allan Ramsay was born in Edinburgh, Scotland, the eldest son of Allan Ramsay, poet and author of The Gentle Shepherd. Ramsay's first wife, Anne Bayne, by Ramsay Ramsay's second wife Margaret Lindsay, by RamsayFrom the age of twenty he studied in London under the Swedish painter Hans Huyssing, and at the St. Martin's Lane Academy; leaving in 1736 for Rome and Naples, where he worked for three years under Francesco Solimena and Imperiali (Francesco Fernandi). On his return in 1738 he first settled in Edinburgh, attracting attention by his head of Duncan Forbes of Culloden and his full-length portrait of the Duke of Argyll, later used on Royal Bank of Scotland banknotes. He later moved to London, where he was employed by the Duke of Bridgewater. His pleasant manners and varied culture, not less than his artistic skill, contributed to render him popular. His only serious competitor was Thomas Hudson, with whom he shared a drapery painter, Joseph van Aken. In 1739 he married his first wife, Anne Bayne, the daughter of a professor of Scots law at Edinburgh, Alexander Bayne of Rires (c.1684?C1737), and Mary Carstairs (1695??C1759). None of their 3 children survived childhood, and she died on 4 February 1743 giving birth to the third of them. One of his drawing pupils was Margaret Lindsay, eldest daughter of Sir Alexander Lindsay of Evelick and Amelia Murray (granddaughter to David Murray, 5th Viscount of Stormont and sister to the naval officer John Lindsay). He later eloped with her and on 1 March 1752 they married in the Canongate Kirk, Edinburgh, though her father never forgave her for marrying an artist. Ramsay already had to maintain a daughter from his previous marriage as well as his two surviving sisters, but told Sir Alexander that he could provide Margaret with an annual income of £100 which would increase ??as my affairs increase, and I thank God, they are in a way of increasing?? and that his only motive for the marriage was ??my love for your Daughter, who, I am sensible, is entitled to much more than ever I shall have to bestow upon her??. There were three surviving children from their long and happy marriage, Amelia (1755?C1813), Charlotte (1758?C1818?), and John (1768?C1845). Ramsay and his new wife spent 1754?C1757 together in Italy, going to Rome, Florence, Naples and Tivoli, researching, painting and drawing old masters, antiquities and archaeological sites, and (to earn an income) painting Grand Tourists' portraits. This and other trips to Italy involved more literary and antiquarian research than art. After their return, he was in 1761 appointed to succeed John Shackelton as Principle Painter in Ordinary to George III, beating Hudson to the post; and so fully employed was he on the royal portraits which the king was in the habit of presenting to ambassadors and colonial governors, that he was forced to take advantage of the services of a host of assistants--of whom David Martin and Philip Reinagle are the best known. He gave up painting in about 1770 to concentrate on literary pursuits, his health shattered by an accidental dislocation of the right arm and his second wife's death in 1782. With unflinching pertinacity, he struggled until he had completed a likeness of the king upon which he was engaged at the time, and then started for his beloved Italy, leaving behind him a series of fifty royal portraits to be completed by his assistant Reinagle. For several years he lingered in the south, his constitution finally broken. He died at Dover on 10 August 1784.
Giovanni Benedetto Castiglione
was an Italian Baroque artist, painter, printmaker and draftsman, of the Genoese school. He is best known now for his elaborate engravings, and as the inventor of the printmaking technique of monotyping. He was known as Il Grechetto in Italy and in France as Le Benedette.