Flemish Baroque Era Painter, 1577-1640 Peter Paul Rubens (June 28, 1577 ?C May 30, 1640) was a prolific seventeenth-century Flemish Baroque painter, and a proponent of an exuberant Baroque style that emphasized movement, color, and sensuality. He is well-known for his Counter-Reformation altarpieces, portraits, landscapes, and history paintings of mythological and allegorical subjects. In addition to running a large studio in Antwerp which produced paintings popular with nobility and art collectors throughout Europe, Rubens was a classically-educated humanist scholar, art collector, and diplomat who was knighted by both Philip IV, king of Spain, and Charles I, king of England. Rubens was a prolific artist. His commissioned works were mostly religious subjects, "history" paintings, which included mythological subjects, and hunt scenes. He painted portraits, especially of friends, and self-portraits, and in later life painted several landscapes. Rubens designed tapestries and prints, as well as his own house. He also oversaw the ephemeral decorations of the Joyous Entry into Antwerp by the Cardinal-Infante Ferdinand in 1635. His drawings are mostly extremely forceful but not detailed; he also made great use of oil sketches as preparatory studies. He was one of the last major artists to make consistent use of wooden panels as a support medium, even for very large works, but he used canvas as well, especially when the work needed to be sent a long distance. For altarpieces he sometimes painted on slate to reduce reflection problems. His fondness of painting full-figured women gave rise to the terms 'Rubensian' or 'Rubenesque' for plus-sized women. The term 'Rubensiaans' is also commonly used in Dutch to denote such women.  Related Paintings of Peter Paul Rubens :. | The Coronation of Marie de Medici | Sketch of Gedelinxidao | The Amazonenschlacht | Adoration of the Shepherds | Helene Fourment and her Eldest Son Frans |
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BABUREN, Dirck van
Dutch Baroque Era Painter, 1595-1624 1624). Dutch painter. His father, Jasper van Baburen (d ?1599), had been in the service of Geertruijd van Bronckhorst van Battenburg, Baroness (vrijvrouw) of Vianen, Viscountess (burggravin) of Utrecht, and thus Dirck must have received a better than average education, a fact at least partially confirmed by the innovative and often literary nature of his subject-matter. In 1611 he is recorded as a pupil of the portrait and history painter Paulus Moreelse in Utrecht. It is likely that this was the last year of his apprenticeship. Van Baburen probably left for Italy shortly after 1611, for a document rediscovered in the late 1980s records a signed and dated altarpiece of the Martyrdom of St Sebastian (1615; untraced), executed for a church in Parma. His most important pictures made in Italy were painted in collaboration with David de Haen (d 1622) for the Piet? Chapel of S Pietro in Montorio, Rome, which was decorated between 1615 and 1620. Van Baburen's paintings for the chapel were mentioned by Giulio Mancini in his manuscript notes, Considerazioni sulla pittura (c. 1619-20); there Mancini claims the artist was 22 or 23 years old when he carried out the commission. One of his best-known works, the Entombment (formerly dated 1617), is still in situ on the altar of the chapel. This much-copied composition reveals van Baburen's close study of Caravaggio's famous Entombment (Rome, Pin. Vaticana). In 1619 and the spring of 1620 van Baburen and de Haen were recorded as living in the same house in the Roman parish of S Andrea delle Fratte. Caravaggio's close follower and presumed student, Bartolomeo Manfredi, was living in the same parish in 1619. Van Baburen must have known the works of Manfredi.
GHEYN, Jacob de II
Dutch engraver/painter (b. 1565, Antwerp, d. 1629, The Hague). was a Dutch painter and engraver, whose work shows the transition from Northern Mannerism to Dutch realism over the course of his career. De Gheyn received his first training from his father, Jacob de Gheyn I, a glass painter, engraver, and draftsman. In 1585, he moved to Haarlem, and studied under Hendrik Goltzius for the next five years. He moved again to Leiden in the middle of the 1590s. His first commission was for an engraving of the Siege of Geertruitenberg from Amsterdam city officials in 1593. Around 1600, de Gheyn abandoned engraving, and focused his work on painting and etching. Moving to The Hague in 1605, he was employed often by Dutch royalty, designing a garden in the Buitenhof for Prince Maurice of Orange which featured the two first grottoes in the Netherlands. After Prince Maurice's death in 1625, de Gheyn worked for Prince Frederick Henry, his brother. De Gheyn painted some of the earliest female nudes, vanitas, and floral still lifes in Dutch art. He is credited with creating over 1,500 drawings, including landscapes and natural history illustrations.
Federico Faruffini
Italian, 1831-1869