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 Garden of Love | Equestrian Portrait of the Duke of Lerma, | The Adoration of the kings | Equestrian Portrait of the George Villiers | Stormy Landscape with Philemon und Baucis |
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Benedetto Luti
Benedetto Luti (17 November 1666 - 17 June 1724) was an Italian painter. Luti was born in Florence. He moved to Rome in 1691 where he was patronized by Cosimo III de' Medici, Grand Duke of Tuscany, an enthusiast for the pastel portrait. Luti was one of the first artists to work in pastels as the final composition as opposed to initial studies for paintings or frescoes. He also worked in oils and painted frescoes for the Basilica di San Giovanni in Laterano. Luti was also a successful art dealer and ran a school of drawing; among his pupils were Giovanni Domenico Piastrini, Giovanni Paolo Panini, Claude Arnulphy, Jean-Baptiste van Loo, William Kent.
COSSA, Francesco del
Italian Early Renaissance Painter, ca.1435-1477 Italian painter. Together with Cosimo Tura and Ercole de' Roberti, Cossa was one of the most important painters working in Ferrara and Bologna in the second half of the 15th century. With them he shared an expressive use of line and solidity of form, but he also had a gift for decorative and anecdotal scenes, most evident in the frescoes in the Palazzo Schifanoia, Ferrara.
Mikhail Vrubel
Russian Symbolist Painter, 1856-1910 Russian painter and draughtsman. He was a pioneer of modernism, and his highly innovative technique broke with the traditions of the Academy of Arts in St Petersburg, where he had been a brilliant student; at the same time he felt dissociated from the social consciousness of The Wanderers.