b Pontormo, nr Empoli, 26 May 1494; d Florence, 31 Dec 1556). Italian painter and draughtsman. He was the leading painter in mid-16th-century Florence and one of the most original and extraordinary of Mannerist artists. His eccentric personality, solitary and slow working habits and capricious attitude towards his patrons are described by Vasari; his own diary, which covers the years 1554-6, further reveals a character with neurotic and secretive aspects. Pontormo enjoyed the protection of the Medici family throughout his career but, unlike Agnolo Bronzino and Giorgio Vasari, did not become court painter. His subjective portrait style did not lend itself to the state portrait. He produced few mythological works and after 1540 devoted himself almost exclusively to religious subjects. His drawings, mainly figure studies in red and black chalk, are among the highest expressions of the great Florentine tradition of draughtsmanship; close to 400 survive, forming arguably the most important body of drawings by a Mannerist painter. His highly personal style was much influenced by Michelangelo  Related Paintings of Pontormo, Jacopo :. | Vertumnus and Pomona | Deposition | Leda and the Swan | Adam and Eve at Work | The Expulsion from Earthly Paradise |
Related Artists:
Jacques Bellange
French Painter, ca.1575-1616,French painter, etcher and draughtsman. His known artistic activity dates only from 1602 to 1616 and he is now familiar chiefly for his etchings and drawings, all his decorative works and most of his paintings having perished. His highly idiosyncratic style was inspired by such Italian artists as Parmigianino, by the School of Fontainebleau and by northern artists including Albrecht Derer and Bartholomeus Spranger. His work would seem to express a private and nervous religious sensibility through a style of the greatest refinement.
Lilly martin spencer
1822-1902 American painter of English birth. At the age of eight, she and her family emigrated to America, and after three years in New York they moved to Marietta, OH. In 1841 her father took her to Cincinnati, where she exhibited and received help from artists such as the animal painter James Henry Beard (1812-93). However, she refused the offer of the city's most important art patron, Nicholas Longworth, to assist in her art studies in Boston and Europe. Instead she stayed in Cincinnati and married an Englishman, Benjamin Spencer, by whom she had thirteen children, seven living to maturity.
Israel Silvestre
French Baroque Era Engraver, 1621-1691,called the Younger to distinguish him from his father, was a prolific French draftsman, etcher and print dealer who specialized in topographical views and perspectives of famous buildings. Orphaned at an early age, he was taken in by his uncle in Paris, Israel Henriet, an etcher and printseller, and friend of Callot. Between 1630 and 1650 Silvestre travelled widely in France and Italy, which he visited three times, and later worked up his sketches as etchings, which were sold singly and in series. His work, especially of Venetian subjects published in the 1660s, influenced eighteenth-century painters of vedute such as Luca Carlevaris and Canaletto, who adapted his compositions. In 1661 he inherited the stock of plates of his uncle, the printseller Israel Henriet, among which was a large part of the works of Jacques Callot, and many of those of Stefano della Bella. In 1662 he was appointed dessinateur et graveur du Roi and in 1673 he was appointed drawing-master to Louis, le Grand Dauphin. From 1668 he was granted workshop space in the galleries of the Louvre, where the practice of housing eminent artists and craftsmen was a tradition that was originated under Henri IV. Silvestre's atelier was large: he had at least two pupils who had careers as engravers, Franqois Noblesse and Meunier, and In 1670 Charles Le Brun recommended him for membership in the Acadeemie royale de peinture et de sculpture. In 1675 his son, the artist Louis Silvestre, was born at Sceaux.