Italian Mannerist Painter, 1494-ca.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.   Related Paintings of Pontormo :. | Jacopo Pontormo | Joseph in Egypt | Joseph | The Birth of the Baptist | Detail of Joseph with Jacob in Egypt |
Related Artists:
PREDIS, Ambrogio de
Italian Early Renaissance Painter, ca.1455-1508 Painter and illuminator, half-brother of Cristoforo de Predis. He began his career as an illuminator, working with Cristoforo. His first documented works are seven miniatures for a Book of Hours (1472; destr.) for Vitaliano Borromeo (1451-95) and a Book of Hours for Francesco Borromeo. He was paid for the latter in 1474, and the codex can probably be identified with the Horae Beatae Virginis Mariae (ex-H. P. Kraus, New York, 1987; Suida, 1959). From 1479 he artist worked in the Milanese mint, together with his brother Bernardino. For some years Giovanni Ambrogio also worked at the court of Ludovico Sforza ('il Moro'), especially as a portrait painter. This is borne out by the charcoal drawing of Bianca Maria Sforza (1492; Venice, Accad.), which dates from a period before her marriage to Emperor Maximilian I. The portrait was ordered by her future husband, through Frederick III, Duke of Saxony, to give him an idea of her appearance. It was favourably received, and later a painting of the same subject (Washington, DC, N.G.A.) was commissioned from Giovanni Ambrogio.
MASTER of the Duke of Bedford
French Early Renaissance Miniaturist, active 1405-1435
John Hamilton Mortimer
ARA (1740-1779) was a British Neoclassical figure and landscape painter and printmaker, known for romantic paintings set in Italy, works depicting conversations, and works drawn in the 1770s portraying war scenes, similar to those of Salvator Rosa. Mortimer became President of the Society of Artists in 1774, five years before his death, at age 39. John Hamilton Mortimer was born on 17 September 1740 at Eastbourne. Not much is known about his family, other than that his father was a customs officer, a dealer in flour and owner of several mills. By 1757, while he was still young, he was studying in London at the Duke of Richmond's Academy. During this time he became a friend of Joseph Wright, a fellow student at the Academy - a friendship which would endure throughout Mortimer's life. Mortimer is also known to have had some professional relationship with the artist Samuel Ireland, who was involved with etching Mortimer's work. At the St Martin's Lane Academy his fellow students included Thomas Jones and William Pars. In 1759 Mortimer won a first prize for a study after Michelangelo's Bacchus and a second prize for a life drawing. He began to display his works on a regular basis from the early 1760s onwards. He became an active member of the Society of Artists and President of the Society in 1774.