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 :. | Group of the Dead | Gethsemane Garden | Apollo and Daphne | Resurrection of Christ | Joseph sold to poor Botticelli |
Related Artists:
Max, Gabriel Cornelius von
Czechoslovakian, 1840-1915 Painter, illustrator and teacher, nephew of (1) Emanuel Max. He studied at the Academy of Fine Arts, Prague (1855-8), and the Akademie der Bildenden K?nste, Vienna (1858-61), and under Karl Theodor von Piloty at the Akademie der Bildenden K?nste, Munich (1863/4-7). He settled in Munich, where he opened a private school of painting in 1869. His paintings and book illustrations of the second half of the 1860s show an affinity with the late Romanticist movement. He illustrated works of German literature by Wieland, Lenau and Schiller, as well as producing illustrations for Goethe's Faust (1867-8; Prague, N.G., Kinsky Palace). As well as literary and even musical sources, religious themes frequently occur in his work, including his first great success, the Crucifixion of St Julie (1867; ex-Sotheby's, London, 1976). In numerous female figures and portraits Max explored the tension between the inner state and the charm of the physical appearance or surroundings of his subjects. His interest in the artistic perception of relationships between physical reality and the spiritual world led him to a study of anthropology and contemporary occultism and mysticism, as in his portraits of the Seer of Prevorst
Christian Friedrich Gille
1805-1899 German painter, engraver and lithographer. Between 1825 and 1833 he studied engraving under Johann Gottfried Abraham Frenzel, lithography under Louis Z?llner and painting under Johan Christian Dahl at the Hochschule f?r Bildende K?nste, Dresden. Dahl encouraged in Gille an appreciation for the natural formations and changing conditions of light that had inspired Dahl's friend and mentor, the Romantic painter Caspar David Friedrich. Gille, however, did not adopt Friedrich's tendency to find mystical significance in these phenomena. Gille's prints are highly descriptive in style and include Saxon landscapes, genre scenes, animal studies and portraits of celebrated men. His paintings and sketches, in oils, watercolour and pen and brown ink, were mostly of landscapes, many with animal staffage.
Paul Huet
French Painter, 1804-1869