Italian High Renaissance Painter, 1483-1520 Raphael Sanzio, usually known by his first name alone (in Italian Raffaello) (April 6 or March 28, 1483 ?C April 6, 1520), was an Italian painter and architect of the High Renaissance, celebrated for the perfection and grace of his paintings and drawings. Together with Michelangelo and Leonardo da Vinci, he forms the traditional trinity of great masters of that period. Raphael was enormously productive, running an unusually large workshop, and, despite his early death at thirty-seven, a large body of his work remains, especially in the Vatican, whose frescoed Raphael Rooms were the central, and the largest, work of his career, although unfinished at his death. After his early years in Rome, much of his work was designed by him and executed largely by the workshop from his drawings, with considerable loss of quality. He was extremely influential in his lifetime, though outside Rome his work was mostly known from his collaborative printmaking. After his death, the influence of his great rival Michelangelo was more widespread until the 18th and 19th centuries, when Raphael's more serene and harmonious qualities were again regarded as the highest models. His career falls naturally into three phases and three styles, first described by Giorgio Vasari: his early years in Umbria, then a period of about four years (from 1504-1508) absorbing the artistic traditions of Florence, followed by his last hectic and triumphant twelve years in Rome, working for two Popes and their close associates.  Related Paintings of Raphael :. | Portrait of George Morland | Self-portrait | Details of Pope Leo X With Cardinals Giuliano de'Medici and Luigi de Rossi (mk45) | madonna of the pinks | Self-portrait |
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Diego Rivera
Mexican Social Realist Muralist, 1886-1957,Mexican muralist. After study in Mexico City and Spain, he settled in Paris from 1909 to 1919. He briefly espoused Cubism but abandoned it c. 1917 for a visual language of simplified forms and bold areas of colour. He returned to Mexico in 1921, seeking to create a new national art on revolutionary themes in the wake of the Mexican Revolution. He painted many public murals, the most ambitious of which is in the National Palace (1929 ?C 57). From 1930 to 1934 he worked in the U.S. His mural for New York's Rockefeller Center aroused a storm of controversy and was ultimately destroyed because it contained the figure of Vladimir Ilich Lenin; he later reproduced it at the Palace of Fine Arts in Mexico City. With Jose Clemente Orozco and David Alfaro Siqueiros, Rivera created a revival of fresco painting that became Mexico's most significant contribution to 20th-century art. His large-scale didactic murals contain scenes of Mexican history, culture, and industry, with Indians, peasants, conquistadores, and factory workers drawn as simplified figures in crowded, shallow spaces. Rivera was twice married to Frida Kahlo.
Carl Ludwig Brandt
(22 September 1831 Holstein, Germany - 1905) was a German-born artist who worked mostly in the United States. Brandt was born near Hamburg, in Holstein, Germany. His father and grandfather were physicians in Hamburg. His father taught him drawing at the age of seven, and he subsequently studied in the principal galleries of Europe. He served in the First War of Schleswig (1848-1850), between Germany and Denmark. He came to the United States in 1852. He painted several portraits previous to 1864, and in that year built his studio in Hastings-on-Hudson, New York, but lived in Europe from 1865 until 1869. He was chosen a national academician in 1872, and in 1883 was elected first director of the Telfair Academy of Arts and Sciences, Savannah, Georgia, where he resided in winter. At Telfair he offered art instruction and oversaw art acquisitions, including plaster casts, thus transforming a family mansion into a cultural institution.
Henry Benbridge
Henry Benbridge born October 1743 died February 1812), early American portrait painter, was born in Philadelphia, the only child of James and Mary (Clark) Benbridge. When he was seven years old, his mother, who had been left a widow, was married to Thomas Gordon, a wealthy Scot. The boy's artistic talent was encouraged. He made decorative designs for his stepfather's drawing-room which were much admired. When he was fourteen years old he may have watched John Wollaston paint Gordon's portrait. It has been plausibly argued that young Benbridge had instruction from Wollaston, since his earliest known portrait, that of his half-sister Rebecca Gordon, "seems to hark back to Wollaston." When he was 21, Benbridge was sent to Italy, where he studied with Pompeo Batoni and Anton Raphael Mengs. In 1769, on commission from James Boswell, biographer of Dr. Samuel Johnson, he made a portrait of Pasquale Paoli in Corsica which he took to London. It was exhibited (1769) at the Free Society of Artists, and from it three mezzotints were scraped and published with the artist's name signed "Bembridge." Like other young Americans he was encouraged by Benjamin West. He wrote, on December 7, 1769, to his stepfather: "Upon my arrival I waited upon Mr. West who received me with a sort of brotherly affection, as did my cousin, Mrs. West." Impelled, apparently, by a longing to rejoin his family, he left England in 1770, bearing from West the following note of recommendation to Francis Hopkinson: "By Mr. Benbridge you will receive these few lines. You will find him an Ingenous artist and an agreeable Companion. His merit in the art must procure him great incouragement and much esteem. I deare say it will give you great pleasure to have an ingenous artist resident amongst you." Elizabeth Ann Timothy (Mrs. William Williamson), watercolor on ivory of 1775In Philadelphia Benbridge married a Miss Sage and was admitted on January 18, 1771, to membership in the American Philosophical Society, of which Benjamin Franklin was a founder. He painted the large portrait of the Gordon family, with six figures, one of his masterpieces. Suffering, however, from asthma, he sought a more congenial climate and moved to Charleston, South Carolina, where he succeeded Jeremiah Theus (d. May 18, 1774) as the popular portrait painter of South Carolina. There he made many likenesses of southern men and women, several of which have been popularly attributed to John Singleton Copley, an artist who never painted in the South and who left America in 1774. Around 1800 Benbridge settled in Norfolk, Virginia, whence he made frequent visits to his native city. At Norfolk he gave to Thomas Sully his first lessons in oil painting. He had previously instructed Thomas Coram of Charleston. Sully describes his master as "a portly man of good address - gentlemanly in his deportment." Benbridge's health is said by Hart to have declined in middle age. Dunlap's assertion that his last years were passed "in obscurity and poverty" has been disputed.