Italian Early Renaissance Painter, 1445-1510 Italian painter and draughtsman. In his lifetime he was one of the most esteemed painters in Italy, enjoying the patronage of the leading families of Florence, in particular the Medici and their banking clients. He was summoned to take part in the decoration of the Sistine Chapel in Rome, was highly commended by diplomatic agents to Ludovico Sforza in Milan and Isabella d Este in Mantua and also received enthusiastic praise from the famous mathematician Luca Pacioli and the humanist poet Ugolino Verino. By the time of his death, however, Botticelli s reputation was already waning. He was overshadowed first by the advent of what Vasari called the maniera devota, a new style by Perugino, Francesco Francia and the young Raphael, whose new and humanly affective sentiment, infused atmospheric effects and sweet colourism took Italy by storm; he was then eclipsed with the establishment immediately afterwards of the High Renaissance style, which Vasari called the modern manner, in the paintings of Michelangelo and the mature works of Raphael in the Vatican. From that time his name virtually disappeared until the reassessment of his reputation that gathered momentum in the 1890s   Related Paintings of Sandro Botticelli :. | C Dr to North Korea | The Birth of Venus | birth of venus | The infernal Abyss (mk36) | St Augustione in his Study (mk36) |
Related Artists:
David Octavius Hill
Scottish Painter and Photographer, 1802-1870 was a founding member of the Royal Scottish Academy and its secretary for 40 years. In 1843 he enlisted the help of Robert Adamson (b. 1821, Berunside, Scot. January 1848, St. Andrews), a chemist experienced in photography, in photographing the delegates to the founding convention of the Free Church of Scotland. They used the calotype process, by which an image was developed from a paper negative. In these and other portraits they demonstrated a masterly sense of form and composition and a dramatic use of light and shade. Their five-year partnership resulted in some 3,000 photographs, including many views of Edinburgh and small fishing villages.
Raimundo de Madrazo y Garreta
Spanish realist Painter , 1841-1920 Son of Federico de Madrazo y K?ntz. Because of his ability and training with his father, Federico, in the Real Academia de S Fernando in Madrid and with L?on Cogniet in Paris, he seemed destined to continue the family tradition of academic painting. However, due to the influence of the Belgian Alfred Stevens, of his brother-in-law, Mariano Jos? Bernardo Fortuny y Marsal, and the Parisian environment, he exchanged dry historical painting (e.g. Arrival in Spain of the Body of the Apostle St James, 1858, and Ataulfo, 1860) for the preciousness of the tableautin, the small, intimate genre painting. He lived in Paris and New York and became so remote from Spanish artistic life that he and Fortuny y Marsal were the only Spanish artists not to participate in any national exhibition, and because of this the Spanish state never directly acquired their works. In 1882, with Giuseppe De Nittis, Stevens and the gallery owner Georges Petit, he co-founded the Exposition Internationale de Peinture, designed to promote foreign artists in Paris. Madrazo Garreta's most characteristic works are the female portrait and the witty and elegant genre painting, with soft, delicate tones and suggestive poses. The influence of the Rococo and of Japanese art is reflected in his painting, which expresses an exquisite aristocratic or bourgeois ideal, the illusion of a refined, sensual and superficial life. Consequently,
Levi Wells Prentice
1850-1935 Levi Wells Prentice Gallery Prentice was associated with the Hudson River School, a group of artists known throughout art circles. According to the book Nature Staged by Barbara Jones, Prentice followed a self-prescribed educational path, begun by the Hudson River School and reinforced by John Ruskin's (1819-1900) truth-to-nature principles laid out in his book Modern Painters. Although he can be allied to both schools of thought, Prentice can not be considered a member of either. This book has a photo of the artist in his early Brooklyn studio surrounded by his paintings and a complete essay on his life and work. Levi grew up on a farm in Lewis County, New York. By 1872, Prentice had traveled through the Adirondack Mountains, painting the views as well as the surrounding region. He opened his first studio as a landscape painter in Syracuse, New York in 1875. Self-taught artist Levi Wells Prentice is best known for his realistic still life compositions of fruit arranged within a landscape, or abundantly spilling from bushel baskets. Early in his career, he painted portraits and landscapes of the Adirondack Mountain region of Lewis County, New York, his birthplace. Levi married an English woman Emma Roseloe Sparks in Buffalo, New York in 1882 and had two children, Leigh (born 22 March 1887) and Imogene (born 17 September 1889). Prentice then turned to painting still life subjects when he moved briefly to Brooklyn, New York in 1883, focusing on fruit, in order of frequency apples, strawberries, peaches, plums, raspberries, cherries, muskmelons, pears, currants, pineapples, gooseberries, grapes and bananas usually piled high in pots or in natural settings. Prentice subsequently moved around from 1903-07 before settling in the Germantown district of Philadelphia. However, his work did not gain much recognition with historians until the 1970s. He was a member of the Brooklyn Art Association and frequently exhibited his paintings there. In addition to his artistic talents, he was a craftsman who enjoyed making his own brushes, palettes and frames. In his painting, Prentice placed an emphasis on dark outlining with a concern for textual precision, creating dramatic contrasts. The shift between dark background areas and the vibrant hues of the fruit are done to give the compositions an exciting, visual energy. The fruit is presented with clarity and precision. An emphasis appears to be placed on the idea of man versus nature. The wooden baskets with hand-wrought nails represent a structured, man-made object, while the overly ripe fruit represents the fleeting qualities of nature. These paintings also demonstrate Prentice's remarkable skills at rendering color, form, and texture. Noted art historian William H. Gerdts observed: there are several works by Prentice in which he achieves a quality of illusionism which is unsurpassed. In 1993, the skillful 'illusionism' of Levi Wells Prentice was celebrated in a retrospective exhibition at the Adirondack Museum in New York. His works continue to receive a high degree of appreciation by collectors today. He is represented in many museums including the New York State Museum, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Montclair Art Museum, Philbrook Museum of Art and Yale University Art Gallery. Levi died 28 November 1935 in Germantown, Pennsylvania.