Italian Rococo Era Painter, 1708-1787 He was born in Lucca, the son of a goldsmith, Paolino Batoni. He moved to Rome in 1727, and apprenticed with Agostino Masucci, Sebastiano Conca and/or Francesco Imperiale (1679-1740). By the early 1740s, however, he started to receive independent commissions. In 1741, he was inducted into the Accademia di San Luca. His celebrated painting, The Ecstasy of Saint Catherine of Siena (1743) illustrates his academic refinement of the late-Baroque style. Another masterpiece, his Fall of Simon Magus was painted initially for the St Peter's Basilica. Batoni became a highly-fashionable painter in Rome, particularly after his rival, the proto-neoclassicist Anton Raphael Mengs, departed for Spain in 1761. Batoni befriended Winckelmann and, like him, aimed in his painting to the restrained classicism of painters from earlier centuries, such as Raphael and Poussin, rather than to the work of the Venetian artists then in vogue. He was greatly in demand for portraits, particularly by the British traveling through Rome , who took pleasure in commissioning standing portraits set in the milieu of antiquities, ruins, and works of art. There are records of over 200 portraits by Batoni of visiting British patrons . Such "Grand Tour" portraits by Batoni came to proliferate in the British private collections, thus ensuring the genre's popularity in the United Kingdom, where Sir Joshua Reynolds would become its leading practitioner. In 1760, the painter Benjamin West, while visiting Rome would complain that Italian artists "talked of nothing, looked at nothing but the works of Pompeo Batoni". In 1769, the double portrait of Joseph II and Leopold II won an Austrian nobility for Batoni. He also portrayed Pope Pius VI. According to a rumor, he bequeathed his palette and brushes to Jacques-Louis David.  Related Paintings of BATONI, Pompeo :. | Portrait of Princess Giacinta Orsini Buoncampagni Ludovisi | The Ecstasy of St Catherine of Siena | Sir Gregory Page-Turner dfhf | Madonna and Child ewgdf | Susanna and the Elders gmg |
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Pieter Wouwerman
1623-1682
Albertus Pictor
c.1440-1509,English also called Albert Pictor, Albert Målare and Albrekt Pärlstickare (Swedish), is the most famous late medieval Swedish painter, known for his wallpaintings surviving in numerous churches in southern and central Sweden. Albertus was originally called Albertus Immenhusen, after the German town in Hessen of which he was a native. He occurs in Swedish historical sources from 1465, when he was admitted a burgher of Arboga. Eight years later he moved to Stockholm, where, in accordance with current practice, he took over the workshop as well as the widow of a deceased painter. He was a versatile and prolific artist, known to his contemporaries not only for his church wallpaintings, but also as an organist and embroiderer (hence his nickname of Parlstickare, Pearl-embroiderer). More than thirty of his schemes, mostly in a secco technique, are extant, many in the Lake Malaren region, about a third of which bear his signature. Notable examples include wallpaintings at Bromma kyrka, near Stockholm, Lid kyrka, in Sodermanland and Taby Kyrkby kyrka in Taby. Part of his life and work are depicted in the illustrated book, Albert malare och sommaren i Harkeberga (Albert the Painter and the summer in Harkeberga), which describes his painting of the small church of Harkeberga in Uppland (see below).
Francesco del Castagno
1446-1497