German painter (b. 1472, Kronach, d. 1553, Weimar). German painter and engraver. The son of a painter, he settled in Wittenberg c.1504 and was court painter successively under three electors of Saxony. There he maintained a flourishing workshop and was twice burgomaster. Cranach was a close friend of Martin Luther, whose doctrine he upheld in numerous paintings and woodcuts, and he has been called the painter of the Reformation. He was a rapid and prolific painter, and the work turned out by his studio is uneven in quality. Naïve and fanciful, often awkward in draftsmanship, it has, nonetheless, freshness and originality and a warm, rich palette. His portraits are particularly successful. Among his best-known works are Repose in Egypt (Gemäldgalerie, Staatliche Mus., Berlin-Dahlem); Judgment of Paris (Staatliche Kunsthalle, Karlsruhe); Adam and Eve (Courtauld Inst., London); and Crucifixion (Weimar). The latter contains figures of Luther and Cranach. His many famous protraits include those of Elector John Frederick and Self-Portrait (Uffizi). Cranach was also an accomplished miniaturist. He produced a few copperplates and designs for woodcuts. His son and pupil Lucas Cranach, the Younger, 1515C86,   Related Paintings of CRANACH, Lucas the Elder :. | The Fountain of Youth | Crucifixion inso | Hans Melber gfh | Judith with the Head of Holofernes dfg | Young Mother with Child dfhd |
Related Artists:
Theodor Horschelt
(1829 -1871 ) - Watercolours
BEER, Jan de
Netherlandish Painter, ca.1475-1528 South Netherlandish painter and draughtsman. He is first mentioned in 1490 in the register of the Antwerp Guild of St Luke, apprenticed to the painter Gillis van Everen ( fl 1477-1513). In 1504 de Beer became a master. He subsequently served as alderman of the guild in 1509 and dean in 1515, although he found himself temperamentally unsuited to the position of dean, as is known from a lawsuit he filed in 1519 regarding guild administration. This document also reveals that de Beer participated in the preparations for Charles V's 'Joyous Entry' into Antwerp in 1515 and for the Antwerp Society of Rhetoricians' entry that year in the Malines landjuweel (regional competition of the rhetoricians). In 1510 and 1513 de Beer enrolled apprentices; his son Aert de Beer (c. 1509-before 6 Aug 1540) became an Antwerp master in 1529. The artist is undocumented between 1519 and 1528, by which date he was dead. In 1567 Guicciardini included de Beer in his list of famous Netherlandish painters.
Arnold Bocklin
Swiss 1827-1901 Arnold Bocklin Locations Arnold Bocklin was born on Oct. 16, 1827, in Basel. He attended the Dusseldorf Academy (1845-1847). At this time he painted scenes of the Swiss Alps, using light effects and dramatic views subjectively to project emotional moods into the landscape. In 1848 this romantic introspection gave way to plein air (open-air) objectivity after he was influenced by Camille Corot, Eugene Delacroix, and the painters of the Barbizon school while on a trip to Paris. But after the February and June revolutions Bocklin returned to Basel with a lasting hatred and disgust for contemporary France, and he resumed painting gloomy mountain scenes. In 1850 Bocklin found his mecca in Rome, and immediately his paintings were flooded by the warm Italian sunlight. He populated the lush southern vegetation, the bright light of the Roman Campagna, and the ancient ruins with lonely shepherds, cavorting nymphs, and lusty centaurs. These mythological figures rather than the landscapes became Bocklins primary concern, and he used such themes as Pan Pursuing Syrinx (1857) to express the polarities of life: warm sunshine contrasts with cool, moist shade, and the brightness of womans spirituality contrasts with mans dark sensuality. When Bocklin returned to Basel with his Italian wife, he completed the painting which brought him fame when the king of Bavaria purchased it in 1858: Pan among the Reeds, a depiction of the Greek phallic god with whom the artist identified. He taught at the Academy of Art in Weimar from 1860 to 1862, when he returned to Rome. Called to Basel in 1866, he painted the frescoes and modeled the grotesque masks for the facade of the Basel Museum. Bocklin resided in Florence from 1874 until 1885, and this was his most active period. He continued to explore the male-female antithesis and painted religious scenes, allegories of Natures powers, and moody studies of mans fate. He ceased working with oils and began experimenting with tempera and other media to obtain a pictorial surface free of brushstrokes. Bocklin spent the next 7 years mostly in Switzerland, with occasional trips to Italy; he devoted much of his energy to designing an airplane. Following a stroke in 1892, he returned to Italy, bought a villa in Fiesole, and died there on Jan. 16, 1901. Many of his late works depict nightmares of war, plague, and death.