1580-1620 Italian Carlo Saraceni Galleries Carlo Saraceni (Venice 1579-Venice, 16 June 1620) was an Italian early-Baroque painter, whose reputation as a "first-class painter of the second rank" was improved with the publication of a modern monograph in 1968. Though he was born in Venice, his paintings are distinctly Roman in style; he moved to Rome in 1598, joining the Accademia di San Luca in 1607. He never visited France, though he spoke fluent French and had French followers and a French wardrobe. His painting, however, was influenced at first by the densely forested, luxuriantly enveloping landscape settings for human figures of Adam Elsheimer, a German painter resident in Rome; "there are few landscapes by Saraceni which have not been attributed to Elsheimer," Malcolm Waddingham observed, and Anna Ottani Cavina has suggested the influences may have travelled both ways. and Elsheimer's small cabinet paintings on copper offered a format that Saraceni employed in six landscape panels illustrating The Flight of Icarus; in Moses and the Daughters of Jethro and Mars and Venus. Saint Sebastian Castle Museum, PragueWhen Caravaggio's notorious Death of the Virgin was rejected in 1606 as an altarpiece suitable for a chapel of Santa Maria della Scala, it was Saraceni who provided the acceptable substitute, which remains in situ, the only securely dated painting of his first decade in Rome. He was influenced by Caravaggio's dramatic lighting, monumental figures, naturalistic detail, and momentary action (illustration, right), so that he is numbered among the first of the "tenebrists" or "Caravaggisti". Examples of this style can be seen in the candlelit Judith and the Head of Holofernes. Saraceni's matured rapidly between 1606 and 1610, and the next decade gave way to his fully mature works, synthesizing Caravaggio and the Venetians. In 1616?C17 he collaborated on the frescoes for the Sala Regia of the Palazzo del Quirinale. In 1618 he received payment for two paintings in the church of Santa Maria dell'Anima. The compositional details of his fresco of The Birth of the Virgin in the Chapel of the Annunciation of the church of Santa Maria in Aquiro are repeated in a panel on copper at the Louvre In 1620 he returned to Venice, where he died in the same year. He was so influential on the style of an anonymous still life painter working in Rome, that the man is known as "Pensionante del Saraceni"  Related Paintings of Carlo Saraceni :. | The Madonna and Child with Saint Anne and an Angle | Dogs | St.Cecelia with an Angel | Mars and Venus, with a Circle of Cupids and a Landscape | Mars and Venus |
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Jean Marc Nattier
1685-1766 French Jean Marc Nattier Gallery Brother of Jean-Baptiste Nattier. As well as being taught by his father, he trained with his godfather, Jean Jouvenet, and attended the drawing classes of the Academie Royale, where in 1700 he won the Premier Prix de Dessin. From around 1703 he worked on La Galerie du Palais du Luxembourg. The experience of copying the work of Rubens does not, however, seem to have had a liberating effect on his draughtsmanship, which was described by the 18th-century collector Pierre-Jean Mariette as cold. Nattier was commissioned to make further drawings for engravers in the early part of his career, including those after Hyacinthe Rigaud famous state portrait of Louis XIV (1701; Paris, Louvre) in 1710, which indicates that he had established a reputation while he was still quite young. Although he was offered a place at the Academie de France in Rome on the recommendation of Jouvenet, Nattier preferred to remain in Paris and further his career. In 1717 he nevertheless made a trip to Holland, where he painted portraits of Peter the Great and the Empress Catherine (St Petersburg, Hermitage). The Tsar offered Nattier work at the Russian court, but the artist declined the offer. He remained in Paris for the rest of his life.
MARIESCHI, Michele
Italian Painter, 1710-1743 Italian painter and engraver. His first biographers, Orlandi and Guarienti (1753), stated that Marieschi worked in Germany early in his career and then returned to Venice, where he established himself as a painter of 'beautiful views of the Grand Canal, and of churches and palaces'. Yet there is no other evidence for this journey and Marieschi's early training remains problematic. It seems likely that he began his career as a stage designer: his first recorded activity, in 1731, was the preparation, on behalf of the impresario Francesco Tasso ( fl 1725-c. 1740), of the setting for the Venetian celebration of Carnival Thursday in the Piazzetta. He then, influenced by Marco Ricci and Luca Carlevaris, began to paint capriccios and vedute. His early capriccios, such as the pair Capriccio with Classical Ruins and Bridge and Capriccio with Roman Arch and Encampment (mid-1730s; Naples, Mus. Civ. Gaetano Filangieri), are indebted to Ricci, although they lack his solemnity and magnificence. Marieschi's blend of medieval and Classical ruins in a serene Venetian landscape is more picturesque and romantic. Marieschi began to paint vedute having been encouraged by Canaletto's great success with the genre; examples such as the S Maria della Salute (1733-5; Paris, Louvre), the Piazzetta dei Leoni and the Grand Canal at Ca' Pesaro (1734-5; both Munich, Alte Pin.) are distinguished from Canaletto's work by their exaggerated perspective, more atmospheric colour and the spirited handling of the small figures. Two capriccios, the Town on a River with Rapids (London, N.G.) and the Town on a River with Shipping (London, N.G.;.), both charmingly picturesque scenes with watermills and crumbling towers, date from the mid-1730s. Marieschi began to etch in the 1730s,
Frantisek Kupka
Czech Abstract Painter, 1871-1957,was a Czech painter and graphic artist. He was a pioneer and co-founder of the early phases of the abstract art movement and orphic cubism (orphism). Kupka's abstract works arose from a base of realism, but later evolved into pure abstract art. Frantisek Kupka was born in Opocno, eastern Bohemia (now Czech Republic). From 1889 to 1892, he studied at the Prague Art Academy. At this time, he painted historical and patriotic themes. In Kupka enrolled at the Akademie der Bildenden Kunste in Vienna, Vienna, where he concentrated on symbolic and allegorical subjects. He exhibited at the Kunstverein, Vienna, in 1894. His involvement with theosophy and Eastern philosophy dates from this period. By spring 1894, Kupka had settled in Paris; there he attended the Academie Julian briefly and then studied with Jean-Pierre Laurens at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts. Kupka worked as an illustrator of books and posters and, during his early years in Paris, became known for his satirical drawings for newspapers and magazines. In 1906, he settled in Puteaux, a suburb of Paris, and that same year exhibited for the first time at the Salon d'Automne. Kupka was deeply impressed by the first Futurist Manifesto, published in 1909 in Le Figaro. Kupka's 1909 painting "Piano Keyboard/Lake" marked a break in his representational style; his work became increasingly abstract around 1910 C11, reflecting his theories of motion, color, and the relationship between music and painting (orphism). In 1911, he attended meetings of the Puteaux group. In 1912, he exhibited at the Salon des Independants in the Cubist room, although he did not wish to be identified with any movement. Creation in the Plastic Arts, a book Kupka completed in 1913, was published in Prague in 1923. In 1931, he was a founding member of Abstraction-Creation. In 1936, his work was included in the exhibition "Cubism and Abstract Art" at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, and in an important show with another excellent Czech painter Alphonse Mucha at the Jeu de Paume in Paris. A retrospective of his work took place at the Galerie Manes in Prague in 1946. The same year, Kupka participated in the Salon des Realites Nouvelles, where he continued to exhibit regularly until his death. During the early 1950s, he gained general recognition and had several solo shows in New York. Between 1919 and 1938 Kupka was financially supported by his good friend, art collector and industrialist Jindich Waldes who accumulated a substantial collection of his art. Kupka died in Puteaux, France. Kupka had a strong interest in color theory; around 1910 he began developing his own color wheels, adapting a format previously explored by Sir Isaac Newton and Hermann von Helmholtz. This work in turn led Kupka to execute a series of paintings he called "Discs of Newton" (1911-12).