French 1600-1682 Claude Lorrain Galleries In Rome, not until the mid-17th century were landscapes deemed fit for serious painting. Northern Europeans, such as the Germans Elsheimer and Brill, had made such views pre-eminent in some of their paintings (as well as Da Vinci in his private drawings or Baldassarre Peruzzi in his decorative frescoes of vedute); but not until Annibale Carracci and his pupil Domenichino do we see landscape become the focus of a canvas by a major Italian artist. Even with the latter two, as with Lorrain, the stated themes of the paintings were mythic or religious. Landscape as a subject was distinctly unclassical and secular. The former quality was not consonant with Renaissance art, which boasted its rivalry with the work of the ancients. The second quality had less public patronage in Counter-Reformation Rome, which prized subjects worthy of "high painting," typically religious or mythic scenes. Pure landscape, like pure still-life or genre painting, reflected an aesthetic viewpoint regarded as lacking in moral seriousness. Rome, the theological and philosophical center of 17th century Italian art, was not quite ready for such a break with tradition. In this matter of the importance of landscape, Lorrain was prescient. Living in a pre-Romantic era, he did not depict those uninhabited panoramas that were to be esteemed in later centuries, such as with Salvatore Rosa. He painted a pastoral world of fields and valleys not distant from castles and towns. If the ocean horizon is represented, it is from the setting of a busy port. Perhaps to feed the public need for paintings with noble themes, his pictures include demigods, heroes and saints, even though his abundant drawings and sketchbooks prove that he was more interested in scenography. Lorrain was described as kind to his pupils and hard-working; keenly observant, but an unlettered man until his death. The painter Joachim von Sandrart is an authority for Claude's life (Academia Artis Pictoriae, 1683); Baldinucci, who obtained information from some of Claude's immediate survivors, relates various incidents to a different effect (Notizie dei professoni del disegno). John Constable described Claude Lorrain as "the most perfect landscape painter the world ever saw", and declared that in Claude??s landscape "all is lovely ?C all amiable ?C all is amenity and repose; the calm sunshine of the heart"  Related Paintings of Claude Lorrain :. | Ulysses Kerry race will be the return of her father Dubois | Landscape with the Rest on the Flight into Egypt | Landscape with Ascanius Shooting the Stag of Sylvia | Figures behind Plants (mk17) | Landscape with Abraham Expelling Hagar and Ishmael (mk17) |
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Maclise, Daniel
Irish Painter, 1806-1870 Irish painter, active in England. He grew up in Cork where his father had set up as a shoemaker after discharge from the British army. In 1822 Maclise went to the Cork Institute where he began to draw from the newly arrived collection of casts made after the antique sculpture in the Vatican, laying the foundation of the strong draughtsmanship that characterizes his mature work. Richard Sainthill, antiquary and connoisseur, encouraged Maclise and introduced him to local literary and artistic circles, which were influenced by the Romantic movement and interested in Irish antiquities and oral traditions. Maclise was a central figure in this early phase of the Irish revival, and maintained an interest in Irish subject-matter throughout his career; in 1833 he painted Snap Apple (Mrs Cantor priv. col.), and in 1841 contributed illustrations to Samuel Carter Hall's Ireland: Its Scenery and Character. When Sir Walter Scott visited Cork in 1825, Maclise made a sketch of him that was lithographed, and that inaugurated his public career.
ROSSELLINO, Bernardo
Italian sculptor Florentine school (b. 1409, Settignano, d. 1464, Firenze).Italian architect and sculptor. Influenced by Donatello, Filippo Brunelleschi, and Luca Della Robbia, he developed a moderately Classical style. His tomb for Leonardo Bruni (1444 C 50) in Santa Croce, Florence, was one of the greatest achievements of early Renaissance sculpture and inaugurated a new type of sepulchral monument. Its fine balance between sculpture and architecture, figure and decoration, made it the prototypical niche tomb of its time. He also designed the apse of St. Peter's Basilica and the cathedral and Piccolomini Palace in Pienza (1460 ?C 64). He presumably trained his brother Antonio (1427 ?C 79), who regularly assisted him.
Francis Wheatley
1747-1801 British Francis Wheatley Location Francis Wheatley (1747 - June 28, 1801), was an English portrait and landscape painter, was born at Wild Court, Covent Garden, London. He studied at Shipleys drawing-school and the Royal Academy, and won several prizes from the Society of Arts. He assisted in the decoration of Vauxhall, and aided Mortimer in painting a ceiling for Lord Melbourne at Brocket Hall (Hertfordshire). In youth his life was irregular and dissipated. He eloped to Ireland with the wife of Gresse, a brother artist, and established himself in Dublin as a portrait-painter, executing, among other works, an interior of the Irish House of Commons. His scene from the Gordon Riots of 1780 was engraved by Heath. He painted several subjects for Boydells Shakespeare Gallery, designed illustrations to Bells edition of the poets, and practised to some small extent as an etcher and mezzotint-engraver. It is, however, as a painter, in both oil and water-color, of landscapes and rustic subjects that Wheatley is best remembered. He was elected an associate of the Royal Academy in 1790, and an academician in the following year. His wife, as Mrs Pope after his death, was known as a painter of flowers and portraits.