1592-1644,was born at Romford, London Borough of Havering, and baptized there on May 8 1592. Francis traced his ancestry to a family settled in England before the Norman Conquest with a long history in royal service. His great-grandfather, George Quarles, was Auditor to Henry VIII, and his father, James Quarles, held several places under Elizabeth I and James I, for which he was rewarded with an estate called Stewards in Romford. His mother, Joan Dalton, was the daughter and heiress of Eldred Dalton of Mores Place, Hadham. There were eight children in the family; the eldest, Sir Robert Quarles, was knighted by James I in 1608. Francis was entered at Christ's College, Cambridge, in 1608, and subsequently at Lincoln's Inn. He was made cupbearer to the Princess Elizabeth, in 1613, remaining abroad for some years; and before 1629 he was appointed secretary to Ussher, the primate of Ireland. About 1633 he returned to England, and spent the next two years in the preparation of his Emblems. In 1639 he was made city chronologer, a post in which Ben Jonson and Thomas Middleton had preceded him. At the outbreak of the Civil War he took the Royalist side, drawing up three pamphlets in 1644 in support of the king's cause. It is said that his house was searched and his papers destroyed by the Parliamentarians in consequence of these publications. Quarles married in 1618 Ursula Woodgate, by whom he had eighteen children. His son, John Quarles (1624-1665), was exiled to Flanders for his Royalist sympathies and was the author of Fons Lachrymarum (1648) and other poems. The work by which Quarles is best known, the Emblems, was originally published in 1635, with grotesque illustrations engraved by William Marshall and others. The forty-five prints in the last three books are borrowed from the Pia Desideria (Antwerp, 1624) of Herman Hugo. Each "emblem" consists of a paraphrase from a passage of Scripture, expressed in ornate and metaphorical language, followed by passages from the Christian Fathers, and concluding with an epigram of four lines. The Emblems was immensely popular with the common people, but the critics of the 17th and 18th centuries had no mercy on Quarles. Sir John Suckling in his Sessions of the Poets disrespectfully alluded to him as he "that makes God speak so big in's poetry." Pope in the Dunciad spoke of the Emblems, "Where the pictures for the page atone And Quarles is saved by beauties not his own."   Related Paintings of Francis Quarles :. | Abraham, Sarah and the Angel | Equestrian Portrait of Mariana of Neuburg | pa loftet | The Vintage Festival | The vital elephant |
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PEREDA, Antonio de
Spanish Baroque Era Painter, ca.1611-1678 Spanish painter. He was the son of a minor painter of the same name (d 1622) and, after his father died, about 1627 he moved to Madrid with his mother. There he entered the studio of Pedro de las Cuevas, and his fellow pupils included such artists as Juan Carreeo de Miranda, Francisco Camilo, Jusepe Leonardo and Antonio Arias Fernendez. He must also have known and studied the work of many masters esteemed at court, particularly Vicente Carducho, echoes of whose work can be found in the former's early paintings. Pereda received protection early on from a member of the Royal Council, Francisco de Tejada, and later from Giovanni Battista Crescenzi, a painter and patron who was in Spain from 1617. Pereda probably completed his training through contact with Crescenzi's collection and eventually he lived in Crescenzi's house. In 1634 Pereda executed Aid to Genoa (Madrid, Prado) for the decoration of the Salen de Reinos in the Casen Buen Retiro, Madrid, a project involving all the leading artists of Madrid, including Carducho, Velezquez, Zurbaren and Jose Leonardo. The death of Crescenzi in 1635 deprived Pereda of further court commissions and seems to have stopped him painting any further secular works other than still-lifes. Also in 1635 he began a well-documented career as a religious painter, producing large altar paintings and many other medium-sized works, probably for private worship. Outstanding among these is the Immaculate Conception (1637) in the Convento de los Felipenses, Alcale de Henares (Madrid). The important allegorical painting Vanitas
Mattieni, Teodoro
Italian, 1754-1831
John Thomas Serres
1759-1825 English painter, born in London in December 1759. He was the eldest son of Dominic (1722-93), a successful marine painter who was to be one of the founder members of the Royal Academy.Son of Dominic Serres. John Thomas Serres's colourful career began with landscape painting. He later travelled extensively, spending periods in Paris (1789), Rome and Naples (1790-91), before succeeding his father to the office of Marine Painter to George III in 1793. He worked promisingly as a painter (in both oils and watercolour) of sea-pieces in the European tradition, advanced in England by Phillipe Jacques de Loutherbourg. After becoming Marine Draughtsman to the Admiralty in 1800 he took on the less challenging employment of making drawings and elevations of the west coasts of France and Spain. This connection with the Navy was probably related to his appointment as drawing instructor at Chelsea Naval School, London.