German 1805-1873
Franz Xaver Winterhalter Galleries
German painter and lithographer. He trained as a draughtsman and lithographer in the workshop of Karl Ludwig Scheler (1785-1852) in Freiburg im Breisgau and went to Munich in 1823, sponsored by the industrialist Baron Eichtal. In 1825 he began a course of study at the Akademie and was granted a stipend by Ludwig I, Grand Duke of Baden. The theoretical approach to art of the Akademie under the direction of Peter Cornelius was unfamiliar to him, as in Freiburg he had been required to paint in a popular style. He found the stimulus for his future development in the studio of Joseph Stieler, a portrait painter who was much in demand and who derived inspiration from French painting. Winterhalter became his collaborator in 1825. From Stieler he learnt to make the heads of figures emerge from shadow and to use light in the modelling of faces. He moved to Karlsruhe in 1830 with his brother Hermann Winterhalter (1808-92), who had also trained with Scheler and had followed him to Munich. Related Paintings of Franz Xaver Winterhalter :. | Princess Elizabeth Esperovna Belosselsky-Belosenky, Princess Troubetskoi | Countess Alexander Nikolaevitch Lamsdorff | The First of Mays (mk25) | Charles-Jerome, Comte Pozzo di Borgo | The Empress Eugenie Surrounded by her Ladies in Waiting | Related Artists:
John H F Baconb. 1740, London, d. 1799, London
Francisco de Zurbaran1598-1664
Spanish Francisco de Zurbaran Galleries
Spanish baroque painter, active mainly at Llerena, Madrid, and Seville. He worked mostly for ecclesiastical patrons. His early paintings, including Crucifixion (1627; Art Inst., Chicago), St. Michael (Metropolitan Mus.), and St. Francis (City Art Museum, St. Louis), often suggest the austere simplicity of wooden sculpture. The figures, placed close to the picture surface, are strongly modeled in dramatic light against dark backgrounds, indicating the influence of Caravaggio. They were clearly painted as altarpieces or devotional objects. In the 1630s the realistic style seen in his famous Apotheosis of St. Thomas Aquinas (1631; Seville) yields to a more mystical expression in works such as the Adoration of the Shepherds (1638; Grenoble); in this decade he was influenced by Ribera figural types and rapid brushwork. While in Seville, Zurbur??n was clearly influenced by Velazquez. After c.1640 the simple power of Zurbaran work lessened as Murillo influence on his painting increased (e.g., Virgin and Child with St. John, Fine Arts Gall., San Diego, Calif.). There are works by Zurbar??n in the Hispanic Society of America, New York City; the National Gallery, Washington, D.C.; and the Philadelphia Museum of Art..
CASTIGLIONE, Giovanni BenedettoItalian Baroque Era Painter, ca.1609-1664
Painter, printmaker and draughtsman. Most of his works are scenes of the journeys of the patriarchs (e.g. Noah, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob), drawn from the book of Genesis and filled with animals and still-life detail. His oeuvre also, however, includes many spectacular mythological and religious compositions set in expansive landscapes, and for these he found inspiration in Classical mythology, ancient history, Aesop's Fables, 16th-century Italian literature and the lives of the saints. Early biographers claim that he was also a prolific portrait painter, but few examples, save the so-called portrait of Gianlorenzo Bernini (c. 1648-50; Genoa, Pal. Bianco), have been conclusively identified. His surviving subjects reveal his interest in magic and metamorphosis and in philosophical questions such as the frailty of human life, the inevitability of death and the search for truth.