Italian Rococo Era Painter, 1712-ca.1793 The records of his parish in Venice show that Francesco Guardi was baptized on Oct. 5, 1712. His father, Domenico, who died when Francesco was 4, had a workshop. Francesco and his elder brother, Gian Antonio, worked in a small studio, carrying out such orders as they could get for almost anything the client wanted:mythological pictures, genre, flower pieces, battle scenes, altarpieces, and even, on rare occasions, frescoes. They did not hesitate to copy compositions by other artists, but what they borrowed they always transformed into something more capricious, less stable, more fragmentary in the refraction of light. Francesco did not emerge as an independent personality until 1760, when his brother died. Then, 48 years old, he married, established his own studio, and devoted himself chiefly to painting views of Venice. For the most part he worked in obscurity, ignored by his contemporaries. He was not even admitted to the Venetian Academy until he was 72 years old. Guardi and Canaletto have always been compared to one another because the buildings they chose to paint were often the same. But the way each artist painted them is very different. Canaletto's world is constructed out of line. It provides solid, carefully drawn, three-dimensional objects that exist within logically constructed three-dimensional space. Guardi's world is constructed out of color and light. The objects in it become weightless in the light's shimmer and dissolve in a welter of brushstrokes; the space, like the forms in space, is suggested rather than described. Canaletto belonged essentially to the Renaissance tradition that began with Giotto and, as it grew progressively tighter and more controlled, pointed the way to neoclassicism. Guardi belonged to the new baroque tradition that grew out of the late style of Titian and, as it became progressively looser and freer, pointed the way toward impressionism. Such differences appear even in Guardi's early view paintings, where he was obviously trying to copy Canaletto, such as the Basin of San Marco. The famous buildings are there, but they are far in the background, insubstantial, seeming to float. In front is a fleet of fishing boats, their curving spars seeming to dance across the surface of the canvas. What is important for Guardi is not perspective but the changing clouds and the way the light falls on the lagoon. Guardi became increasingly fascinated by the water that surrounds Venice. In late works, such as the famous Lagoon with Gondola, buildings and people have been stripped away until there is nothing but the suggestion of a thin line of distant wharfs, a few strokes to indicate one man on a gondola, a long unbroken stretch of still water, and a cloudless sky. Guardi also painted the festivals that so delighted visitors to the city, such as the Marriage of Venice to the Sea. This was a symbolic ceremony in which the doge, in the great gilded galley of the head of state, surrounded by a thousand gondolas, appeared before all Venice, in Goethe's image, "raised up like the Host in a monstrance." Of all Guardi's paintings the most evocative are his caprices, the landscapes born out of his imagination though suggested by the ruined buildings on the lonely islands of the Venetian lagoon. A gentle melancholy clings to such scenes.   Related Paintings of GUARDI, Francesco :. | The Giudecca Canal with the Zattere dgh | Doge Alvise IV Mocenigo Appears to the People in St Mark's Basilica in 1763 | Audience Granted by the Doge dfh | The Doge on the Bucintoro near the Riva di San Elena (detail) | Landscape with a Fisherman-s Tent |
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Rudolf Ernst
1854-1932
COSTA, Lorenzo
Italian High Renaissance Painter, ca.1460-1535 was an Italian painter of the Renaissance. He was born at Ferrara, but moved to Bologna by the his early twenties, and would be more influential to the Bolognese school of painting. However, many artists worked in both nearby cities, and thus others consider him a product of the School of Ferrara. There are claims that he trained with Cosimo Tura. In 1483 he painted his famous Madonna and Child with the Bentivoglio family, and other frescoes, on the walls of the Bentivoglio chapel in San Giacomo Maggiore, and he followed this with many other works. He was a great friend of Francesco Francia, who was much influenced by him. In 1509 he went to Mantua, where his patron was the Marquis Francesco Gonzaga, and he eventually died there. His Madonna and Child enthroned is in the National Gallery, London, but his chief works are at Bologna. His sons, Ippolito and Girolamo, were also painters, and so was Girolamo's son, Lorenzo the younger (1537-1583).
Albert Baertsoen
Belgian, 1866-1922.Belgian painter and etcher. The son of a successful mill-owner and an excellent musician, he was a pupil and friend of Gustave Den Duyts (1850-97), and later, at the Ghent Acad?mie, of Jean Delvin (1853-1922). He was involved in the exhibiting society LEssor in Brussels as well as the triennial salons held in Brussels, Antwerp and Ghent in rotation. Among his earliest important works are The Scheldt at Dendermonde (1887; Ghent, Mus. S. Kst.), which he painted beside Isidore Meyers (1836-1917) and Franz Courtens in a Realist style characteristic of the Dendermonde school. In 1889-90 he attended the studio of Alfred Roll in Paris, where he met Jacques-Emile Blanche and Charles Cottet, and became particularly closely associated with Frits Thaulow, Emile-Ren? M?nard and Edmond Aman-Jean. He exhibited regularly at the Salon in Paris. Although Baertsoen is considered to be one of the first Belgian Impressionists, he belonged to no particular school. He was more than a descriptive landscape painter, for he sought to evoke through the depiction of the natural world a mood of melancholy and resignation. He painted silent streets, rocks, rivers and canals in Bruges, Li?ge, Nieuwpoort, Diksmuide and in London, where he stayed during World War I. His most important paintings, however, were inspired by his native town, Ghent, of which he built up a remarkable portrait over the years in such works as Barges in the Snow (1901) and Ghent in the Evening (1903; both Brussels, Mus. A. Mod.). A broad, spontaneous technique, great delicacy of nuance, deep sincerity as well as a certain meditative quality characterize his work, which is limited in quantity. Baertsoen played an important role in Belgian cultural life of his period and was elected to the Acad?mie Royale des Beaux-Arts in 1919.