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 Grand Canal with Santa Lucia and the Scalzi dfh | The Doge on the Bucentaur at San Niccol del Lido dfh | The Doge on the Bucentaur at San Niccol del Lido | The Piazzetta, Looking toward San Giorgio Maggiore dh | The Three-Arched Bridge at Cannaregio sdg |
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BELLEGAMBE, Jean
Flemish painter (c. 1480 - c. 1535) South Netherlandish painter and designer. His father, George Bellegambe, a cabinetmaker and musician, was a prominent citizen of Douai. Jean is first mentioned in a document of 1504, when he is referred to as a master painter, a burgher and married. His teacher is unknown, but his work bears some imprint of the art of Jan Provoost, who inherited Simon Marmion's studio. However, Bellegambe might equally have been apprenticed in Bruges or Brussels (possibly in the atelier of the Master of the Legend of St Mary Magdalen, for example), or even in Antwerp. The calm and serenity of Bellegambe's compositions, his treatment of landscape, his lightness of technique, his pursuit of clear, soft colours and delicate harmonies all indicate links with the work of Gerard David and Quinten Metsys. In the 17th century Bellegambe was known as 'the Master of Colours'.
Heinrich Friedrich Fuger
painted Prometheus brings Fire to Mankind in 1817
Jacob Levecq
(1634 - 1675), was a Dutch Golden Age painter trained by Rembrandt. According to Houbraken, who was his pupil during the last 9 months of his life, he had been trained by Rembrandt, but inherited a sum of money when his parents died, that he used to take care of himself, his two unmarried sisters and a blind half-brother. Houbraken could not recall much of his painting style, since he had been mostly sick while he was living in the house, and he no longer painted actively. In his younger years Levecq travelled to Paris and Sedan where he painted portraits, and on his return to Dordrecht became a portrait painter in the manner of Jan de Baen. When he died, Houbraken inherited a third of his prints, but regretted the fact that as a young boy with little experience in such matters, he only chose prints by Lucas van Leyden and Albert Durer, and had left the French prints for others, and so was very glad that he had received one anyway by Charles le Brun.