1593-1652 French Georges de La Tour Galleries His early work shows influences from Caravaggio, probably via his Dutch followers, and the genre scenes of cheats??as in The Fortune Teller ??and fighting beggars clearly derive from the Dutch Caravaggisti, and probably also his fellow-Lorrainer, Jacques Bellange. These are believed to date from relatively early in his career. La Tour is best known for the nocturnal light effects which he developed much further than his artistic predecessors had done, and transferred their use in the genre subjects in the paintings of the Dutch Caravaggisti to religious painting in his. Unlike Caravaggio his religious paintings lack dramatic effects. He painted these in a second phase of his style, perhaps beginning in the 1640s, using chiaroscuro, careful geometrical compositions, and very simplified painting of forms. His work moves during his career towards greater simplicity and stillness ?? taking from Caravaggio very different qualities than Jusepe de Ribera and his Tenebrist followers did. He often painted several variations on the same subjects, and his surviving output is relatively small. His son Etienne was his pupil, and distinguishing between their work in versions of La Tour's compositions is difficult. The version of the Education of the Virgin, in the Frick Collection in New York is an example, as the Museum itself admits. Another group of paintings (example left), of great skill but claimed to be different in style to those of de La Tour, have been attributed to an unknown "Hurdy-gurdy Master". All show older male figures (one group in Malibu includes a female), mostly solitary, either beggars or saints. After his death in 1652, La Tour's work was largely forgotten until rediscovered by Hermann Voss, a German scholar, in 1915. In 1935 an exhibition in Paris began the revival in interest among a wider public. In the twentieth century a number of his works were identified once more, and forgers tried to help meet the new demand; many aspects of his œuvre remain controversial among art historians.  Related Paintings of Georges de La Tour :. | St Sebastian Attended by St Irene (mk08) | St Sebastian Attended by St Irene | Frau mit dem Floh | Das gute Schicksal | Brawl, Getty Museum |
Related Artists:
ANGELICO Fra
Italian Early Renaissance Painter, ca.1387-1455 Italian painter, illuminator and Dominican friar. He rose from obscure beginnings as a journeyman illuminator to the renown of an artist whose last major commissions were monumental fresco cycles in St Peter's and the Vatican Palace, Rome. He reached maturity in the early 1430s, a watershed in the history of Florentine art. None of the masters who had broken new ground with naturalistic painting in the 1420s was still in Florence by the end of that decade. The way was open for a new generation of painters, and Fra Angelico was the dominant figure among several who became prominent at that time, including Paolo Uccello, Fra Filippo Lippi and Andrea del Castagno. By the early 1430s Fra Angelico was operating the largest and most prestigious workshop in Florence. His paintings offered alternatives to the traditional polyptych altarpiece type and projected the new naturalism of panel painting on to a monumental scale. In fresco projects of the 1440s and 1450s, both for S Marco in Florence and for S Peter's and the Vatican Palace in Rome, Fra Angelico softened the typically astringent and declamatory style of Tuscan mural decoration with the colouristic and luminescent nuances that characterize his panel paintings. His legacy passed directly to the second half of the 15th century through the work of his close follower Benozzo Gozzoli and indirectly through the production of Domenico Veneziano and Piero della Francesca. Fra Angelico was undoubtedly the leading master in Rome at mid-century, and had the survival rate of 15th-century Roman painting been greater, his significance for such later artists as Melozzo da Forli and Antoniazzo Romano might be clearer than it is.
SAVERY, Roelandt
Flemish Northern Renaissance Painter, 1576-1639 Flemish Northern Renaissance Painter, 1576-1639.Painter, draughtsman and etcher, brother of (1) Jacob Savery I. The subject and miniaturist precision of his earliest dated work, Birds by a Pond (1600; St Petersburg, Hermitage), reflect the influence of Jacob, his presumed teacher. The strong Flemish current in Amsterdam c. 1600 is apparent in the Village Edge
RIBALTA, Francisco
Spanish Baroque Era Painter, ca.1565-1628 He was the most distinguished artist working in Valencia in the early 17th century. His move towards naturalism at an early date was significant for the history of Spanish painting as well as being very influential. His documented mature works after about 1620 show a change of vision, and they are also of the highest quality. The religious paintings are depicted with more pronounced realism, and his deeply felt spiritual belief is expressed in a direct and very immediate way. In 1607 Ribalta supported other leading Valencian painters in a move to form the Colegio de Pintores (College of Painters) to safeguard the interests of the profession. The expulsion of the Moriscos in 1609 and the death in 1611 of the Patriarch Archbishop Juan de Ribera, Ribalta's most important patron, led to an economic crisis and spiritual void in Valencia that had an effect on his activity, since thereafter commissions came more rarely, and his work became more introspective. During 1616 and 1617 the idea of forming the Colegio de Pintores was revived, and Ribalta took an active role in the management and signed the petition to Philip III seeking support for the Colegio.