Italian 1476-1510 Giorgione Galleries For his home town of Castelfranco, Giorgione painted the Castelfranco Madonna, an altarpiece in sacra conversazione form ?? Madonna enthroned, with saints on either side forming an equilateral triangle. This gave the landscape background an importance which marks an innovation in Venetian art, and was quickly followed by his master Giovanni Bellini and others.Giorgione began to use the very refined chiaroscuro called sfumato ?? the delicate use of shades of color to depict light and perspective ?? around the same time as Leonardo. Whether Vasari is correct in saying he learnt it from Leonardo's works is unclear ?? he is always keen to ascribe all advances to Florentine sources. Leonardo's delicate color modulations result from the tiny disconnected spots of paint that he probably derived from manuscript illumination techniques and first brought into oil painting. These gave Giorgione's works the magical glow of light for which they are celebrated. Most entirely central and typical of all Giorgione's extant works is the Sleeping Venus now in Dresden, first recognized by Morelli, and now universally accepted, as being the same as the picture seen by Michiel and later by Ridolfi (his 17th century biographer) in the Casa Marcello at Venice. An exquisitely pure and severe rhythm of line and contour chastens the sensuous richness of the presentment: the sweep of white drapery on which the goddess lies, and of glowing landscape that fills the space behind her, most harmoniously frame her divinity. The use of an external landscape to frame a nude is innovative; but in addition, to add to her mystery, she is shrouded in sleep, spirited away from accessibility to her conscious expression. It is recorded by Michiel that Giorgione left this piece unfinished and that the landscape, with a Cupid which subsequent restoration has removed, were completed after his death by Titian. The picture is the prototype of Titian's own Venus of Urbino and of many more by other painters of the school; but none of them attained the fame of the first exemplar. The same concept of idealized beauty is evoked in a virginally pensive Judith from the Hermitage Museum, a large painting which exhibits Giorgione's special qualities of color richness and landscape romance, while demonstrating that life and death are each other's companions rather than foes. Apart from the altarpiece and the frescoes, all Giorgione's surviving works are small paintings designed for the wealthy Venetian collector to keep in his home; most are under two foot (60 cm) in either dimension. This market had been emerging over the last half of the fifteenth century in Italy, and was much better established in the Netherlands, but Giorgione was the first major Italian painter to concentrate his work on it to such an extent ?? indeed soon after his death the size of such paintings began to increase with the prosperity and palaces of the patrons.  Related Paintings of Giorgione :. | Sleeping Venus dhh | The Adulteress brought Before Christ | Portrait of Warrior with his Equerry sg | Castelfranco Veneto | Herd worship |
Related Artists:
GRANACCI, Francesco
Italian High Renaissance Painter, ca.1469-1543 was an Italian painter of the Renaissance. Born at Villamagna di Volterra, he trained in Florence in the studio of Domenico Ghirlandaio, and was employed painting frescoes for San Marco on commission of Lorenzo de'Medici. He is featured in Giorgio Vasari's Vite. His early works, such as the Enthroned Madonna between Saint Michael and John the Baptist (Staatliche Museen, Berlin), Adoration of the Child (Honolulu Academy of Arts) and four histories of Saint John the Baptist, were influenced by the style of Filippino Lippi. In 1508, Granacci went to Rome, where he and other artists helped his lifelong friend Michelangelo to transfer cartoons to the Sistine chapel ceiling. Returning to Florence, Granacci painted a Madonna with Child with Saints Francesco and Jerome for the Augustinian convent of San Gallo (now in the Gallery of the Academy), a Madonna della Cintola for the Company of San Benedetto Bigi, and in 1515 he participated in creating the decorations to celebrate the visit to Florence of Pope Leo X. In 1519, he painted a Madonna with Child and Saint John. Works of the years 1520-1525 betray a direct influence of Fra Bartolomeo, including a Madonna in throne between Saints Sebastiano and Francesco for Castelfiorentino and a Sacred Conversation for Montemurlo. An altarpiece of the Assumption is influenced by Pietro Perugino.
Charles Rennie Macintosh
Scottish Art Nouveau Designer , (1868-1928). Scottish architect, designer and painter. In the pantheon of heroes of the Modern Movement, he has been elevated to a cult figure, such that the importance of his late 19th-century background and training in Glasgow are often overlooked. He studied during a period of great artistic activity in the city that produced the distinctive GLASGOW STYLE. As a follower of A. W. N. Pugin and John Ruskin, he believed in the superiority of Gothic over Classical architecture and by implication that moral integrity in architecture could be achieved only through revealed construction. Although Mackintosh's buildings refrain from overt classicism, they reflect its inherent discipline. His profound originality was evident by 1895, when he began the designs for the Glasgow School of Art. His decorative schemes, particularly the furniture, also formed an essential element in his buildings. During Mackintosh's lifetime his influence was chiefly felt in Austria, in the work of such painters as Gustav Klimt and such architects as Josef Hoffmann and Joseph Maria Olbrich. The revival of interest in his work was initiated by the publication of monographs by Pevsner (1950) and Howarth (1952). The Charles Rennie Mackintosh Society was formed in Glasgow in 1973; it publishes a biannual newsletter, has a reference library and organizes exhibitions. The Hunterian Art Gallery, University of Glasgow, which opened in 1981,
Jean-Louis-Ernest Meissonier
French Academic Painter, 1815-1891,French painter, sculptor and illustrator. Although he was briefly a student of Jules Potier (1796-1865) and Leon Cogniet, Meissonier was mainly self-taught and gained experience by designing wood-engravings for book illustrations. These included Leon Curmer's celebrated edition of J.-H. Bernardin de Saint-Pierre's Paul et Virginie (Paris, 1838), the series Les Franeais peints par eux-memes (Paris, 1840-42) and Louis de Chevigne's Les Contes remois (Paris, 1858).