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 :. | Il Tramonte | Madonna and Child Enthroned between St Francis and St Liberalis | The Singing Lesson | Allendale group | Warrior with Shield Bearer |
Related Artists:
Simon Ushakov
1626 - 1686) was a leading Russian graphic artist of the late 17th-century. Together with Fyodor Zubov and Fyodor Rozhnov, he is associated with the comprehensive reform of the Russian Orthodox Church undertaken by Patriarch Nikon. We know almost nothing about the early years of Simon Ushakov. His birth date is deduced from his inscription on one of the icons: In the year 7166 painted this icon Simon Ushakov son, being 32 years of age. At 22 he became a paid artist of the Silver Chamber, affiliated with the Armory Prikaz. The bright, fresh colours and exquisite, curving lines of his proto-baroque icons caught the eye of Patriarch Nikon, who introduced Simon to the tsar Alexei Mikhailovich. He became a great favourite with the royal family and was eventually (1664) assigned to the Kremlin Armoury, run by an educated boyar Bogdan Khitrovo.
Christian Wilhelm Ernst Dietrich
German Painter, 1712-1774,German painter and etcher. He received his first training from his father, Johann Georg Dietrich (1684-1752), a court painter at Weimar, and was sent to Dresden at the age of 13 to study under the landscape painter Johann Alexander Thiele (1685-1752). In 1728 they travelled to Arnstadt to paint landscapes for stage sets. In 1730 Thiele presented his pupil to Frederick-Augustus I, Elector of Saxony, as a prodigy; Frederick-Augustus appointed him court painter and entrusted him to his minister Heinrich, Graf von Brehl, for whom he worked on some decorative paintings. From 1732 he used the name 'Dietricy' to sign his paintings. He travelled in Germany from 1734 and may have visited the Netherlands, the source of his artistic inspiration. He returned from his travels in 1741 and was appointed court painter to Frederick-Augustus II, Elector of Saxony, who sent him to Italy in 1743 to study. He visited Venice and Rome but returned to Dresden in 1744.
Louis Anquetin
1861-1932,French painter. He came to Paris in 1882 and studied art at the Ateliers of Bonnat and Cormon, where he was a contemporary and friend of Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Emile Bernard and Vincent van Gogh. His early work shows the influence of Impressionism and of Edgar Degas. In 1887 Anquetin and Bernard devised an innovative method of painting using strong black contour lines and flat areas of colour; Anquetin aroused much comment when he showed his new paintings, including the striking Avenue de Clichy: Five O'Clock in the Evening (1887; Hartford, CT, Wadsworth Atheneum) at the exhibition of Les XX in Brussels and at the Salon des Independants in Paris in 1888. The new style, dubbed Cloisonnisme by the critic Edouard Dujardin (1861-1949), resulted from a study of stained glass, Japanese prints and other so-called 'primitive' sources; it was close to the Synthetist experiments of Paul Gauguin and was adopted briefly by van Gogh during his Arles period. Anquetin's works were shown alongside Gauguin's and Bernard's at the Caf? Volpini exhibition in 1889,