1575-1642 Italian Guido Reni Galleries Born in Bologna into a family of musicians, Guido Reni was the son of Daniele Reni and Ginevra de?? Pozzi. As a child of nine, he was apprenticed under the Bolognese studio of Denis Calvaert. Soon after, he was joined in that studio by Albani and Domenichino. He may also have trained with a painter by the name of Ferrantini. When Reni was about twenty years old, the three Calvaert pupils migrated to the rising rival studio, named Accademia degli Incamminati (Academy of the "newly embarked", or progressives), led by Lodovico Carracci. They went on to form the nucleus of a prolific and successful school of Bolognese painters who followed Annibale Carracci to Rome. Like many other Bolognese painters, Reni's painting was thematic and eclectic in style. By late 1601, Reni and Albani had moved to Rome to work with the teams led by Annibale Carracci in fresco decoration of the Farnese Palace. During 1601-1604, his main patron was cardinal Sfondrato. By 1604-1605, he received an independent commission for an altarpiece of the Crucifixion of St. Peter. After a few year sojourn in Bologna, he returned to Rome to become one of the premier painters during the papacy of Paul V (Borghese). From 1607-1614, he was one of the painters patronized by Borghese. Abduction of Deianira, 1620-1621.Reni's frescoed ceiling of the large central hall of garden palace, Casino dell'Aurora located in the grounds of the Palazzo Pallavicini-Rospigliosi, is considered his masterpiece. The casino was originally a pavilion commissioned by Cardinal Scipione Borghese; the rear portion overlooks the Piazza Montecavallo and Palazzo del Quirinale. The massive fresco is framed in quadri riportati and depicts Apollo in his Chariot preceded by Dawn (Aurora) bringing light to the world. The work is restrained in classicism, copying poses from Roman Sarcophagi, and showing far more simplicity and restraint than Carracci's riotous Triumph of Bacchus and Ariadne[5] in the Farnese. Reni in this painting is allies himself more with the sterner Cavaliere d'Arpino,Lanfranco, and Albani "School" of mytho-historic painting, and less with the more crowded frescoes characteristic of Pietro da Cortona. There is little concession to perspective, and the vibrantly colored style is antithetical to the tenebrism of Caravaggio's followers. Payments showed that he was paid in 247 scudi and 54 baiocchi upon completion on 24 September 1616. He also frescoed in Paoline Chapel of Santa Maria Maggiore in Rome as well as the Aldobrandini wings of the Vatican. According to rumor, the pontifical chapel of Montecavallo (Chapel of the Annuciation) was assigned to Reni to paint. However, because he felt underpaid by the ministers, the artist left for Bologna, leaving the role of the preeminent artist in Rome to Domenichino.  Related Paintings of Guido Reni :. | The Abduction of Helen (mk05) | Saint Cecilia | Saint Sebastien martyr dans un paysage | Anbetung der Hirten | Charity |
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Julius Caesar Ibbetson
1759-1817 British In 1785, Ibbetson began exhibiting at the Royal Academy with View of North Fleet. Mitchell calls George Biggin (1783), which is one of Ibbetson's earliest known works, "an accomplished full-length portrait in the Gainsborough tradition, [which] should be considered as a milestone in the development of an artist who was entirely self-taught". Through the efforts of Captain William Baillie in 1787, Ibbetson was made draughtsman to Colonel Charles Cathcart on the first British embassy to Peking (Beijing); he made many watercolor drawings of the animals and plants on the journey. While he was away, his Ascent of George Biggin, esq. from St. George's Fields, June 29th 1785 was exhibited at the Royal Academy to great critical and popular acclaim. In 1789, Ibbetson went to visit the Viscount Mountstuart at Cardiff Castle in Wales. He spent decades drawing the scenery there and, according to Mitchell, "[h]is detailed watercolours of iron furnaces, coal staithes, and copper mines foreshadow the work of Joseph Wright of Derby and J. M. W. Turner and constitute an important record of the early industrial developments in that region, but are less well known than his more numerous scenes of folk life and picturesque scenery." After a visit to the Isle of Wight in 1790, he began painting shipwrecks and smugglers. David Murray, 2nd Earl of Mansfield, and his wife commissioned Ibbetson to decorate Kenwood House, in 1794. This distracted him from the death of his wife and caring for their three children. Her death had "provoked a minor nervous breakdown, exacerbated by near destitution", but the Kenwood project relieved that stress. Four years later, he moved to Liverpool to work for Thomas Vernon. In 1801 he married his second wife, Bella Thompson, and moved to Ambleside. Ibbetson acquired several generous patrons in Liverpool and in Edinburgh: William Roscoe, Sir Henry Nelthorpe, and the Countess of Balcarress. The last prompted him to write and publish his instruction manual An Accidence, or Gamut, of Painting in Oil (1803). In 1803, he met the Yorkshire philanthropist William Danby and in 1805 moved to Masham to be near him. The next 14 years of his life were the most settled of his life. Ibbetson died on 13 October 1817 and was buried in the churchyard of St Mary's, Masham. Benjamin West described Ibbetson as the "Berchem of England" in recognition of his debt to the Dutch 17th century landscape painters. According to Mitchell, "[h]is watercolours are prized for their delicacy and sureness of line". Many were engraved for projects such as John Church's A Cabinet of Quadrupeds and John Boydell's Shakespeare Gallery.
RICCI, Sebastiano
Italian painter, Venetian school (b. 1659, Belluno, d. 1734, Venezia).Painter and draughtsman. He painted light and colourful religious, historical and mythological subjects with a fluid, painterly touch. His rediscovery of Paolo Veronese, whose settings and costumes he borrowed, was important to later Venetian painters. Sebastiano was an itinerant artist, celebrated throughout Europe.
Zahari Zograf
(1810?C1853), better known as Zahari Zograf (or Zahariy Zograf) is arguably the most famous Bulgarian painter of the Bulgarian National Revival, noted for his church mural paintings and icons and often regarded as the founder of secular art in Bulgaria due to the introduction of everyday life elements in his work. Zahari Zograf was born in the town of Samokov in 1810 and was taught by his brother Dimitar Zograf, with whom he later worked together, as his father died early. A spiritual student of Neophyte of Rila since 1827, he became an equal partner of his brother at the age of 21 in 1831, i.e. he was proclaimed a master. His best known icons are those of the SS Constantine and Helen Church in Plovdiv, the Church of the Theotokos in Koprivshtitsa, as well as a number of monasteries. Zahari Zograf's best known frescoes are those in the main church of the Rila Monastery, in the chapel and the St Nicholas church of the Bachkovo Monastery, the Troyan Monastery and the Monastery of the Transfiguration. He painted three mural portraits of himself in the latter three, a move that was regarded as controversial during the time.