German 1497-1543 Hans Holbein Galleries Holbein always made highly detailed pencil drawings of his portrait subjects, often supplemented with ink and colored chalk. The drawings emphasize facial detail and usually did not include the hands; clothing was only indicated schematically. The outlines of these drawings were then transferred onto the support for the final painting using tiny holes in the paper through which powdered charcoal was transmitted; in later years Holbein used a kind of carbon paper. The final paintings thus had the same scale as the original drawings. Although the drawings were made as studies for paintings, they stand on their own as independent, finely wrought works of art. How many portraits have been lost can be seen from Holbein's book (nearly all pages in the Royal Collection) containing preparatory drawings for portraits - of eighty-five drawings, only a handful have surviving Holbein paintings, though often copies have survived. David Hockney has speculated in the Hockney-Falco thesis that Holbein used a concave mirror to project an image of the subject onto the drawing surface. The image was then traced. However this thesis has not met with general acceptance from art historians. A subtle ability to render character may be noted in Holbein's work, as can be seen in his portraits of Thomas Cromwell, Desiderius Erasmus, and Henry VIII. The end results are convincing as definitive images of the subjects' appearance and personality.  Related Paintings of Hans Holbein :. | Prince of Wales | Portrait of an Unidentified Man, possibly the goldsmith Hans of Antwerp | Robert Qiesi Man | Nicolas Clerides Zheer | Childhood portrait of Edward V |
Related Artists:
Francesco Hayez
1791-1882 Italian Francesco Hayez Galleries Hayez came from a relatively poor family from Venice. His father was of French origin while his mother, Chiara Torcella, was from Murano. The child Francesco, youngest of five sons, was brought up by his mother sister, who had married Giovanni Binasco, a well-off shipowner and collector of art. From childhood he showed a predisposition for drawing, so his uncle apprenticed him to an art restorer. Later he became a student of the painter Francisco Magiotto with whom he continued his studies for three years. He was admitted to the painting course of the New Academy of Fine Arts in 1806, where he studied under Teodoro Matteini. In 1809 he won a competition from the Academy of Venice for one year of study at the Accademia di San Luca in Rome. He remained in Rome until 1814, then moved to Naples where he was commissioned by Joachim Murat to paint a major work depicting Ulysses at the court of Alcinous. In the mid 1830s he attended the Salotto Maffei salon in Milan, hosted by Clara Maffei (whose portrait Hayez painted for her husband), and he was still in Milan in 1850 when he was appointed director of the Academy of Brera there. Assessment of the career of Hayez is complicated by the fact that he often did not sign or date his works. Often the date indicated from the evidence is that at which the work was acquired or sold, not of its creation. Moreover he often painted the same compositions several times with minimal variations, or even with no variation. His early works show the influence of Ingres and the Nazarene movement. His later work participates in the Classical revival.
Marescalca, Pietro
Italian Painter, ca.1520-1589
Louis Buvelot
Swiss-born Australian Painter 1814-1888 was a Swiss-born landscape painter who emigrated to Australia in 1865 and influenced the Heidelberg School of painters. Buvelot was born in Morges, Vaud, Switzerland, second son of Francois Simeon Buvelot, postal official, and his wife Jeanne-Louise nee Heizer, a school teacher. Louis Buvelot worked under Marc-Louis Arland at Lausanne, and from around 1834 continued his studies at Paris with Camille Flers, a well-known landscape painter of the day. After a few months there he migrated to Bahia, Brazil where he worked on his uncle's coffee plantation. In October 1840 Buvelot moved to Rio de Janeiro and attracted the notice of the emperor Dom Pedro II, who bought some of his pictures and decorated him with the Order of the Rose. In November 1843 Buvelot married Marie-Felicite, nee Lalouette (born 1816). Buvelot returned to Switzerland in 1852 and in 1856 was awarded a silver medal for a picture exhibited at Berne.