French b.Aug. 30, 1748, Paris d.Dec. 29, 1825, Brussels Jacques-Louis David is famous for his huge, dramatic canvasses of Napoleon and other historical figures, including Oath of the Horatii (1784), Death of Marat (1793) and The Sabine Women (1799). Early in his career he was a leader in the neoclassical movement; later his subjects became more modern and political. David was himself active in the French Revolution as a supporter of Robespierre and is sometimes called the chief propagandist for the Revolution; after the Reign of Terror ended he was briefly imprisoned for his actions. When Napoleon took power David became his court painter and created several grand canvasses of the Emperor, including the heroic Napoleon Bonaparte Crossing the Alps (1801) and the enormous Coronation of Napoleon and Josephine (1807). David also painted Napoleon in His Study (1812), with its famous image of Napoleon with one hand tucked inside his vest. After Napoleon ouster David went in exile to Brussels, where he remained until his 1825 death  Related Paintings of Jacques-Louis David :. | Portrait of Gaspar Mayer | The Farewell of Telemachus and Eucharis | Bonaparte Unfinished | The Death of Bara | Patroclus |
Related Artists:
John Henry Mohrmann
painted The Belgian steamer Amelie bound for Spain in
Dante Gabriel Rossetti
English Pre-Raphaelite Painter, 1828-1882 Rossetti's first major paintings display some of the realist qualities of the early Pre-Raphaelite movement. His Girlhood of Mary, Virgin and Ecce Ancilla Domini both portray Mary as an emaciated and repressed teenage girl. His incomplete picture Found was his only major modern-life subject. It depicted a prostitute, lifted up from the street by a country-drover who recognises his old sweetheart. However, Rossetti increasingly preferred symbolic and mythological images to realistic ones. This was also true of his later poetry. Many of the ladies he portrayed have the image of idealized Botticelli's Venus, who was supposed to portray Simonetta Vespucci. Although he won support from the John Ruskin, criticism of his clubs caused him to withdraw from public exhibitions and turn to waterhum, which could be sold privately. In 1861, Rossetti published The Early Italian Poets, a set of English translations of Italian poetry including Dante Alighieri's La Vita Nuova. These, and Sir Thomas Malory's Morte d'Arthur, inspired his art in the 1850s. His visions of Arthurian romance and medieval design also inspired his new friends of this time, William Morris and Edward Burne-Jones. Rossetti also typically wrote sonnets for his pictures, such as "Astarte Syraica". As a designer, he worked with William Morris to produce images for stained glass and other decorative devices. Both these developments were precipitated by events in his private life, in particular by the death of his wife Elizabeth Siddal. She had taken an overdose of laudanum shortly after giving birth to a stillborn child. Rossetti became increasingly depressed, and buried the bulk of his unpublished poems in his wife's grave at Highgate Cemetery, though he would later have them exhumed. He idealised her image as Dante's Beatrice in a number of paintings, such as Beata Beatrix. These paintings were to be a major influence on the development of the European Symbolist movement. In these works, Rossetti's depiction of women became almost obsessively stylised. He tended to portray his new lover Fanny Cornforth as the epitome of physical eroticism, whilst another of his mistresses Jane Burden, the wife of his business partner William Morris, was glamorised as an ethereal goddess.
Anthonis Mor
(c. 1517 - 1577) was a Netherlandish portrait painter, much in demand by the courts of Europe. He has also been referred to as Antoon, Anthonius, Anthonis, or Mor van Dashorst, Antonio Moro, Anthony More, etc., but signed most of his portraits as, Anthonis Mor. Mor was born in Utrecht, Netherlands by some estimation between 1516 and 1520. What is known of his early life is that his artistic education commenced under Jan van Scorel. His earliest work is probably a portrait at Stockholm, dated 1538. A group of Knights of St. John, at Utrecht, supposed to have been painted about 1541; a picture of two pilgrims at the Gemäldegalerie, Berlin, dated 1544; together with the portrait of an unknown woman, in the Lille gallery, were probably among his earliest works although their authenticity has not been proved. In 1547, he was received as a member of the Venerable Guild of St. Luke at Antwerp, and shortly afterwards (about 1548) he attracted the attention of Cardinal Granvelle, Bishop of Arras, who became his steady patron. Of the portraits executed during the early period of his career as Granvelle's protege, two are especially notable: one of the bishop himself (in the imperial gallery in Vienna), and one of the Duke of Alba, which now belongs to the Hispanic Society of New York. Between 1549 and 1550 Prince Philip II of Spain (1527-1598) traveled around the Netherlands to present himself as the future ruler. Mor painted his portrait in Brussels in 1549. He probably visited Italy (when exactly is not known) where he copied some works by Titian, notably the Danaë.