Spanish Realist/Impressionist Painter, 1863-1923  Related Paintings of Joaquin Sorolla :. | Sevilla Palace | Project | Evening dress of Andrei Aristide | Toledo Landscape | My wife and daughter were in the garden |
Related Artists:
Jacques Rigaud
French, 1681-1754
Francesco Solimena
1657-1747 Italian Francesco Solimena Gallery Francesco Solimena was born in Canale di Serino, near Avellino. He received early training from his father, Angelo Solimena, with whom he executed a Paradise for the cathedral of Nocera (place where he spend a big part of his life) and a Vision of St. Cyril of Alexandria for the church of San Domenico at Solofra. He settled in Naples in 1674, there he worked in the studio of Francesco di Maria and later Giacomo del Po[1]. He apparently had taken the clerical orders, but was patronized early on, and encouraged to become an artist by Cardinal Vincenzo Orsini (later Pope Benedict XIII)[2]. By the 1680s, he had independent fresco commissions, and his active studio came to dominate Neapolitan painting from the 1690s through the first four decades of the 18th century. He modeled his art??for he was a highly conventional painter??after the Roman Baroque masters, Luca Giordano and Giovanni Lanfranco, and Mattia Preti, whose technique of warm brownish shadowing Solimena emulated. Solimena painted many frescoes in Naples, altarpieces, celebrations of weddings and courtly occasions, mythological subjects, characteristically chosen for their theatrical drama, and portraits. His settings are suggested with a few details??steps, archways, balustrades, columns??concentrating attention on figures and their draperies, caught in pools and shafts of light. Art historians take pleasure in identifying the models he imitated or adapted in his compositions. His numerous preparatory drawings often mix media, combining pen-and-ink, chalk and watercolor washes. Francesco Solimena 'A study for the fresco cycle in the Sacristy of San Paolo Maggiore in Naples', Whitfield Fine Art.A typical example of the elaborately constructed allegorical "machines" of his early mature style, fully employing his mastery of chiaroscuro, is the Allegory of Rule (1690) from the Stroganoff collection, which has come to the State Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg. He apparently hoped to see his son Orazio follow a career in the law, for which he received a doctorate (de Domenici), but also became a painter. His large, efficiently structured atelier became a virtual academy, at the heart of cultural life in Naples. Among his many pupils were Francesco de Mura (1696-1784) , Giuseppe Bonito (1707-89), Pietro Capelli, Gaspare Traversi, and most notably Corrado Giaquinto and Sebastiano Conca. The Scottish portraitist Allan Ramsay spent three years in Solimena's studio. Solimena amassed a fortune, was made a baron and lived in sumptuous style founded on his success. Francesco Solimena died at Barra, near Naples, in 1747.
Pater, Jean-Baptiste
French Rococo Era Painter, 1695-1736 French painter and draughtsman. He was taught in Valenciennes by Jean-Baptiste Guid? (master 1697; d 1711) and also by his father, Antoine Pater (1670-1747), a sculptor whose portrait was painted by Antoine Watteau (Valenciennes, Mus. B.-A.), who was also a native of Valenciennes. He probably followed Watteau to Paris after the short stay that the latter made in Valenciennes around 1710. Pater thus became a pupil of Watteau. Watteau's difficult character led to Pater's dismissal. He then spent a few hard years on his own in Paris, before returning to Valenciennes around 1715 or 1716. He tried to work independently of the local corporation of St Luc, of which he was not a member; a number of comical legal difficulties ensued, and Pater returned to Paris in 1718. There he must have been in contact with Watteau, since he worked for some of the latter's clients, such as the dealers Pierre Sirois and Edm?-Fran?ois Gersaint, and the collector Jean de Jullienne. In the spring of 1721 the dying Watteau called Pater to him at Nogent, near Paris, apparently full of remorse for his previous attitude and wishing to instruct him in the basic tenets of his painting,