Spanish Baroque Era Painter, ca.1617-1682 Spanish religious and portrait painter. He was born in Seville, where most of his life was spent. There, c.1645, he painted a series of 11 pictures of the history of the Franciscan order for a monastery. These brought him immediate fame, and for the remainder of his life he was the favorite painter of the wealthy and pious Andalusian capital. His early works show the influence of Zurbarn in the dramatic use of light and shadow. Murillo adapted several compositions from northern and Italian prints. Notable works of his early years include St. Leander, St. Isidore, Vision of St. Anthony (all: cathedral, Seville), Birth of the Virgin (Louvre), and his series for the Church of Santa Maria la Blanca. In 1660 he was instrumental in founding the Seville Academy, of which he shared the presidency with the younger Francisco de Herrera. From 1670 to 1682, Murillo painted many of his major religious works, including those for the Charity Hospital and for the Capuchin convent (Seville Mus.). These religious works, particularly the Madonnas, are noted for their sweetness of mood. In 1682, while working on the Marriage of St. Catherine for the Capuchin church of Cediz, Murillo fell from a scaffold and died as a result of his injuries. Murillo's greatest works include his fine portraits, Don Andres de Andrade y la Col (Metropolitan Mus.) and Knight of the Collar (Prado) and his naturalistic genre paintings, such as Girl and Her Duenna (National Gall., Washington, D.C.) and Peasant Boy (National Gall., London).   Related Paintings of MURILLO, Bartolome Esteban :. | Mary and Child with Angels Playing Music sg | Annunciation shyu | Madonna and Child | St. Thomas of Villanueva Distributing Alms | The Young Beggar sg |
Related Artists:
w. holmberg

VERNET, Claude-Joseph
French Painter, 1714-1789 Painter. Vernet probably received his first lessons in painting from his father, Antoine, who then encouraged him to move to the studio of Philippe Sauvan (1697-1792), the leading master in Avignon. Sauvan supplied altarpieces to local churches and decorative works and mythologies for grand houses in the area. After this apprenticeship Vernet worked in Aix-en-Provence with the decorative painter Jacques Viali ( fl 1681- 1745), who also painted landscapes and marine pictures. In 1731 Vernet independently produced a suite of decorative overdoors for the h?tel of the Marquise de Simiane at Aix-en-Provence; at least two of these survive (in situ) and are Vernet's earliest datable landscapes. These are early indications of his favoured type of subject, and Vernet would have studied works attributed to such 17th-century masters as Claude Lorrain, Gaspard Dughet and Salvator Rosa in private collections at Aix and Avignon. Three years later Joseph de Seytres, Marquis de Caumont, who had previously recommended Vernet to the Marquise de Simiane, offered to sponsor a trip to Italy.
Matthias Stomer
Amersfoort ca.1600-Sicily after 1650