1702-1785 Italian Pietro Longhi Galleries Pietro Longhi was born in Venice in the parish of Saint Maria, first child of the silversmith Alessandro Falca and his wife, Antonia. He adopted the Longhi last name when he began to paint. He was initially taught by the Veronese painter Antonio Balestra, who then recommended the young painter to apprentice with the Bolognese Giuseppe Maria Crespi, who was highly regarded in his day for both religious and genre painting. He was married in 1732 to Caterina Maria Rizzi. Among his early paintings are some altarpieces and religious themes. In 1734, he completed frescoes in the walls and ceiling of the hall in Ca' Sagredo, representing the Death of the giants. Henceforward, his work would lead him to be viewed in the future as the Venetian William Hogarth, painting subjects and events of everyday life in Venice. The gallant interior scenes reflect the 18th century's turn towards the private and the bourgeois. Many of his paintings show Venetians at play, such as the depiction of the crowd of genteel citizens awkwardly gawking at a freakish Indian rhinoceros (see image). This painting chronicles Clara the rhinoceros brought to Europe in 1741 by a Dutch sea captain and impresario from Leyden, Douvemont van der Meer. This rhinoceros was exhibited in Venice in 1751. There are two versions of this painting, nearly identical except for the unmasked portraits of two men in Ca' Rezzonico version. Ultimately, there may be a punning joke to the painting, since the young man on the left holds aloft the sawed off horn (metaphor for cuckoldry) of the animal. Perhaps this explains the difference between the unchaperoned women. Other paintings chronicle the daily activities such as the gambling parlors (Riddoti) that proliferated in the 18th century. In some, the insecure or naive posture and circumstance, the puppet-like delicacy of the persons, seem to suggest a satirical perspective of the artists toward his subjects. Nearly half of the figures in his genre paintings are faceless, hidden behind Venetian Carnival masks. Like Crespi before him, Longhi was commissioned to paint seven canvases documenting the seven Catholic sacraments. Longhi is well-known as a draughtsman, whose drawings were often done for their own sake, rather than as studies for paintings. Pietro's son, Alessandro, was also an accomplished painter. A paraphrase of Bernard Berenson states that "Longhi painted for the Venetians passionate about painting, their daily lives, in all dailiness, domesticity, and quotidian mundane-ness. In the scenes regarding the hairdo and the apparel of the lady, we find the subject of gossip of the inopportune barber, chattering of the maid; in the school of dance, the amiable sound of violins. It is not tragic... but upholds a deep respect of customs, of great refinement, with an omnipresent good humor distinguishes the paintings of the Longhi from those of Hogarth, at times pitiless and loaded with omens of change".  Related Paintings of Pietro Longhi :. | Die Ankunft des Signore | Besuch bei einer Dame | The Rhinoceros | Der Apotheker | Die Schule der Arbeit |
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Victor Borisov-Musatov
(Russian), (April 14 [O.S. April 2] 1870 - November 8 [O.S. October 26] 1905) was a Russian painter, prominent for his unique Post-Impressionistic style that mixed Symbolism, pure decorative style and realism. Together with Mikhail Vrubel he is often referred as the creator of Russian Symbolism style. Victor Musatov was born in Saratov, Russia (he added the last name Borisov later). His father was a minor railway official who had been born as a serf. In his childhood he suffered a spinal injury, which made him humpbacked for the rest of his life. In 1884 he entered Saratov real school, where his talents as an artist were discovered by his teachers Fedor Vasiliev and Konovalov. He was enrolled in the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture in 1890, transferring the next year to the Imperial Academy of Arts in Saint-Petersburg, where he was a pupil of Pavel Chistyakov. The damp climate of Saint-Petersburg was not good for Victor's health and in 1893 he was forced to return to Moscow and re-enroll to the Moscow School of painting, sculpturing and architecture. His earlier works like May flowers, 1894 were labelled decadent by the school administration, who sharply criticised him for making no distinction between the girls and the apple trees in his quest for a decorative effect. The same works however were praised by his peers, who considered him to be the leader of the new art movement. The Pool. 1902In 1895 Victor once again left Moscow School of painting, sculpturing and architecture and enrolled in Fernand Cormon's school in Paris. He studied there for three years, returning in summer months to Saratov. He was fascinated by the art of his French contemporaries, and especially by the paintings of "the father of French Symbolism" Pierre Puvis de Chavannes and by the work of Berthe Morisot. In 1898 Borisov-Musatov returned to Russia and almost immediately fell into what it is called "fin de siecle nostalgia". He complained about "the cruel, the truly iron age", "dirt and boredom", "devil's bog", and he had acute money problems that were somewhat alleviated only in the last years of his life when collectors started to buy his paintings. Musatov's response was creating a half-illusory world of the 19th century nobility, their parks and country-seats. This world was partially based on the estate of princes Prozorvky-Galitzines Zubrilovka and partially just on Musatov's imagination. Borisov-Musatov also abandoned oil-paintings for the mixed tempera and watercolor and pastel techniques that he found more suitable for the subtle visual effects he was trying to create.
Nicolas-Andre Monsiau
(1754 -- 31 May 1837) was a French history painter and a refined draughtsman who turned to book illustration to supplement his income when the French Revolution disrupted patronage. His cool Poussiniste drawing style and coloring marked his conservative art in the age of Neoclassicism. His training at the school of the Academie royale de peinture et de sculpture, Paris, was under the direction of Jean-François-Pierre Peyron. An early patron, the marquis de Corberon, paid for a sojourn at Rome, where he studied at the French Academy in Rome from 1776. On his return to Paris, he was unable to exhibit in the annual Paris salons, which were closed to all but those who had been received by the Academie or were members, under the Ancien Regime. Instead he found an outlet in the smaller Salon de la correspondance, where in 1782 he showed a tenebrist Piquant effect of the light of a lamp. Two years later he was received at the Academie with a historical subject, Alexander taming Bucephalus and was made a member 3 October 1787, his second attempt, on the strength of The Death of Agis. The influence of Jacques-Louis David, an acquaintance from Monsiau's days in Rome, is most vividly represented by Monsiau's Ulysses, after returning to his palace and slaying Penelope's suitors, orders the women to remove the corpses (1791 Salon), where the action is played out in a shallow frieze-like space defined by a colonnade parallel to the picture plane. In his best-known painting, Zeuxis choosing among the most beautiful girls of Crotona, shown at the Salon of 1791,Monsiau illustrates an anecdote of the painter Zeuxis, recorded in Pliny's Natural History, that exemplifies an essential aspect of the Classical approach to artistic creation, in the artist's refining an ideal Art by selecting from among the lesser beauties of Nature. Monsiau's great public commission was a commemoration of the occasion on 26 January 1802, at which Napoleon delivered an authoritarian constitution to the Cisalpine Republic at a convocation of notables (the consulta) at Lyon. François Gerard had turned down the commission, preferring to continue his series of individual portraits of the Bonapartes. Monsiau received the commission in 1806; the finished painting was exhibited at the Salon of 1808 and was installed at the Tuileries the following year. Monsiau was among the first history painters to depict scenes from modern history that were not commemorations of battles. He showed Moliere reading Tartuffe at the house of Ninon de Lenclos at the Salon of 1802. It was engraved by Jean-Lous Anselin. His painting of Louis XVI giving instructions to the sea captain-explorer La Perouse before his attempted circumnavigation was exhibited at the Salon of 1817 and was purchased for the recently restored Louis XVIII. His portrayal of a sensational episode in which an escaped lion from the Grand Ducal menagerie in Florence had dropped a child it had picked up, without harming it, was exhibited at the Salon of 1801 and is conserved in the Louvre. Among his pupils was the portrait draughtsman Louis Letronne (1790--1842), whose pencil portrait of Ludwig van Beethoven is iconic.
Giovan Battista Salvi Sassoferrato
1605-1685 Italian Giovan Battista Salvi Sassoferrato Gallery