b Pontormo, nr Empoli, 26 May 1494; d Florence, 31 Dec 1556). Italian painter and draughtsman. He was the leading painter in mid-16th-century Florence and one of the most original and extraordinary of Mannerist artists. His eccentric personality, solitary and slow working habits and capricious attitude towards his patrons are described by Vasari; his own diary, which covers the years 1554-6, further reveals a character with neurotic and secretive aspects. Pontormo enjoyed the protection of the Medici family throughout his career but, unlike Agnolo Bronzino and Giorgio Vasari, did not become court painter. His subjective portrait style did not lend itself to the state portrait. He produced few mythological works and after 1540 devoted himself almost exclusively to religious subjects. His drawings, mainly figure studies in red and black chalk, are among the highest expressions of the great Florentine tradition of draughtsmanship; close to 400 survive, forming arguably the most important body of drawings by a Mannerist painter. His highly personal style was much influenced by Michelangelo  Related Paintings of Pontormo, Jacopo :. | St John the Evangelist | Deposition | Adam and Eve at Work | Madonna and Child with Two Saints | Halberdier |
Related Artists:
Carlos Schwabe
German Symbolist Painter, 1877-1926 Swiss painter and printmaker of German birth. He became a Swiss citizen and received his artistic training under Joseph Mittey (b 1853) at the Ecole des Arts Decoratifs in Geneva. Following brief success there, Schwabe moved to Paris where he supported himself as a designer of wallpaper while he developed considerable graphic skills. He soon became active in Symbolist circles, winning favour as an illustrator of mystical religious themes. His highly refined drawings and watercolours accompany texts such as Le Reve by Emile Zola (published 1892; drawings, Paris, Pompidou; exhibited Sociot Nationale des Beaux-Arts, also in 1892), Baudelaire's Les Fleurs du mal (1900), Maeterlinck's Pellias et Melisande, Catulle Mendes's L'Evangile de l'enfance de notre Seigneur Jesus-Christ selon Saint Pierre (1900) and Albert Samain's Jardin de l'Infante (1908).
Camille Roqueplan
Camille Joseph Etienne Roqueplan, 18 February 1802 in Mallemort; † 30 September 1855 in Paris) was a French painter.
Franz Xaver Winterhalter
German 1805-1873 Franz Xaver Winterhalter Galleries German painter and lithographer. He trained as a draughtsman and lithographer in the workshop of Karl Ludwig Scheler (1785-1852) in Freiburg im Breisgau and went to Munich in 1823, sponsored by the industrialist Baron Eichtal. In 1825 he began a course of study at the Akademie and was granted a stipend by Ludwig I, Grand Duke of Baden. The theoretical approach to art of the Akademie under the direction of Peter Cornelius was unfamiliar to him, as in Freiburg he had been required to paint in a popular style. He found the stimulus for his future development in the studio of Joseph Stieler, a portrait painter who was much in demand and who derived inspiration from French painting. Winterhalter became his collaborator in 1825. From Stieler he learnt to make the heads of figures emerge from shadow and to use light in the modelling of faces. He moved to Karlsruhe in 1830 with his brother Hermann Winterhalter (1808-92), who had also trained with Scheler and had followed him to Munich.