French Baroque Era Painter, 1594-1665
French painter and draughtsman, active in Italy. His supreme achievement as a painter lies in his unrivalled but hard-won capacity to subordinate dramatic narrative and the expression of extreme states of human passions to the formal harmony of designs based on the beauty and precision of abstract forms. The development of his art towards this end was focused on the search for a point of equilibrium and synthesis between the forces of the Classical and the Baroque around which most critical debate in Rome was concentrated during the 1630s. Poussin did not aspire to the classicism of Raphael's idealized human forms or Michelangelo's re-embodiment of the physical splendours of the antique world, nor did he attempt to vie with the bravura and energy of Annibale Carracci's treatment of Classical mythology in the Galleria of the Palazzo Farnese in Rome. Equally he was not concerned with the illusionistic effects and heightened emotionalism of Baroque artists such as Pietro da Cortona and Lanfranco. He was concerned above all with interpreting his subject-matter, whether Classical or religious, and telling a story with the greatest possible concentration of emotional response, Related Paintings of POUSSIN, Nicolas :. | Landscape with Saint Matthew and the Angel | Bacchanal before a Statue of Pan zg | Tanecred and Erminia | The Death of Germanicus af | Rebecca at the Well st | Related Artists:
Joos van cleveFlemish Northern Renaissance Painter, ca.1485-1540
BENING, SimonFlemish Northern Renaissance Manuscript Illuminator, ca.1483-1561
Simon Bening (1483?C1561) was a 16th century miniature painter of the Ghent-Bruges school, the last major artist of the Netherlandish tradition.
Bening was trained in his father Alexander Bening's miniature painting workshop in Ghent. He made his own name after moving to Bruges. His specialty was the book of hours, but by his time these were becoming relatively unfashionable, and only produced for royalty and the very rich. He also created genealogical tables and portable altarpieces on parchment. Many of his finest works are Labours of the Months for Books of Hours which are largely small scale landscapes, at that time a nascent genre of painting. In other respects his style is relatively little developed beyond that of the years before his birth, but his landscapes serve as a link between the 15th century illuminators and Peter Brueghel. His self-portrait and other portraits equally are early examples of the portrait miniature. He served as dean of the calligraphers, booksellers, illuminators, and bookbinders in the Guild of Saint John and Saint Luke.
He created books for German rulers, like Cardinal Albrecht of Brandenburg, and royalty like Emperor Charles V and Don Fernando, the Infante of Portugal.
The artistic tradition continued in his family. His eldest daughter, Levina Teerlinc, became a miniature painter, mostly of portrait miniatures and another daughter became a dealer in paintings, miniatures, parchment, and silk.
Peter Johannes BrandlPetr Brandl (Peter Johannes Brandl or Jan Petr Brandl) (October 24, 1668 - September 24, 1735) was a painter of the late Baroque, famous in his time but - due to isolation behind the Iron Curtain - rather forgotten until recently. He was of German-speaking Austrian descent in the bilingual kingdom of Bohemia. His mother was from Czech peasant family, that lived in Přestanice (a village in Bohemia, now part of Hlavnovice). According to the Grove Dictionary of Art and other sources, Brandl was born into a craftsmanes family (his father seems to have been a goldsmith) and apprenticed around 1683 - 1688 to Kristien Schröder (1655 - 1702).
Brandl employed strong chiaroscuro, areas of heavy impasto and very plastic as well as dramatic figures. The major art museum in Prague, called the National Gallery, has an entire hall devoted to the artist's works, including the wonderful "Bust of an Apostle" from some time before 1725.