Italian High Renaissance Painter, 1483-1520 Italian painter and architect. As a member of Perugino's workshop, he established his mastery by 17 and began receiving important commissions. In 1504 he moved to Florence, where he executed many of his famous Madonnas; his unity of composition and suppression of inessentials is evident in The Madonna of the Goldfinch (c. 1506). Though influenced by Leonardo da Vinci's chiaroscuro and sfumato, his figure types were his own creation, with round, gentle faces that reveal human sentiments raised to a sublime serenity. In 1508 he was summoned to Rome to decorate a suite of papal chambers in the Vatican. The frescoes in the Stanza della Segnatura are probably his greatest work; the most famous, The School of Athens (1510 C 11), is a complex and magnificently ordered allegory of secular knowledge showing Greek philosophers in an architectural setting. The Madonnas he painted in Rome show him turning away from his earlier work's serenity to emphasize movement and grandeur, partly under Michelangelo's High Renaissance influence. The Sistine Madonna (1513) shows the richness of colour and new boldness of compositional invention typical of his Roman period. He became the most important portraitist in Rome, designed 10 large tapestries to hang in the Sistine Chapel, designed a church and a chapel, assumed the direction of work on St. Peter's Basilica at the death of Donato Bramante,   Related Paintings of RAFFAELLO Sanzio :. | Crucifixion | Bridgewater Madonna | St Sebastian | Portrait of a Young Man. | Christ Falls on the Way to Calvary |
Related Artists:
BARBARI, Jacopo de
Italian Early Renaissance Painter, ca.1440-1515 Italian painter and printmaker. He was the first Italian Renaissance artist of note who travelled to the courts of Germany and the Netherlands. His earliest known works appear to date from the late 1490s, suggesting that he was born c. 1460-70. The birthdate of c. 1440 traditionally assigned to him reflects the misinterpretation of a document of 1512 in which his patron, Margaret of Austria, Regent of the Netherlands, awarded him a stipend because of his 'weakness and old age'. In fact, at this date a man could be described as 'old' while in his fifties or even younger.
Jost Amman
(June 13, 1539, Zerich - March 17, 1591, Nuremberg, Bavaria) was a Swiss artist, celebrated chiefly for his woodcuts, done mainly for book illustrations. Amman was born in Zurich, the son of a professor of Classics and Logic. He was himself well-educated. Little of his personal history is known beyond the fact that he moved to Nuremberg in 1560, where he continued to reside until his death in March 1591. He worked initially with Virgil Solis, then a leading producer of book illustrations. His productiveness was very remarkable, as may be gathered from the statement of one of his pupils, that the drawings he made during a period of four years would have filled a hay wagon. A large number of his original drawings are in the Berlin print room. About 1,500 prints are attributed to him. He was one of the last major producers of woodcuts for books, as during his career engravings were gradually taking over that role. Although like most artists for woodcut he normally let a specialist formschneider cut the block to his drawing, he sometimes included both a cutter's knife and a quill pen in his signature on prints, suggesting he sometimes cut his own blocks. A series of engravings by Amman of the kings of France, with short biographies, appeared in Frankfurt in 1576. He also executed many of the woodcut illustrations for the Bible published at Frankfurt by Sigismund Feierabend. Another serial work, the Panoplia Omnium Liberalium Mechanicarum et Seden-tariarum Artium Genera Continens, containing 115 plates, is of great value. Amman's drawing is correct and spirited, and his delineation of the details of costume is minute and accurate. Paintings in oil and on glass are attributed to him, but none have been identified.
Eduard Gaertner
1801-1877 German Eduard Gaertner Gallery German painter and lithographer. His father was a master carpenter and his mother a gold embroiderer, and he had his first drawing lessons in 1811 in Kassel, where he had gone with his mother after the occupation of Berlin. After returning to Berlin he became in 1814 an apprentice painter at the Kenigliche Porzellanmanufaktur; and from 1821 he studied under Carl Wilhelm Gropius (1793-1870), then engaged as a painter of stage sets at the Kenigliches Theater in Berlin and also known for his townscapes. Here Gaertner developed skill in the rendering of perspective. He first exhibited at the Akademie der Kenste, Berlin, in the following year. In 1824-5 he was commissioned to paint interior views of Berlin Cathedral (see fig.) and the chapel of the Schloss Charlottenburg (both Berlin, Schloss Charlottenburg). In return, he was granted funds to enable him to spend three years in Paris, where he studied under Francois Bertin. Gaertner views of Paris already show his gift for lighting and use of staffage. His special ability lay in his understanding of the character of a city as the work of its inhabitants. After his return to Berlin he swiftly established himself as the leading painter of urban views, which he regularly showed at Berlin Akademie exhibitions. Interest in this genre grew along with the spate of building activity in Berlin after the end of the wars against Napoleon. There was a fresh interest in paintings of new buildings in particular, intended for a local rather than a visitors market. Two large views of the former Berlin Schloss, The Schleterhof and The Eosanderhof (both 1831; Potsdam, Neues Pal.), show Gaertner bold use of light and shadow. With the six-part panorama View over Berlin from the Roof of the Friedrich-Wedersche Church (1834; Berlin, Schloss Charlottenburg) Gaertner showed the spread of the city by this time. After painting a replica of this work for the Prussian king daughter Alexandra Feodorovna, Empress of Russia, in 1835-6 (St Petersburg, Hermitage), Gaertner visited Russia in 1837, and again from 1838 to 1839, staying in both St Petersburg and Moscow. He completed a large number of city views, including a three-part view of The Kremlin (1839; Berlin, Schloss Charlottenburg), commissioned by Frederick William III. With the death of the Prussian king in 1840, Gaertner lost his most powerful patron and interest in his work began to wane as it came to seem too stiff and objective to Romantic sensibilities. Gaertner tried to adapt to the change in taste, adopting a more painterly approach; in particular, he paid attention to effects of lighting. The vogue for city views had passed its peak, however, and Gaertner turned to landscape painting. Journeys to Prague in 1841-2, through West and East Prussia in 1845-6, and to Silesia in 1848-51 introduced new subjects; but it was architecture rather than setting that most engaged Gaertner attention. At this period he occasionally also invented ideal landscape settings for real buildings, as in the Ruined Monastery of Lehnin in an Imaginary Mountain Landscape (Berlin, Schloss Charlottenburg). Gaertner also produced watercolours of interiors and lithographs of both landscape and city views; but after the middle of the century his productivity in all respects dwindled. (An example of his work from this period is his oil painting of the Bauakademie and Friedrich-Wedersche-Kirche in Berlin (1868; Berlin, Tiergarten, N.G.; see SCHINKEL, KARL FRIEDRICH, fig. 2).) The rise of photography appeared to be making the architectural painter redundant.