Italian High Renaissance Painter, ca.1485-1576 Italian painter active in Venice. As a young man he was taught by the Bellini family and worked closely with Giorgione. His early works are so similar in style to Giorgione's as to be indistinguishable, but soon after Giorgione's early death Titian established himself as the leading painter of the Republic of Venice. Among his most important religious paintings is the revolutionary and monumental Assumption (1516 ?C 18) for Santa Maria dei Frari, in which the Virgin ascends to heaven in a blaze of colour accompanied by a semicircle of angels. Titian was also interested in mythological themes, and his many depictions of Venus display his work's sheer beauty and inherent eroticism. Bacchus and Ariadne (1520 ?C 23), with its pagan abandon, is one of the greatest works of Renaissance art. Titian was sought after for his psychologically penetrating portraits, which include portrayals of leading Italian aristocrats, religious figures, and Emperor Charles V. He reached the height of his powers in The Rape of Europa (c. 1559 ?C 62), one of several paintings done for Philip II of Spain. He was recognized as supremely gifted in his lifetime, and his reputation has never declined.  Related Paintings of Titian :. | Wisdom | Spain Succoring Religion | Portrat eines jungen Mannes | The goddess becomes a woman | Danae |
Related Artists:
Adriaen Hanneman
(c. 1603 - buried 11 July 1671) was a Dutch Golden Age painter best-known today for his portraits of the exiled British royal court. His style was strongly influenced by his contemporary, Anthony Van Dyck.
MASSYS, Quentin
Flemish Northern Renaissance Painter, ca.1465-1530 Quentin Massys, also spelled Matsys or Metsys, was born in Louvain, the son of a blacksmith. He is traditionally thought to have been trained in that craft by his father. Art in Louvain while Massys was growing up was dominated by Dirk Bouts. Massys became a member of the painters' guild in Antwerp in 1491 and died there in 1530. He represented a current of painting that flourished in Antwerp at this time of its sudden new prosperity. Erwin Panofsky (1953) described this trend, "archaism of around 1500," as "a prelude to, in fact a fact of, the Renaissance in Netherlandish painting," which prevailed in the southern Netherlands. The monumental Enthroned Madonna (Brussels), an early work by Massys, has features recalling both Robert Campin and Jan van Eyck. The central panel of Massys' imposing St. Anne Altarpiece, or the Holy Kinship (Brussels), which was commissioned for the church of St-Pierre in Louvain in 1507 and signed and dated 1509, has a prototype in the Holy Kinship of Geertgen tot Sint Jans. Even the physical types and costumes in Massys' version refer to Geertgen's. But Massys placed his rhythmically balanced figure groups in a domed, arcaded loggia that in architectural style appears to be reaching for a Renaissance vocabulary it cannot quite attain; certainly the architecture evokes a later period than that represented by the Gothic throne of the Enthroned Madonna. The calm and restraint of the St. Anne Altarpiece are replaced by heightened emotional expression in the next important painting by Massys that can be firmly dated, the Deposition triptych (Antwerp). This was commissioned in 1508 by the guild of joiners in Antwerp for their chapel in the Cathedral; Massys completed the composition in 1511. It was inspired by Rogier van der Weyden's great Deposition, which was in the church of St-Pierre in Louvain in Massys' time, and also quotes from Rogier's Entombment. Massys painted genre subjects, possibly with emblematic meaning, such as A Money Changer and His Wife, which belonged to a Netherlandish tradition that maintained its popularity right through the 17th century. In portraiture he made significant contributions. His pair of portraits of Erasmus and Petrus Aegidius, painted in 1517 for Sir Thomas More, set the pattern for representations of the scholar in his study.
Paul Bril
Flemish Baroque Era Painter, ca.1554-1626 Paul (1554-1626) and Mattheus (1550-1583) Brill (or Bril) were brothers, both born in Antwerp, who were landscape painters who worked in Rome after earning papal favor. They are also described as painters of capricci (whims or fancies) or vedute ideate or veduta di fantasia, with typical rustic hills with a few ruins. Mattheus began work on several frescoes in Rome from 1570 onwards, and his work includes the Vatican Seasons. Mattheus died young, and his brother continued his work around 1574. Paul painted frescoes such as the landscapes in the Casino Rospigliosi (Rome), and The Roman Forum, which showed this site for what it had become: a slum for squatters and pasture for livestock (so much so that the place was nicknamed Campo Vaccino, or The Cowfield). His masterpiece may be a fresco in the Clementine Hall of the Vatican. Paul also did engravings and small cabinet paintings on copper, some of which are signed with a pair of spectacles (a pun on the French word brilles, spectacles). Some of these were collaborations with Johann Rottenhammer, who according to a dealer letter of 1617 painted the figures in Venice and then sent the plates to Rome for Bril to complete the landscape. He collaborated with his friend Adam Elsheimer, who he both influenced and was influenced by, on one painting (now Chatsworth House)