French painter (full name: Marie-Louise-Élisabeth Vigee-Lebrun). Vigee LeBrun's most famous client was Marie Antoinette, France's much maligned queen. When the two met in 1778, Vigee LeBrun's art-dealer husband had gambled away his wife's earnings. Still, she was dauntless and set out to establish her own salon where she would court royal clients. In a November 1982 article for Art in America, Brooks Adams noted that in her memoirs, Vigee LeBrun said that her much sought-after salon was, "a place where art and society mixed, where noblemen and ministers were content to sit on the floor, to avoid the stiff, formal court entertainments at Versailles." In time, her portraits and memoirs alike painted a portrait of Vigee LeBrun as a woman born to contend with anyone. Unfortunate Circumstances Marie Louise Elisabeth Vigee LeBrun was born in 1755 in Paris. Her father was Louis Vigee, a little-known portrait artist who worked in pastels. From the time she was small, he taught his daughter the skills of the trade. She proved to be somewhat of a prodigy. Her parents placed Vigee LeBrun in the convent of La Trinite, directly behind the Bastille. Her earliest memories were of drawing so frantically on the walls of her dormitory that the sisters regularly punished her. When her father died, Vigee LeBrun was only 12. He had been her biggest supporter. For an article in Antiques, magazine in November 1967, Ilse Bischoff quoted Vigee LeBrun's father after he saw a drawing she had done as a small child. It was the head of a bearded man with the light of a lamp falling on his face. She took care to observe light and shade, and showed skill beyond her years. Her father had exclaimed, "You will be a painter if I ever saw one." By the time she was 15, Vigee LeBrun had established a business as a painter that provided major financial support for her family. Her mother was a hairdresser from Luxembourg, who remarried not long after her first husband's death. Her stepfather soon began to squander her earnings. When she was only 21, she married an art dealer named Pierre LeBrun. It was clearly a marriage more of convenience, than of love. They had one daughter, Julie, born in 1780. Vigee LeBrun's marriage helped her gain access to a world normally restricted to men. Although she was denied access to a male apprentice system, and was unable to participate in classes at the major art academies around the city, she gained admission to the lesser salon of the Academie de Saint Luc. However, the Academie Royale was closed to her without proper connections. In those days, being shown in lesser salons kept a painter away from the financial benefits to be gained from wealthier clients who frequented the prestigious Academie Royale. When Vigee LeBrun was finally admitted to the Royale in 1783, her critics were not kind. She was accused of using her husband and the palace, most particularly her friendship with Queen Marie Antoinette. Another unfortunate rumor was that she had a long-standing sexual affair with the finance minister, Calonne. Her accusers contended that he aided her in squandering much of the Royal Treasury. That was never proven. Still, it was clear that she capitalized on her associations with the queen and the rest of the royal family. The aristocracy longed to be seen as simple, especially as unrest grew among the people outside of the palace confines. One portrait of Marie Antoinette was considered so scandalously informal, that it was withdrawn from the salon in the midst of her debut at the Academie Royale. Vigee LeBrun's arch-rival was a woman painter named Madame Labille Guiard. They were admitted to the Academie Royale on the same day. For the rest of the decade, before the French Revolution erupted in 1789, the two women maintained their rivalry. At the time of the academy's biennial exhibitions, the bitterness they felt toward each other had reached the height of its intensity. Vigee LeBrun painted one of her most acclaimed works in 1784. It was the portrait of Marie-Gabrielle de Gramont, Duchess of Caderousse. That was the same year she suffered a miscarriage, and painted only five portraits. Her usual output far exceeded that. The portrait was shown at the Salon of 1785 to much acclaim and became one of the artist's most celebrated works. In her memoirs, written fifty years later, Vigee LeBrun recalled the painting. "As I detested the female style of dress then in fashion, I bent all my efforts upon rendering it a little more picturesque, and was delighted when, after getting the confidence of my models, I was able to drape them according to my fancy. Shawls were not yet worn, but I made an arrangement with broad scarfs lightly intertwined around the body and on the arms, which was an attempt to imitate the beautiful drapings of Raphael and Domenichino I could not endure powder persuaded the Duchess to put none on for her sittings." Thrived in Exile Vigee LeBrun was not immune to the anxious rumbling that became the French Revolution. What had begun on that fateful night of July 14, 1789, erupted further when mobs stormed the palace at Versailles on the following October 6. Vigee LeBrun had been in disfavor for her association with Marie Antoinette for some time and was considered to be a royal sympathizer.   Related Paintings of VIGEE-LEBRUN, Elisabeth :. | Countess A S Stroganova and Her Son (san 05) | Calonne by lebrun | Count G I Chernyshev Holding a Mask (mk05) | Self-Portrait in a Straw Hat r | Countess Golovin |
Related Artists:
GRANACCI, Francesco
Italian High Renaissance Painter, ca.1469-1543 was an Italian painter of the Renaissance. Born at Villamagna di Volterra, he trained in Florence in the studio of Domenico Ghirlandaio, and was employed painting frescoes for San Marco on commission of Lorenzo de'Medici. He is featured in Giorgio Vasari's Vite. His early works, such as the Enthroned Madonna between Saint Michael and John the Baptist (Staatliche Museen, Berlin), Adoration of the Child (Honolulu Academy of Arts) and four histories of Saint John the Baptist, were influenced by the style of Filippino Lippi. In 1508, Granacci went to Rome, where he and other artists helped his lifelong friend Michelangelo to transfer cartoons to the Sistine chapel ceiling. Returning to Florence, Granacci painted a Madonna with Child with Saints Francesco and Jerome for the Augustinian convent of San Gallo (now in the Gallery of the Academy), a Madonna della Cintola for the Company of San Benedetto Bigi, and in 1515 he participated in creating the decorations to celebrate the visit to Florence of Pope Leo X. In 1519, he painted a Madonna with Child and Saint John. Works of the years 1520-1525 betray a direct influence of Fra Bartolomeo, including a Madonna in throne between Saints Sebastiano and Francesco for Castelfiorentino and a Sacred Conversation for Montemurlo. An altarpiece of the Assumption is influenced by Pietro Perugino.
Salomon de Bray
(Amsterdam, 1597 - Haarlem, 11 May 1664) was a Dutch Golden Age architect and painter. De Bray established himself in Haarlem before 1617, where he is registered as being a member of the schutterij that year in the St. Adrian's cloveniers.[1] He probably followed draftsmanship and painting lessons in the small academy started by Karel van Mander, Hendrick Goltzius and Cornelis van Haarlem, and where he married in 1625. He is registered as a pupil of Goltzius and Cornelis van Haarlem, but he probably started his training in Amsterdam with Jan Pynas, Nicolaes Moeyaert and Pieter Lastman.He painted history paintings, portraits and landscapes. As a Catholic he probably also made altar pieces for the Haarlem underground Catholic churches known as mission stations, or staties. He was a member of the Chamber of rhetoric called "De Wijngaertranken". This is probably how he met his wife Anna, the sister of the painter Jan and the poet Jacob Westerbaen. They married in 1625 and in 1630 he became a member of the Haarlem Guild of St. Luke. He cooperated with fellow Haarlem lukasguild member Jacob van Campen in the decoration of Huis ten Bosch in The Hague. His works draw on the spirit of the Dutch classicism beginning at that time, and are comparable with those of Pieter de Grebber. Transcription of Salomon de Bray's proposed hierarchy of the guild in 1631. The Haarlem archivist C.J. Gonnet published a book in 1877 on the Haarlem St. Lukasgilde archives. This was meant for historians wishing to do research on Haarlem painting, but who could not read the old handwriting.De Bray was also active as a designer of silverwork, as a poet, as an architect and as a town planner for the city council of Haarlem. He designed an ambitious plan to expand the city on the North side that was partially implemented in the decades after his death. He became headman of the Guild of St. Luke and even prepared a new charter for the guild (that was never ratified) in 1631. As an architect, he was involved in the construction or expansion of Haarlem's City Hall, Zijlpoort, and St. Annakerk (Church of St. Anne), and Nijmegen's city orphanage. One of his poems was set to music by his friend the composer Cornelis Padbru??. Salomon de Bray was the father of ten children, of whom three (Dirck de Bray, Jan de Bray, and Joseph de Bray) became notable artists. He probably died of the plague that hit Haarlem in 1664, as he and his children Jacob, Josef, Juliana and Margaretha all died in April and May of that year. His wife had already died the previous year. He was buried in the Sint-Bavokerk in Haarlem. In 1631 Salomon de Bray wrote "Architectura Moderna" which provided a biography and descriptions of buildings built by Hendrick de Keyser, one of the key Dutch architects of the period
Costanzo da Ferrara
the period of 1465-1535