Old Masters
Johann Wilhelm Baur, Joan Guiliam Bouwer or Bauer, was a German engraver, etcher and miniature painter of the Baroque period. He is famous for a series of illustrations of Ovid's Metamorphoses.
Herri met de Bles is a Flemish artist, along with Joachim Patinir, one of the founders of European landscape painting. He painted mainly landscapes with multi-figured compositions. Like Patinir, his style is characterized by stylized images of rocks and a careful rendering of aerial perspective.
Jacob Cornelisz van Oostsanen was a Northern Netherlandish designer of woodcuts and painter. He was one of the first important artists working in Amsterdam, at a time when it was a flourishing and beautiful provincial town.
Throughout his artistic career, Cornelisz's painting style changed. At first, he started as a late Gothic craftsman under the influence of the Haarlem school and then ended with a style presented by the painting Saul and the Witch of Endor. In this particular painting, the details are simple, elongated proportions and a looser stroke of paint. Though he excelled as a technical painter, he was not a good leader. He progressed at presenting contemporary trends in subject-matter and style.
Cornelisz's symbolism was also conservative as well. He painted mostly sacred themes with traditional iconography in old and new combinations in response to an event, such as the Reformation.
Abraham Govaerts was a Flemish painter who specialized in small cabinet-sized forest landscapes in the manner of Jan Brueghel the Elder and Gillis van Coninxloo. He was a regular collaborator with other artists who were specialists in specific genres. Govaerts would paint the landscape while these specialists painted the figures, animals or still life elements.
Frans Francken the Younger was a Flemish painter who created altarpieces and furniture panels and gained his reputation chiefly through his small and delicate cabinet pictures with historical, mythological or allegorical themes. He is the best-known and most prolific member of the large Francken family of artists. Franckenplayed an important role in the development of Flemish art in the first half of the 17th century through his innovations in many genres including genre painting and his introduction of new subject matter. He was a frequent collaborator of leading Antwerp painters of his time.
Pieter Bruegel the Younger was a Flemish painter, known for numerous copies after his father Pieter Bruegel the Elder's work as well as his original compositions. The large output of his studio, which produced for the local and export market, contributed to the international spread of his father's imagery.
Traditionally Pieter Brueghel the Younger has been nicknamed "de helse Brueghel" or "Hell Brueghel" because it was believed he was the author of several paintings with fantastic depictions of fire and grotesque imagery.
Tino di Camaino was an Italian sculptor.
He was a pupil of Giovanni Pisano, whom he helped work on the façade of the Cathedral of Siena. Later Tino followed his master to Pisa, where in 1311 he became responsible for the work on the cathedral.
Giovanni di Paolo di Grazia was an Italian painter, working primarily in Siena, becoming a prolific painter and illustrator of manuscripts, including Dante's texts. He was one of the most important painters of the 15th century Sienese School. His early works show the influence of earlier Sienese masters, but his later style was more individual, characterized by cold, harsh colours and elongated forms. His style also took on the influence of International Gothic artists such as Gentile da Fabriano. Many of his works have an unusual dreamlike atmosphere, such as the surrealistic Miracle of St. Nicholas of Tolentino painted about 1455 and now housed in the Philadelphia Museum of Art, while his last works, particularly Last Judgment, Heaven, and Hell from about 1465 and Assumption painted in 1475, both at Pinacoteca Nazionale (Siena), are grotesque treatments of their lofty subjects. Giovanni's reputation declined after his death but was revived in the 20th century.
Marinus van Reymerswaele was a Dutch Renaissance painter mainly known for his genre scenes and religious compositions. After studying in Leuven and training and working as an artist in Antwerp, he returned later to work in his native Northern Netherlands. He operated a large workshop which produced many versions of mainly four themes: the tax collectors, the money changer and his wife, the calling of Saint Matthew and St. Jerome in his study.
Hans Baldung, called Hans Baldung Grien, (being an early nickname, because of his predilection for the colour green), was a painter, printer, engraver, draftsman, and stained glass artist, who was considered the most gifted student of Albrecht Dürer and whose art belongs to both German Renaissance and Mannerism. Throughout his lifetime, he developed a distinctive style, full of colour, expression and imagination. His talents were varied, and he produced a great and extensive variety of work including portraits, woodcuts, drawings, tapestries, altarpieces, and stained glass, often relying on allegories and mythological motifs.
Lucas Cranach the Elder was a German Renaissance painter and printmaker in woodcut and engraving. He was court painter to the Electors of Saxony for most of his career, and is known for his portraits, both of German princes and those of the leaders of the Protestant Reformation, whose cause he embraced with enthusiasm. He was a close friend of Martin Luther. Cranach also painted religious subjects, first in the Catholic tradition, and later trying to find new ways of conveying Lutheran religious concerns in art. He continued throughout his career to paint nude subjects drawn from mythology and religion.
Cranach had a large workshop and many of his works exist in different versions; his son Lucas Cranach the Younger and others continued to create versions of his father's works for decades after his death. He has been considered the most successful German artist of his time.
Ambrosius Benson was an Italian painter who became a part of the Northern Renaissance.
While many surviving paintings have been attributed, there is very little known of him from records, and he tended not to sign his work. He is believed to be responsible for mainly religious art, but also painted portraits on commission. He sometime painted from classical sources, often setting the figures in modern-dress, or a contemporary domestic setting. In his lifetime he was successful; he had a large workshop, his work was sold internationally and he was especially popular in Spain.
Marco d'Oggiono was an Italian Renaissance painter and a chief pupil of Leonardo da Vinci, many of whose works he copied.
He was a hard-working artist, but his work has since been criticized by some for paintings are wanting in vivacity of feeling and purity of drawing, while, in his composition, it has been well said that "intensity of color does duty for intensity of sentiment". He copied Leonardo's Last Supper repeatedly, and one of his best copies is in the possession of the Royal Academy of Arts.
Giovanni di Niccolò de Luteri, better known as Dosso Dossi, was an Italian Renaissance painter who belonged to the School of Ferrara, painting in a style mainly influenced by Venetian painting, in particular Giorgione and early Titian.
From 1514 to his death he was court artist to the Este Dukes of Ferrara and of Modena, whose small court valued its reputation as an artistic centre. He often worked with his younger brother Battista Dossi, who had worked under Raphael. He painted many mythological subjects and allegories with a rather dream-like atmospheres, and often striking disharmonies in colour. His portraits also often show rather unusual poses or expressions for works originating in a court.
Johannes van der Molen or Johannes Jan Vermeulen was a still-life painter during the Dutch Golden Age. He was active in Haarlem from 1638 to 1674. His specialty was the Vanitas, a style of painting meant to symbolize the transience of life. Many of them feature books.
Some of his works may be seen at the Statens Museum for Kunst, Mauritshuis, Schloss Johannisburg and the Musée des beaux-arts de Nantes. Others are in private collections.
Sebastian Vrancx was a Flemish Baroque painter, draughtsman and designer of prints who is mainly known for his battle scenes, a genre that he pioneered in Netherlandish painting. He also created landscapes with mythological and allegorical scenes, scenes with robbers, village scenes and celebrations in cities. He was a gifted figure painter who was regularly invited to paint the staffage in compositions of fellow painters. As an active member of a local chamber of rhetoric, he wrote comedies and a number of poems. He was further captain of the Antwerp civil militia.
Anthonie Palamedesz was a Dutch portrait and genre painter. He is in particular known for his merry company paintings depicting elegant figures engaged in play, music and conversation as well as guardroom scenes showing soldiers in guardrooms. Like many Dutch painters of his time, he painted portraits and still lifes, including vanitas still lifes. He further painted the staffage in a few views of the interior of churches. He played a major role in the development of genre painting in Delft in the mid 17th century.
Elisabetta Sirani was an Italian Baroque painter and printmaker who died in unexplained circumstances at the age of 27. She was a pioneering female artist in early modern Bologna, who established an academy for other women artists.
Sirani produced over 200 paintings, 15 etchings, and hundreds of drawings, making her an extremely prolific artist, especially considering her early death.
Her works cover a number of subjects, including historical and Biblical narratives, often featuring women, allegories, and portraits. Sirani was also the first female artist to specialize in history painting, a style that many female painters that Sirani trained also followed.
Artemisia Gentileschi was an Italian Baroque painter. Gentileschi is considered among the most accomplished seventeenth-century artists, initially working in the style of Caravaggio. She was producing professional work by the age of 15. In an era when women had few opportunities to pursue artistic training or work as professional artists, Gentileschi was the first woman to become a member of the Accademia di Arte del Disegno in Florence and she had an international clientele.
Many of Gentileschi's paintings feature women from myths, allegories, and the Bible, including victims, suicides, and warriors. Some of her best known subjects are Susanna and the Elders (particularly the 1610 version in Pommersfelden), Judith Slaying Holofernes (her 1614–1620 version is in the Uffizi gallery), and Judith and Her Maidservant (her version of 1625 is in the Detroit Institute of Arts).
She is now regarded as one of the most progressive and expressive painters of her generation, with the recognition of her talents exemplified by major exhibitions at internationally esteemed fine art institutions, such as the National Gallery in London.
Bartolomé Esteban Murillo was a Spanish Baroque painter. Although he is best known for his religious works, Murillo also produced a considerable number of paintings of contemporary women and children. These lively realistic portraits of flower girls, street urchins, and beggars constitute an extensive and appealing record of the everyday life of his times. He also painted two self-portraits, one in the Frick Collection portraying him in his 30s, and one in London's National Gallery portraying him about 20 years later. In 2017-18, the two museums held an exhibition of them.
Sir Peter Paul Rubens was a Flemish artist and diplomat from the Duchy of Brabant in the Southern Netherlands (modern-day Belgium). He is considered the most influential artist of the Flemish Baroque tradition. Rubens's highly charged compositions reference erudite aspects of classical and Christian history. His unique and immensely popular Baroque style emphasized movement, colour, and sensuality, which followed the immediate, dramatic artistic style promoted in the Counter-Reformation. Rubens was a painter producing altarpieces, portraits, landscapes, and history paintings of mythological and allegorical subjects. He was also a prolific designer of cartoons for the Flemish tapestry workshops and of frontispieces for the publishers in Antwerp.
