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ART “4” “2”-DAY  09 December
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DEATHS: 1554 MORETTO — 1647 VAN DYCK — 1678 NANTEUIL — 1715 GENNARI
BIRTH: 1853 TUXEN
^ Died on 09 December 1554 (or up to 13 days later) Alessandro Bonvicino Moretto da Brescia, Italian painter born in 1498.
— Moretto da Brescia (originally Alessandro Bonvicino) was active mainly in his native Brescia and the neighborhood. He was a student of Titian and certainly his influence is apparent in Moretto's work. He was the leading Brescian painter of his day and had a large practice as a painter of altarpieces and other religious works, the best of which display an impressive gravity and a poetic feeling for nature (St Giustina with a Donor). However, his portraits, although much less numerous, are considered to be generally of higher quality and of greater importance historically. It seems likely that he introduced the independent full-length portrait to Italy, for although Vasari credits Titian with this distinction. Moretto's Portrait of a Gentleman of 1526 in the National Gallery, London, antedates any known example by Titian by several years. He passed on the thoughtful qualities to his student Moroni.
LINKS
Allegory of Faith (1530, 102x78cm) _ Similarly to other works from the Brescia school the painting has the character of the genre. The inscription on the band of the bouquet: IVSTUS EX FIDE VIVIT.
Saint Justina with the Unicorn (1530, 200x139cm) _ This is one of the masterpieces of Moretto. The kneeling man is probably the donor.
Portrait of a Man (1520, 74x56cm) _ The attribution to Moretto is debated.
Pietà (1520) _ In this important early work by Moretto, Christ is mourned by the Virgin Mary, Saint John the Evangelist, and Mary Magdalen. By introducing the grandeur and monumental composition of Venetian masters, particularly Titian, Moretto brought new stature to the local Brescian shool of painting.
The Virgin of Carmel (1522, 271x298cm) _ Moretto was a painter influenced by Lombard naturalism but he preferred the intimate, muted study of reality characteristic of Foppa, Borgognone and Savoldo to the exuberant realism of Romanino. Among the greatest works of his youth can certainly be placed the 'Virgin of Carmel' who is presented in the powerful and carefully gauged monumentally of a Madonna of Mercy with the figures of the Carmelites the Blessed Angelo and St. Simon Stock at her sides and a crowd of devotees below, probably members of the Brescian family the Ottoboni. The conspicuously earthly nature of the figures imparts to the celestial apparition a feeling of everyday reality, rendered with ineffable naturalness by the quiet light which defines poses, gestures, spiritual feelings themselves with such plastic objectivity. This 'bourgeois' view of appearances marks the role of primary importance played by Moretto in Lombard realism which was to see Michelangelo Caravaggio as its greatest proponent around the end of the sixteenth century and the beginning of the seventeenth.
^ Born on 09 December 1853: Laurits Regner Tuxen, Danish painter who died on 21 November 1927.
— Tuxen grew up in Copenhagen. His father was an officer in the navy and Tuxen originally wanted to be a marine painter. Together with Krøyer he was recognized as being one of the cleverest pupils at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts, and was, therefore, encouraged to study figure painting, which was regarded as being the most distinguished genre.
      Tuxen came to Skagen for the first time in 1874, where he met Michael Ancher with whom he developed a life-long friendship. It was, however, 27 years before he came to Skagen again in 1901. In the interim he had studied further in Paris with P.S. Krøyer, and he was the initiator of the Artists Independent Study Schools in Copenhagen. Furthermore, he traveled extensively because of large works commissioned by European royal families. Among other things he painted huge family portraits of the Danish King Christian IX and Queen Louise and their family, Queen Victoria and her family, and the Russian Tzar’s family.
     Tuxen’s first wife, the Belgian Ursule de Baisieux, died from tuberculosis in1899. In 1901 he married Frederikke Treschow from Norway and they settled in Copenhagen together with Tuxen’s two daughters, Yvonne and Nina. The same year they bought Madam Bendsen’s house in Skagen, which they renovated into a grand summer residence christened “Dagminne”. During the following years, Tuxen painted a large number of paintings in Skagen. Now it was especially the near things that occupied him: the family, friends, landscapes, the sea and the flowers in the garden. He was also very much engaged in the establishment of Skagens Museum.
— Tuxen came to Skagen a couple af times in the 1870's, before becoming a much sought-for portrait painter in the courts of Europe. But after the death in 1899 of his first wife, the Belgian-born Ursula de Baisieux, and his second marriage in 1901 with Frederikke Treschow, he bought a house in Skagen. Here, in the "Tuxen Villa", he spent much of his time together with Krøyer and Michael and Anna Ancher. In this period as an artist he was mainly occupied by the subjects of family life, his wife and daughters, and of Skagen in the changing light of summertime. The "Tuxen Villa" is today a museum.
LINKS
Self-Portrait (1911; 314x300pix, 20kb)
First Wife (1890) — Artist's Mother and Daughter (1902) — From the Studio (1895)
Bathing Children (1907) — F.L. Smiths (1911) — The Lifeboat (1877)
Model in Sunshine (1881) — Returning Home (1905) — The Drowned (1913)
Coronation of Nicholas II (1898) — Wedding of Nicholas II (1896)
Venus (1905) — Susanne in the Bath (1879)
^ Died on 09 December 1641: Anthony van Dyck, Flemish painter, draftsman, and printmaker, specialized in portraits, active also in Italy and England, born on 22 March 1599.
— He was the leading Flemish painter after Rubens in the first half of the 17th century and in the 18th century was often considered no less than his match. A number of van Dyck’s studies in oil of characterful heads were included in Rubens’s estate inventory in 1640, where they were distinguished neither in quality nor in purpose from those stocked by the older master. Although frustrated as a designer of tapestry and, with an almost solitary exception, as a deviser of palatial decoration, van Dyck succeeded brilliantly as an etcher. He was also skilled at organizing reproductive engravers in Antwerp to publish his works, in particular The Iconography (1632–1644), comprising scores of contemporary etched and engraved portraits, eventually numbering 100, by which election he revived the Renaissance tradition of promoting images of uomini illustri. His fame as a portrait painter in the cities of the southern Netherlands, as well as in London, Genoa, Rome and Palermo, has never been outshone; and from at least the early 18th century his full-length portraits were especially prized in Genoese, British and Flemish houses, where they were appreciated as much for their own sake as for the identities and families of the sitters.
— Student of Peter Paul Rubens. Painted in Italy, England and Antwerp. The records of the Antwerp Guild of Saint Luke first mention Anthony van Dyck, who was born in that city, as an apprentice of Hendrick van Balen in 1609. By 1618 Van Dyck was received as an independent master by the guild. Prior to that time he had established contact with the older Rubens. The scanty contemporary evidence suggests a changing collaborative relationship between the two artists, as Van Dyck would move from the position of a gifted apprentice to that of the most important member of Rubens's large studio. In the fall of 1620 Van Dyck is first recorded in England, at the court of James 1. Returning briefly to Antwerp in 1624, Van Dyck then traveled to Italy, visiting Genoa, Venice, Florence, Rome, and Palermo, before arriving back in Antwerp by the beginning of 1628. The effect of Venetian colorism, particularly as seen in the works of Titian, reinforced lessons learned from Rubens; Van Dyck remained a brilliant colorist throughout his career. Working in Antwerp until 1632, Van Dyck then returned to England at the invitation of Charles 1, who knighted him that year. Broken only by brief visits to the Continent, Van Dyck would spend the rest of his life in England, where he died at the age of forty-two. An accomplished history painter, Van Dyck is best known today as a portraitist. In addition to his consummate technical skill, Van Dyck's ability to capture the facial features of his portrait subjects and to characterize their social status soon made him much sought after by Europe's nobility and aristocracy. His portraits of the first Genoese period and later, which were initially based on the Italian portraits of Rubens, created the vocabulary of aristocratic portraiture that remained preeminent until the nineteenth century and that helped to shape England's great portrait tradition.
— Sir Anthony van Dyck was a Flemish painter who was one of the most important and prolific portraitists of the 17th century. He is also considered to be one of the most brilliant colorists in the history of art.
      Van Dyck was born in Antwerp, son of a rich silk merchant, and his precocious artistic talent was already obvious at age 11, when he was apprenticed to the Flemish historical painter Hendrik van Balen. He was admitted to the Antwerp guild of painters in 1618, before his 19th birthday. He spent the next two years as a member of the workshop of the Flemish painter Peter Paul Rubens in Antwerp. Van Dyck's work during this period is in the lush, exuberant style of Rubens, and several paintings attributed to Rubens have since been ascribed to van Dyck.
      From 1620 to 1627 van Dyck traveled in Italy, where he was in great demand as a portraitist and where he developed his maturing style. He toned down the Flemish robustness of his early work to concentrate on a more dignified, elegant manner. In his portraits of Italian aristocrats—men on prancing horses, ladies in black gowns—he created idealized figures with proud, erect stances, slender figures, and the famous expressive “van Dyck” hands. Influenced by the great Venetian painters Titian, Paolo Veronese, and Giovanni Bellini, he adopted colors of great richness and jewel-like purity. No other painter of the age surpassed van Dyck at portraying the shimmering whites of satin, the smooth blues of silk, or the rich crimsons of velvet. He was the quintessential painter of aristocracy, and was particularly successful in Genoa. There he showed himself capable of creating brilliantly accurate likenesses of his subjects, while he also developed a repertoire of portrait types that served him well in his later work at the court of Charles I of England.
      Back in Antwerp from 1627 to 1632, van Dyck worked as a portraitist and a painter of church pictures. In 1632 he settled in London as chief court painter to King Charles I, who knighted him shortly after his arrival. Van Dyck painted most of the English aristocracy of the time, and his style became lighter and more luminous, with thinner paint and more sparkling highlights in gold and silver. At the same time, his portraits occasionally showed a certain hastiness or superficiality as he hurried to satisfy his flood of commissions. In 1635 van Dyck painted his masterpiece, Charles I in Hunting Dress, a standing figure emphasizing the haughty grace of the monarch.
      Van Dyck was one of the most influential 17th-century painters. He set a new style for Flemish art and founded the English school of painting; the portraitists Sir Joshua Reynolds and Thomas Gainsborough of that school were his artistic heirs. He died in London.
—       Anthony van Dyck (Antonie or Antoon van Dijck) is one of the greatest Flemish painters. He was born in Antwerp, 7th child in the family of a well-to-do silk merchant Frans van Dyck. After the early death of his mother he, at the age of 10, was sent to be trained by painter Hendrick van Balen in his workshop. In 1615, he already had his own workshop and an apprentice. In 1618, he was accepted as a full member of the Lucas Guild of painters.
      In 1618-1620, Van Dyck was working with Rubens as his student and assistant. He took part in the painting of the Jesuit Church in Antwerp. Also he painted such religious works as Samson and Delilah (1620), The Crowning with Thorns (1620), Judas' Kiss (1618-1620), St. Martin Dividing His Cloak (1620-1621) and portraits: Frans Snyders (1618),  Margareta de Vos (1618), Family Portrait (1621) and several known self-portraits. Although Van Dyck was with Rubens little more than two years, the older master's style affected his own indelibly.
      By his twenty-first year Van Dyck was already ripe for independence. His pride and ambition made it hard for him to stand in Rubens' shadow in Antwerp. He therefore accepted the invitation from Earl of Arundel to London, where he stayed several months. In England he painted Thomas Howard, 2nd Earl of Arundel (1620-1621) and other pictures. Also he was able to study the numerous works of the masters of Italian Renaissance, which were in the collections of the Earl of Arundel and the Duke of Buckingham. This led him to follow in the footsteps of his teachers Van Balen and Rubens and finish his education in Italy.
      Van Dyck left London in February 1621 and after staying 8 months in Antwerp, he arrived in Italy by the end of 1621. He spent 6 years in Italy, staying mostly in Genoa and traveling to Rome, Venice, Turin and Palermo, studying and copying the Venetian masters — Tintoretto, Veronese, and particularly Titian, whose works influenced him greatly. He earned his livelihood by creating portraits especially of the Genoese aristocracy. The most notable portraits were George Gage, Looking at a Statuette (1623), Cardinal Bentivolo (1622-1623), Lucas van Uffeln (1622), Elena Grimaldi, Marchesa Cattaneo (1623), Paola Adorno, Marchesa Brinole-Sale with Her Son (1626), Giovanni Vincenzo Imperiale (1626). Also he was commissioned to paint some pictures for the Church Oratorio del Rosario depicting St. Rosalia, the patroness saint of Palermo. Other well-known religious picture of this period are Susanna and the Elders (1621-1622), The Four Ages of Man (1626), The Tribute Money (1620s).
      In 1627, Van Dyck returned to Antwerp, where he was given a triumphal welcome. He received many commissions for churches and became a court painter to the Archduchess Isabella in 1630. He created an astonishing amount of portraits during his stay in Antwerp in 1627-1632, the best of them are Portrait of Maria Louisa de Tassis (c.1630), Philippe Le Roy (1630), Marie de Raet, Wife of Philippe Le Roy (1631), Prince Rupert von der Pfalz (1631-1632). He also undertook a bigger project Iconography, for which he created the engravings of the famous people of the time: monarchs, commanders, philosophers, artists, collectors. It was published in 1628-1641.
      In 1632, Charles I invited Van Dyck to England to be a court painter. He was knighted, rewarded with the generous annuity of £200 and lavished with gifts. Sir Anthony van Dyck was crucial to Charles I: his portraits were designed to support the King in his claim to be absolute monarch. Other artists painted Charles, too, but it is Van Dyck's image of this melancholic, doomed King that is remembered in history. Van Dyck painted 37 pictures of Charles I and 35 of his Queen Henrietta Maria. The best of them are Equestrian Portrait of Charles I, King of England with Seignior de St. Antoine (1633), Queen Henrietta Maria with Sir Jeffrey Hudson (1633), Charles I, King of England, at the Hunt (1635) Charles I, King of England (1636), Charles I, King of England, from Three Angles (1636), Children of Charles I (1635), Equestrian Portrait of Charles I, King of England (1638). Van Dyck become a celebrated portraitist of the English court and aristocracy. In less that 10 years he created over 350 pictures, including royal portraits. His best portraits are Philip, Lord Wharton (1632), George Villiers, 2nd Duke of Buckingham and His Brother Lord Francis Villiers (1635), Thomas Howard, 2nd Earl of Arundel and Surrey with His Grandson Lord Maltravers (1635), James Stuart, Duke of Lennox and Richmond (1637), Lord John Stuart and His Brother Lord Bernard Stuart (1637), George Digby, 2nd Earl of Bristol and William Russell, 1st Duke of Bedford (1637), Princess Mary Stuart and Prince William of Orange (1641).
      In 1639, Van Dyck married Mary Ruthven, grand-daughter of the Earl of Gowrie. His only daughter was born on the 1st of December, 1641 and on the 9th of December, 1641 he died in London. He was buried in the St. Paul Cathedral.
      In his court portraits Van Dyck established a style of characterization that was to persist all over the Europe for more than two centuries: in his visions of tall and aloof, yet relaxed, elegance, he showed the most subtle ability to bring a precise physical likeness into compositions of fluent and elaborate Baroque splendor. He was in particular a stimulus to English painters, such as Gainsborough, Reynolds and Lawrence.
— The records of the Antwerp Guild of Saint Luke first mention Anthony van Dyck, who was born in that city in 1599, as an apprentice of Hendrick van Balen in 1609. By 1618 Van Dyck was received as an independent master by the guild. Prior to that time he had established contact with the older Rubens. The scanty contemporary evidence suggests a changing collaborative relationship between the two artists, as Van Dyck would move from the position of a gifted apprentice to that of the most important member of Rubens's large studio.
      In the fall of 1620 Van Dyck is first recorded in England, at the court of James I. Returning briefly to Antwerp in 1624, Van Dyck then traveled to Italy, visiting Genoa, Venice, Florence, Rome, and Palermo, before arriving back in Antwerp by the beginning of 1628. The effect of Venetian colorism, particularly as seen in the works of Titian, reinforced lessons learned from Rubens; Van Dyck remained a brilliant colorist throughout his career. Working in Antwerp until 1632, Van Dyck then returned to England at the invitation of Charles 1, who knighted him that year.
      Broken only by brief visits to the Continent, Van Dyck would spend the rest of his life in England, where he died at the age of forty-two. An accomplished history painter, Van Dyck is best known today as a portraitist. In addition to his consummate technical skill, Van Dyck's ability to capture the facial features of his portrait subjects and to characterize their social status soon made him much sought after by Europe's nobility and aristocracy. His portraits of the first Genoese period and later, which were initially based on the Italian portraits of Rubens, created the vocabulary of aristocratic portraiture that remained preeminent until the nineteenth century and that helped to shape England's great portrait tradition.
— The assistants of van Dyck included Adriaen Hanneman, Michel Lasne, Remi van Leemput , Matthäus Merian II, Edward Pierce I.
— Giovanni Benedetto Castiglione and Theodore Russell were students of van Dyck.

LINKS
Self portrait (1630)
Self-Portrait (1629, 116x93cm; 994x800pix, 118kb) (3/4~length) _ 1847 lithograph after the preceding portrait (27x22cm; full size") _ Self-Portrait (head and shoulders) _ These are two of the three versions of a painting representing the painter at 20, although they were painted later, based on an earlier, now lost, study.
Lucas Vorsterman (1620) — Nicolaes van der Borght, Merchant of Antwerp (1631)
William II, Prince of Orange and Princess Henrietta Mary Stuart, daughter of Charles I of England (1641) _ William II of Orange [27 May 1626 – 06 Nov 1650 Gregorian] and Mary Henrietta Stuart [14 Nov 1631 – 03 Jan 1661 Gregorian] were married on 12 May 1641 (Gregorian) in London. In William succeeded as stadholder of the Netherlands after the death of his father Frederick Henry of Orange [29 Jan 1584 – 14 March 1647 Gregorian]. Both William and Mary died of smallpox. Their child, Willem Hendrik [14 Nov 1650 – 19 Mar 1702 Gregorian] would become on 08 July 1672 (Gregorian) stadholder of the Netherlands, conquer England as the champion of Protestantism, overthrow his father-in-law, and in February 1689 he and his wife (Protestant daughter of Catholic king James II of England) would be proclaimed England's king William III (who did not die of smallpox) and Queen Mary II [10 May 1662 – 07 Jan 1695 Gregorian], who died of smallpox.
Mary Princess of Orange (engraving 20x15cm; 2/3 size) by Wenceslas Hollar.
_ Prince William III, the Prince of Orange as a Child (1654) by Adriaen Hanneman.
_ Mary II, Wife of Prince William III (1684) and William III, Prince of Orange and from 1689, King of England (1684), both by Caspar Netscher.
Portrait of a Lady (1620, 148x109cm; 1/5 size, 159kb _ ZOOM to 2/5 size, 727kb _ ZOOM++ to 4/5 size, 3306kb which enables you to see all the scratches and cracks in the paint)
Marie Claire de Croy, Duchess d'Havre, and Girl (1634, 207x123cm; 1/8 size, 154kb _ ZOOM to 1/4 size, 591kb _ ZOOM++ to 1/2 size, 2556kb)
Margareta Snyders
Sheet of Studies (1635) — Titian's Self Portrait with a Young Woman (1630)
Engravings of 32 portraits at FAMSF
^ Died on 09 December 1678: 1678 Robert Nanteuil, French engraver, draftsman, and pastellist, born in 1623.
— Born in Reims; Studied under the engraver Regneson; moved to Paris in 1647; became highly esteemed in Paris and made many portraits of Louis XIV and other notables; he was named the King's engraver and received an annual pension in 1959; died in Paris.
He was the son of Lancelot Nanteuil, a wool merchant, and submitted his thesis in philosophy, for which he engraved the headpiece, at the Jesuit College of Reims, in 1645. He went on to work in the studio of Nicolas Regnesson, whose sister he married in 1646, before moving to Paris in 1647. His early work mainly consisted of portrait drawings in black lead on parchment, and he continued to draw throughout his career. He took 155 of his 221 portraits directly from life. His drawing style was influenced by Philippe de Champaigne, and he based his engraving technique on the work of Claude Mellan and Jean Morin. By 1652 he had developed his own technique, and his engraving of Cardinal Mazarin of that year gained him official recognition. The size of his engravings increased, and after 1664 he produced mainly life-size heads. In 1658 he was appointed Dessinateur et Graveur Ordinaire du Roi.
— "Time and trouble do not make fine works of art so much as a good disposition and intelligence," Robert Nanteuil counseled a student, who preserved Nanteuil's philosophical teachings. Early on, Nanteuil made primarily portrait drawings. He developed his own engraving technique, and his 1652 engraving of Cardinal Mazarin gained him official recognition: Louis XIV appointed him designer and engraver. Because of Nanteuil's achievements and efforts, in 1660 the king granted a royal edict that pronounced engraving distinct from the mechanical arts and gave its practitioners the privileges of other fine artists. Nanteuil's subjects included royalty and high-ranking members of society. He aimed to capture the character of his subjects, talking to them amusingly in the studio, then in the engravings making them appear calm, with lofty thoughts. He drew them in simple costume with few, if any, accessories, setting the head and shoulders in a simple oval resting on an architectural plinth. The outstanding French portrait engraver of his age, Nanteuil was also the most accomplished pastelist of the 1600s. His style dominated French portrait engraving until the end of the 1700s.
— The students of Nanteuil included William Faithorne, Pierre-Louis van Schuppen, Pierre Simon.
LINKS
Monseigneur Louis Doni d'Attichy, Évêque de Riez (et ensuite d'Autun) (1663, 34x28cm) _ Nanteuil made this pastel portrait as a preparatory study for an engraving made in 1663. Scholars believe that the print was intended to adorn the cover of a doctoral thesis dedicated to the eminent bishop. Broadly defining the sitter's garments and leaving the background plain, Nanteuil concentrated on modeling the facial features with the utmost precision, giving the illusion of rendering the sitter with exacting realism.
19 zoomable engravings at FAMSF, all portraits, including:
Louis XIV (oval 50x43cm; half-size, 220kb _ ZOOM to full size, 879kb)
Mazarin (octagonal 32x25cm; 4/5 size, 206kb)
Colbert (oval 32x25cm; 4/5 size, 221kb)
^ Died on 09 December 1715: Benedetto Gennari II, Italian Britishified artist, baptized as an infant on 19 October 1633.
— Gennari was baptized in Cento, a market-town near Bologna, and spent his youth in Bologna. Coming from a family of painters, he trained under his uncle, Guercino, who influenced his early style. When Guercino died, Benedetto and his brother Cesare took over direction of the studio. An admirer of the French king Louis XIV, Gennari went to France in March 1672 with his cousin Francesco Riva, and stayed for over sixteen months painting commissions for the nobility. His records indicate that he painted about fifteen pictures, including religious and mythological subjects and portraits. He went on to London in September 1674, presenting to the King his painting Diana and Endymion, which he had painted for the Duc de Richelieu but not delivered, fearing he would not be paid for it.
      Gennari spent fourteen years in England as a court painter for Charles II and his successor James II, producing over a hundred pictures for Charles and another thirty-five for James. One of his early commissions was for a portrait of Queen Catherine, for whom he also painted altarpieces and other devotional subjects, and four large pictures of scenes from Ovid's Metamorphoses. He also painted several erotic pictures for Charles II, such as Sleeping Shepherd (1682). When the papists were ordered from London in 1689, Gennari followed the Catholic court of James II into exile at Saint-Germain-en-Laye near Paris, producing another thirty pictures for the monarch.
      In Gennari's twenty years away from Italy, his style underwent such change that he appeared almost to be a northern painter. He returned to Bologna in 1692, and in 1709 he was a founder-member of the Bolognese Accademia Clementina.
— Gennari, the nephew and student of the Italian painter Guercino, settled in England in 1674. He was much patronized by Charles II’s court, painting mythological and religious images as well as portraits. Catherine of Braganza and Mary of Modena, consorts of Charles II and James II respectively, relied on him in particular for devotional images for their Roman Catholic chapels. In 1689 he joined the deposed James II’s exiled Stuart court at Saint Germain-en-Laye, near Paris. Gennari holds a significant place in the history of religious and political art patronage in Britain.
— Gennari was taught by Guercino in Bologna, and his early works, such as The Investiture of Saint Chiara (1657), are close to the style of Guercino. On Guercino’s death he and his brother Cesare Gennari [12 Oct 1637 – 11 Feb 1688] directed the studio. In March 1672, motivated by his admiration for Louis XIV, he journeyed to Paris, where commissions from the French nobility encouraged him to extend his stay over 16 months. In Paris he began to keep a diary, which lists his works in chronological sequence. In September 1674 he went to London, where commissions to paint royal portraits inaugurated a lengthy period of residence at the court of Charles II and subsequently of James II (reg 1685–1689). His mythological paintings include four large pictures of scenes from Ovid’s Metamorphoses and Tasso’s Rinaldo and Armida (1678). For the Catholic Queen Catherine he painted devotional pictures and altarpieces, among them The Annunciation (1675) and a series of pictures to commemorate important feast days of the Virgin. A full-length portrait of James II (1686) marked his appointment as First Painter to that monarch. For this court, which zealously promoted the Catholic faith, he continued to paint the traditional subjects of Catholicism, as for example an Annunciation (1686), painted as an altarpiece for the chapel in the palace at Whitehall, London. In 1689 he followed James II in exile to the court at Saint-Germain-en-Laye, remaining there until his return to Bologna (1692). In 1709 he became one of the founder-members of the Bolognese Accademia Clementina. Apart from having the most eventful career of the Gennari family, Benedetto II developed, as a portrait painter, an intriguing eccentricity of style and iconography, diverging considerably from its origins in Guercino.
— Giuseppe Gambarini was an assistant of Gennari.
LINKS
Orpheus Playing His Lyre (123x140cm) _ The story of Orpheus and his love for Eurydice is recorded in Book X of the Metamorphoses by Ovid. Gennari retells the story in three moving paintings. The first of the three paintings depicts Orpheus pleading with Pluto, god of the underworld, to allow him to descend into the Inferno to rescue Eurydice. The second painting captures the tragic fate of Eurydice trapped in flames after Orpheus breaks his oath to Pluto and looks back on Eurydice before they are safely out of the Inferno. This, the last painting shows us the lonely, love struck Orpheus playing his lyre for the lost Eurydice.
Elizabeth Panton, Later Lady Arundell of Wardour, as Saint Catherine (1689, 127x102cm) _ The sitter, Elizabeth Panton [–1700], was the eldest daughter of Colonel Thomas Panton, a member of Charles II's life-guards and foot-guards. Panton's success at gambling enabled him to buy property in Herefordshire and London's west end, where he built what is now Panton Street. In July 1681 Elizabeth, with her mother and brother, left England, claiming health reasons but in actuality to escape the persecution they faced as Roman Catholics. The exiled Catholic court of James II at Saint-Germain-en-Laye in France became a natural focal point for English papists abroad. Gennari followed the Stuart court into exile in 1689, and his notebook records that this was the first work he produced from there. Elizabeth Panton is portrayed, in a statement of her Catholicism, as Saint Catherine of Alexandria, holding a martyr's palm and the spiked wheel on which, according to legend, Saint Catherine's body was broken. This theme is seen in portraits of Charles II's queen, Catherine of Braganza, some twenty-five years earlier. It was a popular subject with English court sitters, even used by Lely in paintings of Charles's mistress, Barbara, Lady Castlemaine. Elizabeth returned to England in October 1690, presumably taking her portrait with her. In 1691 she married Henry, fifth Lord Arundell of Wardour. Gennari's combination of French and Italian influences sets him apart from his British contemporaries, and is exemplified in this portrait by the Italianate coloring and strong lighting.
Saint Roch Implores the Virgin Mary to Free Ferrara from the Plague (1668 engraving; 3541x2174pix; 6729kb) _ Saint Roch [1295-1327] cured the plague-stricken and made the plague disappear from many Italian cities.
^
Died on a 09 December:


2002 Ian Hornak, of an abdominal aneurysm. Born on 09 January 1944, he was a US representational (or photorealist) still-life painter known for elaborate, extremely detailed paintings of flowers, food and tableware that recall the 17th-century Dutch vanitas tradition. His pictures have a sharply focused hyper-real look that verges on Surrealism and Photorealism. His frames, often bearing painted imagery or decoration, add layers of meaning to his postmodernism. — LINKS

1909 Hermann Kaulbach, German history and genre painter born on 26 July 1846. Son of Wilhelm von Kaulbach [15 Oct 1804 – 07 Apr 1874], who was a first cousin and a teacher of Friedrich Kaulbach [08 July 1822 – 17 Sep 1903], who was the father of Friedrich August von Kaulbach [02 Jun 1850 – 26 Jul 1920].

1895 (some time between 09 and 11 Dec) Charles Meer Webb, British artist born on 16 July 1830. — Relative? of James Webb [1825-1895]?

1879 (or 10 Dec) Jacob Albrecht Michael Jacobs
, Belgian artist born on 19 May 1812.

1870 Louise Joséphine Sarazin de Belmont, French artist born on 14 February 1790.

^ 1678 Jürgen Ovens, Danish or German Baroque painter and engraver born in 1623, active in the Netherlands. He was said to have been a student of Rembrandt’s, and to this mistaken information he owes a great deal of his renown. It is possible that Ovens was trained in Holland, but he must also have been in Flanders, possibly as a student of Jan Lievens, who had been residing in Antwerp since 1635. Ovens’s earliest dated work is a Portrait of a Man (1642), which was inspired by van Dyck rather than Rembrandt. Flemish influences are unmistakably present throughout Ovens’s entire oeuvre, from his official state portraits to his representations of the Virgin and his large altarpieces. Relatively few works are known from his first ‘Dutch’ period, but these confirm the fact that he must rapidly have made a name for himself in Holland as a portrait painter. In the Portrait of a Woman in Blue (1649) the wife of an Amsterdam merchant is portrayed with her child as a Flemish-style Virgin and Child. On 21 September 1652 Ovens married Maria Martens in Tönning and shortly afterwards moved to Friedrichstadt, also in Schleswig-Holstein, as court painter to Duke Frederick III of Holstein-Gottorp (reg 1616–1659), for whom he had painted family portraits in 1651 while still in Amsterdam. In 1652 Ovens painted a group portrait measuring nearly 5 m in width, Princess Hedwig Eleonore von Gottorp Taking Leave of her Family. Ovens was present in Sweden at the wedding of the Princess to Karl X Gustav of Sweden on 24 October 1654, an occasion that he also recorded in three paintings. In the Self-portrait of the Artist Painting his Wife the painter turns his head to look at the viewer with a self-assured expression. Maria Ovens was also the model for the Portrait of a Woman in Fancy Costume (1655), after which Ovens made an etching in 1675.— LINKSSelf-Portrait of the Artist Painting his Wife (125x95cm; 575x441pix, 82kb) _ As we can see from this self-portrait, Ovens was able to create a realistic, vivid characterisation, despite other limitations. The range of brown tones, the compositional devices and nature of the lighting all indicate the hand of a student and follower of Rembrandt. We can only rightly understand and assess the work of Oven's if we realize that he spent many years living in Holland, where he was very close to Rembrandt's students Ferdinand Bol and Jan Lievens, with whom he worked on the Amsterdam Ratshuis or town hall. — Diana with her companions (170x124cm; 541x741pix, 55kb)


Born on a 09 December:


1896 Josef Scharl, US artist who died in 1954.

1829 Théodore Gérard, Belgian artist who died on 03 July 1895.

1715 Niccolo Guardi, Italian artist who died on 26 May 1785. — Brother of Francesco Guardi [05 Oct 1712 – 01 Jan 1793] and of Gian Antonio Guardi [1698 – 23 Jan 1760]; first-cousin of Giandomenico Tiepolo [30 Aug 1727 03 March 1804].

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