Cosme Tura Annunciation Painting
Annunciation (detail) by Cosme Tura
Annunciation (detail)
1469
Tempera on canvas, 138 x 113 cm (entire painting: 349 x 305 cm)
Museo del Duomo, Ferrara
Cosme Tura Madonna and Child in a Garden Painting
Madonna and Child in a Garden by Cosme Tura
1452
Oil on panel, 53 x 37 cm
National Gallery of Art, Washington
Cosme Tura Madonna with the Child Painting
Madonna with the Child by Cosme Tura
1475
Oil on panel, 45 x 30 cm
Accademia Carrara, Bergamo
Correggio Ganymede Painting
Ganymede by Correggio
1531-32
Oil on canvas, 163,5 x 70,5 cm
Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna
Two vertical canvases depicting Io and Ganymede, datable to 1531-32, are now in Vienna. These were made for Federigo Gonzaga, first duke of Mantua. The duke intended to line a room in his palace with the Loves of Jupiter. Jupiter was a mythical ancestor of the Gonzaga family and, in his amorous exploits, not unlike Federigo.
The Abduction of Ganymede, who is carried off by Zeus in the form of an eagle, has been seen as an allegorical interpretation that prefigured, in its moralizing intent, St John the Evangelist which Correggio painted several times in the church of the same name, and as referring to the flight of the intellect, liberated from earthly desires, toward the heaven of contemplation.
Ganymede, the son of Tros, who gave his name to Troy, or of Laomedon, the father of Priam, was the most beautiful of mortal youths. Zeus chooses him as his cup-bearer and, covered with eagle feathers, takes him away from his earthly games and from his dog, that looks on in fear as the abduction takes place. The landscape beneath is of an almost eighteenth-century modernity, to the point where it resembles a transparent English watercolour.
Francesco del Cossa Annunciation and Nativity (Altarpiece of Observation) Painting
Annunciation and Nativity (Altarpiece of Observation) by Francesco del Cossa
1470
Tempera on panel, 137 x 113 cm, and 26,5 x 114,5 cm
Gemäldegalerie, Dresden
The main panel and the predella formed the altarpiece of the church of Observation in Bologna. At both sides of the predella there were two small paintings representing St Clare and St Catherine of Alexandria, presently both in the Thyssen collection in Madrid.
The altarpiece was attributed to Mantegna until the end of the 19th century.
Francesco del Cossa Madonna with the Child and Saints Painting
Madonna with the Child and Saints by Francesco del Cossa
1474
Tempera on canvas, 227 x 166 cm
Pinacoteca Nazionale, BolognaThe saints on the painting are St Petronio and St John the Evangelist. The kneeling figure in profile is Alberto de’ Cattanei.
This signed and dated painting was commissioned by justice Alberto de’ Cattanei and notary Domenico degli Amorini for the Palazzo della Mercanzia nel Foro dei Mercanti in Bologna where it remained until 1785.
Sebastiano Ricci Altar of St Gregory the Great Painting
Altar of St Gregory the Great by Sebastiano Ricci
Oil on canvas
Basilica di S. Giustina, Padua
Ricci was an exuberant personality, internationally renowned and an archetypal “traveling” painter. After training in the Veneto, Ricci spent some time in Emilia (Bologna, Parma and Piacenza). This proved crucial to his development as his style was influenced by the local classicism, deepened when Ricci made a trip to Rome, where Annibale Carraci’s frescos in Palazzo Farnese deeply moved him. After a brief trip to Vienna, Ricci went back to Venice in 1708, where his art changed. His Altarpiece of St Gregory the Great was a deliberate homage to Paolo Veronese and inaugurated a totally new era in eighteenth-century Venetian painting, trying to revive the glories of its Renaissance. Compared to his earlier works, his art was now remarkably free in composition and brushwork. This new style of painting was an immediate success. By 1711 Sebastiano had joined his nephew Marco Ricci in London where he remained for five years, working for many great noblemen.
Sebastiano Ricci Bacchus and Ariadne Painting
Bacchus and Ariadne by Sebastiano Ricci
c. 1713
Oil on canvas, 189 x 104 cm
Chiswick House, London
It was Ariadne, the daughter of King Minos of Crete, who helped Theseus, whom she loved, to escape from the labyrinth with the aid of a ball of string, but all she had in return was to be abandoned by him on the island of Naxos. Here Bacchus came to her rescue. Classical representations show Ariadne asleep when Bacchus arrives, as described by Philostratus. But according to Ovid she was at that moment lamenting her fate, and Renaissance and later artists generally depict her awake. Bacchus took her jeweled crown and flung it into the heavens where it became a constellation. Ariadne was readily consoled by him and they were married shortly afterwards.
Sebastiano Ricci Bathsheba at the Bath Painting
Bathsheba at the Bath by Sebastiano Ricci
1720s
Oil on canvas, 118,5 x 199 cm
Museum of Fine Arts, Budapest
The composition of this painting is similar to that of another painting of the same subject by Sebastiano Ricci, now in the Staatliche Museeen, Berlin. Both painting follow the scheme used for representing the toilette of Venus. Bathsheba is identified only by the barely visible spying figure in the Budapest painting and by the figure of a maid approaching with a letter from King David.
Apparently Ricci liked to use buildings with columns to close up the background, no doubt inspired by Veronese. Slender columns, light, almost floating balconies provide a picturesquely decorative framework for the figures grouped on the stage in front. The whole scene is pervaded by a shimmering silvery light; shadow and dimness have vanished completely; the painter applies light and colour for modelling. The colouring, with its nacreous lustre, is particularly attractive; the hues are delicately shaded, enhancing the interplay of form and content.
Francois Boucher Adoration of the Shepherds Painting
Adoration of the Shepherds by Francois Boucher
1750
Oil on canvas
Musee des Beaux-Arts, Lyon
Boucher had never been a committed artistic believer. Although he had worked in Italy, the Italian tradition did not tempt him into vast imaginative schemes. He never aimed at a heroic vision. He expressed no glorious promises about heaven: either as an Olympian refuge for aristocratic families, or in ordinary Christian terms. Like most French eighteenth-century painters, he could not evolve a satisfactory idiom for religious pictures of any kind; and he was particularly unsuited to the task by the nature of his real abilities.
The picture shows one of his rare paintings of religious subject.
Francois Boucher An Autumn Pastoral Painting
An Autumn Pastoral by Francois Boucher
1749
Oil on canvas, 260 x 199 cm
Wallace Collection, London
Boucher’s pastorals and landscape paintings, which are certainly part of his rococo achievement, are willfully artificial on a basis of real observation. They create a new branch of rococo art in which the growing tendency to shake off dynastic and mythological duties has been completely developed.
This painting and its companion piece, A Summer Pastoral (also in the Wallace Collection), were commissioned by the financier Trudaine for his new château at Montigny-Lencoup, together with four overdoors by Oudry which are also in the Wallace Collection.
These great pastorals offer a characteristic Boucher blend of elegance and ruticity.
Francois Boucher Apollo Revealing his Divinity to the Shepherdess Painting
Apollo Revealing his Divinity to the Shepherdess by Francois Boucher
1750
Oil on canvas, 129 x 158 cm
Musee des Beaux-Arts, Tours
The subject of the love of Apollo and the shepherdess Isse is taken from Ovid’s metamorphoses. The painting was commissioned from Boucher in 1749 by the Direction des Bâtiments du Roi.
Francois Boucher Are They Thinking About the Grape Painting
Are They Thinking About the Grape by Francois Boucher
1747
Oil on canvas
Art Institute, Chicago
Fra Angelico Annunciation (from the paintings for the Armadio degli Argen Painting
Annunciation (from the paintings for the Armadio degli Argen by Fra Angelico
c. 1450
Tempera on wood, 38,5 x 37 cm
Museo di San Marco, Florence
Giuseppe Arcimboldo Autumn Painting
Autumn by Giuseppe Arcimboldo
Autumn by Giuseppe Arcimboldo
1573
Oil on canvas, 76 x 63,5 cm
Musée du Louvre, Paris
The painting is one of the series representing the four seasons, all in the Louvre. There exists several other versions of the series in other museums (e.g. in Vienna).
Giuseppe Arcimboldo Spring Painting
Spring by Giuseppe Arcimboldo
1573
Oil on canvas, 76 x 63,5 cm
Musée du Louvre, Paris
This painting belongs to a four-part cycle which was frequently repeated by the Milan artist for the Imperial court in Vienna and Prague. This particular series, which is now in Paris, had been commissioned by the Emperor Maximilian II for the Elector august of Saxony.
The Italian art historian Giovanni Paolo Lomazzo (L’Idea del Tempio della pittura, Milan, 1590) described Arcimboldo’s allegories as “teste composte” (composed heads). The underlying principle of these compositions is the use of elements from an object area which is clearly distinct from others and in such a way that they add up to a personified figure. The individual elements as such do not have any mimetic properties; they only receive them when they co-occur with others.
Claude Monet Impression, Sunrise Painting
Monet painting Impression, Sunrise
Painting: Impression: Sunrise
Artist: Claude Monet
Year: 1873
Size: 48cm x 63cm or 19 x 24 3/8″
Medium: Oil on canvas
Location: Musee Marmottan, Paris, France
The Saint-Lazare Station Painting by Claude Monet
Monet Painting The Saint-Lazare Station
Painting: Saint-Lazare Station
Artist: Claude Monet
Year: 1877
Medium: Oil on canvas
Size: 54.3 x 73.6 cm (21 3/8 x 29 in.)
Location: National Gallery, London
Claude Monet Arm of the Seine near Giverny Painting
monet painting Arm of the Seine near Giverny
Painting: Branch of the Seine Near Giverny
Artist: Claude Monet
Year: 1897
Medium: Oil on canvas
Location: Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, MA, USA.
Claude Monet’s Dining Room at Giverny
Monet's Dining Room at Giverny
I have just been given the right to take pictures inside of Monet‘s House. I am thrilled being able to comment on this very special home I love!
Taking photographs in the museum is forbidden for several reasons, especially because of the very fragile japanese woodblocks that hang on the walls. Monet didn’t want his own work to decorate his home: it was work! He preferred something more exotic and fun. He would hang them everywhere except in his studio, in the kitchen and in his bedroom.
I don’t know what strikes visitors most when they enter the most beautiful room of the house, the famous dining room. The Japanese prints cover the walls, almost masking them, their mainly blue color matching the yellow furniture, walls and moldings.
It is strangely modern, especially when compared with the very heavy and dark fashion in matter of decoration in Victorian times. Bright, and stunning. Everybody says waow! when stepping inside of this yellow dining room, and most people like it. But for some visitors, it is too yellow.
Guido Reni Work in Naples and Return to Bologna
In later years, Guido Reni traveled to Naples to complete a commission to paint a ceiling in a chapel of the San Gennaro. However, in Naples, the other local prominent painters, including Corenzio, Caracciolo and Ribera, were vehemently resistant to competitors, and according to rumor, conspired to poison or otherwise harm Reni (as may have befallen Domenichino in Naples after him). He passed briefly by Rome, but left that city abruptly, during the pontificate of Urban VIII, after being reprimanded by Cardinal Spinola.
Returning to Bologna, more or less permanently, Reni established a successful and prolific studio. He was commissioned to decorate the cupola of the chapel of Saint Dominic in the Basilica of San Domenico in Bologna, between 1613 and 1615, resulting in the radiant fresco St Dominic’s Glory, a masterpiece that can stand the comparison with the exquisite Arca di San Domenico below. He also contributed to the decoration of the Rosary Chapel in the same church with the Resurrection.
In Ravenna, he painted the chapel in the cathedral with his admired picture of the Israelites gathering Manna. Reni, after departing Rome, alternately painted in a variety of styles, true to the eclectic tastes of many of Carracci trainees. For example, his altarpiece for Samson Victorious formulates stylized poses characteristic of Mannerism. In contrast his Crucifixion and his Atlanta and Hipomenes depict dramatic diagonal movement coupled with the effects of light and shade that betray the influence of Caravaggio. His turbulent and violent Massacre of the Innocents (Pinacoteca, Bologna) is painted in a manner reminiscent of Raphael. In 1625 Prince Władysław Sigismund Vasa of Poland visited the artist workshop in Bologna during his voyage to Western Europe.The close rapport between the painter and the Polish Prince resulted in the acquisitions of drawings and paintings.In 1630, he painted the Pallion del Voto with images of St. Ignatius and Francis Xavier, painted during the plague of 1630 that attacked Bologna.
The Mature Painting Time of Pierre-Auguste Renoir
Renoir experienced his initial acclaim when six of his paintings hung in the first Impressionist exhibition in 1874. In the same year two of his works were shown with Durand-Ruel in London.
In 1881, he traveled to Algeria, a country he associated with Eugène Delacroix,then to Madrid, to see the work of Diego Velázquez. Following that he traveled to Italy to see Titian’s masterpieces in Florence and the paintings of Raphael in Rome. On January 15, 1882 Renoir met the composer Richard Wagner at his home in Palermo, Sicily. Renoir painted Wagner’s portrait in just thirty-five minutes. In the same year, Renoir convalesced for six weeks in Algeria after contracting pneumonia, which would cause permanent damage to his respiratory system.
In 1883, he spent the summer in Guernsey, creating fifteen paintings in little over a month. Most of these feature Moulin Huet, a bay in Saint Martin’s, Guernsey. Guernsey is one of the Channel Islands in the English Channel, and it has a varied landscape which includes beaches, cliffs, bays, forests, and mountains. These paintings were the subject of a set of commemorative postage stamps issued by the Bailiwick of Guernsey in 1983.
While living and working in Montmartre, Renoir employed as a model Suzanne Valadon, who posed for him (The Bathers, 1885–87; Dance at Bougival, 1883)and many of his fellow painters while studying their techniques; eventually she became one of the leading painters of the day.
In 1887, a year when Queen Victoria celebrated her Golden Jubilee, and upon the request of the queen’s associate, Phillip Richbourg, he donated several paintings to the “French Impressionist Paintings” catalog as a token of his loyalty.
In 1890 he married Aline Victorine Charigot, who, along with a number of the artist’s friends, had already served as a model for Les Déjeuner des canotiers (Luncheon of the Boating Party, 1881), and with whom he already had a child, Pierre, in 1885. After his marriage Renoir painted many scenes of his wife and daily family life, including their children and their nurse, Aline’s cousin Gabrielle Renard. The Renoirs had three sons, one of whom, Jean, became a filmmaker of note and another, Pierre, became a stage and film actor.
Chinese Lantern Festival Celebration
Falling on the 15th day of the first month of the Lunar Year, the Lantern Festival takes place under a full moon, and marks the end of Chinese New Year festivities. The Lantern Festival dates back to shrouded legends of the Han Dynasty over 2000 years ago.
Legend of the Lantern Festival’s Origin
In one such legend, the Jade Emperor in Heaven was so angered at a town for killing his favorite goose, that he decided to destroy it with a storm of fire. However, a good-hearted fairy heard of this act of vengeance, and warned the people of the town to light lanterns throughout the town on the appointed day. The townsfolk did as they were told, and from the Heavens, it looked as if the village was ablaze. Satisfied that his goose had already been avenged, the Jade Emperor decided not to destroy the town. From that day on, people celebrated the anniversary of their deliverance by carried lanterns of different shapes and colors through the streets on the first full moon of the year, providing a spectacular backdrop for lion dances, dragon dances, and fireworks.
The Modern Lantern Festival
While the Lantern Festival has changed very little over the last two millennia, technological advances have made the celebration moreand more complex and visually stimulating. Indeed, the festival as celebrated in some places (such as Taipei, Taiwan) can put even the most garish American Christmas decorations to shame. They often sport unique displays of light that leave the viewer in awe.
Master craftsman will construct multicolored paper lanterns in the likeness of butterflies, dragons, birds, dragonflies, and many other animals; these accentuate the more common, red, spherical lanterns. Brilliantly-lit floats and mechanically driven light displays draw the attention of the young and old alike. Sometimes, entire streets are blocked off, with lanterns mounted above and to the sides, creating a hallway of lamps. Some cities in North China even make lanterns from blocks of ice! And just as in days gone by, the billion-watt background sets the scene for dragon and lion dances, parades, and other festivities.
Yuan Xiao and Tang Yuan
Yuan Xiao and Tang Yuan are balls of glutinous rice, sometimes rolled around a filling of sesame, peanuts, vegetable, or meat. Tang Yuan are often cooked in red-bean or other kinds of soup. The round shape symbolizes wholeness and unity.
Chinese Dragon Boat Festival
Celebration of the
Dragon Boat Festival
Officially on falling on the fifth day of the fifth lunar month, the Dragon Boat Festival is also known as Double Fifth Day. While many stories regarding its origin abound, the most popular and widely accepted version regards Qu Yuan, a minister during the Warring States Period (475 – 221 BC)
Legend of the Dragon Boat Festival’s Origin
At the end of the Zhou Dynasty, the area we now know as China had fallen into a state of fragmentation and conflict. While the Zhou dynasty had ruled for several centuries, several other states, originally feudal domains, tried to carve out their own kingdoms. The state of Qin would eventually emerge the victor and unify all of China under one rule for the first time in history.
Qu Yuan served as minister to the Zhou Emperor. A wise and articulate man, he was loved by the common people. He did much to fight against the rampant corruption that plagued the court– thereby earning the envy and fear of other officials. Therefore, when he urged the emperor to avoid conflict with the Qin Kingdom, the officials pressured the Emperor to have him removed from service. In exile, he traveled, taught and wrote for several years. Hearing that the Zhou had been defeated by the Qin, he fell into despair and threw himself into the Milou River. His last poem reads:
Many a heavy sigh I have in my despair,
Grieving that I was born in such an unlucky time.
I yoked a team of jade dragons to a phoenix chariot,
And waited for the wind to come,
to sour up on my journey As he was so loved by the people, fishermen rushed out in long boats, beating drums to scare the fish away, and throwing zong zi into the water to feed braver fish so that they would not eat Qu Yuan’s body.
The Modern Dragon Boat Festival
Starting from that time to this day, people commemorate Qu Yuan through Dragon Boat Races, eating zong zi, and several other activities, on the anniversary of his death: the fifth day of the fifth lunar month.
Dragon Boat races are the most exciting part of the festival, drawing crowds of spectators. Dragon Boats are generally brightly painted and decorated canoes. Ranging anywhere from 40 to 100 feet in length, their heads are shaped like open-mouthed dragons, while the sterns end with a scaly tail. Depending on the length, up to 80 rowers can power the boat. A drummer and flag-catcher stand at the front of the boat. Before a dragon boat enters competition, it must be “brought to life” by painting the eyes in a sacred ceremony. Races can have any number of boats competing, with the winner being the first team to grab a flag at the end of the course. Annual races take place all over China, Hong Kong, Macao, Taiwan, and other overseas Chinese communities.
Zong Zi
The traditional food for the Dragon Boat Festival, Zong zi is a glutinous rice ball, with a filling, wrapped in corn leaves. The fillings can be egg, beans, dates, fruits, sweet potato, walnuts, mushrooms, meat, or a combination of them. They are generally steamed.
Talisman and Charms
Another aspect of the Double Fifth Day is the timing: at the beginning of summer, when diseases are likely to strike, people also wear talisman to fend off evil spirits. They may hang the picture of Zhong Kui, guardian against evil spirits, on the door of their homes, as well. Adults may drink Xiong Huang Wine, and children carry fragrant silk pouches, all of which can prevent evil. It is said that if you can balance a raw egg on its end at exactly noon on Double Fifth Day, the rest of the year will be lucky.
The Most Important Holiday for Chinese – Chinese New Year
The most important holiday for Chinese around the world is undoubtedly Chinese New Year — and it all started out of fear.
The centuries-old legend on the origins of the New Year celebration varies from teller to teller, but they all include a story of a terrible mythical monster who preyed on villagers. The lion-like monster’s name was Nian (年) which is also the Chinese word for “year.”
The stories also all include a wise old man who counsels the villagers to ward off the evil Nian by making loud noises with drums and firecrackers and hanging red paper cutouts and scrolls on their doors because for some reason, the Nian is scared of the color red.
The villagers took the old man’s advice and the Nian was conquered. On the anniversary of the date, the Chinese recognize the “passing of the Nian” known in Chinese as guo nian (过年), which is also synonymous with celebrating the new year.
Based on the Lunar Calendar
The date of Chinese New Year changes each year as it is based on the lunar calendar. While the western Gregorian calendar is based on the earth’s orbit around the sun, China and most Asian countries use the lunar calendar that is based on the moon’s orbit around the earth. Chinese New Year always falls on the second new moon after the winter solstice. Other Asian countries such as Korea, Japan and Vietnam also celebrate new year using the lunar calendar.
While both Buddhism and Daoism has unique customs during the New Year, Chinese New Year is far older than both religions. Like many agrarian societies, Chinese New Year is rooted in much a celebration of spring just like Easter or Passover.
Depending on where rice is grown in China, the rice season lasts from roughly May to September (north China), April to October (Yangtze River Valley), or March to November (Southeast China). The New Year was likely the start of preparations for a new growing season.
Spring cleaning is a common theme during this time, as many Chinese will clean out their homes during the holiday. The New Year celebration could even have been a way to break up the boredom of the long winter months.
Traditional Customs
On this day, families travel long distances to meet and make merry. Known as the “Spring movement” or Chunyun (春运), a great migration takes place in China during this period where many travelers brave the crowds to get to their hometowns.
Though the holiday is only about a week-long, traditionally it is a 15-day holiday during which firecrackers are lit, drums can be heard on the streets, red lanterns glow at night, and red paper cutouts and calligraphy hangings are hung on doors. Celebrations conclude on the 15th day with the Lantern Festival.
Children are also given red envelopes with money inside. Many cities around the world also hold New Year parades complete with a dragon and lion dance.
Food is an important component to New Year. Traditional foods include nian gao or sweet sticky rice cake and savory dumplings – which are round and symbolize never-ending wealth. For more about Chinese New Year foods visit About.com’s Chinese Food site.
Chinese New Year vs. Spring Festival
In China, New Year celebrations are synonymous with “Spring Festival” (春节 or chūn jié) and it is typically a week-long celebration.
The origins of this renaming from “Chinese New Year” to “Spring Festival” is fascinating and not widely known.
In 1912, the newly-formed Chinese Republic, governed by the Nationalist party, renamed the traditional holiday to Spring Festival in order to get the Chinese people to transition to celebrating the Western New Year instead.
During this period, many Chinese intellectuals felt that modernization meant doing all the things as the West did.
When the Communists took over power in 1949, the celebration of New Year was viewed as feudalistic and seeped in religion — not proper for an atheist China. Under the Chinese Communist Party, there were some years where New Year was not celebrated at all.
By the late 1980s, however, as China began liberalizing its economy, Spring Festival celebrations became big business.
China Central Television has held an annual New Year’s Gala since 1982, which was and is still televised across the country and now via satellite to the world.
A few years ago, the government announced that it would shorten its holiday system. The May Day holiday would be shortened from a week to one day and the National Day holiday would be made two days instead of a week. In their place, more traditional holidays such as the Mid-Autumn Festival and Tomb-Sweeping Day might be implemented.
The only week-long holiday that was maintained is Spring Festival. Perhaps even today, several millennia after the first New Year, the fear of the Nian is alive and well.
Italian Painter Titian’s Biography and Painting
Titian, born 1473/1490 (probably c.1488/1490), died 27 August 1576,better known as Titian , was the leading painter of the 16th-century Venetian school of the Italian Renaissance. He was born in Pieve di Cadore, near Belluno (in Veneto), in the Republic of Venice. During his lifetime he was often called Da Cadore, taken from the place of his birth.
Recognized by his contemporaries as “The Sun Amidst Small Stars” (recalling the famous final line of Dante’s Paradiso), Titian was one of the most versatile of Italian painters, equally adept with portraits, landscape backgrounds, and mythological and religious subjects. His painting methods, particularly in the application and use of color, would exercise a profound influence not only on painters of the Italian Renaissance, but on future generations of Western art.
During the course of his long life Titian’s artistic manner changed drastically[4] but he retained a lifelong interest in color. Although his mature works may not contain the vivid, luminous tints of his early pieces, their loose brushwork and subtlety of polychromatic modulations are without precedent in the history of Western art.
French Painter Auguste Toulmouche – A Specialized Costume Painter
Auguste Toulmouche (21 September 1829 – 16 October 1890), French painter. He was a student of Marc Charles Gabriel Gleyre [1806-1874]. He specialized in “costume painting”, as did his students, including Jules Émile Saintin [1829-1894], Joaquin Pallares y Allustante, and Charles Joseph Frederick Soulacroix [1825–]. They depicted beautiful women in interiors, in a sentimental and romantic way. The subject matter of a picture was the primary consideration, and its success depended on the expressiveness of the characters, a quality directly derived from history painting. The parents of Emile Auguste Toulmouche were Toulmouche Rose and Sophie Mercier, and he had an uncle sculptor. Starting from 1841, Auguste Toulmouche received the first elements of the design in the workshop of the sculptor Amedeo Rene Menard. Then Toulmouche expanded his studies by taking a few lessons from painting with Biron, a painter of portraits and religious scenes registered as a teacher of drawing and painting at Nantes from 1844. In 1846, Auguste Toulmouche went to Paris to follow the teaching of Gleyre. Gleyre was a peculiar professor at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts, and a member of the Academy. Girl (1852) was bought by Napoleon III, the first step (1853) by the Empress Eugenie, and after lunch by Princess Mathilde. Toulmouche had success with its small tables of a genre called neo-Greek. The reading lesson (1855), was the subject of much criticism by Théophile Gautier. After the War of 1870, his fame fades gradually, like painters of his generation.
Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec’s Disablity and Healthy Problems
The Comte and Comtesse themselves were first cousins, and Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec suffered from a number of congenital health conditions attributed to this tradition of inbreeding.
At the age of 13 Henri fractured his right thigh bone, and at 14, the left. The breaks did not heal properly. Modern physicians attribute this to an unknown genetic disorder, possibly pycnodysostosis (also sometimes known as Toulouse-Lautrec Syndrome), or a variant disorder along the lines of osteopetrosis, achondroplasia, or osteogenesis imperfecta.[4] Rickets aggravated with praecox virilism has also been suggested. His legs ceased to grow, so that as an adult he was only 1.52 m tall,having developed an adult-sized torso, while retaining his child-sized legs, which were 0.70 m long. He is also reported to have had hypertrophied genitals.
An alcoholic for most of his adult life, Toulouse-Lautrec was placed in a sanatorium shortly before his death. He died from complications due to alcoholism and syphilis at the family estate in Malromé at the age of 36. He is buried in Verdelais, Gironde, a few kilometers from the Château of Malromé, where he died.
Toulouse-Lautrec’s last words reportedly were: “Le vieux con!” (“The old fool!”) This was his goodbye to his father.
After Toulouse-Lautrec’s death, his mother, the Comtesse Adèle Toulouse-Lautrec, and Maurice Joyant, his art dealer, promoted his art. His mother contributed funds for a museum to be built in Albi, his birthplace, to house his works.
French Barbizon School Painter Paul Trouillebert
Paul Desiré Trouillebert was a famous French Barbizon School painter in the mid-nineteenth and the early twentieth centuries. He was born in Paris, France in 1829 and died here in June 28, 1900.
Paul is considered a portrait, and a genre and landscape painter from the French Barbizon School. He was a student of Ernest Hébert (1817-1908) and Charles-François Jalabert (1819-1901), and made his debut at the Salon of 1865, exhibiting a portrait.
At the Paris Salon of 1869, Mr. Trouillebert exhibited “Au bois Rossignolet”, which was a lyrical Fontainebleau landscape that received great critical acclaim.
He was interested in the orientalism and produced paintings of nudes. He painted a most fabulous portrait of a half-nude young woman in an ancient Egyptian style of the Greco-Roman Dynasty. He called it Servante du harem (The Harem Servant Girl). and in 1884, his painting of nudes, The Bathers was well received by the Paris Salon
Italian early-Renaissance painter and the founders of the School of Ferrara Cosimo Tura
Cosimo Tura (c. 1430 – 1495), also known as Il Cosmè or Cosmè Tura, was an Italian early-Renaissance (or Quattrocento) painter and considered one of the founders of the School of Ferrara.
Born in Ferrara, he was a student of Francesco Squarcione of Padua. Later he obtained patronage from both Dukes Borso and Ercole I d’Este. By 1460, he was stipended by the Ferrarese Court. His pupils include Francesco del Cossa and Francesco Bianchi. He appears influenced by Mantegna’s and Piero della Francesca’s quattrocento styles.
In Ferrara, he is well represented by frescoes in the Palazzo Schifanoia (1469–71) [1]. This pleasure palace, with facade and architecture of little note, belonged to the d’Este family and is located just outside the medieval town walls. Cosimo, along with Francesco del Cossa, helped produce an intricately conceived allegorical series about the months of the year and zodiac symbols. The series contains contemporary portraits of musicians, laborers, and carnival floats in idyllic parades. As in Piero della Francesca’s world, the unemotive figures mill in classical serenity.
He also painted the organ doors for the Duomo showing the Annunciation (1469). He collaborated in the painting of a series of “muses” for a studiolo of Leonello d’Este, including the allegorical figure of Calliope at the National Gallery (see image). While the individual attributions are often debated, among the artists thought to complete the Angelo di Pietro da Sienna, also called Maccagino or Angelo Parrasio, and Michele Pannonio.
