Donato di Niccolo di Betto Bardi

Donato di Niccolò di Betto Bardi (c. 1386 –

13 December 1466), better known as
Donatello (English: /ˌdɒnəˈtɛloʊ/[1] Italian:
[donaˈtɛllo]), was an Italian sculptor of the
Renaissance. Born in Florence, he studied
classical sculpture and used this to develop
a complete Renaissance style in sculpture,
who’s periods in Rome, Padua and Siena
introduced to other parts of Italy a long and
productive career. He worked with stone,
Born Donato di Niccolò di Betto Bardi
bronze, wood, clay, stucco and wax, and
had several assistants, with four perhaps
being a typical number. Though his best- c. 1386
known works were mostly statues in the Republic of Florence
round, he developed a new, very shallow,
type of bas-relief for small works, and a Died 13 December 1466 (aged 79–80)
good deal of his output was larger Republic of Florence
architectural reliefs.
Nationality Florentine
Early life
Donatello was the son of Niccolò di Betto Education Lorenzo Ghiberti
Bardi, who was a member of the
Florentine Arte della Lana, and was born in Known for Sculpture
Florence, probably in the year 1386.
Donatello was educated in the house of the Notable St. George, David, Equestrian
Martelli family. He apparently received his work Monument of Gattamelata
early artistic training in a goldsmith's
workshop, and then worked briefly in the Movement Early Renaissance
studio of Lorenzo Ghiberti.
While undertaking study and excavations with Filippo Brunelleschi in Rome
(1404–1407), work that gained the two men the reputation of treasure seekers,
Donatello made a living by working at goldsmiths' shops. Their Roman sojourn
was decisive for the entire development of Italian art in the 15th century, for it
was during this period that Brunelleschi undertook his measurements of
the Pantheon dome and of other Roman buildings. Brunelleschi's buildings and
Donatello's sculptures are both considered supreme expressions of the spirit of
this era in architecture and sculpture, and they exercised a potent influence upon
the artists of the age.

Work in Florence

In 1409–1411 he executed the colossal seated figure of Saint John the Evangelist.

In Florence, Donatello assisted Lorenzo Ghiberti with the statues of prophets for
the north door of the Baptistery of Florence Cathedral, for which he received
payment in November 1406 and early 1408. In 1409–1411 he executed the
colossal seated figure of Saint John the Evangelist, which until 1588 occupied a
niche of the old cathedral façade, and is now placed in the Museo dell'Opera del
Duomo. This work marks a decisive step forward from late Gothic Mannerism in
the search for naturalism and the rendering of human feelings. The face, the
shoulders and the bust are still idealized, while the hands and the fold of cloth
over the legs are more realistic.
In 1411–1413, Donatello worked on a statue of St. Mark for the guild church
of Orsanmichele. In 1417 he completed the Saint George for the Confraternity of
the Cuirass-makers. The elegant St. George and the Dragon relief on the statue's
base, executed in schiacciato (a very low bas-relief) is one of the first examples
of central-point perspective in sculpture. From 1423 is the Saint Louis of
Toulouse for the Orsanmichele, now in the Museum of the Basilica di Santa Croce.
Donatello had also sculpted the classical frame for this work, which remains,
while the statue was moved in 1460 and replaced by the Incredulity of Saint
Thomas by Verrocchio.
Between 1415 and 1426, Donatello created five statues for
the campanile of Santa Maria del Fiore in Florence, also known as the Duomo.
These works are the Beardless Prophet; Bearded Prophet (both from 1415);
the Sacrifice of Isaac (1421); Habbakuk (1423–25); and Jeremiah (1423–26); which
follow the classical models for orators and are characterized by strong portrait
details. From the late teens is the Pazzi Madonna relief in Berlin. In 1425, he
executed the notable Crucifix for Santa Croce; this work portrays Christ in a
moment of the agony, eyes and mouth partially opened, the body contracted in
an ungraceful posture.
From 1425 to 1427, Donatello collaborated with Michelozzo on the funerary
monument of the Antipope John XXIII for the Battistero in Florence. Donatello
made the recumbent bronze figure of the deceased, under a shell. In 1427, he
completed in Pisa a marble relief for the funerary monument of Cardinal Rainaldo
Brancacci at the church of Sant'Angelo a Nilo in Naples. In the same period, he
executed the relief of the Feast of Herod and the statues of Faith and Hope for
the Baptistery of San Giovanni in Siena. The relief is mostly in stiacciato, with the
foreground figures are done in bas-relief.

Major commissions in Florence

David at Bargello, Florence

The dating of the statue is not settled, though
recent scholarship has indicated it was made
around 1460. It is certain that Cosimo de' Medici,
the foremost art patron of his era, commissioned
from Donatello the bronze David (now in
the Bargello) for the court of his Palazzo Medici.
This is now Donatello's most famous work, and the
first known free-standing nude statue produced
since antiquity. Conceived fully in the round, independent of any architectural
surroundings, and largely representing an allegory of the civic virtues triumphing
over brutality and irrationality, it is arguably the first major work
of Renaissance sculpture. Also from this period is the disquietingly small Love-
Atys, housed in the Bargello.

Statue of St. George in Orsanmichele, Florence

Some have perceived the David as having homo-erotic qualities, and have argued
that this reflected the artist's own orientation. The historian Paul Strathern makes
the claim that Donatello made no secret of his
homosexuality, and that his behaviour was tolerated by his
friends. The main evidence comes from anecdotes by Angelo
Poliziano in his "Detti piacevoli", where he writes about
Donatello surrounding himself with "handsome assistants"
and chasing in search of one that had fled his workshop. This
may not be surprising in the context of attitudes prevailing in
the 15th- and 16th-century Florentine republic. However,
little detail is known with certainty about his private life, and
no mention of his sexuality has been found in the Florentine
archives (in terms of denunciations) albeit which during this
period are incomplete.
When Cosimo was exiled from Florence, Donatello went to
Rome, remaining until 1433. The two works that testify to
his presence in this city, the Tomb of Giovanni
Crivelli at Santa Maria in Aracoeli, and the Ciborium at St.
Peter's Basilica, bear a strong stamp of classical influence.
Donatello's return to Florence almost coincided with Cosimo's. In May 1434, he
signed a contract for the marble pulpit on the facade of Prato cathedral, the last
project executed in collaboration with Michelozzo. This work, a passionate,
pagan, rhythmically conceived bacchanalian dance of half-nude putti, was the
forerunner of the great Cantoria, or singing tribune, at the Duomo in Florence on
which Donatello worked intermittently from 1433 to 1440 and was inspired by
ancient sarcophagi and Byzantine ivory chests. In 1435, he executed
the Annunciation for the Cavalcanti altar in Santa Croce, inspired by 14th-century
iconography, and in 1437–1443, he worked in the Old Sacristy of the San
Lorenzo in Florence, on two doors and lunettes portraying saints, as well as eight
stucco tondoes. From 1438 is the wooden statue of St. John the Baptist for Santa
Maria Gloriosa dei Frari in Venice. Around 1440, he executed a bust of a Young
Man with a Cameo now in the Bargello, the first example of a lay bust portrait
since the classical era.

In Padua

Donatello's equestrian statue of Gattamelata at Padua

In 1443, Donatello was called to Padua by the heirs of the
famous condottiero Erasmo da Narni (better known as the Gattamelata, or
"Honey-Cat"), who had died that year. Completed in 1450 and placed in the
square facing the Basilica of St. Anthony, his Equestrian Monument of
Gattamelata was the first example of such a monument since ancient times.
(Other equestrian statues, from the 14th century, had not been executed in
bronze and had been placed over tombs rather than erected
independently, in a public place.) This work became the
prototype for other equestrian monuments executed in Italy and
Europe in the following centuries.
For the Basilica of St. Anthony, Donatello created, most famously,
the bronze Crucifix of 1444–47 and additional statues for the
choir, including a Madonna with Child and six saints, constituting
a Holy Conversation, which is no longer visible since the
renovation by Camillo Boito in 1895. The Madonna with
Child portrays the Child being displayed to the faithful, on a
throne flanked by two sphinxes, allegorical figures of knowledge. On the throne's
back is a relief of Adam and Eve. During this period—1446–50—Donatello also
executed four extremely important reliefs with scenes from the life of St. Anthony
for the high altar.
Leonardo da Vinci

Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci was

an Italian polymath of
the Renaissance whose areas of
interest included invention, drawing,
painting, sculpture, architecture,
science, music, mathematics,
engineering, literature, anatomy,
geology, astronomy, botany,
paleontology, and cartography. He is
widely considered one of the
greatest painters of all time, despite
perhaps only 15 of his Born 14/15 April 1452
paintings having survived. The Mona
Lisa is the most famous of his works Vinci, Republic of
and the most popular portrait ever Florence (present-day Italy)
made. The Last Supper is the most
reproduced religious painting of all
Died 2 May
time and his Vitruvian Man drawing
is regarded as a cultural icon as 1519 (aged 67)Amboise, Kingdom
well. Leonardo's paintings and of France
preparatory drawings—together
with his notebooks, which contain Known for Art (painting, drawing, sculpting),
sketches, scientific diagrams, and his science, engineering, architecture,
thoughts on the nature of painting— anatomy
compose a contribution to later
generations of artists rivalled only by
that of his Movement High Renaissance
contemporary Michelangelo.
Although he had no formal academic
training, many historians and
scholars regard Leonardo as the Signature
prime exemplar of the "Universal
Genius" or "Renaissance Man," an individual of "unquenchable curiosity" and
"feverishly inventive imagination. He is widely considered one of the most
diversely talented individuals ever to have lived. According to art historian Helen
Gardner, the scope and depth of his interests were without precedent in recorded
history, and "his mind and personality seem to us superhuman, while the man
himself mysterious and remote.” Scholars interpret his view of the world as being
based in logic, though the empirical methods he used were unorthodox for his
time.
Leonardo is revered for his technological ingenuity. He conceptualized flying
machines, a type of armoured fighting vehicle, concentrated solar power, an
adding machine, and the double hull. Relatively few of his designs were
constructed or even feasible during his lifetime, as the modern scientific
approaches to metallurgy and engineering were only in their infancy during the
Renaissance. Some of his smaller inventions, however, entered the world of
manufacturing unheralded, such as an automated bobbin winder and a machine
for testing the tensile strength of wire. He is also sometimes credited with the
inventions of the parachute, helicopter, and tank. He made substantial discoveries
in anatomy, civil engineering, geology, optics, and hydrodynamics, but he did not
publish his findings and they had no direct influence on subsequent science.
Early life
Leonardo was born in the Tuscan hill town of Vinci, in the lower valley of
the Arno river in the territory of the Medici-ruled Republic of Florence. He was
the out-of-wedlock son of Messer Piero Fruosino di Antonio da Vinci, a wealthy
Florentine legal notary, and a peasant named Caterina, identified as Caterina Buti
del Vacca and more recently as Caterina di Meo Lippi by historian Martin Kemp.
There have been many theories regarding Leonardo's mother's identity, including
that she was a slave of foreign origin or an impoverished local youth. Leonardo
had no surname in the modern sense—da Vinci simply meaning "of Vinci"; his full
birth name was Lionardo di ser Piero da Vinci, meaning "Leonardo, (son) of ser
Piero from Vinci."
Leonardo spent his first years in the hamlet of Anchiano in the home of his
mother, and from at least 1457 lived in the household of his father, grandparents
and uncle in the small town of Vinci. Leonardo had 12 half-siblings, who were
much younger than he was.
Leonardo received an informal education in
Latin, geometry and mathematics.
Verrocchio's workshop
The Baptism of Christ (1472–1475), Uffizi, by Verrocchio and Leonardo
In the mid-1460s, Leonardo's family moved to Florence, and around the age of 14,
he became a garzone (studio boy) in the workshop of Verrocchio, who was the
leading Florentine painter and sculptor of his time. Leonardo became an
apprentice by the age of 17 and remained in training for seven years. Other
famous painters apprenticed in the workshop or associated with it
include Ghirlandaio, Perugino, Botticelli, and Lorenzo di Credi. Leonardo was
exposed to both theoretical training and a wide range of technical skills, including
drafting, chemistry, metallurgy, metal working, plaster casting, leather working,
mechanics, and wood-work, as well as the artistic skills of drawing, painting,
sculpting, and modelling.
Leonardo collaborated with Verrocchio on his The Baptism of Christ. Close
examination reveals areas of the work that have been painted or touched-up over
the tempera, using the new technique of oil paint, including the landscape, the
rocks seen through the brown mountain stream, and much of the figure of Jesus,
bearing witness to the hand of Leonardo.
By 1472, at the age of 20, Leonardo qualified as a master in the Guild of Saint
Luke, the guild of artists and doctors of medicine, but even after his father set him
up in his own workshop, his attachment to Verrocchio was such that he continued
to collaborate and live with him. Leonardo's earliest known dated work is a 1473
pen-and-ink drawing of the Arno valley, which has been
cited as the first "pure" landscape in the Occident. According
to Vasari, the young Leonardo was the first to suggest
making the Arno River a navigable channel between
Florence and Pisa.
Old age and death
In 1512, Leonardo was working on plans for an equestrian
monument for Gian Giacomo Trivulzio, but this was
prevented by an invasion of a confederation of Swiss,
Spanish and Venetian forces, which drove the French from
Milan. Leonardo stayed in the city, spending several months
in 1513 at the Medici's Vaprio d'Adda villa. In March of that year, Lorenzo de'
Medici's son Giovanni assumed the papacy (as Leo X); Leonardo went to Rome
that September, where he was received by the pope's brother Giuliano. From
September 1513 to 1516, Leonardo spent much of his time living in the Belvedere
Courtyard (designed by Donato Bramante) in the Apostolic Palace, where
Michelangelo and Raphael were both active. Leonardo was given an allowance of
33 ducats a month, and according to Vasari, decorated a lizard with scales dipped
in quicksilver. The pope gave him a painting commission of unknown subject
matter, but cancelled it impatiently when the artist set about developing a new
kind of varnish. Leonardo became ill, in what may have been the first of multiple
strokes leading to his death. He practiced botany in the Gardens of Vatican City,
and was commissioned to make plans for the pope's proposed draining of the
Pontine Marshes. He also dissected cadavers, making notes for a treatise on vocal
cords; these he gave to an official in hopes of regaining the pope's favor, but was
unsuccessful.
In October 1515, King Francis I of France recaptured Milan. Leonardo was present
at the 19 December meeting of Francis I and Leo X, which took place in Bologna.
In 1516, Leonardo entered Francis' service, being given the use of the manor
house Clos Lucé, near the king's residence at the royal Château d'Amboise. Being
frequently visited by Francis, he drew plans for an immense castle town the king
intended to erect at Romorantin, and made a mechanical lion, which during a
pageant walked toward the king and—upon being struck by a wand—opened its
chest to reveal a cluster of lilies. Leonardo was accompanied during this time by
his friend and apprentice, Francesco Melzi, and supported by a pension totalling
10,000 scudi. At some point, Melzi drew a portrait of Leonardo; the only others
known from his lifetime were a sketch by an unknown assistant on the back of
one of Leonardo's studies (c. 1517)and a drawing by Giovanni Ambrogio Figino
depicting an elderly Leonardo with his right arm assuaged by cloth. The latter, in
addition to the record of an October 1517 visit by Louis d'Aragon, confirms an
account of Leonardo's right hand being paralytic at the age of 65, which may
indicate why he left works such as the Mona Lisa unfinished.[79][81][82] He
continued to work at some capacity until eventually becoming ill and bedridden
for several months.
Leonardo died at Clos Lucé on 2 May 1519 at the age of 67, possibly of a stroke.
Vasari describes Leonardo as lamenting on his deathbed, full of repentance that
"he had offended against God and men by failing to practice his art as he should
have done. Leonardo sent for a priest to make his confession and to receive the
Holy Sacrament. On 12 August 1519, Leonardo's remains were interred in the
Collegiate Church of Saint Florentin at the Château d'Amboise.
Early works
Annunciation (1475–1480), Uffizi, is thought to be Leonardo's earliest complete
work
Leonardo first gained attention for his work on the Baptism of Christ, painted in
conjunction with Verrocchio. In this painting, the young Leonardo presents the
humanist face of the Virgin Mary, recognising humanity's role in God's
incarnation.
Paintings of the 1480s

Unfinished painting of Saint Jerome in the

Wilderness (c. 1480), VaticanOne of these paintings
was Saint Jerome in the Wilderness, which Bortolon
associates with a difficult period of Leonardo's life, as
evidenced in his diary: "I thought I was learning to live; I
was only learning to die." Although the painting is barely
begun, the composition can be seen and is very unusual.
The daring display of figure composition, the landscape
elements and personal drama also appear in the great unfinished masterpiece,
the Adoration of the Magi, a commission from the Monks of San Donato a
Scopeto. It is a complex composition, of about 250 x 250 centimetres. Leonardo
did numerous drawings and preparatory studies, including a detailed one in linear
perspective of the ruined classical architecture that forms part of the background.
In 1482 Leonardo went to Milan at the behest of Lorenzo de' Medici in order to
win favour with Ludovico il Moro, and the
painting was abandoned.
Paintings of the 1490s

The Last Supper (1498), Convent of Sta.

Maria delle Grazie, Milan, ItalyLeonardo's
most famous painting of the 1490s is The
Last Supper, commissioned for the
refectory of the Convent of Santa Maria
della Grazie in Milan. It represents the last
meal shared by Jesus with his disciples
before his capture and death, and shows
the moment when Jesus has just said
"one of you will betray me", and the
consternation that this statement caused. Leonardo,
instead of using the reliable technique of fresco, had used
tempera over a ground that was mainly gesso, resulting in
a surface subject to mould and to flaking.

Lady with an Ermine, c. 1489–1490, National Museum,

Kraków, Poland
Remarkable is the portrait of Cecilia Gallerani (c. 1483–1490), lover of Leonardo's
patron Ludovico Sforza. Interpretation of the portrait stating that it has allegorical
elements has contradicted the theory that Leonardo's
portrait painting had only a realistic character.
Paintings of the 16th century
Mona Lisa or La Gioconda (1503–1505/07), Louvre,
ParisAmong the works created by Leonardo in the 16th
century is the small portrait known as the Mona Lisa or La
Gioconda, the laughing one. In the present era, it is
arguably the most famous painting in the world. Its fame
rests, in particular, on the elusive smile on the woman's
face, its mysterious quality perhaps due to the subtly
shadowed corners of the mouth and eyes such that the
exact nature of the smile cannot be determined. The shadowy quality for which
the work is renowned came to be called "sfumato," or Leonardo's smoke. Vasari,
who is generally thought to have known the painting only by repute, said that
"the smile was so pleasing that it seemed divine rather than human; and those
who saw it were amazed to find that it was as alive as the original."
Drawings
His earliest dated drawing is a Landscape of the Arno Valley,
1473, which shows the river, the mountains, Montelupo Castle
and the farmlands beyond it in great detail. This is the first true
landscape in art. It was the first landscape "not to be the
background of some religious scene or a portrait. It is the first
[documented] time where a landscape was drawn just for the
sake of it.
Among his famous drawings is the Vitruvian Man, a study of the proportions of
the human body.
Michelangelo
Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni (
6 March 1475 – 18 February 1564), was
an Italian sculptor, painter, architect and
poet of the High Renaissance born in
the Republic of Florence, who exerted an
unparalleled influence on the development
of Western art. Considered by many the
greatest artist of his lifetime and by some the
greatest artist of all time, his artistic
versatility was of such a high order that he is
often considered a contender for the title of
the archetypal Renaissance man.
Born Michelangelo di Lodovico
In his lifetime, Michelangelo was often called
Buonarroti Simoni
Il Divino ("the divine one"). His
6 March 1475
contemporaries often admired his
terribilità—his ability to instil a sense of awe. Caprese near Arezzo, Republic
Attempts by subsequent artists to imitate of Florence (present-
Michelangelo's impassioned, highly personal day Tuscany, Italy)
style resulted in Mannerism, the next major
movement in Western art after the High Died 18 February
Renaissance. 1564 (aged 88)Rome, Papal
Early life, 1475–1488 States (present-day Italy) due
Michelangelo was born in Caprese, known to brief illness
today as Caprese Michelangelo, a small town
situated near Arezzo, Tuscany. For several Known for Sculpture, painting,
generations, his family had been small-scale architecture, and poetry
bankers in Florence; but the bank failed, and
Movement High Renaissance
his father, Ludovico di Leonardo Buonarroti
Simoni, briefly took a government post in
Caprese, where Michelangelo was born. At
Signature
the time of Michelangelo's birth, his father
was the town's Judicial administrator and
local administrator of Chiusi della Verna.
Michelangelo's mother was Francesca di Neri
Del Miniato di Siena. The Buonarrotis
claimed to descend from the Countess Mathilde of Canossa—a claim that remains
unproven, but which Michelangelo believed.
Several months after Michelangelo's birth, the family returned to Florence, where
he was raised. During his mother's later prolonged illness, and after her death in
1481 (when he was six years old), Michelangelo lived with a nanny and her
husband, a stonecutter, in the town of Settignano, where his father owned a
marble quarry and a small farm. There he gained his love for marble.
Apprenticeships, 1488–1492
As a young boy, Michelangelo was sent to Florence to study grammar under
the Humanist Francesco da Urbino. However, he showed no interest in his
schooling, preferring to copy paintings from churches and seek the company of
other painters. In 1488, at age 13, Michelangelo was apprenticed to
Ghirlandaio. The next year, his father persuaded Ghirlandaio to pay Michelangelo
as an artist, which was rare for someone of fourteen. When in 1489, Lorenzo de'
Medici, de facto ruler of Florence, asked Ghirlandaio for his two best pupils,
Ghirlandaio sent Michelangelo and Francesco Granacci.

From 1490 to 1492, Michelangelo attended the Humanist academy the Medici
had founded along Neo-Platonic lines. There his work and outlook were
influenced by many of the most prominent philosophers and writers of the day,
including Marsilio Ficino, Pico della Mirandola and Poliziano. At this time,
Michelangelo sculpted the reliefs Madonna of the Stairs (1490–1492) and Battle
of the Centaurs (1491–1492), the latter based on a theme suggested by Poliziano
and commissioned by Lorenzo de Medici. Michelangelo worked for a time with
the sculptor Bertoldo di Giovanni.

Works

The Madonna of the Steps

It is Michelangelo's earliest known work in marble. It is carved in shallow relief, a
technique often employed by the master-sculptor of the early 15th century,
Donatello, and others such as Desiderio da Settignano. While the Madonna is in
profile, the easiest aspect for a shallow relief, the child displays a twisting motion
that was to become characteristic of Michelangelo's
work.

The Taddei Tondo (1502)

It shows the Christ Child frightened by a Bullfinch, a

symbol of the Crucifixion.

Madonna and Child Bruges, Belgium (1504)

The Bruges Madonna was, at the time of its creation, unlike

other such statues depicting the Virgin proudly presenting
her son. Here, the Christ Child, restrained by his mother's
clasping hand, is about to step off into the world.

The Doni Tondo (1504–06)

The Doni Tondo, depicting the Holy Family, has elements

of all three previous works: the frieze of figures in the
background has the appearance of a low-relief, while the
circular shape and dynamic forms echo the Taddeo Tondo.
The twisting motion present in the Bruges Madonna is
accentuated in the painting. The painting heralds the
forms, movement and colour that Michelangelo was to
employ on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel.

Angel by Michelangelo,(1494–95)
The kneeling angel is an early work, one of several that Michelangelo created as
part of a large decorative scheme for the Arca di San Domenico in the church
dedicated to that saint in Bologna. Michelangelo's depicting a robust and
muscular youth with eagle's wings, clad in a garment of Classical style. Everything
about Michelangelo's angel is dynamic.

Bacchus by Michelangelo, (1496–97)

Michelangelo's Bacchus was a commission with a specified

subject, the youthful God of Wine. The sculpture has all the
traditional attributes, a vine wreath, a cup of wine and a
fawn, but Michelangelo ingested an air of reality into the
subject, depicting him with bleary eyes, a swollen bladder
and a stance that suggests he is unsteady on his feet. While
the work is plainly inspired by Classical sculpture, it is
innovative for its rotating movement and strongly three-dimensional quality,
which encourages the viewer to look at it from every angle.

Dying slave, Louvre (1513)

In the so-called Dying Slave, Michelangelo has again utilised the
figure with marked contraposto to suggest a particular human
state, in this case waking from sleep. With the Rebellious Slave, it
is one of two such earlier figures for the Tomb of Pope Julius II,
now in the Louvre, that the sculptor brought to an almost
finished state.

Bound slave, known as Atlas (1530–34)

The Bound Slave is one of the later figures for Pope Julius' tomb. It
shows the figure struggling to free itself, as if from the bonds of the
rock in which it is lodged. The work gives a unique insight into the
sculptural methods that Michelangelo employed and his way of revealing what he
perceived within the rock.

The Sistine Chapel Ceiling (1508–12)

The ceiling is a flattened barrel vault supported

on twelve triangular pendentives that rise from
between the windows of the chapel. The
commission, as envisaged by Pope Julius II, was
to adorn the pendentives with figures of the
twelve apostles. Michelangelo, who was
reluctant to take the job, persuaded the Pope to give him a free hand in the
composition. The resultant scheme of decoration awed his contemporaries and
has inspired other artists ever since. The scheme is of nine panels illustrating
episodes from the Book of Genesis, set in an architectonic frame. On the
pendentives, Michelangelo replaced the proposed Apostles with Prophets and
Sibyls who heralded the coming of the Messiah.

The Drunkenness of Noah

Michelangelo began painting with the later episodes

in the narrative, the pictures including locational
details and groups of figures, the Drunkenness of
Noah being the first of this group.

The Creation of Adam (1510)

It is one of the best known and most reproduced

works in the history of art. It illustrates the Biblical
creation narrative from the Book of Genesis in which
God gives life to Adam, the first man. The fresco is
part of a complex iconographic scheme and is chronologically thefourth in the
series of panels depicting episodes from Genesis.

Separation of Light from Darkness

It is the broadest in style and was painted in a

single day. It is from the perspective of the
Genesis chronology, the first of nine central
panels that run along the center of
Michelangelo's Sistine Chapel ceiling and which
depict scenes from the Book of Genesis.
Michelangelo probably completed this panel in the summer of 1512, the last year
of the Sistine ceiling project. It is one of five smaller scenes that alternate with
four larger scenes that run along the center of the Sistine ceiling.

Battle of the Centaurs (1492)

It is a relief by Italian Renaissance artist

Michelangelo, created around 1492. It was the last
work Michelangelo created while under the
patronage of Lorenzo de' Medici, who died shortly
after its completion. Inspired by a classical relief
created by Bertoldo di Giovanni, the marble sculpture depicts the mythic battle
between the Lapiths and the Centaurs. A popular subject of art in ancient Greece,
the story was suggested to Michelangelo by the classical scholar and poet
Poliziano. The sculpture is exhibited in the Casa Buonarroti in Florence, Italy.

Battle of Cascina
It is known in its entirety only from copies, as the
original cartoon, it was so admired that it
deteriorated and was eventually in pieces. It reflects
the earlier relief in the energy and diversity of the figures, with many different
postures, and many being viewed from the back, as they turn towards the
approaching enemy and prepare for battle.

The Last Judgment

It is said that Michelangelo drew inspiration from a

fresco by Melozzo da Forlì in Rome's Santi Apostoli.
In The Last Judgement Michelangelo had the
opportunity to depict, on an unprecedented scale,
figures in the action of either rising heavenward or
falling and being dragged down.

The Crucifixion of St. Peter

It is a fresco painting housed in the Cappella Paolina,
Vatican Palace. It is the last fresco executed by
Michelangelo.

Architecture

Laurentian Library
The vestibule of the Laurentian
Library has Mannerist features which challenge the
Classical order of Brunelleschi's adjacent church.

Capitoline Hill
Michelangelo's redesign of the ancient Capitoline
Hill included a complex spiralling pavement with a star
at its centre.
St. Peter’s Basilica
Michelangelo's design for St Peter's is both massive and
contained, with the corners between the apsidal arms
of the Greek cross filled by square projections.

Final years
The Rondanini Pietà (1552–64)
It is a marble sculpture that Michelangelo worked on
from 1552 until the last days of his life, in 1564. Several
sources indicate that there were actually three versions,
with this one being the last. The name Rondanini refers to
the fact that the sculpture stood for centuries in the
courtyard at the Palazzo Rondanini in Rome. Certain
sources point out that biographer Giorgio Vasari had
referred to this Pietà in 1550, suggesting that the first
version may already have been underway at that time. The work is now in the
Museum of Rondanini Pietà of Sforza Castle in Milan.

Statue of Victory (1532–1534)

It is a marble sculpture produced as part of a design for the

tomb of Pope Julius II. It is 2.61 m high and is now in the
Salone dei Cinquecento of the Palazzo Vecchio in Florence.

The Pietà of Vittoria Colonna (c. 1540)

It is addressed in a highly emotional composition, as in the

Crucifixion for Colonna. The dead Jesus is cradled between the
grieving Mary's legs, which raises her arms to heaven as two
angels also raise Christ's arms at right angles. Mary's gesture
balances the forceful vertical lines of Jesus' body, which lies on
a rock.
Rafaello Sanzio Da Urbino
Raphael was born on April 6, 1483, in Urbino, Italy. He
became Perugino's apprentice in 1504. Living in
Florence from 1504 to 1507, he began painting a series
of "Madonnas." In Rome from 1509 to 1511, he
painted the Stanza della Segnatura ("Room of the
Signatura") frescoes located in the Palace of the
Vatican. He later painted another fresco cycle for the
Vatican, in the Stanza d'Eliodoro ("Room of Heliodorus"). In 1514, Pope Julius II
hired Raphael as his chief architect. Around the same time, he completed his last
work in his series of the "Madonnas," an oil painting called the Sistine Madonna.
Early Life and Training

Italian Renaissance painter and architect Raphael was born Raffaello Sanzio on
April 6, 1483, in Urbino, Italy. At the time, Urbino was a cultural center that
encouraged the Arts. Raphael’s father, Giovanni Santi, was a painter for the Duke
of Urbino, Federigo da Montefeltro. Giovanni taught the young Raphael basic
painting techniques and exposed him to the principles of humanistic philosophy
at the Duke of Urbino’s court.

In 1494, when Raphael was just 11 years old, Giovanni died. Raphael then took
over the daunting task of managing his father’s workshop. His success in this role
quickly surpassed his father’s; Raphael was soon considered one of the finest
painters in town. As a teen, he was even commissioned to paint for the Church of
San Nicola in the neighboring town of Castello.

In 1500 a master painter named Pietro Vannunci, otherwise known as Perugino,

invited Raphael to become his apprentice in Perugia, in the Umbria region of
central Italy. In Perugia, Perugino was working on frescoes at the Collegio del
Cambia. The apprenticeship lasted four years and provided Raphael with the
opportunity to gain both knowledge and hands-on experience. During this period,
Raphael developed his own unique painting style, as exhibited in the religious
works the Mond Crucifixion (circa 1502), The Three Graces (circa 1503), The
Knight’s Dream (1504) and the Oddi altarpiece, Marriage of the Virgin, completed
in 1504.
Architecture

By 1514, Raphael had achieved fame for his work at the Vatican and was able to
hire a crew of assistants to help him finish painting frescoes in the Stanza
dell’Incendio, freeing him up to focus on other projects. While Raphael continued
to accept commissions -- including portraits of popes Julius II and Leo X -- and his
largest painting on canvas, The Transfiguration (commissioned in 1517), he had by
this time begun to work on architecture. After architect Donato Bramante died in
1514, the pope hired Raphael as his chief architect. Under this appointment,
Raphael created the design for a chapel in Sant’ Eligio degli Orefici. He also
designed Rome’s Santa Maria del Popolo Chapel and an area within Saint Peter’s
new basilica. Raphael’s architectural work was not limited to religious buildings. It
also extended to designing palaces. Raphael’s architecture honored the classical
sensibilities of his predecessor, Donato Bramante, and incorporated his use of
ornamental details. Such details would come to define the architectural style of
the late Renaissance and early Baroque periods.

Death and Legacy

On April 6, 1520, Raphael’s 37th birthday, he died suddenly and unexpectedly of

mysterious causes in Rome, Italy. He had been working on his largest painting on
canvas, The Transfiguration (commissioned in 1517), at the time of his death.
When his funeral mass was held at the Vatican, Raphael's unfinished
Transfiguration was placed on his coffin stand. Raphael’s body was interred at the
Pantheon in Rome, Italy.

Following his death, Raphael's movement toward Mannerism influenced painting

styles in Italy’s advancing Baroque period. Celebrated for the balanced and
harmonious compositions of his "Madonnas," portraits, frescoes and architecture,
Raphael continues to be widely regarded as the leading artistic figure of Italian
High Renaissance classicism.

“Time is a vindictive bandit to steal the beauty of our former selves. We are left
with sagging, rippled flesh and burning gums with empty sockets.”

—Raphael
Artworks
The School of Athens
It was painted between 1509 and 1511 as a part
of Raphael's commission to decorate the rooms
now known as the Stanze di Raffaello, in the
Apostolic Palace in the Vatican.

The Transfiguration

It is the last painting by the Italian High Renaissance

master Raphael. Commissioned by Cardinal Giulio de
Medici, the later Pope Clement VII (1523–1534) and
conceived as an altarpiece for the Narbonne Cathedral
in France, Raphael worked on it until his death in 1520.
The painting exemplifies Raphael's development as an
artist and the culmination of his career.

The Marriage of the Virgin

It is also known as Lo Sposalizio, is an oil painting by the

Italian High Renaissance artist Raphael. Completed in
1504 for the Franciscan church of San Francesco, Città
di Castello, the painting depicts a marriage ceremony
between Mary and Joseph.

Liberation of St. Peter

It was painted in 1514 as part of Raphael's

commission to decorate with frescoes. The
painting shows how Saint Peter was liberated from
Herod's prison by an angel, as described in Acts 12.
It is technically an overdoor
Stanza della segnatura

It forms a suite of reception rooms in the

palace, the public part of the papal
apartments in the Palace of the Vatican. It is
one of the grand fresco sequences that mark
the High Renaissance in Rome.

Disputa/ Disputation of the Sacrament

In the painting, Raphael has created a
scene spanning both heaven and earth.
Above, Christ is surrounded by an aureole,
flanked by the Blessed Virgin Mary and
John the Baptist to his right and left (an
arrangement known as the Deësis).
Submmitted to: Mrs. Evangeline
B. Belandres
Submmitted by: Chelsea Ariah
Flores
9- Martin De Porres
Born Gian Lorenzo
Bernini
7 December
1598
Naples, Kingdom
of
Naples (present-
day Italy)

Died 28 November
1680 (aged 81)
Rome, Papal
States (present-
day Italy)

Nationality Italian
Giovanni Bernini
Movement Baroque style
Gian Lorenzo Bernini (7 December 1598 – 28
November 1680) was an Italian sculptor and architect. While a major figure in the
world of architecture, he was, also and even more prominently, the leading
sculptor of his age, credited with creating the Baroque style of sculpture. As one
scholar has commented, "What Shakespeare is to drama, Bernini may be to
sculpture: the first pan-European sculptor whose name is instantaneously
identifiable with a particular manner and vision, and whose influence was
inordinately powerful...." In addition, he was a painter (mostly small canvases in
oil) and a man of the theater: he wrote, directed and acted in plays (mostly
Carnival satires), for which he designed stage sets and theatrical machinery. He
produced designs as well for a wide variety of decorative art objects including
lamps, tables, mirrors, and even coaches.

As architect and city planner, he designed secular buildings, churches, chapels,

and public squares, as well as massive works combining both architecture and
sculpture, especially elaborate public fountains and funerary monuments and a
whole series of temporary structures (in stucco and wood) for funerals and
festivals. His broad technical versatility, boundless compositional inventiveness
and sheer skill in manipulating marble ensured that he would be considered a
worthy successor of Michelangelo, far outshining other sculptors of his
generation. His talent extended beyond the confines of sculpture to a
consideration of the setting in which it would be situated; his ability to synthesize
sculpture, painting, and architecture into a coherent conceptual and visual whole
has been termed by the late art historian Irving Lavin the "unity of the visual arts".
Early life
Bernini was born in Naples in 1598 to Angelica Galante
and Mannerist sculptor Pietro Bernini, originally from Florence. He was the sixth
of their thirteen children. Gian Lorenzo Bernini was the definition of childhood
genius. He was “recognized as a prodigy when he was only eight years old, [and]
he was consistently encouraged by his father, Pietro. His precocity earned him the
admiration and favor of powerful patrons who hailed him as ‘the Michelangelo of
his century’”. In 1606 his father received a papal commission (to contribute a
marble relief in the Cappella Paolina of Santa Maria Maggiore) and so moved
from Naples to Rome, taking his entire family with him and continuing in earnest
the training of his son Gian Lorenzo. Several extant works, dating from circa 1615-
20, are by general scholarly consensus, collaborative efforts by both father and
son: they include the Faun Teased by Putti (c. 1615, Metropolitan Museum,
NYC), Boy with a Dragon (c. 1616-17, Getty Museum, Los Angeles), the
Aldobrandini Four Seasons (c. 1620, private collection), and the recently
discovered Bust of the Savior (1615-16, New York, private collection). Sometime
after the arrival of the Bernini family in Rome, word about the great talent of the
boy Gian Lorenzo got around and he soon caught the attention of Cardinal
Scipione Borghese, nephew to the reigning pope, Paul V, who spoke of the boy
genius to his uncle. Bernini was therefore presented before Pope Paul V, curious
to see if the stories about Gian Lorenzo's talent were true. The boy improvised a
sketch of Saint Paul for the marveling pope, and this was the beginning of the
pope’s attention on this young talent.
Once he was brought to Rome, he rarely left its walls, except (much against his
will) for a five-month stay in Paris in the service of King Louis XIV and brief trips to
nearby towns (including Civitavecchia, Tivoli and Castelgandolfo), mostly for
work-related reasons. Rome was Bernini’s city: “‘You are made for Rome,’ said
Pope Urban VIII to him, ‘and Rome for you’”. It was in this world of 17th-century
Rome and the international religious-political power which resided there that
Bernini created his greatest works. Bernini's works are therefore often
characterized as perfect expressions of the spirit of the assertive, triumphal but
self-defensive Counter Reformation Roman Catholic Church. Certainly Bernini was
a man of his times and deeply religious (at least later in life), but he and his artistic
production should not be reduced simply to instruments of the papacy and its
political-doctrinal programs, an impression that is at times communicated by the
works of the three most eminent Bernini scholars of the previous generation,
Rudolf Wittkower, Howard Hibbard, and Irving Lavin. As Tomaso Montanari's
recent revisionist monograph, La libertà di Bernini (Turin: Einaudi, 2016) argues
and Franco Mormando's anti-hagiographic biography, Bernini: His Life and His
Rome (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2011), illustrates, Bernini and his
artistic vision maintained a certain degree of freedom from the mindset and
mores of Counter-Reformation Roman Catholicism.
Works for Cardinal Scipione Borghese
Apollo and Daphne (1622–25)
Under the patronage of the extravagantly wealthy and most powerful Cardinal
Scipione Borghese, the young Bernini rapidly rose to prominence as a sculptor.
Among his early works for the cardinal were decorative pieces for the garden of
the Villa Borghese such as The Goat Amalthea with the Infant Jupiter and a
Faun. Other allegorical busts also date to this period, including the so-
called Damned Soul and Blessed Soul of circa 1619, which may have been
influenced by a set of prints by Pieter de Jode I but which were in fact
unambiguously cataloged in the inventory of their first documented owner,
Fernando de Botinete y Acevedo, as depicting a nymph and a satyr, a commonly
paired duo in ancient sculpture (they were not commissioned by nor ever
belonged to either Scipione Borghese or, as most scholarship erroneously claims,
the Spanish cleric, Pedro Foix Montoya). By the time he was twenty-two, Bernini
was considered talented enough to have been given a commission for a papal
portrait, the Bust of Pope Paul V, now in the J. Paul Getty Museum.
Bernini's reputation, however, was definitively established by four masterpieces,
executed between 1619 and 1625, all now displayed in the Galleria Borghese in
Rome. To the art historian Rudolf Wittkower these four works—Aeneas, Anchises,
and Ascanius (1619), The Rape of Proserpina (1621–22), Apollo and
Daphne (1622–25), and David (1623–24)—"inaugurated a new era in the history
of European sculpture". It is a view repeated by other scholars, such as Howard
Hibbard who proclaimed that, in all of the seventeenth century, "there were no
sculptors or architects comparable to Bernini". Adapting the classical grandeur of
Renaissance sculpture and the dynamic energy of the Mannerist period, Bernini
forged a new, distinctly Baroque conception for religious and historical sculpture,
powerfully imbued with dramatic realism, stirring
emotion and dynamic, theatrical compositions.
Bernini's early sculpture groups and portraits
manifest "a command of the human form in
motion and a technical sophistication rivalled only
by the greatest sculptors of classical antiquity."
Moreover, Bernini possessed the ability to depict
highly dramatic narratives with characters showing
intense psychological states, but also to organize
large-scale sculptural works that convey a
magnificent grandeur.
Unlike sculptures done by his predecessors, these
focus on specific points of narrative tension in the
stories they are trying to tell: Aeneas and his family
fleeing the burning Troy; the instant that Pluto
finally grasps the hunted Persephone; the precise
moment that Apollo sees his beloved Daphne begin her transformation into a
tree. They are transitory but dramatic powerful moments in each story.
Bernini's David is another stirring example of this. Michelangelo's motionless,
idealized David shows the subject holding a rock in one hand and a sling in the
other, contemplating the battle; similarly immobile versions by other Renaissance
artists, including Donatello's, show the subject in his triumph after the battle with
Goliath. Bernini illustrates David during his active combat with the giant, as he
twists his body to catapult toward Goliath. To emphasize these moments, and to
ensure that they were appreciated by the viewer, Bernini designed the sculptures
with a specific viewpoint in mind. Their original placements within the Villa
Borghese were against walls so that the viewers' first view was the dramatic
moment of the narrative.
The result of such an approach is to invest the sculptures with greater
psychological energy. The viewer finds it easier to gauge the state of mind of the
characters and therefore understands the larger story at work: Daphne's wide
open mouth in fear and astonishment, David biting his lip in determined
concentration, or Proserpina desperately struggling to free herself. In addition to
portraying psychological realism, they show a greater concern for representing
physical details. The tousled hair of Pluto, the pliant flesh of Proserpina, or the
forest of leaves beginning to envelop Daphne all demonstrate Bernini's exactitude
and delight for representing complex real world textures in marble form.
Papal artist: the pontificate of Urban VIII

Baldacchino in St. Peter's Basilica

Beginning in 1623, with the ascent of his friend and former tutor, Cardinal Maffeo
Barberini, to the papal throne as Pope Urban VIII, Bernini enjoyed near
monopolistic patronage from the Barberini pope and family:. The new Pope
Urban is reported to have remarked, "It is a great fortune for you, O Cavaliere, to
see Cardinal Maffeo Barberini made pope, but our fortune is even greater to have
Cavalier Bernini alive in our pontificate." Although he did not fare so well during
the reign of Innocent X, under Alexander VII, he once again regained pre-eminent
artistic domination and continued to be held in high regard by Clement IX. His
horizons rapidly and widely broadened:: he was not just producing sculpture for
private residences, but playing the most significant artistic (and engineering) role
on the city stage, as sculptor, architect, and urban planner. His official
appointments also testify to this—"curator of the papal art collection, director of
the papal foundry at Castel Sant'Angelo, commissioner of the fountains of Piazza
Navona". Such positions gave Bernini the opportunity to demonstrate his versatile
skills throughout the city. To great protest from older, experienced master
architects, he, with virtually no architectural training to his name, was appointed
Chief Architect of St Peter's in 1629, upon the death of Carlo Maderno. From then
on, Bernini's work and artistic vision would be placed at the symbolic heart of
Rome.
Bernini's artistic pre-eminence, particularly during the reign of pope Urban
VIII (1623–44) and again under Pope Alexander VII (1655–65), meant he was able
to secure the most important commissions in the Rome of his day, namely, the
various massive embellishment projects of the newly finished St. Peter's Basilica,
completed under Pope Paul V with the addition of Maderno's nave and facade
and finally re-consecrated by Pope Urban VIII on 18 November 1626, after 150
years of planning and building. Within the basilica he was responsible for the
Baldacchino, the decoration of the four piers under the cupola, the Cathedra Petri
or Chair of St. Peter in the apse, the tomb monument of Matilda of Tuscany, the
chapel of the Blessed Sacrament in the right nave, and the decoration (floor, walls
and arches) of the new nave. The St Peter's Baldacchino immediately became the
visual centerpiece of the new St. Peter's. Designed as a massive spiraling gilded
bronze canopy over the tomb of St Peter, Bernini's four-pillared creation reached
nearly 30 m (98 ft) from the ground and cost around 200,000 Roman scudi (about
$8m in currency of the early 21st century). "Quite simply", writes one art
historian, "nothing like it had ever been seen before". Soon after the St Peter's
Baldacchino, Bernini undertook the whole-scale embellishment of the four
massive piers at crossing of the basilica (i.e., the structures supporting the cupola)
including, most notably, four colossal, theatrically dramatic statues, among them,
the majestic St. Longinus executed by Bernini himself (the other three are by
other contemporary sculptors François Duquesnoy, Francesco Mochi, and
Bernini's disciple, Andrea Bolgi).
In the basilica, Bernini also began work on the tomb for Urban VIII, completed
only after Urban's death in 1644, one in a long, distinguished series of tombs and
funerary monuments for which Bernini is famous and a traditional genre upon
which his influence left an enduring mark, often copied by subsequent artists.
Indeed, Bernini's final and most original tomb monument, the Tomb of Pope
Alexander VII, in St. Peter's Basilica, represents, according to Erwin Panofsky, the
very pinnacle of European funerary art, whose creative inventiveness subsequent
artists could not hope to surpass. Begun and largely completed during Alexander
VII's reign, Bernini's design of the Piazza San Pietro in front of the Basilica is one of
his most innovative and successful architectural designs, which transformed a
formerly irregular, inchoate open space into an aesthetically unified, emotionally
thrilling, and logistically efficient (for carriages and crowds), completely in
harmony with the pre-exiting buildings and other features and adding to the
majesty of the basilica.

Bust of Armand, Cardinal de Richelieu (1640-1641)

Despite this engagement with public architecture, Bernini was still able to
produce artworks that showed the gradual refinement of his portrait technique. A
number of Bernini's sculptures show the continual evolution of his ability to
capture the utterly distinctive personal characteristics that he saw in his sitters.
This included a number of busts of Urban VIII himself, the family bust of Francesco
Barberini or most notably, the Two Busts of Scipione Borghese—the second of
which had been rapidly created by Bernini once a flaw had been found in the
marble of the first. The transitory nature of the expression on Scipione's face is
often noted by art historians, iconic of the Baroque concern for representing
movement in static artworks. To Rudolf Wittkower the "beholder feels that in the
twinkle of an eye not only might the expression and attitude change but also the
folds of the casually arranged mantle".
Portraits in marble include that of Costanza Bonarelli (executed around 1637),
unusual in its more personal, intimate nature (in fact, it would appear to be the
first fully finished marble portrait of a non-aristocratic woman by a major artist in
European history). Bernini had an affair with Costanza, who was the wife of one of
his assistants. When Bernini then suspected Costanza of involvement with his
brother, he badly beat him and ordered a servant to slash her face with a razor.
Pope Urban VIII intervened on his behalf, and he was simply fined.
Beginning in the late 1630s, now known in Europe as one of the most
accomplished portraitists in marble, Bernini also began to receive royal
commissions from outside Rome, for subjects such as Cardinal Richelieu of
France, Francesco I d'Este the powerful Duke of Modena, Charles I of
England and his wife, Queen Henrietta Maria. The sculpture of Charles I was
produced in Rome from a triple portrait (oil on canvas) executed by Van Dyck,
that survives today in the British Royal Collection. The bust of Charles was lost in
the Whitehall Palace fire of 1698 (though its design is known through
contemporary copies and drawings) and that of Henrietta Maria was not
undertaken due to the outbreak of the English Civil War.
Temporary eclipse and resurgence under Innocent X

Ecstasy of Saint Teresa, 1651

Under Urban VIII, Bernini had been appointed chief architect for the basilica of St.
Peter's. Work by Bernini included the aforementioned Baldacchino and the St
Longinus. In 1636, eager to finally finish the exterior of St. Peter's, Pope Urban
ordered Bernini to design and build the two long-intended bell towers for its
facade: the foundations of the two towers had already been designed and
constructed (namely, the last bays at either extremity of the facade) by Carlo
Maderno (architect of the nave and the facade) decades earlier. Once the first
tower was finished in 1641, cracks began to appear in the facade but, curiously
enough, work continued on the second tower and the first storey was completed.
Despite the presence of the cracks, work only stopped in July 1642 once the papal
treasury had been exhausted by the disastrous War
of Castro. With the death of Pope Urban and the
ascent to power of Barberini-enemy in 1644, Pope
Innocent X Pamphilj, Bernini's enemies (especially
Borromini) raised a great alarm over the cracks,
predicting a disaster for the whole basilica and
placing the blame entirely on Bernini. The
subsequent investigations, in fact, revealed the
cause of the cracks as Maderno's defective
foundations and not Bernini's elaborate design, an exoneration later confirmed by
the meticulous investigation conducted in 1680 under Pope Innocent XI.
Truth Unveiled by Time, Galleria Borghese, Rome.
Nonetheless, Bernini's opponents in Rome succeeded in seriously damaging the
reputation of Urban's artist and in persuading the pope to order (in February
1646) the complete demolition of both towers, to Bernini's great humiliation and
indeed financial detriment. After this, one of the rare failures of his career,
Bernini retreated into himself: according to his son, Domenico. his subsequent
unfinished statue of 1647, Truth Unveiled by Time, was intended to be his self-
consoling commentary on this affair, expressing his faith that eventually Time
would reveal the actual Truth behind the story and exonerate him fully, as indeed
did occur.
Bernini did not entirely lose patronage, not even of the pope. Innocent X
maintained Bernini in all of the official roles given to him by Urban. Under
Bernini's design and direction, work continued on decorating the massive new but
entirely unadorned nave of St. Peter's, with the addition of an elaborate multi-
colored marble flooring, marble facing on the walls and pilasters, and scores of
stuccoed statues and reliefs. It is not without reason that Pope Alexander VII once
quipped, 'if one were to remove from Saint Peter's everything that had been
made by the Cavalier Bernini, that temple would be stripped bare.' Indeed, given
all of his many and various works within the basilica over several decades, it is to
Bernini that is due the lion's share of responsibility for the final and enduring
aesthetic appearance and emotional impact of St. Peter's.[33] He was also allowed
to continue to work on Urban VIII's tomb, despite Innocent's antipathy for the
Barberini.[34] A few months after completing Urban's tomb, Bernini won, in
controversial circumstances, the Pamphilj
commission for the prestigious Four Rivers
Fountain on Piazza Navona, marking the end of his
disgrace and the beginning a yet another glorious
chapter in his life.

Memorial to Maria Raggi, 1651.

If there had been doubts over Bernini's position as
Rome's preeminent artist, the success of the Four
Rivers Fountain removed them. Bernini continued
to receive commissions from Pope Innocent X and other senior members of
Rome's clergy and aristocracy, as well as from exalted patrons outside of Rome,
such as Francesco d'Este. In such an environment, Bernini's artistic style
flourished. New types of funerary monument were designed, such as the
seemingly floating medallion, hovering in the air as it were, for the deceased
nun Maria Raggi, while chapels he designed, such as the Raimondi Chapel in the
church of San Pietro in Montorio, illustrated how Bernini could use hidden lighting
to help suggest divine intervention within the narratives he was depicting.
The Cornaro Chapel showcased Bernini's ability to integrate sculpture,
architecture, fresco, stucco, and lighting into "a marvelous whole" (bel composto,
to use early biographer Filippo Baldinucci's term to describe his approach to
architecture) and thus create what scholar Irving Lavin has called the "unified
work of art". The central focus of the Cornaro Chapel is the ecstasy of the Spanish
nun and saint-mystic, Teresa of Avila. Bernini presents the spectator with a
theatrically vivid portrait, in gleaming white marble, of the swooning Teresa and
the quietly smiling angel, who delicately grips the arrow piercing the saint's heart.
On either side of the chapel the artist places (in what can only strike the viewer as
theater boxes), portraits in relief of various members of the Cornaro family — the
Venetian family memorialized in the chapel, including Cardinal Federico Cornaro
who commissioned the chapel from Bernini — who are in animated conversation
among themselves, presumably about the event taking place before them. The
result is a complex but subtly orchestrated architectural environment providing
the spiritual context (a heavenly setting with a hidden source of light) that
suggests to viewers the ultimate nature of this miraculous event.
It was an artistic tour de force that incorporates all of the multiple forms of visual
art and technique that Bernini had at his disposal, including hidden lighting, thin
gilded beams, recessive architectural space, secret lens, and over twenty diverse
types of colored marble: these all combine to create the final artwork—"a
perfected, highly dramatic and deeply satisfying seamless ensemble".
Embellishment of Rome under Alexander VII
Upon his accession to the Chair of St Peter, Pope Alexander VII Chigi (1655–67)
began to implement his extremely ambitious plan to transform Rome into a
magnificent world capital by means of systematic, bold (and costly) urban
planning. In so doing, he brought to fruition the long, slow recreation of the urban
glory of Rome—the "renovatio Romae"—that had begun in the fifteenth century
under the Renaissance popes. Alexander immediately commissioned large-scale
architectural changes in the city, for example connecting new and existing
buildings by opening up streets and piazzas. Bernini's career showed a greater
focus on designing buildings (and their immediate surroundings) during this
pontificate, as there were far greater opportunities.

Visit to France and service to King Louis XIV

Bust of Louis XIV, 1665
At the end of April 1665, and still considered the most important artist in Rome, if
indeed not in all of Europe, Bernini was forced by political pressure (from both the
French court and Pope Alexander VII) to travel to Paris to work for King Louis XIV,
who required an architect to complete work on the royal palace of the Louvre.
Bernini would remain in Paris until mid-October. Louis XIV assigned a member of
his court to serve as Bernini's translator, tourist guide,
and overall companion, Paul Fréart de Chantelou, who
kept a Journal of Bernini's visit that records much of
Bernini's behaviour and utterances in Paris. The writer
Charles Perrault, who was serving at this time as an
assistant to the French Finance Minister Jean-Baptiste
Colbert, also provided a first-hand account of Bernini's
visit.[43]
Bernini's popularity was such that on his walks in Paris the
streets were lined with admiring crowds. But things soon
turned sour. Bernini presented finished designs for the
east front (i.e., the all-important principal facade of the
entire palace) of the Louvre, which were ultimately rejected, albeit formally not
until 1667, well after his departure from Paris (indeed, the already constructed
foundations for Bernini's Louvre addition were inaugurated in October 1665 in an
elaborate ceremony, with both Bernini and King Louis in attendance). It is often
stated in the scholarship on Bernini that his Louvre designs were turned down
because Louis and his financial advisor Jean-Baptiste Colbert considered them too
Italianate or too Baroque in style. In fact, as Franco Mormando points out,
"aesthetics are never mentioned in any of [the] . . . surviving memos" by Colbert
or any of the artistic advisors at the French court. The explicit reasons for the
rejections were utilitarian, namely, on the level of physical security and comfort
(e.g., location of the latrines). It is also indisputable that there was an
interpersonal conflict between Bernini and the young French king, each one
feeling insufficiently respected by the other. Though his design for the Louvre
went unbuilt, it circulated widely throughout Europe by means of engravings and
its direct influence can be seen in subsequent stately residences such as
Chatsworth House, Derbyshire, England, seat of the Dukes of Devonshire.
Other projects in Paris suffered a similar fate. With the exception of Chantelou,
Bernini failed to forge significant friendships at the French court. His frequent
negative comments on various aspects of French culture, especially its art and
architecture, did not go down well, particularly in juxtaposition to his praise for
the art and architecture of Italy (especially Rome); he said that a painting
by Guido Reni was worth more than all of Paris. The sole work remaining from his
time in Paris is the Bust of Louis XIV although he also contributed a great deal to
the execution of the Christ Child Playing with a Nail marble relief (now in the
Louvre) by his son Paolo as a gift to the Queen of France. Back in Rome, Bernini
created a monumental equestrian statue of Louis XIV; when it finally reached
Paris (in 1685, five years after the artist's death), the French king found it
extremely repugnant and wanted it destroyed; it was instead re-carved into a
representation of the ancient Roman hero Marcus Curtius.
Later years and death

Tomb of Gian Lorenzo Bernini in Basilica di Santa Maria Maggiore

The grave of Bernini in the Basilica di Santa Maria Maggiore

Bernini remained physically and mentally vigorous and active in his profession
until just two weeks before his death that came as a result of a stroke. The
pontificate of his old friend, Clement IX, was too short (barely two years) to
accomplish more than the dramatic refurbishment by Bernini of the Ponte
Sant'Angelo, while the artist's elaborate plan, under Clement, for a new apse for
the basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore came to an unpleasant end in the midst of
public uproar over its cost and the destruction of ancient mosaics that it entailed.
The last two popes of Bernini's life, Clement X and Innocent XI, were both not
especially close and sympathetic to Bernini and not particularly interested in
financing works of art and architecture, especially given the disastrous conditions
of the papal treasury. The most important commission by Bernini under Clement
X was the statue of the Blessed Ludovica Albertoni, another nun-mystic, a work
reminiscent of Bernini's Ecstasy of Saint Teresa. In his last two years, Bernini also
carved (supposedly for Queen Christina) the bust of the Savior (Basilica of San
Sebastiano fuori le Mura, Rome) and supervised the restoration of the historic
Palazzo della Cancelleria as per papal commission under Innocent XI.
Shortly after the completion of the latter project, Bernini died in his home on 28
November 1680 and was buried, with little public fanfare, in the simple,
unadorned Bernini family vault, along with his parents, in the Basilica di Santa
Maria Maggiore. Though an elaborate funerary monument had once been
planned (documented by a single extant sketch of circa 1670 by disciple Ludovico
Gimignani), it was never built and Bernini remained with no permanent public
acknowledgement of his life and career in Rome until 1898 when, on the
anniversary of his birth, a simple plaque and small bust was affixed to the face of
his home on the Via della Mercede, proclaiming "Here lived and died Gianlorenzo
Bernini, a sovereign of art, before whom reverently bowed popes, princes, and a
multitude of peoples."

Architecture
Bernini's architectural works include sacred and secular buildings and sometimes
their urban settings and interiors. He made adjustments to existing buildings and
designed new constructions. Amongst his most well-known works are the Piazza
San Pietro (1656–67), the piazza and colonnades in front of St. Peter's Basilica and
the interior decoration of the Basilica. Amongst his secular works are a number of
Roman palaces: following the death of Carlo Maderno, he took over the
supervision of the building works at the Palazzo Barberini from 1630 on which he
worked with Borromini; the Palazzo Ludovisi (now Palazzo Montecitorio, started
1650); and the Palazzo Chigi (now Palazzo Chigi-Odescalchi, started 1664).
St. Peter's baldachin, 1624–1633
His first architectural projects were the façade and refurbishment of the church
of Santa Bibiana (1624–26) and the St. Peter's baldachin (1624–33), the bronze
columned canopy over the high altar of St. Peter's Basilica. In 1629, and before St.
Peter's Baldachin was complete, Urban VIII put him in charge of all the ongoing
architectural works at St Peter's. However, Bernini fell out of favor during the
papacy of Innocent X Pamphili: one reason was the pope's animosity towards the
Barberini and hence towards their clients including Bernini. Another reason was
the failure of the belltowers designed and built by Bernini for St. Peter's Basilica,
commencing during the reign of Urban VIII. The completed north tower and the
only partially completed south tower were ordered demolished by Innocent in
1646 because their excessive weight had caused cracks in the basilica's facade
and threatened to do more calamitous damage. Professional opinion at the time
was in fact divided over the true gravity of the situation (with Bernini's rival
Borromini spreading an extreme, anti-Bernini catastrophic view of the problem)
and over the question of responsibility for the damage: Who was to blame?
Bernini? Pope Urban VIII who forced Bernini to design overelaborate towers?
Deceased Architect of St. Peter's, Carlo Maderno who built the weak foundations
for the towers? Official papal investigations in 1680 in fact completely exonerated
Bernini, while inculpating Maderno. Never wholly without patronage during the
Pamphili years, after Innocent's death in 1655 Bernini regained a major role in the
decoration of St. Peter's with the Pope Alexander VII Chigi, leading to his design of
the piazza and colonnade in front of St. Peter's. Further significant works by
Bernini at the Vatican include the Scala Regia (1663–66), the monumental grand
stairway entrance to the Vatican Palace, and the Cathedra Petri, the Chair of Saint
Peter, in the apse of St. Peter's, in addition to the Chapel of the Blessed
Sacrament in the nave.
View of the piazza and colonnade in front of St.
Peter's
Bernini did not build many churches from scratch; rather, his efforts were
concentrated on pre-existing structures, such as the restored church of Santa
Bibbiana and in particular St. Peter's. He fulfilled three commissions for new
churches in Rome and nearby small towns. Best known is the small but richly
ornamented oval church of Sant'Andrea al Quirinale, done (beginning in 1658) for
the Jesuit novitiate, representing one of the rare works of his hand with which
Bernini's son, Domenico, reports that his father was truly and very
pleased. Bernini also designed churches in Castelgandolfo (San Tommaso da
Villanova, 1658–61) and Ariccia (Santa Maria Assunta, 1662–64), and was
responsible for the re-modeling of the Santuario della Madonna di Galloro (just
outside of Ariccia), endowing it with a majestic new facade.
When Bernini was invited to Paris in 1665 to prepare works for Louis XIV, he
presented designs for the east facade of the Louvre Palace, but his projects were
ultimately turned down in favour of the more sober and classic proposals of the
French doctor and amateur architect Claude Perrault, signaling the waning
influence of Italian artistic hegemony in France. Bernini's projects were essentially
rooted in the Italian Baroque urbanist tradition of relating public buildings to their
settings, often leading to innovative architectural expression in urban spaces
like piazze or squares. However, by this time, the French absolutist monarchy now
preferred the classicising monumental severity of Perrault's facade, no doubt with
the added political bonus that it had been designed by a Frenchman. The final
version did, however, include Bernini's feature of a flat roof behind a Palladian
balustrade.
Fountains in Rome

Fontana dei Quattro Fiumi

True to the decorative dynamism of Baroque, among Bernini's most gifted
creations were his Roman fountains, which were both public works and papal
monuments. His fountains include the Fountain of the Triton, or Fontana del
Tritone, and the Barberini Fountain of the Bees, the Fontana delle Api. The
Fountain of the Four Rivers, or Fontana dei Quattro Fiumi, in the Piazza Navona is
a masterpiece of spectacle and political allegory. An oft-repeated, but false,
anecdote tells that one of the Bernini's river gods defers his gaze in disapproval of
the facade of Sant'Agnese in Agone (designed by the talented, but less politically
successful, rival Francesco Borromini), impossible because the fountain was built
several years before the façade of the church was completed. Bernini was also the
artist of the statue of the Moor in La Fontana del Moro in Piazza Navona (1653).
Tomb Monuments and Other Works
Another major category of Bernini's activity was that of the tomb monument, a
genre on which his distinctive new style exercised a decisive and long-enduring
influence; included in this category are his tombs for Popes Urban VIII and
Alexander VII (both in St. Peter's Basilica), Cardinal Domenico Pimental (Santa
Maria sopra Minerva, Rome, design only), and Matilda of Canossa (St. Peter's
Basilica). Related to the tomb monument is the funerary memorial, of which
Bernini executed several (including that, most notably, of Maria Raggi [Santa
Maria sopra Minerva, Rome] also of greatly innovative style and long enduring
influence.[60] Among his smaller commissions, although not mentioned by either
of his earliest biographers, Baldinucci or Domenico Bernini, the Elephant and
Obelisk is a sculpture located near the Pantheon, in the Piazza della Minerva, in
front of the Dominican church of Santa Maria sopra Minerva. Pope Alexander
VII decided that he wanted a small ancient Egyptian obelisk (that was discovered
beneath the piazza) to be erected on the same site, and in 1665 he commissioned
Bernini to create a sculpture to support the obelisk. The sculpture of an elephant
bearing the obelisk on its back was executed by one of Bernini's students, Ercole
Ferrata, upon a design by his master, and finished in 1667. An inscription on the
base relates the Egyptian goddess Isis and the Roman goddess Minerva to the
Virgin Mary, who supposedly supplanted those pagan goddesses and to whom
the church is dedicated. A popular anecdote concerns the elephant's smile. To
find out why it is smiling, legend has it, the viewer must examine the rear end of
the animal and notice that its muscles are tensed and its tail is shifted to the left
as if it were defecating. The animal's rear is pointed directly at one of the
headquarters of the Dominican Order, housing the offices of its Inquisitors as well
as the office of Father Giuseppe Paglia, a Dominican friar who was one of the
main antagonists of Bernini, as a final salute and last word.

Gian Lorenzo Bernini in 1665, painted by Giovanni Battista Gaulli

Among his minor commissions for non-Roman patrons or venues, in 1677 Bernini
worked along with Ercole Ferrata to create a fountain for the Lisbon palace of the
Portuguese nobleman, the Count of Ericeira: copying his earlier fountains, Bernini
supplied the design of the fountain sculpted by Ferrata, featuring Neptune with
four tritons around a basin. The fountain has survived and since 1945 has been
outside the precincts of the gardens of the Palacio Nacional de Queluz, several
miles outside of Lisbon.
Paintings and Drawings
Bernini would have studied painting as a normal part of his artistic training begun
in early adolescence under the guidance of his father, Pietro, in addition to some
further training in the studio of the Florentine painter, Cigoli. His earliest activity
as a painter was probably no more than a sporadic diversion practiced mainly in
his youth, until the mid-1620s, that is, the beginning of the pontificate of Pope
Urban VIII (reigned 1623-1644) who ordered Bernini to study painting in greater
earnest because the pontiff wanted him to decorate the Benediction Loggia of St.
Peter's. The latter commission was never executed most likely because the
required large-scale narrative compositions were simply beyond Bernini's ability
as a painter. According to his early biographers, Baldinucci and Domenico Bernini,
Bernini completed at least 150 canvases, mostly in the decades of the 1620s and
30s, but currently there are no more than 35-40 surviving paintings that can be
confidently attributed to his hand. The extant, securely attributed works are
mostly portraits, seen close up and set against an empty background, employing a
confident, indeed brilliant, painterly brushstroke (similar to that of his Spanish
contemporary Velasquez), free from any trace of pedantry, and a very limited
palette of mostly warm, subdued colors with deep chiaroscuro. His work was
immediately sought after by major collectors. Most noteworthy among these
extant works are several, vividly penetrating self-portraits, especially that in the
Uffizi Gallery, Florence, purchased during Bernini's lifetime by Cardinal Leopoldo
de' Medici. The only canvas that is securely dated is that of the Apostles Andrew
and Thomas in London's National Gallery.
As for Bernini's drawings, about 300 still exist; but this is a minuscule percentage
of the drawings he would have created in his lifetime; these include rapid
sketches relating to major sculptural or architectural commissions, presentation
drawings given as gifts to his patrons and aristocratic friends, and exquisite, fully
finished portraits, such as those of Agostino Mascardi (Ecole des Beaux-Arts,
Paris) and Scipione Borghese and Sisinio Poli (both in New York's Morgan Library).
Caravaggio
Michelangelo Merisi (Michele Angelo
Merigi or Amerighi) da Caravaggio (28 September
1571[2] – 18 July 1610) was an Italian painter active
in Rome, Naples, Malta, and Sicily from the early
1590s to 1610. His paintings combine a realistic
observation of the human state, both physical and
emotional, with a dramatic use of lighting, which
had a formative influence on Baroque painting.
Caravaggio employed close physical observation
with a dramatic use of chiaroscuro that came to be
known as tenebrism. He made the technique a
dominant stylistic element, darkening shadows
and transfixing subjects in bright shafts of light.
Caravaggio vividly expressed crucial moments and Born Michelangelo Merisi or
scenes, often featuring violent struggles, torture Amerighi
and death. He worked rapidly, with live models, 29 September 1571
preferring to forgo drawings and work directly
onto the canvas. His influence on the new Baroque Milan, Duchy of
style that emerged from Mannerism was Milan, Spanish Empire[1]
profound. It can be seen directly or indirectly in
the work of Peter Paul Rubens, Jusepe de Died 18 July 1610 (aged 38)
Ribera, Gian Lorenzo Bernini, and Rembrandt, and Porto Ercole, State of
artists in the following generation heavily under the Presidi, Spanish
his influence were called the "Caravaggisti" or Empire
"Caravagesques", as well
as tenebrists or tenebrosi ("shadowists"). Known for Painting
Caravaggio trained as a painter in Milan before
moving in his twenties to Rome. He developed a Movement Baroque
considerable name as an artist, and as a violent,
touchy and provocative man. A brawl led to a
death sentence for murder and forced him to flee
to Naples. There he again established himself as
Patron(s) Cardinal Francesco
one of the most prominent Italian painters of his
Maria del Monte
generation. He traveled in 1607 to Malta and on to
Alof de Wignacourt
Sicily, and pursued a papal pardon for his
sentence. In 1609 he returned to Naples, where he was involved in a violent clash;
his face was disfigured and rumours of his death circulated. Questions about his
mental state arose from his erratic and bizarre behavior. He died in 1610 under
uncertain circumstances while on his way from Naples to Rome. Reports stated
that he died of a fever, but suggestions have been made that he was murdered or
that he died of lead poisoning.
Caravaggio's innovations inspired Baroque painting, but the Baroque incorporated
the drama of his chiaroscuro without the psychological realism. The style evolved
and fashions changed, and Caravaggio fell out of favor. In the 20th century
interest in his work revived, and his importance to the development of Western
art was reevaluated. The 20th-century art historian André Berne-Joffroy stated,
"What begins in the work of Caravaggio is, quite simply,
modern painting.”
Early life (1571–1592)

Basket of Fruit, c. 1595–1596, oil on canvas, Pinacoteca

Ambrosiana, Milan
Caravaggio (Michelangelo Merisi or Amerighi) was born
in Milan, where his father, Fermo (Fermo Merixio), was a
household administrator and architect-decorator to the Marchese of Caravaggio,
a town not far from the city of Bergamo.[7] In 1576 the family moved to
Caravaggio (Caravaggius) to escape a plague that ravaged Milan, and Caravaggio's
father and grandfather both died there on the same day in 1577. It is assumed
that the artist grew up in Caravaggio, but his family kept up connections with
the Sforzas and with the powerful Colonna family, who were allied by marriage
with the Sforzas and destined to play a major role later in Caravaggio's life.
Caravaggio's mother died in 1584, the same year he began his four-year
apprenticeship to the Milanese painter Simone Peterzano, described in the
contract of apprenticeship as a pupil of Titian. Caravaggio appears to have stayed
in the Milan-Caravaggio area after his apprenticeship ended, but it is possible that
he visited Venice and saw the works of Giorgione, whom Federico Zuccari later
accused him of imitating, and Titian. He would also have become familiar with the
art treasures of Milan, including Leonardo da Vinci's Last Supper, and with the
regional Lombard art, a style that valued simplicity and attention
to naturalistic detail and was closer to the naturalism of Germany than to the
stylised formality and grandeur of Roman Mannerism.
Beginnings in Rome (1592/95–1600)
Following his initial training under Simone Peterzano, in 1592 Caravaggio left
Milan for Rome, in flight after "certain quarrels" and the wounding of a police
officer. The young artist arrived in Rome "naked and extremely needy ... without
fixed address and without provision ... short of money." During this period he
stayed with the miserly Pandolfo Pucci, known as "monnsignor Insalata". A few
months later he was performing hack-work for the highly successful Giuseppe
Cesari, Pope Clement VIII's favourite artist, "painting flowers and fruit" in his
factory-like workshop.
In Rome there was demand for paintings to fill the many huge new churches
and palazzi being built at the time. It was also a period when the Church was
searching for a stylistic alternative to Mannerism in religious art that was tasked
to counter the threat of Protestantism. Caravaggio's innovation was a
radical naturalism that combined close physical observation with a dramatic, even
theatrical, use of chiaroscuro that came to be
known as tenebrism (the shift from light to dark
with little intermediate value).

The Musicians, 1595–1596, Metropolitan Museum

of Art, New York
Known works from this period include a small Boy
Peeling a Fruit (his earliest known painting), a Boy
with a Basket of Fruit, and the Young Sick Bacchus, supposedly a self-portrait
done during convalescence from a serious illness that ended his employment with
Cesari. All three demonstrate the physical particularity for which Caravaggio was
to become renowned: the fruit-basket-boy's produce has been analysed by a
professor of horticulture, who was able to identify individual cultivars right down
to "... a large fig leaf with a prominent fungal scorch lesion
resembling anthracnose (Glomerella cingulata)."
Caravaggio left Cesari, determined to make his own way after a heated argument.
At this point he forged some extremely important friendships, with the
painter Prospero Orsi, the architect Onorio Longhi, and the sixteen-year-
old Sicilian artist Mario Minniti. Orsi, established in the profession, introduced
him to influential collectors; Longhi, more balefully, introduced him to the world
of Roman street-brawls. Minniti served Caravaggio as a model and, years later,
would be instrumental in helping him to obtain important commissions in Sicily.
Ostensibly, the first archival reference to Caravaggio in a contemporary document
from Rome is the listing of his name, with that of Prospero Orsi as his partner, as
an 'assistante' in a procession in October 1594 in honour of St. Luke. The earliest
informative account of his life in the city is a court transcript dated 11 July 1597,
when Caravaggio and Prospero Orsi were witnesses to a crime near San Luigi de'
Francesi.
An early published notice on Caravaggio, dating from 1604 and describing his
lifestyle three years previously, recounts that "after a fortnight's work he will
swagger about for a month or two with a sword at his side and a servant following
him, from one ball-court to the next, ever ready to engage in a fight or an
argument, so that it is most awkward to get along with him." In 1606 he killed a
young man in a brawl, possibly unintentionally, and fled from Rome with a death
sentence hanging over him.

Judith Beheading Holofernes 1599–1602, Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Antica, Rome

Saint Francis of Assisi in Ecstasy (c. 1595), Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford

The Fortune Teller, his first composition with more than one figure, shows a boy,
likely Minniti, having his palm read by a gypsy girl, who is stealthily removing his
ring as she strokes his hand. The theme was quite new for Rome, and proved
immensely influential over the next century and beyond. This, however, was in
the future: at the time, Caravaggio sold it for practically nothing. The Cardsharps –
showing another naïve youth of privilege falling the victim of card cheats – is even
more psychologically complex, and perhaps Caravaggio's first true masterpiece.
Like The Fortune Teller, it was immensely popular, and over 50 copies survive.
More importantly, it attracted the patronage of Cardinal Francesco Maria del
Monte, one of the leading connoisseurs in Rome. For Del Monte and his wealthy
art-loving circle, Caravaggio executed a number of intimate chamber-pieces – The
Musicians, The Lute Player, a tipsy Bacchus, an allegorical but realistic Boy Bitten
by a Lizard – featuring Minniti and other adolescent models.
Caravaggio's first paintings on religious themes returned to realism, and the
emergence of remarkable spirituality. The first of these was the Penitent
Magdalene, showing Mary Magdalene at the moment when she has turned from
her life as a courtesan and sits weeping on the floor, her jewels scattered around
her. "It seemed not a religious painting at all ... a girl sitting on a low wooden stool
drying her hair ... Where was the repentance ... suffering ... promise of
salvation?" It was understated, in the Lombard manner, not histrionic in the
Roman manner of the time. It was followed by others in the same style: Saint
Catherine; Martha and Mary Magdalene; Judith Beheading Holofernes; a Sacrifice
of Isaac; a Saint Francis of Assisi in Ecstasy; and a Rest on the Flight into Egypt.
These works, while viewed by a comparatively limited circle, increased
Caravaggio's fame with both connoisseurs and his fellow artists. But a true
reputation would depend on public commissions, and for these it was necessary
to look to the Church.
Already evident was the intense realism or naturalism for which Caravaggio is
now famous. He preferred to paint his subjects as the eye sees them, with all their
natural flaws and defects instead of as idealised creations. This allowed a full
display of his virtuosic talents. This shift from accepted standard practice and the
classical idealism of Michelangelo was very controversial at the time. Caravaggio
also dispensed with the lengthy preparations traditional in central Italy at the
time. Instead, he preferred the Venetian practice of working in oils directly from
the subject – half-length figures and still life. Supper at Emmaus, from c. 1600–
1601, is a characteristic work of this period demonstrating his virtuoso talent.
"Most famous painter in Rome" (1600–1606)
In 1599, presumably through the influence of Del Monte, Caravaggio was
contracted to decorate the Contarelli Chapel in the church of San Luigi dei
Francesi. The two works making up the commission, the Martyrdom of Saint
Matthew and Calling of Saint Matthew, delivered in 1600, were an immediate
sensation. Thereafter he never lacked commissions or patrons.

The Calling of Saint Matthew (1599–1600), Contarelli Chapel, San Luigi dei
Francesi, Rome. Without recourse to flying angels, parting clouds or other artifice,
Caravaggio portrays the instant conversion of St Matthew, the moment on which
his destiny will turn, by means of a beam of light and the pointing finger of Jesus.
Caravaggio's tenebrism (a heightened chiaroscuro) brought high drama to his
subjects, while his acutely observed realism brought a new level of emotional
intensity. Opinion among his artist peers was polarized. Some denounced him for
various perceived failings, notably his insistence on painting from life, without
drawings, but for the most part he was hailed as a great artistic visionary: "The
painters then in Rome were greatly taken by this novelty, and the young ones
particularly gathered around him, praised him as the unique imitator of nature,
and looked on his work as miracles."
Caravaggio went on to secure a string of prestigious commissions for religious
works featuring violent struggles, grotesque decapitations, torture and death,
most notable and most technically masterful among them The Taking of Christ of
circa 1602 for the Mattei Family, recently rediscovered in Ireland after two
centuries. For the most part each new painting increased his fame, but a few
were rejected by the various bodies for whom they were intended, at least in
their original forms, and had to be re-painted or find new buyers. The essence of
the problem was that while Caravaggio's dramatic intensity was appreciated, his
realism was seen by some as unacceptably vulgar.
His first version of Saint Matthew and the Angel, featuring the saint as a bald
peasant with dirty legs attended by a lightly clad over-familiar boy-angel, was
rejected and a second version had to be painted as The Inspiration of Saint
Matthew. Similarly, The Conversion of Saint Paul was rejected, and while another
version of the same subject, the Conversion on the Way to Damascus, was
accepted, it featured the saint's horse's haunches far more prominently than the
saint himself, prompting this exchange between the artist and an exasperated
official of Santa Maria del Popolo: "Why have you put a horse in the middle,
and Saint Paul on the ground?" "Because!" "Is the horse God?" "No, but he stands
in God's light!"

Death of the Virgin, 1601–1606, Louvre, Paris

Other works included Entombment, the Madonna di Loreto (Madonna of the
Pilgrims), the Grooms' Madonna, and the Death of the Virgin. The history of these
last two paintings illustrates the reception given to some of Caravaggio's art, and
the times in which he lived. The Grooms' Madonna, also known as Madonna dei
palafrenieri, painted for a small altar in Saint Peter's Basilica in Rome, remained
there for just two days, and was then taken off. A cardinal's secretary wrote: "In
this painting there are but vulgarity, sacrilege, impiousness and disgust...One
would say it is a work made by a painter that can paint well, but of a dark spirit,
and who has been for a lot of time far from God, from His adoration, and from
any good thought..."

Amor Vincit Omnia, 1601–1602, Gemäldegalerie, Berlin.

Caravaggio shows Cupid prevailing over all human
endeavors: war, music, science, government.
The Death of the Virgin, commissioned in 1601 by a wealthy jurist for his private
chapel in the new Carmelite church of Santa Maria della Scala, was rejected by
the Carmelites in 1606. Caravaggio's contemporary Giulio Mancini records that it
was rejected because Caravaggio had used a well-known prostitute as his model
for the Virgin. Giovanni Baglione, another contemporary, tells us it was due to
Mary's bare legs—a matter of decorum in either case. Caravaggio scholar John
Gash suggests that the problem for the Carmelites may have been theological
rather than aesthetic, in that Caravaggio's version fails to assert the doctrine of
the Assumption of Mary, the idea that the Mother of God did not die in any
ordinary sense but was assumed into Heaven. The replacement altarpiece
commissioned (from one of Caravaggio's most able followers, Carlo Saraceni),
showed the Virgin not dead, as Caravaggio had painted her, but seated and dying;
and even this was rejected, and replaced with a work showing the Virgin not
dying, but ascending into Heaven with choirs of angels. In any case, the rejection
did not mean that Caravaggio or his paintings were out of favour. The Death of
the Virgin was no sooner taken out of the church than it was purchased by the
Duke of Mantua, on the advice of Rubens, and later acquired by Charles I of
England before entering the French royal collection in 1671.
One secular piece from these years is Amor Vincit Omnia, in English also
called Amor Victorious, painted in 1602 for Vincenzo Giustiniani, a member of Del
Monte's circle. The model was named in a memoir of the early 17th century as
"Cecco", the diminutive for Francesco. He is possibly Francesco Boneri, identified
with an artist active in the period 1610–1625 and known as Cecco del
Caravaggio ('Caravaggio's Cecco'), carrying a bow and arrows and trampling
symbols of the warlike and peaceful arts and sciences underfoot. He is unclothed,
and it is difficult to accept this grinning urchin as the Roman god Cupid – as
difficult as it was to accept Caravaggio's other semi-clad adolescents as the
various angels he painted in his canvases, wearing much the same stage-prop
wings. The point, however, is the intense yet ambiguous reality of the work: it is
simultaneously Cupid and Cecco, as Caravaggio's Virgins were simultaneously the
Mother of Christ and the Roman courtesans who modeled for them.
A crime too many (1606)
St. Jerome, 1605–1606, Galleria Borghese, Rome.
Caravaggio led a tumultuous life. He was notorious for brawling, even in a time
and place when such behavior was commonplace, and the transcripts of his police
records and trial proceedings fill several pages. On 29 May 1606, he killed,
possibly unintentionally, a young man named Ranuccio Tomassoni
from Terni (Umbria). The circumstances of the brawl and the death of Ranuccio
Tomassoni remain mysterious. Several contemporary avvisi referred to a quarrel
over a gambling debt and a tennis game, and this explanation has become
established in the popular imagination. But recent scholarship has made it clear
that more was involved. Good modern accounts are to be found in Peter
Robb's M and Helen Langdon's Caravaggio: A Life. A theory relating the death to
Renaissance notions of honour and symbolic wounding has been advanced by art
historian Andrew Graham-Dixon.[32] Whatever the details, it was a serious
matter. Previously, his high-placed patrons had protected him from the
consequences of his escapades, but this time they could do nothing. Caravaggio,
outlawed, fled to Naples.
Exile and death (1606–1610)
Naples

The Seven Works of Mercy, 1606–1607, Pio Monte della Misericordia, Naples
Following the death of Tomassoni, Caravaggio fled first to
the estates of the Colonna family south of Rome, then on
to Naples, where Costanza Colonna Sforza, widow of
Francesco Sforza, in whose husband's household
Caravaggio's father had held a position, maintained a
palace. In Naples, outside the jurisdiction of the Roman
authorities and protected by the Colonna family, the most
famous painter in Rome became the most famous in
Naples.
His connections with the Colonnas led to a stream of important church
commissions, including the Madonna of the Rosary, and The Seven Works of
Mercy.[35] The Seven Works of Mercy depicts the seven corporal works of mercy as
a set of compassionate acts concerning the material needs of others. The painting
was made for, and is still housed in, the church of Pio Monte della
Misericordia in Naples. Caravaggio combined all seven works of mercy in one
composition, which became the church's altarpiece. Alessandro Giardino has also
established the connection between the iconography of "The Seven Works of
Mercy" and the cultural, scientific and philosophical circles of the
painting's commissioners.
Malta
Despite his success in Naples, after only a few months in the city Caravaggio left
for Malta, the headquarters of the Knights of Malta. Fabrizio Sforza Colonna,
Costanza's son, was a Knight of Malta and general of the Order's galleys. He
appears to have facilitated Caravaggio's arrival in the island in 1607 (and his
escape the next year). Caravaggio presumably hoped that the patronage of Alof
de Wignacourt, Grand Master of the Knights of Saint John, could help him secure
a pardon for Tomassoni's death. De Wignacourt was so impressed at having the
famous artist as official painter to the Order that he inducted him as a Knight, and
the early biographer Bellori records that the artist was well pleased with his
success.

The Beheading of Saint John (1608) by Caravaggio (Saint John's Co-

Cathedral, Valletta, Malta)
Major works from his Malta period include the Beheading of Saint John the
Baptist, his largest ever work, and the only painting to which he put his
signature, Saint Jerome Writing (both housed in Saint John's Co-
Cathedral, Valletta, Malta) and a Portrait of Alof de Wignacourt and his Page, as
well as portraits of other leading Knights. According to Andrea Pomella, The
Beheading of Saint John the Baptist is widely considered "one of the most
important works in Western painting." Completed in 1608, the painting had been
commissioned by the Knights of Malta as an altarpiece and was the largest
altarpiece Caravaggio painted. It still hangs in St. John's Co-Cathedral, for which it
was commissioned and where Caravaggio himself was inducted and briefly served
as a knight.
Yet, by late August 1608, he was arrested and imprisoned, likely the result of yet
another brawl, this time with an aristocratic knight, during which the door of a
house was battered down and the knight seriously wounded. Caravaggio was
imprisoned by the Knights at Valletta, but he managed to escape. By December,
he had been expelled from the Order "as a foul and rotten member", a formal
phrase used in all such cases.
Sicily

The Raising of Lazarus and the Adoration of the Shepherds, Regional Museum
of Messina
Caravaggio made his way to Sicily where he met his old friend Mario Minniti, who
was now married and living in Syracuse. Together they set off on what amounted
to a triumphal tour from Syracuse to Messina and, maybe, on to the island
capital, Palermo. In Syracuse and Messina Caravaggio continued to win
prestigious and well-paid commissions. Among other works from this period
are Burial of St. Lucy, The Raising of Lazarus, and Adoration of the Shepherds. His
style continued to evolve, showing now friezes of figures isolated against vast
empty backgrounds. "His great Sicilian altarpieces isolate their shadowy, pitifully
poor figures in vast areas of darkness; they suggest the desperate fears and frailty
of man, and at the same time convey, with a new yet desolate tenderness, the
beauty of humility and of the meek, who shall inherit the earth."[45] Contemporary
reports depict a man whose behaviour was becoming increasingly bizarre, which
included sleeping fully armed and in his clothes, ripping up a painting at a slight
word of criticism, and mocking local painters.
Caravaggio displayed bizarre behaviour from very early in his career. Mancini
describes him as "extremely crazy", a letter of Del Monte notes his strangeness,
and Minniti's 1724 biographer says that Mario left Caravaggio because of his
behaviour. The strangeness seems to have increased after Malta. Susinno's early-
18th-century Le vite de' pittori Messinesi ("Lives of the Painters of Messina")
provides several colourful anecdotes of Caravaggio's erratic behaviour in Sicily,
and these are reproduced in modern full-length biographies such as Langdon and
Robb. Bellori writes of Caravaggio's "fear" driving him from city to city across the
island and finally, "feeling that it was no longer safe to remain", back to Naples.
Baglione says Caravaggio was being "chased by his enemy", but like Bellori does
not say who this enemy was.
Return to Naples

Salome with the Head of John the Baptist, Royal Palace of Madrid
After only nine months in Sicily, Caravaggio returned to Naples in the late summer
of 1609. According to his earliest biographer he was being pursued by enemies
while in Sicily and felt it safest to place himself under the protection of the
Colonnas until he could secure his pardon from the pope (now Paul V) and return
to Rome.[46] In Naples he painted The Denial of Saint Peter, a final John the Baptist
(Borghese), and his last picture, The Martyrdom of Saint Ursula. His style
continued to evolve — Saint Ursula is caught in a moment of highest action and
drama, as the arrow fired by the king of the Huns strikes her in the breast, unlike
earlier paintings that had all the immobility of the posed models. The brushwork
was also much freer and more impressionistic.
David with the Head of Goliath, 1609–1610, Galleria Borghese, Rome
In October 1609 he was involved in a violent clash, an attempt on his life, perhaps
ambushed by men in the pay of the knight he had wounded in Malta or some
other faction of the Order. His face was seriously disfigured and rumours
circulated in Rome that he was dead. He painted a Salome with the Head of John
the Baptist (Madrid), showing his own head on a platter, and sent it to de
Wignacourt as a plea for forgiveness. Perhaps at this time, he painted also a David
with the Head of Goliath, showing the young David with a strangely sorrowful
expression gazing on the severed head of the giant, which is again Caravaggio.
This painting he may have sent to his patron, the unscrupulous art-loving
Cardinal Scipione Borghese, nephew of the pope, who had the power to grant or
withhold pardons. Caravaggio hoped Borghese could mediate a pardon, in
exchange for works by the artist.
News from Rome encouraged Caravaggio, and in the summer of 1610 he took a
boat northwards to receive the pardon, which seemed imminent thanks to his
powerful Roman friends. With him were three last paintings, the gifts for Cardinal
Scipione.[48] What happened next is the subject of much confusion and
conjecture, shrouded in much mystery.
The bare facts seem to be that on 28 July an anonymous avviso (private
newsletter) from Rome to the ducal court of Urbino reported that Caravaggio was
dead. Three days later another avviso said that he had died of fever on his way
from Naples to Rome. A poet friend of the artist later gave 18 July as the date of
death, and a recent researcher claims to have discovered a death notice showing
that the artist died on that day of a fever in Porto Ercole,
near Grosseto in Tuscany.
Death
Caravaggio had a fever at the time of his death, and what killed him has been a
matter of historical debate and study. Traditionally historians have long thought
he died of syphilis. Some have said he had malaria, or possibly brucellosis from
unpasteurized dairy. Some scholars have argued that Caravaggio was actually
attacked and killed by the same "enemies" that had been pursuing him since he
fled Malta, possibly Wignacourt and/or factions of the Knights.
Human remains found in a church in Porto Ercole in 2010 are believed to almost
certainly belong to Caravaggio. The findings come after a year-long investigation
using DNA, carbon dating and other analyses. Initial tests suggested Caravaggio
might have died of lead poisoning – paints used at the time contained high
amounts of lead salts, and Caravaggio is known to have indulged in violent
behavior, as caused by lead poisoning. Later tests suggested he died as the result
of a wound sustained in a brawl in Naples, specifically from sepsis. Recently
released Vatican documents (2002) also indicate that fatal wounds may have
been sustained as a result of a vendetta, perpetrated
after Caravaggio had murdered a love rival in a botched
attempt at castration.

Boy with a Basket of Fruit, 1593–1594, oil on canvas,

67 cm × 53 cm (26 in × 21 in), Galleria Borghese, Rome
Nevertheless, since the 1970s both art scholars and
historians have debated the inferences
of homoeroticism in Caravaggio's works as a way to better understand the man.
The model of "Amor vincit omnia", for example, is known to have been Cecco di
Caravaggio. Cecco stayed with Caravaggio even after he was obliged to leave
Rome in 1606, and the two may have been lovers.
Caravaggio's sexuality also received early speculation due to claims about the
artist by Honoré Gabriel Riqueti, Comte de Mirabeau. Writing in 1783, Mirabeau
contrasted the personal life of Caravaggio directly with the writings of St Paul in
the Book of Romans, arguing that "Romans" excessively practice sodomy
or homosexuality. The twenty-sixth verse of the first chapter contains the Latin
phrase: "Et fœminæ eorum immutaverunt naturalem usum in eum usum qui est
contra naturam." The phrase, according to Mirabeau, entered Caravaggio's
thoughts, and he claimed that such an "abomination" could be witnessed through
a particular painting housed at the Museum of the Grand Duke of Tuscany –
featuring a rosary of a blasphemous nature, in which a circle of thirty men
(turpiter ligati) are intertwined in embrace and presented in unbridled
composition. Mirabeau notes the affectionate nature of Caravaggio's depiction
reflects the voluptuous glow of the artist's sexuality. By the late nineteenth
century, Sir Richard Francis Burton identified the painting as Caravaggio's painting
of St. Rosario. Burton also identifies both St. Rosario and this painting with the
practices of Tiberius mentioned by Seneca the Younger. The survival status and
location of Caravaggio's painting is unknown. No such painting appears in his or
his school's catalogues.

Sacred Love Versus Profane Love (1602–03), by Giovanni Baglione. Intended as an

attack on his hated enemy, Caravaggio, it shows a boy (hinting at Caravaggio's
alleged homosexuality) on one side, a devil with Caravaggio's face on the other,
and between an angel representing pure, meaning non-erotic, love.
Aside from the paintings, evidence also comes from the libel trial brought against
Caravaggio by Giovanni Baglione in 1603. Baglione accused Caravaggio and his
friends of writing and distributing scurrilous doggerel attacking him; the
pamphlets, according to Baglione's friend and witness Mao Salini, had been
distributed by a certain Giovanni Battista, a bardassa, or boy prostitute, shared by
Caravaggio and his friend Onorio Longhi. Caravaggio denied knowing any young
boy of that name, and the allegation was not followed up.
Baglione's painting of "Divine Love" has also been seen as a visual accusation of
sodomy against Caravaggio. Such accusations were damaging and dangerous
as sodomy was a capital crime at the time. Even though the authorities were
unlikely to investigate such a well-connected person as Caravaggio, "Once an
artist had been smeared as a pederast, his work was smeared too." Francesco
Susino in his later biography additionally relates the story of how the artist was
chased by a school-master in Sicily for spending too long gazing at the boys in his
care. Susino presents it as a misunderstanding, but
Caravaggio may indeed have been seeking sexual solace;
and the incident could explain one of his most
homoerotic paintings: his last depiction of St John the
Baptist.
The art historian, Andrew Graham-Dixon has summarised
the debate:
A lot has been made of Caravaggio's presumed homosexuality, which has in more
than one previous account of his life been presented as the single key that
explains everything, both the power of his art and the misfortunes of his life.
There is no absolute proof of it, only strong circumstantial evidence and much
rumour. The balance of probability suggests that Caravaggio did indeed have
sexual relations with men. But he certainly had female lovers. Throughout the
years that he spent in Rome he kept close company with a number of prostitutes.
The truth is that Caravaggio was as uneasy in his relationships as he was in most
other aspects of life. He likely slept with men. He did sleep with women. He
settled with no one... the idea that he was an early martyr to the drives of an
unconventional sexuality is an anachronistic fiction.

As an artist
The birth of Baroque

The Taking of Christ, 1602, National Gallery of

Ireland, Dublin. Caravaggio's application of
the chiaroscuro technique shows through on the
faces and armour notwithstanding the lack of a
visible shaft of light. The figure on the extreme
right is a self-portrait.

Supper at Emmaus, 1601, oil on canvas, 139 cm

× 195 cm (55 in × 77 in), National Gallery, London. Caravaggio included himself as
the figure at the top left.
Caravaggio "put the oscuro (shadows) into chiaroscuro." Chiaroscuro was
practiced long before he came on the scene, but it was Caravaggio who made the
technique a dominant stylistic element, darkening the shadows and transfixing
the subject in a blinding shaft of light. With this
came the acute observation of physical and
psychological reality that formed the ground both
for his immense popularity and for his frequent
problems with his religious commissions.
He worked at great speed, from live models,
scoring basic guides directly onto the canvas with
the end of the brush handle; very few of
Caravaggio's drawings appear to have survived, and it is likely that he preferred to
work directly on the canvas. The approach was anathema to the skilled artists of
his day, who decried his refusal to work from drawings and to idealise his figures.
Yet the models were basic to his realism. Some have been identified,
including Mario Minniti and Francesco Boneri, both fellow artists, Minniti
appearing as various figures in the early secular works, the young Boneri as a
succession of angels, Baptists and Davids in the later canvasses. His female
models include Fillide Melandroni, Anna Bianchini, and Maddalena Antognetti
(the "Lena" mentioned in court documents of the "artichoke" case[72] as
Caravaggio's concubine), all well-known prostitutes, who appear as female
religious figures including the Virgin and various saints. Caravaggio himself
appears in several paintings, his final self-portrait being as the witness on the far
right to the Martyrdom of Saint Ursula.
Caravaggio had a noteworthy ability to express in one scene of unsurpassed
vividness the passing of a crucial moment. The Supper at Emmaus depicts the
recognition of Christ by his disciples: a moment before he is a fellow traveler,
mourning the passing of the Messiah, as he never ceases to be to the inn-keeper's
eyes; the second after, he is the Saviour. In The Calling of St Matthew, the hand of
the Saint points to himself as if he were saying "who, me?", while his eyes, fixed
upon the figure of Christ, have already said, "Yes, I will follow you". With The
Resurrection of Lazarus, he goes a step further, giving us a glimpse of the actual
physical process of resurrection. The body of Lazarus is still in the throes of rigor
mortis, but his hand, facing and recognizing that of Christ, is alive. Other
major Baroque artists would travel the same path, for example Bernini, fascinated
with themes from Ovid's Metamorphoses.
Diego Rodríguez de Silva y Velázquez ( June 6, 1599 –
August 6, 1660) was a Spanish painter, the leading artist
in the court of King Philip IV, and one of the most
important painters of the Spanish Golden Age. He was
an individualistic artist of the contemporary Baroque
period. He began to paint in a precise tenebrist style,
later developing a freer manner characterized by bold
brushwork. In addition to numerous renditions of
scenes of historical and cultural significance, he painted
scores of portraits of the Spanish royal family and
commoners, culminating in his masterpiece Las Meninas (1656).
Velázquez's artwork became a model for 19th century realist and impressionist
painters. Since then, famous modern artists, including Pablo Picasso, Salvador Dalí
and Francis Bacon, have paid tribute to Velázquez by recreating several of his
most famous works.

Early life

Birthplace of Velázquez in Seville

Velázquez was born in Seville, Spain, the first child of João Rodrigues de Silva, a
notary, and Jerónima Velázquez. He was baptized at the church of St. Peter in
Seville on Sunday, June 6, 1599The baptism most likely occurred a few days or
weeks after his birth. His paternal grandparents, Diogo da Silva and Maria
Rodrigues, were Portuguese and had moved to Seville decades earlier. When
Velázquez was offered knighthood in 1658 he claimed descent from the lesser
nobility in order to qualify; in fact, however, his grandparents were tradespeople,
and possibly Jewish conversos. As was customary in Andalusia, Velázquez usually
used his mother's surname.
Raised in modest circumstances, he showed an early gift for art, and was
apprenticed to Francisco Pacheco, an artist and teacher in Seville. An early-18th-
century biographer, Antonio Palomino, said Velázquez studied for a short time
under Francisco de Herrera before beginning his apprenticeship under Pacheco,
but this is undocumented. A contract signed on September 17, 1611, formalized a
six-year apprenticeship with Pacheco backdated to December 1610, and it has
been suggested that Herrera may have substituted for a traveling Pacheco
between December 1610 and September 1611.
Though considered a dull and undistinguished painter, Pacheco sometimes
expressed a simple, direct realism although his work remained
essentially Mannerist. As a teacher, he was highly learned and encouraged his
students' intellectual development. In Pacheco's school Velázquez studied the
classics, was trained in proportion and perspective, and witnessed the trends in
the literary and artistic circles of Seville.
Vieja friendo huevos (1618, English: Old Woman Frying Eggs). National Gallery of
Scotland, Edinburgh
On April 23, 1618, Velázquez married Juana Pacheco (June 1, 1602 – August 10,
1660), the daughter of his teacher. She had two daughters. The elder, Francisca
de Silva Velázquez y Pacheco (1619–1658), married painter Juan Bautista
Martínez del Mazo at the Church of Santiago in Madrid on August 21, 1633; the
younger, Ignacia de Silva Velázquez y Pacheco, born in 1621, died in infancy.
His earliest works are bodegones (kitchen scenes with prominent still-life), He was
one of the first Spanish artists to paint such scenes, and his Old Woman Frying
Eggs (1618) demonstrates the young artist's unusual skill in realistic
depiction. The realism and dramatic lighting of this work may have been
influenced by Caravaggio's work—which Velázquez could have seen second-hand,
in copies—and by the polychrome sculpture in Sevillian churches. Two of his
bodegones, Kitchen Scene with Christ in the House of Martha (1618) and Kitchen
Scene with Christ at Emmaus (c. 1618), feature religious scenes in the background,
painted in a way that creates ambiguity as to whether the religious scene is a
painting on the wall, a representation of the thoughts of the kitchen maid in the
foreground, or an actual incident seen through a window. The Virgin of the
Immaculate Conception (1618–19) follows a formula used by Pacheco, but
replaces the idealized facial type and smoothly finished surfaces of his teacher
with the face of a local girl and varied brushwork. His other religious works
include The Adoration of the Magi (1619) and Saint John the Evangelist on the
Island of Patmos (1618–19), both of which begin to express his more pointed and
careful realism.
Also from this period are the portrait of Sor Jerónima de la Fuente (1620) –
Velázquez's first full-length portrait– and the genre The Water Seller of
Seville (1618–1622). The Water Seller of Seville has been termed "the peak of
Velázquez's bodegones" and is admired for its virtuoso rendering of volumes and
textures as well as for its enigmatic gravitas.

To Madrid (early period)

Philip IV in Brown and Silver, 1632

Velázquez had established his reputation in Seville by
the early 1620s. He traveled to Madrid in April 1622,
with letters of introduction to Don Juan de Fonseca,
chaplain to the King. Velázquez was not allowed to paint
the new king, Philip IV, but portrayed the poet Luis de
Góngora at the request of Pacheco. The portrait showed
Góngora crowned with a laurel wreath, which Velázquez later painted over. He
returned to Seville in January 1623 and remained there until August.
In December 1622, Rodrigo de Villandrando, the king's favorite court painter,
died. Velázquez received a command to come to the court from the Count-Duke
of Olivares, the powerful minister of Philip IV. He was offered 50 ducats (175 g of
gold) to defray his expenses, and he was accompanied by his father-in-law.
Fonseca lodged the young painter in his home and sat for a portrait, which, when
completed, was conveyed to the royal palace. A portrait of the king was
commissioned, and on August 30, 1623, Philip IV sat for Velázquez. The portrait
pleased the king, and Olivares commanded Velázquez to move to Madrid,
promising that no other painter would ever paint Philip's portrait and all other
portraits of the king would be withdrawn from circulation. In the following year,
1624, he received 300 ducats from the king to pay the cost of moving his family to
Madrid, which became his home for the remainder
of his life.

El Triunfo de Baco or Los Borrachos 1629

(English: The Triumph of Bacchus/The Drunks)
Portrait of the Infanta Maria Theresa, Philip IV's
daughter with Elisabeth of France
Velázquez secured admission to the royal service
with a salary of 20 ducats per month, lodgings and
payment for the pictures he might paint. His
portrait of Philip was exhibited on the steps of San
Felipe and received with enthusiasm. It is now lost
(as is the portrait of Fonseca). The Museo del
Prado, however, has two of Velázquez's portraits of the king (nos. 1070 and 1071)
in which the severity of the Seville period has disappeared and the tones are more
delicate. The modeling is firm, recalling that of Antonio Mor, the Dutch portrait
painter of Philip II, who exercised a considerable influence on the Spanish school.
Velázquez depicts Philip wearing the golilla, a stiff linen collar projecting at right
angles from the neck. The golilla replaced the earlier court fashion of elaborate
ruffed collars as part of Philip's dress reform laws during a period of economic
crisis.
The Prince of Wales (afterwards Charles I) arrived at the court of Spain in 1623.
Records indicate that he sat for Velázquez, but the picture is now lost.
In September 1628, Peter Paul Rubens was positioned in Madrid as an emissary
from the Infanta Isabella, and Velázquez accompanied him to view the Titians at
the Escorial. Rubens, who demonstrated his brilliance as painter and courtier
during the seven months of the diplomatic mission, had a high opinion of
Velázquez but had no significant influence on his painting. He did, however,
galvanize Velázquez's desire to see Italy and the works of the great Italian
masters.
In 1627, Philip set a competition for the best painters of Spain with the subject to
be the expulsion of the Moors. Velázquez won. Recorded descriptions of his
painting (destroyed in a fire at the palace in 1734) say it depicted Philip
III pointing with his baton to a crowd of men and women being led away by
soldiers, while the female personification of Spain sits in calm repose. Velázquez
was appointed gentleman usher as reward. Later he also received a daily
allowance of 12 réis, the same amount allotted to the court barbers, and 90
ducats a year for dress. Five years after he painted it in 1629, as an extra
payment, he received 100 ducats for the picture of Bacchus (The Triumph of
Bacchus), also called Los Borrachos (The Drunks), a painting of a group of men in
contemporary dress paying homage to a half-naked ivy-crowned young man
seated on a wine barrel. Velázquez's first mythological painting, it has been
interpreted variously as a depiction of a theatrical performance, as a parody, or as
a symbolic representation of peasants asking the god of wine to give them relief
from their sorrows. The style shows the naturalism of Velázquez's early works
slightly touched by the influence of Titian and Rubens.

Italian period
In 1629, Velázquez was given permission to spend a year and a half in Italy.
Though this first visit is recognized as a crucial chapter in the development of his
style—and in the history of Spanish Royal Patronage, since Philip IV sponsored his
trip—few details and specifics are known of what the painter saw, whom he met,
how he was perceived and what innovations he hoped to introduce into his
painting. It is canonical to divide his career by his two visits to Italy. Velázquez
rarely signed his pictures, and the royal archives give the dates of only his most
important works. Internal evidence and history pertaining to his portraits supply
the rest to a certain extent.
He traveled to Venice, Ferrara, Cento, Loreto, Bologna, and Rome. In 1630 he
visited Naples to paint the portrait of Maria Anna of Spain, and there he probably
met Ribera. The major works from his first Italian period are Joseph's Bloody Coat
brought to Jacob (1629–30) and Apollo in the Forge of Vulcan (1630), both of
which reveal his ambition to rival the Italians as a history painter in the grand
manner.
Return to Madrid (middle period)

La rendición de Breda (1634–1635) was inspired by Velázquez's first visit to Italy,

in which he accompanied Ambrogio Spinola, who conquered the Dutch city of
Breda a few years prior. It depicts a transfer of the key to the city from the Dutch
to the Spanish army during the Siege of Breda. It is considered one of the best of
Velázquez's paintings.
Velázquez returned to Madrid in January 1631. That year he completed the first
of his many portraits of the young prince, beginning with Prince Balthasar Charles
with a Dwarf, (Boston, Museum of Fine Arts). ln portraits such as Equestrian
portrait of prince Balthasar Charles (1635), Velázquez depicts the prince looking
dignified and lordly, or in the dress of a field marshal on his prancing steed. In one
version, the scene is in the riding school of the palace, the king and queen looking
on from a balcony, while Olivares attends as master of the horse to the prince.
To decorate the king's new palace, the Palacio del Buen Retiro, Velázquez painted
equestrian portraits of the royal family. In Philip IV on Horseback (1634–35), the
king is represented in profile in an image of imperturbable majesty,
demonstrating expert horsemanship by executing an effortless levade. The
large The Surrender of Breda (1634–35), also painted for the Palacio, is
Velázquez's only extant painting depicting contemporary history. Its symbolic
treatment of a Spanish military victory over the Dutch eschews the rhetoric of
conquest and superiority that is typical in such scenes, in which a general on
horseback looks down on his vanquished, kneeling opponent. Instead, Velázquez
shows the Spanish general standing before his Dutch counterpart as an equal, and
extending to him a hand of consolation.
The influential minister Olivares was the early patron of the painter. His
impassive, saturnine face is familiar to us from the many portraits painted by
Velázquez. Two are notable: one is full-length, stately and dignified, in which he
wears the green cross of the order of Alcantara and holds a wand, the badge of
his office as master of the horse; in the other, The Count-Duke of Olivares on
Horseback (c. 1635), he is flatteringly represented as a field marshal during action.
In these portraits, Velázquez well repaid the debt of gratitude that he owed to his
first patron, whom Velázquez stood by during Olivares's fall from power, thus
exposing himself to the great risk of the anger of the jealous Philip. The king,
however, showed no sign of malice towards his favorite painter.
The sculptor Juan Martínez Montañés modeled a statue on one of Velázquez's
equestrian portraits of the king (painted in 1636; now lost) which was cast in
bronze by the Florentine sculptor Pietro Tacca and now stands in the Plaza de
Oriente in Madrid. Velázquez was in close attendance to Philip, and accompanied
him to Aragon in 1644, where the artist painted a portrait of the monarch in the
costume as he reviewed his troops in Fraga.
Velázquez's paintings of Aesop and Menippus (both c. 1636–1638) portray ancient
writers in the guise of portraits of beggars.[16] Mars Resting (c. 1638) is both a
depiction of a mythological figure and a portrait of a weary-looking, middle-aged
man posing as Mars. The model is painted with attention to his individuality,
while his unkempt, oversized mustache is a faintly comic incongruity. The
equivocal image has been interpreted in various ways: Javier Portús describes it
as a "reflection on reality, representation, and the artistic vision", while Alfonso E.
Pérez Sánchez says it "has also been seen as a melancholy meditation on the arms
of Spain in decline".
Had it not been for his royal appointment, which enabled Velázquez to escape the
censorship of the Inquisition, he would not have been able to release his La Venus
del espejo (c. 1644–1648, English: Venus at her Mirror) also known as The Rokeby
Venus. It is the first known female nude painted by a Spanish artist, and the only
surviving female nude by Velázquez.
Portraiture

Lady from court, c. 1635

Portrait of Pablo de Valladolid, 1635, a court fool of Philip IV
Besides the many portraits of Philip by Velázquez—thirty-four by one count—he
painted portraits of other members of the royal family: Philip's first
wife, Elisabeth of Bourbon, and her children, especially her eldest son, Don
Baltasar Carlos, whom Velázquez first depicted at about two years of age.
Cavaliers, soldiers, churchmen, and the poet Francisco de Quevedo (now
at Apsley House), sat for Velázquez.
Velázquez also painted several buffoons and dwarfs in Philip's court, whom he
depicted sympathetically and with respect for their individuality, as in The Jester
Don Diego de Acedo (1644), whose intelligent face and huge folio with ink-bottle
and pen by his side show him to be a wise and well-educated man. Pablo de
Valladolid (1635), a buffoon evidently acting a part, and The Buffoon of
Coria (1639) belong to this middle period.
As court painter, Velázquez had fewer commissions for religious works than any
of his contemporaries. Christ Crucified (1632), painted for the Convent of San
Plácido in Madrid, depicts Christ immediately after death. The Savior's head hangs
on his breast and a mass of dark tangled hair conceals part of the face, visually
reinforcing the idea of death. The figure is presented alone before a dark
background.
Velázquez's son-in-law Juan Bautista Martínez del Mazo had succeeded him as
usher in 1634, and Mazo himself had received a steady promotion in the royal
household. Mazo received a pension of 500 ducats in 1640, increased to 700 in
1648, for portraits painted and to be painted, and was appointed inspector of
works in the palace in 1647.
Philip now entrusted Velázquez with the mission of procuring paintings and
sculpture for the royal collection. Rich in pictures, Spain was weak in statuary, and
Velázquez was commissioned once again to proceed
to Italy to make purchases.
Final years

Detail of Las Meninas (Velázquez's self-portrait)

Portrait of the eight-year-old Infanta Margarita
Teresa in a Blue Dress (1659)
There were essentially only two patrons of art in Spain—the church and the art-
loving king and court. Bartolomé Esteban Murillo, who toiled for a rich and
powerful church, left little means to pay for his burial, while Velázquez lived and
died in the enjoyment of a good salary and pension.
One of his final works was Las hilanderas (The Spinners), painted circa 1657, a
depiction of Ovid's Fable of Arachne. The tapestry in the background is based
on Titian's The Rape of Europa, or, more probably, the copy that Rubens painted
in Madrid. It is full of light, air and movement, featuring vibrant colors and careful
handling. Anton Raphael Mengs said this work seemed to have been painted not
by the hand but by the pure force of will. It displays a concentration of all the art-
knowledge Velázquez had gathered during his long artistic career of more than
forty years. The scheme is simple—a confluence of varied and blended red,
bluish-green, gray and black.
Velázquez's final portraits of the royal children are among his finest works and in
the Infanta Margarita Teresa in a Blue Dress the painter's personal style reached
its high-point: shimmering spots of color on wide painting surfaces produce an
almost impressionistic effect – the viewer must stand at a suitable distance to get
the impression of complete, three-dimensional spatiality.
His only surviving portrait of the delicate and sickly Prince Felipe Prospero] is
remarkable for its combination of the sweet features of the child prince and his
dog with a subtle sense of gloom. The hope that was placed at that time in the
sole heir to the Spanish crown is reflected in the depiction: fresh red and white
stand in contrast to late autumnal, morbid colors. A small dog with wide eyes
looks at the viewer as if questioningly, and the largely pale background hints at a
gloomy fate: the little prince was barely four years old when he died. As in all of
the artist's late paintings, the handling of the colors is extraordinarily fluid and
vibrant.
In 1660 a peace treaty between France and Spain was consummated by the
marriage of Maria Theresa with Louis XIV, and the ceremony took place on the
Island of Pheasants, a small swampy island in the Bidassoa. Velázquez was
charged with the decoration of the Spanish pavilion and with the entire scenic
display. He attracted much attention from the nobility of his bearing and the
splendor of his costume. On June 26 he returned to Madrid, and on July 31 he was
stricken with fever. Feeling his end approaching, he signed his will, appointing as
his sole executors his wife and his firm friend named Fuensalida, keeper of the
royal records. He died on August 6, 1660. He was buried in the Fuensalida vault of
the church of San Juan Bautista, and within eight days his wife Juana was buried
beside him. This church was destroyed by the French around 1809, so his place of
interment is now unknown.
There was much difficulty in adjusting the tangled accounts outstanding between
Velázquez and the treasury, and it was not until 1666, after the death of King
Philip, that they were finally settled.

Technique and painting materials

Although acquainted with all the Italian schools and a friend of the foremost
painters of his day, Velázquez was strong enough to withstand external influences
and work out for himself the development of his own nature and his own
principles of art. He is known for using a rather limited palette, but he mixed the
available paints with great skill to achieve varying hues. His pigments were not
significantly different from those of his contemporaries and he mainly
employed azurite, smalt, vermilion, red lake, lead-tin-yellow and ochres.[63] His
early works were painted on canvases prepared with a red-brown ground. He
adopted the use of light-gray grounds during his first trip to Italy, and continued
using them for the rest of his life. The change resulted in paintings with greater
luminosity and a generally cool, silvery range of color.
Few drawings are securely attributed to Velázquez. Although preparatory
drawings for some of his paintings exist, his method was to paint directly from
life, and x-rays of his paintings reveal that he frequently made changes in his
composition as a painting progressed.
Artworks

THE TRIUMPH OF BACCHUS

Year: 1629

Known popularly as The Drinkers or Los

borrachos, this painting depicts Bacchus
surrounded by several drunks. The painting
can be divided in two halves with the left centered around the luminous Bacchus
figure shown in a relaxed but dominant pose; while the right showing a group of
drunkards in a very Spanish party atmosphere.
 APOLLO IN THE FORGE OF VULCAN

Year: 1630

This painting depicts the moment in Greco-

Roman mythology when the
god Apollo visits Vulcan, who is making
weapons for the god of war Mars. Some
figures in the painting are in front of others
to create a sensation of depth for the viewer, an artistic method known as space
sandwiching.

OLD WOMAN FRYING EGGS

Year: 1618

In this painting, Velazquez has used

the artistic method of strong
contrasts between light and dark,
known as chiaroscuro. Old Woman
Frying Eggs is considered the finest genre painting by Velazquez and is his most
famous artwork in this art genre.

CHRIST CRUCIFIED

Year: 1632

This painting depicts Jesus on the

cross immediately after his death. A
work of tremendous originality and
masterly in its fusion of serenity,
dignity and nobility, Christ Crucified is
considered a turning point in the
artistic development of Velazquez.
INFANTA MARGARITA TERESA IN A BLUE DRESS

Year: 1659

This is one of the several court portraits made by

Velazquez of infant Margaret Theresa, daughter
of King Philip IV of Spain and Mariana of Austria;
and who would later become Holy Roman
Empress from 1666 till her death at the age of 21
in 1673.

LAS HILANDERAS
Year: 1657

Previously believed to be a depiction of women

workers in the tapestry workshop, this painting
is now considered a representation of Ovid’s
Fable of Arachne by most art critics.

THE SURRENDER OF BREDA

Year: 1634

This painting depicts the exchange of keys that

occurred 3 days after the surrender of the
Dutch fortified city of Breda. The painting is
considered one of his best works and is
renowned worldwide, but especially in Spain
where it is among the most celebrated
artworks.
 PORTRAIT OF INNOCENT X

Year: 1650

During a trip to Italy, Velazquez offered to

paint a portrait of the Pope who asked him to
first prove his painting skills. Velazquez’s
portrait of his servant Juan de Pareja
convinced Pope Innocent X of his talent and
this resulted in the creation of this famous
masterpiece. The portrait shows such
ruthlessness in Innocent’s expression that some feared it would displease the
Pope but Innocent X was rather. Portrait of Innocent X is considered by many art
critics as the finest portrait ever created while Guardian calls it the most acute
study of personal power in the history of art.
LAS MENINAS
Year: 1656

Considered one of the most

important paintings ever, Las
Meninas depicts at its center the 5
year old Margarita Teresa. The
infant Margarita is surrounded by
her maids, bodyguard, two dwarfs
and a dog. On the left, Velazquez
depicts himself with a brush, leading
to BBC calling this masterpiece “the
world’s first photobomb”. Above the
princess’ head is a mirror which
shows her father and mother, King
Philip IV of Spain and Mariana of Austria. They appear to be in position of the
viewer. Velazquez perhaps depicts the scene of him painting the royal couple. Las
Meninas has been described to represent the “theology of painting” and “the true
philosophy of the art” by notable artists. It is the most famous painting by
Velazquez, is considered his supreme achievement and is one of the most
analyzed paintings in Western art history.
Born 28 June 1577
Siegen, Nassau-Dillenburg, Holy
Roman Empire

Died 30 May 1640 (aged 62)

Antwerp, Spanish Netherlands

Education Tobias Verhaecht

Adam van Noort
Otto van Veen

Movement Flemish Baroque

Baroque

Spouse(s) Isabella Brant (1609 – her death

1626)
Helena Fourment (1630 – his
death 1640)

Signature
Peter Paul Rubens

Sir Peter Paul Rubens (28 June

1577 – 30 May 1640) was
a Flemish artist. He is considered
the most influential artist of 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, color, and
sensuality, which followed the immediate, dramatic artistic style promoted in
the Counter-Reformation. Rubens specialized in making altarpieces, portraits,
landscapes, and history paintings of mythological and allegorical subjects.

In addition to running a large studio

in Antwerp that produced paintings popular with
nobility and art collectors throughout Europe,
Rubens was a classically educated humanist
scholar and diplomat who was knighted by
both Philip IV of Spain and Charles I of England.
Rubens was a prolific artist. The catalogue of his works by Michael Jaffé lists 1,403
pieces, excluding numerous copies made in his workshop.
His commissioned works were mostly "history paintings", which included religious
and mythological subjects, and hunt scenes. He painted portraits, especially of
friends, and self-portraits, and in later life painted several landscapes. Rubens
designed tapestries and prints, as well as his own house. He also oversaw
the ephemeral decorations of the royal entry into Antwerp by the Cardinal-
Infante Ferdinand of Austria in 1635.
His drawings are predominantly very forceful and without great detail. He also
made great use of oil sketches as preparatory studies. He was one of the last
major artists to make consistent use of wooden panels as a support medium,
even for very large works, but he used canvas as well, especially when the work
needed to be sent a long distance. For altarpieces he sometimes painted
on slate to reduce reflection problems.
Early life
The garden designed by Rubens at the Rubenshuis in Antwerpen
Rubens was born in the city of Siegen to Jan
Rubens and Maria Pypelincks. He was named in honour
of Saint Peter and Saint Paul, because he was born
on their solemnity. His father, a Calvinist, and mother fled
Antwerp for Cologne in 1568, after increased religious
turmoil and persecution of Protestants during the rule of
the Habsburg Netherlands by the Duke of Alba.
Jan Rubens became the legal adviser (and lover) of Anna of Saxony, the second
wife of William I of Orange, and settled at her court in Siegen in 1570, fathering
her daughter Christine who was born in 1571.
Following Jan Rubens's imprisonment for the affair, Peter Paul Rubens was born
in 1577. The family returned to Cologne the next year. In 1589, two years after his
father's death, Rubens moved with his mother Maria Pypelincks to Antwerp,
where he was raised as a Catholic.
Religion figured prominently in much of his work, and Rubens later became one of
the leading voices of the Catholic Counter-
Reformation style of painting (he had said "My
passion comes from the heavens, not from earthly
musings").
Apprenticeship

Portrait of a Young Scholar, from 1597

In Antwerp, Rubens received a Renaissance humanist education, studying Latin
and classical literature. By fourteen he began his artistic apprenticeship
with Tobias Verhaeght. Subsequently, he studied under two of the city's leading
painters of the time, the late Mannerist artists Adam van Noort and Otto van
Veen. Much of his earliest training involved copying earlier artists' works, such
as woodcuts by Hans Holbein the Younger and Marcantonio
Raimondi's engravings after Raphael. Rubens completed his education in 1598, at
which time he entered the Guild of St. Luke as an independent master.
Italy (1600–1608)
In 1600 Rubens travelled to Italy. He stopped first in Venice, where he saw
paintings by Titian, Veronese, and Tintoretto, before settling in Mantua at the
court of Duke Vincenzo I Gonzaga. The colouring and compositions
of Veronese and Tintoretto had an immediate effect on Rubens's painting, and his
later, mature style was profoundly influenced by Titian. With financial support
from the Duke, Rubens travelled to Rome by way of Florence in 1601. There, he
studied classical Greek and Roman art and copied works of the Italian masters.
The Hellenistic sculpture Laocoön and His Sons was especially influential on him,
as was the art of Michelangelo, Raphael, and Leonardo da Vinci. He was also
influenced by the recent, highly naturalistic paintings by Caravaggio.
The Fall of Phaeton, 1604, in the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C.
Rubens later made a copy of Caravaggio's Entombment of Christ and
recommended his patron, the Duke of Mantua, to purchase The Death of the
Virgin (Louvre). After his return to Antwerp he was instrumental in the acquisition
of The Madonna of the Rosary (Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna) for the St.
Paul's Church in Antwerp.[11] During this first stay
in Rome, Rubens completed his first altarpiece
commission, St. Helena with the True Cross for the
Roman church of Santa Croce in Gerusalemme.
Rubens travelled to Spain on a diplomatic mission
in 1603, delivering gifts from the Gonzagas to the
court of Philip III. While there, he studied the
extensive collections of Raphael and Titian that
had been collected by Philip II. He also painted an equestrian portrait of the Duke
of Lerma during his stay (Prado, Madrid) that demonstrates the influence of
works like Titian's Charles V at Mühlberg (1548; Prado, Madrid). This journey
marked the first of many during his career that combined art and diplomacy.
He returned to Italy in 1604, where he remained for the next four years, first in
Mantua and then in Genoa and Rome. In Genoa, Rubens painted numerous
portraits, such as the Marchesa Brigida Spinola-Doria (National Gallery of Art,
Washington, D.C.), and the portrait of Maria di Antonio Serra Pallavicini, in a style
that influenced later paintings by Anthony van Dyck, Joshua Reynolds and Thomas
Gainsborough.
Madonna on Floral Wreath, together with Jan Brueghel the Elder, 1619
He also began a book illustrating the palaces in the city, which was published in
1622 as Palazzi di Genova. From 1606 to 1608, he was mostly in Rome. During this
period Rubens received, with the assistance of Cardinal Jacopo Serra (the brother
of Maria Pallavicini), his most important commission to date for the High Altar of
the city's most fashionable new church, Santa Maria in Vallicella also known as
the Chiesa Nuova.
The subject was to be St. Gregory the Great and important local saints adoring
an icon of the Virgin and Child. The first version, a single canvas (now at the
Musée des Beaux-Arts, Grenoble), was immediately replaced by a second version
on three slate panels that permits the actual miraculous holy image of the "Santa
Maria in Vallicella" to be revealed on important feast
days by a removable copper cover, also painted by the
artist.
Rubens's experiences in Italy continued to influence his
work. He continued to write many of his letters and
correspondences in Italian, signed his name as "Pietro
Paolo Rubens", and spoke longingly of returning to the
peninsula—a hope that never materialized.
Antwerp (1609–1621)
Rubens and Isabella Brandt, the Honeysuckle Bower, c. 1609. Alte Pinakothek
Upon hearing of his mother's illness in 1608, Rubens planned his departure from
Italy for Antwerp. However, she died before he arrived home. His return
coincided with a period of renewed prosperity in the city with the signing of
the Treaty of Antwerp in April 1609, which initiated the Twelve Years' Truce. In
September 1609 Rubens was appointed as court painter by Albert VII, Archduke
of Austria, and Infanta Isabella Clara Eugenia of Spain, sovereigns of the Low
Countries.
He received special permission to base his studio in Antwerp instead of at their
court in Brussels, and to also work for other clients. He remained close to the
Archduchess Isabella until her death in 1633, and was called upon not only as a
painter but also as an ambassador and diplomat. Rubens further cemented his
ties to the city when, on 3 October 1609, he married Isabella Brant, the daughter
of a leading Antwerp citizen and humanist, Jan Brant.

Descent from the Cross, 1618. Hermitage Museum

In 1610 Rubens moved into a new house and studio that he designed. Now
the Rubenshuis Museum, the Italian-influenced villa in the centre of Antwerp
accommodated his workshop, where he and his apprentices made most of the
paintings, and his personal art collection and library, both among the most
extensive in Antwerp. During this time he built up a studio with numerous
students and assistants. His most famous pupil was the young Anthony van Dyck,
who soon became the leading Flemish portraitist and collaborated frequently
with Rubens. He also often collaborated with the many specialists active in the
city, including the animal painter Frans Snyders, who contributed the eagle
to Prometheus Bound (c. 1611–12, completed by 1618), and his good friend the
flower-painter Jan Brueghel the Elder.
Another house was built by Rubens to the north of Antwerp in the polder village
of Doel, "Hooghuis" (1613/1643), perhaps as an investment. The "High House"
was built next to the village church.
Family of Jan Brueghel the Elder, 1613–1615. Courtauld Institute of Art
Altarpieces such as The Raising of the Cross (1610) and The Descent from the
Cross (1611–1614) for the Cathedral of Our Lady were particularly important in
establishing Rubens as Flanders' leading painter shortly after his return. The
Raising of the Cross, for example, demonstrates the artist's synthesis
of Tintoretto's Crucifixion for the Scuola Grande di San Rocco in
Venice, Michelangelo's dynamic figures, and Rubens's own personal style. This
painting has been held as a prime example of Baroque religious art.
Rubens used the production of prints and book title-pages, especially for his
friend Balthasar Moretus, the owner of the large Plantin-Moretus publishing
house, to extend his fame throughout Europe during this part of his career. In
1618, Rubens embarked upon a printmaking enterprise by soliciting an unusual
triple privilege (an early form of copyright) to protect his designs in France, the
Southern Netherlands, and United Provinces. He enlisted Lucas Vorsterman to
engrave a number of his notable religious and mythological paintings, to which
Rubens appended personal and professional dedications to noteworthy
individuals in the Southern Netherlands, United Provinces, England, France, and
Spain. With the exception of a few etchings, Rubens left the printmaking to
specialists, who included Lucas Vorsterman, Paulus Pontius and Willem
Panneels. He recruited a number of engravers trained by Christoffel Jegher, whom
he carefully schooled in the more vigorous style he wanted. Rubens also designed
the last significant woodcuts before the 19th-century revival in the technique.
Marie de' Medici Cycle and diplomatic missions (1621–1630)
Main article: Marie de' Medici cycle
In 1621, the Queen Mother of France, Marie de' Medici, commissioned Rubens to
paint two large allegorical cycles celebrating her life and the life of her late
husband, Henry IV, for the Luxembourg Palace in Paris. The Marie de' Medici
cycle (now in the Louvre) was installed in 1625, and
although he began work on the second series it was
never completed. Marie was exiled from France in
1630 by her son, Louis XIII, and died in 1642 in the
same house in Cologne where Rubens had lived as a
child.
Portrait of Anna of Austria, Queen of France, c. 1622–
1625
After the end of the Twelve Years' Truce in 1621, the
Spanish Habsburg rulers entrusted Rubens with a
number of diplomatic missions. While in Paris in 1622 to discuss the Marie de'
Medici cycle, Rubens engaged in clandestine information gathering activities,
which at the time was an important task of diplomats. He relied on his friendship
with Nicolas-Claude Fabri de Peiresc to get information on political developments
in France. Between 1627 and 1630, Rubens's diplomatic career was particularly
active, and he moved between the courts of Spain and England in an attempt to
bring peace between the Spanish Netherlands and the United Provinces. He also
made several trips to the northern Netherlands as both an artist and a diplomat.
At the courts he sometimes encountered the attitude
that courtiers should not use their hands in any art or
trade, but he was also received as a gentleman by
many. Rubens was raised by Philip IV of Spain to the
nobility in 1624 and knighted by Charles I of England
in 1630. Philip IV confirmed Rubens's status as a
knight a few months later. Rubens was awarded an
honorary Master of Arts degree from Cambridge
University in 1629.
Rubens was in Madrid for eight months in 1628–
1629. In addition to diplomatic negotiations, he executed several important works
for Philip IV and private patrons. He also began a renewed study of Titian's
paintings, copying numerous works including the Madrid Fall of Man (1628–29).
During this stay, he befriended the court painter Diego Velázquez and the two
planned to travel to Italy together the following year. Rubens, however, returned
to Antwerp and Velázquez made the journey without him.

The Fall of Man, 1628–29. Prado, Madrid

His stay in Antwerp was brief, and he soon travelled on to London where he
remained until April 1630. An important work from this period is the Allegory of
Peace and War (1629; National Gallery, London). It illustrates the artist's lively
concern for peace, and was given to Charles I as a gift.
While Rubens's international reputation with collectors and nobility abroad
continued to grow during this decade, he and his workshop also continued to
paint monumental paintings for local patrons in Antwerp. The Assumption of the
Virgin Mary (1625–6) for the Cathedral of Antwerp is one prominent example.
Last decade (1630–1640)
Rubens's last decade was spent in and around Antwerp. Major works for foreign
patrons still occupied him, such as the ceiling paintings for the Banqueting
House at Inigo Jones's Palace of Whitehall, but he also explored more personal
artistic directions.
In 1630, four years after the death of his first wife Isabella, the 53-year-old
painter married his first wife's niece, the 16-year-old Hélène Fourment. Hélène
inspired the voluptuous figures in many of his paintings from the 1630s,
including The Feast of Venus (Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna), The Three
Graces and The Judgment of Paris (both Prado, Madrid). In the latter painting,
which was made for the Spanish court, the artist's young wife was recognized by
viewers in the figure of Venus. In an intimate portrait of her, Hélène Fourment in a
Fur Wrap, also known as Het Pelsken, Rubens's wife is even partially modelled
after classical sculptures of the Venus Pudica, such as the Medici Venus.
In 1635, Rubens bought an estate outside Antwerp, the Steen, where he spent
much of his time. Landscapes, such as his Château de Steen with Hunter (National
Gallery, London) and Farmers Returning from the Fields (Pitti Gallery, Florence),
reflect the more personal nature of many of his later works. He also drew upon
the Netherlandish traditions of Pieter Bruegel the Elder for inspiration in later
works like Flemish Kermis (c. 1630; Louvre, Paris).
Death
Rubens died from heart failure, a result of his chronic
gout, on 30 May 1640. He was interred in Saint James'
Church, Antwerp.
Artworks

 Portrait of Marchesa Brigida Spinola-Doria,

1606

 Portrait of King Philip IV of Spain, c. 1628/1629

 Portrait of Elisabeth of France. 1628,

Kunsthistorisches Museum. Vienna
 Portrait of Ambrogio Spinola, c. 1627 National Gallery in Prague
Rembrandt
Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn was born on July
15, 1606 in Leiden, the Netherlands. He was the
ninth child born to Harmen Gerritszoon van Rijn and
Neeltgen Willemsdochter van Zuytbrouck. His family
was quite well-to-do; his father was a miller and his
mother was a baker's daughter. As a boy he
attended Latin school and was enrolled at the
University of Leiden, although according to a
contemporary he had a greater inclination towards
painting; he was soon apprenticed to a Leiden
history painter, Jacob van Swanenburgh, with whom
he spent three years. After a brief but important apprenticeship of six months
with the famous painter Pieter Lastman in Amsterdam, Rembrandt opened a
studio in Leiden in 1624 or 1625, which he shared with friend and colleague Jan
Lievens. In 1627, Rembrandt began to accept students, among them Gerrit Dou.

In 1629 Rembrandt was discovered by the statesman Constantijn Huygens, the

father of Christiaan Huygens (a famous Dutch mathematician and physicist), who
procured for Rembrandt important commissions from the court of The Hague. As
a result of this connection, Prince Frederik Hendrik continued to purchase
paintings from Rembrandt until 1646.

At the end of 1631, Rembrandt moved to Amsterdam, then rapidly expanding as

the new business capital of the Netherlands, and began to practice as a
professional portraitist for the first time, with great success. He initially stayed
with an art dealer, Hendrick van Uylenburg, and in 1634, married Hendrick's
cousin, Saskia van Uylenburg. Saskia came from a good family: her father had
been lawyer and burgemeester (mayor) of Leeuwarden. When Saskia, as the
youngest daughter, became an orphan, she lived with an older sister in Het Bildt.
They were married in the local church of St. Annaparochie without the presence
of his relatives. In the same year, Rembrandt became a burgess of Amsterdam
and a member of the local guild of painters. He also acquired a number of
students, among them Ferdinand Bol and Govert Flinck.

In 1635 Rembrandt and Saskia moved into their own house, renting in fashionable
Nieuwe Doelenstraat. In 1639, they moved to a prominent house (now the
Rembrandt House Museum) in the Jodenbreestraat in what was becoming the
Jewish quarter; the mortgage to finance the 13,000 guilder purchase would be a
primary cause for later financial difficulties. It was there that Rembrandt
frequently sought his Jewish neighbors to model for his Old Testament scenes.
Although they were by now affluent, the couple suffered several personal
setbacks; their son Rumbartus died two months after his birth in 1635 and their
daughter Cornelia died at just 3 weeks of age in 1638. In 1640, they had a second
daughter, also named Cornelia, who died after living barely over a month. Only
their fourth child, Titus, who was born in 1641, survived into adulthood. Saskia
died in 1642 soon after Titus's birth, probably from tuberculosis. Rembrandt's
drawings of her on her sick and death bed are among his most moving works.

During Saskia's illness, Geertje Dircx was hired as Titus' caretaker and nurse and
probably also became Rembrandt's lover. She would later charge Rembrandt with
breach of promise and was awarded alimony of 200 guilders a year. Rembrandt
worked to have her committed for twelve years to an asylum or poorhouse
(called a "bridewell") at Gouda, after learning Geertje had pawned jewelry that
had once belonged to Saskia, and which Rembrandt had given her.

In the late 1640s Rembrandt began a relationship with the much younger
Hendrickje Stoffels, who had initially been his maid. In 1654 they had a daughter,
Cornelia, bringing Hendrickje a summons from the Reformed church to answer
the charge "that she had committed the acts of a whore with Rembrandt the
painter". She admitted this and was banned from receiving communion.
Rembrandt was not summoned to appear for the Church council because he was
not a member of the Reformed church. The two were considered legally wed
under common law, but Rembrandt had not married Henrickje, so as not to lose
access to a trust set up for Titus in his mother's will.

Rembrandt lived beyond his means, buying art (including bidding up his own
work), prints (often used in his paintings) and rarities, which probably caused a
court arrangement to avoid his bankruptcy in 1656, by selling most of his
paintings and large collection of antiquities. The sale list survives and gives us a
good insight into his collections, which apart from Old Master paintings and
drawings included busts of the Roman Emperors, suits of Japanese armour among
many objects from Asia, and collections of natural history and minerals; the prices
realized in the sales in 1657 and 1658 were disappointing. He also had to sell his
house and his printing-press and move to more modest accommodation on the
Rozengracht in 1660. The authorities and his creditors were generally
accommodating to him, except for the Amsterdam painters' guild, who
introduced a new rule that no one in Rembrandt's circumstances could trade as a
painter. To get round this, Hendrickje and Titus set up a business as art-dealers in
1660, with Rembrandt as an employee.

In 1661 he (or rather the new business) was contracted to complete work for the
newly built city hall, but only after Govert Flinck, the artist previously
commissioned, died without beginning to paint. The resulting work, The
Conspiracy of Claudius Civilis, was rejected and returned to the painter; the
surviving fragment is only a fraction of the whole work. It was around this time
that Rembrandt took on his last apprentice, Aert de Gelder. In 1662 he was still
fulfilling major commissions for portraits and other works. When Cosimo III de'
Medici, Grand Duke of Tuscany visited Amsterdam in 1667, he visited Rembrandt
at his house.

Rembrandt outlived both Hendrickje, who died in 1663, and Titus, who died in
1668, leaving a baby daughter. Rembrandt died
within a year of his son, on October 4, 1669 in
Amsterdam, and was buried in an unmarked grave
in the Westerkerk.

WORKS

In a letter to Huyghens, Rembrandt offered the

only surviving explanation of what he sought to
achieve through his art: the greatest and most
natural movement, translated from die meeste
ende di naetuereelste beweechgelickheijt. The word "beweechgelickhijt" is also
argued to mean "emotion" or "motive." Whether this refers to objectives,
material or otherwise is open to interpretation; either way, Rembrandt
seamlessly melded the earthly and spiritual as has no other painter in Western
art.

Earlier 20th century connoisseurs claimed Rembrandt had produced over 600
paintings, nearly 400 etchings and 2,000 drawings. More recent scholarship, from
the 1960s to the present day (led by the Rembrandt Research Project), often
controversially, have winnowed his oeuvre to nearer 300 paintings. His prints,
traditionally all called etchings, although many are produced in whole or part by
engraving and sometimes drypoint, have a much more stable total of slightly
under 300. It is likely he made many more drawings in his lifetime than 2,000, but
those extant are more rare than presumed.

At one time about ninety paintings were counted as Rembrandt self-portraits, but
it is now known that he had his students copy his own self-portraits as part of
their training. Modern scholarship has reduced the autograph count to over forty
paintings, as well as a few drawings and thirty-one etchings, which include many
of the most remarkable images of the group. Many show him posing in quasi-
historical fancy dress, or pulling faces at himself. His oil paintings trace the
progress from an uncertain young man, through the dapper and very successful
portrait-painter of the 1630s, to the troubled but massively powerful portraits of
his old age. Together they give a remarkably clear picture of the man, his
appearance and his psychological make-up, as revealed by his richly-weathered
face.

Among the more prominent characteristics of his work are his use of chiaroscuro,
the theatrical employment of light and shadow derived from Caravaggio, or, more
likely, from the Dutch Caravaggisti, but adapted for very personal means. Also
notable are his dramatic and lively presentation of subjects, devoid of the rigid
formality that his contemporaries often displayed, and a deeply felt compassion
for mankind, irrespective of wealth and age. His immediate family - his wife
Saskia, his son Titus and his common-law wife Hendrickje - often figured
prominently in his paintings, many of which had
mythical, biblical or historical themes.

PERIODS, THEMES AND STYLES

Throughout his career Rembrandt took as his

primary subjects the themes of portraiture,
landscape and narrative painting. For the last, he
was especially praised by his contemporaries,
who extolled him as a masterful interpreter of
biblical stories for his skill in representing
emotions and attention to detail. Stylistically, his
paintings progressed from the early 'smooth'
manner, characterized by fine technique in the portrayal of illusionistic form, to
the late 'rough' treatment of richly variegated paint surfaces, which allowed for
an illusionism of form suggested by the tactile quality of the paint itself.

A parallel development may be seen in his skill as a printmaker. In the etchings of

his maturity, particularly from the late 1640s onward, the freedom and breadth of
his drawings and paintings found expression in the print medium as well. The
works encompass a wide range of subject matter and technique, sometimes
leaving large areas of white paper to suggest space, at other times employing
complex webs of line to produce rich dark tones.

It was during Rembrandt's Leiden period (1625-1631) that Lastman's influence

was most prominent. It is also likely that at this time Lievens had a strong impact
on his work as well. Paintings were rather small, but rich in details (for example, in
costumes and jewelry). Religious and allegorical themes were favored, as were
tronies, half-length figures not intended as specific portraits. In 1626 Rembrandt
produced his first etchings, the wide dissemination of which would largely
account for his international fame. In 1629 he completed Judas Repentant,
Returning the Pieces of Silver and The Artist in His Studio, works that evidence his
interest in the handling of light and variety of paint application, and constitute the
first major progress in his development as a painter.

During his early years in Amsterdam (1632-1636), Rembrandt began to paint

dramatic biblical and mythological scenes in high contrast and of large format
(The Blinding of Samson, 1636, Belshazzar's Feast, c. 1635), seeking to emulate
the baroque style of Rubens. With the occasional help of assistants in
Uylenburgh's workshop, he painted numerous portrait commissions both small
(Jacob de Gheyn III) and large (Portrait of the Shipbuilder Jan Rijcksen and his
Wife, 1633, Anatomy Lesson of Dr. Nicolaes Tulp, 1632).

By the late 1630s, Rembrandt had produced a few paintings and many etchings of
landscapes. Often these landscapes highlighted natural drama, featuring
uprooted trees and ominous skies (Cottages before a Stormy Sky, c. 1641, The
Three Trees, 1643). From 1640 his work became less exuberant and more sober in
tone, possibly reflecting personal tragedy. Biblical scenes were now derived more
often from the New Testament than the Old Testament, as had been the case
before. In 1642 he painted the The Night Watch, his largest work and the most
notable of the important group portrait commissions which he received in this
period, and through which he sought to find solutions to compositional and
narrative problems that had been attempted in previous works.

In the decade following the Night Watch, Rembrandt's paintings varied greatly in
size, subject, and style. The previous tendency to create dramatic effects primarily
by strong contrasts of light and shadow gave way to the use of frontal lighting and
larger and more saturated areas of color. Simultaneously, figures came to be
placed parallel to the picture plane. These changes can be seen as a move toward
a classical mode of composition and, considering the more expressive use of
brushwork as well, may indicate a familiarity with Venetian art (Susanna and the
Elders, 1637-47). At the same time, there was a marked decrease in painted
works in favor of etchings and drawings of landscapes. In these graphic works
natural drama eventually made way for quiet Dutch rural scenes.

In the 1650s, Rembrandt's style changed again. Paintings increased in size, colours
became richer and brush strokes more pronounced. With these changes,
Rembrandt distanced himself from earlier work and current fashion, which
increasingly inclined toward fine, detailed works. His singular approach to paint
application may have been suggested in part by familiarity with the work of Titian,
and could be seen in the context of the then current discussion of 'finish' and
surface quality of paintings. Contemporary accounts sometimes remark
disapprovingly of the coarseness of Rembrandt's brushwork, and the artist
himself was said to have dissuaded visitors from looking too closely at his
paintings. The tactile manipulation of paint may hearken to medieval procedures,
when mimetic effects of rendering informed a painting's surface. The end result is
a richly varied handling of paint, deeply layered and often apparently haphazard,
which suggests form and space in both an illusionistic and highly individual
manner.

In later years, biblical themes were still depicted often, but emphasis shifted from
dramatic group scenes to intimate portrait-like figures (James the Apostle, 1661).
In his last years, Rembrandt painted his most deeply reflective self-portraits (from
1652 to 1669 he painted fifteen), and several moving images of both men and
women (The Jewish Bride, ca. 1666)--- in love, in life, and before God .
ETCHINGS

Rembrandt produced etchings for most of his

career, from 1626 to 1660, when he was forced to
sell his printing-press and virtually abandoned
etching. Only the troubled year of 1649 produced
no dated work. He took easily to etching and,
though he also learned to use a burin and partly
engraved many plates, the freedom of etching
technique was fundamental to his work. He was
very closely involved in the whole process of
printmaking, and must have printed at least early
examples of his etchings himself. At first he used a style based on drawing, but
soon moved to one based on painting, using a mass of lines and numerous bitings
with the acid to achieve different strengths of line. Towards the end of the 1630s,
he reacted against this manner and moved to a simpler style, with fewer bitings.
He worked on the so-called Hundred Guilder Print in stages throughout the 1640s,
and it was the "critical work in the middle of his career", from which his final
etching style began to emerge. Although the print only survives in two states, the
first very rare, evidence of much reworking can be seen underneath the final print
and many drawings survive for elements of it.

In the mature works of the 1650s, Rembrandt was more ready to improvise on
the plate and large prints typically survive in several states, up to eleven, often
radically changed. He now uses hatching to create his dark areas, which often
take up much of the plate. He also experimented with the effects of printing on
different kinds of paper, including Japanese paper, which he used frequently, and
on vellum. He began to use "surface tone," leaving a thin film of ink on parts of
the plate instead of wiping it completely clean to print each impression. He made
more use of drypoint, exploiting, especially in landscapes, the rich fuzzy burr that
this technique gives to the first few impressions.

His prints have similar subjects to his paintings, although the twenty-seven self-
portraits are relatively more common, and portraits of other people less so. There
are forty-six landscapes, mostly small, which largely set the course for the graphic
treatment of landscape until the end of the 19th century. One third of his etchings
are of religious subjects, many treated with a homely simplicity, whilst others are
his most monumental prints. A few erotic, or just obscene, compositions have no
equivalent in his paintings. He owned, until forced to sell it, a magnificent
collection of prints by other artists, and many borrowings and influences in his
work can be traced to artists as diverse as Mantegna, Raphael, Hercules Segers,
and Giovanni Benedetto Castiglione.
Giotto Di Bondone
He was known for being the earliest artist to paint more
realistic figures rather than the stylized artwork of the
medieval and Byzantine eras. Giotto is considered by some
scholars to be the most important Italian painter of the
14th century. His focus on emotion and natural
representations of human figures would be emulated and
expanded upon by successive artists, leading Giotto to be
called the "Father of the Renaissance." He is also known
for fresco and architecture. He decorated chapels in Assisi, Rome, Padua,
Florence, and Naples with frescoes and panel paintings in tempera. 12th of April
1334, he was appointed master of the works of the cathedral of Sta. Reparata
(later and better known as Sta. Maria del Fiore).
Early life
Though many stories and legends have circulated about Giotto and his life, very
little can be confirmed as fact. He was probably born around 1266 or 1267 in a
hilltop farmhouse, perhaps at Colle di Vespignano , 35 kilometres north of
Florence. Most authors accept that Giotto was his real name, but it may have
been an abbreviation of Ambrogio (Ambrogiotto) or Angelo (Angelotto). He was
the son of a man named Bondone, described in surviving public records as "a
person of good standing". His family was probably farmers.
How was he discovered?
Legend has it that while he was tending goats he drew a picture on a rock and
that the artist Cimabue, who happened to be passing by, saw him at work and
was so impressed with the boy's talent that he took him into his studio as an
apprentice. Whatever the actual events, Giotto appears to have been trained by
an artist of great skill, and his work is clearly influenced by Cimabue.
Married life
Around 1290, Giotto married Ricevuta di Lapo del Pela (known as 'Ciuta'), the
daughter of Lapo del Pela of Florence. The marriage produced three sons,
Francesco, who became a painter, Niccola and Donato. Three daughters, Bice,
Caterina and Lucia. He had added by successive purchases to the plot of land
inherited from his father at Vespignano. By 1301, Giotto owned a house in
Florence, and when he was not traveling, he would return there and live in
comfort with his family.
Death
January 8, 1337 (aged 69–70); Florence
Famous Artworks