Italian 1476-1510 Giorgione Galleries For his home town of Castelfranco, Giorgione painted the Castelfranco Madonna, an altarpiece in sacra conversazione form ?? Madonna enthroned, with saints on either side forming an equilateral triangle. This gave the landscape background an importance which marks an innovation in Venetian art, and was quickly followed by his master Giovanni Bellini and others.Giorgione began to use the very refined chiaroscuro called sfumato ?? the delicate use of shades of color to depict light and perspective ?? around the same time as Leonardo. Whether Vasari is correct in saying he learnt it from Leonardo's works is unclear ?? he is always keen to ascribe all advances to Florentine sources. Leonardo's delicate color modulations result from the tiny disconnected spots of paint that he probably derived from manuscript illumination techniques and first brought into oil painting. These gave Giorgione's works the magical glow of light for which they are celebrated. Most entirely central and typical of all Giorgione's extant works is the Sleeping Venus now in Dresden, first recognized by Morelli, and now universally accepted, as being the same as the picture seen by Michiel and later by Ridolfi (his 17th century biographer) in the Casa Marcello at Venice. An exquisitely pure and severe rhythm of line and contour chastens the sensuous richness of the presentment: the sweep of white drapery on which the goddess lies, and of glowing landscape that fills the space behind her, most harmoniously frame her divinity. The use of an external landscape to frame a nude is innovative; but in addition, to add to her mystery, she is shrouded in sleep, spirited away from accessibility to her conscious expression. It is recorded by Michiel that Giorgione left this piece unfinished and that the landscape, with a Cupid which subsequent restoration has removed, were completed after his death by Titian. The picture is the prototype of Titian's own Venus of Urbino and of many more by other painters of the school; but none of them attained the fame of the first exemplar. The same concept of idealized beauty is evoked in a virginally pensive Judith from the Hermitage Museum, a large painting which exhibits Giorgione's special qualities of color richness and landscape romance, while demonstrating that life and death are each other's companions rather than foes. Apart from the altarpiece and the frescoes, all Giorgione's surviving works are small paintings designed for the wealthy Venetian collector to keep in his home; most are under two foot (60 cm) in either dimension. This market had been emerging over the last half of the fifteenth century in Italy, and was much better established in the Netherlands, but Giorgione was the first major Italian painter to concentrate his work on it to such an extent ?? indeed soon after his death the size of such paintings began to increase with the prosperity and palaces of the patrons.  Related Paintings of Giorgione :. | Portrait of a Man in Armor with His Page | The Three philosophers | Portrait of a Venetian Gentleman | Judith | The San Diego Portrait of a Man |
Related Artists:
Jules Guerin
Mural painter and Illustrator. American 1866-1946 American muralist, painter and illustrator. Guerin was born in St Louis, Missouri on November 18, 1866 and moved to Chicago to study art in 1880. Later he was to follow a parade of other American artists and architects of his day to Paris, where he studied with Benjamin-Constant and Jean Paul Laurens. Returning to America after his European sojourn, he began his career as an artist illustrating books, often travel books about exotic places. It is likely that these designs are based on his own travels through North Africa and Palestine. The designs that he did then as well as his ability to romantically depict exotic peoples and places stood him well later when he began painting murals. His mural work typically featured large areas of gold with vermilion, salmon and rose hues and blue and green accents. As with many of the artists of his time Guerin took an active part in the international expositions of his day, showing at the Paris Expo 1900, where he received an honorable mention, the Pan American Expo in Buffalo, New York, 1901, the Louisiana Purchase Expo held in St Louis in 1904 at which he won a silver medal, and the Lewis & Clark Expo in Portland, Oregon in 1905. In 1915, Guerin was asked to serve as color co-ordinator of the Panama Pacific International Exposition of 1915 in San Francisco. It is likely that connections that he made there led to his one man show at the University of California, Berkeley two years later, followed by several large murals in the Federal reserve Bank in San Francisco. Daniel Burnham, one of Chicago's most influential architects, and his colleague Edward H. Bennett were commissioned to create the Chicago Plan in 1907, a major milestone in the international City Beautiful movement. In pursuit of this effort, Burnham invited Guerin paint a series of renderings of Burnham and Bennett's proposed cityscape to complement the numerous maps and plans that gave more technical information. The majority of these original renderings--by Guerin and other artists--are in the collection of the Department of Architecture at The Art Institute of Chicago, while others are currently owned by the Chicago Historical Society. In 1903, he travelled to Pittsburgh Pennsylvania and painted "Pittsburgh as Hell with the Lid Off" for Lincoln Steffens, a renouned Muckraker. Lincoln Steffens mentions this in his autobiography. In 1912, when architect Henry Bacon began working on the Lincoln Memorial in Washington D.C., he hired Guerin to create renderings of his proposed designs. After he received the commission, Bacon retained Guerin to paint the two large murals, Reunion and Emancipation, that decorate the interior of the memorial, allegorical figures that today serve primarily as the backdrop to Daniel Chester Frenches Seated Lincoln statue.
Montald, Constant
Belgian Painter, 1862-1944 Belgian painter, illustrator and teacher. He studied at the Koninklijke Academie of Ghent, and first made his mark by winning the Prix de Rome in 1886 with Diagorus Borne in Triumph. This success allowed him to travel throughout Europe and the Near East. In 1896 he took part in the first Salon d'Art Id?aliste, organized by Jean Delville, and exhibited there regularly. In the same year he became professor of decorative art at the Acad?mie Royale des Beaux-Arts in Brussels, a post he held for the next 37 years. He was a founder-member of L'Art Monumental in 1920
Charles Warren Eaton
painted The Stump Lot in 1857 - 1937