Titian | The Venus of Urbino, 1538 | Uffizi Gallery

Toward the beginning of his career Titian had brought to completion Giorgione's unfinished canvas of Venus asleep in a landscape; some twenty-five years later he adapted the central motif of the recumbent figure to a new setting and transformed its meaning by domesticating that pastoral deity. Giorgione's Venus - withdrawn in a private dream of love that we can share, to a degree, only by an effort of the imagination - has been brought indoors; fully awake now and aware of her audience, she displays her charms in a deliberately public proclamation of love.

Ambrosius Bosschaert the Elder | Baroque painter

Ambrosius Bosschaert the Elder (1573-1621) was a Flemish-born Dutch still life painter and art dealer.

He is recognised as one of the earliest painters who created floral still lifes as an independent genre.

He founded a dynasty of painters who continued his style of floral and fruit painting and turned Middelburg into the leading centre for flower painting in the Dutch Republic.

Biography

He was born in Antwerp, where he started his career, but he spent most of it in Middelburg (1587-1613), where he moved with his family because of the threat of religious persecution. He specialized in painting still lifes with flowers, which he signed with the monogram AB (the B in the A).

At the age of twenty-one, he joined the city's Guild of Saint Luke and later became dean.

Not long after, Bosschaert married and established himself as a leading figure in the fashionable floral painting genre.

He had three sons who all became flower painters: Ambrosius II, Johannes and Abraham.

His brother-in-law Balthasar van der Ast also lived and worked in his workshop and accompanied him on his travels. Bosschaert later worked in Amsterdam (1614), Bergen op Zoom (1615-1616), Utrecht (1616-1619) and Breda (1619).

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In 1619 when he moved to Utrecht, his brother-in-law van der Ast entered the Utrecht Guild of St. Luke, where the renowned painter Abraham Bloemaert had just become dean.

The painter Roelandt Savery (1576-1639) entered the St. Luke's guild in Utrecht at about the same time. Savery had considerable influence on the Bosschaert dynasty.

After Bosschaert died in The Hague while on commission there for a flower piece, Balthasar van der Ast took over his workshop and pupils in Middelburg.

Style

His bouquets were painted symmetrically and with scientific accuracy in small dimensions and normally on copper.

They sometimes included symbolic and religious meanings. At the time of his death, Bosschaert was working on an important commission in the Hague.

That piece is now in the collection in Stockholm.

Bosschaert was one of the first artists to specialize in flower still life painting as a stand-alone subject. He started a tradition of painting detailed flower bouquets, which typically included tulips and roses.

Thanks to the booming seventeenth-century Dutch art market, he became highly successful, as the inscription on one of his paintings attests.

His works commanded high prices although he never achieved the level of prestige of Jan Brueghel the Elder, the Antwerp master who contributed to the floral genre.

Legacy

His sons and his pupil and brother-in-law, Balthasar van der Ast, were among those to uphold the Bosschaert dynasty which continued until the mid-17th century.

It may not be a coincidence that this trend coincided with a national obsession with exotic flowers which made flower portraits highly sought after.

Although he was highly in demand, he did not create many pieces because he was also employed as an art dealer.| © Wikipedia

Ambrosius Bosschaert il Vecchio (Anversa, 18 gennaio 1573 - L'Aia, 1621) è stato un pittore di nature morte del Secolo d'oro Olandese.

Biografia

Cominciò la sua carriera ad Anversa, anche se passò la maggior parte della vita a Middelburg, dove divenne decano della gilda dei pittori.

Lavorò poi ad Amsterdam, Bergen op Zoom, Utrecht e Breda.

Si specializzò nelle rappresentazioni di nature morte con fiori, spesso accompagnate da conchiglie o lepidotteri.

Nel 1587, Bosschaert si trasferì da Anversa a Middelburg con la sua famiglia per la minaccia di persecuzioni religiose.

All'età di ventun'anni entrò a far parte della Corporazione di San Luca; non molto tempo dopo Bosschaert consolidò la sua fama come figura di spicco nel proprio genere artistico.

Suo figlio Johannes Bosschaert ed il suo allievo e cognato, Balthasar van der Ast, furono tra coloro, assieme all'altro figlio Abraham Bosschaert, che portarono avanti la dinastia dei Bosschaert, la quale durò fino alla metà del XVII secolo.

Clicca sull'immagine per la visualizzazione estesa

Stile

I suoi bouquet di fiori sono dipinti simmetricamente e con una precisione scientifica, solitamente in piccole dimensioni. Includono spesso significati reconditi, dove ogni fiore va a rappresentare un'accezione simbolica.

Bosschaert divenne uno dei primi artisti a specializzarsi in nature morte, e nel fare ciò diede vita ad una tradizione di opere d'arte aventi per soggetto realistici mazzi di fiori, generalmente tulipani, rose e specie esotiche.

Dal punto di vista storico, tale scelta coincise con la Bolla dei tulipani, che aumentò enormemente anche nell'arte l'interesse verso il genere floreale.

Nonostante la fama raggiunta come pittore di genere, il numero di opere di Bosschaert non è particolarmente elevato, probabilmente perché mantenne come impiego principale quello di venditore d'opere piuttosto che artista. | © Wikipedia

Women Artists of the Renaissance era

Although women artists have been involved in the making of art throughout history, their work, when compared to that of their male counterparts, has been often obfuscated, overlooked and undervalued. Many of their works have been wrongly attributed to men artists.

Renaissance Europe was not a promising place for female artists to emerge. Women were expected to marry and have children, and those who did work were not welcomed into male-dominated professions. In fact women were unable to even receive formal art training (a cornerstone of which was the study of the figure).

Plautilla Nelli (1524-1588) | The first Woman painter of Florence

Plautilla Nelli | The Last Supper, 1570 (detail) | Museo di Santa Maria Novella, Florence

Sister Plautilla Nelli was a self-taught nun-artist and the first-known female Renaissance painter of Florence.

She was a nun of the Dominican convent of St. Catherine of Siena located in Piazza San Marco, Florence, and was heavily influenced by the teachings of Savonarola and by the artwork of Fra Bartolomeo.

Levina Teerlinc (1510-1576) | Renaissance miniaturist

Levina Teerlinc was a Flemish Renaissance miniaturist who served as a painter to the English court of Henry VIII, Edward VI, Mary I and Elizabeth I.

She was the most important miniaturist at the English court between Hans Holbein the Younger and Nicholas Hilliard.

Her father, Simon Bening was a renowned book illuminator and miniature painter of the Ghent-Bruges school and probably trained her as a manuscript painter. She may have worked in her father's workshop before her marriage.

Catharina van Hemessen (1528-1587) | Renaissance painter

Caterina or Catharina van Hemessen was a Flemish Renaissance painter.

She is the earliest female Flemish painter for whom there is verifiable extant work.

She is mainly known for a series of small scale female portraits completed between the late 1540s and early 1550s and a few religious compositions.

Van Hemessen is often given the distinction of creating the first self-portrait of an artist (of either gender) depicted seated at an easel.

Diana Scultori (1547-1612) Mannerist painter

Diana Scultori, Diana Montovano, or Diana Ghisi was an Italian engraver from Mantua, Italy.

She is one of the earliest known women printmakers.

She was one of four children of the sculptor and engraver Giovanni Battista Ghisi. Diana learned the art of engraving from her father and the artist Giulio Romano.

She received her first public recognition as an engraver in Giorgio Vasari’s second edition of his Vites (1568).

Giorgio Vasari | Vita di Sandro Botticello - Pittor Fiorentino

Ne’ medesimi tempi del Magnifico Lorenzo Vecchio de’ Medici, che fu veramente per le persone d’ingegno un secol d’oro, fiorì ancora Alessandro, chiamato a l’uso nostro Sandro e detto di Botticello per la cagione che appresso vedremo.

Costui fu figliuolo di Mariano Filipepi, cittadino fiorentino dal quale diligentemente allevato e fatto instruire in tutte quelle cose che usanza è di insegnarsi a’ fanciulli in quella età, prima che e’ si ponghino a le botteghe, ancora che agevolmente apprendesse tutto quello che e’ voleva, era nientedimanco inquieto sempre; né si contentava di scuola alcuna, di leggere, di scrivere o di abbaco; di maniera che il padre infastidito di questo cervello sì stravagante, per disperato lo pose a lo orefice con un suo compare chiamato Botticello, assai competente maestro allora in quell’arte.