Benvenuto Tisi da Garofalo (1481-1559) | High Renaissance painter

Benvenuto Garòfalo, byname of Benvenuto Tisi, Italian painter🎨, one of the most prolific 16th-century painters of the Ferrarese school.

Garofalo’s first apprenticeship was with Domenico Panetti and later with the Cremonese painter Boccaccio Boccaccino.

Garofalo’s two visits to Rome in the first and second decades of the century greatly influenced his style, as did the work of Dosso Dossi, especially in the treatment of landscape backgrounds.

Agnolo Bronzino (1503-1572) | Hands detail

Agnolo di Cosimo🎨, usually known as Bronzino or Agnolo Bronzino, was an Italian Mannerist🎨 painter from Florence.

His sobriquet, Bronzino, may refer to his relatively dark skin or reddish hair.

He lived all his life in Florence, and from his late 30s was kept busy as the court painter of Cosimo I de' Medici, Grand Duke of Tuscany.

He was mainly a portraitist but also painted many religious subjects, and a few allegorical subjects, which include what is probably his best known work, Venus, Cupid, Folly and Time, c. 1544-45, now in London.

Tilman Riemenschneider (1460-1531) | Late Gothic sculptor

Tilman Riemenschneider, (born c. 1460, Heiligenstadt or Osterode, Domain of the Teutonic Order [Germany] - died July 7, 1531, Würzburg), master sculptor whose wood portrait carvings and statues made him one of the major artists of the late Gothic period in Germany; he was known as the leader of the Lower Franconia school.

Riemenschneider was the son of the mint master of Würzburg and opened a highly successful workshop there in 1483.

Albert Einstein / Giuseppe Arcimboldo: "La creatività è l'intelligenza che si diverte"!

Giuseppe Arcimboldo (1527-1593)🎨 | The Librarian. 1566 | Skokloster Castle Sweden

"Creativity is intelligence having fun".

"La creatività è l'intelligenza che si diverte".

Albert Einstein (1879-1955)🎨

Agnolo Bronzino | Art in Detail

Agnolo Bronzino (1503-1563)🎨 was a stand-out artist of the second-wave of Italian Mannerism🎨 in the middle of the 16th century.

He lived his entire life in Florence🎨 and modeled his painting style so closely to that of his mentor, Jacopo Pontormo🎨.

For biographical notes and earlier works by Bronzino🎨 see:

• Agnolo Bronzino | Mannerist painter🎨.

Giovanni Bellini | High Renaissance painter

Italian painter🎨 Giovanni Bellini (1430-1516) was the founder of the Venetian school of painting and raised Venice to a center of Renaissance art that rivaled Florence and Rome. He brought to painting a new degree of realism, a new wealth of subject matter, and a new sensuousness in form and color.

Perhaps more than any other, Giovanni Bellini [Giambellino] was an artist who passed through different periods and cultural revolutions.

He, before Leonardo🎨, was the great inventor of the representation of sentiment and nature, painting works of extraordinary poetry, landscapes that brought together everything that had been seen until then in Italy and Europe, with the human figure totally immersed in the surrounding space.

Nicolas Tournier (1590-1639) | Baroque painter

Nicolas Tournier (baptised 12 July 1590 - d. before February 1639) was a French Baroque painter🎨.

Born in Montbéliard, he followed the profession of his father, André Tournier, "a Protestant painter from Besançon".

Little is known of his life before his arrival in Rome, where he worked between 1619-1626, and where he was influenced by the work of Caravaggio🎨. According to one early source, he was a pupil of Valentin de Boulogne🎨.

16th century Artists | Sitemap

The 16th century begins with the Julian year 1501 and ends with either the Julian or the Gregorian year 1600 (depending on the reckoning used; the Gregorian calendar introduced a lapse of 10 days in October 1582).

The 16th century is regarded by historians as the century in which the rise of the West occurred. During the 16th century, Spain and Portugal explored the world's seas and opened worldwide oceanic trade routes.

Large parts of the New World became Spanish and Portuguese colonies, and while the Portuguese became the masters of Asia's and Africa's Indian Ocean trade, the Spanish opened trade across the Pacific Ocean, linking the Americas with Asia.

Francesco Bacchiacca🎨 ~ High Renaissance painter

Leonardo da Vinci | Mona Lisa, Portrait of Lisa Gherardini, 1503-1504

This portrait was doubtless started in Florence around 1503. It is thought to be of Lisa Gherardini, wife of a Florentine cloth merchant named Francesco del Giocondo - hence the alternative title, La Gioconda. However, Leonardo seems to have taken the completed portrait to France rather than giving it to the person who commissioned it. After his death, the painting entered François I's collection.

• Lisa Gherardini, wife of Francesco Giocondo

The history of the Mona Lisa is shrouded in mystery. Among the aspects which remain unclear are the exact identity of the sitter, who commissioned the portrait, how long Leonardo worked on the painting, how long he kept it, and how it came to be in the French royal collection.

The portrait may have been painted to mark one of two events - either when Francesco del Giocondo and his wife bought their own house in 1503, or when their second son, Andrea, was born in December 1502 after the death of a daughter in 1499. The delicate dark veil that covers Mona Lisa's hair is sometimes considered a mourning veil. In fact, such veils were commonly worn as a mark of virtue. Her clothing is unremarkable. Neither the yellow sleeves of her gown, nor her pleated gown, nor the scarf delicately draped round her shoulders are signs of aristocratic status.

Albrecht Dürer | High Renaissance painter

A supremely gifted and versatile German artist🎨 of the Renaissance period🎨, Albrecht Dürer (1471-1528) was born in the Franconian city of Nuremberg, one of the strongest artistic and commercial centers in Europe during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.

He was a brilliant painter, draftsman, and writer, though his first and probably greatest artistic impact was in the medium of printmaking. Dürer apprenticed with his father, who was a goldsmith, and with the local painter Michael Wolgemut, whose workshop produced woodcut illustrations for major books and publications.

An admirer of his compatriot Martin Schongauer, Dürer revolutionized printmaking, elevating it to the level of an independent art form.

Sir Peter Paul Rubens | Baroque Era painter

Peter Paul Rubens, (born June 28, 1577, Siegen, Nassau, Westphalia [Germany] - died May 30, 1640, Antwerp, Spanish Netherlands [now in Belgium]), Flemish painter who was the greatest exponent of Baroque painting's🎨, dynamism, vitality, and sensuous exuberance. Though his masterpieces include portraits and landscapes, Rubens is perhaps best known for his religious and mythological compositions.

As the impresario of vast decorative programs, he presided over the most famous painter’s studio in Europe. His powers of invention were matched by extraordinary energy and versatility.

The art of Peter Paul Rubens is a fusion of the traditions of Flemish realism with the Classicizing tendencies of the Italian Renaissance🎨. Rubens was able to infuse his own astounding vitality into a powerful and exuberant style that came to epitomize the Baroque art of the 17th century.

The ample, robust, and opulent figures in his paintings generate a pervasive sense of movement in vivid, dynamic compositions. Rubens was one of the most assimilative, versatile, and productive of all Western artists, and his almost limitless resources of invention enabled him to become the master of the greatest studio organization in Europe since that of Raphael🎨 in Rome a century before. The larger the scale of the undertaking, the more congenial it was to his spirit.

Giulio Romano | Renaissance / Mannerist painter

Giulio Romano🎨, also known as Giulio Pippi, (c. 1499 - 1 November 1546) was an Italian painter🎨 and architect. A pupil of Raphael🎨, his stylistic deviations from high Renaissance🎨 classicism help define the 16th-century style known as Mannerism🎨.

For biographical notes -in english and italian- and other works by Romano see:

• Giulio Romano | Mannerist painter🎨

Ambrosius Benson | Northern Renaissance painter

Ambrosius Benson (c. 1495/1500, in Ferrara or Milan - 1550, in Flanders) was an Italian painter🎨 who became a part of the Northern Renaissance🎨.

While many surviving paintings have been attributed, there is very little known of him from records, and he tended not to sign his work. He is believed to be responsible for mainly religious art, but also painted portraits on commission.

He sometime painted from classical sources, often setting the figures in modern-dress, or a contemporary domestic setting. In his lifetime he was successful; he had a large workshop, his work was sold internationally and he was especially popular in Spain.

Benson became popular as a source for pastiche with 19th-century painters, who are sometimes known as the "followers of Benson". In particular his many variations of the Magdalen and Sibilla Persica were further copied and became popular with contemporary buyers.

Rosso Fiorentino | Musician Angel, 1522 | Art in Detail

Playing putto /Musical Angel is a fragment of a lost altarpiece which probably depicted the Madonna and Child with Saints.

This little work belonging to the period of maturity of the artist.

In 1605 the picture was collocated in the Tribune beside the more precious masterworks Medici family had collected.

Recent studies revealed the panel to be a fragment of a larger painting including - such as other altarpieces by Rosso🎨 - the angel in the lower part of the scene. A sense of vitality and tenderness emanates from this little cherub playing a lute, probably dating to the beginning of the third decade of 16th century.

Michelangelo Buonarroti | High Renaissance | Sculpture

Michelangelo, in full Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni (born March 6, 1475, Caprese, Republic of Florence [Italy]-died February 18, 1564, Rome, Papal States) Italian Renaissance sculptor, painter, architect and poet who exerted an unparalleled influence on the development of Western art.

Michelangelo was considered the greatest living artist in his lifetime, and ever since then he has been held to be one of the greatest artists of all time. A number of his works in painting, sculpture, and architecture rank among the most famous in existence.

Although the frescoes on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel🎨 (Vatican; see below) are probably the best known of his works today, the artist thought of himself primarily as a sculptor. His practice of several arts, however, was not unusual in his time, when all of them were thought of as based on design, or drawing. Michelangelo worked in marble sculpture all his life and in the other arts only during certain periods. The high regard for the Sistine Ceiling🎨 is partly a reflection of the greater attention paid to painting in the 20th century and partly, too, because many of the artist’s works in other media remain unfinished.

Michelangelo | San Giovannino di Ubeda, 1495-1496 | Museo del Prado

The biographies of Michelangelo by Vasari🎨 (1550) and Condivi (1553) recount that following the artist’s return to Florence from Bologna in 1495, his first commission was for a marble sculpture of a “San Giovannino” for Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco de’Medici (cousin of Lorenzo the Magnificent), now identified as the present work. Rather than following the model of Donatello🎨’s Saint John the Baptist (Florence, Museo del Bargello) as other Florentine sculptors had done, Michelangelo depicted the Baptist as much younger, no more than a boy of six or seven.

Michelangelo | Pietà for Vittoria Colonna, 1538-44

The Pietà for Vittoria Colonna is a black chalk drawing on cardboard (28.9 × 18.9 cm) by Michelangelo Buonarroti🎨, dated to about 1538-44 and kept at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston.

History

Michelangelo became acquainted with Vittoria Colonna (1492-1547, marchioness of Pescara, was an Italian noblewoman and poet) around 1538. Their lively friendship gained Michelangelo admission to her social circles, and he became acquainted with issues of church reform.
For Colonna, Michelangelo executed several paintings in the fifth decade of the sixteenth century.

All of them are now lost or of controversial attribution, but several sketches and copies by students and admirers of Michelangelo have been preserved.

Apart from a famous Crucifixion🎨, Michelangelo's most notable work for Vittoria Colonna is a Pietà, of which a remarkable drawing is exhibited at Boston.

Tintoretto 1519-2019 | 500th anniversary of the birth of the Venetian painter

In celebration of the 500th anniversary of the birth of Jacopo Tintoretto (1519-1594)🎨, the National Gallery of Art, Washington and the Fondazione Musei Civici di Venezia with the special cooperation of the Gallerie dell’Accademia, will organize a major exhibition on the Venetian master.

• Following its opening at the Palazzo Ducale, Venice, beginning in September 2018, Tintoretto: Artist of Renaissance Venice will travel to the Gallery - its only other venue - from March 10 through July 7, 2019.

As the first retrospective of the artist in North America, the exhibition will include many significant international loans traveling to the U.S. for the first time.

The exhibition will feature nearly 50 paintings and more than a dozen works on paper spanning the artist’s entire career and ranging from regal portraits of Venetian aristocracy to religious and mythological narrative scenes.

The exhibition curators are Tintoretto experts Robert Echols, independent scholar, and Frederick Ilchman, chair of the Art of Europe department and Mrs. Russell W. Baker Curator of Paintings at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.

Giovanni Antonio Boltraffio (1466-1516) | High Renaissance painter

Born in Milan, Boltraffio (1467-1516), sometimes called Giovanni Antonio Beltraffio, was a painter of the High Renaissance🎨 said to work with Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519)🎨.
This is partially confirmed by the biographer, Giorgio Vasari (1511-1574)🎨 and also from Leonardo’s note of a Gian Antonio working in his studio. There is also the evidence that Boltraffio painted closely to the style of da Vinci at the time.

His pieces showing the influence of da Vinci include his Madonna and Child, among his other depictions of the Virgin and child, as well as in his portrait work. They clearly show the use of a common da Vinci trait, the smoky blend of color and tone to create depth in the image, a method called Sfumato.

Saint Cecilia: Patroness of Musicians

In the fourth century a Greek religious romance on the Loves of Cecilia and Valerian was written in glorification of virginal life with the purpose of taking the place of then-popular sensual romances.

Consequently, until better evidence is produced, we must conclude that St. Cecilia was not known or venerated in Rome until about the time when Pope Gelasius (496) introduced her name into his Sacramentary.

It is said that there was a church dedicated to St. Cecilia in Rome in the fifth century, in which Pope Symmachus held a council in 500.

The story of St. Cecilia is not without beauty or merit. She is said to have been quite close to God and prayed often:

"In the city of Rome there was a virgin named Cecilia, who came from an extremely rich family and was given in marriage to a youth named Valerian. She wore sackcloth next to her skin, fasted, and invoked the saints, angels, and virgins, beseeching them to guard her virginity".

During her wedding ceremony she was said to have sung in her heart to God and before the consummation of her nuptials, she told her husband she had taken a vow of virginity and had an angel protecting her. Valerian asked to see the angel as proof, and Cecilia told him he would have eyes to see once he traveled to the third milestone on the Via Appia (Appian Way) and was baptized by Pope Urbanus.

Orazio Gentileschi🎨 | Saint Cecilia with an Angel