Barbara Krafft | Portrait painter

Maria Barbara Krafft (1764-1825) was an Austrian painter, best remembered today for her widely reproduced posthumous portrait of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.

She was born in Iglau (now Jihlava, in the Czech Republic) where her father, the Austrian Imperial court painter Johann Nepomuk Steiner, was working at the time.

She was taught painting by her father and accompanied him to Vienna, where she exhibited her first painting in 1786 at the Academy of Fine Arts.

Barbara Krafft | Posthumous Portrait of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (Salzburg, 1756 - Vienna, 1791), 1819

Josef Büche | Portrait / Genre painter

Josef Büche (February 29, 1848 in Vienna - August 13, 1917 in Linz-Urfahr) was an Austrian portrait painter.

Born the son of a painter, Büche studied at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna under Eduard von Engerth and Carl Wurzinger.

He received an overall study award.

Dominik Skutecký | Genre painter

Dominik Skutecký (1849-1921) was a Slovakian painter of Jewish ancestry.

Alternate forms of his name include David, Domenico, Döme, Skutezky, Skuteczky and Skutetzky.

He specialized in landscapes, portraits and genre scenes.

After his father's death in 1859, his family moved to Vienna, where he began his artistic studies with the sculptor Johann Meixner.

The Ladies of the Baroque | Part 3

Elisabetta Sirani

Italian painter, 1638-1665

Elisabetta Sirani was an Italian Baroque painter and printmaker who died in still unexplained circumstances at the early age of 27.

She was the most famous woman artist in early modern Bologna and established an academy for other women artists.

Sirani produced over 200 paintings, 15 etchings, and hundreds of drawings, making her an extremely prolific artist, especially considering her early death.

Claude Monet | L'idillio di Giverny: tra covoni, giardini e cattedrali

Dopo la mostra organizzata da Petit, Monet poté godere del sostegno economico e morale di un pubblico finalmente svincolatosi dalle pastoie della pittura accademica.

La gloria, tuttavia, non offuscò né la sua umiltà né le sue ambizioni pittoriche, finalizzate a rendere «l'immediatezza, l'atmosfera soprattutto e la stessa luce diffusa ovunque».

Volendo indagare in maniera più accurata i problemi della luce e dalle sensazioni di colore, dunque, Monet intraprese le cosiddette serie, nelle quali uno stesso soggetto viene ripreso in decine e decine di tele, in modo tale che l'unico fattore cangiante è proprio la luce: si trattava di una escogitazione pittorica ottimale per dimostrare come la sola luce riuscisse a generare percezioni visive sempre mutevoli e stimolanti.