Sienese School, circa 1400
THE MADONNA DELLA MISERICORDIA WITH SAINTS PETER AND FRANCIS, AND ANGELS
Tempera on panel, gold ground
23.5 by 43.5 cm.; 9 1/4 by 17 1/8 in.
Private collection
The Virgin of Mercy is a subject in Christian art, showing a group of people sheltering for protection under the outspread cloak of the Virgin Mary. It was especially popular in Italy from the 13th to 16th centuries, often as a specialised form of votive portrait, and is also found in other countries and later art, especially Catalonia and Latin America. In Italian it is known as the Madonna della Misericordia (Madonna of Mercy), in German as the Schutzmantelmadonna (Sheltering-cloak Madonna), and in French as the Vièrge au Manteau or Vierge de Miséricorde (Virgin with a cloak or Virgin of Mercy).
Usually the Virgin is standing alone, though if angels hold up the cloak she is free to hold the infant Christ. The people sheltered normally kneel, and are of necessity shown usually at a much smaller scale. These may represent all members of Christian society, with royal crowns, mitres and a Papal tiara in the front rows, or represent the local population. The subject was often commissioned by specific groups such as families, confraternities, guilds or convents or abbeys, and then the figures represent these specific groups, as shown by their dress, or by the 15th century individual portraits.
More on The Virgin of Mercy
The Sienese School of painting flourished in Siena, Italy between the 13th and 15th centuries and for a time rivaled Florence. Its most important representatives include Duccio, whose work shows Byzantine influence; his pupil Simone Martini; Pietro and Ambrogio Lorenzetti; Domenico and Taddeo di Bartolo; Sassetta and Matteo di Giovanni. Unlike the naturalistic Florentine art, there is a mystical streak in Sienese art. The economic and political decline of Siena by the 16th century, and its eventual subjugation by Florence, largely checked the development of Sienese painting, although it also meant that a good proportion of Sienese works in churches and public buildings were not discarded or destroyed by new paintings or rebuilding. More on The Sienese School
Duccio (1260–1318)
Maestà (Madonna with Angels and Saints), c. between 1308 and 1311
Tempera on wood
Height: 214 cm (84.3 in). Width: 412 cm (162.2 in).
Museo dell'Opera metropolitana del Duomo, Siena, Italy
The Maestà, or Maestà of Duccio is an altarpiece composed of many individual paintings commissioned he artist Duccio di Buoninsegna. The front panels make up a large enthroned Madonna and Child with saints and angels. The base of the panel has an inscription that reads (in translation): "Holy Mother of God, be thou the cause of peace." Though it took a generation for its effect to be truly felt, Duccio's Maestà set Italian painting on a course leading away from the hieratic representations of Byzantine art towards more direct presentations of reality. More on The Maestà
Duccio di Buoninsegna (c. 1255–1260 – c. 1318–1319) was an Italian painter, active in the city of Siena in Tuscany, where he was born, in the late 13th and early 14th centuries.
He is considered to be the father of Sienese painting and along with a few others the founder of Western art. He was hired throughout his life to complete many important works in government and religious buildings around Italy. Duccio is credited with creating the painting style of Trecento and the Sienese school, and contributed significantly to the Sienese Gothic style. More on Duccio di Buoninsegna
Workshop of Bartolomé Esteban Murillo, SEVILLE 1618 - 1682
ECCE HOMO
Oil on canvas
70.2 by 56 cm.; 27 5/8 by 22 in.
Private collection
Ecce homo; "behold the man", are the Latin words used by Pontius Pilate in the Vulgate translation of the Gospel of John, when he presents a scourged Jesus, bound and crowned with thorns, to a hostile crowd shortly before his Crucifixion. The scene has been widely depicted in Christian art. More on Ecce homo
Bartolomé Esteban Murillo (born late December 1617, baptized January 1, 1618 – April 3, 1682) was a Spanish Baroque painter. Although he is best known for his religious works, Murillo also produced a considerable number of paintings of contemporary women and children. These lively, realist portraits of flower girls, street urchins, and beggars constitute an extensive and appealing record of the everyday life of his times. More on Bartolomé Esteban Murillo
Circle of Jan Mostaert
CHRIST AS THE MAN OF SORROWS
Oil on canvas
47 by 32.8 cm.; 18 1/2 by 12 7/8 in.
Private collection
This painting is one of several replicas of Jan Mostaert's original rendition of the subject, two versions of which are in the Museo di Castelvecchio, Verona (inv. no. 382), and the Kunsthalle, Hamburg (inv. no. 761). More on this painting
Man of Sorrows is paramount among the prefigurations of the Messiah identified by Christians in the passages of Isaiah 53 in the Hebrew Bible. It is also an iconic devotional image that shows Christ, usually naked above the waist, with the wounds of his Passion prominently displayed on his hands and side, often crowned with the Crown of Thorns and sometimes attended by angels. It developed in Europe from the 13th century, and was especially popular in Northern Europe.
The image continued to spread and develop iconographical complexity until well after the Renaissance, but the Man of Sorrows in its many artistic forms is the most precise visual expression of the piety of the later Middle Ages, which took its character from mystical contemplation rather than from theological speculation". Together with the Pietà, it was the most popular of the andachtsbilder-type images of the period - devotional images detached from the narrative of Christ's Passion, intended for meditation. More on Man of Sorrows
Jan Mostaert, (c. 1475 – 1555/1556) was a Netherlandish Renaissance painter of portraits and religious subjects. Mostaert was born in Haarlem and had been a pupil of Jacob van Haarlem. He was handsome, eloquent and polite, and claimed to be descended from the Haarlem knights of the Crusade to Damietta. He worked eighteen years as portraitist for Margaret of Austria (1480-1530), governor of the Habsburg Netherlands. He died in Antwerp where he had been awarded a pension for life. Mostaert's name first appeared in city records in 1498, the year he married and bought a house in his birthplace. He is also mentioned in Haarlem archives from 1527 to 1554. In 1500 Mostaert was commissioned to paint the shutters for a receptacle housing the relics of Saint Bavo in the Groote Kerk, Haarlem. From this date he began to be listed in the records of the Haarlem Guild of St. Luke, and continued to be frequently listed until 1549. He became deacon of the painters' guild in 1507, and again in 1543 and 1544. More on Jan Mostaert
Follower of Albrecht Dürer, circa 1600
CHRIST AS THE MAN OF SORROWS
Bears monogram and date lower right: 1514 AD
Oil on panel
19.5 by 17 cm.; 7 5/8 by 6 5/8 in.
Private collection
This composition derives from a lost prototype by Albrecht Dürer, now known only through old copies. The earliest mention of the original painting is in the Imhoff inventories of 1573/74 and 1580. Other copies of the present painting include a drawing and a painting, dated 1510, by Georg Gärtner, and an engraving by Jérome David. More on this painting
Man of Sorrows, see above
Albrecht Dürer (21 May 1471 – 6 April 1528) was a painter, printmaker and theorist of the German Renaissance. Born in Nuremberg, Dürer established his reputation and influence across Europe when he was still in his twenties, due to his high-quality woodcut prints. He was in communication with the major Italian artists of his time, including Raphael, Giovanni Bellini and Leonardo da Vinci, and from 1512 he was patronized by emperor Maximilian I.
His vast body of work includes engravings, his preferred technique in his later prints, altarpieces, portraits and self-portraits, watercolours and books. The woodcuts, such as the Apocalypse series (1498), retain a more Gothic flavour than the rest of his work. His well-known engravings include the Knight, Death, and the Devil (1513), Saint Jerome in his Study (1514) and Melencolia I (1514), which has been the subject of extensive analysis and interpretation. His watercolours also mark him as one of the first European landscape artists, while his ambitious woodcuts revolutionized the potential of that medium.
Dürer's introduction of classical motifs into Northern art, through his knowledge of Italian artists and German humanists, has secured his reputation as one of the most important figures of the Northern Renaissance. This is reinforced by his theoretical treatises, which involve principles of mathematics, perspective and ideal proportions. More on Albrecht Dürer
Follower of Andrea del Sarto
THE HOLY FAMILY
Oil on poplar panel
90 by 69.5 cm.; 35 3/8 by 27 3/8 in
Private collection
This is based on Andrea del Sarto's picture of the mid-1520s, now in Palazzo Barberini, Rome More
Andrea del Sarto (1486–1530) was an Italian painter from Florence, whose career flourished during the High Renaissance and early Mannerism. Though highly regarded during his lifetime as an artist senza errori ("without errors"), his renown was eclipsed after his death by that of his contemporaries, Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo and Raphael.
By 1494 Andrea was apprenticed to a goldsmith, and then to a woodcarver and painter named Gian Barile, with whom he remained until 1498. According to his late biographer Vasari, he then apprenticed to Piero di Cosimo, and later with Raffaellino del Garbo.
Andrea and an older friend Franciabigio decided to open a joint studio at a lodging together in the Piazza del Grano. By the time the partnership was dissolved, Sarto's style bore the stamp of individuality. According to the Encyclopædia Britannica, it "is marked throughout his career by an interest, exceptional among Florentines, in effects of colour and atmosphere and by sophisticated informality and natural expression of emotion." More on Andrea del Sarto
Circle of Paolo Caliari, called Paolo Veronese
NOLI ME TANGERE, , "don't touch me" or "don't tread on me",
Oil on canvas
71 by 61 cm.; 28 by 24 in.
Private collection
Noli me tangere, meaning "don't touch me" or "don't tread on me", is the Latin version of words spoken, according to John 20:17, by Jesus to Mary Magdalene when she recognized him after his resurrection.
The biblical scene became the subject of a long, widespread and continuous iconographic tradition in Christian art from Late Antiquity to the present. More on Noli me tangere
The original Koine Greek phrase is better represented in translation as "cease holding on to me" or "stop clinging to me".
Paolo Caliari, known as Paolo Veronese (1528 – 19
April 1588) was an Italian Renaissance painter based in Venice,
most famous for large history paintings of both religious and mythological
subjects, such as The Wedding at Cana and The Feast in the House of Levi. With
Titian, who was at least a generation older, and Tintoretto, ten years older,
he was one of the "great trio that dominated Venetian painting of the
cinquecento" or 16th-century late Renaissance. Veronese is known as a
supreme colorist, and after an early period with Mannerist influence turned to
a more naturalist style influenced by Titian.
His most
famous works are elaborate narrative cycles, executed in a dramatic and
colorful style, full of majestic architectural settings and glittering
pageantry. His large paintings of biblical feasts, crowded with figures,
painted for the refectories of monasteries in Venice and Verona are especially
famous, and he was also the leading Venetian painter of ceilings. Most of these
works remain in situ, or at least in Venice, and his representation in most
museums is mainly composed of smaller works such as portraits that do not
always show him at his best or most typical.
He has always been appreciated for "the chromatic
brilliance of his palette, the splendor and sensibility of his brushwork, the
aristocratic elegance of his figures, and the magnificence of his
spectacle", but his work has been felt "not to permit expression of
the profound, the human, or the sublime", and of the "great
trio" he has often been the least appreciated by modern criticism.
Nonetheless, "many of the greatest artists ... may be counted among his
admirers, including Rubens, Watteau, Tiepolo, Delacroix and Renoir". More on Paolo Caliari, known as Paolo Veronese
Antonio da Correggio (1490–1534)
Noli Me Tangere, "don't touch me" or "don't tread on me", c. 1525
Oil on canvas
130 x 103 cm (51 1/8 x 40 1/2 in.)
Museo del Prado, Madrid
Noli me tangere, see above
Antonio Allegri da Correggio (August 1489 – March 5, 1534), usually known as Correggio, was the foremost painter of the Parma school of the Italian Renaissance, who was responsible for some of the most vigorous and sensuous works of the 16th century. In his use of dynamic composition, illusionistic perspective and dramatic foreshortening, Correggio prefigured the Rococo art of the 18th century. He is considered a master of chiaroscuro. More on Antonio da Correggio
Follower of Sir Peter Paul Rubens
SAINT MATTHEW
Oil on oak panel
38.6 by 18.2 cm.; 15 1/4 by 7 1/8 in.
Private collection
Matthew the Apostle was, according to the Bible, one of the twelve apostles of Jesus and, according to Christian tradition, one of the four Evangelists. Among the early followers and apostles of Jesus, Matthew is mentioned in Matthew 9:9 and Matthew 10:3 as a publican who, while sitting at the "receipt of custom" in Capernaum, was called to follow Jesus. Matthew may have collected taxes from the Hebrew people for Herod Antipas. Matthew is also listed among the twelve, but without identification of his background, in Mark 3:18, Luke 6:15 and Acts 1:13. In passages parallel to Matthew 9:9, both Mark 2:14 and Luke 5:27 describe Jesus' calling of the tax collector Levi, the son of Alphaeus, but Mark and Luke never explicitly equate this Levi with the Matthew named as one of the twelve
Later Church fathers such as Irenaeus (Against Heresies 3.1.1) and Clement of Alexandria claim that Matthew preached the Gospel to the Jewish community in Judea, before going to other countries. Ancient writers are not agreed as to what these other countries are.[6] The Roman Catholic Church and the Orthodox Church each hold the tradition that Matthew died as a martyr, although this was rejected by the gnostic heretic Heracleon as early as the second century. More on Matthew the Apostle
Sir Peter Paul Rubens (28 June 1577 – 30 May 1640) was a Flemish Baroque painter. A proponent of an extravagant Baroque style that emphasized movement, colour, and sensuality, Rubens is well known for his Counter-Reformation 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. More on Sir Peter Paul Rubens
School of Toledo, early 17th Century
SAINT LOUIS IX OF FRANCE WITH THE ARCHANGEL MICHAEL, IN A LANDSCAPE
Oil on panel
117.8 by 66.1 cm.; 46 3/8 by 26 in.
Private collection
Louis IX (25 April 1214 – 25 August 1270), commonly known as Saint Louis, was a Capetian King of France who reigned from 1226 until his death. Louis was crowned in Reims at the age of 12, following the death of his father Louis VIII the Lion. As an adult, Louis IX faced recurring conflicts with some of the most powerful nobles, such as Hugh X of Lusignan and Peter of Dreux. Simultaneously, Henry III of England tried to restore his continental possessions, but was defeated at the battle of Taillebourg. His reign saw the annexation of several provinces, notably Normandy, Maine and Provence.
Louis's actions were inspired by Christian values. He decided to punish blasphemy, gambling, interest-bearing loans and prostitution, and bought the relics of Christ for which he built the Sainte-Chapelle. More on Louis IX
School of Toledo. In 1577 Toledo was the religious capital of Spain and a populous city with "an illustrious past, a prosperous present and an uncertain future". During the 1570s the huge monastery-palace of El Escorial was still under construction and Philip II of Spain was experiencing difficulties in finding good artists for the many large paintings required to decorate it.
After Giovanni Antonio Boltraffio, 16th Century
The Madonna and Child
Oil on panel
53 x 39cm (20 7/8 x 15 3/8in).
Private collection
The present composition is after Giovanni Antonio Boltraffio's original in the National Gallery, London.
Giovanni Antonio Boltraffio (1466 or 1467 – 1516) was an Italian painter of the High Renaissance from Lombardy, who worked in the studio of Leonardo da Vinci. Boltraffio and Bernardino Luini are the strongest artistic personalities to emerge from Leonardo's studio. According to Giorgio Vasari, he was of an aristocratic family and was born in Milan. More on Giovanni Antonio Boltraffio
After Giovanni Pietro Rizzoli, called il Giampetrino, 17th Century
The Madonna and Child
Oil on panel
64.5 x 50cm (25 3/8 x 19 5/8in).
Private collection
The present work is after Giampetrino's original composition previously in the Cook Collection, Richmond.
Giampietrino, probably Giovanni Pietro Rizzoli (active 1495–1549), was a north Italian painter of the Lombard school and Leonardo's circle. Giampietrino was a very productive painter of large altarpieces, Madonnas, holy women in half figure, and mythological women. For a long time, the true identity of the artist was unknown; he was only known as a so-called "Giampietrino" whose name appeared in lists of the members of Leonardo's studio. In 1929, Wilhelm Suida suggested that he could perhaps be Giovanni Battista Belmonte, since a Madonna signed with this name and dated 1509 had been associated stylistically with Giampietrino. Since then, this assumption is considered outdated, and Giampietrino is identified predominantly with Giovanni Pietro Rizzoli, who is known through documents.
Giampietrino has been regarded as a talented painter who contributed substantially to the distribution of the late style of Leonardo da Vinci. He copied numerous masterpieces by Leonardo, as well as leaving behind numerous capable original compositions of his own. Many of his works are preserved in multiple versions of the same subject. More on Giovanni Pietro Rizzoli, called il Giampetrino
Francisco Camilo (Madrid 1615-1671)
The Ecstasy of Saint Teresa
signed and dated 'franco. Camillo fa.at Ao 1664' (on step, lower left)
Oil on canvas
73.8 x 56.8cm (29 1/16 x 22 3/8in)
Private collection
Saint Teresa of Ávila, also called Saint Teresa of Jesus, baptized as Teresa Sánchez de Cepeda y Ahumada (28 March 1515 – 4 October 1582), was a Spanish nun, mystic and writer during the Counter-Reformation. Some sources suggest that as a girl, Theresa was willful and spoiled, and chose to enter the Carmelite sisterhood instead of marrying a wealthy hidalgo based on the mistaken belief that as a nun she would be afforded more freedom.
Upon entering the convent aged 19, Theresa became seriously ill (she has now become a patron saint for the infirm), possibly depressed and subjecting her body to self-mutilation.
By the time she reached her forties, Theresa had settled down to her new spiritual life, when one day, while praying and singing the hymn "Veni Creator Spiritus," she experienced the first of the episodes that would accompany her for the rest of her life: a rapture.
In her writings, Theresa describes how she would feel suddenly consumed by the love of God, feel the bodily presence of Christ or of angels, and be lifted to an exalted state of ecstasy. Although in her own lifetime Theresa was sometimes ridiculed for such claims, or even accused of communing with the devil, she became a prominent figure in the church. Theresa was one of only three female church doctors and was finally canonized in 1622.
In 1622, forty years after her death, she was canonized by Pope Gregory XV, and on 27 September 1970 was named a Doctor of the Church by Pope Paul VI. Her books, which include her autobiography (The Life of Teresa of Jesus) and her seminal work El Castillo Interior (trans.: The Interior Castle), are an integral part of Spanish Renaissance literature as well as Christian mysticism and Christian meditation practices.
A Santero image (Santo image) of the Immaculate Conception of El Viejo, said to have been sent with one of her brothers to Nicaragua by the saint, is now venerated as the country's national patroness at the Shrine of El Viejo. More on Saint Teresa of Ávila
Francisco Camilo (1610-1671) was a Spanish painter; the son of an Italian who had settled at Madrid. When his father died, his mother remarried, and Camilo became the stepson of the painter Pedro de las Cuevas.
De las Cuevas brought Camilo up as his own son, teaching him painting. At the age of 18, Camilo was asked to paint, for the high altar of the Jesuits’ house at Madrid, a picture representing St. Francis Borgia (which was afterwards removed to make way for an altarpiece in plastic).
The Count-Duke of Olivares ordered Camilo to do a series of paintings of Kings of Spain for the theater of Buenretiro, and also chose Camilo to adorn the western gallery of that palace with 14 frescoes from Ovid's Metamorphoses. Primarily a painter of religious works, Camilo did paintings for the monasteries of Madrid, Toledo, Alcalá, and Segovia. He painted and draped some of the statuary of Manuel Pereyra. More on Francisco Camilo
Follower of Juan Sánchez Cotán (Orgaz 1560-1627 Granada)
Saint John the Baptist
Oil on canvas
142 x 85.6cm (55 7/8 x 33 11/16in).
Private collection
The painting is loosely based on Sanchez Cotan's Saint John the Baptist, now in the Museo de Bellas Artes, Granada.
John the Baptist, known as the prophet
Yahya in the Qur'an, was a Jewish itinerant preacher in the early first century
AD. John is revered as a major religious figure in Christianity, Islam, the
Bahá'í Faith, and Mandaeism. He is called a prophet by all of these traditions,
and honoured as a saint in many Christian traditions.
John used
baptism as the central sacrament of his messianic movement.[ Most scholars
agree that John baptized Jesus. Scholars generally believe Jesus was a follower
or disciple of John and several New Testament accounts report that some of
Jesus' early followers had previously been followers of John. John the Baptist
is also mentioned by the Jewish historian Josephus. Some scholars maintain that
John was influenced by the semi-ascetic Essenes, who expected an apocalypse and
practiced rituals corresponding strongly with baptism, although no direct
evidence substantiates this.
According to the New Testament, John anticipated a
messianic figure greater than himself, and Jesus was the one whose coming John
foretold. Christians commonly refer to John as the precursor or forerunner of
Jesus, since John announces Jesus' coming. John is also identified with the
prophet Elijah. More on Saint John the Baptist
Juan Sánchez Cotán (June 25, 1560 – September 8, 1627) was a Spanish Baroque painter, a pioneer of realism in Spain. His still lifes—also called bodegones—were painted in an austere style, especially when compared to similar works in the Netherlands and Italy.
He was born in Spain, a friend and perhaps pupil of Blas de Prado, an artist famous for his still lifes whose mannerist style with touches of realism the disciple developed further. Cotán began by painting altarpieces and religious works. For approximately twenty years, patronized by the city’s aristocracy. Sánchez Cotán executed his notable still lifes around the beginning of the seventeenth century, before the end of his secular life.
On August 10, 1603, Sanchez Cotán, then in his forties, closed up his workshop at Toledo to renounce the world and enter the Carthusian monastery Santa Maria de El Paular. He continued his career painting religious works with singular mysticism. In 1612 he was sent to the Granada Charterhouse; he decided to become a monk, and in the following year he entered the Carthusian monastery at Granada as a lay brother. The reasons for this are not clear, though such action was not unusual in Cotán’s day.
Cotán was a prolific religious painter whose work, carried out exclusively for his monastery, reached its peak about 1617 in the cycle of eight great narrative paintings that he painted for the cloister of the Granada Monastery. These depict the foundation of the order of St. Bruno, and the prosecution of the monks in England by the Protestants. Although the painter’s religious works have an archaic air, they also reveal a keen interest in the treatment of light and volume, and in some respects are comparable with certain works by the Italian Luca Cambiaso, whom Cotán knew at the Escorial.
In spite of his retreat from the world, Cotán’s influence remained strong. His concern with the relationships among objects and with achieving the illusion of reality through the use of light and shadow was a major influence on the work of later Spanish painters such as Juan van der Hamen, Felipe Ramírez, the brothers Vincenzo and Bartolomeo Carducci and, notably, Francisco de Zurbarán. Sánchez Cotán ended his days universally loved and regarded as a saint. He died in 1627 in Granada. More on Juan Sánchez Cotán
School of Madrid, 17th Century
Ecce Homo
Oil on canvas
96.8 x 77cm (38 1/8 x 30 5/16in).
Private collection
Ecce Homo, see above
School of Madrid, 17th Century. The seventeenth century is in all respects the golden age of Spanish painting. Italian influence was largely rejected in favor of Mannerist formulas and a severe and noble style which used chiaroscuro not for the sake of a theatrical aestheticism, but to create a more urgent sense of drama. Though undoubtedly Baroque, this was a profoundly realistic art, preferring a broad visual synthesis, with a predominance of pictorial over tactile values, to the analytical approach of the sixteenth-century primitivists. More on the School of Madrid, 17th Century
Lombard School, 17th Century
Saint Paul
Oil on canvas
56.7 x 39.4cm (22 5/16 x 15 1/2in).
Private collection
Paul the Apostle (c. 5 – c. 67), originally known as Saul of Tarsus, was an apostle (though not one of the Twelve Apostles) who taught the gospel of Christ to the first-century world. He is generally considered one of the most important figures of the Apostolic Age. In the mid-30s to the mid-50s, he founded several churches in Asia Minor and Europe. Paul took advantage of his status as both a Jew and a Roman citizen to minister to both Jewish and Roman audiences.
According to the New Testament, Paul, who was originally called Saul, was dedicated to the persecution of the early disciples of Jesus in the area of Jerusalem. In the narrative of the book of Acts of the Apostles, while Paul was traveling on the road from Jerusalem to Damascus on a mission to "bring them which were there bound unto Jerusalem", the resurrected Jesus appeared to him in a great light. He was struck blind, but after three days his sight was restored by Ananias of Damascus, and Paul began to preach that Jesus of Nazareth is the Jewish Messiah and the Son of God.
Fourteen of the twenty-seven books in the New Testament have traditionally been attributed to Paul. Seven of the epistles are undisputed by scholars as being authentic, with varying degrees of argument about the remainder.
Today, Paul's epistles continue to be vital roots of the theology, worship, and pastoral life in the Catholic and Protestant traditions of the West, and the Orthodox traditions of the East. Among that of many other apostles and missionaries involved in the spread of the Christian faith Paul's influence on Christian thought and practice has been characterized as being as "profound as it is pervasive". More on Paul the Apostle
Lombard School; a school of art in Northern Italy. Lombard architecture developed from the eighth to tenth centuries. The establishment of Christianity as the Lombards’ official religion fostered the rise of an independent school of architecture that played a decisive role in the development of the Romanesque style in Italy.
Lombard trecento and early quattrocento painting, which developed within the framework of the late, or international, Gothic style, is noted for a delicate elegance of form and direct, poetic observations of the real world. Pisanello played an important role in the development of Lombard quattrocento painting.
In the second half of the 15th century, Florentine art and the work of Mantegna particularly influenced Lombard painting. The works of masters of this period were marked by plastic clarity of composition, a softer palette, and an increased interest in chiaroscuro modeling. During the High Renaissance the impact of Leonardo da Vinci was paramount, with his Milanese pupils creating works permeated by contemplative and sentimental moods. In the second quarter of the 16th century, the traditions of the Lombard quattrocento combined with Venetian and northern influences, resulting in the rise of the separate Brescian school. During the 16th century and the baroque period, the inner unity of the Lombard school was lost. More on the Lombard School, 17th Century
After Pedro Orrente, 17th Century
The Adoration of the Shepherds
Oil on canvas
105.2 x 83.8cm (41 7/16 x 33in).
Private collection
The present work follows the composition by Pedro Orrente in the Cathedral of Toldeo.
The Adoration of the Shepherds, in the Nativity of Jesus in art, is a scene in which shepherds are near witnesses to the birth of Jesus in Bethlehem, arriving soon after the actual birth. It is often combined in art with the Adoration of the Magi, in which case it is typically just referred to by the latter title. The Annunciation to the Shepherds, when they are summoned by an angel to the scene, is a distinct subject. More on The Adoration of the Shepherds
Pedro Orrente (1580–1645) was a Spanish painter of the Baroque period. Orrente appears to have studied with el Greco in Toledo, where he painted a San Ildefonso before the apparition of St Leocadia and the Birth of Christ for the cathedral. He often moved, painting in Murcia and Cuenca. In Valencia, he painted for the Cathedral. He set up a school, and among his pupils were Esteban March and García Salmerón. In Madrid, he painted works transferred to the Palacio del Buen Retiro. He traveled to Seville, where he met Francisco Pacheco. Returning to Castille, died in Valencia and buried in the parish de San Martín. Known for paintings of animals and landscapes, as well a history paintings. More on Pedro Orrente
Circle of Francisco Rizi de Guevara (Madrid 1614-1685 El Escorial)
The Adoration of the Magi
Oil on canvas
166.2 x 125.1cm (65 7/16 x 49 1/4in)
Private collection
The Adoration of the Magi is the name traditionally given to the subject in the Nativity of Jesus in art in which the three Magi, represented as kings, especially in the West, having found Jesus by following a star, lay before him gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh, and worship him. More on The Adoration of the Magi
Francisco Rizi de Guevara ( Madrid , 1614- San Lorenzo de El Escorial , 1685) was a Spanish Baroque painter, son of Antonio Ricci, an Italian artist who came to Spain to work on the decoration of the monastery of El Escorial under the orders of Federico Zuccaro , and brother of painter Fray Juan Rizi .
de Guevara was an apprentice of Vicente Carducho and highlights. This training is manifested in some of his early works, but soon distanced himself from his teacher due to his strong sense of dynamism and gestural expressiveness, and opulent baroque style, that are characteristic features of the Madrid school of painting, which he himself was one of the main representatives and teacher. More on Francisco Rizi de Guevara
Florentine School, 14th Century
The Madonna and Child enthroned with Saints John the Baptist and Anthony Abbot
Tempera on gold ground panel
52.6 x 38.2cm (20 11/16 x 15 1/16in).
Private collection
Florentine painting or the Florentine School refers to artists in, from, or influenced by the naturalistic style developed in Florence in the 14th century, largely through the efforts of Giotto di Bondone, and in the 15th century the leading school of Western painting. Some of the best known artists of the Florentine school, including other arts, are Filippo Brunelleschi, Donatello, Michelangelo, Fra Angelico, Botticelli, Lippi, Masolino, and Masaccio. More on the Florentine School
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