Friday, 4 April 2014

A Set Of Popular Italian Painters

By Darren Hartley


The earliest of Caravaggio paintings was the Boy Peeling a Fruit. The early Caravaggio paintings were paintings of flowers and fruits including Boy with a Basket of Fruit and Young Sick Bacchus. Physical Particularity is an aspect of Caravaggio realism for which he became famous for. This aspect was demonstrated in these paintings.

An Italian artist active in Rome, Naples, Malta and Sicily, Michelangelo Merisi o Amerighi da Caravaggio painted The Fortune Teller, the first of Caravaggio paintings with more than one figure. Its theme consisted of Mario Minniti, a 16 year old Sicilian artist, being cheated by a Gypsy girl. The theme was quite new for Rome and became immensely influential over the next century and thereafter.

The Cardsharps, an example of the more psychologically complex Caravaggio paintings was considered the first true Caravaggio masterpiece. It featured a boy falling prey to card cheats. Other Caravaggio paintings followed suit, namely, The Musicians, The Lute Player, a tipsy Bacchus and Boy Bitten by a Lizard. These paintings became a center of dispute among scholars and biographers due to the homoerotic ambiance they carried with them.

The first Caravaggio paintings on religious themes were a return to realism and showed an emergence of remarkable spirituality. These paintings included Penitent Magdalene, Saint Catherine, Martha and Mary Magdalene, Judith Beheading Holofernes, Sacrifice of Isaac, Saint Francis of Assisi in Ecstasy and Rest on the Flight into Egypt.

A celebration of perfection and grace is what Raphael paintings is all about. They carried with them serene and harmonious qualities. An Italian High Renaissance painter and architect was how Raphael Sanzio was known. He formed the traditional trinity of great masters of the period, together with Michelangelo and Leonardo da Vinci.

Raphael paintings naturally fall into 3 phases and 3 styles, that is, Raphael's early years in Umbria, a 4 year period absorbing Florence's artistic traditions and his last hectic and triumphant 12 years in Rome.

Early Raphael paintings included a brilliant self-portrait drawing showing Raphael's precocious talent. Their technique showed thick paint application with the use of an oil varnish medium, in shadows and darker garments, but thin paint application on flesh areas.

The Baronci altarpiece for the church of Saint Nicholas of Tolentino was the first documented work among Raphael paintings. In the following years, Raphael paintings consisted of painted works for other churches. Among these large works, some done in fresco, are the Mond Crucifixion, the Brera Wedding of the Virgin and Oddi Altarpiece.

During the period, there can be found, small and exquisite cabinet Raphael paintings. The Three Graces and St. Michael are among these works. The beginning of Raphael paintings of Madonna and portraits can also be attributed to the same period.




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