2 new painters on the blog. Fra Bartolomeo and James Barry.
Wednesday, August 3, 2011
Fra Bartolomeo Art: The Vision of Saint Bernard
Fra Bartolomeo Art Gallery
The Vision of Saint Bernard (c.1504)
Fra Bartolomeo Art Gallery: The Mystic Marriage of Saint Catherine
Fra Bartolomeo Art Gallery
The Mystic Marriage of Saint Catherine-1512
Fra Bartolomeo Art Gallery: God the Father in Glory with Saint Mary Magdalene and Saint Catherine of Siena
Fra Bartolomeo Art Gallery
God the Father in Glory with Saint Mary Magdalene and Saint Catherine of Siena-1509
Fra Bartolomeo
Fra Bartolomeo
Fra Bartolomeo Art
Fra Bartolomeo Biography
Starting from 1483 or 1484, by recommendation of Benedetto da Maiano, he apprenticed in the workshop of Cosimo Rosselli. He was one of the greatest painters of his time. In 1490 or 1491 he began a collaboration with Mariotto Albertinelli. In the late 1490s Baccio was drawn to the teachings of Fra Girolamo Savonarola, who denounced what he viewed as vain and corrupt contemporary art. Savonarola argued for art serving as a direct visual illustration of the Bible to educate those unable to read the book. From 1498 is his famous portrait of Savonarola, now in the Museo Nazionale di San Marco in Florence. The following year he was commissioned a fresco of the Universal Judgement for the Ospedale di Santa Maria Nuova, completed by Albertinelli and Giuliano Bugiardini when Baccio became a Dominican friar on July 26, 1500. The following year he entered the convent of San Marco.
He renounced painting for several years, not resuming until 1504 when he became the head of the monastery workshop in obedience to his superior. In that year he began a Vision of St. Bernard for Bernardo Bianco's family chapel in the Badia Fiorentina, finished in 1507. Soon thereafter, Raphael visited Florence and befriended the friar. Bartolomeo learned perspective from the younger artist, while Raphael added skills in coloring and handling of drapery, which was noticeable in the works he produced after their meeting. With Raphael, he remained on the friendliest terms, and when he departed from Rome, left in his hands two unfinished pictures which Raphael completed.
At the beginning of 1508 Bartolomeo moved to Venice to paint a Holy Father, St. Mary Magdalene and St. Catherine of Siena for the Dominicans of San Pietro Martire in Murano, influenced somewhat by Venetian colorism. As the Dominicans did not pay the work, he took it back to Lucca, where it can be seen now. Also in Lucca, in the October 1509, he painted by Albertinelli an altarpiece with Madonna and Child with Saints for the local cathedral. On November 26, 1510 Pier Soderini commissioned him an altarpiece for the Sala del Consiglio of Florence, now in the Museum of San Marco. Two years later he finished another altarpiece for the cathedral of Besançon.
In 1513 he went to Rome, where he painted a Peter and Paul, now in the Pinacoteca Vaticana, while from the following years are the St. Mark Evangelist of Palazzo Pitti in Florence and the frescoes in the Dominican convent of Pian di Mugnone. After a promised Feast of Venus for Duke Alfonso I d'Este of Ferrara, of which only drawings remain, his last work is fresco of Noli me tangere also in Pian di Mugnone.
He died in Florence in 1517.
Evaluation
Initially, his works showed the influence of Rosselli's assistant, Piero di Cosimo, and those of Domenico Ghirlandaio and Filippino Lippi. After his hiatus from 1500 to 1503, he seemed to change vision, taking from Raphael the representation of light and its effects over moving shapes.
Fra Bartolomeo's figures are generally small and draped. These qualities were alleged against him as defects, and to prove that his style was not the result of want of power, he painted the magnificent figure of the St. Mark Evangelist (ranked as his masterpiece), and the undraped figure of St. Sebastian. It is alleged that the latter was felt to be so strongly expressive of suffering and agony, that it was found necessary to remove it from the place where it had been exhibited in the chapel of a convent.
Fra Bartolomeo's compositions are remarkable for skill in the massing of light and shade, richness and delicacy of colouring, and for the admirable drapery of the figures, Bartolomeo having been the first to introduce and use the lay-figure with joints.
Milton Dictating to Ellwood the Quaker. Art of James Barry.
Art of James Barry
Milton Dictating to Ellwood the Quaker-1804
King Lear Mourns Cordelia's Death. James Barry Art Gallery.
James Barry Art Gallery
Painting: King Lear Mourns Cordelia's Death-1786
James Barry
James Barry
James Barry Art
James Barry Biography
The painting that first brought him into public notice, and gained him the acquaintance and patronage of Edmund Burke, was founded on an old tradition of the landing of St Patrick on the sea-coast of Cashel, (this is a mistake reproduced from another source, Cashel is an inland town far from the sea) and of the conversion and Baptism of the King of Cashel It was exhibited in London in 1762 or 1763 and rediscovered in the 1980s, in unexhibitable condition.
By the liberality of Burke and his other friends, Barry in the latter part of 1765 was enabled to go abroad. He went first to Paris, then to Rome, where he remained upwards of three years, from Rome to Florence and Bologna, and thence home through Venice. His letters to the Burkes, giving an account of Raphael, Michelangelo, Titian and Leonardo da Vinci, show remarkable insight. Barry painted two pictures while abroad, an Adam and Eve and a Philoctetes.
Soon after his return to England in 1771 he produced his picture of Venus, which was compared to the Galatea of Raphael, the Venus of Titian and the Venus de Medici. In 1773 he exhibited his Jupiter and Juno on Mount Ida (illustration, above right). His Death of General Wolfe, in which the British and French soldiers are represented in very primitive costumes, was considered as a falling-off from his great style of art. His fondness for Greek costume was assigned by his admirers as the cause of his reluctance to paint portraits. His failure to go on with a portrait of Edmund Burke which he had begun caused a misunderstanding with his early patron. The difference between them is said to have been widened by Burke’s growing intimacy with Sir Joshua Reynolds, and by Barry’s jealousy of the fame and fortune of his rival “in a humbler walk of the art.” About the same time he painted a pair of classical subjects, Mercury inventing the lyre, and Narcissus, the last suggested to him by Burke. He also painted a historical picture of Chiron and Achilles, and another of the story of Stratonice, for which last the duke of Richmond gave him a hundred guineas.
In 1773 it was proposed to decorate the interior of St Paul’s with historical and sacred subjects; but the plan fell to the ground, from not meeting with the agreement of the bishop of London and the Archbishop of Canterbury. Barry was upset by the failure, for he had in anticipation fixed the subject he intended to paint — the rejection of Christ by the Jews when Pilate proposes his release. In 1773 he published An Inquiry into the real and imaginary Obstructions to the Acquisition of the Arts in England, vindicating the capacity of the English for the fine arts and tracing their slow progress to the Reformation, to political and civil dissensions, and lastly to the general direction of the public mind to mechanics, manufactures and commerce.
In 1774 a proposal was made through Valentine Green to Sir Joshua Reynolds, Benjamin West, Cipriani, Barry, and other artists to ornament the Great Room of the Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce (now the Royal Society of Arts), in London's Adelphi, with historical and allegorical paintings. This proposal was at the time rejected by the artists; but in 1777 Barry made an offer to paint the whole on condition that he was allowed the choice of his subjects, and that he would be paid by the society the costs of canvas, paints and models. His offer was accepted. He finished the series of pictures after seven years to the satisfaction of the members of the society, who granted him two exhibitions, and at subsequent periods voted him 50 guineas, a gold medal, and a further 200 guineas. Barry regularly returned to the series for more than a decade, making changes and inserting new features. The series of six paintings - The progress of human knowledge and culture - has been described by critic Andrew Graham-Dixon as "Britain's late, great answer to the Sistine Chapel".
Soon after his return from the continent Barry had been chosen a member of the Royal Academy of Arts; and in 1782 he was appointed professor of painting in the room of Mr Penny with a salary of £30 a year. Among other things, he insisted on the necessity of purchasing a collection of pictures by the best masters as models for the students, and proposed several of those in the Orleans collection. This recommendation was not relished, and in 1799 Barry was expelled from the Academy soon after the appearance of his Letter to the Dilettanti Society, an eccentric publication, full of enthusiasm for his art and at the same time of contempt for the living professors of it. Barry remained the only academician ever to be expelled by the Academy until Professor Brendan Neiland resigned in July 2004.
During his time at the Royal Academy of Arts, Barry painted The Thames (or Triumph of Navigation) in 1791, which featured the English music historian [Charles Burney].
After the loss of his salary, a subscription was set on foot by the Earl of Buchan to relieve him from his difficulties, and to settle him in a larger house to finish his picture of Pandora. The subscription amounted to £1000, with which an annuity was bought, but on 6 February 1806 he was seized with illness and died on the 22nd of the same month. On 4 March his remains were interred in St Paul’s Cathedral, London.
The 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica has this to say:
As an artist, Barry was more distinguished for the strength of his conceptions, and for his resolute and persistent determination to apply himself only to great subjects, than for his skill in designing or for beauty in his colouring. His drawing is not especially good, his colouring ordinary. He was impulsive; sometimes morose, sometimes sociable and urbane; jealous of his contemporaries, and yet capable of pronouncing a splendid eulogy on Reynolds.
Barry also mastered the art of aquatint.
Alice Pike Barney Online Art Gallery
Last update, the Art of Alice Pike Barney.
- Alice Warder Garrett
- Bar Harbor
- Ceres
- Dream Book
- Firelight
- Girl with Basket
- Hollywood
- In Southern France
- Japanese Lullaby
- La Rosita
- Lunar
- Man with Monocle
- Marshlands at Sundown
- Medusa
- Natalie at Seven
- Natalie with Violin
- Study, Head of a Boy
- The Brass Kettle
- The Field
- Woman with Red Hood
- Young Man
- Young Woman in Black Hat
Young Woman in Black Hat. Alice Pike Barney art Gallery.
Alice Pike Barney art Gallery
Young Woman in Black Hat-1927
Woman with Red Hood. Alice Pike Barney art Gallery.
Alice Pike Barney art Gallery
Woman with Red Hood
Study, Head of a Boy. Alice Pike Barney art Gallery.
Alice Pike Barney art Gallery
Study, Head of a Boy
Alice Pike Barney art Gallery: Natalie with Violin
Alice Pike Barney art Gallery
Painting: Natalie with Violin
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