Baroque Paintings

This is a very large decorating Majolica Plate depicting Don Quixote de La Mancha. These famous character is universally known by the Spanish novel book of Miguel de Cervantes (One o...

A Pair of French 19th Century Oil on Canvas "Allegory of Fortune and Virtue". The old-master style oval canvas' depicting Fortune as a classical seated elegantly dressed maiden tossi...

In the style or School of the Important Old Master Guido Reni (Italian, 1575-1642). A stunning Old Master 18th or possibly 17th century Italian Baroque School religious portrait pa...

A Large Flemish-style Oil-on-Canvas, Still Life with Vegetables, including eggplant, red bell peppers, yellow ears of corn, green celery: and objects, a clay ewer, pots, and lanter...

Adolf Constantin Baumgartner Stoiloff (Austrian/Russian, 1850-1924) a fine oil on board "Charging Warriors on Horseback" within an ornate giltwood frame, circa 1890 Born in 1850 in Linz (Austria) Stoiloff died in Vienna in 1924. According to a research of Russian literature, he studied in the 1880s at St. Petersburg Imperial Academy of Fine Arts. He was very well known for his Russian horse...

Impressive oil on canvas memento mori or omnia vanitas still life painting. The site measures 15.5 inches wide and 12.5 inches high. Set i...

Hand painted, oil paint on canvas of an Italian family tree featuring a male figure, crests and names, all in the design of a tree. Framed in an antique, hand-carved gilt-wood fram...

Hand painted architectural painting from an 18th century boiserie room.

This beautifully composed painting of "Madonna and Child" by Carlo Garofalo embodies a timeless reverence and serene beauty. Garofalo, a prominent voice in Italy during the late 17th...

Set of five German Engraved and parcel Gilt Mirror Panels, Each engraved mirrored panel portrays a different character with hand painting and gilt detailing.

An exceptional original Old Master reproduction of Isaac 'Blessing Jaacob' after Govert Flinck, a student of Rembrandt. The original 17th cen...

A Large and Impressive 19th Century Continental Oil on Canvas "An Allegory of Love" after the original work by Titian - Tiziano Vecellio (Italian 1488-1576), within an ornate gilt-wo...

In this compelling 19th-century art student study, we encounter a mesmerizing self-portrait by the eminent Baroque master, Peter Paul Rubens. The painting captures Rubens adorned in ...

This is a classic Italian late 17th century floral still life. Although the painting is not signed, it has all of the hallmarks of being created by a master painter. The painting and...

A LARGE OIL ON CANVAS OF 'DON GASPAR DE GUZMAN COUNT-DUKE OF OLIVARES, MID-20TH CENTURY, originally painted by Diego Valazquez ( 1599-1660), Provenance: Painting has been used in the Three Musketeers film and was purchased from...

pastorial landscape picture with cattle in the Manner of Paulus Potter, (Dutch, 1625-1654), oil on canvas, picture has been relined, some overpainting, signed front lower left POTTER...

Santiago Uribe Holguin. Colombian, b. 1957 El Gran Vermeer, 1996-97. Signed and dated Uribe-Holguin '96 (lr), Signed and dated Uribe-Holguin 97 and inscribed as titled on the reverse...

18th Century oil on canvas painting depicting Saint Catherine of Siena bearing lilies and a book in her left hand and a crucifix in her right ...

18th to 19th century framed watercolor Coat of Arms of the Company of Merchant Taylors of the City of York. A guild of freemen since 1273, Charles II granted them a royal charter Apr...

A 17th century oil on canvas picture, framed, a scene of travelers / noblemen including horses after Philips Wouwerman ( Dutch, 1619-1668 ), noblemen on horseback are drinking ale / ...

An exquisite circa 1720 English George I period "Kit-kat" style portrait firmly attributed to royal court painter Sir Godfrey Kneller (8 August 1646 – ...

This six panel Italian screen is from the Baroque period, circa 1700. The four central panels have been affixed to a foldable frame, while the two outer panels are detached. When all...

A fine Italian 19th century oil painting on canvas "La Madonna della Seggiola" after Raphael (Raffaello Sanzio da Urbino 1483-1520). The circular painted canvas depicting a seated Ma...

A very fine Italian 18th century oil on canvas "Madonna and Child" after Giovanni Lanfranco (Italian, 1582-1647). The young Virgin Mary attending to...

Pair of framed antique 17th century Roman Catholic antiphonal music sheets, hand drawn on vellum with illuminated capitals. Measures: 28.25” x 1.75” ...

"Oil on canvas ""The Lamentation"" painted after the original (circa 1629) by Sir Anthony van Dyck. This rendition of the burial of Jesus Christ shows ...

A late 18th century French painting depicting a romantic couple in a pastoral setting. Oil on canvas. Unsigned. Original gilded wood frame. Small repair to canvas in the upper left c...

Dimensions- Frame: H: 32 3/4in W: 39 1/4in D: 2 1/2in Painting: H: 25 1/2in W: 32 1/4in This Oil Painting On Canvas Titled "Checkmated" by Alex De Andreis (1880-1939) is truly ...

A very fine Italian 17th century oval oil on canvas "Head of Christ Crowned with Thorns" Circle of Pierre Mignard (French, 1612-1695) within...

Pair of 20th Century decorative Venetian canal paintings, After Canaletto Each one Signed 'Maffel' A stunning pair of late 20th Century oils on canvas, views of the Grand Canal in Venice Italy, in ornate carved giltwood frames. After works by the iconic Venetian painter...

A beautiful Italian Still Life oil painting on old canvas of an urn holding a bouquet of assorted flowers set on a ledge. 17th century....

A Fine Italian 19th Century Oil Painting on Canvas "La Madonna della Seggiola" after Raphael (Raffaello Sanzio da Urbino 1483-1520). The circular painted canvas depicting a seated Madonna holding an infant Jesus Christ next to a child Saint John the Baptist, all within a massive carved two-tone gilt wood, gilt-patinated and gesso frame, which is identical to the frame on Raphael's original artwork. This painting is a 19th Century copy of Raphael's Madonna della Seggiola painted in 1514 and currently exhibited and part of the permanent collection at the Palazzo Pitti, Galleria Palatina, Florence, Italy. The bodies of the Virgin, Christ, and the boy Baptist fill the whole picture. The tender, natural looking embrace of the Mother and Child, and the harmonious grouping of the figures in the round, have made this one of Raphael's most popular Madonnas. The isolated chair leg is reminiscent of papal furniture, which has led to the assumption that Leo X himself commissioned the painting. Circa: 1890-1900. Subject: Religious painting Painting diameter: 28 inches (71.1 cm) Frame height: 55 1/8 inches (140 cm) Frame width: 46 inches (116.8 cm) Frame depth: 5 1/8 inches (13 cm) Raffaello Sanzio da Urbino (Italian, March 28 or April 6, 1483 - April 6, 1520), known as Raphael, was an Italian painter and architect of the High Renaissance. His work is admired for its clarity of form, ease of composition, and visual achievement of the Neoplatonic ideal of human grandeur. Together with Michelangelo and Leonardo da Vinci, he forms the traditional trinity of great masters of that period. Raphael was enormously productive, running an unusually large workshop and, despite his death at 37, leaving a large body of work. Many of his works are found in the Vatican Palace, where the frescoed Raphael Rooms were the central, and the largest, work of his career. The best known work is The School of Athens in the Vatican Stanza della Segnatura. After his early years in Rome much of his work was executed by his workshop from his drawings, with considerable loss of quality. He was extremely influential in his lifetime, though outside Rome his work was mostly known from his collaborative printmaking. After his death, the influence of his great rival Michelangelo was more widespread until the 18th and 19th centuries, when Raphael's more serene and harmonious qualities were again regarded as the highest models. His career falls naturally into three phases and three styles, first described by Giorgio Vasari: his early years in Umbria, then a period of about four years (1504–1508) absorbing the artistic traditions of Florence, followed by his last hectic and triumphant twelve years in Rome, working for two Popes and their close associates. Raphael was born in the small but artistically significant central Italian city of Urbino in the Marche region, where his father Giovanni Santi was court painter to the Duke. The reputation of the court had been established by Federico III da Montefeltro, a highly successful condottiere who had been created Duke of Urbino by the Pope - Urbino formed part of the Papal States - and who died the year before Raphael was born. The emphasis of Federico's court was rather more literary than artistic, but Giovanni Santi was a poet of sorts as well as a painter, and had written a rhymed chronicle of the life of Federico, and both wrote the texts and produced the decor for masque-like court entertainments. His poem to Federico shows him as keen to show awareness of the most advanced North Italian painters, and Early Netherlandish artists as well. In the very small court of Urbino he was probably more integrated into the central circle of the ruling family than most court painters. Federico was succeeded by his son Guidobaldo da Montefeltro, who married Elisabetta Gonzaga, daughter of the ruler of Mantua, the most brilliant of the smaller Italian courts for both music and the visual arts. Under them, the court continued as a centre for literary culture. Growing up in the circle of this small court gave Raphael the excellent manners and social skills stressed by Vasari. Court life in Urbino at just after this period was to become set as the model of the virtues of the Italian humanist court through Baldassare Castiglione's depiction of it in his classic work The Book of the Courtier, published in 1528. Castiglione moved to Urbino in 1504, when Raphael was no longer based there but frequently visited, and they became good friends. He became close to other regular visitors to the court: Pietro Bibbiena and Pietro Bembo, both later cardinals, were already becoming well known as writers, and would be in Rome during Raphael's period there. Raphael mixed easily in the highest circles throughout his life, one of the factors that tended to give a misleading impression of effortlessness to his career. He did not receive a full humanistic education however; it is unclear how easily he read Latin. Early Life and Works His mother Màgia died in 1491 when Raphael was eight, followed on August 1, 1494 by his father, who had already remarried. Raphael was thus orphaned at eleven; his formal guardian became his only paternal uncle Bartolomeo, a priest, who subsequently engaged in litigation with his stepmother. He probably continued to live with his stepmother when not staying as an apprentice with a master. He had already shown talent, according to Vasari, who says that Raphael had been "a great help to his father". A self-portrait drawing from his teenage years shows his precocity. His father's workshop continued and, probably together with his stepmother, Raphael evidently played a part in managing it from a very early age. In Urbino, he came into contact with the works of Paolo Uccello, previously the court painter (d. 1475), and Luca Signorelli, who until 1498 was based in nearby Città di Castello. According to Vasari, his father placed him in the workshop of the Umbrian master Pietro Perugino as an apprentice "despite the tears of his mother". The evidence of an apprenticeship comes only from Vasari and another source, and has been disputed—eight was very early for an apprenticeship to begin. An alternative theory is that he received at least some training from Timoteo Viti, who acted as court painter in Urbino from 1495.Most modern historians agree that Raphael at least worked as an assistant to Perugino from around 1500; the influence of Perugino on Raphael's early work is very clear: "probably no other pupil of genius has ever absorbed so much of his master's teaching as Raphael did", according to Wölfflin. Vasari wrote that it was impossible to distinguish between their hands at this period, but many modern art historians claim to do better and detect his hand in specific areas of works by Perugino or his workshop. Apart from stylistic closeness, their techniques are very similar as well, for example having paint applied thickly, using an oil varnish medium, in shadows and darker garments, but very thinly on flesh areas. An excess of resin in the varnish often causes cracking of areas of paint in the works of both masters. The Perugino workshop was active in both Perugia and Florence, perhaps maintaining two permanent branches. Raphael is described as a "master", that is to say fully trained, in December 1500. His first documented work was the Baronci altarpiece for the church of Saint Nicholas of Tolentino in Città di Castello, a town halfway between Perugia and Urbino. Evangelista da Pian di Meleto, who had worked for his father, was also named in the commission. It was commissioned in 1500 and finished in 1501; now only some cut sections and a preparatory drawing remain. In the following years he painted works for other churches there, including the Mond Crucifixion (about 1503) and the Brera Wedding of the Virgin (1504), and for Perugia, such as the Oddi Altarpiece. He very probably also visited Florence in this period. These are large works, some in fresco, where Raphael confidently marshals his compositions in the somewhat static style of Perugino. He also painted many small and exquisite cabinet paintings in these years, probably mostly for the connoisseurs in the Urbino court, like the Three Graces and St. Michael, and he began to paint Madonnas and portraits. In 1502 he went to Siena at the invitation of another pupil of Perugino, Pinturicchio, "being a friend of Raphael and knowing him to be a draughtsman of the highest quality" to help with the cartoons, and very likely the designs, for a fresco series in the Piccolomini Library in Siena Cathedral. He was evidently already much in demand even at this early stage in his career. Influence of Florence Raphael led a "nomadic" life, working in various centres in Northern Italy, but spent a good deal of time in Florence, perhaps from about 1504. Although there is traditional reference to a "Florentine period...

Mesmerizing French still life oil painting on board. The midcentury painting depicts a pheasant on a tablecloth with green cabbage. Amazing detail and brushwork set in a distressed g...

A Fine Italian 19th Century Oil Painting on Canvas "La Madonna della Seggiola" after Raphael (Raffaello Sanzio da Urbino 1483-1520). The circular painted canvas depicting a seated Madonna holding an infant Jesus Christ next to a child Saint John the Baptist, all within a massive carved gilt wood and gesso frame, which is identical to the frame on Raphael's original artwork. This painting is a 19th Century copy of Raphael's Madonna della Seggiola painted in 1514 and currently exhibited and part of the permanent collection at the Palazzo Pitti, Galleria Palatina, Florence, Italy. The bodies of the Virgin, Christ, and the boy Baptist fill the whole picture. The tender, natural looking embrace of the Mother and Child, and the harmonious grouping of the figures in the round, have made this one of Raphael's most popular Madonnas. The isolated chair leg is reminiscent of papal furniture, which has led to the assumption that Leo X himself commissioned the painting. A retailer's label reads " Fred K/ Keer's Sons - Framers and Fine Art Dealers - 917 Broad St. Newark, N.J." - Another label from the gilder reads "Carlo Bartolini - Doratore e Verniciatori - Via Maggio 1924 - Firenze". Circa: 1890-1900. Subject: Religious painting Canvas diameter: 28 inches (71.1 cm) Frame height: 54 inches (137.2 cm) Frame width: 42 1/2 inches (108 cm) Frame depth: 5 1/2 inches (14 cm) Raffaello Sanzio da Urbino (Italian, March 28 or April 6, 1483 - April 6, 1520), known as Raphael, was an Italian painter and architect of the High Renaissance. His work is admired for its clarity of form, ease of composition, and visual achievement of the Neoplatonic ideal of human grandeur. Together with Michelangelo and Leonardo da Vinci, he forms the traditional trinity of great masters of that period. Raphael was enormously productive, running an unusually large workshop and, despite his death at 37, leaving a large body of work. Many of his works are found in the Vatican Palace, where the frescoed Raphael Rooms were the central, and the largest, work of his career. The best known work is The School of Athens in the Vatican Stanza della Segnatura. After his early years in Rome much of his work was executed by his workshop from his drawings, with considerable loss of quality. He was extremely influential in his lifetime, though outside Rome his work was mostly known from his collaborative printmaking. After his death, the influence of his great rival Michelangelo was more widespread until the 18th and 19th centuries, when Raphael's more serene and harmonious qualities were again regarded as the highest models. His career falls naturally into three phases and three styles, first described by Giorgio Vasari: his early years in Umbria, then a period of about four years (1504–1508) absorbing the artistic traditions of Florence, followed by his last hectic and triumphant twelve years in Rome, working for two Popes and their close associates. Raphael was born in the small but artistically significant central Italian city of Urbino in the Marche region, where his father Giovanni Santi was court painter to the Duke. The reputation of the court had been established by Federico III da Montefeltro, a highly successful condottiere who had been created Duke of Urbino by the Pope - Urbino formed part of the Papal States - and who died the year before Raphael was born. The emphasis of Federico's court was rather more literary than artistic, but Giovanni Santi was a poet of sorts as well as a painter, and had written a rhymed chronicle of the life of Federico, and both wrote the texts and produced the decor for masque-like court entertainments. His poem to Federico shows him as keen to show awareness of the most advanced North Italian painters, and Early Netherlandish artists as well. In the very small court of Urbino he was probably more integrated into the central circle of the ruling family than most court painters. Federico was succeeded by his son Guidobaldo da Montefeltro, who married Elisabetta Gonzaga, daughter of the ruler of Mantua, the most brilliant of the smaller Italian courts for both music and the visual arts. Under them, the court continued as a centre for literary culture. Growing up in the circle of this small court gave Raphael the excellent manners and social skills stressed by Vasari. Court life in Urbino at just after this period was to become set as the model of the virtues of the Italian humanist court through Baldassare Castiglione's depiction of it in his classic work The Book of the Courtier, published in 1528. Castiglione moved to Urbino in 1504, when Raphael was no longer based there but frequently visited, and they became good friends. He became close to other regular visitors to the court: Pietro Bibbiena and Pietro Bembo, both later cardinals, were already becoming well known as writers, and would be in Rome during Raphael's period there. Raphael mixed easily in the highest circles throughout his life, one of the factors that tended to give a misleading impression of effortlessness to his career. He did not receive a full humanistic education however; it is unclear how easily he read Latin. Early Life and Works His mother Màgia died in 1491 when Raphael was eight, followed on August 1, 1494 by his father, who had already remarried. Raphael was thus orphaned at eleven; his formal guardian became his only paternal uncle Bartolomeo, a priest, who subsequently engaged in litigation with his stepmother. He probably continued to live with his stepmother when not staying as an apprentice with a master. He had already shown talent, according to Vasari, who says that Raphael had been "a great help to his father". A self-portrait drawing from his teenage years shows his precocity. His father's workshop continued and, probably together with his stepmother, Raphael evidently played a part in managing it from a very early age. In Urbino, he came into contact with the works of Paolo Uccello, previously the court painter (d. 1475), and Luca Signorelli, who until 1498 was based in nearby Città di Castello. According to Vasari, his father placed him in the workshop of the Umbrian master Pietro Perugino as an apprentice "despite the tears of his mother". The evidence of an apprenticeship comes only from Vasari and another source, and has been disputed—eight was very early for an apprenticeship to begin. An alternative theory is that he received at least some training from Timoteo Viti, who acted as court painter in Urbino from 1495.Most modern historians agree that Raphael at least worked as an assistant to Perugino from around 1500; the influence of Perugino on Raphael's early work is very clear: "probably no other pupil of genius has ever absorbed so much of his master's teaching as Raphael did", according to Wölfflin. Vasari wrote that it was impossible to distinguish between their hands at this period, but many modern art historians claim to do better and detect his hand in specific areas of works by Perugino or his workshop. Apart from stylistic closeness, their techniques are very similar as well, for example having paint applied thickly, using an oil varnish medium, in shadows and darker garments, but very thinly on flesh areas. An excess of resin in the varnish often causes cracking of areas of paint in the works of both masters. The Perugino workshop was active in both Perugia and Florence, perhaps maintaining two permanent branches. Raphael is described as a "master", that is to say fully trained, in December 1500. His first documented work was the Baronci altarpiece for the church of Saint Nicholas of Tolentino in Città di Castello, a town halfway between Perugia and Urbino. Evangelista da Pian di Meleto, who had worked for his father, was also named in the commission. It was commissioned in 1500 and finished in 1501; now only some cut sections and a preparatory drawing remain. In the following years he painted works for other churches there, including the Mond Crucifixion (about 1503) and the Brera Wedding of the Virgin (1504), and for Perugia, such as the Oddi Altarpiece. He very probably also visited Florence in this period. These are large works, some in fresco, where Raphael confidently marshals his compositions in the somewhat static style of Perugino. He also painted many small and exquisite cabinet paintings in these years, probably mostly for the connoisseurs in the Urbino court, like the Three Graces and St. Michael, and he began to paint Madonnas and portraits. In 1502 he went to Siena at the invitation of another pupil of Perugino, Pinturicchio, "being a friend of Raphael and knowing him to be a draughtsman of the highest quality" to help with the cartoons, and very likely the designs, for a fresco series in the Piccolomini Library in Siena Cathedral. He was evidently already much in demand even at this early stage in his career. Influence of Florence Raphael led a "nomadic" life, working in various centres in Northern Italy, but spent a good deal of time in Florence, perhaps from about 1504. Although there is traditional reference to a "Florentine period...

A light-brown, green antique Austrian Baroque oil on canvas painting by Franz Xaver Hornöck in a hand crafted original black, partly gilded wooden frame, in good condition. The vinta...

A rare pair of Flemish 18th century "Verre Églomisé" Reverse Glass Paintings, each depicting riverfront scenes with figures, fishermen castles, co...

A 19th Century Meissen Porcelain Plaque of 'The Banishment of Ishmael and Hager', in its Original Frame. This fantastic Meissen porcelain plaque depicts...

18th century French Baroque Old Master painting oil on leather. Old Master painting, French Baroque period 18th century oil on leather represents a lush imaginary landscape in ric...

Early 18th Century French Oil on Canvas Grisaille of Putti in a Hunting Scene. Gray-green tones, sculptural looking putti in a landscape with auct...

Fabulous antique realism landscape oil on canvas painting titled Polperro signed Hely Smith (a.k.a. Hely Augustus Morton Smith) with original Baroque style ...

Giltwood Framed Limoges Enamel after François Boucher 'The Bird Catchers' France, Circa 1880s Framed in an elaborate hand carved pierced and giltwood t...

A Beautiful Italian Still Life oil painting on old canvas of a brass urn holding a bouquet of assorted flowers set on a ledge. 18th or ...

A beautiful 19th century Italian oil painting on re-lined canvas presented in a gilded wooden frame. Done in Guardi style with gold frame. The...

This is a beautiful hand carved and gilded mirror frame. It is a dramatic wall hanging with a stunning depth of more than 3 inches. The circa 1880...

A pair of Continental, early 20th century floral painted lacquered panels. Framed in carved Dutch style gilt and ebonized frames.

Miniature portrait of a sleepy eyed man, circle Christian Wilhelm Ernst Dietrich Germany 18th century, inscribed on back, refer to ph...

Oil on canvas depicting Saint Anthony in a garden being visited by Angelic Cherubs with a courtyard and fountain and mysterious figure in the background, the ever present Lily flower in the foreground. In a period ebonized wood frame. Anthony of Padua (Italian: Antonio di Padova) or Anthony of Lisbon (Portuguese: António/Antônio de Lisboa; born Fernando Martins de Bulhões; 15 August 1195 – 13 June 1231) was a Portuguese Catholic priest...

An incredible and very rare 19th Century Meissen porcelain plaque depicting Rembrandt and Saskia in the Tavern. Meissen plaques are incredibly rar...

From the Emilia Romagna school of painting this is a depiction of a mother hen protecting her chicks, the period giltwood frame in perfect condition and retaining a paper label at to...

A large palatial Flemish baroque historical tapestry depicting a battle scene, with soldiers to the foreground on land, the opposing army arriving by sea, with a city under siege to ...

A fine Italian 19th century oil painting on canvas "La Madonna della Seggiola" after Raphael (Raffaello Sanzio da Urbino 1483-1520) The circular canvas depicting a seated Madonna holding an infant Jesus Christ next to a child Saint John the Baptist, all within a massive carved gilt wood and gesso frame (all high quality gilt is original) which is identical to the frame on Raphael's original artwork. This painting is a 19th Century copy of Raphael's Madonna della Seggiola painted in 1514 and currently exhibited and part of the permanent collection at the Palazzo Pitti, Galleria Palatina, Florence, Italy. The bodies of the Virgin, Christ, and the boy Baptist fill the whole picture. The tender, natural looking embrace of the Mother and Child, and the harmonious grouping of the figures in the round, have made this one of Raphael's most popular Madonnas. The isolated chair leg is reminiscent of papal furniture, which has led to the assumption that Leo X himself commissioned the painting, circa 1890-1900. Subject: Religious painting Measures: Canvas height: 29 1/4 inches (74.3 cm) Canvas width: 29 1/4 inches (74.3 cm) Painting diameter: 28 1/4 inches (71.8 cm) Frame height: 57 7/8 inches (147 cm) Frame width: 45 1/2 inches (115.6 cm) Frame depth: 5 1/8 inches (13 cm).   Raffaello Sanzio da Urbino (Italian, March 28 or April 6, 1483 - April 6, 1520), known as Raphael, was an Italian painter and architect of the High Renaissance. His work is admired for its clarity of form, ease of composition, and visual achievement of the Neoplatonic ideal of human grandeur. Together with Michelangelo and Leonardo da Vinci, he forms the traditional trinity of great masters of that period. Raphael was enormously productive, running an unusually large workshop and, despite his death at 37, leaving a large body of work. Many of his works are found in the Vatican Palace, where the frescoed Raphael Rooms were the central, and the largest, work of his career. The best known work is The School of Athens in the Vatican Stanza della Segnatura. After his early years in Rome much of his work was executed by his workshop from his drawings, with considerable loss of quality. He was extremely influential in his lifetime, though outside Rome his work was mostly known from his collaborative printmaking. After his death, the influence of his great rival Michelangelo was more widespread until the 18th and 19th centuries, when Raphael's more serene and harmonious qualities were again regarded as the highest models. His career falls naturally into three phases and three styles, first described by Giorgio Vasari: his early years in Umbria, then a period of about four years (1504–1508) absorbing the artistic traditions of Florence, followed by his last hectic and triumphant twelve years in Rome, working for two Popes and their close associates. Raphael was born in the small but artistically significant central Italian city of Urbino in the Marche region, where his father Giovanni Santi was court painter to the Duke. The reputation of the court had been established by Federico III da Montefeltro, a highly successful condottiere who had been created Duke of Urbino by the Pope - Urbino formed part of the Papal States - and who died the year before Raphael was born. The emphasis of Federico's court was rather more literary than artistic, but Giovanni Santi was a poet of sorts as well as a painter, and had written a rhymed chronicle of the life of Federico, and both wrote the texts and produced the decor for masque-like court entertainments. His poem to Federico shows him as keen to show awareness of the most advanced North Italian painters, and Early Netherlandish artists as well. In the very small court of Urbino he was probably more integrated into the central circle of the ruling family than most court painters. Federico was succeeded by his son Guidobaldo da Montefeltro, who married Elisabetta Gonzaga, daughter of the ruler of Mantua, the most brilliant of the smaller Italian courts for both music and the visual arts. Under them, the court continued as a centre for literary culture. Growing up in the circle of this small court gave Raphael the excellent manners and social skills stressed by Vasari. Court life in Urbino at just after this period was to become set as the model of the virtues of the Italian humanist court through Baldassare Castiglione's depiction of it in his classic work The Book of the Courtier, published in 1528. Castiglione moved to Urbino in 1504, when Raphael was no longer based there but frequently visited, and they became good friends. He became close to other regular visitors to the court: Pietro Bibbiena and Pietro Bembo, both later cardinals, were already becoming well known as writers, and would be in Rome during Raphael's period there. Raphael mixed easily in the highest circles throughout his life, one of the factors that tended to give a misleading impression of effortlessness to his career. He did not receive a full humanistic education however; it is unclear how easily he read Latin. Early Life and Works His mother Màgia died in 1491 when Raphael was eight, followed on August 1, 1494 by his father, who had already remarried. Raphael was thus orphaned at eleven; his formal guardian became his only paternal uncle Bartolomeo, a priest, who subsequently engaged in litigation with his stepmother. He probably continued to live with his stepmother when not staying as an apprentice with a master. He had already shown talent, according to Vasari, who says that Raphael had been "a great help to his father". A self-portrait drawing from his teenage years shows his precocity. His father's workshop continued and, probably together with his stepmother, Raphael evidently played a part in managing it from a very early age. In Urbino, he came into contact with the works of Paolo Uccello, previously the court painter (d. 1475), and Luca Signorelli, who until 1498 was based in nearby Città di Castello. According to Vasari, his father placed him in the workshop of the Umbrian master Pietro Perugino as an apprentice "despite the tears of his mother". The evidence of an apprenticeship comes only from Vasari and another source, and has been disputed—eight was very early for an apprenticeship to begin. An alternative theory is that he received at least some training from Timoteo Viti, who acted as court painter in Urbino from 1495.Most modern historians agree that Raphael at least worked as an assistant to Perugino from around 1500; the influence of Perugino on Raphael's early work is very clear: "probably no other pupil of genius has ever absorbed so much of his master's teaching as Raphael did", according to Wölfflin. Vasari wrote that it was impossible to distinguish between their hands at this period, but many modern art historians claim to do better and detect his hand in specific areas of works by Perugino or his workshop. Apart from stylistic closeness, their techniques are very similar as well, for example having paint applied thickly, using an oil varnish medium, in shadows and darker garments, but very thinly on flesh areas. An excess of resin in the varnish often causes cracking of areas of paint in the works of both masters. The Perugino workshop was active in both Perugia and Florence, perhaps maintaining two permanent branches. Raphael is described as a "master", that is to say fully trained, in December 1500. His first documented work was the Baronci altarpiece for the church of Saint Nicholas of Tolentino in Città di Castello, a town halfway between Perugia and Urbino. Evangelista da Pian di Meleto, who had worked for his father, was also named in the commission. It was commissioned in 1500 and finished in 1501; now only some cut sections and a preparatory drawing remain. In the following years he painted works for other churches there, including the Mond Crucifixion (about 1503) and the Brera Wedding of the Virgin (1504), and for Perugia, such as the Oddi Altarpiece. He very probably also visited Florence in this period. These are large works, some in fresco, where Raphael confidently marshals his compositions in the somewhat static style of Perugino. He also painted many small and exquisite cabinet paintings in these years, probably mostly for the connoisseurs in the Urbino court, like the Three Graces and St. Michael, and he began to paint Madonnas and portraits. In 1502 he went to Siena at the invitation of another pupil of Perugino, Pinturicchio, "being a friend of Raphael and knowing him to be a draughtsman of the highest quality" to help with the cartoons, and very likely the designs, for a fresco series in the Piccolomini Library in Siena Cathedral. He was evidently already much in demand even at this early stage in his career. Influence of Florence Raphael led a "nomadic" life, working in various centres in Northern Italy, but spent a good deal of time in Florence, perhaps from about 1504. Although there is traditional reference to a "Florentine period...

Late 17th century oil on joined wood panel interpretation of The Vision of Saint Hubertus by Albrecht Durer. It was painted in 1501 and became a very po...

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18th century French pair of oils on gold leaf panels. One is depicting an angel playing the violin, and the other one is holding the music book.

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Hamilton Hamilton (American, 1847-1928) A large and impressive oil on canvas "Othello and Desdemona" after the William Shakespeare's play "Othe...

The canvas is attributed to Niccolò Cassana (Venice, 1659 - London, 1714), the architect whom the biographer Carlo Giuseppe Ratti defined as 'active, lively and all fire', praising his works for the 'lively and sanguine' colors, which highlight the their lagoon and Genoese genesis. In fact, the freedom of drafting and the expressiveness that characterizes his first production evoke the examples of Bernardo Strozzi...