Francesco Lazzaro Guardi (1712 – 1793) was a Venetian painter of veduta (a highly detailed, usually large-scale painting or, actually more often print, of a cityscape or some other vista), a member of the Venetian School. His early vedutas show influence both from Canaletto and Luca Carlevarijs. Francesco Guardi's most important later works include the Doge's Feasts, a series of twelve canvases celebrating the ceremonies held in 1763 for the election of Doge Alvise IV Mocenigo. In his late...

Auguste Rodin was a French sculptor, considered the progenitor of modern sculpture; but Rodin did not set out to rebel against the past. He was schooled traditionally, took a craftsman-like approach to his work, and desired academic recognition. Rodin is recognized worldwide for the exceptional authenticity of his anatomical sculptures. He strongly influenced twentieth century sculpture by his assemblage techniques and prepared the way for symbolism by adopting literary and mythological th...

Vincent van Gogh drew thousands of images to better his style. He believed that drawing was “the root of everything”.In just over a decade, he produced more than 2100 artworks, consisting of 860 oil paintings and more than 1,300 watercolors, drawings, sketches and prints. He produced nearly 150 watercolor paintings during his life. Similar to his drawings, Van Gogh often did watercolors as studies before doing an oil painting or as practice. As he continued to refine his technique, he used...

Raffaello Sanzio was an Italian Renaissance painter, architect and designer. His work along with that of his older contemporaries Leonardo and Michelangelo defined the High Renaissance style in central Italy. His posthumous reputation was even greater, for until the later 19th century he was regarded by almost all critics as the greatest painter who had ever lived — the artist who expressed the basic doctrines of the Christian Church through figures that have a physical beauty worthy of th...

Peter Paul Rubens was a Flemish Baroque painter, and proponents of an exaggerated Baroque style that emphasised movement, colour, and sensuality. He is well known for his altarpieces, portraits, landscapes, and history paintings of mythological and allegorical subjects.The majority of Rubens's drawings served as a step toward a final work of art in another medium. Rubens kept his drawings close by as studio material to be used by his assistants and collaborators. It was often with the help...

Giovanni Battista Piranesi (1720-1778), Italian engraver and architect, is best known for his etchings of ancient and baroque Rome and grandiose architectural constructions of his own imagination. Throughout most of his adult life Piranesi made etchings of views of the city; not only its antiquities, such as the Pantheon, but also its contemporary masterpieces such as the Capitoline and Piazza Navona. The scenes are animated with tiny, frail, fluttering figures. Long before he died his pri...

Jean-François Millet (1814 – 1875) was a French painter and one of the founders of the Barbizon school in rural France. Millet is noted for his scenes of peasant farmers; he can be categorized as part of the movements of Realism and Naturalism. Millet portrayed the gravity, hardship, and dignity of common agricultural laborers, but, despite being labeled a "Socialist revolutionary," his viewpoint was less political than fatalistic.Millet learned Latin and knowledge of the major work...

Giovanni Francesco Barbieri (1591 – 1666), best known as Guercino, or Il Guercino, was an Italian Baroque painter and draftsman from the region of Emilia, and active in Rome and Bologna. The vigorous naturalism of his early manner is in contrast to the classical equilibrium of his later works. His many drawings are noted for their luminosity and lively style.Guercino was remarkable for the extreme rapidity of his executions: he completed no fewer than 106 large altarpieces for churc...

Joseph Mallord William Turner was English artist, one of the greatest and most original of all landscape painters. Turner was considered a controversial figure in his day, but is now regarded as the artist who elevated landscape painting to an eminence rivaling history painting. Although renowned for his oil paintings, Turner is also one of the greatest masters of British watercolor landscape painting. In 1856 the Court of Chancery awarded all the works remaining in his possession at his d...

Leonardo, like Christopher Columbus, possessed an greedy curiosity and desire for discovery of unknown worlds. Only observation, says many times Leonardo, is the key to knowledge and understanding. His drawings are unlike from those of his generation and those drawn before and after him. Among them are fast sketches, portraits, rapid notes for compositions, complicated cartoons, drapery studies, and projects for machines, plants, animals, sketched from nature and anatomical studies. The gr...

Are you the smart enough? Do you know the answers to these questions:Who was George Orwell?Why did George Orwell start writing?What is the primary, most significant, occupation and source of livelihood of George Orwell?What best describes the plot of George Orwell's book "1984"?Who did Orwell join in the early years of World War II?Why did George Orwell write Animal Farm?Do you know that:Orwell was a socialist.Orwell had a r...

Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni exercised a huge influence on the development of Western art. He is considered a nominee for the title of the archetypal Renaissance man, along with Leonardo da Vinci. Michelangelo was the first Western artist whose biography was published while he was alive. Giorgio Vasari proposed that he was the high point of all artistic achievement of the Renaissance. In this way Michelangelo, indirectly, marked the beginning of the next major movement in Wes...