Friday, March 21, 2014

Two Famous Italian Painters

By Darren Hartley


Early Caravaggio paintings were paintings of flowers and fruits, including Boy Peeling a Fruit, also known to be the earliest of Caravaggio paintings, Boy with a Basket of Fruit and Young Sick Bacchus. They demonstrated physical particularity, an aspect of Caravaggio realism, for which he became famous for.

The Fortune Teller was the first of Caravaggio paintings to feature more than one figure. It was painted by an Italian artist active in Rome, Naples, Malta and Sicily whose full name was Michelangelo Merisi o Amerighi da Caravaggio. It carried a theme that was relatively new in Rome, that of a 16 year old Sicilian artist, who went by the name Mario Minniti, being cheated by a Gypsy girl. This theme became immensely influential in the coming century as well as the next.

Considered to be the first true Caravaggio masterpiece, The Cardsharps was among the more psychologically complex Caravaggio paintings. It featured a boy falling victim to card cheats. The following Caravaggio paintings, i.e., The Musicians, The Lute Player, a tipsy Bacchus and Boy Bitten by a Lizard, became the center of dispute among scholars and biographers mainly because of their homoerotic ambiance.

An emergence of remarkable spirituality was shown in the first Caravaggio paintings on religious themes. These paintings, including 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, featured the return of Caravaggio to realism.

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.

The Three Graces and St. Michael are examples of small and exquisite cabinet Raphael paintings during the period. In the same period are Raphael paintings showcasing the beginning of his Madonna and portrait paintings.




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