BOTERO, Fernando
(1932- ) Colombian artist of recognizable 'fat' figures and exaggerated forms, initially influenced by *Goya and *Velazcjuez, e.g. Princess Margarita after Velasquez (I978)
BOTH, Andries
(1612-1641) Baroque Dutch painter (Rome)
BOTH, Jan
(1618-1652) Baroque Dutch painter (Rome)
BOTTANI, Giuseppe
(1717-1784) Rococo Italian painter
BOTTICELLI, Sandro (born Alessandro Filipepi)
(1445-1510) Early Renaissance Italian painter. Born in Florence, Botticelli lived at the time of the city's greatest intellectual and artistic flowering, which coincides roughly with the reign of Lorenzo the Magnificent (1449—92). He was trained or influenced by Fra Filippo *Lippi and by the two Pollaiuolo brothers. In 1470 he painted the figure Fortitude, one of 7 'Virtues', commissioned from P. Pollaiuolo. Another teacher of influence was unquestionably Verrocchio. Thus Botticelli was prepared for his career by those masters who represented all that was most vital in Florentine painting. To this he brought a rare talent for draughtsmanship and a very unusual temperament.
19th-c. writers on art have been responsible for creating an almost legendary figure, making Botticelli the embodiment of the Renaissance painter: in tact, he was by no means typical. The picture of Botticelli as a lyrical painter, bringing back to life the myths of the Golden Age of Greece must also be modified. It relies on those paintings Botticelli was commissioned to paint by patrons such as Lorenzo the Magnificent, and his cousin, Lorenzo di Pier Francesco de' Medici who set the subjects from Poliziano, Marsiho Ficino and classical authors, and who restrained B.'s natural temperament. The most famous of these paintings of classical myths are The Birth of Venus, the Primavera, Pallas Subduing a Centaur and Venus and Mars. Thoughtful, but serene, they have coloured men's ideas about classical antiquity since they were painted. With the madonnas and such large works as The Adoration of the Magi, they are the best known of 13.'s works. IB. probably reveals himself more fully, however, in such paintings as The (Jalumuy of Apelles, another classical subject, where the story from l.ucian is told with effects that are strained to the point of frenzy. The drawn and troubled figure of the Baptist m the St Barnabas Altarpiece is obviously close in feeling to similar figures by A. Castagno, but there is something about it which disturbs the serenity of the whole picture. Such elements are even more pronounced in the Deposition and in the same subject in the Alte Pina., Munich. We know that when Savonarola proclaimed his religious crusade against the vanities of Renaissance Florence at the end of 15. s life, IB. became one of his followers. Very little is certain about his life that is not based upon Vasari, but it seems likely that in the Mystic Nativity which is dated 1500/1501, and which has an inscription referring to the Apocalypse and the 'troubles of Italy', the reconciliation between the angels and the fallen angels at the birth of Christ gives a significant clue to the divisions in Botticelli's own personality.
However great his inner turmoil, his life seems to have been relatively tranquil for the times. He won early recognition for his talent. Between 1481 and 1482 he was in Rome painting frescoes in the Sistine Chapel with a number of the leading painters. Vasari claims that he lost much of the reputation he had built up after this by taking time from painting to illustrate Dante. These drawings show an incredible gift for draughtmanship (Beatrice and Dante in Paradise). Botticelli was prosperous enough by the end of the c. to be running a large workshop, but with the revolutions in painting brought about by Leonardo and Michelangelo, and his own ill-health in old age, B.'s popularity appears to have diminished. After his death he was often forged but seldom imitated.
BOTTICINI, Francesco
(b.1446-1497) Early Renaissance Italian painter (Florence)
BOTTICINI, Raffaello
(1477-1520) High Renaissance Italian painter (Florence)
BOUCHARDON, Edme
(1698-1762) Neoclassicism French sculptor
BOUCHER, François
(1703-1770) Rococo French court painter and decorative artist, the truest exponent of the Rococo style. He studied under *Lemoyne and began working on engravings after Watteau. In Italy (1727-31) B. was influenced by Tiepolo. In the 1740s he obtained the patronage of Madame de Pompadour; he painted several portraits of her and through her influence became chief painter to Louis XV in 1765. His superficial but graceful, delicately coloured, frivolous and endlessly inventive variations on pastoral mythological themes were exactly attuned to the artificiality of Louis XV tastes. He also executed designs for Beauvais and Gobelins tapestries. *Fragonard was his pupil.
BOUCLE, Pierre van
(1610-1673) Baroque Flemish painter (Paris)
BOUCQUET, Vigor
(1619-1677) Baroque Flemish painter
BOUDARD, Jean-Baptiste
(1710-1768) Rococo French sculptor (Parma)
BOUDEWIJNS, Adriaen Frans
(1644-1711) Baroque Flemish painter
BOUGUEREAU, William-Adolphe
(1825-1905) The most revered French academic painter of his day. His harmony of composition and technical skill, as displayed in his female nudes, were superb but his subjects banal.
BOULANGER, Gustave
(1824-1888) Realism French painter (Paris). Born of creole parents, Boulanger became an orphan at 14. His uncle and guardian sent him to the studio of Pierre-Jules Jollivet and then in 1840 to Paul Delaroche, whose prosaic Realism and dry, careful technique influenced Boulanger’s style of painting. A first visit to Algeria in 1845 gave him an interest in North African subjects, which was taken up later by his friend Jean-Léon Gérôme. In 1849 he won the Prix de Rome with Ulysses Recognized by his Nurse (Paris, Ecole N. Sup. B.-A.), in which he combined academic figure drawing with Pompeian touches inspired by Ingres’s Antiochus and Stratonice (1840; Chantilly, Mus. Condé). Boulanger’s knowledge of the ruins at Pompeii, which he visited while studying at the Ecole de Rome, gave him ideas for many future pictures, including the Rehearsal in the House of the Tragic Poet (1855; St Petersburg, Hermitage), in which the influence of Stratonice is still obvious. This was later developed into the Rehearsal of the ‘Flute Player’ and the ‘Wife of Diomedes’ (1861; Versailles, Château), which recorded the preparations being made for a performance given before the imperial Court in Napoleon’s mock-Pompeian Paris house. Boulanger specialized in painting studies of daily life from ancient Greece and Rome, as well as Arab subjects. He also painted a number of decorative schemes, at the theatre of the Casino in Monte Carlo (1879), at the Paris Opéra (1861–74) and other locations, opportunities gained through his friendship with CHARLES GARNIER, his fellow pensionnaire at the Ecole de Rome. He entered the Institut de France in 1882 and became an influential teacher, well known for his dislike of the Impressionists and their successors.
BOULENGER, Hans (see BOLLONGIER, Hans)
(1600-1675 )Baroque Dutch painter (Haarlem)
BOULLE, André-Charles
(1642-1732) Baroque French cabinet-maker (Paris)
BOULLOGNE, Bon
(1649-1717) Baroque French painter (Paris)
BOULLOGNE, Louis the Younger
(1654-1733) Baroque French painter (Paris)
BOURDELLE, (Emile) Antoine
(1861-1929) French sculptor, painter and designer, for several years Rodin's assistant. Rodin's influence can be seen in the strong lines and vigorous movement of B.'s work, e.g. Hercules the Archer (1909) but B. was also affected by his study of Greek and Egyptian art. His output includes frescoes and reliefs for the Theatre des Champs-Elysecs (1912), monumental work and many portrait busts.
BOURDICHON, Jean
(1457-1521) Early Renaissance French illuminator (Tours)
BOURDON, Sébastien
(1616-1671) Baroque French painter of portraits, historical and religious subjects and landscape. In Rome (1634-7) he executed pastiches after Castiglione, P. van Laer, Claude and N. Poussin. Returning to Paris, he gained a great reputation and was one of the founders of the Paris Academy of Painting and Sculpture (1648). From 1652 to 1654 he was court painter to Queen Christina of Sweden.
BOURGEOIS, Louise
(1911- ) French-born U.S. sculptor. She began her career as a painter and engraver. She turned to imaginative and highly individual carved sculpture in the late 1940s making abstract elongated forms and clustered groups of abstract shapes painted black and white. In the 1960s she turned to plaster for bronze (e.g. Labyrinthine Tower, 1963) creating anthropomorphic forms and inside-out shapes which evoke the human body, and which were subsequently worked in marble.
BOURSSE, Esaias
(1631-1672) Baroque Dutch painter (Amsterdam)
BOUT, Pieter
(1658-1719) Baroque Flemish painter (Brussels)
BOUTS, Dieric the Elder
(1415-1475) Northern Renaissance Netherlands painter who united in his work the influence of the brothers Van Eyck and of Rogier van der Weyden, possibly his master. An objective painter, he was concerned with a detached observation of reality and an intellectual approach to spatial problems, to perspective and composition. This is evident in the liucharisl triptych where a contemporary banqueting scene is transformed by an austere geometry into the pathos of The Last Supper. The Hades panel of The List Judgement triptych reveals a more tender lyricism in expression and characterization of resignation and grace.
BOZIC, Tiffany
Surrealism.
BOUTS, Dieric the Younger
(1448-1491) Northern Renaissance Flemish painter (Leuven)
BOWERS, David
(1956- ) Born in Chambersburg, Pennsylvania and graduated from art school in Pittsburgh in 1979. Fantastic art.
BOYER, Rebekah
Neo-Figurative Art.
BOYS, Thomas Shotter
(1803-1874) Romanticism English graphic artist (London)
BOZE, Joseph
(1745-1826) Rococo French painter (Paris)
BRACELLI, Giovanni Battista  
(1600-1650) Bizzarie di Varie Figure, 1624
BRACCESCO, Carlo
(active 1478-1501) Early Renaissance Italian painter (Liguria)
BRACCI, Pietro
(1700-1773) Baroque Italian sculptor (Rome)
BRAKENBURG, Richard
(1650-1702) Baroque Dutch painter (Haarlem)
BRAMANTE, Donato
(1444-1514) Early Renaissance Italian architect (Milan). Perhaps the greatest Italian architect of the High Renaissance, born near Urbino. He was a relation of Raphael and 1st trained as a painter.
When Pope Julius II demolished the thousand-year-old basilica of St Peter's, he commissioned 13. to design a new one (begun in 1506). B.'s plan has been obscured by later work, though Michelangelo used as much of it as he could. What the interior would have looked like can be seen in Raphael's painting The School of Athens.
BRAMANTINO
(1460-1536) Early Renaissance Italian painter and architect. He was one of the leading artists in Milan in the early 16th century. His early training as a goldsmith may indicate a relatively late start to his activity as a painter, and none of his work may be dated before 1490. The style of his early work parallels that of such followers of Vincenzo Foppa as Bernardino Butinone, Bernardo Zenale and Giovanni Donato da Montorfano. He assumed the name Bramantino very early in his career, indicating that he was in close contact with Donato Bramante, whose influence is uppermost in his early work. Probably his earliest surviving painting is the Virgin and Child (Boston, MA, Mus. F.A.). It is an adaptation of a type of half-length Virgin with standing Christ Child well known in Milan. The linear emphasis and the dramatic treatment of light are aspects derived from Bramante’s work. Bramantino stressed graphic quality in this picture, and throughout his early work he was considerably influenced by Andrea Mantegna and by the visual aspects of prints. His Risen Christ (Madrid, Mus. Thyssen–Bornemisza) derives from Bramante’s Christ at the Column (c. 1490; Milan, Brera) but has a more precise musculature and a much harder use of line. The conception of the figure set against a rocky background, derived from Leonardo da Vinci’s Virgin of the Rocks (versions, London, N.G.; Paris, Louvre), also indicates Bramantino’s persistently eclectic nature.
BRAMER, Leonaert
(1596-1674) Baroque Dutch painter (Delft)
BRANCUSI, Constantin
(1876—1957) One of the outstanding sculptors of the 20th c, born 111 Rumania and trained initially as a carpenter and stonemason. He studied sculpture at Bucharest (1898-1902) and in 1904 settled in Paris for life. Here he soon shared the interest, common among Parisian artists, in African and other primitive arts, but the most absorbing influence on him was his native folk art and oriental art. Primarily a carver of wood and stone, he worked towards expressive strength through formal simplification, and The Kiss (1908) is in some ways a sculptural counterpart to Picasso's Demoiselles D'Avigtwn of 1907. But, unlike Picasso, B. always retained in his carvings something of the mystic symbolism of non-European mainstream art. Le Nouveau-Ne (1915) and Le Commencement du monde (1924) are universal symbols of life and fertility — simple but never symmetrical or geometrical. His Lndless Column (1937—8) is a turning point in 20th-c. sculpture: B.'s influence on it is two-told. He brought about a revival of carving and had a craftsmanlike respect for the nature of his materials; his last years were devoted to polishing the surface of earlier works, e.g. Fish (1940s). Secondly, be endowed sculpture with an almost sacred significance: his carvings are objects for contemplation. 'B.'s mission was to make us shape-conscious' (Henry Moore).
BRANDI, Giacinto
(1621-1691) Baroque Italian painter
BRANDT, Bill
(1904 – 1983) British photographer and photojournalist known for his high-contrast images of British society and his distorted nudes and landscapes. (Surrealism - photographers). Born in Hamburg, Germany, son of a British father and German mother, Brandt grew up during World War I. Shortly after the war, he contracted tuberculosis and spent much of his youth in a sanatorium in Davos, Switzerland. He traveled to Vienna to undertake a course of treatment for TB by psychoanalysis. He was in any case pronounced cured and began an apprenticeship in a portrait studio in the city. When Ezra Pound visited a mutual friend, Eugenie Schwarzwald, Brandt made his portrait. In appreciation, Pound offered Brandt an introduction to Man Ray, in whose Paris studio, Brandt would assist in 1930.In 1933 Brandt moved to London and began documenting all levels of British society. This kind of documentary was uncommon at that time. Brandt published two books showcasing this work, The English at Home (1936) and A Night in London (1938). He was a regular contributor to magazines such as Lilliput, Picture Post, and Harper's Bazaar. He documented the Underground bomb shelters of London during The Blitz in 1940, commissioned by the Ministry of Information.During World War II, Brandt focused every kind of subject - as can be seen in his "Camera in London" (1948) but excelled in portraiture and landscape. To mark the arrival of peace in 1945 he began a celebrated series of nudes. His major books from the post-war period are Literary Britain (1951), and Perspective of Nudes (1961), followed by a compilation of the best of all areas of his work, Shadow of Light (1966). Brandt became Britain's most influential and internationally admired photographer of the 20th century. Many of his works have important social commentary but also poetic resonance. His landscapes and nudes are dynamic, intense and powerful, often using wide-angle lenses and distortion.
BRAQUE, Georges
(1882—1963) French painter. He was born in Argenteuil. At Le Havre, from 1889, he worked as apprentice to his father, a house painter. He moved to Pans in 1900 and then studied at the free Academie Humbert (1902—4). In 1905 he was deeply impressed by the room of *Fauve paintings at the Salon d'Automne (including Matisse, Derail] and B.'s friends from Le Havre, Fnesz and Dufy). The landscapes that B. painted (1906—7) at Antwerp (e.g. Harbour Scene, Antwerp, 1906), L'Estaque and Le Ciotat are in freely broken strokes of strong colour. B. considered these his 1st creative works.
In 1907, like so many of his generation, he was overwhelmed by the Cezanne Memorial Exhibition at the Salon d'Automne and this revelation was followed by his meeting with Picasso and the disconcerting distortions of the Demoiselles d'Avignon. B.'s ruthlessly simplified sombre-coloured landscapes and figures, e.g. Nude (1907—8), of the next 2 years show the extent of his change of direction and prepare the way for the development of Cubism. B. is credited with the introduction into Cubist painting of typography (in Le Porlugais, 191 1) and of the decorator's techniques of wood-graining and marbling, but Cubism was essentially the product of a remarkable partnership with Picasso ('marriage' was Picasso's word) which was broken by the war and B.'s call up in 1914. Cubism established above all the self-sufficient existence of the work of art, independent of reality, that was implicit in Cezanne's late landscapes. In looking beyond the superficial appearance of their subjects, Picasso and B. created a precedent which has contributed in one way or another to most subsequent developments in European painting and sculpture, both figurative and abstract.
Seriously injured in 1915, B. returned to Paris in 1917 where, apart from summers at Varengeville, he spent the rest of his life. His earliest post-war paintings returned to synthetic Cubism with a stronger palette; La Musicienne (1917-18).
From 1920, although still related to his Cubist experience in their formal improvisation, his paintings are less obviously disciplined. The qualities which distinguished his Cubist paintings from Picasso's — his fluent painterliness and his natural ability as a rich but subtle colourist — predominate in a work like Guitar and Jug (1927). The still-life remained his principal theme from the (Jueridon series (1927—30) to the climactic A teller series (1949—55) '" which the scope of the still-life extends to include the studio, the artist, his model and even the painting itself. The mysterious presence of the bird in flight is gently evocative in this as in other works by B., and the mood of his whole oeuvre - apart from his shortlived excursion into Surrealism in the early 1930s — is serene and harmonious.
BRASSAI(Brasso)
(1899-1984) French photographer, draughtsman, sculptor and writer of Hungarian birth. The son of a Hungarian professor of French literature, he lived in Paris in 1903–4 while his father was on sabbatical there, and this early experience of the city greatly impressed him. In 1917 he met the composer Béla Bartók, and from 1918 to 1919 he studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Budapest. Due to the hostility between Hungary and France in World War I he was unable to study in France and so moved to Berlin in late 1920. There he became acquainted with László Moholy-Nagy, Kandinsky and Kokoschka and in 1921–2 attended the Akademische Hochschule in Charlottenburg, Berlin. He was a keen draughtsman and while there produced a series of characteristic drawings of nudes executed in an angular, emphatic style. In 1924 he moved to Paris, where he quickly became involved with the artists and poets of the Montmartre and Montparnasse districts while supporting himself as a journalist. In 1925 he adopted the name Brassai, derived from that of his native town, and throughout that year he continued drawing as well as making sculptures. In 1926 he met André Kertész, who introduced him to photography. In 1930 Brassai began taking photographs of Paris at night, concentrating on its architecture and the nocturnal activities of its inhabitants. These were collected and published as Paris de nuit in 1933 and showed the night workers, cafés, brothels, theatres, streets and buildings of the capital. The artificial lighting created strong tonal contrasts, lending the images a strikingly evocative beauty. Some of his photographs were included in the exhibition Modern European Photographers at the Julien Levy Gallery in New York in 1932, and the following year at the Arts et Métiers Graphiques in Paris he had a one-man show of his photographs of Paris, which travelled to the Batsford Gallery in London the same year.
BRAUER, Aric
(1929- ) Austrian painter, draughtsman, printmaker, poet, dancer, singer and stage designer. He resides in Vienna and Ein-Hod Israel. Brauer is a co-founder of the Vienna School of Fantastic Realism, together with Ernst Fuchs, Rudolf Hausner, Wolfgang Hutter and Anton Lehmden. Erich 'Arik' Brauer is the child of Lithuanian Jewish emigrants. His post-war artistic training was in Vienna, under the supervision of Albert Paris von Gutersloh. Gütersloh promoted Brauer's work within the Vienna School of Fantastic Realism circle of artists, which had formed in the mid-1950s from a post-1946 Viennese surrealist group that had included Brauer along with Edgar Jené, Ernst Fuchs, Wolfgang Hutter, Rudolf Hausner, Anton Lehmden, and Fritz Janschka. Despite the prevailing art-world taste for abstraction in the 1950s and early 60s, Brauer's work successfully blended high craftsmanship and surrealism in ways that gained him international attention. In 1982 he had breakthrough solo shows in the USA. Brauer has also designed architectural projects in Austria and Israel. The facades and interiors of his buildings are covered with fantastical mosaics, murals and painted tiles. He also designed 2002 the first United Buddy Bear for Austria. (Fantastic realism, Vienna School of Fantastic realism).
BRAUNER, Victor
(1903-1966) Rumanian painter working mainly in France and associated with the Surrealist movement.
BRAVO, Claudio
Born in Chile, November 8, 1936 in the town of Valparaíso, Claudio Bravo has lived and worked in Tangier, Morocco since 1972.
In 1945 he joined the Colegio San Ignacio in Santiago, Chile and studied art in the studio of Miguel Venegas Cienfuentes in Santiago. In 1954 he had his first exhibition at "Salón 13" in Santiago at the age of 17. 1955 He danced professionally with the Compañía de Ballet de Chile and worked for Teatro de Ensayo of the Universidad Católica de Chile.
Later he established himself in Madrid in the 1960s as a society portraitist, gaining recognition for his astounding ability to create verisimilitude. His ability to depict complex objects and shapes is reminiscent of Velázquez.
In 1968 Bravo received an invitation from President Marcos of the Philippines to come and paint him and his wife, Imelda Marcos as well as members of the high society.
In 1970 he had his first exhibition at the Staempfli Gallery in New York which received rave reviews from renowned New York Times art critic John Canaday. Years later, when Bravo's work reflected the hippie movement, Canaday would refer to Bravo's work as "cheap and vulgar".
Bravo moved to Tangier in 1972 where he purchased a 19th century three story mansion. He had many of the walls removed and the remaining walls were painted white to encourage the Mediterranean light so present in his paintings.
Bravo has painted many prominent figures in society including dictator Franco of Spain, President Ferdinand Marcos and First Lady Imelda Marcos of the Philippines and Malcolm Forbes.
Works by Claudio Bravo are included in the collections of the Baltimore Museum of Art, Baltimore, Maryland; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, New York; Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes, Santiago, Chile; Museo Rufino Tamayo, Mexico City, Mexico; Museum Boymans-van Beuningen, Rotterdam, The Netherlands; Museum of Modern Art, New York, New York; Museum Ludwig, Cologne, Germany; The Palmer Museum of Art, State College, Pennsylvania; and the Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
BRAY, Dirck de
(active 1651-1678) Baroque Dutch painter (Haarlem)
BRAY, Jan de
(1627-1697) Baroque Dutch painter (Haarlem)
BRAY, Joseph de
(d. 1664) Baroque Dutch painter (Haarlem)
BRAY, Salomon de
(1597-1664) Baroque Dutch painter (Haarlem)
BREEN, Gillis van
(active 1595-1622) Baroque Dutch graphic artist (Haarlem)
BREENBERGH, Bartholomeus
(1598/1600-1657) Baroque Dutch painter (Amsterdam)
BREGHTEL, Hans Conraedt
(1608-1675) Baroque German goldsmith (The Hague)
BREGNO, Andrea
(1418-1503) Early Renaissance Italian architect and sculptor. Nothing is known of Bregno’s activity until his arrival in Rome in the 1460s, although his early works betray a Lombard training. During the pontificate of Sixtus IV he became the most popular and prolific sculptor of his day, with a large and well-organized bottega. He worked mainly on the decoration of tombs of prelates and dignitaries of the papal court. Bregno became famous in his lifetime and was mentioned, together with Verrocchio, by Giovanni Santi in La vita e le geste di Federico di Montefeltro duca d’Urbino, written between 1484 and 1487. The writer of a funeral epitaph actually compared him with Polykleitos. Bregno’s work is characterized by great refinement and technical skill. Although he was often not particularly inventive, he was certainly a fine sculptor of grotesques and other forms of ornamentation. He soon fell under the influence of Tuscan models, probably as a result of his contact with Mino da Fiesole, with whom he worked in Rome. There his style became more classical and its design more compact, with precise references to antique sculpture: documents show that he possessed a collection of antique objects recovered from excavations. He was also a friend of Platina, who held him in high esteem, as he wrote in a letter to Lorenzo the Magnificent.
BREGNO, Antonio
(active 1425-1457) Early Renaissance Italian sculptor
BREGNO, Giovanni Battista
(c. 1472-c. 1518) Early Renaissance Italian sculptor
BREKELENKAM, Quiringh van
(active c. 1647-1668) Baroque Dutch painter (Leiden)
BRESCIANINO, Andrea del
(c. 1485-c. 1545) High Renaissance Italian painter (Siena)
BRESDIN, Rodolphe
(1825-1885).
BRETON, Andre
(1896-1966) French poet, leader and principal theorist of Surrealism. He publ. 3 Surrealist manifestos (1924, 1930, 1934) and founded Surrealist research laboratories which employed Freudian techniques in studying the subconscious. His works include: the poetry colls Mom de piele (1919), Les Pas perdus (1924) and Pocnies (1948); he also wrote the partly autobiographical 'novel' Natlja (1928).
BRETON, Jules
(1827-1906) French painter and writer. After the death of his mother he was brought up in the village of Courrières by his father, grandmother and uncle. The last instilled in him respect for tradition and a commitment to the philosophical ideas of the 18th century. Breton’s father, as supervisor of the lands of the Duc de Duras, encouraged him to develop a deep knowledge of and affection for his native region and its heritage, which remained central to his art.
BREU, Jörg the Elder (of Augsburg)
(1475/76-1537) Northern Renaissance German painter of the German Danube school. He was the son of a weaver.
He journeyed to Austria and created several multi-panel altarpieces there in 1500–02, such as the Melk Altar (1502). He returned to Augsburg in 1502 where he became a master. He travelled to Italy twice, in ca. 1508 and in 1514/15.
After his death in 1537, his son, Jörg Breu the Younger continued to lead his Augsburg workshop until his own death 10 years later.
BREUNING, Olaf
(1970- ) Find works of art, auction results & sale prices of artist Olaf Breuning at galleries and auctions worldwide.
BRIL, Paul
(1554-1626) Baroque Flemish painter (Rome)
BRIOSCO, Andrea (see RICCIO, Il)
(c. 1460-1532) High Renaissance Italian sculptor (Padua)
BRIOSCO, Benedetto
(1460-1514) Italian sculptor. The first notice of his activity dates from 1477, when he and his brother-in-law Francesco Cazzaniga were employed as sculptors on the monument to Giovanni Borromeo and Vitaliano Borromeo (Isola Bella, Palazzo Borromeo, chapel), which was executed for S Francesco Grande, Milan. By 1482 he had begun employment for the Works of Milan Cathedral and in 1483 was paid for carving a figure of S Apollonia (untraced). Although he was a master figure sculptor at the cathedral until the middle of 1485, the other work he did there remains unknown. During 1483–4 it is likely that he assisted Francesco and Tommaso Cazzaniga in the execution of the tomb of Cristoforo and Giacomo Antonio della Torre (Milan, S Maria delle Grazie). In 1484 he and the Cazzaniga brothers began work on the tomb of Pietro Francesco Visconti di Saliceto destined for the Milanese church of S Maria del Carmine (destr.; reliefs in Cleveland, OH, Mus. A.; Kansas City, MO, Nelson-Atkins Mus. A.; and Washington, DC, N.G.A.; architectural elements in Paris, Louvre). This project was completed by Briosco and Tommaso Cazzaniga following Francesco Cazzaniga’s death at the beginning of 1486. In the same year Benedetto and Tommaso were commissioned to finish the tomb of Giovanni Francesco Brivio (Milan, S Eustorgio), designed and begun by Francesco. Briosco’s hand is virtually impossible to distinguish in these collaborative works. In 1489 the Apostolic Prothonotary and ducal councillor Ambrogio Griffo engaged Briosco to execute his funerary monument, to be installed in the church of S Pietro in Gessate, Milan. This tomb, which in its original form consisted of an effigy mounted on a high rectangular sarcophagus, appears to be Briosco’s first major independent work and represents a significant break with Lombard tradition; although its design may to some extent have been influenced by Giovanni Antonio Amadeo’s tomb to Medea Colleoni (Bergamo, Colleoni Chapel), it was free-standing and entirely secular in content. In 1490 Briosco returned to Milan Cathedral, where he was engaged to carve four life-size statues each year until he or his employers should cancel the arrangement. Although he worked at the cathedral until mid-1492, only a figure of St Agnes (Milan, Mus. Duomo) is documented from this period.
BRITTO, Giovanni
(active 1530-1550) High Renaissance Italian graphic artist (Venice)
BRIZIO, Francesco
(1574-1623) Baroque Italian painter (Bologna)
BROC, Jean
(1771-1850) Romanticism French painter
BROCKY, Károly
(1807-1855) Romanticism Hungarian painter (London)
BRODAHL, Cris
(1963- ) Belgian artist based in Ghent. Brodahl has shown internationally in exhibitions including 'Electric Blue' at Xavier Hufkens in Brussels Cut at The Approach in London, Michael Bauer, Cris Brodahl, Stef Driesen at Marc Foxx in Los Angeles and The Triumph of Painting at the Saatchi Gallery in London. She is represented by Xavier Hufkens in Brussels, [The Approach Gallery|The approach] in London and Marc Foxx in Los Angeles.
BROEDERLAM, Melchior
(1355-1411) Medieval Flemish painter born at Ypres. About 1385 he became painter to Philip the Bold, Duke of Burgundy, who commissioned from him 2 wings for an altar in the Carthusian monastery at Champmol (1392-9). These depict the Annunciation, the Visitation, the Presentation in the Temple and the Flight into Egypt, and are an early example of International Gothic style.
BROMPTON, Richard
(1734-1783) Rococo English painter
BRONCHORST, Jan Gerritsz van
(1603-1661) Baroque Dutch painter
BRONDGEEST, Albertus
(1786-1849) Romanticism Dutch graphic artist (Amsterdam)
BRONZINO, Agnolo
(1503-1572) High Renaissance Florentine Mannerist painter, pupil of J. da Pontormo. B. was painter to Cosimo I de' Medici, for whom he undertook decorative works and many court portraits, e.g. those of Eleanor of Toledo and her son, and I.ucrezia Panciatichi. He used fine rich colours but portrayed his sitters with unrelaxed posture and faces of inscrutable reserve. His allegorical paintings and religious subjects, which appear devoid of deep or religious feeling, show typical Mannerist figure elongation and include (Christ ill Limbo (1552) and Venus, Cupid, ToUy and Time, remarkable for its harshly metallic flesh tones against a brilliant blue background. B. also wrote poetry.
BROODTHAERS, Marcel
(1924-1976) Belgian poet, filmmaker and artist.
BROOKING, Charles
(1723-1759) Baroque English painter (London)
BROUWER, Adriaen
(c. 1605-1638) Baroque Flemish genre painter, mainly of low life, and landscape painter. He led a dissipated life and died of the plague at Antwerp. In his realistic, often dramatic, tavern scenes the vulgarities and rowdy emotions of the subjects are fully recorded. B. often used dark tones and thick, violent but economical brush-strokes; in his last years he painted sensitive impressionistic landscapes. B.'s genre pieces strongly influenced D. Teniers the Younger and A. van Ostade.
BROUWER, Gerloff
(1627-1676)BaroqueDutch goldsmith (Amsterdam)
BROWN, Ford Madox
(1821-1893) Romanticism British painter, who was born m France and studied in Antwerp, Paris and Rome, where he met *Overbeck. He settled in London, and in 1848 Rossetti became his pupil and introduced him to the *Pre-Raphaehtes, who affected his work, e.g. Tlw Last of England (1855), but he was never a member of the Brotherhood. He was a partner in the firm of (William) Morris, Marshall, Faulkner and Co.
BROWN, Paul S
(1967- ) Born in the U.S. and currently resides in London, UK.