DA VINCI, Leonardo (Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci)
(1452-1519) Italian polymath: painter, sculptor, architect, musician, scientist, mathematician, engineer, inventor, anatomist, geologist, botanist and writer. Leonardo has often been described as the archetype of the Renaissance man, a man whose unquenchable curiosity was equaled only by his powers of invention. He is widely considered to be one of the greatest painters of all time and perhaps the most diversely talented person ever to have lived. According to art historian Helen Gardner, the scope and depth of his interests were without precedent and "his mind and personality seem to us superhuman, the man himself mysterious and remote". Marco Rosci points out, however, that while there is much speculation about the man himself, Leonardo's vision of the world is essentially logical rather than mysterious, and that the empirical methods he employed were unusual for his time.
DADDI, Bernardo
(1280-1348) Medieval Italian painter (Florence)
DAEL, Jan Frans van
(1764-1840) Romanticism Belgian painter (Paris)
DAGGIÙ (see CAPPELLA, Francesco)
(1711-1774) Baroque Italian painter (Bergamo)
DAHL, Johan Christian Clausen
(1788-1857) Romanticism Norwegian painter and collector, active in Germany. His paintings, imbued with Romantic and patriotic sentiments, had a strong influence on the landscape tradition both in Germany (especially Dresden) and in his native Norway.
DAHL, Michael
(1659-1743) Baroque Swedish painter (London)
DALEM, Cornelis van
(1530-1576) Mannerism Flemish painter (Antwerp)
DALEN, Cornelis van, the Elder
(1602-1665) Baroque Dutch graphic artist
DALLE MASEGNE, Jacobello
(?-1409) Medieval Italian sculptor (Emilia)
DALI, Salvador
(1904-1989) Spanish painter, designer of jewellery, etc. and stage-sets, book ill. and writer, notorious for his extravagant and eccentric statements about himself. He joined the Surrealist movement in Pans in 1929 making
the Surrealist films Le Chien Andalou (1929) and L'Age d'or (1931) with L. Bunuel and painting such works as The Persistence of Memory (1931) and Premonition of Civil War (1936). His paintings, which he has called 'hand-painted dream photographs', are characterized by minute detail, virtuoso technique, ingenuity and showmanship together with elements of Freudian dream symbolism. His religious paintings include Christ of St John of the Cross (1951). Later works include ills for Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (1969). His publs include Diary of a Genius (trs. 1966) and his Unspeakable Confessions ... (trs. 1976).
DALMATA, Giovanni
(1440-1510) Early Renaissance Italian sculptor
DALMAU, Lluis
(active 1428-61) Early Renaissance Catalan painter who worked at the court of Aragon and helped to extend the influence of Flemish painting in Spain. In 1431 D, was sent on a mission to Bruges and probably there learnt to follow Van Eyck's style, evident in his great work Virgin and Councillors (I445).
DAMIAN, Cosmas
(1686-1739) Painter and architect, son of Hans Georg Asam. As a youth, he worked as his father’s assistant, for example at Schloss Schönach (1704) and at the Maria-Hilf-Kirche (1708), Freystadt. After his father’s death in 1711, Cosmas Damian went to Rome, studying at the Accademia di S Luca under Carlo Maratti; he was awarded the academy’s first prize for his brush drawing of the Miracle of St Pius (Rome, Accad. N. S Luca) in 1713. That year he returned to Germany. In 1717 he married Maria Anna, daughter of the engraver Franz Anton Morl (1671–1734); their son, Franz Erasmus Asam (1720–95), produced few works of his own, acting mainly as an assistant to his father. In 1724 Cosmas Damian bought an estate he named Asamisch-Maria-Einsiedel-Thal in Munich-Thalkirchen, even building a chapel of his own there in 1739. Throughout his life Cosmas Damian worked mainly on large commissions, painting and sometimes also acting as architect, sometimes collaborating with his brother Egid Quirin; his work took him to the Upper Palatinate, Upper and Lower Bavaria, Baden and Swabia as well as to the Tyrol, Switzerland, Bohemia and Silesia. Besides church dignitaries, his patrons included the court and the aristocracy. He was given the protection of the Elector’s court in Munich in 1719 and subsequently some minor offices at various other courts. On large-scale commissions he always employed workshop assistants as well as members of his family. His pupils included Thomas Christian Scheffler (1699–1756), Matthaus Günther, Joseph Gregor Winck, Johann Adam Schopf (1702–72) and Johann Adam Muller ( fl 1718–38).
DANCKERTS, Cornelis the Elder
(1603-1656) Baroque Dutch graphic artist (Amsterdam)
D'ANCONA, Edward
Pin-Up Art.
DANDINI, Cesare
(1596-1657) Baroque Italian painter (Florence)
DANDINI, Pietro
(1646-1712) Baroque Italian painter (Florence)
DANDRÉ-BARDON, Michel-François
(1700-1783) Baroque French painter
DANHAUSER, Josef Franz
(1805-1845) Romanticism Austrian painter
DANIELE da Volterra see Volterra Daniele da
(1509-1566) High Renaissance Italian painter.
D'ARCANGELO, Allan
(1930- ) U.S. artist, noted in the mid-1960s for his *Pop art paintings of highways.
DANNECKER, Heinrich
(1758-1841) Neoclassicism German sculptor
DANTAN, Jean-Pierre
(1800-1869) Romanticism French sculptor
DANTI, Vincenzo
(1530-1576) Mannerism Italian sculptor (Florence)
DARET, Jacques
(1404-1470) Northern Renaissance Flemish painter (Tournai)
DARGER, Henry
(1892-1973) American writer and artist who worked as a janitor in Chicago, Illinois. He has become famous for his posthumously discovered 15,145-page fantasy manuscript called The Story of the Vivian Girls, in What is known as the Realms of the Unreal, of the Glandeco-Angelinnian War Storm, Caused by the Child Slave Rebellion, along with several hundred drawings and watercolor paintings illustrating the story.
DAUBIGNY, Charles-François
(1817-1878) Realism French landscape painter associated with the Barbizon school. D. painted chiefly in the Ile-de-France, but travelled in Italy, Spain, Britain and Holland. Typical of his work are The Lock at Optevoz and River Scene with Ducks.
DAUCHER, Adolf
(1460-1523) Northern Renaissance German sculptor
DAULLÉ, Jean
(1703-1763) Baroque French graphic artist (Paris)
DAUMIER, Honoré
(1808-1879) Romanticism French painter, caricaturist, graphic artist and sculptor. Trained in Paris and attracted to lithography. D. made his living from 1830 with cartoons in the satirical journals La Caricature and Le Charivari. He lampooned the government (being imprisoned in 1832 for his attack on King Louis-Philippe), the bourgeoisie in the Robert Macaire series and the legal profession. From about 1848 D. attempted to establish himself as a serious painter in oils, but he was hampered by his fame as a left-wing cartoonist, his dependence on his fellow-painters for most of his subjects and his refusal to give his works the finish then considered necessary. A brief period of success under the Third Republic was followed by neglect, poverty and near-blmdness. Since his death he has been recognized as a pioneer, chiefly of Expressionism, e.g. The Painter before his I'.ascl, a master draughtsman, e.g. We want Barabbas!, a major graphic artist and a sculptor of vigour and expressiveness. In his sketches and oil paintings of Don Quixote and Sancho Panza D. created a great modern rein-terpretation of Cervantes's characters, e.g. Don Quixote and Sancho Panza.
DAVID d'Angers
(1788-1856) Neoclassicism French sculptor
DAVID, Gerard
(1460-1523) Northern Renaissance Netherlands painter who succeeded Memlinc as the most important painter of the school. Born in Oudewater, D. was admitted to the painters' guild in Bruges m 1484. He was influenced by earlier Netherlands masters, in particular Van Eyck and Van der Goes, but his work shows close relationship with the painting of Geertgen tot Sintjans and the miniaturists of Bruges. He was commissioned by the town of Bruges to paint a number of works, including 2 pictures to warn officials of the stern retribution for corruption and injustice — Tlie Judgement of Cambyses and The Flaying ofSisamnes — a Last Judgement and Virgin with Child and Angels. Other important works are The Baptism of Christ, 'The Marriage at Ñàïà, 2 landscapes, and The Virgin and Child with Saints and Donor, the most serene and successful * sacra conversazione painted in N. Europe.
DAVID, Jacques-Louis
(1748-1825) Neoclassicism French painter, the leading figure ot Neoclassical painting. Trained in the Rococo tradition ot Boucher by J.-M. Vien, D. repudiated this training with his Oath of the Horatii, shown in Rome and Paris in 1784 and immediately recognized as a landmark in painting. Its colouring was lucid and cool, its drawing strong, simple and severe. In its theme it advocated a return from the diversions of a pleasure-loving aristocracy to the traditionally austere virtues of the early Roman republic. D. became virtual dictator of the arts in France from the outbreak of the Revolution to the fall of Napoleon; few men have exercised such power over the art and taste of their period. His subjects — allegory, history and mythology — and his search for an ideal beauty based on the supposed canons of classical sculpture were to become the hall-marks of academic art during the 19th ñ IX celebrated the victories and extolled the martyrs of the Revolution, e.g. The Death of Marat; in Return of the Sons of Brutus the theme of republican virtue recurs. IX was himself a deputy and was briefly imprisoned after the tall of Robespierre (1794); from his cell he painted the View of the I.uxenihourg (hardens, a small masterpiece of landscape painting, wholly romantic ami warmly evocative in feeling. His portraits too, are far from austere, e.g. of M. Seriziat and Mine Senziat, and of the famous beauty and conversationalist Mine Recamier (1800). Later he became the pamter-advocate of Napoleon, e.g. The (Coronation of Napoleon and his work was fundamental in the creation of the Empire style.
DAVIES, Arthur Bowen
(1862-1928) U.S. painter of romanticized landscapes with whimsical, elongated figures, e.g. Crescendo (1910). He was a member of The *Eight. He supported new trends and artistic independence and took a leading part in organizing the *Armory Show. After it he worked for a time in a modified Cubist style.
DAVIS, Ronald Ron Davis
(born 1937) American painter.
DAVRINGHAUSEN, Heinrich 
(1894-1970) German
DAWE, George
(1781-1829) Romanticism English painter (St. Petersburg)
DE ANDREA, John
(1941- ) U.S. Hyper-Realist sculptor of figures cast from life which, through the perfection ot his models, appear to be idealized as in classical sculpture, e.g. Scaled Man and Woman (1981). Sometimes the figures re-enact 3-dimensional, realist scenes from works such as *Manet's lx Dejeuner stir I'herbe or Allegory: After Com bet (1988).
DE BRY, Theodore 
(1528 – 1598) Engraver, goldsmith and editor who travelled around Europe, starting from the City of Liège (where he was born and grown up), then to Strasburg, Antwerp, London and Frankfurt, i.e. a true European of his time, a bit like Erasmus. At his time in the 16th century, the city of Liège was the center of the Prince-Bishopric of Liège, independent of neighbouring countries, i.e. Burgondy, Netherlands, Germany and France. See relevant map on that link. Theodorus de Bry was born in 1528 in Liege, East of today's (2008) Belgium, to a family who had escaped the destruction of the City of Dinant in 1466 by the Duke of Burgondy, so-called Philip the Good and his son Charles the Bold. As a man he trained from his grand father, Thiry de Bry senior (? - 1528), and under his father Thiry de Bry junior (1495 - 1590), a family of jewelers and engravers, engraving copper plates. The art of copper plate engraving was the technology of that time required for printing images and drawings as part of books. In 1524, Thiry de Bry junior married Catherine le Blavier, daughter of Conrad le Blavier de Jemeppe. Their son Theodorus de Bry became also a jeweler, engraver and book editor and publisher and he became famous most notably for his depictions of early European expeditions to the Americas.
DECAMPS, Alexandre-Gabriel
(1803-1860) French painter, lithographer, caricaturist and book ill. His travels in Turkey, which antedated those of Delacroix in Morocco, gave him material for successful exotic landscapes and genre paintings.
DE CORTE, Josse
(1627-1679) Baroque Flemish sculptor (Venice)
DECAMPS, Alexandre Gabriel
(1803-1860) Romanticism French painter
DECKER, Coenraet
(1651-1685) Baroque Dutch graphic artist
DEFERNEX, Jean-Baptiste
(1729-1783) Rococo French sculptor (Paris)
DEGAS, Edgar (Hilaire Germain)
(1834-1917) French painter, draughtsman, sculptor and graphic artist, the son of a rich banker and a Creole mother. After a typical bourgeois education he studied law, but in 1855 went to the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris, then to Naples and Rome. In 1861 he was back in Paris, where he painted portraits and compositions in a severely classical style, later turning to the painting of dancers, the races, town life and portraits in an environment, which established his reputation. Though not in agreement with Impressionist theory he allied himself with the movement from its beginning in protest against sterile academic theory and practice, and exhibited with the Impressionist painters until 1886. His life was marred by hypochondria increasing with old age, and with his eyesight failing towards the end of his life, he shunned all society.
D. discovered and appropriated the new environment of I9th-c. industrial man — the townscape, the street, the interiors of the places of entertainment and work of all social classes. He observed the behaviour of the female and male human animal against these settings with analytical detachment, biting wit and an unfailing eye for the typical. For this purpose he made use of photography, the store of knowledge accumulated m museums, the technical knowledge of craftsmen and the visual discoveries of the Impressionist painters. He strove after perfection in every possible way, for he believed that given sensibility the mastery of the technical means was decisive. He experimented therefore with graphic media, perfected the art of pastel, made monotypes and etchings and modelled in clay and wax in order to understand better the movements of his dancers and racehorses. These stuidies, which were never intended for exhibition, were cast m bronze after his death and thus preserved. He never painted on the spot, but composed only after much observation, many studies and a most intimate knowledge of the subject, relying on a prodigious visual memory. The vision of eternal truth in fleeting reality was D.'s characteristic contribution. There is a gradual development from the early classical composition of the Young Spartans (1860) with its cool colours, to the new science of colour and movement m the Washerwomen (1879), the Miss Lola, the series of ballet dancers, drawings, paintings and pastels of women at their toilette, washing themselves and dressing, and especially in the near-abstract monotypes.
DE GROUX, Henry
(1866-1930) Painter, pastellist and lithographer, son of Charles De Groux. He studied under Jean-François Portaels from the age of 11 and at the Académie de Bruxelles (1882–3). Until 1890 he participated in exhibitions organized by the avant-garde circles La Chrysalide, L’Essor and Les XX, of which he was a member. He was a close friend of William Degouve de Nuncques, in whose studio he executed the frieze Procession of Archers (pastel, 1886–90; Belgium, priv. col.), first exhibited at Les XX in 1887 and 1889, and the Mocking of Christ (1889; Avignon, Pal. Roure), to which he gave his friend’s features. Masses of tangled bodies with crazed expressions haunt his considerable oeuvre, marked by literary symbolism and by a tendency towards depicting such renowned figures as Christ, Napoleon and Wagner.
DE KOONING, Willem
(1904-1997) Dutch painter, influenced by *De Stijl and Flemish Expressionists, who moved to the U.S.A. (1926) where he worked as a decorator. He worked on the *W.P.A. art project (1938) and joined the N.Y. Group of *Abstract Expressionist painters, becoming a leading member. His painting has its roots in *Gorky's Surrealism and he often uses open allusions to reality which may be the starting-point or may accidentally occur during the painting's execution. His best-known series, the Women (1952) was the first sign of the 'new figuration' in N.Y. painting. Its violent imagery and technique caused a sensation. It was followed by a series of landscapes and a return r. 1963 to the theme of woman, now painted in flamboyant, almost satiric style.
DELACROIX, Eugène
(1798-1863) Leading French Romantic painter, draughtsman, lithographer, writer and art critic. It is possible that he was a natural son of Talleyrand. After studies with Guerin, a follower of David, he worked at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts, Paris, for a while. In 1821, when D. was in financial difficulties, he was helped by his friend Gericault, whose work he greatly admired. D. became known from 1822 with his painting Dante and Virgil in the Inferno, shown in the Salon. During a visit to Britain in 1825 D. met Lawrence and Wilkie. In 1831 he was awarded the Legion d'honneur and during the following year visited Morocco and Spam, a journey which proved to be crucial for the further development of his work. In 1833 a commission to decorate a salon in the Palais Bourbon was the beginning of a period of very intense work and a number of public commissions on a large scale, which established D. State honours followed and in 1857, after 7 rejections, he was at last elected a member of the French Institute. He was frequently ill now, but his monumental work increased and he employed about 30 assistants. His last great work, paintings for the church of St-Sulpice, occupied him until 1861.
D. used the works of his contemporaries Constable, Gencault, Gros and of the past masters, Michelangelo, Poussin, Rubens and others, as sources from which he took what he needed. He applied the same approach to his study of nature and to reality as a whole. He made use of literature for his subjects, of science in his studies of colour relationships, of photography in his study of form, and of lithography in his graphic work. He saw painting as a bridge between painter and spectator, and colour as its most important element. He was original in the realization of related — as against local — colour, and in the use of complementaries and of simultaneous contrast, but it is wrong to see D. as a colounst only. His concern for form and composition increased, and towards the end he achieved a synthesis of these elements. His use of broken colour and the freedom of his brushwork was decisive in the formation of the later Realist and Impressionist painting. D. is best known today for his Massacre of Chios (1824) and the Death of Sardanapalns (1827), and also for Liberty Leading the People (1830). He is also celebrated for his paintings of Morocco in the Louvre, such as the Women of Algiers (1834), his compositions of animal subjects and many watercolours. His religious paintings, e.g. the Pieta (1848), are less known; so are his mural paintings, mainly because of lack of access. His journals (1823—54) and critical writings are valuable as historical documents and as works in their own right.
DELAISTRE, François-Nicolas
(1746-1832) Neoclassicism French sculptor
DELAPORTE, Henri-Horace Roland
(1724-1793) Neoclassicism French painter (Paris)
DELAROCHE, Hippolyte (see DELAROCHE, Paul)
(1797-1859) Romanticism French painter
DELAROCHE, Paul
(1797-1859) Romanticism French painter of historical subjects of romantic or sentimental interest derived from works by Sir Walter Scott. Shakespeare and others. Pictures painted with extreme naturalism such as Children of Edward (the Princes in the Tower), 1830, were popular and widely used in history textbooks.
DELAUNAY, Nicolas (see LAUNAY, Nicolas de)
(1739-1792) Rococo French graphic artist (Paris)
DELAUNAY, Robert
(1885-1941) French painter and the originator of *Orphism, which extended the Cubist practice of fragmentation into the held of colour. He started painting r. 1904. His works of 1905—7 are painted in a brilliantly coloured *Divisionist technique. In 1907, under the influence of Cezanne, his palette was temporarily subdued, and during his military service (1908) he began his study of optics. He met *Leger in 1909, and their sombre-coloured paintings pursued a parallel search for structural organization. In the Saint-Severiti and The Eiffel Tower series (1909—10) he returned to his highly coloured palette and by 19ò2, m the Fenetre Sitmdtane paintings, he had isolated pure-colour areas from the motif. In Orphist paintings, D. writes, 'the breaking up of form by light creates coloured planes; these are the structure for description but a pretext'. He saw Orphism as a logical development of Impressionism and Neo-impressionism, but his transition to pure abstraction was probably inspired by *Kupka (c 1911—12). D. was visited in 19T2 by Marc, Ìàñêå and Klee, who later trs. his essay On Light. His influence upon the *Blaue Reiter group was considerable and by 1914 he was probably the most influential artist in Paris. His later work, like Leger's, attempted to reconcile his innovations with more traditional forms.
DELAUNAY, Sonia (nee Terk)
(1885-1979) Russian painter who settled in Paris (1905), married *Delaunay (1910) and with him was a pioneer of abstract painting (*Orphism). After World War I she concentrated on textile and fashion design but returned to painting in the late 1930s. She exhibited regularly from the early T950S and held retrospectives in Paris (1967) and Lisbon (1972). She designed costumes and decor for Stravinsky's ballet Dances Concertantes (1968).
DELEMER, Jean
(active mid 15th century) Northern Renaissance Flemish sculptor (Tournai)
DELEN, Dirck van
(1604/5-1671) Baroque Dutch painter
DELFF, Cornelis Jacobsz
(1570-1643) Baroque Dutch painter (Delft)
DELFF, Jacob Willemsz I
(1550-1601) Northern Renaissance Dutch painter (Delft)
DELFF, Jacob Willemsz II
(1619-1661) Baroque Dutch painter (Delft)
DELFF, Willem Jacobsz
(1580-1638) Baroque Dutch graphic artist (Delft)