Italian, 17th century, male.
Active in Rome.
Born 1593, in Borgo San Sepolcro.
Painter, sculptor, engraver, art theorist. Religious subjects. Frescoes.
Served as Secretary to the Accademia di San Luca in Rome (founded by Zuccharo). In 1585, he published in Rome a benchmark Treatise on the Noble Art of Painting...
[Père André]
(b Châteaulin, Finistère, May 22, 1675; d Caen, Feb 26, 1764).
French priest, philosopher and writer. He entered the Society of Jesus in 1693, studied theology in Paris, then philosophy at the Collège de Clermont, and he was ordained a priest in 1706. He was a great scholar, who knew Greek, Latin and Hebrew; he devoted himself to philosophical research and poetry, at the same time teaching for the Society of Jesus in numerous institutions of learning in France. A staunch Cartesian, Père André inevitably incurred the hostility of the Society, which was wedded to Scholastic doctrines and Aristotelian philosophy. His innovative philosophical opinions and his suspect theology caused him to suffer various penalties, including imprisonment (1721). Under duress, he made a submission and in 1726 was appointed Royal Professor of Mathematics at Caen, where he remained for the rest of his life.
Père André is best known for his Essai sur le beau (1741), one of the earliest ...
Illuminated manuscript of the first five books of the Old Testament (now incomplete), dating from the late 6th or early 7th century (Paris, Bib.N., MS. nouv. acq. lat. 2334) and named after the English collector Bertram Ashburnham. Also known as the Pentateuch of Tours, the Ashburnham Pentateuch is one of the oldest surviving pre-Carolingian Vulgate manuscripts of the Old Testament. In its present condition, it lacks the last verses of Numbers and all of Deuteronomy; while 18 pages of illustration and 1 frontispiece survive from the original 65 pages with illustrations. The illustrated pages comprise several scenes generally arranged in two or three bands, although some pages have one or two large scenes, others combine illustration and text. Painted tituli that follow the Vulgate accompany the miniatures; however, beneath the painted titutli are preliminary inscriptions penned in ink that follow the Vetus latina text.
Based upon stylistic, iconographical and codicological evidence, the Pentateuch appears to have been made in a late 6th- to early 7th-century Italian scriptorium. Twelve pages were added in the 8th century by scribes from Fleury; an additional restored page (fol. 33) was added in the 7th century by a Touronian scribe. The illustrations often deviate from the exact retelling of the biblical text. The column of smoke and fire, for example, in the story of the Crossing of the Red Sea is depicted as a large candle held in two hands, a reference to Easter Vigil liturgical ceremonies (fol. 68...
Richly illustrated bestiary manuscript (275×185mm, 105 fols; Oxford, Bodleian Lib., Ashmole 1511), written in Latin and illuminated probably in southern England around 1210. The original patron is unknown. It contains the text and illustrations of a complete bestiary, with prefatory Creation scenes and excerpts from Genesis and part of Hugh de Folieto’s Aviarium (Book of Birds). It is a luxury manuscript with lavish use of gold leaf, sometimes tooled, in the backgrounds of the full-page miniatures and numerous smaller framed animal ‘portraits’. Its images are especially notable for their ornamental qualities, evident in both the pictorial compositions and a wide variety of geometric framing devices. The prefatory cycle includes a full-page miniature of Adam Naming the Animals. The Ashmole Bestiary is considered a ‘sister’ manuscript to the Aberdeen Bestiary (Aberdeen, U. Lib., MS. 24), to which it is iconographically very closely related, but owing to major stylistic differences the two manuscripts have been attributed to different artists. The chronological relationship between the two has been disputed: based on proposed workshop methods, Muratova (...
Astrology is the art of predicting events on earth as well as human character and disposition from the movements of the planets and fixed stars. Medieval astrology encompassed both general concepts of celestial influence, and the technical art of making predictions with horoscopes, symbolic maps of the heavens at particular moments and places constructed from astronomical information. The scientific foundations of the art were developed in ancient Greece, largely lost in early medieval Europe and recovered by the Latin West from Arabic sources in the 12th and 13th centuries. Late medieval astrological images were successfully Christianized and were adapted to particular contexts, acquired local meanings and changed over time.
Astrology developed into a scientific branch of learning in ancient Greece, but because of the opposition of the Church Fathers it was transmitted to early medieval Europe in only fragmentary form in technically unsophisticated textbooks and popular divinatory genres. Literary and scientific texts provided more general ideas about the nature and attributes of the planets which were influential on later iconography. The first significant astrological images appear in 11th-century illustrated astronomical texts (e.g. London, BL, Cotton MS. Tiberius BV), which were acquired and produced by monasteries to aid with time-keeping and the construction of the Christian calendar....
Type of large-format Bible, usually found in pandect (single-volume) form, produced in central Italy and Tuscany from around 1060 to the middle of the 12th century. They came out of the efforts of a reformist papacy intent on wresting control over ecclesiastical investiture from the Holy Roman Emperor. The Giant Bibles were produced in reformed canonries and monasteries and then exported to the same, not only in Italy but throughout Europe.
The term ‘Atlantic’ (from the mythological giant Atlas) is derived from their impressive size; dimensions range from 550 to 600 mms by 300 to 400 mms. Their script, derived from Caroline minuscule, is placed in two columns of around fifty-five lines. The texts are decorated with two initial types, which Edward B. Garrison designated as ‘geometrical’ and ‘full shaft’, both of which are derived from Carolingian and Ottonian exemplars, respectively. The iconography consists of full-length prophets, patriarchs, kings and saints as well as narrative scenes. The last are at times found as full-page cyclical illuminations and preface important textual divisions, especially Genesis. The iconography of the Giant Bibles is a specific Roman iconographical recension with its sources based in part on Early Christian pictorial cycles, such as the wall paintings of Old St Peter’s in Rome. These came from an era considered by the reformers to have been uncorrupted by the abuses that afflicted the Church when these Bibles were being made. While the Giant Bibles were promulgated by the Church of Rome as a symbol of its supreme authority, they also allowed the clergy to perform the liturgy, and the Divine Office in particular, properly....
French, 18th century, male.
Born 1724, in Paris; died 13 April 1806, in Paris.
Painter, draughtsman, writer and administrator. Religious subjects, portraits, animals, still-lifes (including flowers, fruit, game), cats, decorative motifs.
Jean-Jacques Bachelier was a pupil of Jean-Baptiste Pierre. He later became the director of painting at the Manufacture de Sèvres (Sèvres Porcelaine Factory), and founded the École Royale Gratuite de Dessin, an independent school of industrial arts, where he worked very successfully as a painter of flowers and still-lifes. The school, intended for young artisans aspiring to make a living in the applied arts, taught ornamental design, architecture, and the drawing of the human figure, animals and plants. He also tried his hand at biblical subjects. His works include: ...
German, 15th century, male.
Born c. 1435; died 1504.
Painter, miniaturist, illuminator, writer, printer. Religious subjects.
School of Alsace.
Hans Baemler's name appears for the first time in 1453. He established himself in Augsburg as a printer. His name appears on two miniatures, a Crucifixion...
(b Hradec Králové, Dec 3, 1621; d Prague, Nov 29, 1688).
Bohemian historiographer . Born into a noble family, he entered the Jesuit Order in 1638 and graduated in history at the Klementinum Jesuit College in Prague. As a student he accompanied the Spanish theologian Rodrigo Arriaga (1592–1667) on his tour of Bohemia. He was ordained a priest in 1649 and subsequently devoted himself to writing. His historiographic works include many descriptions of architecture and art works. Writing about places of pilgrimage and miraculous religious images, such as statues of the Virgin in Varta and Příbram (15th century; Church of Our Lady), he drew on the detailed knowledge he had acquired during his extensive travels and from his archive studies. In the Vita venerabilis Arnesti (Prague, 1664) he described the patronage of both Arnošt, first Archbishop of Prague (1297–1364), and the Holy Roman Emperor Charles IV. His two principal works, Epitome historica rerum Bohemicarum (Prague, 1677) and ...
(b Syracuse, 1426; d Palermo, c. 1487).
Italian historian, philosopher and theologian . A member of the Dominican Order, he taught at the University of Catania and at Palermo. He twice visited Hungary before 1474, and was granted a pension for life by King Matthias Corvinus. His writings included several historical works. His chronicle of popes and emperors (from 1316–1469) was first published anonymously in Rome in 1474, but was later reissued erroneously under the name of Giovanni Filippo de Lignamine. Another important work was the Virorum illustrium cronica (published early 1475), which culminates in a eulogy of Ferdinand the Catholic (later Ferdinand II, King of Aragon), and includes such figures as Guarino da Verona and Leonardo Bruni. He also produced two major theological works, De immortalite animarum libri tres and De divina providentia et hominum praedestionene, which defend the Thomist doctrine of predestination. In 1474 he was appointed as preacher to the Florentine convent of S Maria Novella and later as preacher to the Aragonese court in Naples. While he was on a mission to Seville, he came to be highly regarded by King Ferdinand II and his court. From ...
American, 20th century, male.
Born 2 September 1911, in Charlotte (North Carolina); died 12 March 1988, in New York.
Painter (including gouache), watercolourist, lithographer, screen printer, engraver, collage artist, newspaper cartoonist, illustrator, art theorist. Religious subjects, figure compositions, local figures. Humorous cartoons, frontispieces, stage sets...
French, 19th – 20th century, male.
Born 16 January 1834, in Mirabeau, Provence; died 28 December 1912, in Brignoles, Provence.
Painter, writer. Religious subjects.
Jules Marie Béguin was ordained in 1857, and became a canon in 1902. That same year, he published a book on St Mary Magdalene. He left a corpus of over 400 paintings in a number of churches in Provence including Cuers, Camps-la-Source, Puget-sur-Argens....
Illuminated manuscript (292 × 225 mm; London, BL, Add. MS. 49598) containing liturgical prayers recited by the bishop, produced in Winchester between
(b nr Dijon, 1090; d Clairvaux, Aug 20, 1153; can 1174; fd 20 Aug).
French saint, Cistercian abbot, and writer. He was born into a noble family and spent most of his life at Clairvaux Abbey in southern Champagne. He became its first abbot in 1115, having entered Cîteaux, its mother house, in 1113. The Cistercians became the most successful monastic reform movement of the age. When Bernard died there were about 170 monasteries attached to Clairvaux, nearly half the Order’s total, their spread across Europe reflecting Bernard’s power to attract recruits and patrons. A superb orator and writer, he was involved in attacking heresy, ending a papal schism, and encouraging the Second Crusade.
The only place where Bernard wrote directly (but not extensively) on art and buildings was in his Apologia, addressed to his friend William of Saint-Thierry (c. 1075–1148), a Benedictine, whom he tried to reassure that Cistercian criticisms of other Benedictines were soundly based. Neither the traditional date of ...
British, 18th – 19th century, male.
Born 28 November 1757, in London, United Kingdom; died 12 August 1827, in London.
Painter, draughtsman, engraver, illustrator, poet. Religious subjects, figure compositions.
William Blake was the son of a draper. He showed a strong artistic tendency from an early age and, at the age of 10, started to study drawing at Henry Par’s Academy in the Strand. He learnt engraving under Ryland and was then apprenticed to James Basire. During his seven years with Basire (1772–1779), Blake was made to copy the sculptures of Westminster Abbey and of London’s old churches, thus stimulating his fascination with Gothic art. He studied briefly at the Royal Academy in 1779, where he made friends with Barry, Fuseli, Mortimer, Flaxman, and Stodhart. While there, his studies concentrated on Michelangelo....
(b Berlin, Aug 18, 1911; d Cambridge, MA, Sept 6, 2006).
German historian of antiquity and the Middle Ages, active also in Italy and America. Bloch was trained at the University of Berlin under the historian of ancient Greece Werner Jaeger, art historian Gerhart Rodenwaldt and medievalist Erich Caspar from 1930 until 1933, when the rise of National Socialism convinced him to move to Rome. There he received his tesi di laurea in ancient history in 1935 and his diploma di perfezionamento in 1937. He then participated in the excavations at Ostia, Rome’s ancient port, which was an important site in the revival of Italian archaeology under Fascism. At the outbreak of World War II, he immigrated to the USA, and began his teaching career in 1941 at Harvard University’s Department of Classics, where he remained until his retirement in 1982. His experience of totalitarianism shaped both his personal and professional beliefs.
Bloch applied a deep knowledge of epigraphy, history and material culture, art history, literary and archival sources to his research and he had a propensity for uncovering the significance of new or neglected evidence. One such area was Roman history. His first publications, on ancient Rome’s brick stamps (many of which he discovered ...
Group of twelve manuscripts, primarily Psalter and Book of Hours, nearly all illustrated by in-house artists for members of the Bohun family in the second half of the 14th century. The owner–patrons were the successive earls of Essex, Hereford and Northampton: Humphrey de Bohun VI (1309–61), the 6th Earl of Hereford and 5th Earl of Essex and his nephew Humphrey de Bohun VII (1342–73), the 7th earl of Essex and 2nd Earl of Northampton, Humphrey VII’s wife Joan Fitzalan (d 1419) and their daughters Eleanor (1366–99), who married Thomas of Woodstock, Duke of Gloucester (see Plantagenet, House of family §(5)), son of King Edward III, and Mary (c. 1369–94), who married Henry of Bolingbroke (1366–1413; from 1399 King Henry IV), son of John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster. Known to have been active between c. 1360 and ...
French, 17th century, male.
Born 1604, in Tours; died 14 February 1676, in Paris.
Painter, draughtsman, engraver (etching/burin), art writer. Religious subjects, historical subjects, figures, genre scenes, interior scenes, architectural interiors, landscapes.
The son of a tailor, Abraham Bosse went to Paris aged about 15 to improve his drawing skills, which showed considerable promise. He appears to have started his study of engraving under Melchior Tavernier. Back in his native city in 1622, he engraved a ...
Belgian, 19th century, male.
Born 1816, in Courtrai; died 1878, in Antwerp.
Painter, writer. Religious subjects, genre scenes.
This Flemish artist was a pupil of Gustave Wappers and Nicaise de Keyser in Antwerp.
Courtrai: Praying Monk (1841)
(b Berlin, Aug 11, 1909; d London, Nov 10, 1996).
German scholar of Byzantine, East Christian and European illuminated manuscripts. He took his degree in 1933 at the University of Hamburg in the heady community of the Warburg Library (later Institute) under the tutelage of Erwin Panofsky and Fritz Saxl. Immigrating with the Warburg staff and library to London in 1934, he served from 1940 to 1949 as the Institute’s Librarian and from 1944 to 1965 as Lecturer, Reader and then Professor of Byzantine art at the University of London. In 1965 he came to the Institute of Fine Arts, New York University, becoming in 1970 the first Ailsa Mellon Bruce Professor. He retired in 1975 to London, where he died in 1996.
Buchthal is best known for his Miniature Painting in the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem (1957), which laid the foundation for the now well-established art-historical field of Crusader studies. It exemplifies both his originality and the methods that made his scholarship so durable. Fundamental among these were his holistic approach to manuscripts, giving as much attention to ornament, liturgical usage, text traditions, palaeography and apparatus as to miniatures, and his relentlessly keen visual analysis. Aided by a powerful memory, he worked from original monuments, developing exceptional acuity in dissecting the formal components of their images. Mobilized in his dissertation, published in ...
