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(b Regensburg, 1667; d Regensburg, 1719).

German painter. He travelled to England, the Netherlands, France and Italy, working for longer periods in Rome, Naples and Augsburg. He was strongly influenced by French landscape painters active in Italy, such as Gaspard Dughet and Claude Lorrain. In Agricola’s paintings the balanced arrangement of the picturesque landscape elements creates a lucid pictorial structure, and unusual light effects, such as twilight or the darkness before a storm, are used to convey a particular mood. The small scale of his figures expresses the contrast between human frailty and the forces of nature. He painted with lively local colours, especially ochres and deep greens for the rich tones of earth and vegetation. The multicoloured costumes of his figural staffage provide pictorial accents and reveal the romantic orientation of his paintings. Scenes of country people at work, for example Landscape with a Millstone (Dresden, Gemäldegal. Alte Meister), express his yearning for a return to nature. Paintings representing the life of nomadic Orientals, such as ...

(b Cairnie, Forfar, Tayside, Oct 24, 1682; d London, June 4, 1731).

Scottish painter. He came from a professional background, and his maternal uncle, Sir John Clerk of Penicuik, may have provided Aikman with an introduction to Sir John Baptist Medina, under whom he studied painting in London from 1704. In 1707 Aikman set out on travels to Italy, Constantinople (now Istanbul) and Smyrna, on the proceeds made from the sale of his estate at Cairnie. When he returned to Edinburgh in 1711, he adopted a heavy Baroque style for his portraits: Sir William Carstares (c. 1712–15; U. Edinburgh, Old Coll., Upper Lib.) shows bravura, although the handling is coarse. The three-quarter-length portraits of Patrick, 1st Earl of Marchmont (1720; Mellerstain, Borders) and Sir Hew Dalrymple, Lord North Berwick (1722; Edinburgh, Parliament House) show a greater sophistication, which he may have acquired during a further trip to London in 1720.

Aikman was widely patronized, especially by the Duke of Argyll and his circle; after the Act of Union in ...

(b Berg, nr Starnberg, Bavaria, Jan 3, 1687; d Munich, Aug 15, 1765).

German painter and administrator. He was the son of Augustin Albrecht, a carpenter, and he was probably taught in Munich by his uncle, the painter Benedikt Albrecht (d 1730), before he went to Italy, where he is thought to have stayed in Rome and Venice. Albrecht returned to Munich in 1719 and executed his first works (all 1723–4) for the former Hofmarkkirche (now Katholische Pfarrkirche; in situ) in Schönbrunn, near Dachau. These were a ceiling fresco, Celebration of the Cross, and three altar panels, Mourning Angel (high altar), Martyrdom of St Catherine (left altar) and St Anne (right altar). He also painted two altar panels, St John of Nepomuk and St Leonard (both 1724–5; untraced), for the Katholische Pfarrkirche Mariahilf in der Au in Munich. Unlike Cosmas Damian Asam, Matthäus Günther and Johann Baptist Bergmüller, he was influenced by 16th-century Venetian and Roman models, and both in these works and in later ones he continued to look to the past for inspiration. Between ...

(b Ciminna, Jan 24, 1634; d Palermo, July 3, 1714).

Italian architect, writer and painter. He trained as a priest in Palermo and entered the Padri Ministri degl’Infermi. Another member of this Order was Giacomo Amato, with whom he worked, although they were not related. While serving as a chaplain Amato studied geometry, architecture, optics and engraving. His earliest known artistic work is a painting on copper of the Miracle of S Rosalia (1663), the patron saint of Palermo. After 1686 he created many works of an ephemeral character. For the feasts of S Rosalia and for important political events he provided designs for lavish triumphal chariots, probably developed from those by Jacques Callot, triumphal arches and other ceremonial apparatus set up on principal roads and piazzas, and he painted hangings, papier-mâché models and massive altarpieces for the cathedral. These works influenced Amato’s permanent architecture. The spiral columns of the campanile of S Giuseppe dei Teatini, Palermo, recall the festival designs of ...

(Petrovich)

(b March 14, 1716; d St Petersburg, June 12, 1795).

Russian painter. He trained at the Construction Office in St Petersburg, where his teachers included Ivan Vishnyakov, in whose team of painters Antropov later worked. He participated in the decorative painting of the Winter Palace and other imperial residences in St Petersburg and its environs. In 1752 he embarked on painting Andreyevsky Cathedral in Kiev and produced icons for its iconostasis. He returned to St Petersburg in 1758 and then trained for two years with Pietro Antonio Rotari. Soon afterwards he was appointed principal supervisor of the artists and icon painters of the Synod.

Antropov is remembered primarily as a portrait painter who worked in a realistic style that retained many traditional elements. The most notable among his portraits is that of the lady-in-waiting Anastasiya Izmailova (1759; Moscow, Tret’yakov Gal.), which shows the best and most typical features of his work. He conveys the sitter’s authority, energy and intelligence, suggesting the force of character of a significant figure at the court of the Empress Elizabeth. Antropov’s style is typical of the Russian Baroque. His preference for vivid local colours and his careful reproduction of detail and texture link his work to the traditions of both Russian folk art and earlier Russian portrait painting. Also notable are the portraits of the Chieftain of the Don Cossacks, ...

(b Madrid, 1664; d Madrid, Feb 15, 1726).

Spanish architect, painter and writer. He was trained in architecture by the Jesuits and in painting by Claudio Coello and worked mainly as an architect. Two overdoors showing multiple allegorical scenes of the Battle of Lepanto (1721; Madrid, Pal. Arzobisp.) and a St Barbara (1723; Madrid, Mus. Lázaro Galdiano) reveal Ardemans as a talented painter working in the tradition of Francisco Rizi, Juan Carreño de Miranda and Francisco de Herrera the younger, and partially influenced by Luca Giordano. His debt to Coello is apparent in a ceiling fresco attributed to him in the Capilla del Cristo de los Dolores of the Venerable Orden Tercera de San Francisco, Madrid, which shows St Francis riding in a chariot of fire with figures watching from a balcony. Also attributed to Ardemans is the portrait of Pedro Atanasio Bocanegra (c. 1689; Granada, Pal. Arzobisp.)

As an architect, Ardemans belongs to a period of transition, continuing into the 18th century the Baroque tradition of the Madrid school. He worked in Granada (...

(b Genoa, 1645; d Genoa, 1717).

Italian painter. His work is now little known, yet the large number of paintings cited by Soprani, the many existing drawings and the technical proficiency of the relatively few surviving paintings confirm that he was a prolific and versatile artist, capable of painting portraits, history pictures and religious scenes. He was the son of the painter Giuseppe Badaracco (c. 1588–1657), himself a pupil of Bernardo Strozzi and Andrea Ansaldo, whose work may have encouraged Giovanni Raffaello to compose lively narratives with many figures. Yet it is unlikely that Giovanni Raffaello studied with his father, and his formal education probably started in Rome, where he studied under Carlo Maratti and was influenced by the art of Pietro da Cortona. He spent eight years in Rome during the 1660s, when Giovanni Andrea II Carlone (i) was also recorded there (1662; 1664; 1666), which could explain the similarity of their drawing styles, for which both were indebted to Maratti. Badaracco visited Naples, Venice and other Italian cities before returning to Genoa, possibly by ...

(b Stradella, Pavia, 1723; d Parma, 1803).

Italian painter, also active in France. He studied painting in Florence under the Baroque fresco painter Vincenzo Meucci (1694–1766). He then went to Parma, where he won the esteem of Duke Philip, the Bourbon ruler of Parma, and the protection of Philip’s minister, Guillaume Du Tillot, who made Baldrighi court artist and sent him to Paris for further training, hoping thereby to bring refined French taste to the court of Parma. The painter was able to study and work with artists such as François Boucher, Maurice-Quentin de La Tour, Jean-Marc Nattier, Jean-Etienne Liotard and Jean-Baptiste Perroneau. Letters between Du Tillot and the banker Claude Bonnet, who represented the interests of the Parma court in Paris, have proved a rich source of information for Baldrighi’s stay in Paris, and indeed one of the artist’s first works was a portrait of Mme Bonnet (1752), followed a year later by the portrait of ...

(b Verona, Aug 12, 1666; d Verona, April 21, 1740).

Italian painter and printmaker. His altarpieces and history paintings, which unite late Baroque classicism with Venetian colour, brought new life to north Italian painting. The son of Lucia Boschetti and Francesco Balestra, a wealthy merchant, he studied literature, rhetoric and the humanities, but, after lessons in drawing and perspective with Giovanni Zeffis (d 1688) and one Monsignor Bianchini (1646–1724), he moved to Venice in 1687 and trained with Antonio Bellucci. In 1691 he transferred to Rome, where he studied with Carlo Maratti, whose art continued a classical tradition that can be traced back to Raphael, and where he also absorbed the work of Annibale Carracci and Domenichino. In 1694 Balestra’s large drawing of the Fall of the Giants (Rome, Gal. Accad. N. S Luca) won first prize in a competition at the Accademia di S Luca. In 1695 he returned to Verona, where he was acclaimed as the chief exponent in the Veneto of Maratti’s late Baroque classicism. His pictures of this period were mainly small religious works, such as the ...

Term used to describe one of the first genuinely global styles of art and architecture in the Western canon, extending from its birthplace in Bologna and Rome to places as far-flung as France, Sweden, Russia, Latin America, colonial Asia (Goa, Macao), and Africa (Mozambique, Angola), even manifesting itself in hybrid forms in non-European cultures such as Qing China (the Yuanming yuan pleasure gardens of the Qianlong Emperor) or Ottoman Turkey (in a style often called Türk Barok). The Baroque also embraced a very wide variety of art forms, from the more traditional art historical media of painting, sculpture, and architecture to public spectacles, fireworks, gardens, and objects of everyday use, often combining multiple media into a single object or space in a way that blurred traditional disciplinary boundaries. More so than the Renaissance and Mannerist stylistic movements which preceded it, Baroque was a style of the people as well as one of élites, and scholars are only recently beginning to explore the rich material culture of the Baroque, from chapbooks (Italy) and votive paintings (central Europe and Latin America) to farm furniture (Sweden) and portable oratories (Brazil). Although its precise chronological boundaries will probably always be a matter of dispute, the Baroque era roughly covers the period from the 1580s to the early 18th century when, in places such as France and Portugal, the ...

(b Mantua, Sept 23, 1690; d Mantua, Aug 18, 1769).

Italian painter. He was the son of the goldsmith Giovanni Bazzani and trained in the studio of Giovanni Canti (1653–1715). Giuseppe was a refined and cultivated artist (Tellini Perina, 1988) and as a young man profited from the rich collections of art in Mantua, studying the works of Andrea Mantegna, Giulio Romano, 16th-century Venetian painters, especially Paolo Veronese, and Flemish artists, above all Rubens. His earliest works, for example the Assumption (Milan, priv. col., see Caroli, pl. 20), reveal an affinity with contemporary Venetian painters such as Giovanni Battista Piazzetta, Federico Bencovich and Andrea Celesti, but Bazzani rapidly absorbed the influence of Antonio Balestra, Domenico Fetti and most of all Rubens and Veronese. The inspiration of the last two artists is apparent in a number of works that may be dated in the 1720s and early 1730s. These include the Miracles of Pius V, the Conversion of a Heretic...

(b Turin, July 4, 1694; d Turin, June 21, 1766).

Italian painter of French descent. After a visit to Bologna in 1716, he was sent by Victor-Amadeus II of Savoy, King of Sicily, to study in Rome (1716–19), where he trained with Francesco Trevisani. Between 1719 and 1723 Beaumont was given various important commissions in Turin, including that for the ceiling painting of Aurora’s Chariot (1720) on the second floor of the Palazzo Reale. Around this time he was elected prior of the Confraternità di S Luca, and between 1723 and 1731 he was again in Rome. Victor-Amadeus II recommended him to Nicolas Vleughels, the director of the Académie de France in Rome, and Beaumont was much influenced by the Roman–French style of Trevisani, Carle Vanloo and Charles-Joseph Natoire.

On his return to Turin in 1731, Beaumont was appointed court painter to Victor-Amadeus III, and over the following years he decorated a series of chambers in the Palazzo Reale in Turin with frescoes and encaustic paintings, including the vault decorations for the queen’s Camera di Lavoro (...

(Maria Nicolao)

(b Bologna, 1675; d Vienna, March 4, 1735).

Italian architect, decorative artist, stage designer and painter, active also in Austria. He trained as a quadratura painter in Bologna, where he was a pupil of Giovanni Gioseffo dal Sole. He was recorded as working as a figure and quadratura painter in Vienna for Prince Montecuccoli in 1695, and shortly afterwards for Count Heřman Jakub Czernin in both Vienna and Prague. He soon became a project designer, when his responsibilities expanded to include architecture. Beduzzi’s first project was probably the design of furnishings for the summer sacristy of Melk Abbey Church (from 1701; see Melk Abbey, §2), which matched the European High Baroque style of the building. Later he designed furnishings and frescoes for the abbey church itself (1711–22) although, contrary to common belief, he did not design the high altar and doorway. He initially painted his frescoes himself, but later these were entrusted to his associates, as in the case of the pilgrimage church of Maria Taferl, near Melk, or to specialists employed by those commissioning the work. Beduzzi’s design for the illusionistic decoration of the church of St Peter (...

(b Ravensburg, Oct 15, 1665; d Munich, Oct 16, 1748).

German painter. He was the son of a cartographer and painter, Daniel Beich (fl 1624–70), with whom he probably trained. His first recorded work, View of Mountains at Evening (1694; Nuremberg, Ger. Nmus.) marked him out as an independent artist. Beich received his first major commission through Maximilian II Emanuel, Elector of Bavaria: two battle scenes, painted between 1702 and 1704, for his newly built castle at Schleissheim. They won Beich the title of court painter. In 1704–15 he worked in Italy—initially in Rome, where landscape painting was dominated by foreigners such as Jan Frans van Bloemen, Christoph Ludwig Agricola and Franz Werner von Tamm, a circle he joined. Moving to Livorno, Beich was equally successful, with a reputation that made him sought after as a teacher. In Naples even Francesco Solimena admired him, and Bernardo de Dominici’s praise of his naturalism in the Vite de Pittori...

(b Pieve di Soligo, 1654; d Pieve di Soligo, 1726).

Italian painter, active also in Austria, Germany and England. He studied drawing with a nobleman Domenico Difnico in Sebenico (Sibenik) in Dalmatia (now part of Croatia, at that time a Venetian colony) and went to Venice around 1675. His first works were influenced by Pietro Liberi, Andrea Celesti and Antonio Zanchi, as is apparent from the large canvas showing St Lorenzo Giustiniani, first Patriarch of Venice, praying for the city’s deliverance from the plague of 1447 (c. 1691; Venice, S Pietro di Castello, choir). In the following years, in response to Veronese, his palette became lighter. The first of his contacts with Austria was made in 1692, when he executed four altarpieces depicting scenes from the lives of various saints for the church of Klosterneuburg (in situ). From 1695 to 1700 he lived in Vienna; he was back in Venice in 1700 and returned to Vienna in ...

(b Naples, 1652; d Naples, 1732).

Italian painter. He specialized in still-lifes and was the final major representative of those 17th-century Neapolitan flower painters who used the decorative Baroque style with restraint and whose work anticipated the refined and delicate aspects of European Rococo. At the start of his career his work was inspired by Paolo Porpora and particularly by the early works of Giuseppe Recco. From this period survive two pairs of pendants of Carnations (Naples, Capodimonte) and Tulips (Sorrento, Mus. Correale Terranova), small paintings characterized by great attention to detail. Other youthful works feature the traditional Neapolitan still-life subject of fish (e.g. Fish, Naples, Mus. N. S Martino), where the formality learnt from Recco is combined with a romantic quality that anticipates 18th-century developments.

In mid-career Belvedere united his vein of refined sentimentality and a fanciful manner of composition with a new Baroque opulence inspired by Abraham Breughel (1631–?1680) and Giovanni Battista Ruoppolo. Examples are the inventive and subtly lit ...

[Federichetto; Federiko; Ferigheto; Ferighetto]

(b ?Dalmatia or Venice, ?1677; d Görz [Gorica, now Gorizia], July 8, 1753).

Croatian painter. He belonged to a noble family who originated on the island of Brazza (now Brač) or of Lesina (Hvar) and had possessions in Dalmatia. From c. 1695 he was apprenticed in Carlo Cignani’s Bologna workshop; he assisted Cignani in painting the Assumption of the Virgin (begun 1686) in the chapel of the Madonna del Fuoco in Forlí Cathedral (in situ; for illustration see Cignani, Carlo, Conte). The classicizing style of his first known independent work, Juno (1707; Forlí, Pal. Foschi), is close to Cignani. While in Venice (1710–16), Bencovich met Lothar Franz von Schönborn (1655–1729), Prince-Bishop of Mainz, for whom he executed works for Schloss Pommersfelden: Hagar and Ishmael in the Desert and the Sacrifice of Iphigenia (both 1715; Pommersfelden, Schloss Weissenstein); the Sacrifice of Isaac (1720; Zagreb, Strossmayer Gal.); and Apollo and Marsyas (untraced). All are intensely dramatic, with elongated figures in a strange, cold light....

[Fortunato]

(b Mekinje, nr Stein [now Kamnik], Sept 6, 1721; d Laibach [now Ljubljana], March 31, 1769).

Slovene painter. He first trained in Stein in the Austrian duchy of Carniola, where his father was a chest-maker. He was influenced by the Slovene Baroque painters Valentin Metzinger and Franc Jelovšek and by the sculptors—Francesco Robba and a group of anonymous Franciscan carvers—working around Laibach in the 1730s and 1740s. His earliest works (1750s) are preserved in the Croatian parish churches of Sinac, Lešće and Otočac and are painted in clear Baroque colours. Between 1756 and 1760 he studied at the Accademia di S Luca in Rome, receiving two first prizes for his drawings of nudes. Most of his surviving paintings, including religious scenes (e.g. St Bernard of Corleone, c. 1768; Ljubljana, N.G.) and portraits of noblemen (e.g. Baron Codelli, 1762; Ljubljana, N.G.) and clergymen, were created in the 1760s, using cool colours; they are often coarse and crude but individual in their expressive faces, shading with grey-green hues and decoratively arranged clothing. The influence of such Roman artists as Carlo Maratti, Pompeo Batoni and Anton Raphael Mengs is evident, while Central European Baroque art dominates Bergant’s iconography and colour-range....