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(di Giacomo di Pace)

(b Cortine in Valdibiana Montaperti, 1484; d Siena, between Jan and May 1551).

Italian painter, sculptor, draughtsman, printmaker and illuminator. He was one of the protagonists, perhaps even the most precocious, of Tuscan Mannerism, which he practised with a strong sense of his Sienese artistic background but at the same time with an awareness of contemporary developments in Florence and Rome. He responded to the new demand for feeling and fantasy while retaining the formal language of the early 16th century. None of Beccafumi’s works is signed or dated, but his highly personal maniera has facilitated almost unanimous agreement regarding the definition of his corpus and the principal areas of influence on it. However, some questions concerning the circumstances of his early career and the choices available to him remain unanswered. The more extreme forms of Beccafumi’s reckless experimentation underwent a critical reappraisal only in the later 20th century.

The primary sources of information concerning Beccafumi are Vasari’s biography (1568) and archival findings, mostly 19th century, relating to the artist. Vasari, although a direct acquaintance of Beccafumi in his last years and in a position to gather information from mutual friends, was, predictably, unreliable in regard to his early career. According to Vasari, Mecherino, the son of a poor farmer named Giacomo di Pace, became the protégé of ...

[Liberale di Jacopo dalla Biava]

(b Verona, c. 1445; d Verona, 1527–9).

Italian illuminator, painter and woodcut designer. His father, the baker Jacopo, came from Monza; his mother, Jacoba, was the daughter of the Veronese painter Zeno Solimani (fl c. 1438) and sister of the painter Nicolò Solimani (fl c. 1462–1493). The latter, according to Vasari, was Liberale’s teacher (but mistakenly called Vincenzo di Stefano in the Vite). Liberale is documented in Verona in 1455 and 1465, but works from this period are not known. His career thereafter may be divided into two periods: as a young artist he was based in Siena, where his work on a group of choir-books for the cathedral demonstrates his originality as an illuminator; in or soon after 1476 he returned to Verona, where he established himself as one of the city’s major painters. During both periods he travelled and worked in other centres.

Called to Siena before 1467 by the Olivetans, Liberale illuminated four choir-books (Chiusi, Mus. Cattedrale, Cods A, Q, R and Y) for the abbey of Monte Oliveto Maggiore. The miniatures show a mixture of styles: Sienese influences, especially the Late Gothic ornament of Sano di Pietro, are combined with such stylistic components from the Veneto and Emilia as sculpturally modelled, animated draperies, expressive physiognomies and tense, nervous gestures. Liberale worked as an illuminator for Siena Cathedral from ...

(b c. 1510; d Paris, Oct 15, 1573).

French illuminator, painter, designer and etcher. He worked for Francis I, Henry II and Catherine de’ Medici. Among his most remarkable works is the frontispiece to the Registre du Chartrier de l’hospice général de Rouen (Rouen, Bib. Mun.). In 1549 the Chronologia inclytae urbis Rothonogensis cited him as the most famous Rouennais painter. He appears to have run the most important illumination studio in the town, and the 60 miniatures of the illuminated manuscript Chants royaux (Paris, Bib. N.) were executed under his direction. He is mentioned in the royal accounts from 1537 to 1540 and worked during this period at the château of Fontainebleau under the direction of Rosso Fiorentino. In about 1545 he was in Rouen and executed designs for stained-glass windows; he must also have been the designer of stained-glass windows at the church of St Acceul at Ecouen, near Paris, as well as those of the chapel of the château, and of the ceramic floor by the potter ...

(b Antwerp, Jan 10, 1610; d Antwerp, June 21, 1666).

Flemish painter, illuminator and printmaker. He is one of the rediscovered minor masters of the 17th-century Flemish school. He was educated in the humanities at the Jesuit college in Antwerp, but it is not known with whom he studied painting. In 1631–2 he was enrolled as a master in the Guild of St Luke in Antwerp.

Until the 1960s Fruytiers was known only as the author of a few excellent miniature portraits in watercolour and gouache on paper or vellum. One of the earliest, Family on a Terrace (1638; sold, London, Sotheby’s, 25 Feb 1959, lot 15), includes a painter at work, which may be a self-portrait. The best-known miniature, Four Children of Rubens and Hélène Fourment with Two Servants (1638; Windsor Castle, Berks, Royal Col.), is probably the portrait of the children mentioned in the inventory of Rubens’s estate in 1641, on which the costs of the frame and glass were still owing....

(b Florence, 1618; d after 1661).

Italian painter and engraver. He was a pupil of Francesco Furini (Bartsch). His most important work is a series of engravings for Leonardo Agostini’s book Le gemme antiche figurate (Rome, 1657–9). He also produced several collections of engravings of low reliefs and friezes by Polidoro da Caravaggio, published by Vincenzo Belly in Opere di Polidoro da Caravaggio (Rome, 1658). His engraving after Giovanni Francesco Grimaldi’s Triumph of Piety dates from the same year. He was an accomplished draughtsman and his attractive, light and sketchy engraving style is close to that of Stefano della Bella. He completed and signed the Sixth Death (see Vesme and Massar, no. 92), one of the latter’s uncompleted plates for the series the Dance of Death. There is only one known painting by Galestruzzi, a Magdalene owned by the Accademia di S Luca in Rome; the artist was a member of the Accademia from ...

(b Kotagiri, Madras, India, March 13, 1836; d London, Nov 25, 1875).

English painter and illustrator. He played a leading role in the renaissance of wood-engraved illustration during the so-called golden decade of English book illustration (c. 1860–75), when a new school of artists overcame the limitations of the medium. Deeply influenced by the idealism of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, he imbued both his paintings and drawings with a haunting blend of poetic realism. He was the fourth son of Captain John Michael Houghton (1797–1874), who served in the East India Company’s Marine as a draughtsman.

Houghton was admitted to the Royal Academy Schools, London, in 1854 but did not pass further than the Life School. He received additional training at J. M. Leigh’s academy and its convivial corollary, the Langham Artists’ Society, which was then a forcing-house for young impoverished painters who wished to have a foot in both publishing and the fine arts. There, with older artists such as Charles Keene and John Tenniel, he learnt to run the race against time with a set weekly subject. Keene, already a well-known contributor to ...

(b c. 1532; d c. 1592–3).

German draughtsman, publisher, wood-engraver and painter. In 1548 he published a textbook of writing instruction and in 1551 one on arithmetic. In 1560–63 he made a model of Augsburg (Augsburg, Maximilianmus.) and in 1563 a map of the city, which was used in simplified form in the monumental Civitates orbis terrarum (1572–1618) by Georg Braun and Franz Hogenberg (fl c. 1560–c. 1590/94). His Augsburger Meilenscheibe (c. 1565, frequently reissued), a disc with a plan of Augsburg at the centre, with lists of towns and distances radiating from it, was a practical instrument for travellers from and to the most important trade and cultural centre of 16th-century central Europe and is to be seen in close conjunction with the Reissbüchlein (Augsburg, 1563) by Jörg Gail.

Rogel reproduced the works of several artists in woodcuts, for example the Geometria et perspectiva (Augsburg, 1567...

(b ?Nuremberg, c. 1495; d after 1522).

German painter, draughtsman, woodcut designer and possibly manuscript illuminator. He was probably born in Nuremberg and is reputed to have lived in Dürer’s house, where he was a pupil (Neudörfer). He was commissioned in 1520 to contribute to the decoration of the Emperor Charles V’s private chambers in the Burg, on the occasion of the Emperor’s visit to Nuremberg. He dated woodcuts between 1513 and 1522, signing many of them with the ligated letters hsk (the s reversed). A Hans Springinklee married Barbara Wagnerin on 7 December 1533 in St Sebald.

Springinklee’s oeuvre can be established on the basis of his woodcuts and book illustrations. Between 1512 and 1515 he collaborated with Dürer, Wolf Traut and Albrecht Altdorfer on the Triumphal Arch of Maximilian I, designing at least 7 of 24 historical scenes from Emperor Maximilian I’s life as well as much of his family tree. He is also credited with contributing, along with Dürer and others, to the ...

(b Tours, May 19, 1593; d Paris, May 10, 1670).

French painter, printmaker and illustrator . Born into a prosperous family in Tours, he received his early training in Paris, probably in Jacob Bunel’s studio. In 1609–10 he travelled to Rome; although his presence there is recorded only in 1618–20, he was probably based there throughout that decade, becoming a member of the community of young French artists that included Simon Vouet and Valentin de Boullogne. They were all predominantly influenced by the art of Caravaggio and of his most direct follower Bartolomeo Manfredi. Vignon’s severe half-length figures (St Paul, Turin, Gal. Sabauda; Four Church Fathers, on loan to Cambridge, Fitzwilliam), executed possibly even earlier than 1615, are in a Caravaggesque style, as are his paintings of singers, musicians and drinkers (e.g. the Young Singer, Paris, Louvre), although the latter group owes more to the style of contemporary genre painting. However, Vignon was already showing an interest in new artistic experiments, the origins of which were northern, Venetian and Mannerist. His sensitivity to the splendid colouring of Venice and to the art of Jacques Bellange, Georges Lallemand and Jacques Callot is manifest in his ...

(b Dillingen an der Donau, 1490; d Vienna, 1556).

German woodcutter, draughtsman, etcher, painter, writer and publisher. Although he wrote and printed several medical books and became an eye specialist, his main career was as an artist. He may have received his training in the workshop of Hans Burgkmair I in Augsburg and may have spent some time as a journeyman with Hans Schaüfelein I. By 1513 he had returned to Dillingen. A Self-portrait (1518; see Geisberg, no. 1348) is signed hsd, a monogram reading ‘Henricus Satrapitanus Dilinganus’ (Gr. satrapes, Ger. Vogt: ‘deputy’); Satrapitanus was the name he later used as an author. From 1522 he lived in Wimpfen an der Neckar, as documented by a woodcut of Christ as Redeemer (1522), signed ‘Hainricus Vogtherr Maler zu Wimpffen’, and by frescoes of the Annunciation and Last Judgement (Wimpfen, St Mary; rest. 1869). In 1525 he moved to Strassburg (Strasbourg), where he became a citizen and member of the guild the following year. In ...