Search Results

[Jean de Paris; Master of Charles VIII]

(b ?1450–60; d Paris, after April 5, 1530).

French painter, illuminator, sculpture designer and architect. The most celebrated and best-documented French artist of his time, Perréal was painter and valet de chambre to three kings of France, Charles VIII, Louis XII and Francis I. In the earliest reliable document to mention him, of 1485, he was a resident of Lyon and painted two escutcheons for use during the celebrations for the entry of Charles of Bourbon into the city. Throughout his career he devoted considerable time to designing props for staging such ceremonial events. Perréal visited Italy on at least four occasions and recorded that he studied ancient remains there. In 1514 he was sent to England to negotiate the marriage of Louis XII and his second wife, Mary Tudor, and to ensure that her wardrobe conformed to French taste. According to Dupont, a portrait of Louis XII in the British Royal Collection (Windsor Castle, Berks) was painted by Perréal and brought to England at this time. Considered by Sterling to be a copy, this portrait is one of few panels that can still be associated with Perréal, who during his lifetime was highly praised for his abilities as a portrait painter....

Composite volume (Cambridge, Corpus Christi Coll., MS. 53) consisting of a Psalter (fols 1–180) and chronicles of England and Peterborough Abbey (fols 180v–187v) produced in England in the first quarter of the 14th century, richly illuminated by several artists, and followed by a contemporary Bestiary (fols 189–210v) differing in script and format, and illustrated by another English artist. The two sections of the manuscript have been bound together since they were given to Corpus Christi College by Matthew Parker, Archbishop of Canterbury in the 16th century. Although its place of origin and original destination are uncertain, the Bestiary takes its name from the Peterborough Abbey provenance of the first part of the volume. The manuscript contains accounts of the physical form and habits of animals, birds, reptiles and fish, many supplied with Christian moralizations identified as spiritualiter (that is, spiritual, as opposed to physical), with small text illustrations and decorated initials at the beginning of each of the 104 entries. The animals are represented in profile, sometimes alone and sometimes in narrative situations in which human actors play a role. The elegant script, page layout, and execution of the miniatures and decoration reach the high level of refinement characteristic of the so-called Court style of English illumination, continuing the tradition of such manuscripts as the Alphonso Psalter (London, BL, MS. Add. 24686) of ...

(b Manchester, July 2, 1792; d Cheltenham, Feb 6, 1872).

English antiquary and collector. De Ricci called him ‘the greatest collector of manuscript matter the world has ever known.’ Educated at Rugby and Oxford, he began collecting while still at school, with a particular interest in preserving unpublished historical works on vellum. He referred to himself as a ‘vellomaniac’ and followed the example of such collectors as Sir Robert Bruce Cotton. Succeeding to his father’s considerable estates in Worcestershire in 1818, he commissioned agents in both England and continental Europe, buying some 1600 manuscripts in 1836 alone. His collection ultimately reached 60,000, all of which he assiduously tried to research and publish, establishing a private printing press on his estate in 1822 for this purpose. He owned an illustrated copy of Gerald of Wales, an illustrated manuscript of Dioskurides’ De materia medica, examples of jewelled bindings, Caxton’s Recuyell of the Histories of Troy and Bishop Gandulf’s Bible (San Marino, CA, Huntington Lib., Phillipps MS. 3504). In ...

(b Paris, Jan 25, 1892; d Paris, April 6, 1966).

French scholar, art historian, and librarian. He specialized in French illuminated manuscripts. He studied at the Ecole des Chartes and worked for most of his life at the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris, in both the printed books and manuscripts departments. Porcher’s early publications were devoted to medieval and Renaissance texts. As Conservateur en Chef of the manuscripts department (1944–62) he provided a great stimulus to art historical studies of illuminated manuscripts in France through his own publications, exhibitions, his enlightened welcome of scholars, and important acquisitions (above all from the Rothschild family and Comte Guy de Boisrouvray). After becoming Conservateur his publications concentrated on illuminated manuscripts. In the last 20 years of his life his numerous articles and books covered the whole historical range of French illumination from the Merovingian and Carolingian eras to the 15th century. His tenure coincided with the great increase in research in this field, which was largely stimulated by his own work instigating extensive photographic records of the illuminated manuscript collections of the Bibliothèque Nationale and numerous provincial libraries in France. Although the texts of these manuscripts had been catalogued, usually only a minimal description of the pictorial and ornamental decoration had been given. Porcher’s work culminated in two great exhibitions (...

(b Mantua, July 10, 1533; d Ferrara, Feb 26, 1611).

Italian writer. He entered the Jesuit Order in 1559, and was an energetic teacher, diplomat and campaigner against heretics. He also wrote a great many books, the outstanding works being the Moscovia (1586), important for information on the Russia of that time, and the Bibliotheca selecta (1593), a broad and systematic treatise on divine and human sciences. The 17th book of the Bibliotheca selecta deals with poetry and painting. Like other parts of the work, it was published on its own (1595), with additions and under the title Tractatio de poesi et pictura ethnica, humana et fabulosa collata cum vera, honesta et sacra. Possevino was convinced of the close affinity between poetry and painting and believed that painters must have a wide literary and scientific education. He referred to the major ancient and modern writers on painting, providing the first attempt at a critical bibliography on the subject. The theological and moral correctness of images interested him intensely. The ...

(b Istanbul, 30 July (ns 12 Aug) 1916; d Eygalières, nr Avignon, Oct 23, 1985).

French painter, illustrator, stage designer, tapestry designer and writer of Greek descent. He moved to Paris in 1922, registered at the Sorbonne in 1932 and briefly attended the studio of the French painter Clement Serveau (b 1886). Through his father’s literary interests he became acquainted with Surrealism, meeting Paul Eluard, André Breton, Salvador Dalí and others in 1934, and decided to become an artist. From 1932 to 1936 he worked in a Surrealist style, introducing procedures of automatism and formal ambiguities that he retained in his later work. From 1938 to 1947 he painted portraits of women and cats in an Expressionist style before experimenting briefly with abstraction.

In 1951 Prassinos settled in Provence, where he painted landscapes from nature in which he created a personal formal vocabulary of signs inspired in part by Chinese ideograms. After visiting Greece in 1957 he explored his national origins and childhood years in portraits of his grandfather entitled ...

(b London, 1769; d London, May 29, 1843).

English painter, illustrator and writer. He trained at the drawing academy of Henry Pars (c. 1733–1806) in London and first exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1790. His drawings were almost always pen, ink and colour wash (e.g. Gossip at the Cottage Door, 1794; London, BM). His most characteristic works are the illustrations for the books Microcosm (1803–8) and The Costume of Great Britain (1808) in which he successfully placed groups of well-observed characters in picturesque settings. Pyne had been a founder of the Old Water-Colour Society in 1804 but resigned in 1809 when it refused to increase its membership to greater than 24 artists. He was also an early member of the sketching society, known as the ‘Bread and Cheese Society’, founded in 1808.

Pyne wrote the text of the first two volumes of The Microcosm of London (1808), published by ...

(b Kessarevo, nr Veliko Turnovo, Jan 1, 1889; d Sofia, May 2, 1954).

Bulgarian writer, teacher, art historian, critic, administrator, illustrator, painter, designer and printmaker. He graduated from the Ecclesiastical Seminary in Sofia and in 1909 from the University of Sofia with a degree in philosophy. In 1919 he graduated from the Academy of Art in Sofia and in 1922 had his first one-man exhibition in Plovdiv, where he showed landscapes in oils, gouache and watercolour. His best paintings, such as Poppies, A Fairy-tale and Cloister, are from this early period. In 1926–7 he studied art history in Paris and established himself there as a designer and printmaker, executing linocuts and wood-engravings in a decorative linear fashion and with allegorical and mythical content. From 1932 to 1951 he was a professor of Art History at the Academy of Art in Sofia, in 1934 became a chairman of the Society of Applied Artists and in 1944, a chairman of the Union of Bulgarian Artists. As an art historian and critic he wrote more than 40 volumes of works, among them a book about Bulgarian portrait painting (...

(b Etruria, Staffs, Nov 6, 1857; d Amityville, NY, July 29, 1926).

American painter, illustrator, and writer of English birth. He trained at the National Art Training School, South Kensington, London, and in Paris, first making his reputation as a designer of bookbindings. He was invited to New York in 1883 by the Appleton Publishing Company but then stayed on in the USA to work for various publishers. In the late 1880s and early 1890s he designed posters for Harper’s Magazine, Century Magazine, and the children’s magazine St Nicholas. These were praised by an American public hungry for anything similar to the linear style of Walter Crane and Kate Greenaway.

Rhead’s popularity began to wane after 1900, when the vogue for posters also died down; to make a living he began to illustrate children’s books with colour lithography, for example producing editions of Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels (New York, 1913) and The Swiss Family Robinson (New York, 1909) by Jonathan David Wyss. He also wrote a few books for children himself and wrote and illustrated books about fishing, such as the privately printed ...

(b 1881; d Paris, Dec 26, 1942).

French epigraphist, bibliographer, papyrologist, art historian, collector and antiquarian. He is best known for several reference works on rare books and manuscripts, each of which can be described as a ‘census’ of the known copies of a given type of book. Among these are his Catalogue raisonné des premières impressions de Mayence, 1445–1467, Guide de l’amateur de livres à gravures du XVIIIe siècle and Census of Medieval and Renaissance Manuscripts in the United States and Canada. Fluent in several languages and known for his phenomenal memory, he was the greatest authority of his day on the provenance of rare books. He also worked in the field of Egyptian papyrology, studying works in North American and European collections, as well as in Egypt. He published bibliographies of Egyptology in the Revue Archéologique (1917, 1918), and in the Recueil Champollion (1922). De Ricci also prepared studies of various art collections, such as catalogues of the maiolica pottery and signed bookbindings in the ...

(b London, 1806; d London, 1871).

English architect, designer, writer and collector. He received his architectural training under John Soane and practised independently from 1832. He wrote three books that established his expertise on the subject of Elizabethan design, architecture and ornament, and in addition he designed Elizabethan Revival furniture, which was shown at the Great Exhibition of 1851 in London.

From 1845 to 1852 Richardson taught ornamental and geometrical drawing as master of the architectural class of the School of Design at Somerset House, London. In 1846, along with H. J. Townsend (1810–90) and Richard Redgrave, he presented the curricular problems of the School to a Special Committee, which resulted in the reorganization of courses. In 1851 he was appointed Surveyor of the South Kensington estate of William Cavendish (1808–91), Marquess of Hartington (later the 7th Duke of Devonshire), and was responsible for supervising construction (1851–3) of the Earl’s mansion in Kensington Palace Gardens, London. His executed designs include works at Belsize Park, Hampstead (...

(de Sousy)

(b Geneva, Oct 2, 1866; d London, Oct 7, 1931).

English painter, designer, writer and collector. He trained as an illustrator at the City and Guilds Technical Art School, Lambeth, London, where he met and formed a lifelong relationship with Charles Shannon. He identified with the ideals of the Aesthetic Movement, finding inspiration in Renaissance art as well as in the French artists Gustave Moreau and Pierre Puvis de Chavannes. In 1888 he took over James Abbott McNeill Whistler’s house, The Vale, in Chelsea and drew together an artists’ colony. Inspired by the work of A. H. Mackmurdo and William Morris, he set up a small press over which he exercised complete control of design and production, producing art journals and books that included Oscar Wilde’s A House of Pomegranates (1891) and The Sphinx (1894). Ricketts later designed founts, initials, borders and illustrations for the Vale Press (1896–1904), blending medieval, Renaissance and contemporary imagery. His crisp woodcut illustrations often incorporated the swirling lines of Art Nouveau and androgynous figures....

[Sigmind]

(b Kassel, Dec 10, 1794; d Kassel, March 7, 1887).

German painter, printmaker, illustrator and writer. After having lessons in drawing from his father, the sculptor and printmaker Johann Christian Ruhl (1764–1842), Ruhl studied from 1806 at the Kassel Kunstakademie. In order to gain a more thorough training in history painting, he spent the winter of 1812–13 studying anatomy at the university at Göttingen and then a year at the Akademie in Dresden.

Ruhl achieved his first successes in Kassel with pictures of horses, as Horse Race in Antiquity (1813; Kassel, Neue Gal.). In 1815, after serving in the Hessian cavalry fighting Napoleon, Ruhl continued his artistic studies in Munich and formed a close association with the painter Carl Philipp Fohr. The two shared an enthusiasm for chivalric romances and undertook joint commissions to illustrate them. Examples by Ruhl include drawings for Ludwig Tieck’s Melusine (c. 1815–16; Kassel, Neue Gal.; Frankfurt am Main, Städel. Kstinst. & Städt. Gal.)....

(b Guildford, March 29, 1745; d Hull, April 20, 1806).

English pastellist, painter, writer and astronomer. His father, also called John Russell (1711–1804), was a bookseller, printseller and amateur artist. Russell was educated at Guildford grammar school and won premiums from the Society of Artists for drawings in 1759 and 1760. He was apprenticed to Francis Cotes and set up his own practice in 1767. In 1770 he entered the Royal Academy Schools, London, winning the silver medal for figure drawing. He exhibited at the Society of Artists in 1768 and annually at the Royal Academy from 1769 to 1806. He was elected ARA in 1772 and RA in 1788, when he became Crayon Painter to King George III and to George, Prince of Wales. He painted some rather stilted portraits in oil, but most of his work—hundreds of portraits and large numbers of fancy pictures of children with animals—is in pastel. His pastel portraits include Dr Robert Willis...

(b Middx, Aug 15, 1813; d London, April 6, 1884).

English writer and collector. He was the younger son of Thomas Cloutt (?1781–1846), who adopted the name of Russell in 1820, an independent minister who was also a book collector. John Fuller Russell was educated at Mill Hill, the Merchant Taylors’ School and, from 1832, at Peterhouse, Cambridge. Ordained in 1838, he was curate of St Peter’s, Walworth (1838–9), and of St Mary’s, Newington Butts (1839–41), both in Southwark, south London, and perpetual curate of St James’s, Enfield (1841–54). From 1856 until his death he was rector of Greenhithe, Kent. In 1836 Russell began to correspond with Edward Pusey, professor of Hebrew at the University of Oxford, and his High Church sympathies were reflected both in his publications and in his collection. The former included a number of works of a ritualist character, Sermons for Saints Days (1849) and The Ancient Knight, or Chapters on Chivalry...

Illuminated manuscript of the Passover liturgy to be recited during the seder ceremony at the eve of the Passover holiday, also containing a series of liturgical poems to be read during the Passover week (Sarajevo, N. Mus of Bosnia and Herzegovina.), possibly made in Aragon, c. 1335. Its particularly rich decoration combines French-style marginal scroll decoration with a cycle of full-page miniatures showing biblical history. The latter opens with a visual rendering of the Creation, a theme rarely shown in Jewish art, and follows the story of the Israelites up to the passage through the desert after the Exodus from Egypt.

Like other Sephardic biblical picture cycles, the one in the Sarajevo Haggadah is indebted to Christian pictorial sources, especially of French origin, adapted to suit a Jewish patronage and readership. Jewish biblical exegesis plays a crucial role in the transmission of Christian iconographic formulae to a Jewish idiom. The Creation sequence, for example, reflects Nahmanides’ views of the Creation from Nothing opposing allegorical views about the eternal world held by rationalist philosophers. Likewise midrashic interpretation is dominant in the Sarajevo cycle, where midrashic elements were added to what were really Christian iconographic models....

(d Verona, May 8, 1550).

Italian humanist, historian and patron. He was the author of the first printed book on the history and antiquities of Verona, published in 1540, with woodcuts after drawings by Giovanni Battista Caroto that are still extant (Verona, Bib. Civ.). De origine et amplitudine civitatis Veronae, written in Latin, takes the form of a conversation between members of a group of Veronese humanists including, apart from the author, Giacomo Villafranca and Giovanni Nicola Capella, and the artist Giovanni Battista Caroto. Caroto is given the task of providing technical information on the monuments that are the subject of the second book, which he himself had illustrated.

De origine was the first complete catalogue of Veronese antiquities, from the most prominent, such as the Arena, to miscellaneous remains such as displaced capitals. Also worthy of note are the Latin inscriptions, of which the author must have possessed a collection. The measurements are minute, and the monuments (except for the Arena) are completely reconstructed in the illustrations. Each is placed chronologically in relation to the salient moments of Roman history, and due recognition is given to the architects....

(b Padua, 1478; d Padua, May 29, 1574).

Italian ecclesiastic and historiographer. Educated in Padua, he later entered the clergy and was elected a canon of Padua Cathedral in 1556. He wrote a number of religious works but is best remembered for his book on the antiquities and illustrious men of Padua. This Latin work was granted a licence to print in Venice in 1557 but was published in Basle in 1560. Following the tradition of earlier municipal chronicles, Scardeone described the origins and cultural heritage of Padua, paying considerable attention to its ancient monuments and transcribing many inscriptions from tombs. He also devoted a chapter to the artists of Padua, from the 14th century to his own day, including Andrea Mantegna, Francesco Squarcione, Andrea Riccio and Tiziano Minio. This was the first attempt, outside Florence, to compose a local compendium of artistic biographies. Although the accounts of the lives of individual artists, particularly the earlier ones, often have an anecdotal or legendary quality, they are nevertheless a valuable source for the study of Paduan art, especially that of the 15th century. The frontispiece of this volume is a view of Padua by an anonymous artist: it offers the first accurate compilation of visual data on the city’s buildings....

(b London, Dec 16, 1820; d London, April 19, 1895).

English museum director, art historian and illustrator. His father, the German-born artist George Scharf (1788–1860), settled in London in 1816; a large collection of his work, which consists mainly of watercolours and sketches of topographical subjects and everyday life during the Regency and Victorian periods, is held in the British Museum. The younger Scharf studied under his father before attending the Royal Academy Schools, London in 1838. He began his career as an illustrator in 1839, with the publication of Recollections of Scenic Effects, etchings of William Charles Macready’s Shakespearean revivals. Scharf travelled to Asia Minor twice with Sir Charles Fellows in 1840, and in 1843 as official artist with a government expedition. Drawings from these journeys were published in 1847. During the following decade Scharf illustrated many books, mostly of classical subjects.

When the Crystal Palace reopened at Sydenham in 1854, Scharf assisted in the arrangement of the Greek, Roman and Pompeian courts. He became Art Secretary for the Manchester Art Treasures exhibition, ...

(b Bergamo, 1798; d Bergamo, 1873).

Italian writer and restorer. He wrote the most important 19th-century handbook on the restoration of paintings. Heir to the 18th-century tradition of studying the physical and chemical aspects of art, Secco-Suardo was able to explain problems with a clarity that makes his work still irreplaceable. The manual was probably compiled after 1858, when he gave up his administrative duties for the Austrian government. The first part of the text appeared in 1866 but the entire work was published only posthumously in 1894, and the world it mirrors is that of the restorers who worked for the great collectors of the first half of the 19th century. According to Secco-Suardo, the primary concern of restoration should be the visual pleasure of a painting rather than strict conservation, and the restorer must endeavour to conceal the distinction between the old work and the new. Any additions should imitate the original and repainting should be removed only if of poor quality, though in certain circumstances a colour that has become badly altered may be repainted. When it comes to the appearance of paintings, Secco-Suardo shows a typically Romantic taste for patina as a means of showing age. His link with the methods practised in the first half of the 19th century can also be seen in his recommendations for the transfer of frescoes: he merely advises on their removal, with no regard for their character as painted plaster and with none of the consideration that Gaetano Bianchi had shown for them as part of a building’s polychrome decoration....