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(b Bologna, March 17, 1578; d Bologna, Oct 4, 1660).

Italian painter and draughtsman. He was a distinguished artist of the Bolognese school, deeply influenced by Annibale Carracci’s classicism, who worked in Rome as well as Bologna, painting altarpieces, frescoes and and cabinet pictures. His fame rests on his idyllic landscapes and small mythological pictures, the lyrical qualities of which earned him the soubriquet ‘the Anacreon of painters’.

The 12-year-old Albani began his studies in the Bolognese studio of the Flemish-born painter Denys Calvaert, after which he transferred (c. 1595) to the Carracci Accademia degli Incamminati, also in Bologna, where life drawing and theoretical discussion predominated. For the next four years he studied with Ludovico Carracci and through him obtained his first public commissions. These were for Bolognese palazzi and churches, such as the oratory of S Colombano, where his fresco of the Repentance of St Peter (c. 1597–8) closely imitates the dramatic and emotional qualities of Ludovico’s manner, particularly in the expressive figure of the apostle and in the nocturnal lighting. The oratory’s altarpiece, painted in the same period, showing the ...

(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 ...

(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 (...

[Cesari, Giuseppe]

(b Arpino, nr Sora, 1568; d Rome, July 3, 1640).

Italian painter and draughtsman . His father, Muzio Cesari, was probably a painter; his brother, Bernardino Cesari (1571–1622), became his principal assistant. Giuseppe’s precocious talent for drawing led his mother to take him to Rome in 1581–2, where he became a colour mixer under Niccolò Circignani, then directing the decoration of the third of the great Vatican Logge for Gregory XIII. Circignani promoted him to the painting team; a tiny figure of Abundance on the vault of the seventh compartment has been identified as his earliest known work. During 1583 Giuseppe also worked at the Vatican on the monochrome figure of Samson with the Gates of Gaza in the Sala Vecchia degli Svizzeri and the restoration of the Prophets and Virtues painted by the Raphael workshop in the Sala dei Palafrenieri. Towards the end of the year the Pope granted Giuseppe a salary. Probably in 1584–5 he contributed a fresco of the ...

(b Florence, Oct 31, 1604; d Madrid, July 1657).

Italian painter, draughtsman, engineer and stage designer, active also in central Europe and Spain . He was a pupil of Giovanni Bilivert from 1612 to 1620 and studied with Giulio Parigi. In 1622 he went to Vienna as assistant to Giovanni Pieroni da Galliano and thence to Prague, where he decorated the chapel (1630) with frescoes with scenes from the Life of St Wenceslas and the Life of the Virgin, the Knight’s Hall (destr.; rest. 1853) with ceiling frscoes including Albrecht von Wallenstein as Mars, and he worked on other parts of the Wallenstein Palace (see Prague, §IV, 7). He is documented in 1625 in Florence, where he became a teacher of perspective drawing. In 1626–7 the Medici employed him as military engineer at the fortress at Livorno; here, with Stefano della Bella, he drew harbour and river scenes (e.g. Peasants Waiting on a Quay, Florence, Uffizi). Baccio executed frescoes in Florentine palazzi, and his contributions to the decoration of the Casa Buonarotti include three ...

(b Rome, c. 1566; d Dec 30, 1643).

Italian painter, draughtsman and writer . He executed canvases and frescoes of religious and mythological subjects, and portraits. He was given important commissions by popes and aristocrats and sold his works to patrons in Italy and abroad. Baglione’s arguably greater fame as a writer derives from Le nove chiese di Roma (1639) and especially from his Vite de’ pittori, scultori, architetti (1642), containing biographies of more than 200 artists who worked in Rome between 1572 and 1642.

Although born in Rome, where he spent most of his life, Baglione claimed descent from a noble Perugian family. His only acknowledged training (in the autobiography appended to Le vite, 1642) was an apprenticeship with Francesco Morelli, a little-known Florentine painter in Rome. However, drawings for works from the late 1580s and 1590s (such as the Finding of Moses, the Denial of St Peter and the Arrest of Christ...

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 ...

(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 Fossano, nr Turin, 1636; d Naples, Sept 28, 1688).

Italian painter, engraver and draughtsman. He studied with Esprit Grandjean (fl 1642–55), a painter working at the court of Savoy in Turin from 1642, and won the protection of Christina, Duchess of Savoy (1606–63). By 1652 Beinaschi had settled in Rome. This date appears on the engraving he made (b. 20) of Giovanni Domenico Cerrini’s Rest on the Flight into Egypt (untraced). As a pupil of the engraver Pietro del Pò (1610–92), Beinaschi made copies after Annibale Carracci’s frescoes in the Galleria Farnese, Rome, after Giovanni Lanfranco’s frescoes in S Andrea della Valle and S Carlo ai Catinari, and after the Classical sculptures in the Belvedere in the Vatican. Beinaschi was deeply attracted by Lanfranco’s illusionism, and it seems likely that he made a journey to Parma to study the frescoed domes executed by Correggio (de Dominici). His earliest works, the St John the Baptist Preaching in the Desert...

(b Pieve di Teco, Oct 30, 1592; d Pieve di Teco, Nov 6, 1668).

Italian painter and draughtsman. Around 1605 he came to Genoa, where he presented himself to a leading patron of the arts, Gian Carlo Doria, who gave him lodging and recommended him to Giovanni Battista Paggi, in whose influential studio he trained. Students were required first to copy sketches, then paintings and reliefs and, finally, to draw from nature. Benso made many copies after a variety of source material, among them the Sacrifice of Abraham (Florence, Uffizi) after Luca Cambiaso and the Joseph Sold into Slavery (Berlin, Kupferstichkab.) after Raphael. While still with Paggi, Benso produced ‘bizarre sketches of great number and variety, as he had a fertile mind along with a lively and vigorous imagination’ (Soprani, p. 280). In order to learn perspective he constructed architectural models, which were greatly admired; they enabled him to achieve formidable feats of aerial perspective in his paintings, in which figures and ornament are boldly foreshortened....

(b Türkheim, bapt April 15, 1688; d Augsburg, April 2, 1762).

German painter, teacher, draughtsman and printmaker. His frescoes and altarpieces and his teaching established him as the dominant figure in the art life of Augsburg in the earlier 18th century. He came from a family of well-known Swabian sculptors, cabinetmakers and painters, with whom he probably initially trained. The Bavarian Duke Maximilian Philip paid for him to study (1702–8) with the Munich court painter Johann Andreas Wolff, after which he was summoned by the Elector of the Palatinate to decorate the court church of St Hubertus in Düsseldorf (1708–9; destr.). In 1710 or 1712 Bergmüller frescoed the church of Kreuzpullach, near Wolfratshausen. In his request for permission to marry and for mastership in Augsburg in 1712, he referred to an otherwise undocumented stay in the Netherlands. He settled permanently in the Imperial Free City in 1713 and attended its Reichstädtische Kunstakademie from 1715. From this time he rose to become the most influential painter and teacher in Augsburg, with apprentices coming from beyond the city, including ...

(b Genoa, bapt April 14, 1629; d Genoa, 1657).

Italian painter, draughtsman and etcher. He was taught by his father, Giovanni Andrea Biscaino, a mediocre landscape painter, and entered the workshop of Valerio Castello (ii), probably at the end of the 1640s. The chronology of his oeuvre, truncated by his early death in a plague, is hard to reconstruct. Only two paintings bear early documentation: St Ferrando Imploring the Virgin (Genoa, Pal. Bianco) and an untraced Flaying of Marsyas (see Manzitti, 1971, pl. 31). However, his graphic work had a continuing reputation: he was called a ‘great draughtsman’ by Pellegrino Orlandi in his Abecedario pittorico (1704), and his etchings, of which over 40 are catalogued in Bartsch, were ‘very favourably received’, according to Antoine-Joseph Dezallier d’Argenville (1762). About half the etchings are signed or initialled, and two are dated (Nativity, 1655, b. 22; St Mary Magdalene in the Desert, 1656, b. 38). From them it is possible to attribute further works, mostly small canvases, to Biscaino, and to characterize his development....

(b ?Paris, 1614; d Lyon, June 21, 1689).

French painter, draughtsman, architect, sculptor and printmaker. He trained in Paris, where he came into contact with Jacques Sarazin, who advised him to study painting rather than sculpture. He probably studied (c. 1637–45) with Simon Vouet, becoming familiar with perspective, the Mannerism of the School of Fontainebleau and the Baroque, then newly introduced to Paris. Around 1645 he arrived in Rome; during his stay there (which ended in 1653) he worked with artists who were members of Nicolas Poussin’s circle and frequented the studios of Andrea Sacchi, Pietro da Cortona and Gianlorenzo Bernini (who thought highly of him). He executed paintings for Niccolo Guido di Bagno (1584–1663). His engravings of antique tombs and his prospettive were much admired. In 1654 he created a mausoleum for René de Voyer d’Argenson, Ambassador of France in Venice, in S Giobbe, Venice.

In 1655 Blanchet returned to Lyon, having been summoned to carry out the decoration, both painted and sculpted, of the Hôtel de Ville. In ...

[Bockhorst, Johann; Lange Jan]

(b Münster or Rees, c. 1604; d Antwerp, April 21, 1668).

Flemish painter and draughtsman of German birth. Around 1626 he moved to Antwerp. According to de Bie and Filips Rubens (Vita Petri Pauli Rubenii, 1676), he became a pupil or assistant of Jacob Jordaens and Peter Paul Rubens; the style of his work bears this out. A document of 1655 reveals that Boeckhorst painted a ‘Silenus’, which was subsequently retouched by Rubens and which must have been made under his supervision (i.e. Rubens’s typical workshop practice). Boeckhorst must have had a good relationship with Rubens during the 1630s, as he was one of those who contributed to the large series of paintings Rubens was then working on for the decorations of the Pompa Introitus Ferdinandi (1635; destr., see Martin, p. 134) and for the Torre de la Parada (1637–8; see Alpers, p. 218). Between 1635 and 1637 he toured Italy, and in 1639 he returned there especially to visit Rome. As an independent painter he also executed a number of commissions in the 1630s, such as the 26 scenes, mostly biblical, for the Falcon Monastery in Antwerp, commissioned by a merchant named ...

[Santiago]

(b Piacenza, 1705; d Madrid, 18 or Sept 20, 1759).

Italian architect, painter, urban planner and stage designer, active in Spain. He was a pupil in Piacenza of the painters Bartolomeo Rusca (1680–1745), Andrea Galluzzi (fl 1700–1743) and Giovanni Battista Galluzzi (fl c. 1730–40). In 1728 he was one of a number of artists summoned to Spain by the Marchese Annibale Scotti to assist with the construction of royal projects that were already under way and to introduce an Italian influence in place of the French style that had been introduced by the Bourbon kings. He worked at the Aranjuez Palace with the French engineer Léandre Brachelieu (fl c. 1733–9) and then in 1735 became Director of Royal Works of Decoration. He specialized in quadratura painting and, in addition to his work at Aranjuez, where his fresco vault decorations provided fictive trompe l’oeil architectural settings for mythological figures executed by Rusca and ...

(b Ferrara, 1569; d Ferrara, Sept 3, 1632).

Italian painter. He was among the last great painters of the Ferrarese school, his style uniting warm Venetian colour with the lyrical effects of light and elegant draughtsmanship of Ludovico Carracci. He was a pupil of Giuseppe Mazzuoli (c. 1536-89), but his early activity is little documented. The Martyrdom of St Paul (Pommersfelden, Schloss Weissenstein), which is indebted to Mazzuoli and combines elements of Ferrarese and Venetian traditions, may represent the earliest phase of his development. Later, through a study of the art of Ludovico Carracci, modified by a response to Dosso Dossi and to Correggio, he developed a more individual style. An altarpiece of the Virgin with SS Maurilius and George (Vienna, Ksthist. Mus.) is unanimously dated before 1600. It is probable that Bononi made study tours to Bologna, Parma, Verona and Venice. Between 1605 and 1610 he spent two years in Rome (Baruffaldi), a visit confirmed by three paintings of scenes from the ...

(b Rome, c. 1575; d Rome, Jan 15, 1616).

Italian painter and etcher, also active in Spain. He was the son of a Florentine carpenter and stepbrother of the sculptor and architect Giulio Lasso. He accompanied Lasso to Sicily, and his earliest known work is a modest painting, in a Mannerist tradition, of St Gregory in his Study (1593; Catania, Villa Cerami, see Moir, pl. 48). He finished his training in Rome, and his study of the art of ancient Rome is evident in his early paintings, both in his use of Classical ruins and in the sculptural folds of his drapery. He must also have painted from nature and responded to the naturalism of Caravaggio. About 1598 Borgianni was in Spain and in 1601 he was in Pamplona. He stayed at least until June 1603, when he signed a petition for the establishment of an Italian-style academy of painting in Madrid. Among the other signatories was the Madrid-born Eugenio Cajés, whom Borgianni may have met in Rome, since Cajés was in Italy about ...

(b Sangerhausen, July 30, 1641; d Dresden, May 29, 1706).

German painter, draughtsman, graphic artist and writer on art. He was a son and pupil of Andreas Bottschild II (c. 1590–1657), a painter and engraver, who decorated churches in Sangerhausen. Samuel had further training with his brother Johann Andreas Bottschild (b 1630; d after 1670), with whom he went to Saxony. In 1658–61 they worked jointly on gallery paintings of 19 scenes from the Passion (heavily restored 1852) in the Dorfkirche at Hohnstädt, near Leipzig. The decorations for the banqueting hall of Schloss Rötha, near Leipzig (c. 1668–70; destr.), were Bottschild’s first complete programme of mythological themes. At Rötha he also completed two group portraits of the female and male lines of the Friesen family (Dresden, Inst. Dkmlpf.)

In 1673 Bottschild painted a Presentation in the Temple for Freiberg Cathedral. It was probably after this that he left for Italy with his cousin and pupil ...

(b Montpellier, Feb 2, 1616; d Paris, May 8, 1671).

French painter, draughtsman and engraver. Although he was one of the most successful painters of the mid-17th century in France and highly praised by the writer André Félibien, he was also widely criticized for never achieving a fixed style of his own. He began his career as an imitator of the Bamboccianti and of Giovanni Benedetto Castiglione. He later produced altarpieces in a vigorous Baroque style and portraits in the manner of Anthony van Dyck before coming under the classicizing influence of Nicolas Poussin. Towards the end of his career, in a lecture to the Académie Royale, he recommended that young artists reject uniformity of inspiration. Remarkably, he was able to give a personal flavour to his work in any style and genre.

He was born into a Protestant family, the son of Marin Bourdon, a master painter and glass painter, and Jeanne Gaultière, the daughter of a master goldsmith. He probably left Montpellier for Paris when the city was besieged by Louis XIII in ...

(b Rome, Aug 13, 1616; d after 1690).

Italian architect and painter. She was the first woman to practise architecture whose reputation has survived to the present day. Her father, Giovanni Bricci (1579–1645), was a painter and musician, and her brother Basilio Bricci (1621–92) was himself an architect and painter. The full extent of her activities remains to be explored, but two commissions in Rome stand out. The first of these, the Villa Benedetti (destr. 1849), near the Porta S Pancrazio on the Janiculum Hill, was begun in 1663 for Elpidio Benedetti, agent to Cardinal Jules Mazarin in Rome. The structure if not all of the decoration was completed by 1665. Benedetti was so pleased with the result that in 1677 he published a guidebook to the villa (under an assumed name) giving detailed descriptions and views of the building along with an account of the roles played by Plautilla and her brother, with whom it is said she collaborated. According to Benedetti, Basilio was responsible for most of the architecture of the villa, while Plautilla embellished the interior with numerous allegorical and religious paintings. However, the building contracts and several preparatory drawings (all Rome, Archv Stato) make it clear that it was, in fact, Plautilla who designed the building with little if any creative input from Basilio. Possibly Benedetti was embarrassed to admit that his villa had been designed by a woman. The architecture of the Villa Benedetti, as recorded in views made before ...