Historical Figures
For more on Michelangelo visit the High Renaissance page.
Correggio by
Antonio Allegri was born in Corregio in c.1489, and died at the age of 45. His training and early influences are uncertain, but his early works are reminiscent of the styles of Andrea Mantegna and Lorenzo Costa. Correggio explores the painter's works in great detail, from his early paintings, to his great work in the dome of Parma Cathedral, painted between 1526 and 1530. The contradiction between Correggio's religious works and his profane paintings of scenes from mythology is also examined.
The Age of Correggio and the Carracci by 
Pontormo by 
Pontormo-Rosso Fiorentino by 
Pontormo by
Jacopo Carrucci (1494-1557), called Pontormo after his birthplace, was the main representative of Florentine Mannerism, the 75-year period that links the High Renaissance and early Baroque eras. This book presents an overview of the artist's most important achievements.
Pontormo-Rosso Fiorentino by 
Rosso in Italy by 
Benvenuto Cellini by
Benvenuto Cellini was born in Florence in 1500, and started his career with an apprenticeship with the goldsmith Michelangelo di Viviano da Gaiole. For the first half of his life, he recreated in miniature the monumental forms that his famous contemporaries created in marble and bronze, before realising that he had the skill to create in a larger scale. In 1542 Cellini started work on the doorway of the palace of Fontainebleau for King Francis I of France, and later a number of bronze busts and statues, most famous of which is his Perseus, commissioned in 1545 by Cosimo de'Medici. Benvenuto Cellini follows the life of the artist in the context of his great works, and quotes extensively from Cellini's autobiography.
Autobiography / Benvenuto Cellini ; translated from the Italian by John Addington Symonds. by 
The drawings of Parmigianino by Works
Bronzino by
Bronzino was born Agnolo di Cosimo di Mariano on 17th November 1503, in Monticelli, and was the son of a butcher. He was apprenticed to mediocre painter and then to Raffaellino del Garbo in order to study the principles of art, but his greatest progress was made after he was apprenticed to Jacopo Carrucci, known as Pontormo, an association that was to last the rest of Pontormo's life. Bronzino looks at the life of this artist throughout four phases of his life, from his origins and apprenticeship to Pontormo, to his time as the official painter and portraitist of the Medici Court (1537 - 1555) to his late works.
Tintoretto by 
Veronese by 
Complete Paintings of el Greco by El Greco by 
Lavinia Fontana by
When Artemisia Gentileschi, the best-remembered woman Renaissance painter, was born, Lavinia Fontana was already an established and prolific Bologna-based painter celebrated throughout Europe. Art historian Murphy is the first to write an in-depth, English-language treatise on heretofore overlooked Fontana and her world, and the resulting finely illustrated volume is exhilarating. The first female artist "to attain professional success, not in court or convent, but in direct competition with male artists in her own city," Lavinia, like Artemisia, was the daughter of a painter, Prospero. Murphy convincingly argues that Prospero's ambitions exceeded his talents and means, leading to his pragmatic decision to encourage his younger daughter to take up the brush and support their struggling family. The rapid evolution of her technical abilities and the deepening of her sensibility are impressive feats to follow as Murphy recounts Lavinia's unconventional life and marriage, and marvels over her ability to paint nonstop in spite of 11 pregnancies. From her sometimes kitschy, sometimes elegant devotional paintings to her superb portraits of Bolognese scholars and noblewomen to her compassionate portraits of widows and children, Fontana documented and enriched her times, and now Murphy's portrait of this gifted and triumphant sixteenth-century woman painter enhances ours. --Donna Seaman
Sofonisba Anguissola. The Chess Game (Portrait of the artist's sisters playing chess). 1555.
