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| BIRTH:
1720 BELLOTTO |
| ^
Died on 30 January 1584: Peeter
Janszoon Pourbus (or Poerbus), Flemish painter born in 1523.
— Pieter Pourbus died in Bruges, where he had worked mainly, following, in his religious works, the florid Italianizing style of Lancelot Blondeel, whose daughter he married. His portraits are stiff and formal affairs, but equal to those of his contemporaries Mor or Joos van Cleve. — Pieter Pourbus was born in Gouda. His early training is not known, but he had come while young to Bruges where he joined the guild in 1543. He painted portraits, altarpieces and maps, and devised decorative schemes, of which the most important was for the Triumphal Entry of Charles V and Philip II into Bruges in 1549. His Italianate mannerist style was paralleled in Antwerp by Frans Floris, under whom his son, Frans Pourbus the Elder [1545-1581] , was to study (and marry Floris's niece, who gave birth to Frans Pourbus the Younger [1569-1622]). — Portraits of Jan van Eyewerve and Jacquemyne Buuck (1551) — An Allegory of True Love (1547, 133x206cm) |
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Died on 30 January 1908: David
Johnson, US Hudson
River School painter born on 10 May 1827. — Few nineteenth-century American painters produced an oeuvre with a greater variety of subject that did David Johnson. Predominantly remember as a landscape painter of the US northeast wilderness, Johnson also produced still lifes, portraits, and an occasional genre subject. His art evolved fro the traditional selected observation of nature as transformed by the Hudson River School artists' notion of the ideal, to an art that incorporates the precise clarity of vision as practiced by the US Pre-Raphaelites. Later in his career Johnson employed the diffused suggestions of nature developed by the Barbizon artists in France. Partly as a result of Johnson's stylistic fluctuations, his career has only recently been reexamined and the full richness of his abilities more accurately defined. Very little is known about David Johnson's life. He probably received his early training from his brother, who was a portrait painter. In 1850, when he took a few lessons from Jasper Francis Cropsey, he was already an accomplished artist. He perhaps enrolled for two sessions in the antique class at the National Academy of Design, and at an early age knew and traveled with leading landscape painters, including John Kensett, John Casilear, and Benjamin Champney. He exhibited frequently at the National Academy of Design, and lived and painted in New York City during most of his career. He produced paintings of high quality based on locations in the Catskills, the White Mountains, New Hampshire, Virginia, and Warwick, New York, where Cropsey lived, and in 1876 he was awarded a first-class medal at the Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia. Johnson owned several European paintings, but there is no specific evidence to suggest he ever traveled abroad. — LINKS — View of Dresden, Lake George (1874, 37x62cm) |
| Born
on 30 January 1720: Bernardo Bellotto, “Canaletto
II”, Italian "Vedute" painter and etcher who died on 17 October 1780.
— He was a nephew, pupil, and assistant of of Antonio Canal “Canaletto,” the celebrated painter of Venetian views. Studied in Rome in his youth, adding to his surname that of his teacher, "il Canaletto". In imitation of his uncle, he also painted architectural and perspective views, in a very picturesque and spirited manner. He resided in Italy, in Germany (especially Dresden) and in Poland. Worked as court painter to Augustus III, elector of Saxony and King of Poland, from 1748. From 1747 to 1755 he painted views of Dresden. In 1760 the destruction of Dresden ruined his house. He finally established himself permanently in Warsaw, where after much difficulty, he became the court painter to King Stanislas II Poniatowsky. The life of Bellotto, which included many travels and long sojourns outside of his country, can be divided into three distinct periods: one Italian, one Saxo-Vienese, and one Polish. His painting is naturally an evolution relative to these periods. In Italy, his felt most directly the influence of Canaletto. But by adapting himself more to the places where he visited or lived, he took on a more modern character than that of his uncle. — Bellotto left Italy for good in 1747, to spend the rest of his life working at various European courts, notably Dresden and Warsaw, where he died. He called himself Canaletto, and this caused confusion (perhaps deliberate) between his work and his uncle's, particularly in views of Venice. Bellotto's style, however, is distinguished from his uncle's by an almost Dutch interest in massed clouds, cast shadows, and rich foliage. His coloring is also generally more somber, much of his work being characterized by a steely gray. In the rebuilding of Warsaw after the Second World War his pictures were used as guides, even in the reconstruction of architectural ornament. — Bernardo Bellotto, pupil and nephew of Canaletto, had a highly successful international career. Canaletto, whose name Bellotto sometimes illegally adopted, especially during his stay in Poland, was his uncle on his mother’s side and had trained the young artist for many years. By 1738 Bellotto was already a member of the Venetian Painters’ Guild. Still under Canaletto’s guidance, the young Bellotto traveled extensively in Italy. He went to Rome, Florence, Turin, Milan and Verona. In each city he left memorable images, giving a precocious demonstration of his ability to capture not only the architectural or natural features, but also the specific quality of the light in each place he visited: View with the Villa Melzi d'Eril — View of the Gazzada — Arno in Florence — Signoria Square in Florence. After returning briefly to Venice, in the summer of 1747 Bellotto accepted an invitation from Augustus III, the Elector of Saxony, and moved to Dresden. During the ten years the artist spent there he produced a remarkable series of wonderful views of the city and its surroundings. He repeated these paintings for the Prime Minister, Count Brühl, who eventually sold his collection to Catherine the Great into St. Petersburg. With the purchase of the collection, Catherine the Great bought many of Bellotto’s finest topographic works. The Old Market Square in Dresden — The New Market Square in Dresden — Pirna Seen from the Right Bank of the Elbe are not only convincing in and for themselves, but also remind us of what happened to all that beauty after Dresden was bombed to bits in the Second World War. Bellotto had an enormous success and his reputation spread throughout the whole of Central Europe. In 1758 the Empress Maria-Teresa summoned him to Vienna, where he painted views of the capital’s Gothic and Baroque monuments. His next stop was Munich where, from 1761, he worked for the Elector of Bavaria. After five years there Bellotto returned to Dresden. In 1764-1766 he was a teacher at the Dresden Academy. In late 1766 he went to Warsaw. He had hoped eventually to reach St. Petersburg and work for Empress Catherine II but he stayed permanently in Warsaw at the urging of the recently crowned king, Stanislaus II Augustus Poniatowski. His views of Warsaw are nearly all collected in the city’s Royal Castle. Because of their poetic quality was combined with faultless accuracy, they were used as a draft for rebuilding Warsaw after its near-total destruction in the Second World War. Bernardo Bellotto died in Warsaw. |
| — LINKS
— Vue des ruines des faubourgs de..., (1766) — View of Parma — Perpective du Pont de Dresde sur l'Elbe (1749, etching 54x82cm) — Vue du Roc, et de Forteresse..., — A View of Padua with a..., — View of Vienna — View of Vienna — View of Vienna from the Belvedere (1760) — Capriccio with the Colosseum (1744) — Capriccio of the Capitol (1744) _ These two paintings are part of a cycle of four canvases which are similar in shape and subject matter. The young Bellotto painted them during a seminal visit to Rome. Gradually, he was to move away from the faithful view of glimpses of Roman monuments. Instead he favored the freer capriccio or imaginary view. This still included real buildings (which were truthfully reproduced) but they were set in an eclectic combination of invented architecture which in turn was given an evocative setting. Such capricci were very popular at the time. — The Scuola of San Marco (1740, 42x69cm) _ A nephew and follower of Canaletto, Bernardo Bellotto applies the clear reporter's vision of the master to a slower and more intimate exploration of reality. And from his earliest works, Bellotto softens the formal rigor of Canaletto into natural, simple, concrete observations, and his brilliant, kaleidoscopic palette into a dense range of colors, tending towards the coldly bright. In the Rio dei Mendicanti the buildings of the left bank lie partly in shadow and partly in full sunlight. And beyond the bridge standing between light and shade, the dome of the Emiliani chapel in the church of S. Michele in Isola can be seen in the distance. On the opposite bank the corners of the Scuola of San Marco and the seventeenth century building in the foreground are darkened as the shadows of the hour before sunset gather. The density of the chiaroscuro and the paint itself lend the view a fascinating concreteness with every detail assuming an undramatized presence. — View of Verona and the River Adige from the Ponte Nuovo (1748) _ The campanile of S. Anastasia and the ancient Scaliger castle seem to protect the quiet flow of the river. For once, Bellotto opted to capture the ordinary life of the people and the everyday look of the city. He included the small houses built along the shores of the river which were to be demolished at the end of the nineteenth century to make way for flood protection embankments. — View with the Villa Melzi d'Eril (1744) — View of the Gazzada (1744) _ These two views have recently been restored and we can once again see the crystal transparency of the light. The splendid early masterpieces were painted while the young artist was traveling in Lombardy. They manage to combine poetry with faithful realism in the way they capture the feel of the climate and season. He succeeded in catching the movement of the early fall wind which was pushing the clouds along and drying the washing on the line. He painstakingly and lovingly portrayed the simple colors of the stones, the roof tiles, the clothes people wore, and the way the leaves are just beginning to turn color. All this makes these paintings perhaps the most heartfelt portraits ever painted of the region. — New Market Square in Dresden (1750) — Zwinger Waterway (1750) _ These two paintings are part of an exceptional series of views of Dresden commissioned by the Elector of Saxony. A number of things are of interest: the large size of the paintings; the unfailingly splendid light; the clarity of the views; and finally the variety of different angles from which Bellotto framed the city. They supply fascinating views of a great Baroque city in its prime. — The Ruins of the Old Kreuzkirche in Dresden (1765) _ This is one of Bellotto's later works, painted during his second stay in Saxony. It demonstrates his quite extraordinary, perhaps unique, capacity to capture the spirit of an event. In this case it was the demolition of the Gothic church of the Holy Cross in Dresden's New Market Square. The church had been damaged during a war and was rebuilt in Rococo style a few years later. This image of ruin, bordering on an anatomical dissection of the mortally wounded church, was to reappear two centuries after Bellotto's day with the devastating bombing of Dresden in the night of 13 February 1945 during the Second World War. |
| ^
Died on 30 January 1652: Georges
de La Tour, French painter born (or baptized? or both??)
on 19 March 1593. — The son of a baker in the independent province of Lorraine, Georges de la Tour is first mentioned in documents in 1616, when he was still living in Vic. By 1620 he had established himself in Lunéville and hired his first apprentice. He made a visit to Paris in 1639, the same year he was named peintre ordinaire du roi to Louis XIII. While little is known about La Tour's life or artistic training, he may have been in Rome from 1610 to 1616 and may also have gone to the Netherlands. Famous in his lifetime, La Tour's reputation fell into oblivion after his death. His work was rediscovered in the twentieth century. Scholarly opinion remains divided over the chronology of his oeuvre, but La Tour's important position as a dramatist of humble reality is universally acknowledged today. — Georges de La Tour was born at Vic-sur-Seuille, Lorraine, the son of a baker. Most probably, the artist's early education took place in Vic and then, certainly, at the duchy's capital, Nancy. There is a good chance that the young painter traveled to Italy, a trip that was in fashion at the time with most people and with his young peers in Lorraine. It was not uncommon for whole groups of his Lorraine co-citizens to take off for Italy, and other artists, such as Jacques Callot, may well have taken him along there. In any case, one letter mentions him as a student of the Guide's, that is Guido Reni. This discreet reference has served some art historians as grounds for assuming that perhaps La Tour did go to Italy and that, once there, perhaps he spent some time in Guido Reni's workshop and that - again perhaps - he discovered authentic Caravaggism during his short stay in Rome. Other art historians, however, totally deny such a stay and maintain that La Tour never left Lorraine. De la Tour married Diane Le Nerf on 02 July 1617. Very shortly thereafter they left Vic for his Diane's city of origin, Lunéville. There he began making a reputation for himself and even obtained his first commissions. In no time at all he became a man of some wealth and, true to his Lorraine origins, he knew just how and where to invest his new savings. He ran a strict household: the couple's house staff complained about how poorly one ate at the La Tour table. The general gist is that he was of an uncommonly rapacious nature. He died a rich man, of a parapleurisy that seems to have felled eight persons merely in his own household, let alone over 8000 in the city of Lunéville as a whole. De la Tour's contemporaries portray him as a basically unpleasant person — haughty, sharp-tongued, self-assured, unbearably self-sufficient, stingy, and violent beyond measure. Strangely, this depiction, except for the stinginess, comes close to fitting Caravaggio. Thus the two painters the most strongly focused on depicting the sacred and the Christian message in all its beauty were both rather despicable. Caravaggio was despicable and La Tour probably even more so, and both produced extraordinary art transcending their true nature. La Tour was proud to boast the title of "painter to the King". But historians have found no traces of any interest shown by the old Louis XIII or the young Louis XIV in his work. Was La Tour perhaps inclined to mendacity as well? — LINKS — Un Vieux (1619, 91x60cm) — Une Vieille (1619) — Penitent Saint Jerome (1630, 152x109cm) — Saint Jerome Reading (1622, 62 x55cm) _ Charles II seems to have acquired this painting in 1662. At that time it was listed as 'St. Jerome wth [sic] spectacles of the manner of Albrecht Dürer'; it was not until 1939 that it was recognized by Kenneth Clark as 'a very bad de la Tour'. Saint Jerome reading is now regularly discussed in the literature on the artist, whose popularity has risen dramatically in recent years. Having been born in Lorraine where he passed most of his life, de la Tour's style reveals a commingling of Italian and Northern Caravaggesque influences which suggest, but do not necessarily prove, visits to Rome and the Netherlands. However, his style remains determinedly individual and was equally the product of local influences. He was a man of independent means and was appointed Peintre Ordinaire du Roi in Paris in 1639. There is a limited number of signed or dated works in the artist's small oeuvre and only approximate indications (some controversial) for the development of his style. Saint Jerome Reading may be compared with the series of Apostles, usually regarded as early works although not all autograph. The figures of Saint James the Less, Saint Philip and Saint Paul are particularly relevant. Also significant is a variant Saint Jerome reading, a copy after a lost painting by de la Tour, which is a more sophisticated composition with the figure seen from above and numerous objects comprising a still-life in the foreground. A date of about 1621-23 has been suggested for all of these works, which herald the influence of Caravaggio. Even allowing for the worn surface of the present painting, the chief characteristics of de la Tour's art can be discerned: the naturalistic rendering of hair and skin, the love of genre details such as the spectacles, the splash of saturated color for the cardinal's robe and, above all, the mysterious light that illuminates the figure so powerfully. As a painter Georges de la Tour lifts the art of scientific observation onto a poetic level. It is not quite certain, for instance, to what degree the intense luminosity renders the paper transparent, but it helps to define the distance between the viewer and Saint Jerome in the picture space while providing a bright focal point on a vertical axis. The concentration that characterizes Saint Jerome gradually envelops the viewer to the extent that the internal act of reading becomes synonymous with the external discipline of looking. The painting was cleaned and restored in 1972. |
| — Saint
Thomas (1630, 69x61cm) _ This is one of La Tour's 'daylight' masterpieces.
The bold, simplified modeling is combined here with a psychological analysis
of rare subtlety. The refined sable and slate-grey coloring distinguishes
the work from some other La Tours where red predominate. — The Payment of Dues (1634, 99x152cm) _ An important early picture of La Tour is the surviving Payment of Dues, only identified in 1972, even though it has been in the museum at Lvov since at least the early nineteenth century. (Formerly the painting was attributed to Honthorst.) The picture was cleaned soon after its debut in Paris at the time of the La Tour exhibition in 1972, and a date was revealed. This date, thought to be 1634, has caused a great deal of controversy. If 1634 is correct, a drastic reassessment of La Tour's stylistic development must be made. The early pictures of saints remain from the 1620s, and then in the early 1630s La Tour moves towards his second phase, basically a Le Clerc-influenced period. The swaying figures and flickering lighting of the Payment of Dues are especially reminiscent of Le Clerc's Concert at Schleissheim. There is a certain ambiguity — often present in La Tour — in the subject, which appears to have been little studied. At first sight it is a simple peasant scene of the rich extracting money, ruthlessly, from the poor, but it could be a depiction of the Calling of Matthew (the tax collector). It was recognized as a de La Tour in 1970 when the signature was found. — Cheater with the Ace of Diamond (1640, 106x146cm) _ The scene shows a strong influence of Caravaggio. — Fortune Teller (1635, 102x124cm) _ Georges de La Tour depicted a Caravaggesque genre scene popular in the first half of the 17th century: a young cavalier (the prodigal son) robbed by three women. — Magdalen of Night Light (1635, 128x94cm) _ Magdalen was the object of great devotion in France and La Tour painted several pictures representing her. Georges de La Tour was successful during his lifetime, however he remains somewhat mysterious. A journey to Italy during his youth before he settled at Lunéville, may explain his Caravaggism. Without much imagination, he has very personal color. effects; a fine red often recurs in the nocturnal atmosphere of his pictures, in which the long candle, often seen in transparency, lights up thick, voluntarily geometrical volumes, in the melancholy resigned loneliness of his models. — The Penitent Magdalen (1643, 133x102cm) _ An artist of great brilliance and originality, Georges de La Tour was from the duchy of Lorraine in northeastern France. Early in his career he gained knowledge of contemporary Caravaggesque painting with its emphasis on realism and dramatic effects of light and dark. This picture shows Mary Magdalen in a dark room at the dramatic moment of her conversion, her features lit by a candle flame that imparts a hauntingly spiritual quality to the work. The elaborate silver mirror, the pearls on the table, and the jewels on the floor symbolize luxury, which she has cast aside. In their place she clasps a skull, a common symbol of mortality. — Job Mocked by his Wife (1636, 145x97cm) _ There was a change in La Tour's style from the morbidity and mystery of such pictures as the penitent Magdalen contemplating a skull and a monk watching over his dead or dying companion, to works of a much calmer and more distilled air. The transitional pictures, also datable to the 1630s, are Job Mocked by his Wife and the so-called Woman with the Flea. The composition of the Job is immediately striking. There is the same flickering movement that is found in the Payment of Dues, even though there are only two figures. It is derived from Bellange's etching of The Annunciation, an unexpected source, especially when it is considered that The Annunciation by Caravaggio was already in the ducal collection at Nancy by 1616 (this much-damaged picture is now accepted by most authorities as authentic). No influence on La Tour is discernible in the Caravaggio, although it is virtually certain that he knew it. The subject is a rare one, and La Tour has introduced a special pathos into Job's sufferings. Although its composition is a complex amalgam of the Bellange Annunciation, the mood of the Job is entirely original. La Tour has concentrated on a dialogue between the unfortunate Job and his ill-tempered wife, and has allowed us a glimpse of a rarely painted subject, a husband tormented by his wife. Her cruel mockery of him comes over with great force as Job sits helplessly contemplating his sores (the potsherd he uses to scrape them is on the ground). The spectator is forced to realize that this painter's genius lies chiefly in his ability to observe the human condition; his skill in painting candlelight is only part of the brilliance. Such a depiction of the complex relationship between two people is rare indeed in French art of the period, and in his maturity La Tour was to develop the concept of dialogue between people to ever-increasing heights of subtlety. — Woman Catching Fleas (1635) _ La Tour, as with Rembrandt and Velázquez, made the most creative use of the lessons of Caravaggism. This painting combines chiaroscuro and candlelight with an uncompromising realism, and achieves a surprising intimacy of feeling. This painting is enigmatic in both composition and subject-matter. It strikes an uneasy note because of its stark simplicity, which has usually been interpreted as a genre scene of low life — a woman crushing a flea between her fingernails — but no authentic La Tour depicts such an obviously banal theme without a deeper meaning. The only symbol in the picture is the solitary candle burning on the chair, and it is surely not too speculative to suggest that the picture might represent the pregnant Virgin, isolated by Joseph when he discovers that she is with child, the candle thus symbolizing the forthcoming Christ as the Light of the World. |
| — Saint
Sebastian Attended by Saint Irene (1649, 167x130cm) _ There is a group
of painting attributed to Georges de La Tour depicting Saint Sebastian and
Saint Irene. Part of them is a horizontal composition where the model of
one of the figures is a familiar La Tour type. Most of the versions are
curiously incompetent, only three of them having pretensions to quality.
The upright versions of the same subject are more celebrated. The composition
is monumental, as if the painting were depicting a sculptured tableau. One
composition is especially moving, with the mourning figure in a blue cowl
(in another version the cowl is black) looking as if she were taken from
a piece of Burgundian tomb sculpture. Recent observations on the possible
dating of the costumes have left little doubt that the picture is rather
later than the artist's lifetime. Étienne de La Tour, the son of the artist
was suggested (but not accepted) as the possible author. Étienne de La Tour
is actually documented as being required to continue his father's style,
should the latter die inopportunely, and it is likely that he continued
long into the 1660s and even the 1670s, painting ever-weaker versions of
his father's work which eventually became mockeries of his father's genius. — Saint Sebastian Attended by Saint Irene (another one, 1641, 160x129cm) _ It is one of the typical paintings of the artist showing strong contrasts of light and shadow. — The Dream of Saint Joseph (1640, 93x81cm) _ detail _ De la Tour's mature pictures form a close-knit group which must date from the years immediately before and after 1640. None of them is documented, although some of them are signed. The most typical and one of the best preserved of them is the so-called Dream of Joseph, which in many respects forms a microcosm of La Tour's art and the problems which surround it, in terms of both history and the interpretation of the subject. As recently as 1913 it was attributed to Rembrandt, although the picture was clearly signed La Tour in the top right-hand corner. It is interesting that an illustrious name should have been sought for so magical a picture, and the subject, even now, is as elusive as was the former difficulty of attribution. A youth in biblical costume is making a beckoning or announcing gesture before an old man who has fallen asleep reading a book. The traditional interpretation is that it is a Dream of Joseph, even though Joseph is normally shown as a carpenter (as he is in another La Tour picture). The youth is hardly the angel Gabriel either, coming to warn Joseph to flee to Egypt in order to escape the impending massacre of all children in Bethlehem by Herod's soldiers. A possible explanation for this enigmatic picture is that it depicts the moment when the young Samuel, having been, he thinks, summoned by the elderly priest Eli, finds him asleep. This surprises Samuel, who at that instant realizes that it is God's voice calling him. If this interpretation of the subject is correct, La Tour has with characteristic subtlety and understatement shown the exact moment when the youth Samuel arrives before the sleeping old man, with a 'here I am' gesture. Samuel's pose is unforgettable. All attempts at the naturalism with which La Tour is so wrongly credited have been abandoned, leaving a Mannerist twisting of the fingers and the caprice of shielding most of the candle flame. Above all, there is an exquisite stillness, which pervades not only this picture but also the other all-too-few masterpieces from this period. — Christ in the Carpenter's Shop (1645, 137x101cm) _ On the same deep level as in the Job, in a similar vein but more complex in composition, is the Christ in the Carpenter's Shop. As in the Job, one of the figures is arched over the top of the canvas, and again the attention to mood is shown in the minute observation of the effects of light in certain areas, especially that of the translucency of the child's hand silhouetted against the candle, revealing even the dirt in the fingernails. As usual, La Tour tells the Bible story in the simplest of terms. Only items essential for identifying the subject, in this case the paraphernalia of the carpenter's shop, are included. The picture can exist on the level of a genre scene without religious overtones, and its realism makes it one of the greatest genre paintings of the seventeenth century, rivaling Velázquez's Water Seller of Seville and Rembrandt's Jewish Bride (the latter has also been interpreted as a religious or mythological subject). _ detail _ The attention to mood is shown in the minute observation of the effects of light in certain areas, especially that of the translucency of the child's hand silhouetted against the candle, revealing even the dirt in the fingernails. — Adoration by the Shepherds (1644, 107x131cm) _ This picture marks the beginning of La Tour's last phase. The change in La Tour's art in these last years is so great that it has to be seen in terms of a decline and a rapid increase in studio participation. The Adoration by the Shepherds is one of the most frequently painted subjects in western art, but La Tour is unique in the realism of his treatment: the shepherds are entirely convincing. — The Newborn (1645, 76x91cm) _ The subject is ambiguous because the spectator is uncertain whether it is a simple genre scene or whether it represents the Virgin, Saint Anne and the Christ Child. By common consent La Tour's best picture is The Newborn At first sight this now-famous work seems starkly simple, a refinement of the already-familiar mannerisms and abbreviations, and only close inspection of the relatively small-scale picture reveals its complexity. The technique is almost pointillist: the intense red of the mother's dress is achieved by minute dots of color of varying hue, and the same is true of the lilac garment of the servant (or Saint Anne, if the subject is the Christ Child). The whole surface is thus the product of an intensely concentrated effort, and a large amount of detail is concealed in the stark simplicity of the forms. The collar of the mother's dress is elaborately decorated, and the profiles are painted with an exceptional delicacy of line. A total calm pervades the picture, in which the faces have been described as almost Buddha-like in their serenity. The sentiments which characterize almost all the rest of seventeenth-century painting are avoided, and this picture alone justifies La Tour's reputation. Just as Vermeeer's View of Delft is exceptional, even for Vermeer, so the Newborn rises above all the conventions of its time. _ detail _ The profiles are painted with an exceptional delicacy of line. — The Hurdy-gurdy Player (1636, 162x105m) _ The attribution to Georges de La Tour is dubious. |
Died
on a 30 January:
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