The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Art and Artists (180 page)

 
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(
c.
1300–
c.
1366).
Florentine painter, the son of a painter and mosaicist
Gaddo Gaddi
(
c.
1250–1327/30?). According to Cennino
Cennini
, Taddeo was
Giotto's
godson and worked with him for twenty-four years. In 1347 he headed a list of the best living painters compiled for the purpose of choosing a master to paint a new high altarpiece for Pistoia Cathedral. His best-known works were painted for Sta Croce, Florence: notably the frescos devoted to the
Life of the Virgin
in the Baroncelli Chapel (finished 1338), and the panels illustrating the
Life of Christ
(
c.
1330), originally meant for the doors of a sacristy cupboard and now scattered among museums in Florence (Accademia), Munich (Alte Pinakothek), and Berlin (Staatliche Museen). Many other panels are attributed to him and he must have had a flourishing workshop. Although transmitting the tradition of Giotto, his style is less heroic and more anecdotal. Gaddi's son
Agnolo
(active 1369–96) continued the Giotto tradition but modified it still further in the direction of decorative elegance. He is particularly notable for his cool pale colours, which influenced the refined late
Gothic
art of artists of the next generation such as
Lorenzo Monaco
. Agnolo's works include frescos on
The Story of the Cross
in the chancel of Sta Croce (after 1374) and on
The Story of the Virgin and her Girdle
in the Chapel of the Holy Girdle in Prato Cathedral (1392–5). Many panel paintings also are attributed to Agnolo.

 
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(1727–88).
English painter of portraits, landscapes, and
fancy pictures
, one of the most individual geniuses in British art. He was born at Sudbury, Suffolk, and went to London in about 1740, probably studying with the French engraver
Gravelot
. He returned to Sudbury in 1748 and in 1752 he set up as a portrait painter at Ipswich. His work at this time consisted mainly of heads and half-lengths, but he also painted some small portrait groups in landscape settings which are the most lyrical of all English
conversation pieces
(
Heneage Lloyd and his Sister
, Fitzwilliam, Cambridge). His patrons were the merchants of the town and the neighbouring squires, but when in 1759 he moved to Bath his new sitters were members of Society, and he developed a free and elegant mode of painting seen at its most characteristic in full-length portraits (
Mary, Countess Howe
, Kenwood House, London,
c.
1763–4). In 1768 he was elected a foundation member of the
Royal Academy
, and in 1774 he moved permanently to London. Here he further developed the personal style he had evolved at Bath, working with light and rapid brush-strokes and delicate and evanescent colours. He became a favourite painter of the Royal Family, even though his rival
Reynolds
was appointed King's Principal Painter. Gainsborough sometimes said that while portraiture was his profession landscape painting was his pleasure, and he continued to paint landscapes long after he had left a country neighbourhood. He produced many landscape drawings, some in pencil, some in charcoal and chalk, and he occasionally made drawings which he varnished. He also, in later years, painted fancy pictures of pastoral subjects (
Peasant Girl Gathering Sticks
, Manchester City Art Gal., 1782). Gainsborough's style had diverse sources. His early works show the influence of French engraving and of Dutch landscape painting; at Bath his change of portrait style owed much to a close study of van
Dyck
(his admiration is most clear in
The Blue Boy
, Huntingdon Art Gal., San Marino, 1770); and in his later landscapes (
The Watering Place
, NG, London, 1777) he is sometimes influenced by
Rubens
. But he was an independent and original genius, able to assimilate to his own ends what he learnt from others, and he relied always mainly on his own resources. With the exception of his nephew Gainsborough
Dupont
, he had no assistants and unlike most of his contemporaries he never employed a drapery painter. He was in many ways the antithesis of Reynolds. Whereas Reynolds was sober-minded and the complete professional, Gainsborough (even though his output was prodigious) was much more easy-going and often overdue with his commissions, writing that ‘painting and punctuality mix like oil and vinegar’. Although he was an entertaining letter-writer, Gainsborough, unlike Reynolds, had no interest in literary or historical themes, his great passion outside painting being music (his friend William Jackson the composer wrote that he ‘avoided the company of literary men, who were his aversion … he detested reading’). Gainsborough and Reynolds had great mutual respect, however; Gainsborough asked for Reynolds to visit him on his deathbed, and Reynolds paid posthumous tribute to his rival in his Fourteenth
Discourse
. Recognizing the fluid brilliance of his brushwork, Reynolds praised ‘his manner of forming all the parts of a picture together’, and wrote of ‘all those odd scratches and marks’ that ‘by a kind of magic, at a certain distance … seem to drop into their proper places’.

 
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(
c.
1440–after 1507).
Spanish painter. He worked mainly in Salamanca, where
Palomino
says he was born, and was the major Castilian painter of his period. Gallego's sober, impassive style has affinities with that of Dirk
Bouts
, and it has been suggested that he visited the Netherlands early in his career. His works include a
retable
(
c.
1475–80) of
San Idelfonso
in the cathedral of Zamora, a
triptych
of
The Virgin, St Andrew and St Christopher
in the new cathedral of Salamanca, and ceiling frescos on astrological subjects (much repainted) in the Old Library in the University of Salamanca. Gallego had considerable influence in Castile. One of his followers,
Francisco Gallego
, was presumably a relative.

 
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