The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Art and Artists (19 page)

BOOK: The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Art and Artists
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Antolínez , José
(1635–75).
Spanish painter, born and active in Madrid. Like
Murillo
in Seville, he had a penchant for paintings of the
Immaculate Conception
, and his colourful, sweet style has much in common with Murillo's. His temperament was anything but sweet, however, for he was renowned for his arrogance and died of wounds received in a duel.
Antonello da Messina
(
c.
1430–79).
Italian painter, from Messina in Sicily, a pioneer of
oil painting
in Italy. According to
Vasari
he was a pupil of Jan van
Eyck
, but he is most unlikely to have visited northern Europe. He probably acquired his knowledge of northern techniques in Naples, then artistically dominated by the Netherlands, and the simplified, rounded, sculptural modelling characteristic of Antonello's style was perhaps influenced by the visit to Sicily of the sculptor Francesco
Laurana
. In 1475–6 Antonello visited Venice, where he painted the S. Cassiano altarpiece, of which two fragments only remain, both in the Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna. Vasari says that Antonello brought the ‘secret’ of oil painting to Venice, and while this is untrue, his altarpiece was certainly influential, for several younger Venetian artists borrowed directly from it and Giovanni
Bellini
admired the modelling of its figures. Antonello's bust portraits—in three-quarter view, of Flemish type—also enjoyed a notable vogue in Venice: their expressions were more lively than in the portraits by
Memlinc
then being imported and, like Antonello's religious works, they show a remarkable ability to combine Northern particularity of detail with the Italian tradition of grandeur and clarity of form. Good examples of Antonello's portraits are in the National Gallery, London (this one is often considered a self-portrait), and in the Louvre, Paris.
An Túr Gloine
.
See
PURSER
.
Anuszkiewicz , Richard
.
See
OP ART
.
Apelles
.
Greek painter active in the 4th cent. BC, born at Colophon in Asia Minor. Apelles was reckoned in antiquity to be the greatest of Greek painters, renowned particularly for his gracefulness, but none of his work remains. He was court painter to Philip of Macedon and his son Alexander the Great, and one of the many anecdotes about Apelles tells how Alexander gave him his mistress Pancaspe after the artist had fallen in love with her while painting her in the nude. The names of about 30 of his works are recorded by ancient sources. Among his subjects were portraits of Alexander the Great (particularly famous was one for the temple of Artemis at Ephesus),
Aphrodite Anadyomene
(Venus rising from the sea) made for the temple of Asclepius at Cos, brought to Rome by Augustus, and set up in the temple of Caesar, and
Calumny
. Descriptions of his work by classical authors were well known during the
Renaissance
and inspired several major artists to attempt to emulate them.
Botticelli
made a painting and
Mantegna
a drawing of
Calumny
(Uffizi, Florence, and BM, London, respectively), and
Titian
painted an
Aphrodite Anadyomene
(NG, Edinburgh, on loan from Ellesmere collection).
BOOK: The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Art and Artists
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