The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Art and Artists (209 page)

(1912–48).
French painter. His early work was often of visionary subjects, but from about 1933 he began to paint mainly from the model in the studio; he also did still lifes, views through windows, and from 1937 landscapes painted out of doors. Gruber's mature style was grave and melancholy, featuring long, drooping figures, and he is regarded as the founder of the ‘Misérabiliste’ strain in French painting, later particularly associated chiefly with
Buffet
. A typical work is
Job
(Tate Gallery, London, 1944), painted for the 1944
Salon d'Automne
, which was known as the Salon of the Liberation because it was held soon after Paris was freed from the German Occupation; the picture symbolizes oppressed peoples who like Job in the Bible had endured a great deal of suffering. In spite of the tuberculosis that caused his early death, Gruber worked with great energy and had a substantial output.

 
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(
c.
1470/80–1528).
German painter, the greatest of
Dürer's
contemporaries. His real name was Mathis Gothardt or Neithardt , but this was not discovered until the 1920s; ‘Grünewald’ is an error of
Sandrart
, who published the first biography of the artist in his
Teutsche Akademie
(1675), but it is now hallowed by usage. The obscurity into which he fell reflects the isolation and individuality of his work; he had no known pupils and (unlike most of his German contemporaries) he did not make woodcuts or engravings, which would have spread his name. He was successful for most of his career, working as court painter to two successive archbishops of Mainz, but his reputation did not survive, and in 1597, when the emperor Rudolf II tried to buy his masterpiece, the Isenheim Altarpiece, the name of the painter had already been forgotten. The first documentary reference to him (or what appears to be him) is of 1501, when a ‘Master Mathis’ is recorded working in Seligenstadt, a little town near Frankfurt and within the diocese of the Archbishop of Mainz, Uriel von Gemmingen , for whom Grünewald began working in about 1508. Von Gemmingen died in 1514 and Grünewald was employed by his successor Albrecht von Brandenburg (who was also Archbishop of Magdeburg) from 1516 to 1526. Grünewald was employed as a hydraulic engineer and supervisor of architectural works as well as a painter, and in 1520 he accompanied Albrecht to Aix-la-Chapelle for the coronation of emperor Charles V, an occasion on which he met Dürer. The little that is recorded of his personal life comes from Sandrart, who says he was melancholy and withdrawn and made an unhappy marriage late in life. There is no documentary confirmation of his marriage, but he is known to have had an adopted son called Andreas Neithardt , whose surname the painter sometimes used for himself in documents relating to the boy, thus creating one of the sources of confusion about the painter's identity.
Grünewald's work forms a complete contrast to that of Dürer. Whereas Dürer—an intellectual imbued with
Renaissance
ideas—had limitless curiosity about the visual world, Grünewald concentrated exclusively on religious themes, and in particular the Crucifixion, a subject he was to make his own. His most famous treatment of it is the central panel of his masterpiece, the altarpiece for the hospital church of the Anthonite Abbey at Isenheim in Alsace, completed in about 1515 and now in the Musée d'Unterlinden, Colmar. The hospital at Isenheim cared particularly for plague victims, and the concentration on Christ's appalling physical agonies, his body gruesomely mangled and torn, was designed to bolster the faith of the sick by reminding them that he too had suffered horribly before triumphing over death. In the
Resurrection
, Christ displays his nail and lance wounds, but the lacerations that cover his body in the
Crucifixion
have disappeared, affirming that the patients at the hospital could be cleansed of their diseases and sins. The altarpiece is marked by extreme emotional intensity, brought about by expressive distortion and by colouring of an extraordinary incandescent beauty. Grünewald was familiar with Renaissance ideas of
perspective
, but spiritually he belongs to the late medieval world. His other work includes Crucifixions in Basle (Öffentliche Kunstsammlung), Karlsruhe (Staatliche Kunsthalle), and Washington (NG), and several drawings survive.
The end of Grünewald's career was marked by a decline in his fortunes. He had Protesant sympathies, and following the Peasants’ War in 1525, in which Archbishop Albrecht narrowly escaped death, he was dismissed from his court post. He moved to Frankfurt, where he made a meagre living at a variety of jobs, including selling artists’ colours and a curative balm, the latter presumably something he had learnt about at Isenheim. In 1527 he became convinced his life was in danger and fled to Halle, where he died of plague the following year. His effects included ‘much Lutheran trash’. Grünewald's influence can be seen in the paintings of contemporaries such as
Baldung Grien
and
Ratgeb
, but it was not until the advent of
Expressionism
in the early 20th cent. that his work started to arouse widespread interest and he began his rise to his present pinnacle of esteem as one of the most awe-inspiring artists of his, or any other, time.

 
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(1712–93).
Venetian painter, the best-known member of a family of artists. He is now famous for his views of Venice, indeed next to
Canaletto
he is the most celebrated view-painter (see
VEDUTA
) of the 18th cent., but he produced work on a great variety of subjects and seems to have concentrated on views only after the death of his brother Gianantonio (1699–1760). Until then Francesco's personality was largely submerged in the family studio, of which Gianantonio was head and which handled commissions of every kind. Francesco's career was unsuccessful in worldly terms; he was still working for other artists when he was over 40, he never attracted the attention of foreign visitors in the way Canaletto did, and he died in poverty. Recognition of his genius came in the wake of
Impressionism
, when his vibrant and rapidly painted views were seen as having qualities of spontaneity, bravura, and atmosphere lacking in Canaletto's sharply defined and deliberate works. Francesco was enormously prolific and his work is in many public collections in Italy, Britain, and elsewhere. The major problem in Guardi studies concerns the authorship of paintings representing
The Story of Tobit
that decorate the organ loft of S. Raffaele in Venice. Critical opinion is sharply divided as to whether these brilliant works, painted with brushwork of breathtaking freedom, are by Francesco or Gianantonio (there is dispute also over the dating), but if they are indeed by the latter, he too must rank as a major figure. Giambattista
Tiepolo
was married to the sister of the Guardi brothers, and it was possibly through his influence that Gianantonio became a founder member of the Venetian Academy in 1756. Francesco was not elected until 1784, during the presidency of his nephew Giandomenico Tiepolo .

 
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(1591–1666).
One of the outstanding Italian painters of the 17th cent., known as Il Guercino (‘Squinting One’) on account of an eye defect. He was born at Cento near Ferrara and his early work drew on a variety of north Italian sources, notably Lodovico
Carracci
and Venetian painting, to create a highly individual style characterized by dramatic and capricious lighting, strong colour, and broad, vigorous brushwork. In 1621 Guercino was summoned to Rome by the Bolognese pope Gregory XV and among other commissions painted the celebrated ceiling fresco of
Aurora
in the Casino of the Villa Ludovisi for Gregory's nephew. This exuberant work, with its illusionistic architectural framework designed by Agostino
Tassi
, is much more
Baroque
in style than Guido
Reni's
treatment of the subject of a decade earlier. Guercino returned to Cento in 1623 on the death of the pope, but his short stay in Rome introduced a more classical feeling to his work. This trend became more pronounced when he moved to Bologna in 1642 to take over the studio of Reni, who died in that year. For the next quarter of a century, until his own death, he was Bologna's leading painter, and his late works can be remarkably similar to Reni's, calm and light in colouring, with little of the lively movement of his early style (
St Luke Displaying a Painting of the Virgin
, Nelson-Atkins Mus., Kansas City, 1652). Guercino was one of the most brilliant draughtsmen of his age; the finest collection of his drawings is in the Royal Library at Windsor Castle.