The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Art and Artists (305 page)

 
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Matta
(Roberto Sebastian Antonio Matta Echaurren )
(1911– ).

Chilean painter and sculptor who has worked mainly in Paris, but also in Italy and the USA. He trained as an architect but turned to painting in 1937 and in the same year joined the
Surrealist
movement. In 1939 he fled from Europe to New York, where with other emigrés including
Breton
,
Ernst
,
Masson
, and
Tanguy
he formed a strong and influential Surrealist presence. He encouraged
Gorky
,
Pollock
, and others to experiment with
automatic
techniques. From about 1944 Matta began to create his most characteristic works—large canvases bordering on abstraction that evoke fantastic subjective landscapes and take as their theme the precariousness of human existence in a world dominated by machines and hidden forces. In 1948 he broke with the Surrealists and returned to Europe, but his work continued in a similar vein. He lived in Rome in the early 1950s, then mainly in Paris, although he travelled widely. In 1957 he began making sculpture.

 
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(active 1452–d. 1495).
Sienese painter. He originally came from Borgo San Sepolcro and he painted the wings and
predella
(Pinacoteca, Sansepolcro) of the altarpiece of which
Piero della Francesca's
Baptism of Christ
(NG, London) was the centre panel. His style was elegant, linear, and decorative, revealing affinities with
Pollaiuolo
, and he seems to have been one of the most popular and prolific Sienese painters of the second half of the 15th cent. His major works include a large
Assumption of the Virgin
in the National Gallery, London.

 
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(1724–96).
The outstanding Austrian decorative painter of the 18th cent. He was active (and extremely productive) over a wide area of Central Europe and most of his works (altarpieces as well as
frescos
) are still in the churches and secular buildings in Austria, the Czech Republic, Hungary, and Slovakia for which they were painted. Maulbertsch's vivacious, colourful, and emotional style was almost completely resistant to
Neoclassical
influences, representing the last glorious flowering of the
Baroque
and
Rococo
tradition. His painterly dash is even more apparent in his oil sketches, which are well represented in the Barockmuseum, Vienna, and he was also an outstanding etcher.

 
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maulstick
(mahlstick or rest-stick)
.

A stick with a padded knob at one end, used by painters to support and steady the brush hand, particularly when working on detailed passages. It is first recorded in the 16th cent., and often appears in artists' self-portraits.

 
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Mauritshuis
.

The royal picture gallery in The Hague, opened to the public in 1820. The building, designed by Jacob van
Campen
c.
1633 as a palace for Prince John Maurice of Nassau, is one of the masterpieces of Dutch architecture. It houses one of the world's choicest collections of 17th-cent. Dutch painting (with pictures also from the 15th, 16th, and 18th cents.), including such celebrated works as
Rembrandt's
Anatomy Lesson of Dr Tulp
and
Vermeer's
View of Delft
.

 
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