The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Art and Artists (359 page)

 
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(1610–79).
Italian painter and writer on art. He is of no significance as a painter, but he is important for his collection of biographies of contemporary artists,
Vite de' Pittori, Scultori ed Architetti che anno lavorato in Roma morti dal
1641 fino al 1673, not published until 1772. His accounts are detailed and on the whole accurate, forming one of the most important sources for the study of Roman
Baroque
art.

 
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pastel
.

A drawing or painting material consisting of a stick of colour made from powdered
pigments
mixed with just enough
resin
or
gum
to bind them. Pastel is applied directly to paper, with no
medium
, and a significant difference between this and other methods of painting is that the colour as applied represents the final result—no allowance has to be made for changes during drying. Pastel has the disadvantage, however, of being very fragile and easily dislodged from the paper. This can be counteracted by using a
fixative
, but fixing is apt to reduce the brilliance of the colour. As they are so delicate, pastels are usually used on a small scale, and they developed in the 16th cent. from the use of coloured chalks for drawing. The heyday of pastel was the 18th cent., when it was particularly popular for portraits, and it had a second great flowering in the late 19th cent., when several of the
Impressionists
, most notably
Degas
, took it up.

 
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pastel manner
.

An 18th-cent. engraving technique, a development of the
crayon
manner, in which a number of plates were inked with different colours to give the appearance of
pastel
drawings.

 
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(1862–1945).
Russian painter and graphic artist. He was a friend of many literary, musical, and political personalities, notably Leo Tolstoy, whose works he illustrated (
War and Peace; Resurrection
), and whom he portrayed on many occasions. In 1921 he left the Soviet Union and settled in Berlin, where he worked mainly as a portraitist (his sitters included Max
Liebermann
and Albert Einstein ). He left Germany because of the rise of Nazism and settled in England in 1938, spending his last years in Oxford. The celebrated writer Boris Pasternak was his son.

 
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pastiche
(or pasticcio)
.

A picture or other work of art that (often with fraudulent purpose) imitates the style of a particular artist by copying and recombining parts of his authentic works.

 
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