The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Art and Artists (495 page)

 
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(
c.
1591–1630).
Dutch painter, one of the most important figures in the development of the tradition of naturalistic landscape painting in his country. He was born in Amsterdam, where he was perhaps the pupil of Gillis van
Coninxloo
, and worked in Haarlem and The Hague. His earliest works are in the
Mannerist
tradition, but by 1615 he had already moved away from the panoramic effect and high point of view of his predecessors. His fresh brushwork and directness of vision herald the subsequent accomplishment of his pupil Jan van
Goyen
and of Salomon van
Ruysdael
. Esaias was also an excellent etcher and draughtsman. There were other artists in his family, but he was not related to Willem van de
Velde
.

 
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(1611–93).
Dutch marine painter. He was the son of a naval captain, his brother was a skipper of merchant vessels, and he himself spent part of his youth as a sailor before devoting himself to the drawing and painting of ships. His pictures, which are frequently
grisailles
, contain faithful and detailed portraits of ships (of much value to naval historians) and for a time he was an official artist for the Dutch fleet. In 1672, when the Netherlands were at war with England, he went to London and entered the service of Charles II; why he left his country at a critical moment in its fortunes remains a mystery.
Willem the Younger
(1633–1707), his son, is one of the most illustrious of all marine painters. He was the pupil of his father and Simon de
Vlieger
. Like his father, he gave very accurate portrayals of ships, but is distinguished from him by his feeling for atmosphere and majestic sense of composition. He left Amsterdam for England with his father in 1672 and in 1674 Charles II gave them a yearly retaining fee of £100 each; the father received his ‘for taking and making draughts of seafights’ and the son ‘for putting the said draughts into colours for our own particular use’. They did not switch their allegiance to England completely; both subsequently painted pictures of naval battles for the Dutch as well as the English market. Willem the Younger's influence, however, was particularly great in England, where the whole tradition of marine painting stemmed from him. Adriaen (1636–72), Willem II's younger brother, was a versatile and prolific artist in spite of his short life. His father and Jan
Wijnants
were his teachers. He painted various types of landscapes (most notably some fresh and atmospheric beach scenes) and also religious and mythological works, portraits, and animal pictures. He also did exceptionally fine etchings of landscapes with cattle and often painted the figures into the landscapes of other artists, notably
Hobbema
and
Ruisdael
.

 
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See
PARCHMENT
.

 
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Venus de Milo
.

A marble statue of Aphrodite, the best known of all ancient statues, found on the small Greek island of Melos (or Milos) in 1820 and now in the Louvre. A plinth found with the statue was signed ‘…andros [Alexandros or Agasandros] of Antioch on the Maeander’, but nothing is known of the sculptor. Originally the statue was thought to date from the
Classical
age of Greek sculpture, but it is now put appreciably later—
c.
100 BC—and is thought to be a sophisticated combination of older styles—the goddess's head derives from the later 5th cent. BC, her nudity from the 4th cent., and her spiral, omnifacial posture from the
Hellenistic
age. The
Venus de Milo
arrived in the Louvre (1821) soon after the
Medici Venus
had been returned to Italy (1815), and its enormous fame stemmed from French determination to persuade the world that they had gained a greater treasure than they had lost; Martin Robertson (
A History of Greek Art
, 1975) writes that its ‘extraordinary reputation, which started by propaganda, has become perpetuated by habit’. Many 19th cent. critics went into raptures about the figure, which was thought to represent the apogee of female beauty, combining grandeur with gracefulness, but
Renoir
described it as a ‘big gendarme’. The statue's arms are missing and many conjectures have been made as to what the goddess might have been holding: it has been suggested for example that she is intended as Venus Victrix, and so would have been shown with the golden apple presented to her by Paris when he adjudged her more beautiful than her rivals Juno and Minerva .

 
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