The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Art and Artists (7 page)

 
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(1418–81).
Florentine sculptor and architect. He was the most original if not the greatest sculptor of his time, and the only 15th-cent. sculptor born in Florence who owed little to
Donatello
or
Ghiberti
. His fresh and lively style was linear and graceful, with distinctive swirling draperies.
Reliefs
at Modena Cathedral executed by 1442 are accepted as his earliest work. Some have seen in them indications of a debt to Jacopo della
Quercia
, and others of possible training by Luca della
Robbia
. In 1446 he fled Florence after being accused of stealing silver from a church, and from
c.
1450 to 1457 he worked on the sculptural reliefs for the Tempio Malatestiano at Rimini (see
MALATESTA
). His other memorable large work is the series of reliefs, partly in
terracotta
, on the façade of the Oratory of S. Bernadino at Perugia, on which he worked
c.
1457–61, as architect as well as sculptor. Agostino also executed several delightful reliefs of the Virgin and Child.

 
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air brush
.

An instrument for spraying paint or varnish by means of compressed air. It looks rather like an outsize fountain pen and is operated in a similar fahion, the pressure of the forefinger on a lever regulating the air supply. It can be controlled so as to give large areas of flat colour, delicate gradations of tone, or a fine mist. The device was invented by Charles Burdick , an American watercolour painter, who patented it in England in 1893. He used the tradename Aerograph, which for many years was used as a general term for air brushes (
Man Ray
called paintings he did with an air brush ‘aerographs’). In the early 20th cent. air brushes were mainly used for photographic retouching, and their principal use is now in commercial art. However, they are also used by painters such as
Hard Edge Abstractionists
and
Superrealists
, who require a very smooth finish.

 
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alabaster
.

Soft, semi-transparent stone (a form of gypsum) extensively used in sculpture in the later Middle Ages. Its most notable use was in small
retables
, which were made in great numbers in England, many of them for export—they were sent even as far as Italy, Spain, and Russia. The best collection of such retables is in the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, and other fine examples are in the Castle Museum at Nottingham, a town that was famed for its ‘alabastermen’. The production of religious images was cut off abruptly by the Reformation, but some tombs continued to be carved in alabaster until the 18th cent. Some modern sculptors, for example Henry
Moore
, have used alabaster for small-scale sculptures.

 
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(1692–1779).
Italian churchman, the leading collector and art patron in Rome in his day. He came from a distinguished family that included several cardinals and also Pope Clement XI, but he led a worldly life and was notorious for his lucrative dealings in the art market, not hesitating to have works heavily restored if it made them sell better. With the help of his librarian
Winckelmann
, he made a fine collection of
antique
sculpture, much of which is now in the Glyptothek at Munich. It was housed in his villa in Rome, where
Mengs
painted his famous ceiling painting
Parnassus
(1761), one of the key works of
Neoclassicism
.

 
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(1578–1660).
Bolognese painter. After a period in the studio of Denis
Calvaert
and subsequently in the
Carracci
academy, he moved to Rome (
c.
1600), where he collaborated with Annibale Carracci and
Domenichino
on various decorative schemes, including work in the Palazzo Farnese. In 1616 he returned to Bologna and produced, besides altarpieces, many allegorical paintings and idyllic landscapes in a charmingly light-hearted style which proved very popular in England in the 18th cent.