The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Art and Artists (197 page)

(1558–1617).
Dutch graphic artist and painter of German descent, the outstanding line engraver of his day. He was the leader of a group of
Mannerist
artists who worked in Haarlem, where he founded some kind of ‘academy’ (a life class?) with
Cornelis van Haarlem
and Karel van
Mander
. In 1590–1 he visited Rome and on his return to Haarlem he abandoned his Mannerist style for a more
classical
one. Goltzius's right hand was crippled, but in spite of this handicap he was renowned for his technical virtuosity and his skill in imitating the work of other great engravers such as
Dürer
and
Lucas van Leyden
. In his early career much of his work was reproductive, but he also produced many original compositions, including a splendid series on
Roman Heroes
(1586). His
miniature
portrait drawings were also outstanding, and the landscape drawings he made after 1600 mark him as a forerunner of the great 17th-cent. landscape artists. His paintings are less interesting than his drawings and much less advanced stylistically.

 
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(1909– ).
Austrian-born British art historian. He came to England in 1936 and began a long association with the
Warburg
Institute in the University of London, where he was Director and Professor of the History of the Classical Tradition from 1959 to 1976. He has also been
Slade
Professor at both Oxford and Cambridge. His scholarly work, which shows a remarkable ability to combine great breadth of learning with lucidity and wit, has been devoted largely to the theory of art, the psychology of pictorical representation, and Renaissance symbolism, and has won him a position of the highest esteem in his profession. His writings bear witness to his interest in psychology and scientific method and have helped to break down barriers between art history and other disciplines. Gombrich's best-known book, however, is a popular work,
The Story of Art
, which was first published in 1950 and has ever since held its place as the most congenial introduction to the history of art. It reached its 16th English edition in 1995 and has been translated into 20 languages. Among his other books the best known is probably
Art and Illusion
(1960 and subsequent editions). This highly influential work deals with conventions of representation and examines how styles change and develop, challenging many orthodox views and received opinions about visual perception. In
Thinkers of the Twentieth Century
(ed. Elizabeth Devine ,
et al.
, 1983) J. M. Massing wrote: ‘For his scholarly method, his theoretical approach and his defence of cultural values, Gombrich will be remembered as one of the leading art historians of this century. Through his study of the psychology of perception, he is also one of the very few to have widened our understanding of the visible world.’

 
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(
active 1450–71).
Portuguese painter, first recorded in 1450 as court painter to Alfonso V. No works certainly by his hand survive, but there is strong circumstantial evidence that he was responsible for the
St Vincent
polyptych
(Lisbon Mus.,
c.
1460–70), the outstanding Portuguese painting of the 15th cent. The style is rather dry, but powerfully realistic, and the polyptych contains a superb gallery of highly individualized portraits of members of the court, including a presumed self-portrait. There are affinities with contemporary Burgundian and Flemish art, especially the work of
Bouts
.

 
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(1881–1962).
Russian painter, graphic artist, and designer, born into an impoverished noble family (she was related to the poet Pushkin). In Moscow in 1900 she met her fellow student Mikhail
Larionov
, who became her lifelong companion. In the years leading up to the First World War they were among the most prominent figures in Russian avant-garde art, taking part in and often helping to organize a series of major exhibitions in Moscow. Her early paintings were
Impressionist
, but from 1906 she began to develop a
primitivist
style combining her interest in peasant art and icon painting with influences from modern French art, particularly
Fauvism
and
Cubism
, to which was later added
Futurism
. By the time of the
Target exhibition
of 1913 she was painting in a near-abstract
Rayonist
style (
Cats
, Guggenheim Museum, New York, 1913). In 1915 she left Russia with Larionov and after settling in Paris in 1919 she devoted herself mainly to designing settings and costumes for the theatre, particularly
Diaghilev's
Ballets Russes.
Goncharova and Larionov became French citizens in 1938 and were married in 1955. By this time they had been virtually forgotten, but there was a great revival of interest in them in the early 1960s.

 
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Goncourt , Edmond de
(1822–96) and
Jules de

(1830–70).
French writers, brothers, who worked in close collaboration. They wrote on various artistic topics, their most important work of criticism being a book made up of a collection of articles,
L'Art du dix-huitième siècle
(1875), which helped to revive the reputation of 18th-cent. French artists such as
Watteau
. The brothers inherited a substantial fortune when their mother died in 1848, and their lives were divided between their writing and self-indulgence; the
Journal
that they began in 1851, and which Edmond continued after Jules died until his own death, provides a richly detailed record of Paris in the second half of the 19th cent. Edmond's books on Utamaro (1891) and Hokusai (1896) helped to popularize Japanese art (see
UKIYO-E
). The brothers also wrote novels, and the Académie Goncourt, founded under Edmond's will, is a body of ten men or women of letters that awards an annual prize (the Prix Goncourt) for imaginative prose.