The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Art and Artists (295 page)

 
Back
  -  
 
New Search

(1837–87).
German painter, active mainly in Italy, where he settled in 1864. Like his friends
Böcklin
,
Feuerbach
, and
Hildebrand
, he was one of the Germanic artists working in Italy who turned to the tradition of
ideal
art at a time when naturalism was becoming dominant in their own countries. He devoted himself mainly to the theme of the human figure in a landscape setting (
Age
, Staatliche Mus., Berlin, 1873–8). In 1873 he received a major commission to paint a series of large frescos in the Zoological Institute in Naples, but he lacked self-confidence, and died disappointed and practically unknown. It was only at the beginning of the 20th cent. that the statuesque dignity of his work became appreciated and taken up as a symbol of a new spirit of modernity in German art.

 
Back
  -  
 
New Search

(active
c.
1262)
. Italian painter from Arezzo. He is one of the very few 13th cent. Italian painters and the only early Aretine by whom we have signed works (examples are in the NG, London, and the NG, Washington). Margarito's paintings are clumsy, but have something of the vividness and lucid brevity of the comic strip.
Vasari
, who also came from Arezzo, wrote his biography in his
Lives
(saying he was an architect as well as a painter), and this is virtually the only source of knowledge on him, although a document of 1262 probably refers to him.

 
Back
  -  
 
New Search

(1870–1953).
American painter. From 1905 to 1910 he lived in Europe, mainly Paris, where he was influenced by
Whistler's
watercolours and etchings, but he first came into contact with avant-garde movements after his return to America, when he became a member of
Stieglitz's
circle. The
Armory Show
also made a great impact on him. Responding especially to German
Expressionism
, and the planimetric structure of the late work of
Cézanne
, he developed a distinctive semi-abstract style that he used most characteristically in powerful watercolours of city life and the Maine coast (where he often painted in the summer). His oil paintings (which became more important in his work from the 1930s) are often similar in effect to watercolours, leaving parts of the canvas bare. Marin also made etchings, especially early in his career. From the 1920s he enjoyed a high reputation. He was an individualist, belonging to no movement, and one of the finest watercolourists of the 20th cent.

 
Back
  -  
 
New Search

(1901–80). One of the outstanding Italian sculptors of the 20th cent., also a painter, lithographer, and etcher.
Until
c.
1928 he worked mainly as a graphic artist. During the 1930s he travelled widely in Europe and also visited the USA. Although his travels brought him into contact with many distinguished artists, Marini did not ally himself with any avant-garde movements, remaining essentially isolated in his artistic aims. Working mainly in bronze, he concentrated on a few favourite themes, most notably the Horse and Rider, a subject in which he seemed to express an obscure but poignant tragic symbolism. He also made numerous portrait busts, remarkable for their psychological penetration and sensuous exploitation of the surface qualities of the material. Often he
polychromed
his bronzes, sometimes working with corrosive dyes. In the 1940s he took up painting seriously, many of his pictures being near abstracts. There is a Marini museum in Milan, where he spent much of his career, and his work is represented in many major collections of modern art.

 
Back
  -  
 
New Search

(active
c.
1509– d. after 1567).
Netherlandish painter, presumably from Roymerswaele in Zeeland. He specialized in two types of picture, both with more or less life-size half-length figures: representations of St Jerome in his study (seemingly deriving from
Dürer
) and
genre
scenes of bankers, usurers, misers, and tax-collectors. The genre scenes show the sin of avarice and the vanity of earthly possessions; according to a Flemish proverb a banker, a usurer, a tax-collector, and a miller were the four evangelists of the devil. These paintings must have been very popular, for they exist in numerous versions and copies, but it is not known what kind of clientele bought pictures of such unpleasant characters, grotesquely presented in a manner deriving (via
Massys
) from
Leonardo's
‘caricatures’
. Marinus is last heard of in Middelburg in 1567, when he was condemned to walk in a penitential procession for taking part in the destruction of a church.