Claudio de Lorena Biography

Claudio de Lorena

(Claude Gelleé or Claude Lorrain; Chamagne, near Mirecourt, 1600-Rome, 1682).French painter.The third of the children of a very humble family, he was orphaned very young and lived in Freiburg with the eldest of his brothers, who was a wood engraver.Around 1613 he went to Rome, where he was raised and later a student of the painter Agostino Tassi.From 1620 he made some trips and stayed in Naples, Nancy and Venice for a while, but in 1626 he returned to Rome, where he remained until his death.

Around 1630 he met Nicolas Poussin, with whom he would join a great friendship.By that time he had already achieved notable fame as a landscape painter, and by 1638 he received numerous commissions from ecclesiastical personalities and the Roman aristocracy.Even the King of Spain, Felipe IV, commissioned him eight landscapes and seascapes, of which five are preserved in the Prado Museum.

Villa in the Roman countryside (1647), by Claudio de Lorena

In his painting, in addition to the teachings of his teacher Tassi, influences from Flemish and Dutch painters are appreciated.Claudio de Lorena, who along with Nicolas Poussin occupies a prominent place in seventeenth-century French painting, created a type of landscape in which he captured the variety and beauty of nature with great poetic sense.The subtlety with which he expressed the atmospheric phenomena and the lights of the Roman countryside in his paintings would not be equaled until the arrival of Impressionism.

Such natural beauty is often the setting in which a mythological or historical scene unfolds, the representation of which however occupies only a small part of the surface of the canvas.Thus, in a painting like Cleopatra's Landing at Tarsus , which presents the first meeting between Mark Antony and Queen Cleopatra, the protagonists are barely distinguished; and the same happens, to a greater or lesser extent, with all the human figures of his most characteristic canvases

Among his works, distributed throughout the world, are The Penitent Magdalene, Embarque en Ostia de saint Paula Romana, The return of the flock and Moses saved from the waters, in the Prado; Peasant festival and View of the Vaccino field, in Rome; Seaport at sunset and Cleopatra's landing in Tarsus, at the Louvre; Aeneas hunting the deer, in Brussels; Embarkation of Saint Ursula and Embarkation of the Queen of Sheba, at the National Gallery in London; Acis and Galatea, in Dresden; Jacob and Laban's daughters, in the Hermitage.

Comments

Josep Maria de Sagarra Biography

Josep Maria de Sagarra (Josep Maria de Sagarra i Castellarnau; Barcelona, 1894-1961) Spanish poet, playwright and storyteller in the Catalan language who was the most popular author on the Catalan scene during the decades of 1920 and 1930.Son of a linajuda native family of the region of La Segarra, his father, Ferran de Sagarra i de Siscar, was a notable historian and archaeologist specialized in stealth.Sagarra's literary vocation was manifested from his childhood: at the age of eight he wrote verses and performed comedies at home. Josep Maria de Sagarra He was educated with the Jesuits of Barcelona; one of his teachers, Father Moreu, encouraged him in his penchant for poetry.At the age of twelve he saw his first verses published, and in 1914 his first book appeared: Primer llibre de poemes .He studied Law at the University of Barcelona: among his friends and classmates were the poets Josep Maria López-Picó and Carles Riba.It was presented to Joan Maragall, who guessed i...

Egon Eiermann Biography

Egon Eiermann (Neuendorf, 1904-Baden-Baden, 1970) German architect.He was a disciple of H.Poelzig and was influenced by Mies van der Rohe.He brought the rationalist tradition to the utmost technological and functional refinement (Blumberg handkerchief factory, Merkur department store in Stuttgart).

Frank Lloyd Biography

Frank Lloyd (Glasgow, 1889-Santa Monica, 1960) American film director of British origin.He specialized in adventure films ( Cabalgata , 1933; Rebellion on board , 1935; Lords of the sea , 1939; Last order , 1955).

Auguste Villiers de l'Isle-Adam Biography

Auguste Villiers de l'Isle-Adam (Jean-Marie Mathias Philippe Auguste, Count of Villiers de l'Isle-Adam; Saint-Brieuc, 1838-Paris, 1889) French writer.Author of stories considered masterpieces of the genre, which present a novel synthesis of philosophical tale, horror story, science fiction and esotericism, his first works ( Two poetry essays, 1858; First poems, 1859) do not allow us to deduce what was his later production, once he had met Charles Baudelaire (1859) and Stéphane Mallarmé (1864), and discovered Hegel's philosophy.In 1866 he collaborated in the Parnasse Contemporain .In 1867 he founded the Revue des Lettres et des Arts and wrote The Intersign , his first "cruel tale." In 1870 he sided with the commune; In 1883, the publication of his Cruel Tales earned him some notoriety, but his living conditions remained precarious until his death.His other works include the novels Isis (1862) and The Future Eva (1886), the short novel Claire Lenoi...

Jose Maria Nemesio Otaño Biography

José María Nemesio Otaño (José María Nemesio Otaño y Eguino, Azcoitia, 1880-San Sebastián, 1956) Spanish composer and musicologist, one of the essential figures in the reform of sacred music in Spain during the first half of the 20th century. He studied organ in Guipúzcoa and later counterpoint and composition with Vicente Goicoechea in Valladolid.In 1896 he entered the Society of Jesus and soon obtained the position of organist at the Loyola Basilica. In 1907 he organized the First National Congress of Sacred Music in Valladolid, and that same year he founded the magazine Hispanic Sacred Music , which, following the proposals of Pope Pius X, served to give new air to the religious music that had been performed in Spain until now. Since 1911 he was director of the choir of the Pontifical University of Comillas, which became a model of good functioning for other religious choral groups in Spain.Simultaneously, Otaño continued composing, giving classes and organizing activities...

Francesco Clemente Biography

Francesco Clemente (Naples, 1952) Italian painter, associated with the Italian trans-avant-garde movement.He studied architecture at the University of Rome and was related to the artistic environments of Rome in the sixties, presided over by figures such as Cy Twombly and Alighiero Boetti.The presence of Beuys's work in Rome also exerted a powerful influence on Clement.In 1974 he traveled with Boetti to Afghanistan.Before his friendship with Boetti, Clemente had already drawn countless drawings in which he developed a personal vocabulary of symbols.His first paintings consisted of an abstract mixture of pictorial symbols with figures, animals and objects, sprinkled on the surface, in such a way that all the elements function independently and maintain their identity.His first solo exhibition took place at the Valle Giulia gallery in Rome in 1971.Since the early eighties his work has been present in important galleries and museums in Europe, America and Japan.

Jose de Pedrajas Biography

José de Pedrajas (18th century) Spanish administrator.Intendant of the army, he participated in the execution of the tax reform initiated during the War of the Spanish Succession.He was superintendent of the Treasury of Valencia (1711-1713), La Coruña and Catalonia (1716-1717 and 1720-1724).

Jorge Donn Biography

Jorge Donn (Buenos Aires, 1944-Lausanne, 1992) Argentine dancer and artistic director.He began his studies in 1952, at the Escuela del Teatro Colón in Buenos Aires.In 1960, he was seen by Maurice Béjart, who was on tour in America with his dance company, and invited him to join it, which Donn did from 1962; two years later he joined it permanently in 1964 and became its first male figure.In 1963 he went to Europe to become a principal dancer with the Ballet du XXe Siècle.With this company he premiered numerous ballets by Maurice Béjart.He was a guest dancer with the New York City Ballet, the Opéra de Paris and the Bolshoi Ballet.In 1980 he was appointed artistic director of the Ballet du XXe Siècle.He appeared in the films Le Danseur (1968) and Les Uns et les Autres (1981).

Jose Miguel Ullán Biography

José Miguel Ullán Spanish poet born in Villarino de los Aires (Salamanca) in 1944.He is the author of the poetry books El jornal (1965), Peninsular love (1965), Human power (1966), Maniluvios (1972), Frases (1975), Soldadesca (1979) and Named spots (1984).The essay genre includes the works Las soldades by Francisco Peinado (1977), Abecedario by Brinkman (1977) and Zóbel (1978).A regular contributor to written press and literary magazines, he brought together in Ardicia (1994) a wide sample of his poetic work.Always very close to plastic artists such as Chillida, Miró, Palazuelo or Saura, his reflections on the work of Tápies were published in 2000 under the title Tápies, ostinato .In 2003 he published two books of visual poems, Ni mu and Con todos las letras .The following year he returned to poetry written with Master of Keys .

Jose Bono Biography

José Bono (José Bono Martínez; Salobre, Albacete, 1950) Spanish politician.A true heavyweight of the Spanish Socialist Workers Party (PSOE), he was president of the Community of Castilla-La Mancha for six consecutive legislatures (1983-2004) and Minister of Defense in the first cabinet of José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero (2004-2006).From 2008 to 2011 he presided over the Congress of Deputies. José Bono A Jesuit student in his childhood and a law degree from the University of Navarra, specialized in Criminal Law, José Bono took the political habit from a Catholic commitment that he held throughout his public career.Around 1973 he began to practice as a lawyer and joined the ranks of the PSI, reconverted into the Popular Socialist Party (PSP) by Professor Enrique Tierno Galván.The transition to democracy began after the death of dictator Francisco Franco (1975), José Bono was a candidate for this formation to the Congress of Deputies in the 1977 general elections, but did not win the ...

History Today Online

Search This Blog