Tiepolo was famous throughout Europe as an unrivaled fresco painter and a splendid draftsman. His first teacher, Gregorio Lazzarini, encouraged his disciples to study 16th-century Venetian art but Tiepolo was also influenced by the tenebrist technique of Federico Bencovich and the monumental realism of his great contemporary, Giovanni Battista Piazzetta. His first clients were Venetian noblility,
Solimena was a painter and architect who had begun his studies in the humanities, but his career was subsequently shaped by the profession of his father, the painter Angelo Solimena. He started working as his father’s assistant; however, the most important influence on his early training were the paintings of Luca Giordano (with whom he was friends), Pietro da Cortona, Lanfranco, and Mattia Preti,
Goya was born unexpectedly in his mother’s birthplace, Fuendetodos. His parents, Braulio José Goya, a gilder; and Gracia Lucientes, from a family of wealthy farmers, actually lived in Zaragoza, where they had married in 1736. Francisco was the fourth of six siblings: Rita (1737), Tomás (1739), who was also a gilder and is sometimes mentioned as a painter; Jacinta (1743), Mariano (1750), who died i
He studied in Madrid with Jerónimo Antonio Ezquerra and Miguel Jacinto Meléndez, and according to Ceán, his first work consisted of two paintings based on drawings by Meléndez for the church of San Felipe el Real in Madrid: “Saint Augustine Calling Up a Plague of Locusts” and “The Burial of the Count of Orgaz”. A protege of the Prince of Asturias and future King Ferdinand VI, he was appointed cham