Completed her training in about 1553, met Michelangelo in Rome in 1554, where she became an established portraitist, invited to the court of King Philip II of Spain, advised the young van Dyck, and died in her early 90s.
renaissance
The Renaissance provided the tools of realist painting, but remained largely bound to religious and mythical motifs. Seventy years later, many new genres had appeared.
Femme fatale, daughter of Pope Alexander VI, she was the lover of Isabella d’Este’s husband, and inspired portraits until Dante Gabriel Rossetti in 1871.
After an excellent education, she married the Duke of Mantua, and started collecting paintings, most commissioned in great detail for her private study.
He trained alongside Leonardo, painted frescoes in the Sistine Chapel, and taught the young Raphael, as well as being a great painter.
He painted alongside Tintoretto in Venice, then around 1600 painted an epic replacement for one of Tintoretto’s works destroyed by fire.
He continued to paint distinctive stories from classical mythology, including fine accounts of the fight between Lapiths and Centaurs, and Perseus and Andromeda.
Unusual themes include a forest fire, the discovery of honey by Bacchus, early landscapes and hunting scenes.
Paintings by rising stars including Michelangelo, Giorgione and Raphael. The state of paintings of secular stories from classical and literary sources.
Major works from around 1500 by Giovanni Bellini, Mantegna, Botticelli, Perugino, Leonardo da Vinci, and Fra Bartolomeo.
