People And Biographies

Filippo Brunelleschi (1377-1446), Florentine architect, one of the initiators of the Italian Renaissance. His revival of classical forms and his championing of an architecture based on mathematics, proportion, and perspective make him a key artistic figure in the transition from the Middle Ages to the modern era.

Brunelleschi was born in Florence in 1377 and [...]

I  INTRODUCTION
Édouard Manet (1832-1883), French painter, whose work inspired the impressionist style, but who never identified his own work with impressionism. Manet had far-reaching influence on French painting and the general development of modern art, which stemmed from his choice of subject matter from the world around him; his application of color in broad, [...]

I  INTRODUCTION
Sir Christopher Wren (1632-1723), English architect, scientist, and mathematician, who is considered his country’s foremost architect. His work, in a simple version of the baroque style, displayed great inventiveness in design and engineering. The Wren style strongly influenced English architecture in the Georgian period and its colonial version in America.

II  EARLY [...]

Ludwig Mies van der Rohe (1886-1969), German American architect, the leading and most influential exponent of the glass and steel architecture of the 20th-century International style.
Born in Aachen, Germany, Mies received his principal training as an employee of architect and furniture designer Bruno Paul from 1905 to 1907 and then as an employee of [...]

I  INTRODUCTION
Paul Cézanne (1839-1906), French painter, often called the father of modern art, who strove to develop an ideal synthesis of naturalistic representation, personal expression, and abstract pictorial order.
Among the artists of his time, Cézanne perhaps has had the most profound effect on the art of the 20th century. He was the greatest [...]

Frida Kahlo (1907-1954), Mexican painter, who produced mostly small, highly personal self-portraits using elements of fantasy and a style inspired by native popular art. Kahlo was born in Coyoacán, Mexico, near Mexico City. While a student at Mexico City’s National Preparatory School in 1925, she sustained severe injuries in a bus accident. During her recuperation, [...]

I  INTRODUCTION
Michelangelo (1475-1564), Italian painter, sculptor, architect, and poet whose artistic accomplishments exerted a tremendous influence on his contemporaries and on subsequent European art. Michelangelo considered the male nude to be the foremost subject in art, and he explored its range of movement and expression in every medium. Even his architecture has a human [...]

I  INTRODUCTION
Claude Monet (1840-1926), French painter, a leading figure in the late-19th-century movement called impressionism. Monet’s paintings captured scenes of middle-class life and the ever-changing qualities of sunlight in nature. His technique of applying bright, unmixed colors in quick, short strokes became a hallmark of impressionism.

II  INFLUENCES AND TRAINING
The son of [...]

Donatello, real name Donato di Niccolò di Betto Bardi (1386?-1466), Italian Renaissance sculptor, who is generally considered one of the greatest sculptors of all time and the founder of modern sculpture.
Donatello was born in Florence, the son of a wool comber. When he was 17 years old, he assisted the noted sculptor Lorenzo Ghiberti [...]