Sfumato is a painting technique for softening the transition between colours, mimicking an area beyond what the human eye is focusing on, or the out-of-focus plane. It is one of the canonical painting modes of the Renaissance. Leonardo da Vinci was the most prominent practitioner of sfumato, based on his research in optics and human vision, and his experimentation with the camera obscura. He introduced it and implemented it in many of his works, including the Virgin of the Rocks and in his famous painting of the Mona Lisa. He described sfumato as "without lines or borders, in the manner of smoke".
The Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum is an art museum in Boston, Massachusetts, which houses significant examples of European, Asian, and American art. Its collection includes paintings, sculpture, tapestries, and decorative arts. It was founded by Isabella Stewart Gardner, whose will called for her art collection to be permanently exhibited "for the education and enjoyment of the public forever."
The four Raphael Rooms form a suite of reception rooms in the Apostolic Palace, now part of the Vatican Museums, in Vatican City. They are famous for their frescoes, painted by Raphael and his workshop. Together with Michelangelo's Sistine Chapel ceiling frescoes, they are the grand fresco sequences that mark the High Renaissance in Rome.
The Portrait of Bindo Altoviti is a painting finished around 1515 by the Italian High Renaissance painter Raphael. It is housed in the National Gallery of Art of Washington, D.C., United States.
The Tragedy of Lucretia is a tempera and oil painting on a wood cassone or spalliera panel by the Italian Renaissance master Sandro Botticelli, painted between 1496 and 1504. Known less formally as the Botticelli Lucretia, it is housed in the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum of Boston, Massachusetts, having been owned by Isabella Stewart Gardner in her lifetime.
Isabella Stewart Gardner was a leading American art collector, philanthropist, and patron of the arts. She founded the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston.
Phaedra is a Roman tragedy written by philosopher and dramatist Lucius Annaeus Seneca before 54 A.D. Its 1,280 lines of verse tell the story of Phaedra, wife of King Theseus of Athens and her consuming lust for her stepson Hippolytus. Based on Greek mythology and the tragedy Hippolytus by Euripides, Seneca's Phaedra is one of several artistic explorations of this tragic story. Seneca portrays Phaedra as self-aware and direct in the pursuit of her stepson, while in other treatments of the myth, she is more of a passive victim of fate. This Phaedra takes on the scheming nature and the cynicism often assigned to the nurse character.
Timoteo Viti, sometimes called Timoteo della Viti or Timoteo da Urbino, was an Italian Renaissance painter, who was closely associated with Raphael, who was fourteen years his junior.
Events from the year 1509 in art.
Christ in the Storm on the Sea of Galilee is a 1633 oil-on-canvas painting by the Dutch Golden Age painter Rembrandt van Rijn. It was previously in the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston but was stolen in 1990 and remains missing. The painting depicts the biblical story of Jesus calming the storm on the Sea of Galilee, specifically as it is described in the fourth chapter of the Gospel of Mark. It is Rembrandt's only seascape.
Elisabetta Gonzaga (1471–1526) was a noblewoman of the Italian Renaissance, the Duchess of Urbino by marriage to Duke Guidobaldo da Montefeltro. Because her husband was impotent, Elisabetta never had children of her own, but did adopt her husband's nephew and heir, Francesco Maria I della Rovere. She was renowned for her cultured and virtuous life.
Portrait of Pietro Bembo, also called Portrait of the Young Pietro Bembo, is an oil painting by Italian artist Raphael. Completed ca. 1504, the painting hangs in the Museum of Fine Arts in Budapest.
Tommaso Inghirami was a Renaissance humanist and orator. He was prefect of the Vatican Library for several years and secretary of the Fifth Lateran Council.
According to the theory of the art historian Marcia B. Hall, which has gained considerable acceptance, unione is one of the canonical painting modes of the Renaissance; that is, one of four modes of painting colours available to Italian High Renaissance painters, along with sfumato, chiaroscuro and cangiante. Unione was developed by Raphael, who exemplified it in the Stanza della Segnatura.
Portrait of Doña Isabel de Requesens y Enríquez de Cardona-Anglesola is an oil painting dated circa 1518 that was formerly believed to depict Giovanna d'Aragona. It has been variously ascribed to Raphael, Giulio Romano, or the school of Raphael; it is now usually taken to have been executed by Giulio Romano based on a sketch by Raphael and then altered by Raphael. The painting is now in the Louvre Museum in Lens.
A Lady and Gentleman in Black is a painting by the Dutch artist Rembrandt, painted in 1633. The oil-on-canvas painting, measuring 131.6 by 109 centimetres, depicts a well-dressed husband and wife. The painting hung in the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum of Boston, Massachusetts, prior to being one of 13 works stolen from the museum in a 1990 theft.
In the early morning hours of March 18, 1990, thirteen works of art were stolen from the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston, Massachusetts. Guards admitted two men posing as police officers responding to a disturbance call, and the thieves tied the guards up and looted the museum over the next hour. The case is unsolved; no arrests have been made and no works have been recovered. The stolen works have been valued at hundreds of millions of dollars by the FBI and art dealers. The museum is offering a $10 million reward for information leading to the art's recovery, the largest bounty ever offered by a private institution.
Saint Dorothy or Young Roman Woman with a Fruit Basket is a circa 1512 oil on panel painting by Sebastiano del Piombo, now in the Gemäldegalerie, Berlin. A basket is an attribute of saint Dorothy, hence its first title.
Emilio Costantini (1842–1926) was an Italian painter, a prominent art dealer, and a professor in the Istituto d'Arte di Firenze. Established in Florence, he was originally from Genzano di Roma.
