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Early life and education |
Károly Ferenczy was born in 1862 in Vienna, Austria. His mother died soon after he was born. He first studied law and completed a degree from the College of Economy. |
His future wife, Olga Fialka, encouraged Ferenczy to explore painting and he traveled in Italy. After studying in Paris in 1887 and starting to paint in Hungary, in 1893 he took his young family to Munich. They lived there until 1896, while he studied with the Hungarian painter Simon Hollósy and the circle of young artists around him. |
Marriage and family |
He married Olga Fialka, also a painter. He went to study at the Académie Julian in Paris in 1887. In 1889 he and his wife settled in Szentendre, a small town near Budapest. They had two sons and a daughter together: Valér (b. 1888) and Béni and Noémi, fraternal twins born in 1890. Olga gave up her painting to support her family and husband's career. |
Among Ferenczy's 51 works held by the Hungarian National Gallery are portraits of his children, including one of Béni as a young adult, and one of Noémi and Béni at age 18. All three children became artists; Valér became a painter, Noémi founded modern Hungarian tapestry, in which she became a "master", and Béni Ferenczy became a sculptor. |
Career |
In Hungary, Ferenczy started painting in a naturalistic style, as he had been influenced by Jules Bastien-Lepage. Seeking more training, he took his young family with him to Munich in 1893, the art center of Central and Eastern Europe. They lived there until 1896. There he encountered Simon Hollósy, a Hungarian painter not much older than he, who ran free classes that were more open to new influences than those at the Munich Academy. Hollósy encouraged an appreciation of French painters and their techniques, including en plein air painting. Ferenczy met the young Hungarian artists István Réti and János Thorma in Hollosy's circle in Munich, and the men collaborated on their ideas. |
Returning to Hungary in 1896, Ferenczy joined Réti and Thorma at Nagybánya, and they persuaded Hollósy to bring his classes there. They founded an artists' colony in Nagybánya (today Baia Mare, Romania) where they taught and mentored many Hungarian artists. Even in the first years, Ferenczy had a studio in Budapest during the winter, which he maintained throughout his career. |
Ferenczy's first exhibit in 1903 in Budapest marked his entry into making a living as an artist. In 1906, the painter was offered a teaching position at the Hungarian Royal Drawing School, now the Hungarian University of Fine Arts. He returned to Nagybanya in summers to teach, and has been strongly associated with the colony. |
His studio paintings were most important to his art, and he painted a traditional array of genres: nudes, still lifes, the urban scenes of circus performers. By his own work and his teaching, Ferenczy is considered the "father of Hungarian impressionism and post-impressionism" and the "founder of modern Hungarian painting." |
In his later years, Ferenczy painted subjects ranging from portraits, to nudes, and Biblical scenes. In this period, "[t]he reconciliation of the abstract aesthetic ideal with sensual beauty became a central concern of his art." |
Ferenczy was highly productive, and he worked in a variety of materials and genres. In November 2011, a major retrospective exhibition opened for six months at the Hungarian National Gallery, featuring nearly 150 paintings and 80 prints and drawings, together with about 50 documents (photographs, letters, catalogues and books) related to his art and life. It was the first major exhibit of his work in nearly a century. The works were drawn from private holdings as well as public collections. |
Exhibits |
2011, The Retrospective Exhibition of Károly Ferenczy (1862–1917), 30 November 2011 – 17 June 2012, Hungarian National Gallery. |
2009, "Munich in Hungarian, Hungarian Artists in Munich 1850–1914, 2 Oct. 2009 – Jan. 2010", Hungarian National Gallery. |
1991–1992, Standing in the Storm: The Hungarian Avant-Garde from 1908–1930, Santa Barbara Museum of Art, Santa Barbara, California. |
1966, The Art of Nagybánya. Centennial Exhibition in Celebration of the Artists' Colony in Nagybánya. |
Legacy and honours |
1972, the Ferenczy Museum was founded in Szentendre, to honour all the artists in the family, an effort led by his daughter-in-law Erszi Ferenczy, widow of Béni (it is now named the Ferenczy Károly Múzeum, after the most prominent member). |
1993, the Ferenczy Family Foundation was set up by Erszi Ferenczy to preserve the works of the family and educate people about them. |
Gallery |
Notes |
Further reading |
Boros, Judit, “Kép és Érósz – Ferenczy Károly utolsó festői korszaka [Image and Eros: The Last Period of Károly Ferenczy's Art],” Ferenczy Károly (1862-1917) gyűjteményes kiállítása [The Retrospective Exhibition of Károly Ferenczy], eds. Judit Boros and Edit Plesznivy, Budapest: Hungarian National Gallery, 2011, pp. 49–66. [summary in English: p. 67.] |
External links |
Works by Károly Ferenczy |
Lambert Lombard (French pronunciation: [lɑ̃bɛʁ lɔ̃baʁ]; c. 1505 – August 1566) was a Renaissance painter, architect and theorist for the Prince-Bishopric of Liège. During his career he worked for Jan Gossaert in Middelburg and trained Frans Floris. |
Biography |
Lombard was born in Liège, where in 1532 he became court painter and architect. A few paintings and many drawings have been preserved. |
In 1537, he was sent to Rome by Érard de La Marck, prince-bishop of Liège, to buy works of art, and he discovered the wonders of the Italian Renaissance. On his return he brought not only works of art, but also the new ideas concerning art and the position of the artist, to Liège. |
His pupils were Frans Floris, Hendrick Goltzius, Willem Key, Dominicus Lampsonius, Jean Ramey, and Lambert Zutman. |
Dominicus Lampsonius wrote a biography of Lombard, The Life of Lambert Lombard. |
References |
External links |
Media related to Lambert Lombard at Wikimedia Commons |
(in French) 2006 Lambert Lombard exposition |
Lombard at World Wide Arts Resources |
The Life of Lambert Lombard by Domenicus Lampsonius, original latin version (1565) on Google Books |
Pieter Bruegel the Elder: Drawings and Prints, a full text exhibition catalog from The Metropolitan Museum of Art, which includes material on Lambert Lombard (see index) |
The engravings of Giorgio Ghisi, a full text exhibition catalog from The Metropolitan Museum of Art, which contains material on Lambert Lombard (see index) |
Oger, Cécile; Allart, Dominique (2006). "La copie chez Lambert Lombard: Procédés et fonctions". In Verougstraete, Hélène; Couvert, Jacqueline; Schoute, Roger Van; Dubois, Anne (eds.). La peinture ancienne et ses procédés: copies, répliques, pastiches (in French). Peeters. pp. 249ff. ISBN 978-9-042-91776-7. |
Lavinia Fontana (24 August 1552–11 August 1614) was an Italian Mannerist painter active in Bologna and Rome. She is best known for her successful portraiture, but also worked in the genres of mythology and religious painting. She was trained by her father, Prospero Fontana. She is regarded as the first female career artist in Western Europe, as she relied on commissions for her income. Her family relied on her career as a painter, and her husband served as her agent and raised their 11 children. She was perhaps the first female artist to paint female nudes, but this is a topic of controversy among art historians. |
Biography |
Education and career in Bologna |
Lavinia Fontana was born in Bologna in 1552 to Antonia de' Bonardis and Prospero Fontana. She was baptized on 24 August 1552, at the cathedral of San Pietro. Her elder sister Emilia died in 1568 when Lavinia was sixteen. Prospero was a prominent painter of the School of Bologna and served as her teacher. Caroline P. Murphy suspects that financial issues may have prompted Prospero to train Lavinia as a painter. She later studied under the Netherlandish artist Denis Calvaert, who had once been a pupil of Prospero and who ran an influential painting school in Bologna. |
Her earliest known work, Child of the Monkey, was painted in 1575 at the age of 23. Though this work is now lost, another early painting, Christ with the Symbols of the Passion, painted in 1576, is now in the El Paso Museum of Art. |
Being the daughter of a painter allowed Fontana to become an artist in a time where female artists were not widely accepted, and Bolognese society at large was supportive of Fontana's artistic career, providing opportunities and connections that were not available to women in other locales. She began her commercial practice by painting small devotional paintings on copper, which had popular appeal as papal and diplomatic gifts, given the value and lustre of the metal. |
Fontana married the Count of Imola, Gian Paolo Zappi, (alternate spellings include Giovan and Fappi), one of her father’s pupils, in June 1577. Unusual for the time, their marriage contract specified that she would continue her career and would not be responsible for housekeeping. Instead of offering a dowry as would have been widely accepted in this time, Fontana painted to earn an income. The couple moved into Prospero's house in Bologna and Lavinia added Zappi to her signature. She gave birth to 11 children, though only 3 outlived her: Flaminio, Orazio, and Prospero. Zappi took care of the household and served as an agent and painting assistant to his wife, including painting minor elements of paintings such as draperies. Fontana attended classes at the University of Bologna, and was listed as one of the city's Donne addottrinate (women with doctorates) in 1580. |
In the 1580s, she gained renown as a portraitist of Bolognese noblewomen, who competed for her services. The high demand for portraits painted by Fontana was reflected in the large sums of money she earned during this period. Her relationships with female clients were often unusually warm; multiple women who sat for portraits, such as the Duchess of Sora Constanza Sforza Boncompagni, later served as namesakes or godmothers for Fontana's children. |
Roman period (1603-14) |
Fontana and her family moved to Rome in 1604 at the invitation of Pope Clement VIII. She gained the patronage of the Buoncompagni, of which Pope Gregory XIII was a member. She was subsequently appointed as Portraitist in Ordinary at the Vatican. Fontana thrived in Rome as she had in Bologna and Pope Paul V was among her sitters. |
Along with portraits, Fontana created a substantial number of extensive altar pieces, and it is believed that she may be one of the first female painters to have done this. Fontana followed Paleotti’s Counter-Reformation principles in art theory. In 1593, Cardinal Gabriele Paleotti commissioned the Assumption of the Virgin, created by Fontana for the chapel altarpiece of the church of San Pietro in Bologna. Fontana painted another Assumption of the Virgin in 1593 at the church of San Francesco Oltre Reno at Pieve di Cento, which was commissioned by the Bentivoglio family and placed in the family chapel. Fontana was also commissioned for works by two popes, Gregory XIII and Clement VIII. |
Fontana also produced paintings on mythological allegorical themes, sometimes "highly sensuous paintings with female nude figures—an unheard-of and risky venture which to date no female artist had permitted herself to attempt. Her last painting, Minerva Dressing (1613), was a true masterpiece." |
She was the first female elected into the Accademia di San Luca of Rome, and was the recipient of numerous honors, including a bronze portrait medallion cast in 1611 by sculptor and architect Felice Antonio Casoni. According to Jean Owens Schaefer, the reverse side of the medal depicts Pittura, an allegorical figure representing painting. He also posits that this is the first visual rendition of Cesare Ripa's 1603 description of Pittura. |
She died in the city of Rome on 11 August 1614, at the age of 61, and was buried at Santa Maria sopra Minerva. |
Artistic influences, style |
Fontana's youthful style resembled that of her father, Prospero. As a student of Ludovico Carracci, she gradually adopted the Carracciesque style, with strong quasi-Venetian coloring. |
Sofonisba Anguissola, Caterina Vigri, and Properzia de' Rossi may have influenced Fontana's artistic career. |
The Counter-Reformation and the Council of Trent's recommendations for religious art defined Fontana's treatment of subjects and themes in her paintings. Excellent status as a daughter, wife, and mother was a prerequisite to her career due to the moral standards of the day. Demand for portraits of family and children rose due to the Roman Catholic Church's emphasis on family values. |
The influence of Mannerism is noticeable in Fontana's close attention to detail in her paintings and the significance of the materials surrounding the subject. Her close attention to detail displayed the wealth of the sitter, which made her popular among the rich. |
Fontana's self-portraiture strikes a balance between presenting the artist as a distinguished lady and as a professional artist. This depiction of two coexisting roles was common for sixteenth-century women artists. |
Legacy |
Fontana has been called "the most significant and prolific female artist of the 16th century." |
Fontana's Self-Portrait at the Virginal with a Servant is considered to be her masterpiece. It was painted as a betrothal gift to the Zappi family as evidenced by the Latin inscription in which Fontana describes herself as a virgin and states that she painted while looking at herself in a mirror, a testament to the accuracy of the depiction. (Lavinia Virgo Prosperi Fontane/Filia Ex Speculo Imaginem/Oris Sui Expressit Anno/MDLXXVII.) |
Over 100 works by Fontana are documented, but only 32 signed and dated works are known today. Twenty-five more works have been attributed to her, making hers the largest oeuvre for any female artist prior to 1700. Some of her portraits were once wrongly attributed to her contemporary Guido Reni, another pupil of Denis Calvaert. |
Fontana's mythology paintings with nude figures are being increasingly studied by art historians. Roman gods such as Minerva, Mars, and Venus are depicted in various forms of undress in these paintings. There is little or no evidence that contemporary women artists depicted nude figures in such a way. It has been said that Fontana's depictions of mythology may be the first involvement of a female artist in the genre. Fontana "excelled in composing a new theme for female painters of her time to follow, that is, the depiction of mythological subjects, in particular the portrayal of nude female figures, as seen in her nude Minervas and Venuses. Fontana’s new genre paved the way for Artemisia Gentileschi’s depictions of female nudes in the seventeenth century. |
Fontana is immortalized as the subject of Portrait of a Woman (1595) by Paolo Veronese. She was the only woman artist featured in Giulio Mancini's Considerazioni sulla pittura (Considerations on Painting). The naturalism of her paintings is highly praised and the beauty of her paintings is linked to her own physical attractiveness. |
Fontana influenced Alberto de' Rossi and Alessandro Tiarini. Aurelio Bonelli may have studied under her. |
Controversy |
Nudity |
Among art historians, there is a controversy regarding the means and models used by Fontanta to depict male and female nudes in her paintings. Fontana had studied her father's collection of sculptures and paster casts, but Liana De Girolami Cheney argues that the naturalism of the figures may indicate that Fontana used live nude models. Caroline P. Murphy argues that while body parts are well rendered, the figures as a whole are disproportionate, similar to Prospero's rendering of human anatomy. Additionally, Murphy points out that during Fontana's lifetime, it was socially unacceptable for women to be exposed to nudity; if it was discovered that she used live nude models, her reputation would be tarnished. Murphy suggests that, like Sofonisba Anguissola, Fontana had family members model for her. Linda Nochlin writes that art academies barred women from viewing any nude body, despite this being a crucial part of an artist's training. |
In museums |
Self-Portrait at the Virginal with a Servant, 1577 – Accademia Nazionale di San Luca, Rome |
Portrait of a Noblewoman, c. 1580 – National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington, D.C. |
Portrait of a Couple, 1580–1585 – Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland |
The Dead Christ with Symbols, 1581 – Cornell Fine Arts Museum, Winter Park, Florida |
Newborn Baby in a Crib c. 1583 – Pinacoteca Nazionale di Bologna |
Portrait of the Gozzadini Family, 1584 – Pinacoteca Nazionale di Bologna |
Portrait of Gerolamo Mercuriale, c. 1587–1590 – Walters Art Museum, Baltimore |
Holy Family, 1589 – El Escorial, Outside Madrid |
Portrait of a Lady with Lap Dog, c. 1595 – Walters Art Museum, Baltimore |
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