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He was an apprentice in the workshop of Adam van Noort, who was also the master of other prominent Antwerp painters such as Peter Paul Rubens, Jacob Jordaens and Hendrick van Balen. It is believed that after finishing his apprenticeship, the artist visited Italy as he only became a master of the Antwerp Guild of Saint... |
He commenced his career in Antwerp and gained the recognition of his fellow artists. He was particularly esteemed as a painter of battle scenes and Peter Paul Rubens is known to have owned a battle scene by the artist. |
In 1610 he was invited to join the elite Confrerie of Romanists, a society of Antwerp humanists and artists. A condition of admission was that the member had travelled to Rome. The diversity and high positions held by the Confrerie's membership offered him a good opportunity to meet with potential patrons. He was ele... |
Vrancx was a member of the chamber of rhetoric the Violieren, which was linked to the Guild of Saint Luke. He was very active in the chamber of rhetoric and when he served as its factor he wrote about 13 comedies and a number of poems. Vrancx collaborated with Jan Brueghel the Younger, Hendrick van Balen and Frans Fran... |
Vrancx met with personal tragedy when his wife and sole child Barbara died a few months from each other in 1639. He himself died on 19 May 1647 in Antwerp. |
The pupils of Vrancx included Peter Snayers who became a leading battle painter and Balthasar Courtois, whose work is virtually unknown. There is no clear view of the size of Vrancx' studio. In a letter of 1634, Jan Brueghel the Younger wrote to his business partner in Seville that: 'Vrancx has plenty to do but refuses... |
Work |
Sebastiaen Vrancx is now mainly known for his battle scenes, this was possibly inspired by him being a member of the citizens guard and the fencers guild since 1613. His subject matter was, however, much wider than solely battle scenes. He painted landscapes with mythological and religious scenes, allegories of the se... |
He is also known for a series of drawings depicting scenes from Virgil's Aeneid. He also produced designs for the Antwerp printmakers and publishers. |
War artist |
Sebastiaen Vrancx was probably the first artist in the Northern or Southern Netherlands who created depictions of battle scenes. His experience as an officer and captain of the Antwerp civil militia may have played a role in his interest in developing this genre. Approximately half of his known works are devoted to mi... |
His first-hand experience in military matters likely inspired his treatment of the subject and supported his skill in the depiction of cavalry engagements and battles of the Eighty Years' War. Vrancx became a very influential figure in the development of this subject matter. |
From the period 1611–25, his style had developed so that his landscapes and the figures in them showed the clear-cut and determined handling of form characteristic of his mature style. He achieved greater control of the representation of space and of large and more complex groups of figures. In his mature later period ... |
One of the subjects to which he returned regularly was that of the Battle between Lekkerbeetje and de Bréauté on the Heath of Vught. The subject took its inspiration from an event that occurred on 5 February 1600 when an overly-confident young French commander by the name of Pierre de Bréauté was challenged to a duel b... |
A subject matter closely related to the military scenes are his scenes of assaults by robbers on travelers and of soldiers plundering villages. An example is the Attack of Robbers (the Hermitage Museum). The picture narrates a scene of travellers on horses attempting to ward off an attack of robbers. Many of his scen... |
Vrancx had various followers in the southern Netherlands including Pieter Meulener, Jacques van der Wijen and Adam Frans van der Meulen, who was a pupil of Peter Snayers (a pupil of Vrancx) and later moved to France. In the northern Netherlands Vrancx's influence can be seen clearly in the work of Esaias van de Velde a... |
The four seasons |
Vrancx created various series of paintings representing the Four Seasons or the Months of the Year. In these allegorical pictures each month or season is characterized by the varying phases of the landscape and the associated human activities. These paintings were very popular in Flemish painting in the late 16th and... |
In a set of the Four Seasons (auctioned at Christie's on 9 July 2015, London, lot 28) Sebastiaen Vrancx incorporated a number of stock motifs and charming details into the landscapes to represent the seasons. Spring shows an elegant boating party engaged in courtly love and peasants tending gardens, herding sheep and b... |
Genre paintings |
Sebastiaen Vrancx started his career in Italy by painting Mannerist cabinet-sized Biblical scenes that are reminiscent of Paul Bril and Jan Brueghel the Elder. After returning to his home country he turned to genre subjects. He created a number of village and city scenes. Some scenes depicted masked persons and may ... |
He also painted the composition Uniformed monkeys and cats which falls into the genre of the singerie, which shows representations of monkeys engaging in human activities. In this genre the monkeys were often dressed in costumes which added comedy to the 'aping' by the monkeys of a specific human action (often vices) o... |
Architectural painting |
Vrancx collaborated with the architectural painter Pieter Neefs the Elder. He added staffage to Neefs' church interiors. An example is the Interior of the Jesuit church of Antwerp (Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna). Neefs is considered to be a representative of the Antwerp school of architectural painting. Typical fo... |
Vrancx produced himself architectural paintings of church interiors. An example is the Interior of the Saint James Church in Antwerp (at Christie's on 14 April 2016, New York lot 108). Vrancx' composition depicts the lofty, light-filled interior of the Saint James Church in Antwerp, where a priest is giving a sermon t... |
Collaborations |
He worked with a number of other painters in Antwerp, such as Jan Brueghel the Elder, Jan Brueghel the Younger, David Vinckboons, Rubens, Frans Francken the Younger, van Balen, Frans Snyders and Joos de Momper the Younger. An example of a collaboration with Jan Brueghel the Elder is Assault on a Convoy (Kunsthistorisc... |
Drawings |
A series of 65 drawings recounting incidents in the Aeneid have been attributed to Sebastiaen Vrancx. Of these, 59 were part of a private collection until they were auctioned off at Drouot, Paris on 9 October 1981. Some of these drawings are now in the collection of major museums, including the Plantin-Moretus Museum, ... |
The drawings are dated to around 1615, or possibly a later date, about 1625–1630. Most of the scenes represented occupy the upper half of the sheet, the lower half being reserved for the text from the Aeneid. The upper part has been cut off in some drawings leaving only the illustration. Whatever the case, the differe... |
In the Aeneid cycle drawings, Vrancx did not individualise the facial features. It is only through the actions in which the figures are involved that it is possible to identify them. Vrancx used short, angular strokes to outline the main elements in each scene. |
Notes |
External links |
Media related to Sebastiaen Vrancx at Wikimedia Commons |
Sebastiano Ricci (1 August 1659 – 15 May 1734) was an Italian Baroque painter of the late Baroque period in Venetian painting. About the same age as Piazzetta, and an elder contemporary of Tiepolo, he represents a late version of the vigorous and luminous Cortonesque style of grand manner fresco painting. |
He was the uncle of Marco Ricci (1676 – 1730), who trained with him, and became an innovator in landscape painting. |
Early years |
He was born in Belluno, the son of Andreana and Livio Ricci. In 1671, he was apprenticed to Federico Cervelli of Venice. Others claim Ricci's first master was Sebastiano Mazzoni. Indiscretion at a young age in 1678 resulted in an unintended pregnancy and, later, a bigger scandal when Ricci was charged with trying to po... |
Following his release he moved to Bologna, where he lived near the Parish of San Michele del Mercato. His painting style there was apparently influenced by Giovanni Gioseffo dal Sole. On 28 September 1682 he was contracted by the "Fraternity of Saint John of Florence" to paint a Decapitation of John the Baptist for the... |
On 9 December 1685, the Count of San Secondo near Parma commissioned the decoration of the Oratorio della Beata Vergine del Serraglio, which Ricci completed in collaboration of Ferdinando Galli-Bibiena by October 1687, receiving a payment of 4,482 Lira. In 1686, the Duke Ranuccio II Farnese of Parma commissioned a Piet... |
Turin and return to Venice |
Apparently in 1688, Ricci abandoned his wife and daughter, and fled from Bologna to Turin with Magdalen, the daughter of the painter Giovanni Peruzzini. He was again imprisoned, and nearly executed, but was eventually freed by the intercession of the Duke of Parma. The duke employed him and assigned him a monthly salar... |
The death of the Duke Ranuccio in December, 1694, who was also his protector, forced Ricci to abandon Rome for Milan, where by November 1695 he completed frescoes in the Ossuary Chapel of the Church of San Bernardino dei Morti. On 22 June 1697, the Count Giacomo Durini hired him to paint in the Cathedral of Monza. |
In 1698, he returned to the Venetian republic for a decade. By 24 August 1700, he had frescoed the chapel of the Santissimo Sacramento in the church of Santa Giustina of Padua. In 1701, the Venetian geographer Vincenzo Coronelli commissioned a canvas of the Ascension that was inserted into the ceiling of sacristy of th... |
In Venice in 1704 he executed a canvas of San Procolo (Saint Proculus) for the Dome of Bergamo and a Crucifixion for the Florentine church of San Francisco de Macci. |
Florentine frescoes |
In the summer of 1706, he traveled to Florence, where he completed a work that is by many considered his masterpieces. During his Florentine stay he first completed a large fresco series on allegorical and mythological themes for the now-called Marucelli-Fenzi or Palazzo Fenzi (now housing departments of University of ... |
In 1708 he returned to Venice, completing a Madonna with the Child for San Giorgio Maggiore. In 1711, now painting alongside his nephew, Marco Ricci, he painted two canvases: Esther to Assuero and Moses saved from the Nile, for the Taverna Palace. |
London and Paris |
He ultimately accepted foreign patronage in London, when he was provided a £770 commission by Lord Burlington for eight canvases, to be completed by him and his nephew Marco, depicting mythological frolics: Cupid and Jove, Bacchus meets Ariadne, Diana and Nymphs, Bacchus and Ariadne, Venus and Cupid, Diane and Endymion... |
He decorated the chapel at Bulstrode House near Gerrards Cross for Henry Bentinck, 1st Duke of Portland with a cycle of wall-paintings depicting scenes from the life of Christ. George Vertue described the scheme as "a Noble free invention. great force of lights and shade, with variety & freedom, in the composition of t... |
By the end of 1716, with his nephew, he left England for Paris, where he met Watteau, and submitted his Triumph of the Wisdom over Ignorance in order to gain admission to the Royal French Academy of Painting and Sculpture, which was granted on 18 May 1718. He returned to Venice in 1718 a wealthy man, and bought comfort... |
In 1722 he was one of twelve artists commissioned to contribute a painting on canvas of one of the apostles as part of a decorative scheme at the church of St Stae in Venice. The other artists involved included Tiepolo, Piazetti, and Pellegrini. |
Last years |
From 1724 to 1729, Ricci worked intensely for the Royal House of Savoy in Turin. In 1724 he painted the Rejection of Agar and the Silenus adores the Idols, in 1725, the Madonna in Gloria, in Turin in 1726, he completed Susanna presented to Daniel and Moses causes water to gush from the rock. In October 1727 he was adm... |
Ricci's style developed a following among other Venetian artists, influencing Francesco Polazzo, Gaspare Diziani, Francesco Migliori, Gaetano Zompini, and Francesco Fontebasso (1709–1769). |
He died in Venice on 15 May 1734. |
Veronese copies |
Ricci made many copies from the works of Paolo Veronese, both of individual heads and of whole compositions. Some of these copies of heads were bought by George III. The king also bought a painting of the Finding of Moses which his agent, Joseph Smith, claimed was a Veronese, although this too had been painted by Ric... |
Critical assessments |
"Ricci, leaning at first on the example of splendid art of the Veronese, made a new ideal prevail, one of clear and rich coloristic beauty: in this he paved the way for Tiepolo. The painting of figures of the Roccoco to Venice remains incomprehensible in its evolution without Ricci... Tiepolo germinated the work starte... |
"He is the master of a resurrected-fifteenth century style, whose painterly features are enriched with nervous express and, typically 17th century" (Rudolf Wittkower). Wittkower in his Anthology, contrasts the facile luminous style of Ricci with the darker, more emotional intense painting of Piazzetta. Like Tiepolo, Ri... |
"We perceive in him that synthesis of the baroque decorativeness and individualized and substantial painting, that we will see later again in Tiepolo. On one side the influence of Cortona, directed and indirect, and on the other the observant painting of the hermit Magnasco; more intense, substantial and freed academi... |
"At the start of the Baroque..Venetians remained isolated from the outside…from the great ideas of the baroque painting… The Ricci are the first traveling Venetian painters... and succeed to inaugurate the so-called roccoco rooms of Pitti and Marucelli palaces."(Roberto Longhi). |
Ricci "brought back in the Venetian tradition a wealth of chromatic expression resolved in a new vibrating brilliance brightness…by means of the intelligent interpretation of the Veronese chromatics and of the brushstrokes of a Magnasco-like touch, from the 16th century impediments, he takes unfashionable positions ag... |
"Venice, still more than Naples, collects the Ricci inheritance of the prodigioso trade of Luca Giordano... Sebastiano throws again it, widens he then, refines it for the school of Sebastiano Mazzoni "(Argan) |
Works/Gallery |
Portrait of a Bishop, Landesmuseum Ferdinandeum, Insbruck |
Mercy (1686), New Church of the Capuchins, Parma |
Frescoes in collaboration with Bibiena, (1687) Sacristy of the Fallen in Church of Santo Segundo, Parma |
History and Apotheosis of Paul III (1687–1688), Farnese Palace, now Pinacoteca Civica, Piacenza |
Guardian Angel (1694), Chiesa del Carmine, Pavia |
Frescoes (1695), Church of San Bernardino alle Ossa, Milan |
Ecstasy of St Francis (ca 1695–96), Tweed Museum of Art, Duluth, Minnesota |
Last Supper (ca 1720), Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Texas |
Frescoes(1697), Duomo of Monza |
Communion of St Maria Egiziaca (1698), Archconfraternity of the Duomo of the Santa Sindone, Milan |
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