ROSSO FIORENTINO (GiovanniBattistadi
Jacopo di Gasparre)
Florence 1494-Paris 1540
Rosso Fiorentino, with his contemporary Pontormo, in-
troduced the Mannerist style into Florentine painting.
His youthful Assumption (1517; Florence, SS. Annun-
ziata) shows the influence of Andrea del Sarto and Fra
Bartolommeo. Rosso's style, however, became increas-
ingly idiosyncratic and dramatic. In the Deposition (1521;
Volterra, Pinacoteca) and Moses Defending the Daughters
of Jethro (1523; Florence, Uffizi), the dissonant colors,
distressed figures, and compositional ambiguities run
contrary to classical pictorial values. In 1523 Rosso
moved to Rome, where the influence of Raphael and Mi-
chelangelo predominated. Following the Sack of Rome
in 1527, Rosso continued his career in the provincial cities
of Tuscany and Umbria. After visiting Venice in 1530 , he
accepted Francis I's invitation to work at his court in Fon-
tainebleau. Rosso served as artistic director there from
1532 to 1537, adopting an appropriately sophisticated and
courtly style. A number of his late drawings were made
into prints.
THOMAS ROWLANDSON
London 1757-1827
The son of a textile merchant who went bankrupt, Row-
landson was raised by an uncle and aunt. He was admit-
ted to the Royal Academy in 1772 and made a study trip
to Paris around 1774. He first exhibited at the Royal
Academy in 1775 with a painting entitled Delilah Payeth
Sampson a'Visit in Prison at Gaza (lost), his only known
religious subject. During the early 17805 he probably vis-
ited Italy. His career reached a high point in 1784, when
he exhibited his great watercolor Vauxhall Gardens (Lon-
don, Victoria and Albert Museum) and also came to
prominence as a political caricaturist. From 1786 through
the early 17905 he traveled twice to the Continent and to
Brighton with his friend the magistrate and amateur car-
icaturist Henry Wigstead. During the late 17905 Row-
landson began his association with the fine-art publisher
Rudolph Ackermann, for whom he executed The Micro-
cosm of London (1808-1811), The Three Tours of Dr. Syn-
tax (1812-1821), and The English Dance of Death (1815-
1816). The large corpus of drawings by Rowlandson
provides a detailed pictorial account of everyday life in
Georgian England.PETER PAUL RUBENS
Siegen 1577-Antwerp 1640
The son of an Antwerp magistrate, Rubens spent the first
ten years of his life in Siegen and Cologne. After his fa-ther's death in 1587, he returned to Antwerp, where he
studied with Tobias Verhaeght, Adam van Noort, and
Otto van Veen, becoming a master in the Antwerp guild
of Saint Luke in 1598. Rubens left for Italy in 1600 and
entered an eight-year period of service with Vincenzo
Gonzaga in Mantua, which was interrupted by a diplo-
matic mission to Spain. In 1608 the artist returned to Ant-
werp, where he was made court painter to Archduke Al-
bert and Archduchess Isabella in 1609. He went on to
execute numerous commissions in that city during the
next decade, including the Raising of the Cross (1610; Ant-
werp, Notre Dame). Between 1622 and 1627 Rubens vis-
ited Paris several times in connection with a cycle of
paintings glorifying the reigns of Marie de Medicis and
her husband, King Henry IV (Paris, Louvre). In 1628 he
went to Madrid to promote a peace plan between the
Netherlands and Spain, and was appointed privy council
secretary of the Netherlands by King Philip IV. In 1629-
1630 Rubens was sent on a diplomatic mission to En-
gland, where he was knighted by King Charles I and re-
ceived the commission to execute the ceiling paintings of
the banqueting hall at Whitehall in London. In 1630 he
returned to Antwerp and married Helena Fourment. He
designed decorations for the triumphal entry into Ant-
werp of Cardinal Infant Ferdinand in 1634-1635. In 1635
Rubens purchased the chateau of Steen, the countryside
around which inspired some of his finest landscapes. Ru-
bens executed designs for a series of paintings to decorate
the Torre de la Parada, Philip IV s hunting lodge near Ma-
drid, in 1636-1638.JACOB VAN RUISDAEL
Haarlem circa 1628729-Amsterdam 1682
Jacob was the son and possibly the pupil of Isaack van
Ruisdael, a frame-maker. Although it is likely that he
studied with his uncle, the landscape painter Salomon
van Ruysdael, Jacob's initial style shows stronger influ-
ence from the work of Cornelis Vroom. An artist of pre-
cocious talent, van Ruisdael had produced accomplished
paintings, drawings, and etchings by 1646. During the
early 16505 he toured the hilly eastern border region be-
tween the Netherlands and Germany with the artist Ni-
colaes Berchem, and also visited the ruins of the castle of
Egmond near Alkmaar and the Portuguese Jewish cem-
etery at Oudekerk on the Amstel. Landscapes inspired by
these travels, such as The Castle ofBentheim (1653; Bles-
sington, Beit collection), show an increased heroic qual-
ity. By June 1657 van Ruisdael had moved to Amster-
dam, where he remained for the rest of his life, except
perhaps for a stay in Caen, where he may have received
a medical degree in 1676. His later works include ro-ARTISTS BIOGRAPHIES 351