Titian was a leading artist of the Italian Renaissance who painted works for Pope Paul III, King Philip II of Spain and Holy Roman Emperor Charles V.
Sir Peter Paul Rubens was a Flemish Baroque painter. A proponent of an extravagant Baroque style that emphasized movement, colour, and sensuality, Rubens is well known for his Counter-Reformation altarpieces, portraits, landscapes, and history paintings of mythological and allegorical subjects. Rubens is considered by many to be the very best among the Old Masters.
Peter Candid, also known as Peter de Witte the Elder (other name variations: Peter de Wit, Pieter de Witte, Peter Candido, Pietro Candido) (c. 1548 – 1628) was a Flemish-born Mannerist painter, tapestry designer and draughtsman active in Italy and Bavaria where he worked for many courts.
For those who know Tiepolo only as a decorative artist—genial magician who casts an enchanted and enchanting spell with his poetic tales culled from Ariosto and Tasso—the seriousness of his religious painting will come as a revelation. Not since Titian and Tintoretto had Venice seen a talent for transforming the laconic stories of the Bible and of the saints into a dramatic narrative. The richness and diversity of Tiepolo's imagination have long seemed to many the most modern aspect of his genius, and the last section of this exhibition has been conceived as a celebration of these traits.
Giovanni Battista Tiepolo, also known as Gianbattista or Giambattista Tiepolo, was an Italian painter and printmaker from the Republic of Venice. He was prolific, and is considered to be among the traditional great Old Masters of that period. Successful from the beginning of his career, he has been described by Michael Levey as "the greatest decorative painter of eighteenth-century Europe, as well as its most able craftsman."
Paul Troger (30 October 1698 – 20 July 1762) was an Austrian painter, draughtsman and printmaker of the late Baroque period. Troger's illusionistic ceiling paintings in fresco are notable for their dramatic vitality of movement and their palette of light colors. Paul Troger’s style, particularly in his frescoes, dominated Austrian painting until the end of the 18th century and profoundly influenced significant artists of the next generation, notably Franz Anton Maulbertsch, Josef Ignaz Mildorfer, Johann Wenzel Bergl and Johann Lucas Kracker.
An exceptional early work by Peter Paul Rubens, Lot and His Daughters, led Christie’s Old Master and British Paintings Evening Sale on 7 July, realising £44,882,500 /$58,167,720 after an intense battle between four bidders which lasted for an electrifying 14 minutes.
