Ford Madox Brown was a Victorian painter who is often mentioned or included in books and articles on the Pre-Raphaelites.

Though he was lifelong friends with Dante Gabriel Rossetti, the leader of the Pre-aphaelite Brotherhood, and was philosophically in keeping with many of their ideals and artistic aims, he was never actually a member of the Brotherhood. He got on less well, evidently, with other members William Holman Hunt and John Everett Millais.

Brown’s artistic predilections came largely from the influence of the Nazarenes, a group of German painters, including Johann Overbeck and Peter von Cornelius, who were established prior to the Pre-Raphaelites and who shared many characteristics with them in style and artistic philosophy.

Brown was in opposition to the Royal Academy, which dictated artistic acceptance in England at the time, and was one of the first painters to mount one-man exhibitions. Rossetti was actually a student of Brown’s for a short time, but quickly changed to study under William Holman Hunt. It seemed to have little effect on their friendship.

Brown’s most renowned painting, Work (image above, top, larger version here, detail here), is notable for it’s detail and technique, but to my mind is weighted down with its ambitious attempt to essentially represent all aspects of life in Victorian England. The subjects within the painting and its historical context are fascinating, though. The city of Manchester Art Gallery has an interesting interactive, aimed at grade schoolers, that examines some of the social aspects the painting.

One of the notable characteristics of Work is that it was painted in part on location, an unusual practice particularly for work of this kind. The painting took thirteen years to finish.

It was also in Manchester that Brown completed the series of murals that would be the major achievement of his later career (many are viewable on Wikimedia Commons).

Another notable painting of Brown’s was The Last of England, showing a family forced to leave the difficult conditions in England in search of a life elsewhere, a situation facing Brown himself until sale of the painting kept him afloat.

A notable earlier work is The Pretty Baa-Lambs (image above, middle with detail, bottom, large version here), which is mentioned as a pre-Pre-Raphaelaite work (if you’ll excuse the expression), debuting in 1852 and painted on a white ground, instead of the customary browns, for unusual vibrancy of color. The same painting is sometimes mentioned as a precursor to Impressionism as well, in that it was painted largely on location and with an uncanny fidelity to the look of natural daylight.

Andrea Mantegna was an influential Itallian Renaissance painter and engraver who was noted for his monumental, almost sculptural, figures, his command of perspective and his unusual, often visceral, portrayals of Biblical events.

Mantegna was apprenticed at the age of 10 to Francesco Squarcione, who also legally adopted him. At the age of 17, he had advanced far enough to establish his own studio and declare his independence from Squarcione, who he accused of exploiting his abilities.

Roman sculpture was being collected in Padua during Mantegna’s time there, and the influence of those sculptors, as well as contemporary sculptors like Donatello, is evident in the sculptural (some would say stiff) qualities of his figures.

Mantegna married Nicolosia Bellini, daughter of Jacopo Bellini, one of the key figures in early Renaissance art, and brother of painters Gentile and Giovanni Bellini. Mantegna had a working relationship with Giovanni, and you can see the influence of his masterful command of landsacpe in the rocky intricate detail of the landscapes in Mantegna’s Biblical scenes (see my post on Giovanni Bellini).

Mantegna worked on monumental sized works as well as smaller, more intimate works, and was fascinated with experimental perspective and elements of architecture.

One of his most renowned pieces is La Camera degli Sposi (The Wedding Chamber) of the Mantua Palazzo; a “camera picta” (painted room), covered with illusionistic frescoes. This included his famous example of “di sotto in sú”, or illusionistic ceiling painting, depicting a false oculus in the ceiling, through which cherubs, servants and a peacock lean over a balustrade, peering down at the viewer; rendered in trompe l’oeil realism and dramatically foreshortened perspective (image above, top); the first example of this kind of ceiling effect. I love the underside of the seemingly precariously placed urn and the cherubs poking their heads through the balustrade. The perspective rendering of the geometric elements of the balustrade is astonishing.

One of his other works that incorporated illusionistic perspective and his fascination with architectural elements is his striking grand altar-piece for the Basillica di San Zeno in Verona (supposedly the setting for the marriage of Romeo and Juliet in Shakespeare’s play). Mantegna’s work for this featured a polyptych (multiple paneled painting) depicting Mary and Child in the central panel, flanked by scenes of disciples and saints, with scenes below of the prayer at the Mount of Olives, the Crucifixion and the Resurrection (image above, middle and bottom).

The upper panels, in particular, break the paradigm of such altarpieces in that the top three scenes, though depicting separate events, are joined into one by a common background. The architectural elements are rendered in dramatic perspective and with great attention to realistic texture, an effect heightened by trompe l’oeil garlands of fruit seeming to hang between the actual carved pillars on the face of the altarpiece.

Mantegna has pulled out the stops here, and used the almost magical ability of the newly popular medium of oil paint to render his subjects with extraordinary detail.

He continued to render his paintings in this kind of canvas-wide pinpoint focus, even as Leonardo and Giovanni Bellini began to move Renaissance painting toward more atmospheric effects of tonal color and sfumato.

The Louvre in Paris, which has the largest collection of Mantegna’s works outside of Italy, has mounted a major retrospective of his work. Simply titled Mantegna (1431-1506), the show contains over 190 works and and runs until January 5, 2009.

[Exhibition link via Art Knowledge News]