17 Works, November 26th. is Giuseppe Bezzuolis day, his art, illustrated with footnotes #242

Giuseppe Bezzuoli (Firenze 1784 – 1855)
Entry of Charles VIII into Florence, c. 1829
Oil on canvas
390 x 596 cm
Pitti Palace

The painting depicts a scene from Florentine history. On the 17th of November 1494, following his conquest of the Kingdom of Naples, King of France Charles VIII made his entrance into Florence as ruler. Because of his isolation and lack of allies, Piero de’ Medici, the son of Lorenzo the Magnificent who ruled the city at the time, did not send an army to stop the invasion, thus fuelling the resentment of the Florentine people who finally forced him into exile…

Giuseppe Bezzuoli (28 November 1784–13 September 1855) was an Italian painter of the Neoclassic period, active in Milan, Rome, and his native city of Florence.

He studied as a young man under Jean-Baptiste Desmarais at the Academy of Fine Arts of Florence, and afterward spent some time at Rome between 1813 and 1820. He became a candidate to the professorship of painting at the Academy of Fine Arts of Florence after Pietro Benvenuti’s death in 1844…

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10 Works, Today, June 13th. is Jan Victors’ day, his story, illustrated with footnotes #161

Jan Victors (Dutch, 1619 – after 1676)
The Angel Taking Leave of Tobit and His Family, c. 1649
Oil on canvas
104.1 × 131.8 cm (41 × 51 7/8 in.)
Getty Center

After curing Tobit’s blindness, returning the family’s wealth, and making it possible for Tobit’s son Tobias to marry his beloved Sarah, the Archangel Raphael has dropped his disguise and revealed himself as an angel, saying, “I was not acting on my own will, but by the will of God.” Such a scene of miraculous intervention was especially attractive to Protestants in Holland, who believed in doctrines of faith, mercy, and divine grace.

Jan Victors took his subject from the Book of Tobit, among the Apocrypha in the Old Testament. Borrowing elements from his teacher Rembrandt van Rijn’s 1637 rendition of the subject, Victors set his figures before and within an architectural setting and opened the composition to a clouded landscape on one side. Strong contrasts of light and dark and a foreshortened angel, flying away on a diagonal and viewed from the back, give the scene animation and urgency. Victors’s characteristically careful interpretation of surface details includes beautifully rendered highlights on the costumes and Tobias’s head. More on this painting

Jan Victors or Fictor (bapt. June 13, 1619 — December 1679) was a Dutch Golden Age painter mainly of history paintings of Biblical scenes, with some genre scenes. He may have been a pupil of Rembrandt. He probably died in the Dutch East Indies…

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