Genre painting is a type of painting concerned with the realistic depiction of scenes from everyday life. Originally the term was applied to all paintings that were factual representations of nature (animals, fruit, and landscapes), as well as scenes of ordinary life, rather than to works of imagination, such as religious and historical paintings. Genre paintings deal with ordinary life, including family life, sports, street scenes, picnics, festivals, and tavern scenes. They are usually characterised by human interest and by the care and finish with which they are executed.
Genre painting originated in ancient times. Many of the scenes painted on the walls of Egyptian tombs represent the daily life of the people of ancient Egypt. Excavations in the ancient cities of Pompeii and Herculaneum have revealed many genre paintings, both conventional and erotic. In the late Middle Ages genre painting reappeared, represented chiefly in the religious calendars that formed part of the illuminations, or illustrations, of manuscript books; the calendars show people going about the occupations appropriate to each season of the year.
In Italy during the early Renaissance, many of the religious and historical pictures of such painters as the 15th-century Florentines Ghirlandaio and Benozzo Gozzoli and the later Venetians Giorgione and the Bassano family are considered genre paintings because of their contemporaneous backgrounds and costumes as well as their use of people of the times as models. In 17th- century Italy, Mannerist painters such as Caravaggio executed genre paintings of extreme realism and dramatic power. In the 15th century the Flemish painter Petrus Christus in some of his religious paintings represented scenes from ordinary life, and in the following two centuries genre painting rose to its highest level in history with the work of the Flemish artists Pieter Brueghel the Elder, David Teniers, and Adriaen Brouwer. The greatest national school of genre painting was that of the Netherlands in the 17th century. Probably never before or after was the ordinary life of a nation depicted so fully as was the Dutch life of this period. Not only the great masters but also the less outstanding Dutch painters excelled in it.
The most important of the Dutch genre painters were the so-called little masters, including Gerard Ter Borch, Jan Steen, Gabriel Metsu, Pieter de Hooch, Gerard Dou, and Adrian Van Ostade. The three leading 17th-century Dutch masters, Rembrandt, Frans Hals, and Jan Vermeer, also created genre paintings of unrivalled beauty. French genre painting showed a vital development in the work of Antoine Watteau, Nicolas Lancret, Jean Baptiste Chardin, and Jean Honore Fragonard. One of the most noted English genre painters was the great satirist William Hogarth. In the 19th century, genre painting was widely practised in both Europe and the USA Among the outstanding European painters in this style were the French painters Jean Leon Gerome and Jean Meissonier, the English painter William Powell Frith, and the American painter William Sidney Mount, known as the 'JanSteen of Long Island.' Among the many 19th- and 20th- century American painters whose work included genre painting were Robert Henri, John Sloan, George Wesley Bellows, George B Luks, Charles E Burchfield, Reginald Marsh, Grant Wood, and Thomas Hart Benton. Research Genre Painting
Ghirlandaio or Corradi Domenico was one of the older Florentine painters. He was born in 1450 at Florence and died in 1495. He was the son of a goldsmith known as Il Ghirlandaio (the garland-maker), from his skill in malting garlands. He was distinguished by his fertility of invention, a more natural rendering of life, and a more accurate perspective than his predecessors. Amongst his best works are the frescoes in the Sassetti Chapel of the TrinityChurch and in the choir of Santa Maria Novella at Florence, and the pictures in the Uffizi and the academy at Florence. Research Ghirlandaio
Michael Angelo Buonarotti was an Italian painter, sculptor, architect and poet. He was born in 1475 at Tuscany and died in 1563. He studied drawing under Domenico Ghirlandaio, and sculpture under Bertoldo at Florence, and having attracted the notice of Lorenzo de'Medici, was for several years an inmate of his household.
Having distinguished himself both in sculpture and painting, He was commissioned (together with Leonardo da Vinci) to decorate the senate-hall at Florence with a historical design, but before it was finished, in 1505, he was induced by Pope Julius II to settle in Rome. Here he sculptured the monument of the pontiff (there are seven statues belonging to it) now in the church of St Pietro in Vincoli; and painted the dome of the Sistine Chapel, his frescoes representing the creation and the principal events of sacredhistory.
In 1530 he took a leading part in the defence of Florence against Charles V. Three years later he began his great picture in the Sistine Chapel, the Last Judgment, which occupied him eight years. His last considerable works in painting were two large pictures: the Conversion of St Paul and the Crucifixion of St Peter in the Pauline Chapel.
In sculpture he executed the Descent of Christ from the Cross, four figures of one piece of marble. His statue of Bacchus was thought by Raphael to possess equal perfection with the masterpieces of Phidias and Praxiteles. As late as 1546 he was obliged to undertake the continuation of the building of St Peter's, and planned and built the dome, but he did not live long enough to see his plan finished, in which many alterations were made after his death. Besides this, he undertook the building of the Piazzadel Campidoglio (Capitol), of the Farnese Palace, and of many other edifices. His style in architecture is distinguished by grandeur and boldness, and in his ornaments the untamed character of his imagination frequently appears, preferring the uncommon to the simple and elegant. His poems, which he considered merely as pastimes, contain, likewise, convincing proofs of his great genius. His prose works consist of lectures, speeches, etc. Research Michael Buonarotti
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