Ádám Mányoki

Ádám Mányoki, “Self Portrait”, circa 1711, Oil on Canvas, 87 x 61.5 cm, Museum of Fine Arts, Hungarian National Gallery, Budapest

Born at the village of Szokolya in 1673, Ádám Mányoki was an Hungarian portraitist, one of the most prominent figures of Hungarian Baroque art. His work is known for its refined style and accomplished depiction of human emotion.

Born into the family of a rural Protestant preacher, Ádám Mányoki’s early life was one of hardship as the family struggled financially. Recognizing the family’s situation and Mányoki’s artistic talent, a German staff officer named Dölfer took the responsibility for Mányoki’s upbringing and education in Hamburg and Lüneburg. Exposed to the classical ideas of beauty and proportion, Mányoki developed his skills under court painter Andreas Scheits in Hamburg and painter Nicolas de Largillière of the Royal Academy of Painting and Sculpture in Paris. Both of these artists were acclaimed for their innovation within the Baroque tradition.

Mányoki’s formal education ended with a journey to Amsterdam where the Age of Enlightenment was flourishing. The Dutch Republic had a vibrant art scene with new ideas, literary salons, coffeehouses, and experiments with new techniques in the arts. Mányoki’s exposure to this atmosphere solidified his commitment to the art of portraiture as a means to capture the subtleties of human psychology. In 1703, he decided to relocate to Berlin where he secured patronage from King Frederick William I and established himself as a prominent member of the Prussian cultural elite. Mányoki painted several portraits of royal family members that were celebrated for their precision and sense of dignity.

After establishing his reputation in Germany, Ádám Mányoki traveled extensively in Europe seekings new opportunities. He traveled to both Prague and Vienna where he received commissions from Emperor Charles VI, ruler of the Austrian Habsburg monarchy, and Empress Maria Theresa, who ascended to the throne after Charles VI’s death. Mányoki’s travels expanded his knowledge of both European history and the diverse approaches to painting. Between 1724 and 1731, he remained in Hungary where he created portraits of the Hungarian nobility and members of the Podmanitzky family, an influential lineage that played a key role throughout Hungary’s history.

After leaving Hungary, Mányoki resided in Dresden and Leipzig. He received royal patronage from Augustus III, King of Poland and Grand Duke of Lithuania, and continued to paint works that were in keeping with the style of that era. Due to unresolved salary disputes, Mányoki resigned his position as court painter in 1753, an act which marked the end of his career. Ádám Mányoki died peacefully in Dresden, at the age of eighty-four, in August of 1757.

Notes: Ádám Mányoki painted his 1711 “Self Portrait” while he was residing in Berlin. Influences from his studies of seventeenth-century Dutch and Germany painting can be seen in its composition. Mányoki used a technique of self-portraiture that had been popular since Rembrandt; a soft velvet hat with an upturned rim that casts a warm, brown shadow over the upper half of the face. The choice of colors and some of the portrait’s formal details can be traced to the work of the French portraitist to the Prussian court, Antoine Pesne. In the portrait, the posture of the figure and the shirt’s loose front opening may have been inspired by Mányoki seeing German Baroque artist Philip Kilian’s engraving of landscape painter Johann Heinrich Roos’s self-portrait.

Originally owned by Ádám Mányoki, the painting is documented in the Galerie Schleißheim from 1775. It was bought by the Association of Friends of the Art Museums, and from 1931 was on permanent deposit in museums with which the Friends were associated. From 1974 it has been in the Hungarian National Gallery.

Top Insert Image: Ádám Mányoki, “Portrait of János Podmaniczky”, 1724, Oil on Canvas, 91 x 76 cm, Museum of Fine Arts, Hungarian National Gallery, Budapest

Second Insert Image: Ádám Mányoki, “Porträt einer Hofdame König August de Starken (Portrait of a Lady-in-Waiting to King Augustus III, the Strong)”, circa 1715, Oil on Canvas, 64 x 62 cm, Private Collection

Bottom Insert Image: Ádám Mányoki, “Portrait of Prince Ference Rákózci II”, 1712, Oil on Canvas, 75.5 x 67.5 cm, Museum of Fine Arts, Hungarian National Gallery, Budapest

Fyodor Antonovich Bruni

Fyodor Antonovich Bruni, “The Brazen Serpent”, 1841, Oil on Canvas, 565 x 852 cm, The Mikhailovsky Palace, The State Russian Museum, St. Petersburg

Born in Milan in December of 1801, Fyodor Antonovich Bruni was a Russian Academic painter of Swiss-Italian descent. He was the son of Swiss citizen Antonio Baroffi-Bruni, a Gold Medal of Honor officer of the Austrian army and commissioned painter to Tsar Paul I and the royal Kurakin and Baryatinsky families.

Exhibiting a talent in art from a very early age, Fyodor Bruni learned his basic artistic skills from his father before enrolling at the Imperial Academy of Arts in St. Petersburg. His education was sponsored by Italian count Giulio Renato Litta, both a fellow high-ranking Austrian officer and countryman to Fyodor Bruni’s father. Bruni received an excellent education under the guidance of such artists as portraitist Grigory Ugryumov, anatomical-drawing professor Vasily Shebuyev, and historical painter Andrei Ivanov. During this study period, Bruni created his first self-portrait, a romanticized image dressed in an open shirt, now housed in The State Russian Museum.

In 1818, Bruni entered his “Samson and Delilah” in a competitive examination at the Academy. Failing to achieve the gold medal, he continued his studies in Italy. Bruni, however, was no longer receiving support from Count Litta and subsisted on financial support from his father until Antonio Baroffi-Bruni’s death in 1825. In Italy, Bruni created several large historical compositions including the 1824 “The Death of Camilla, Horace’s Sister” and 1825 “St. Cecilia”, but received no compensation for his efforts. After copying Raphael’s frescoes “The Triumph of Galatea” and”The Expulsion of Heliodorus from the Temple” in 1827, Bruni received the patronage and assistance of Princess Zinaida Volkonskaya, a German-Russian composer and writer as well as the wife of Prince Nikita Volkonsky, aide to the Royal Court.

Supported now by a patron, Fyodor Bruni began to produce compositions focused on Roman and Ancient Greek mythologies, among these are the 1827 “The Awakening of the Graces” and the 1828 “A Bacchante Giving Cupid a Drink”. In February of 1827, he informed Russia’s Imperial Society for the Encouragement of the Arts that he had begun work in Italy on a large painting entitled “The Brazen Serpent”, based on an Old Testament story of Moses leading the Jewish people out of Egypt. In early 1828, Bruni was awarded a five-year stipend with the purpose of improving his painting skills, through an edict issued by Nicolas I, Emperor of Russia and Grand Duke of Finland.

During an earlier trip to London, Bruni met and fell in love with Angelica Serni, the well-educated daughter of a wealthy French hotelier. Although he desired to wed her, he could not secure her parents’ consent to marriage due to his financial condition at that time. In the spring of 1830, Bruni attempted to enter his “Bacchante” at a juried exhibition in Rome. The jury declined its entry due to the semi-nude depiction and as a gesture of respect for the Lenten season. Bruni was awarded, while working in Italy in 1834, the title of Academician in consideration of all his achievements. The next year, he married Angelica Serni in Rome, a ceremony attended by many known Russian artists and Roman patrons.

At the Emperor’s order, Fyodor Bruni and his wife relocated to Russia where they settled in St. Petersburg at a house belonging to the Imperial Academy. Now an established professor of the second degree, he taught painting students and created murals for the Winter Palace’s church as well as an image in 1837 of the deceased novelist and playwright Alexander Pushkin. In August of 1838, Fyodor Bruni returned with his wife to Italy, now as a wealthy, established artist favored by the Russian Emperor, and continued work on his large-scale composition, “The Brazen Serpent”.

In December of that year, the heir to the Russian throne, Grand Duke Alexander Nikolayevich, visited Bruni’s studio and promoted an exhibition of works by Russian artists in Rome. The Grand Duke commissioned a series of projects from these artists; he particularly praised Bruni’s composition “The Mother of God” and purchased it for his own collection. A series of four “Mother of God” paintings were also commissioned by Grigory Rakhmanov, a member of the Imperial Court, for installation at a Greek Russian church.

Fyodor Bruni finished his great work “The Brazen Serpent” in 1841 and took it to St. Petersburg where it was exhibited in a hall at the newly restored Winter Palace. Later in the year, he returned once more to Rome and, during his four-year residency, created twenty-five sketches that would form the foundation of a frescoe series at St. Petersburg’s Saint Isaac’s Cathedral. Bruni painted several of these frescoes; the rest were executed by artists under his direction. This series of frescoes were completed in 1853 and the sketches are now housed in The State Russian Museum. Bruni became the Custodian of the Gallery at the Hermitage Museum in 1849. As a part of his duties, he twice traveled abroad to acquire new works of art for the Hermitage collection.

In 1855, Bruni became the Rector of the Sculpture and Painting Department at St. Petersburg’s Imperial Academy of the Arts. As he aged, he became more reclusive, often disappearing for weeks at a time. Bruni often openly expressed an intolerance towards younger artists; due to this behavior, he was forced to resign his position in 1871. Despite this behavior, Bruni was awarded a honorary Professorship at the Florence Academy of Fine Arts and at Rome’s Academy of San Luca. Fyodor Antonovich Bruni died in August of 1875, at the age of seventy-six, in St. Petersburg and was interred in the city’s Tikhvin Cemetery.

Fyodor Bruni’s 1841 monumental oil painting “The Brazen Serpent” was completed after fifteen years of work. His earliest known sketch on the subject is dated at 1824; his general sketch of the composition was under-painted on board in 1833. Bruni began work in Italy on the final version in the same year, with alternate periods of work on other projects in Italy and Russia. On the fifteenth of April in 1841, he decided his great work was completed.

“The Brazen Serpent” was first exhibited in Rome and received the approval of its population. At the end of June, the painting was sent to Russia and exhibited in September at the Winter Palace and later at the Academy of Arts. After a public exhibition in 1842, Emperor Nicolas I purchased the painting and awarded Bruni the Order of St. Vladimir of the fourth level. Now part of the State Russian Museum, it is considered to be the largest Russian history painting and the largest in the museum’s collection.

The theme of “The Brazen Serpent” is based on a Book of Numbers account within the Bible’s Old Testament that chronicles Moses’s leading the people of Judah through the waterless desert areas of Egypt. When the people loose their faith in Moses’s leadership, a punishment in the form of a rain of poisonous serpents descends upon them. Moses, commanded by the Lord, erected a brazen serpent in their midst. Those individuals, who had repented and looked at the brazen serpent with true faith, lived and the bites inflicted by the serpents were healed.

Notes: There is some discrepancy in regards to the Milan birth date of Russian painter Fyodor Antonovich Bruni. While several sources cited June of 1799 as Bruni’s birthdate, I deferred to Russia’s Voronezh Regional Art Museum and Moscow’s State Tretyakov Gallery that cite his birthdate as December of 1801.

Top Insert Image: Arkady Lvov, “Fyodor Antonovich Bruni, Rector of the Imperial Academy of Arts”, circa 1855-1860, Photolithograph by A. Transhel

Second Insert Image: Fyodor Bruni, “Mother of God with the Eternal Child”, mid-1830s, Oil on Cardboard, 69.5 x 47 cm, Private Collection

Third Insert Image: Fyodor Bruni, “Study for Madonna in Gloria”, mid-1830s, Pencil on Paper, 58 x 44 cm, Private Collection

Fourth Insert Image: Fyodor Bruni, “Bacchant”, 1858, Oil on Canvas, 91.2 x 71.5 cm, The Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow

Fifth Insert Image: Fyodor Bruni, “Two Male Models”, circa 1820-1830, Pencil on Paper, The Russian Academy of the Arts, St. Petersburg

Bottom Insert Image: Fyodor Antonovich Bruni, “The Brazen Serpent”, 1841, Detail, Oil on Canvas, 565 x 852 cm, The Mikhailovsky Palace, The State Russian Museum, St. Petersburg

Joannes Echarius Carolus Alberti

Joannes Echarius Carolus Alberti, “Warrior with Drawn Sword”, 1808, Oil on Canvas, 92.5 x 73 cm, Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam

Born in 1777 in the municipality of Maastricht in the southern Netherlands, Joannes Echarius Carolus Alberti was a Dutch Neo-classical painter. The son of Italian lawyer Arnold Josua Joannes Alberti and his Belgian wife Maria Catharine Vogels, he was baptized on the 20th of June in 1777 in Maastricht’s Saint Martin’s Church.

At the age of five, Joannes Alberti moved with his parents to Amsterdam. He began his initial art training in 1796 at Amsterdam’s City Drawing Academy. For two chalk drawings of male nudes entered in competitions, Alberti won a third class prize in 1803 and a second class prize in 1804..These works are currently in the collection of the Rijksmuseum Amsterdam. In 1804, Alberti won the gold medal of honor at the Felix Meritis Society’s exhibition for his drawing “Marius Amid the Ruins of Carthage”. He won another gold medal in 1805 at the Felix Meritis Society for his drawing of the Greek Hellenistic king Antiochus IV Epiphanes.

In the beginning of 1807, Alberti received a four-year student pension from the Kingdom of Holland’s Ministry of the Arts for studies in Paris and Rome. He found residence in Paris on the Rue Bataves and, on the fifth of March, enrolled in the École des Beaux Arts where he studied under history painter Jacques-Louis David until 1809. Alberti painted copies after the work of Flemish artist Antoon (Anthony) van Dyck and Italian artist Guido Reni, who painted primarily religious works. As a favored artist of Louis I, the King of Holland, he sent some of his work to Amsterdam for exhibitions in 1808 and 1810,

In the middle of October in 1809, Joannes Alberti, along with fellow artists Josephus Augustus Knip and Peter Rudolf Kleijn, traveled to Rome, Italy. He met and took up residence with French painter and draftsman Claude Thiénon, who specialized in landscape scenery. Alberti made copies of old master paintings but also personal works. Among the works he shipped back to Holland in 1810 was his painting “Proculeius Prevents Cleopatra’s Suicide”. After returning to Paris, Alberti made engravings coped after master paintings. He also published an educational course on drawing entitled “Cours Complet Théorique et Pratique de l’Art du Dessin”.

From baptismal records, we know that, through Alberti’s union with Marie Catherine Joséphine Neumeyer, a son named Pierre Charles Antoine Raphaël Alberti was born in Paris on the 12th of December in 1807. From the Departmental Archives of Haute-Marne, a birth certificate shows that a second son, François Eliza Charles Prosper, was born in the town of Giey-sur-Aujon on the 26th of January in 1813.

Joannes Echarius Carolus Alberti became a member of Antwerp’s Royal Academy of Fine Arts in 1822. The Archives de Paris places his death in Paris on the 10th of May in 1832; he is buried in Paris’s Montparnasse Cemetery. Three of Alberti’s works are in the collection of the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam: the 1808 “Warrior with Shield and Spear”, the 1808 “Warrior with a Sword” and the 1810 “Proculus Prevents Cleopatra’s Suicide”. His 1809 “Scene from the Polish Revolution” is housed in Berlin’s Staatliche Museum Preussischer KulturBesitz.

Top Insert Image: Joannes Echarius Carolus Alberti, “Warrior with Lance and Shield”, 1808, Oil on Canvas, 72.5 x 91.5, Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam

Second Insert Image: Joannes Echarius Carolus Alberti, “The Preaching of John the Baptist”, Date Unknown, Oil on Canvas, 60 x 82 cm, Private Collection

Bottom Insert Image: Joannes Echarius Carolus Alberti (Attributed), (Warrior with Spears and Shield), Date Unknown, Oil on Canvas, 112 x 88 cm, Private Collection

Jacques-Charles Derrey

Jacques Charles Derrey, “Untitled (Taking a Swim)”, 1935, Engraving on Paper, Edition of 60, 37.7 x 39.4 cm, Private Collection

Born in Toulouse in September of 1907, Jacques-Charles Derrey was a French engraver, painter and educator. He spent most of childhood and youth from 1914 to 1929 in Nantes with his maternal grandfather Félix Pommier, a painter and the curator of the Musée des Beaux-Arts. As a student at the Georges Clemenceau high school in Nantes, Derrey won first prize in its 1925 general drawing competition. He began his formal art training at the École des Beaux-Arts in Nantes in 1927. Derrey relocated to Paris in 1930 and studied at its École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts under impressionist painter Lucien Simon and portraitist and engraver Louis Roger until his graduation in 1935.

In 1934, Derrey won the Prix Blumenthal, a stipend given to young French artists through the foundation supported by American philanthropist Florence Meyer Blumenthal. For his 1936 intaglio engraving “Job sur Son Fumier”, he was awarded the Grand Prix at the annual exhibition of the American Academy in Rome. For a period of three years beginning in 1937, Derrey was a resident at the French Academy in Rome located at the Villa Medici.

Jacques Derrey created twenty-five etchings for Belgian playwright and poet Maurice Masterlinck’s “Le Trésor des Humbles (The Humble Treasury)”, published in 1949 by Éditions Dancette. He produced illustrations, ten etchings and burin engravings, for the classic 1955 “Versailles”, which included historic text written by Louis XIV. Derry created original engravings for François-Albert Buisson’s 1960 “Le Cardinal de Retz: Portrait”, a biography of Jean François Paul de Gondi, an archbishop and agitator in the 1648 civil war in France.

Derrey also executed a series of illustrations depicting various aspects of an Lacq industrial plant owned by the National Society for Petroleum in Aquitaine. Starting in 1963, he provided engravings of stamp designs to be printed for several French departments and countries overseas, including Comoros, Congo, Gabon, Madagascar, Senegal, Somalia, Upper Volta, and Saint-Pierre-et-Miquelon.

Along with his work as an engraver, Jacques Derrey drew and painted, using oils and gouaches, numerous landscapes in Italy, Corsica and the French provinces of Bearn and Brittany. He also executed work in fresco, most notably the fresco murals in the church of Sainte Marguerite located in the Paris commune of Perreux-sur-Marne. Derry’s work was exhibited in many salons and galleries including the 1936 Salon des Artistes Français where he won a gold medal, the Salon Comparaisons, the Salon Terre Latines, the Mignon-Massart Gallery in Nantes and Paris’s Marseille Gallery, among others. Derrey was a regular participant at the exhibitions of the Association de Deux Rives from 1970 to 1975.

In 1950, Derrey was appointed a Professor at the School of Fine Arts in Valenciennes and, two years later, became its Director until 1956. At that time, he became Drawing Master at the École Polytechnique in Paris where he founded an engraving workshop. He taught his vision of painting and general art at the school until his retirement in 1973. An ardent defender of contemporary Classicism, he was the author of several articles published in the magazine “La Peintre” and through publications of the school.

Jacques-Charles Derrey was awarded the position of Laureate of the Institut de France in 1950 and named a Knight of the Legion of Honor in 1958. He died in Paris in May of 1975. Major retrospectives of Derrey’s work entitled “Entre Deux Rives” were held in January and February of 1988 at the Municipal Center for the Arts in Valenciennes and at the Musée National du Château de Pau from November of 1997 to March of 1998. An exhibition “Four Generations: A Family of Painters”, which included the work of Derrey, his grandfather Félix Pommier, his mother Juliette, and his son Charles, was held in the towns of Pénestin in 2004 and Saint-Marc-sur-Mer in 2012.

Middle Insert Image: Jacques-Charles Derrey, “Les Volets Bleus”, Date Unknown, Oil on Canvas, 46 x 55 cm, Private Collection

Guido Reni

Guido Reni, “Saint Sebastian”, 1625, Oil on Canvas, 76 x 61 cm, Aukland Art Gallery, Aukland

Born in November of 1575 in Bologna, a Papal State under Pope Gregory XIII, Guido Reni was an Italian painter of the Baroque period whose works show a classical influence. He primarily painted religious scenes, but also produced works of mythological and allegorical subjects. Reni became a prominent artist of the Bolognese School, headed by painter and etcher Lodovico Carracci, that rivaled Rome and Florence as the center of Italian painting.

Guido Reni painted the martyrdom of Saint Sebastian several times. There are three other similar posed canvases by Reni in the museums of Bologna, Paris and Puerto Rico. The Auckland Art Gallery’s circa 1625 “Saint Sebastian” is the closest painted to the pose drawn from Michelangelo’s marble statue “Rebellious Slave”. There are, however, differences in this particular canvas: Saint Sebastian’s left hand is shown, his loincloth is smaller, and the landscape contains figures not shown in the other canvases.

Notes: Guido Reni’s 1625 “Saint Sebastian” was originally in the private collection of the Dukes of Hamilton until its sale to the Aukland Art Gallery. The Duke of Hamilton, created in 1643, is the senior dukedom of the Peerage of Scotland, except for the Dukedom of Rothesay which is held by the Sovereign’s son. Since 1711, the title has been the Duke of Hamilton and Brandon in the Peerage of Great Britain.

Guido Reni worked on an almost identical copy from 1620 to 1639 but left it unfinished. This is one of many paintings he left unfinished before his death in August of 1642. The canvas, with its slightly different coloring and larger size of 1.7 by 1.31 meters, is now housed in London’s Dulwich Picture Gallery.