The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Art and Artists (123 page)

crayon
.

See
CHALK
.

 
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crayon manner
.

An 18th-cent. engraving technique, a variant of
etching
, used for the reproduction of crayon (or
pastel
) drawings. Invented
c.
1750 in France, where a number of engravers made prints after
Boucher
,
Fragonard
, and others, the crayon manner was also widely used in England. It was rendered obsolete early in the 19th cent. by the invention of
lithography
. See also
PASTEL MANNER
.

 
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(
c.
1458–1537).
Florentine painter. He was a fellow pupil of
Leonardo
in
Verrocchio's
workshop and he seems to have stayed there until Verrocchio's death in 1488, managing the painting side of his master's varied business. He was a very fine craftsman, but his style was lacking in individuality. His early work is in an extremely prosaic version of Leonardo's youthful style. Later he absorbed some of the ideas of the High
Renaissance
, his
Madonna and Saints
in Sta Maria delle Grazie in Pistoia (1510) recalling Fra
Bartolommeo
. He had several pupils and seems to have had a fairly successful career with his solid, unspectacular skills. It is said that influenced by the teachings of Savonarola in 1497 he destroyed all his pictures with profane subjects.

 
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(
c.
1598–1630).
Milanese painter. Although he died young of the plague, his output was large and his work is considered to be one of the most typical expressions of the zealous spirit of the Counter-Reformation that affected Milan at this time.
St Charles Borromeo at Supper
in Sta Maria della Passione is his best-known work and in its simple composition and emotional directness reflects the ideals of painting advocated by the Council of Trent. Many other examples of his work are in the church. He was probably a relative of Giovanni Battista
Crespi
, whose work influenced him.

 
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(
c.
1575–1632).
Italian painter, sculptor, engraver, architect, and writer. His nickname derived from his birthplace near Novaro, but he was active mainly in Milan, where he was one of the leading artists of his time. During the 1590s he was in Rome, where he was befriended by Cardinal Federico Borromeo (nephew of St Charles Borromeo ), who became his major patron after they returned to Milan together. Borromeo appointed him head of the painting section of the Accademia Ambrosiana, which he founded in 1620, and in 1629 put him in charge of the sculptural decoration of Milan Cathedral. Crespi's paintings, often mystical in feeling, are complex stylistically; there is a strong
Mannerist
current in his colouring and in the elegant posturing of his figures, but his work also shows a solidity and a feeling for realistic details that give it a place in the vanguard of the
Baroque
.

 
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(called Lo Spagnuolo) (1665–1747)
, Bolognese painter. He reacted against the academic tradition in which he was trained (
Cignani
was one of his teachers) and specialized in
genre
subjects, with violent
chiaroscuro
effects of brilliant colour against dark back-grounds. They are in the tradition of the everyday-life paintings of the
Carracci
, but go far beyond them in their sense of unvarnished reality (
The Hamlet
, Pinacoteca, Bologna). He was an outstanding teacher, numbering
Piazzetta
and Pietro
Longhi
among his pupils, and he exercised a great influence on Venetian 18th-cent. painting. Rudolf
Wittkower
called him ‘the only real genius of the late Bolognese school’.