The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Art and Artists (167 page)

 
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(French: ‘outdoor feast’). Type of
genre
scene in which romantic figures are shown in an idealized outdoor setting, usually eating, dancing, flirting, or listening to music. Since the Gardens of Love represented in medieval manuscripts, the theme has had great popularity in European art, undergoing several transformations. It was particularly favoured in 16th-cent. Venetian painting and the
Concert Champêtre
in the Louvre (traditionally by
Giorgione
, but now usually given to
Titian
) is the most celebrated of all examples of the type. The term ‘fête galante’ (courtship party) was invented by the French
Academy
in 1717 to describe
Watteau's
variants on the theme, in which figures in ball dress or masquerade costume disport themselves amorously in a parkland setting.

 
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(
c.
1589–1623).
Italian painter. He was born at Rome, where he studied under Ludovico
Cigoli
, was court painter to Vincenzo
Gonzaga
at Mantua from 1613 to 1622, and then settled in Venice. His most characteristic works are of religious themes turned into
genre
scenes of contemporary life. Though small in scale, they are broadly painted, with characteristic ‘windswept’ brushstrokes. Their great popularity is shown by the fact that they often exist in numerous very similar versions. Feti, who was also an excellent portraitist, was one of a group of non-Venetian artists (including the German
Liss
and the Genoan
Strozzi
) who revivified painting in the city when there was a scarcity of native talent. Consequently, he is often classed as a member of the Venetian School, even though he spent only the last two years of his life there.

 
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(1696–1770).
German
Rococo
stuccoist
and sculptor, the most famous member of a family of artists from Wessobrunn in Bavaria. A virtuoso carver and stuccoist, he did a great deal of decorative work for buildings in the Lake Constance area. The greatest ensemble of his work is in the pilgrimage church of Neu-Birnau (1746–53): it includes his most famous single figure, the
Honey-licking Putto
.

 
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(1829–80).
German painter. He studied in Düsseldorf, Antwerp, and Paris (with
Couture
), then lived in Italy from 1855 to 1873. His father was a professor of classical archaeology (he had written a book on the
Apollo Belvedere
) and the son grew up in an atmosphere saturated with the high-minded ideals of humanistic philosophy. He wished to become the founder of a new school which was to combine noble, didactic, and idealistic subjects with a style derived from the
Grand Manner
of Venetian 16th-cent. painting. His subjects are usually taken from Greek antiquity—in the case of his most celebrated painting, from one of Plato's Dialogues (
The Symposium,
Kunsthalle, Hamburg, 1869). Feuerbach's fervent desire to preach a philosophy through pictorial means was usually a source of weakness rather than strength, and his best works are now generally considered to be his portraits of his model and mistress Nanna Risi , which have a statuesque beauty lacking in his more elaborate paintings; she also posed for subject pictures such as
Iphigenia
(Hessisches Landesmuseum, Darmstadt, 1862). Feuerbach went to Vienna in 1873 to become Professor of History Painting at the Academy, but he returned to Italy in 1876 after criticism of his ceiling of
The Fall of the Titans
for the Academy. Throughout his life he complained that he was being misunderstood and not receiving the recognition due to a very great artist. It is this element of self-pity which makes his book
Ein Vermächtnis
(A Testament) one of the most pathetic and repellent autobiographies ever written. It was posthumously published in 1882.

 
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