M

Mabuse also called Jan Gossaert (1470/80–c. 1533). Early Netherlands artist, born probably at Maubeuge, Hainault, and a master of the Antwerp Guild in 1503. In 1508 he visited Rome and from this date Italian elements appear in his work, which had been close to that of G. David before this. Neptune and Amphitrite shows M.’s humanist interest in antique sculpture, the nude and classical architecture following the journey. It also shows a close study of Dürer’s Adam and Eve. All M.’s work has a fine and carefully calculated finish. In the outstanding early work The Adoration of the Kings this has been described as ‘an enamel-like purity’. Among other paintings are: Adam and Eve and Portrait of the Children of Christian II of Denmark, and Danaë.

Macchiatoli (It. macchia: stain, blot). A group of Italian painters working in Florence c. 1855–65. They rebelled against the prevailing academic style. Influenced by Corot and Courbet, and in some ways anticipating the techniques of French Impressionism, they used short brush-strokes and dots of paint to build up an image. Among the most prominent were Giovanni Fattori and Telemaco Signorini.

McCollum Allan (1944– ). U.S. artist, best known for his ‘Perfect Vehicles’ series, e.g. Five Perfect Vehicles (1985–7) – identical vase-like objects cast in plaster and painted in different colours which look mass-produced. As such his work can be defined as being between Pop, rigorous Minimalism and Neo-Conceptualism. The themes M. explores play on the ambivalence between the uniformity of the mass-produced and the authenticity and uniqueness expected of an art work. His Surrogate Paintings (1978–82) and Plaster Surrogates (1982 to the present) are echoed in the salon-like dense presentation of small separate works, as in the series ‘Individual Works’ in which he has produced over 25,000 unique, hand-sized sculptures since 1987, and in other series like ‘Perpetual Photographs’ and ‘Drawings’.

MacDonald J(ames) E(dward) J(arvey) (1873–1932). British-born Canadian painter, one of the Group of Seven.

McEvoy Arthur Ambrose (1878–1927). British painter, influenced by Gainsborough, who became successful near the end of his life as a portrait painter.

McEwen Jean Albert (1923–99). Canadian painter, president of the ‘Association des Artistes Nonfiguratifs de Montré al’.

McGarrell James (1930– ). U.S. painter of figurative paintings. His eerie, erotic compositions sometimes recall F. Bacon and R. B. Kitaj.

MacIver Loren (1909–98). U.S. painter, 1 of the U.S.A.’s best-known women artists and virtually untrained, who has produced atmospheric, refined and unusual art. Besides figurative, abstract and symbolic works, she has painted a number of sympathetic portraits of friends; she moves freely and with a constant sense of poetry from precise realism to a sophisticated abstraction.

Macke Auguste (1887–1914). German painter. He studied at Düsseldorf Academy (1904–6) and under Corinth in Berlin (1907–8). He visited Paris, admiring Seurat and Matisse for their free use of colour. He was a founder-member in 1911 of the Blaue Reiter group, Munich, with Kandinsky and Marc. His visit to Delaunay in Paris (1912) with Marc, and his trip to Tunis (1914) with Klee were the conclusive factors in the emergence of his personal colouristic style. Landscape with Cows and Camel (1914) is characteristic in its radiant crystalline colour areas.

McKnight-Kauffer Edward (1890–1954). U.S. graphic artist and designer; he produced the 1st advertisement in a Cubist style but also worked as a designer for the stage, e.g. Bliss’s ballet Checkmate.

Maclise Daniel (1806–70). Irish-born artist who became one of the leading Victorian painters of grandiose historical subjects. 2 frescoes, The Death of Nelson and The Meeting of Blücher and Wellington, are in the House of Lords. M. was also noted for portraits of famous contemporaries which appeared in Fraser’s Magazine.

Madurai Tamilnadu, S. India. Capital of the medieval Pandya kingdom whose art and architecture, e.g. the rock-cut shrine at Kalugumalai, derives from Chola styles. The Nayak dynasty (c. 1550–1743) transformed it into a temple city with mandapa halls of elaborately sculptured columns and lofty gopurams (huge gateway towers) covered in tiers of sculpture.

Maerten van Veen. Name by which Van Heemskerck is sometimes known.

Maes (Maas) Nicolaes (1632–93). Dutch portrait and genre painter who studied under Rembrandt; best known for his intimate domestic scenes. A visit to Antwerp in 1670 led to a change in style and the production of fashionable and suave portraits in the Flemish manner.

maestà (It. majesty). Short name given to paintings of the Madonna and Child enthroned in majesty with saints and angels in adoration.

Magic Realism or ‘Sharp-Focus Realism’. A style of primarily U.S. painting which combines simple, sharply defined Precisionist compositions of machine-like clarity with decorative and illustrative Cubism (Cubist-Realism). It has occasionally fantastic or symbolic overtones. Sheeler, Preston Dickinson and Blume are sometimes described as M. Realists.

Magnasco Alessandro (1667–1749). Italian painter in the manner of Salvator Rosa, of monks, gypsies, etc. in wild stormy landscapes.

Magnelli Alberto (1888–1971). Italian non-figurative painter working in Paris. Joined by Kandinsky in 1932, he became one of the chief abstract painters in Paris in the 1930s.

Magritte René (1898–1967). Belgian Surrealist painter. His early work (c. 1920) was influenced by Futurism and Cubism. In 1925 he founded, with the Belgian poet and collagist E. L. T. Messens, the reviews Oesophage and Marie which launched Belgian Surrealism. From that year, and under the influence of De Chirico’s vision which showed him ‘the ascendancy of poetry over painting’, M. developed his personal style: literal paintings of precise, illusionistic images encapsulating poetic ideas, which transcend formal concerns and which suggest the mysterious and unknown presence, or action, of more than what can be seen, e.g. The Menaced Assassin (1926) which incorporates all the features of M.’s subsequent painting: perplexing narrative, suggesting the extraordinary by means of the ordinary, distortion of scales, an erotic quality, the unexpected, mysterious and unfamiliar. In 1927 M. went to Paris for 3 years and joined other Surrealists, before settling in Brussels for the rest of his life. M.’s ‘magic realism’, applied to different themes, changed little throughout his career, e.g. The Treachery (or Perfidy) of Images (1928–9), which aims to subvert identity, The Human Condition I (1933), which introduces the theme of real space vs. painted spatial illusionism (trompe l’œil), Threatening Weather (1928) and The Ladder of Fire I (1933), The Castle of the Pyrenees (1959), and Delusions of Grandeur (1961). M.’s paintings did not receive wide attention until after World War II. The retrospective exhibition of his work at M.O.M.A., N.Y., in 1965, and subsequent large-scale retrospectives in London and Paris, however, confirmed him as one of the most important Surrealist artists and perhaps the most widely popular modernist painter of the 20th c. M.’s characteristic style has since exerted a wide influence, also on posters, advertising and graphic design.

Mahabalipuram or Mamallapuram, Tamilnadu, India. Coastal site near Madras of rock-carved Hindu sculpture and temples for the Pallava king Narasimha Varman I (d. 688). The reliefs, in a developed, elegant post-Andhra style, include the Descent of the Ganges. On the beach are 5 small rock-cut temples, called Raths (‘chariots [of the gods]’), profusely adorned with sculptures, and the early 8th-c. granite-built shore temple of Shiva.

Maillol Aristide (1861–1944). French sculptor. He studied painting and sculpture at the École des Beaux-Arts, Paris (1882–6). He was associated with the Nabis as a painter and tapestry designer and did not concentrate solely on sculpture until c. 1897, when his sight was failing. His early works (wood carvings and terracotta statuettes) provided the basis of his later sculpture, most of which was cast in bronze. He was influenced at first by Rodin (the 2 men shared a mutual respect), but his mature treatment of the figure, strengthened by a visit to Greece in 1906, has a sensuality which is closer to classical art than to Rodin’s expressive and sometimes erotic Romanticism. M.’s whole œuvre is built round the female nude. His most original work (c. 1898–1910) is important for its renewed respect for mass after the fluid surface richness of Rodin and the Impressionist sculpture of artists like M. Rosso. Torso (1906) is typical in its massive simplicity of closed form with a strong sense of a contained dynamic energy. After 1910 his work was relatively uninventive and ranges from the prosaic stylization of his Memorial to Cézanne (1912–25) to the rather theatrical quality of symbolic figures such as Air and River (1939–43).

Mainardi Sebastiano di Bartolo (c. 1460–1513). Italian painter, follower and assistant of Domenico Ghirlandaio, who worked chiefly on altarpieces and frescoes. His 1st dated work is at the Collegiata, San Gimignano; but he later worked mainly in Florence. The early influence of Verrocchio was later superseded by that of Filippino Lippi.

Makart Hans (1840–84). Austrian history painter of huge decorative canvases; student of Piloty.

Makimono. Japanese art

Malbone Edward Greene (1777–1807). U.S. portrait painter especially noted as a miniaturist. He studied under Samuel King in Boston, and worked in Boston, N.Y., Philadelphia and Charleston.

Malerisch (Ger. painterly). The art historian Wölfflin gave a particular meaning to this term by using it to characterize the type of painting which expresses form in terms of colour and tone (e.g. Rembrandt and Titian) as opposed to line (e.g. Botticelli).

Malevich Kasimir (1878–1935). Russian painter born in Kiev, coming to Moscow about 1905 and working for the next few years in a private studio run by Roerich. From 1908 to 1910 M.’s work underwent rapid development under the impact of French Post-Impressionism (The Golden Fleece) and came to the notice of Larionov, who invited him to contribute to the 1st Knave of Diamonds Exhibition. For the next 2 years he associated closely with Larionov and Goncharova, sharing their interest in national folk-art as well as continuing his enthusiasm for the work of Cézanne, Matisse, Picasso and Van Gogh. Intimate with Russian Futurist poets, e.g. Mayakovsky and Khlebnikov, M. designed scenery and costumes for Victory over the Sun, produced in St Petersburg (1913), one of the back-cloths being an abstract black-and-white square. According to M., this production launched Suprematism. During the next 2 years he painted a series of Surrealist and ‘nonsense Realist’ works, e.g. An Englishman in Moscow. In 1915 he exhibited 36 abstract canvases, including the famous Black Square. In this later period of Suprematism (1917–18), e.g. Sensation of the Space of the Universe, soft amorphous forms combined with geometric; 2 series dominated, those using a cross form and a White on White series such as the painting of a white square on a white ground in 1918. After this M. ceased to paint except as illustration to theories expounded in a series of pamphlets and small books. His 1st idealized architectural drawings (1915–16) developed into 3-dimensional plaster sculptures, Architectonicas; during the 1920s M. was influential as a teacher in Vitebsk and Moscow and from 1922 in Leningrad.

Malouel Jean (d. 1419?). Flemish artist and court painter (from 1397) to Philip the Bold and John the Fearless, dukes of Burgundy. He was commissioned to paint 5 altarpieces for the Chartreuse of Champmol in 1398 and was one of the earliest panel painters of N. Europe.

Mamallapuram. Mahabalipuram

Mamontov Savva Ivanovich. Muscovite merchant and railway tycoon who during the 1870s and 1880s gathered round himself on his estate at Abramtsevo the most prominent painters of the Wanderers group. In 1883 he opened his ‘Private Opera’ in Moscow where he introduced the music of Rimsky Korsakov, Borodin and Mussorgsky to the Russian public and where Chaliapin made his début. These productions were also revolutionary in their use of painters as stage designers, a tradition continued directly by Diaghilev. Stanislavsky was a cousin of M.

Man Ray (1890–1976). U.S. painter, photographer, film maker; one of the founders of the New York Dada movement and long associated with Surrealism, though by temperament an eclectic. In the 1920s and 1930s he worked in Paris, mainly as a photographer: he and Moholy-Nagy explored the principles of space and motion in a type of photography that bypassed the camera and concerned itself with forms produced directly on the photographic printing paper. He wrote an autobiography, Self Portrait (1963).

Mander Karel van (1548–1606). Dutch painter, poet and art historian, in Rome from 1574 to 1577. His early work is a mixture of Flemish and Italian Mannerist styles, but he later tended to greater realism. He founded the Academy of Painting at Haarlem. His history of art, Het Schilderboeck (1604), was modelled on Vasari’s work, and also contained an introduction on the techniques of painting.

Manessier Alfred (1911–93). French painter, a leading member of the post-war École de Paris. In the 1930s he moved through Cubist and Surrealist styles, evolving his own lyrical, abstract idiom. His works include a tapestry for the Dominican convent at Sulchoir, with Laurens, a tapestry for the National Center of Art, Ottawa, and stained-glass designs.

Manet Édouard (1832–83). French painter born in Paris. He studied at the École des Beaux-Arts (1850–6) under Couture. His Spanish Guitar Player (1860) was awarded an honourable mention at the 1861 Salon, his only real public success. He continued to cherish official recognition, believing the Salon to be the ‘real field of battle’ and was reluctant to link his name with younger revolutionaries. In the 1860s, however, he was himself the main object of controversy and ridicule. The barrage of hostility which greeted Le Déjeuner sur l’herbe (1861–3) at the famous Salon des Refusés of 1863 was followed in 1865 by the scandalized outcry against Olympia (1863–5). From the start M. had followed the advice of Baudelaire and Courbet to paint modern life. The main public objection was that reality was not adequately disguised: the unabashed nakedness of the female figures was offensive to a public that could approve open eroticism in the right classical garb. In fact M. was little concerned with subject matter; he used highly respectable traditional compositions taken from Giorgione, Raphael and Titian on which to base his scenes of modern life. His primary interest was in the organization of the picture surface. Olympia is flooded with a strong frontal light producing simple tonal contrasts and flattening form and space.

The chief formative influence on M.’s style was that of Spanish art; already fervently Hispanophile, he visited Spain in 1865 and declared Velázquez ‘the painter of painters’. The figure of M.’s Le Fifre (1866) is isolated against a nondescript grey ground, and his early ideas crystallized in the maturity of Le Balcon (1868) and Le Déjeuner à l’Atelier (1868), with a fluid directness of execution and a cool grey/green palette that owe much to Velázquez. He admired the same painterly facility in Frans Hals while visiting Holland in 1872.

During the 1870s at Argenteuil he came under the influence of the Impressionists. Although often linked with them by his contemporaries (he was congratulated for 2 Monet seascapes in 1865, much to his dismay), he is really important with Courbet as their predecessor: in the steadfast integrity of his stand against official disapproval, in his lack of concern for subject matter in painting and in the establishment of the artist’s complete freedom in handling colours and tone. He never exhibited with the Impressionists and during the 1870s continued to paint highly composed studio pictures (In the Conservatory 1879). His last important work, Le Bar aux Folies-Bergères (1882), returned to his ideas of the 1860s.

He was appointed Chevalier de la Légion d’Honneur in 1882, but he died bitter and cynical about this late recognition. A large memorial exhibition was held at the École des Beaux-Arts, bastion of officialdom, in 1884.

Manet Olympia 1863–5

Manfredi Bartolommeo (c. 1580–c. 1620). Italian painter, born near Mantua, who worked in Rome (1610–19). His paintings were influenced by, and are sometimes mistaken for, those of Caravaggio. M. influenced the Utrecht school. He later adopted Mannerism and painted religious subjects in a genre idiom.

Mangold Robert (1937– ). U.S. artist. His paintings are of spaces and silences, introspective works in which M. aims at ‘a simple, direct statement which should affect the viewer quietly but forcefully’.

Mannerism. Any affectation of style, but used more specifically of Italian painting, sculpture and architecture of the period between the High Renaissance and the Baroque period. Architecturally it differs from Renaissance in its deliberate contradiction of classical rules (e.g. regarding the use of orders), aiming at discord instead of harmony and strain instead of repose; and from Baroque in not fusing all its elements into unified, dynamic patterns, but producing effects of ambiguity and discomfort rather than energy and confidence. It is first fully realized in Michelangelo’s Vestibule of the Laurentian Library (1523) and characterizes most of the works of Giulio Romano, Ammanati, Ligorio, Buontalenti and Vignola. Similar qualities appear in French and British architecture slightly later. M. painting is also characterized by a search for novelty and excitement leading to capriciously elongated figures on complicated contraposto, asymmetrical composition with huge discrepancies in scale, and harsh colour. Michelangelo, Tintoretto and El Greco are the great creative exponents of M., but the style is best exemplified in the paintings of such artists as Parmigianino, Rosso and Pontormo; other Mannerist painters and sculptors include Daniele da Volterra, Niccolò dell’Abbate, Bronzino, Cellini and Giovanni da Bologna.

Mantegna Andrea (c. 1431–1506). Northern Italian painter and engraver. M. appears to have been both the apprentice and the adopted son of the antiquarian and painter F. Squarcione, for 6 years in Padua, before freeing himself in a lawsuit. Squarcione’s studies of antiquity, the humanistic influences of Padua Univ. and the masterpieces resulting from Donatello’s 10-year stay in the city were each important in the formation of M.’s art. He painted The Assumption, 4 Scenes from the Life of St James and The Martyrdom of St Christopher in the Ovetari chapel, Eremitani church, Padua (1448–59). All but the last of these important frescoes were destroyed during World War II. In them, and in such paintings as the St Zeno Altarpiece and St Sebastian, M.’s debt to Donatello is obvious: not only are the monumental qualities of sculpture reproduced but even the surface often appears to be made of metal or stone. Classical motifs are actually distracting in the St Sebastian, and M. attempts to reproduce the effect of a Roman bas-relief in paint on canvas in such monochrome works as Judith with the Head of Holofernes. In predella panels, e.g. the superb Crucifixion, the figures are less sculptural, though the landscape is ordered with the same rigour. M. married the daughter of Jacopo Bellini in 1453, and the strengthening of his connection with the Venetians is illustrated by The Agony in the Garden, a painting based on a drawing by Bellini. In 1460 M. became court painter to the Gonzaga family, and in their palace at Mantua painted frescoes of incidents in the lives of his patrons. Most important is the ceiling of the Camera degli Sposi. An illusion of an opened roof above the spectator’s head is created, with a blue sky and a circle of figures gazing down into the room. This is the first use of such effects and it was to lead directly to Correggio and the Baroque masters’ exploitation of illusionistic perspective.

Mantegna The Agony in the Garden c. 1465

At the Gonzaga court M. formed a coll. of classical works of art which was the envy of the Pope. He also executed the fine engravings on classical subjects, such as Battle of the Sea Gods and Death of Orpheus, which were to influence Dürer and other graphic artists. For the Gonzagas he painted The Triumphs of Caesar. One of his last works was the magnificent Dead Christ.

Manuel Niklaus (1484–1530). Swiss painter and poet and statesman; formerly sometimes wrongly called N. M. Deutsch on the basis of his monogram N.M.D.: the ‘D’ is now thought to stand for the surname ‘Degen’. As a member of the Inner Council of Berne, M. had an important influence on the debates on religious reform, having already made a name with plays attacking ecclesiastical abuses. As a painter M. was obviously affected by the work of Dürer and Baldung Grien; but his richly coloured pictures of biblical and mythological subjects frequently have dramatic effects of lighting and mood of landscape peculiar to him. His paintings include: The Execution of John the Baptist and the Judgement of Paris.

Manzoni Piero (1933–63). Italian artist, until 1956 working figuratively in a traditional style; his work then changed abruptly and radically. Many works are entitled Achrome, made of polystyrene pellets in various shapes and forms. In 1960 he made Artist’s Breath, a balloon on a wooden base. With the Gruppo Nucleare he signed the ‘Manifesto against style’ in 1957.

Manzù Giacomo (1908–91). Leading Italian sculptor. Much of his work is religious. It includes: doors for St Peter’s, Rome, and for Salzburg cathedral; some 50 seated or standing figures of cardinals; and Madonna and Child. M. obviously owes a debt to Rodin, and some of his free-standing sculptures have affinities with Marini. M. also did a series of young girl nudes and has done stage designs.

Mapplethorpe Robert (1946–89). U.S. photographer noted for his black-and-white flower studies, nudes, self-portraits, and portraits of artists and celebrities, as well as for his controversial S & M depictions. His work, unlike that of many other contemporary photographers who deal with issues of sexuality, has acquired the status of high art.

maquette. In sculpture a small preliminary model in wax or clay.

Maratta or Maratti Carlo (1625–1713). Italian Baroque decorative artist and portrait painter who studied in Rome. His work was influenced by that of Correggio and Guido Reni. Examples of his fresco work are in S. Giovanni in Fonte and S. Giuseppe dei Falegnani, Rome.

Marc Franz (1880–1916). German Expressionist painter born in Munich; he studied philosophy and theology at the University and then painting at the Academy. He was one of the founders of the Blaue Reiter group in Munich in 1911. He was killed at Verdun. Working in close association with Kandinsky, M. explored the expressive values of colour. This preoccupation with colour was partly inspired by the Orphist paintings of Delaunay, whom he visited in Paris with Macke in 1912, and probably also by Goethe’s Farbenlehre. Although he remained a painter of animals, paintings like Tiger (1912) are primarily expressive through their simple planes of colour; and in Fighting Forms (1914) he was nearing a point of abstract expressionism.

Marcantonio Raimondi (1480–1534). Italian engraver; his most important works are engravings reproducing paintings by Raphael and his school, an art which he was the first to practise.

Marcks Gerhard (1889–1967). German sculptor; his work has been almost exclusively on the theme of the nude figure, in the tradition of Barlach and Lehmbruck. He taught at the Bauhaus (1920–5), where he ran the pottery studio.

Marcoussis Louis (Markhous) (1883–1941). Polish painter who went to Paris in 1903 and was associated with the Cubists from 1907. He made no original contribution to Cubism, but of the group which exhibited together in 1911 and 1912, he seems to have most fully understood Picasso and Braque, e.g. Nature morte au damier (1912).

Marden Brice (1938– ). U.S. painter whose work evolved from Abstract Expressionism to seemingly minimalist simplicity, although redolent of personal expression, with an increasing focus on colour. M.’s admiration for Zurbarán, Newman and Johns is reflected in his particular attention to medium, colour and facture. His use of hot beeswax mixed with turpentine and pigment makes layers of colours deeper and more evocative, and creates a sense of space. In his single-panel paintings of the 1960s, mainly monochrome grey, he left the bottom edge of the canvas unpainted allowing drips and smears to run down, disclosing the process of the painting’s evolution. In the 1970s he painted multi-panel-and-colour works, e.g. Seasons (1974–5) and a 5-panel ‘Annunciation’ series (1977) which has been called ‘one of the most important works of religious art in the twentieth century’. Thira (1980) is an 18-panel, multi-coloured triptych in which he uses for the first time horizontal panels on top of vertical ones which are suggestive of doors and windows. His remarkable large-scale drawings on paper with black ink are composed of dense parallel and intersecting lines.

Marées Hans von (1837–87). German painter who studied in Berlin but later worked in Munich and, after 1865, in Rome. He specialized in frescoes and large landscapes, and his work influenced that of Böcklin and Beckmann.

Margarito of Arezzo. Italian painter sometimes identified with Margaritone of Magnano. According to Vasari he lived from 1236 to 1316. He painted in a rigid, linear ‘Romanesque’ style, producing many paintings of St Francis.

Maria Walter de (1935– ). U.S. artist. In the early 1960s he produced Minimal art and (1961) a proposal for an Earth art piece, Art Yard, the digging of a hole in the ground. His Mile-Long Drawing (1968) consisted of 2 mile-long parallel lines chalked in the Nevada desert.

Marin John (1870–1953). U.S. painter and engraver, M.’s watercolours and engravings of buildings in Europe (1905–9, 1910–11) and the skyscrapers of N.Y. were made known in the U.S.A. by Stieglitz. Later, scenes of Maine, e.g. Maine Islands (1922), and New Mexico made M. the leading U.S. watercolour painter. He worked in a free style reminiscent of Kandinsky, but with a strong and usually obvious element of construction – probably a legacy of his early training as an architect. In his last years he painted many of the same landscapes in oil.

Marinetti Filippo Tommaso (1876–1944). Italian poet (writing in French and Italian) and novelist, remembered as the founder of Futurism: he publ. its 1st manifesto in 1909.

Marini Marino (1901–66). Considered by some as the leading Italian sculptor since Boccioni and Rosso. He studied painting and sculpture at the Florence Academy and then sculpture in Paris (1928). His œuvre includes paintings and prints in several media, and some of his sculpture is itself painted. His principal theme has been that of the horse and rider.

Marinus van Reymerswaele (c. 1493–after 1567). Flemish painter influenced by contemporary German styles and that of Quinten Massys; he painted portraits of bankers, businessmen and grasping excisemen; his work was known in Italy and Spain.

Marisol Escobar (1930– ). Venezuelan sculptor, painter and graphic artist who lives and works in N.Y. Initially associated with Pop art in the 1950s, her work has been seen as highly individualized, often combining social and political comment with images of her own striking features. M. is influenced by native American art which she has alluded to throughout her career. Her large wooden sculptures of well-known U.S. figures, e.g. the Kennedys and John Wayne are often painted and in assemblages with found objects and plaster casts, which challenge expectations of dimension. M. subsequently distanced herself from political comment, while her search for identity remains a constant in her work, e.g. projections of her face on to finely carved mahogany figures of fish.

Marmion Simon (d. 1489). Franco-Flemish illuminator and panel painter who worked in Amiens, Valenciennes and Tournai, and for Philip the Good, Duke of Burgundy. His principal work was a 22-panel altarpiece for St Omer abbey.

Marquet Pierre-Albert (1875–1947). French painter who studied under G. Moreau. He subsequently became associated with the Fauvists and with Matisse, with whom he went to Morocco in 1913. M. later frequently returned there to paint.

Marsh Reginald (1898–1954). U.S. painter of city scenes who worked on newspapers and studied under K. H. Miller. His etchings of N.Y. life verge on caricature.

Marshall Benjamin (1767–1835). British painter of sporting subjects, above all horseracing.

Martin. The 3 brothers of this name, Robert Wallace (1843–1923), Walter (1859–1912) and Edwin (1860–1915), working together from 1873 were an important factor in the British artist potter movement. Their best-known, though not their best works, are the grotesque face and bird jugs and vases mainly by Wallace.

Martin Agnes (1912–2004). U.S. artist. Although painting for several years she did not hold her first solo show until 1958, and she won increasing critical acclaim in the early 1960s with her all-over grid paintings, pencilled on monochrome oil or acrylic grounds on large square canvases. Illusion, texture, delicacy and quiet strength characterize her exquisite paintings and drawings.

Martin Homer Dodge (1836–97). U.S. landscape painter who was largely self-taught. He came under the influence of Impressionism, partly through W. Hart, and this led to a break with the literal manner of the Hudson River school. Travels in France (1881–6) confirmed this stylistic preference.

Martin John (1789–1854). British Romantic painter of visionary and apocalyptic landscape and other subjects; he also painted heroic or Old Testament subjects, with hundreds of figures often in fantastic architectural settings.

John Martin Sadak in Search of the Waters of Oblivion 1812

Martin Kenneth (1905–84). British painter and sculptor. His best-known works are wire mobiles, e.g. the bronze and steel Mobile Spiral (1956), which describe ‘fields of force’ in their movement. M. also painted landscapes and Constructivist abstracts.

Martineau Robert Braithwaite (1826–69). British genre and portrait painter, pupil of Holman Hunt.

Martini Simone (c. 1284–1344). Sienese painter, the pupil of Duccio, M. drew upon Duccio’s colour harmonies while pursuing his own experiments in using line for decorative purposes, so that his later works become almost abstract compositions. By 1315 he was sufficiently well thought of to be commissioned to paint a Maestà for the town hall of Siena. This work makes obvious M.’s debt to Duccio, but it also shows his knowledge of the sculpture of the Pisani and of the use of line in Sienese art. He was brought in direct contact with the court art and literature of France when he was summoned to the French kingdom of Naples by Robert of Anjou in 1317 to paint St Louis of Toulouse Crowning the King. In 1320 he was painting in Pisa and Orvieto. By 1328 he was in Siena to paint the famous portrait of Guidoriccio da Fogliano reviewing his battlelines on horseback, and other frescoes in the town hall. He was in Florence in 1333, working with his brother-in-law Memmi. Both artists signed the Annunciation, which is one of the masterpieces of Sienese painting. In 1339 M. was at the court of the Papacy at Avignon. Here he became the close friend of Petrarch; he is known to have painted Petrarch’s Laura, but this portrait has been lost. ‘Surely my friend Simone was once in paradise’, Petrarch said, and it was M.’s conception of the earthly paradise as the scene of courtly love that was to influence the artists of the International Gothic style throughout Europe.

Martini Maestà (detail) 1315

Masaccio. The nickname of Tommaso di Giovanni (1401–28?). Florentine painter, one of the great innovators of European art: the revolution he brought about in painting was recognized by his contemporaries even within the short span of his own lifetime. Little is known of his early years and his nickname, variously interpreted as ‘naughty Tom’, ‘clumsy Tom’ or ‘hulking Tom’ gives little clue. Vasari simply maintains that he was impractical in everyday affairs. M. became a member of the Florentine Guild in 1422, which leaves a period of some 6 years in which he was to accomplish his revolution, before setting out for Rome never to be heard of again. Masolino is said to have taught him, but if this is so, the roles of master and pupil were to be reversed almost at once. What is certain is that M. was profoundly influenced by those elements of Giotto’s art that had been retained and exploited better by the sculptor Donatello and the architect Brunelleschi, than by any contemporary Florentine painter. M. took up Giotto’s search for a way of expressing the more exalted human emotions through figures in action in terms of painting. Where the painters of the International Gothic style allowed line to flow, to proliferate, to become pure decoration, M. tightened it almost to breaking-point. His style is austere. His drawing of the human figure achieves an incredible degree of realism, the illusion of weight and modelling, with the sparest of means. Yet from reality he chooses only what human presence or the Divine Spirit can make noble. The Pisan polyptych altarpiece, one of his earliest works, has been divided and scattered; they survive separately as: Madonna and Child, Crucifixion, Adoration of the Magi and Beheading of the Baptist. A similar work on panel is the Madonna and Child with St Anne and Five Angels. The fresco The Trinity is undoubtedly the most successful and moving rendering of this subject. But M.’s fame, both as an artist and as the teacher of a whole group of Florentine painters, rests with the frescoes of the Brancacci chapel, S. Maria del Carmine, Florence. Masolino and, later, Filippino Lippi also painted subjects on this chapel; a third of the scheme was destroyed by fire, and some difficulty of attribution remains. Generally accepted as being by M. are: The Tribute Money, Explusion from Paradise, St Peter and St John healing the Sick by letting their Shadows fall on them, St Peter and St John distributing Alms, The Raising of the King’s Son (most) and St Paul visiting St Peter in Prison (part).

Masaccio Crucifixion 1426–7

Masereel Frans (1889–1972). Belgian painter who studied in Ghent, London and Paris, where he finally settled, illustrating books and painting Parisian street scenes and shore scenes at Boulogne. He is known in particular for his Expressionist stories in woodcut.

Masip or Macip Juan Vicente (c. 1490–1550). Spanish painter working in Valencia, painting in the style of Raphael. His son (c. 1523–79) and pupil (of the same name) studied Raphael, Michelangelo and Leonardo and later painted passionate religious pictures in a dramatic Mannerist style.

Maso di Banco (fl. mid-14th c.). Italian painter and one of the greatest of Giotto’s followers; he is sometimes confused with Giottino. The only works which can be ascribed to him with certainty are the fresco cycle St Sylvester and the Emperor Constantine in S. Croce, Florence.

Masolino (c. 1383–c. 1432). Florentine painter trained in the International Gothic style, perhaps by Ghiberti, e.g. Madonna. He was influenced by Masaccio, a much younger man, when working with him on frescoes in the Brancacci chapel, S. Maria del Carmine, Florence. He was in Hungary (1425–7) and later worked in Eripoli, Todi and Rome.

Masson André (1896–1987). French Surrealist painter. He quarrelled with Breton in the late 1920s and developed a form of calligraphic Surrealism which probably had some influence on the Abstract Expressionist movement in the U.S.A.

Massys Quinten (1465/6–1530), also spelt ‘Quentin’ and ‘Matsys’ or ‘Metsys’. Early Netherlandish painter born in Louvain but made a master of the Antwerp Guild in 1519. M.’s style carries the Netherlands search for refinement and spiritual sensitivity to an extreme in his religious work and his portraits; his painting had a considerable influence, especially among the Italianate painters of the Netherlands. His range of subjects is large. An outstanding early painting is the central panel of the St Anne Altarpiece. Portraits of scholars at their work such as Erasmus anticipate a favourite subject of Holbein. In his Virgin and Child, Rest on the Flight into Egypt and other studies of the Holy Family there is a profound melancholy. The caricature drawings and the faces of the crowd in Ecce Homo provide the reverse side of the refinement. Genre paintings such as Money-changer and his Wife are in the tradition of Van Eyck and Petrus Christus. Late, highly finished panels such as The Temptation of St Anthony were often the result of a collaboration with Patenier. Finally, the exceptional painting in tempera on linen, The Virgin and Child with St Barbara (?) and St Catherine gives evidence of Italian influences, particularly of Raphael and Leonardo da Vinci.

Massys St Anne Altarpiece (central panel) 1509

Master Bertram. German artist working at Hamburg 1367–87. His workshop produced an altarpiece for St Peter’s, Hamburg, now in the Kunsthalle.

Master Francke (d. after 1424). Painter who worked in Hamburg; information about his activities is slight. Owing to the influence of French illuminated mss evident in his work he is believed to have been in Paris. His painting shows an advance on that of the slightly older Hamburg artist Master Bertram, in its composition, brilliance of colour, observation of life and expressiveness coupled with restraint. Most famous are his St Thomas Altar (1424), on Thomas Becket, including the gentle Nativity panel, and 2 versions of the Man of Sorrows.

Master of Flémalle. Early Netherlandish painter, now generally accepted to have been the same artist as both the Master of Mérode and Robert Campin (c. 1380–1444). Campin worked in Tournai, becoming a citizen in 1423. Despite being ‘mildly persecuted’ for political activity and ‘living in concubinage’ his reputation remained high. J. Daret and Rogier van der Weyden were his pupils. No major works were known before the association of his name with works attributed to the Master of Flémalle, which include: Nativity, The Werl altarpiece, Miracle of the Rod and Betrothal of the Virgin, Portrait of a Man, Virgin and Child before a Firescreen and Madonna in Glory. Attributed to the Master of Mérode is the important triptych now in the Metropolitan Museum. As controversial as the artist’s identity is the question of his precedence in relation to Jan van Eyck. His naturalism of style shows a quite different feeling to Van Eyck’s but is hardly less revolutionary. He was probably the inventor of the painted statues in grisaille on the backs of the wing panels of altarpieces and of distant views of townscapes seen through windows.

Master of Flémalle Annunciation (St Mérode Altarpiece) c. 1427

Master of Moulins (fl. c. 1483–c. 1500) also known as the ‘Master of the Bourbons’, or ‘Maître aux Anges’. French painter, influenced by Netherlandish artists, especially H. van der Goes, but with a very individual and graceful style which can be seen at its best in the altarpiece, Moulins cathedral. Works include: Nativity, St Mary Magdalene and Female Donor, The Annunciation, and Charlemagne and the Meeting at the Gopdeu Gate.

Master of St Giles. French or Netherlandish artist who worked for the French court in Lyons, Paris and the Loire Valley in the last years of the 15th c. He is named after 2 panels, St Giles and the Hind and The Mass of St Giles. 2 panels with incidents from the life of St Remi are also attributed.

Master of the Aix Annunciation. The painter of an altarpiece, Annunciation, for the Église des Prêcheurs, Aix-en-Provence, c. 1445. The artist was probably French, though influenced by Van Eyck’s Adoration of the Lamb and the Master of Flémalle. The Rijksmus. panel, an outstanding still-life study of books and papers, may also show the link in style between Netherlands and Neapolitan painters.

Master of the Death of the Virgin. A painter of the early 16th c. usually identified with Joos van Cleve.

Master of the Duke of Bedford. French artist, working in Paris during the English occupation, who executed a breviary for the English Regent and The Bedford Hours (1423).

Master of the Female Half-Lengths. Early Netherlandish artist active about 1530 in Antwerp, who often painted young girls playing musical instruments or reading. His graceful, rather mannered style is close to that of Massys, e.g. Three Girls Playing Instruments.

Master of the Housebook. Late 15th-c. German or Dutch artist called after the Hausbuch at Schloss Wolfegg. This contains many drawings depicting contemporary life; and the numerous engravings attributed to this master, important early examples of the technique, have similar subjects.

Master of the Legend of the Magdalen. Early Netherlandish painter active at the beginning of the 16th c. at Brussels. He followed Rogier van der Weyden and others. Works include the Annunciation triptych and St Mary Magdalen Preaching.

Master of the Life of the Virgin. German painter active in Cologne c. 1463–80. His serene style, showing Netherlands influences, is seen best in the beautiful Annunciation from the altarpiece which gave him his name. Other important works: The Presentation in the Temple and a triptych including The Crucifixion.

Master of the Rohan Book of Hours. French artist active c. 1420, named after Les Grandes Heures du Duc de Rohan. M. had a predilection for Last Judgement themes, suffering, violence and death, often rendered in almost Expressionist terms.

Master of the St Lucy Legend. Early Netherlandish painter, active in Bruges c. 1480–90, named after Scenes from the Life of St Lucy. Other attributed works include St Catherine and Madonna with Magdalen and Virgins. Gérard David and others were influenced by the master’s quality of elegance in painting the female saints, the richness of their costume and brilliance of landscape detail.

Master of the St Ursula Legend. Early Netherlandish artist working at Bruges at the end of the 15th c., a close follower in style of Rogier van der Weyden and Memlinc, who painted the 4 Scenes from The St Ursula Legend.

Master of the Virgo inter Virgines. Early Netherlandish artist, probably working in Delft at the end of the 15th c., who painted the Madonna and Child Surrounded by Four Holy Women.

Master of Trebon or Wittingau. Bohemian Gothic painter whose masterpiece is The Resurrection, a panel from the parts of an altarpiece painted c. 1380 for a church in Trebon, or Wittingau, now in Czechoslovakia.

Mataré Ewald (1887–1965). German sculptor who started his career as a painter, studying under Corinth.

Matisse Henri (1869–1954). French painter. Until the advent of Cubism, he was the most influential painter in Paris, if not in Europe, and he remains one of the most important artists of the 20th c. His emancipation of colour has an historical importance comparable to Cubism’s role in releasing form from representation, and his Notes d’un peintre (1908) stated clearly for the 1st time several principles that lie behind later developments in 20th-c. painting. He first studied law in Paris and worked as a lawyer’s clerk at St-Quentin. He started to draw and paint c. 1890 and in 1892 studied in Paris, first under Bouguereau at the Académie Julian and then (1893–8) in Moreau’s studio at the École des Beaux-Arts, where Marquet became his close friend and he met Rouault, Manguin and other future Fauves. His early independent works painted in Brittany (1896–8) were restrained objective interiors and still-lifes, reflecting his admiration for Chardin. In the late 1890s, under the influence of Impressionism and Neo-Impressionism, he began to paint in heightened colour, but dissatisfied with Divisionism, he turned to Cézanne. Although poor at the time, he purchased from Vollard in 1899 the small Cézanne Bathers which later ‘sustained me spiritually in the critical moments of my career as an artist’. Working at the Académie Carrière (c. 1899–1900) where he met Derain, and later in a studio at Quai St-Michel, M. concentrated until 1904 on structural strength in his painting. Académie Bleu (c. 1900) shows the transition from brilliant colour to crudely simple draughtsmanship and solidly modelled form. Significantly he made his 1st sculpture at this time: sculpture continued throughout his career to be an extension of his painting. The experimental phase ended when in 1904, working at St-Tropez, the renewed contact with the brilliant Neo-Impressionist palette proved the springboard to Fauvism. M.’s leadership was recognized and in his major works of the period, Luxe, calme et volupté (1905) and Joie de vivre (1905–6) the fundamental character of his whole œuvre was emerging.

M. was concerned with an expressive art, with a seriousness of purpose comparable to the German Expressionists (whom he influenced) but totally different from them in mood and technique. In his art primitive forms are assimilated without their disturbing violence, e.g. Portrait of Madame Matisse (1913), and his treatment of colour and line never loses sight of their artistic, pictorial values. The difference is fully apparent in his belief that ‘only one who is able to order his emotions systematically is an artist’. He wrote in his Notes d’un peintre (1908): ‘What I dream of is an art of balance, purity and serenity, devoid of troubling or depressing subject-matter … which might be … like an appeasing influence, a mental soother, something like a good armchair in which to rest from physical fatigue.’

He worked in brilliant colour at Collioure (1905) with Derain and each painted a portrait of the other. Although his palette was somewhat subdued during the 1910s, e.g. Pond at Trivaux (c. 1916) or Painter and his Model (1916), he was as little touched by Cubism as Picasso was by Fauvism. He was deeply impressed by an exhibition of Near Eastern art in Munich (1910) and visited Morocco. His love of oriental fabrics and ceramics is reflected in the exotic decorative details and character of the great Odalisques of 1920–5. From 1917 he lived at Nice, with a visit to the U.S.A. and Tahiti in 1930–1. He worked on the chapel at Vence (1949–51); his other late works include the remarkable collages of cutout, gouache-coloured paper shapes arranged in terms of expressive abstract rhythms, e.g. l’Escargot (1953).

Matsys Quinten. Massys

Matta Echaurren Roberto Sebastian Antonio (1912–2002). Chilean-born painter who studied architecture under Le Corbusier, from 1934, but joined the Surrealists in 1937 and began painting, contributing his own brand of organic abstractionism which has sexual and science-fiction overtones.

Matteo di Giovanni (fl. c. 1435–95). Sienese artist who worked in association with Giovanni di Pietro at Siena and Piero della Francesca at Borgo San Sepolcro. M. was influenced by Vecchietta and, later, by the Pollaiuolo brothers. Among many works, The Assumption of the Virgin is notable for the great beauty of the painting of the Virgin herself.

Matveev Alexandr (1878–1960). Russian sculptor of Saratov, like his close friend and hero Borissov-Mussatov; one of M.’s best-known works is his memorial (1910) to this artist. He began as an architect but soon took to sculpture. He worked in Mamontov’s ceramic factory for some years. After a visit to Paris in 1906 he became the only sculptor in the Blue Rose group. For many years he was an influential teacher both in Leningrad and in Moscow. Many of his portraits are of young girls and boys, executed in a mood and technique little changed since his first mature works of the Blue Rose period.

Maulbertsch Franz Anton (1724–96). The most important of the Austrian Baroque decorative painters. He worked in Vienna, throughout Austria, Hungary and Czechoslovakia, and also at the Residenz in Dresden.

Maurya. The first great N. Indian imperial dynasty (c. 320–c. 200 BC). The emperor Ashoka (c. 264–227) adopted Buddhism. Cave sanctuaries were hewn out of rocks and hills, e.g. the Barabar hills, and excellent animal sculpture (e.g. 4 addorsed lions and a bull) on columns erected throughout the empire. The style shows influence from Hellenistic Iran. Massive sculptures of yakshas (nature spirits) survive as do fine terracotta portrait figures.

Mauve Anton (1838–88). Dutch painter in oil and watercolour. The muted colours and atmospheric effects in his landscape subjects show affinities with Corot, Daubigny and Millet. He was an important member of the Dutch ‘Barbizon’ school.

Maya art. Pre-Columbian art

Mayakovsky Vladimir Vladimirovich (1893–1930). Soviet poet and playwright. He studied painting and in 1912 joined the Cubo-futurists. After the October Revolution he worked devotedly for the Bolsheviks, designing and writing the texts of thousands of posters, writing poems and film-scripts and making speeches for Red victory in the Civil War. At this time he was virtually the official poet of Communism, a position he began to lose as Futurism became less acceptable to the régime, but regained after his suicide.

Ma Yuan (fl. 1190–1230). Chinese landscape painter, with Hsia Kuei originator of the classic S. Sung style; of the two, M.Y. is generally calmer and more precise. Characteristic works depict diagonal composition of a figure in one corner under a gnarled tree, looking meditatively out on a misty expanse.

Mazo Juan Batista del (c. 1612–67). Spanish painter, pupil and son-in-law of Velázquez, whose portraits strongly influenced him. His copy of Velázquez’s Infanta is in Vienna, together with the original.

Medici Lorenzo de’ (‘The Magnificent’) (1449–92). Ruler of Florence, politician and poet and one of the greatest art patrons of the Italian Renaissance. Other members of the M. family, notably Lorenzo’s father, Cosimo (1389–1464), and his son Giuliano (1479–1516), who became Pope Leo X, were also important art patrons.

Medina Sir John (1655/60–1711). Portrait painter of Spanish origin who settled and worked in Scotland after 1688. He also illustrated Milton’s Paradise Lost.

medium. (1) The liquid or vehicle (linseed oil, gum arabic, etc.) used to bind powdered pigments to render them usable as paint. (2) The liquid or vehicle (water, turps, etc.) used to thin prepared paint to render it more workable. The word is also used (3) in the more general sense of the technical means by which a work is executed (pastel, charcoal, pen and ink, fresco, etc.).

Meegeren Henricus Anthonius van, called Han (1889–1947). Dutch painter and renowned forger of Vermeers and De Hooghs, notably the magnificent Christ at Emmaus (1937) supposedly by Vermeer. He successfully deceived art experts and was only caught on his own confession in 1945 when he was arrested as an enemy collaborator for being involved in the sale of an old master – in fact one of his own forgeries – to Goering.

Meidner Ludwig (1884–1966). German lithographer and painter. M. was initially influenced by Impressionism but turned to an extreme Expressionism which contained a strong vein of social criticism.

Meissonier Jean-Louis-Ernest (1815–91). French painter, sculptor, lithographer and etcher, pupil of L. Cogniet, whose large historical canvases of the Napoleonic campaign were very popular at the time.

Meléndez Luis Eugenio (1716–80). Spanish painter, son and pupil of Francisco M. (1682–c. 1752). His work included portraits and still-lifes.

Melozzo da Forli (1438–94). Italian painter who worked in Rome from 1476. Work includes frescoes and commissions for the Papacy; much other work is dubiously attributed to him.

Melzi Francesco (1493–c. 1570). Italian painter, pupil and friend of Leonardo da Vinci, working with him in Rome, Bologna and, in 1515, in France. His style is very close to that of his master, e.g. Portrait of a Young Woman.

Memlinc or Memling Hans (c. 1433–94). Painter, born at Seligenstadt near Frankfurtam-Main but trained in the early Netherlands tradition, probably by Rogier van der Weyden. M. worked in Bruges, where he became a leading citizen. His talent, unoriginal but otherwise of a high order, is contrasted unfavourably at present with that of D. Bouts and Rogier van der Weyden, from whom he frequently borrows. This may be in retribution for his over-valuation in the 19th c. M.’s painting shows little development and he repeats himself, e.g. in the composition of The Mystical Marriage of St Catherine and the triptych painted for Sir John Donne of Kidwelly. His portraits combine extreme sensibility with a serene self-confidence, e.g. Tommaso Portinari and Maria, Wife of Tommaso Portinari. Other important examples of his paintings are: The Passion of Christ, The 7 Joys of the Virgin, the panels of The Shrine of St Ursula depicting the St Ursula legend, Adoration of the Magi, the diptych Descent from the Cross and Holy Women and St John.

Memlinc The Mystical Marriage of St Catherine (detail) 1479

Memmi Lippo (documented 1317–47). Sienese painter, the pupil and brother-in-law of Martini. His signature appears with Martini’s on the Annunciation and the Saints on each side are attributed to him. He painted frescoes at S. Gimignano and designed the graceful bell-tower of the Torre del Mangia, Siena. One of his finest pictures is Madonna and Child.

Mende. African tribal people of Sierra Leone. Their art is noted for the carvings, such as slender female figures and the awesome Bundu (Sande) helmets, made for the women’s secret societies.

Mengs Anton Raphael (1728–79). German painter and writer on art. Most of his life M. worked in Rome or as court painter in Spain. First influenced by Correggio, he belonged to the Neoclassicist circle of Winckelmann and became the most famous of the early Neoclassical painters. M. was much sought after as a painter of religious and historical compositions and as a portrait painter. A characteristic example of his later, dry and colourless manner is the ceiling painting, the Parnassus (1761), for the Villa Albani, Rome.

Menzel Adolf van (1815–1905). German painter of historical and military subjects, chiefly known for paintings of scenes in the life of Frederick the Great, in particular the military campaigns. M. also glorified the achievements of Bismarck and William I.

Merz Mario (1925–2003). Italian artist, frequently related to Beuys. He has made many igloos, constructed with clay, glass, stones, asphalt or metal (Black Igloo, 1967). He uses his painting as part of his works and installations (A Board with Legs Becomes a Table, 1974).

Mesdag Hendrik Wilhelm (1831–1915). Dutch marine painter. At first M. was a banker, but turned to painting in 1866, studying under Alma-Tadema in Brussels. He soon became very popular, more for his subject matter than for his questionable technical standards.

Mesopotamian art. Primary elements of Mesopotamian art and architecture are already perceptible in the late 4th millennium BC among the ancestors or immediate predecessors of the Sumerians. Religious buildings of sun-dried brick show sophisticated planning and ingenious wall ornament. Sculpture is limited in scale by shortage of stone or wood, but the mythical imagery of seal engraving initiates conventions still observed 25 centuries later. Under the dynastic rulers of Sumer (c. 2900–2100 BC), pretentious palaces appear and shrines occupy the summits of staged towers known as ziggurats. Small votive statues, animated by coloured inlay, develop characteristics of a style distinctively Mesopotamian, while new metallurgical skills are applied to the use of gold or silver. These, together with other semi-precious materials, are imported from abroad. Superb craftsmanship creates composite art-objects for religious dedication or tomb furniture. Relief carving in stone, mainly of documentary interest in Sumerian times, is refined under Semitic influence from Akkad and, in the 2nd millennium, supplemented by mural paintings. It is not until the 6th c. BC that M. architecture attains its ultimate aggrandizement. In Nebuchadnezzar’s Babylon – a fortified city covering almost 500 acres – the facades of great buildings and a ‘Procession Street’ between them, are ornamented with brilliant designs in glazed brickwork. Elsewhere, the imperishable symbols of Mesopotamian tradition are still in evidence. Islamic art.

Mesopotamian art Relief of a harp-player (Babylon)

Meštrović Ivan (1883–1962). Yugoslav sculptor. He studied at the Vienna Academy, became a friend of Rodin in Paris (1907–8) and during World War I visited Rome, Geneva and London, rapidly earning a considerable European reputation.

Metaphysical painting (It. pittura metafisica). Term used of the work of the Italian painters De Chirico and Carrà between about 1910 and 1920. Their use of dream imagery in architectural fantasies and the juxtaposition of incongruous elements foreshadowed certain aspects of Surrealism.

Metsu Gabriel (1629–67). Dutch painter, probably the pupil of G. Dou, though later influenced by Rembrandt. He worked in Leyden and Amsterdam. His genre studies of middle-class life are painted with great care and unusually genuine feeling for the subject, e.g. The Sick Child.

Metzinger Jean (1883–1956). French painter of the school of Paris. Born in Nantes, he studied in Paris where he was influenced by Neo-Impressionism and then by Cubism. M. publ. Du Cubisme with A. Gleizes in 1912.

Meulen Adam Franz van der (1632–90). Flemish painter of genre and landscape pictures. He was related to Lebrun and became court painter to Louis XIV.

Meunier Constantin (1831–1905). Belgian painter and sculptor. After a period of religious then impressionistic paintings, he turned to sculpture, carving figures of labourers in a ‘heroic’ manner.

Meyer Felix (1653–1713). Swiss painter and engraver noted for his rapidity of execution, mainly of Swiss landscapes and pastoral scenes.

Meyer-Amden Otto (1885–1933). Swiss painter and lithographer who studied under Hölzel in Stuttgart from 1909 to 1912. He formed a circle of artists, some of whom (Baumeister and Pellegrini) were of more importance than himself.

mezzotint. A form of engraving.

Michaux Henri (1899–1984). Belgian poet and prose writer; also a painter and graphic artist producing strange and frightening forms (he often worked under the influence of mescalin). His teeming ink-blots conjured up visions, such as mescalin induces, of a universe in microcosm.

Michel Georges (1763–1843). French landscape painter, the pupil of Taunay; he became known as ‘the Ruisdael of Montmartre’ and most of his subjects were scenes in and around Paris. M. was a forerunner of the Barbizon school.

Michelangelo Buonarroti (1475–1564). Florentine sculptor, painter, poet and architect. M. was born at Caprese where his father was the chief Florentine official. He was trained in Florence, first in the technique of fresco painting by D. Ghirlandaio; then under the patronage of Lorenzo the Magnificent, in the Medici school. Here he became a sculptor. Here too, his mind was formed by the companionship of the Neo-platonic philosophers, artists, poets and men of letters Lorenzo had drawn to his household. M.’s own genius was recognized and encouraged from the beginning. After the death of his patron he went to Bologna and then to Rome, where, at 23, he began the Pietà of St Peter’s. On his return to Florence M. carved the large marble David for the city. Among other works of this period are the Bruges Madonna, the painting Holy Family, or Doni Tondo, and the large cartoon or design for a fresco, The Battle of Cascina, done in competition with Leonardo da Vinci. This important work was destroyed, but not before the studies of the nude in violent action had influenced many artists in a way that led ultimately to Mannerism. In 1505 M. was recalled to Rome by Pope Julius II and ordered to design and execute the tomb which would glorify the Pope after death. Only 1 of the 40 large figures originally envisaged was ever completed, Moses. 2 unfinished but wonderfully realized figures of captives or slaves are in the Louvre. M. quarrelled with the Pope and fled from Rome; he was later reconciled with him and returned in 1508, not to complete the tomb, but to decorate the whole of the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel in the Vatican with frescoes. This enormous undertaking took him over 4 years, working virtually single-handed. His attempt to return to sculpture and the Julian tomb was again frustrated by the successor of Julius II, the Medici Pope Leo X, who ordered him to provide a facade for the unfinished church of S. Lorenzo, Florence. Although this project was abandoned in 1520, M. remained in Florence working for the Medici, chiefly on the chapel which was to contain the family tombs, the Medici chapel, and the Laurentian library, both attached to S. Lorenzo. The city rose against the Medici in 1527 and M. was divided between his loyalty to his patrons and his Republican sympathies. He took an active part in the defence of Florence as engineer in charge of fortifications, but when the Medici recaptured the town, M. was forgiven. He returned to his work in the Medici chapel, completing the tombs of Giuliano and Lorenzo de’ Medici, with the symbolic figures Day and Night, Dawn and Evening, before he was again recalled to Rome in 1534 to paint his 2nd great fresco, the Last Judgement, which covers the whole area of the altar wall of the Sistine Chapel. In Rome he met Vittoria Colonna, a chief influence on his later years. 2 further frescoes, Conversion of St Paul and Crucifixion of St Peter were painted (1542–50). The tomb of Julius II, much reduced in scale, was completed at S. Pietro in Vincoli (1545). In 1546 M. was appointed architect-in-chief of St Peter’s and architect for the new plan and building of the Roman Capitol. Despite all this, designing the dome of St Peter’s, supervising the actual building of the church and work on other architectural projects, M. executed 3 of his most profoundly imagined sculptures at this time, Pietà, the Palestrina Pietà and the Rondanini Pietà. Many of his finest sonnets were also written in these last years.

Michelangelo Creation of Adam (detail from Sistine Chapel ceiling) 1508–12

Probably no artist has ever exerted a greater influence than M. To his contemporaries he was ‘The Divine M.’, and though the greatness of the man was apparent and recognized, the creative power within him inspired an awe in worldly popes, scholars and soldiers, so that they spoke of his ‘terribilità’. His friend Vasari made the achievement of M. the culmination of that gathering splendour in the arts that had begun with Giotto. For over 400 years the frescoes of the Sistine Chapel have been studied by painters, their patrons and all who judged the art of their own times. (‘Until you have seen the Sistine Chapel, you can have no adequate conception of what man is capable of accomplishing’, Goethe wrote.) M.’s influence as a poet might have been equally great if his sonnets had not had to wait until 1863 before they were publ. in their original form. The mutilated and bowdlerized version publ. in 1623 by M.’s great-nephew had little value and aroused interest chiefly as a curiosity. It is often difficult to grasp the total meaning of the sonnets but M.’s genius is as clear in such sonnets as Giunto è già’l corso della vita mia (title given by J. A. Symonds, On the Brink of Death) as it is in those last Pietàs in which the struggle in search of meaning almost destroys meaning.

Michelangelo Pietà (St Peter’s, Rome) c. 1498

Michelozzo Michelozzi (1396–1472). Italian highly influential architect and sculptor from Florence. He worked with Ghiberti and Donatello and designed for Cosimo de’ Medici the Rucellai Palace considered to be the most important palace of the quattrocento.

Middendorf Helmut (1953– ). German Neo-Expressionist artist (Bad art) influenced by Lüpertz and subsequently aligned with the Berlin figurative artists Rainer Fetting and Salomé called ‘Young Fauves’. M. often painted city life, e.g. Man with Fire (1985).

Miereveld Michiel van (1567–1641). Dutch portrait painter working in Delft and The Hague, and portrait painter to the House of Orange. Charles I tried to attract him to England in 1625. His numerous portraits are frequently small and restrained in style.

Mieris the Elder, Franz van (1635–81). Dutch portrait painter and engraver, born at Leyden, notable for his handling of colour and for his treatment of silks, satins and jewellery. He was reputed to have painted on a gold base.

Mignard Pierre (1612–95). French painter. He studied under Boucher and then went to Rome where he became popular, producing Madonnas, called ‘Mignardes’. He returned to France and from 1658 onwards began painting court portraits, including that of Cardinal Mazarin. After long and uneasy rivalry he succeeded Lebrun as first court painter in 1690.

Milan, school of. 15th–16th-c. school of Italian painting brought into prominence by Vincenzo Foppa but subsequently dominated by Leonardo (in Milan 1483–99) and his followers, e.g. Boltraffio and Luini.

Millais Sir John Everett (1829–96). Leading Victorian artist and a founder of the Pre- Raphaelite Brotherhood in 1848. His friendship with Ruskin ended with M.’s marriage to Ruskin’s former wife. Growing away from Ruskin’s ideas and those of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, he became the greatest academic painter of his day, and was president of the R.A. His youthful work Christ in the House of His Parents (1850) caused a scandal by its realistic treatment of the Holy Family.

Millais Christ in the House of His Parents 1850

Millares Manolo (1926–1972). Spanish painter. He 1st experimented in a Surrealist manner and with ‘magical abstractions’. Ed. of art review, Aqueros. He became the founder-member of ‘El Passo’ group (1955). His torn and slashed canvases are painted in funeral blacks and blood colours.

Milles Carl (1875–1955). Swedish sculptor. He studied in Paris (1897) and was subsequently very much influenced by the work of Rodin. His work is well represented in fountains and on public buildings in Stockholm, and also in the U.S.A. where he had a considerable reputation.

Millet Jean-François (1814–75). French painter, etcher and draughtsman. He studied in great poverty in Paris, absorbing the lessons of Flemish painting and of French classicism, above all Poussin. He created his most significant work at Barbizon after 1848. His bestknown work, The Angelus (1858–9), expresses his sympathy for the peasant’s simplicity and devotion in the face of nature. M. reconciled classicism with Realism in direct impressions from nature; his work inspired Van Gogh and contemporary social realists.

Millet The Angelus 1858–9

Milne David (Bruce) (1882–1953). Canadian painter of landscapes, notably of Ontario, working in an impressionistic style.

Milow Keith (1945– ). British artist living in the U.S.A. He came to prominence, one of the most important of his generation, in the 1970s with works that are often a ‘cross between painting and sculpture’ and contain Contructivist and architectural references, e.g. an extensive series of ‘crosses’, made over c. the last 20 years, which relate both to Malevich and to the stylized form of the human figure. Wall reliefs refer to, and are often of, hybrid monuments, faced with oxidized lead over wood, which yields a painterly and subtly coloured surface, e.g. Justice (1986–7). M.’s work has been increasingly suffused with references to architectural Graeco-Roman classicism, lettering and links to the grand cultural traditions of the West and, more recently, of Britain.

Mimbres. Mogollon

Ming. Chinese dynasty (1368–1644). Most court art was an uninspired revival of pre-Mongol (Yüan) academic styles. The talented scholar-painters (wen-jen) of the Wu school, by contrast, included Shen Chou (1427–1509), inspired by the Yüan masters Huang Kungwang and Ni Tsan, as well as N. Sung art, and his pupil Wen Cheng-ming (1470–1559). Other gifted painters were T’ang Yin (1479–1523), the still popular Ch’in Ying (fl. 1520–40) and the theorist Tung Ch’i-ch’ang. M. sculptors revived T’ang styles with vigorous independence. In porcelain, cobalt glazing was taken up and fully developed in the famous blue-and-white wares; porcelain was refined to a purity and hardness never since achieved and, based on the factories of Ching-te-chen (kaolin), its manufacture became a major industry. The export trade was developed from the 16th c. through Portuguese, Spanish and Dutch merchantadventurers. Decorative glaze and underglaze painted porcelain was a specifically M. technique. This and all M. porcelain, and the blanc-de-chine ceramic figures especially from the Wan-li period (1573–1616), were to stimulate the growth of such European wares as Meissen and Wedgwood. Blue was only one of the many new M. glaze colours, used either in monochrome or polychrome; perhaps the most well known are the polychrome enamel wares. The use of enamel in Chinese ceramics was probably borrowed from Chinese cloisonné metalwork. M. is also famous for its carved red and layered lacquer vessels and furniture.

Ming Ming Emperor

miniature. Term originally applied to the art of ms. illumination but later used of paintings, usually portraits, executed on a very small scale. The earliest miniaturists or limners (16th c.) continued to use the materials of the illuminators, painting in gouache on vellum or card. In the 18th c. it became usual to paint in transparent watercolour on ivory, though some mss were painted in oils on metal. In the mid-19th c. the art began to decline. Famous miniaturists include Hilliard, Oliver, Cooper, Cosway (in Britain), J. and F. Clouet, Petitot and Jean-Baptiste Isabey (in France), Fuger (in Germany).

Minimal art. Although not a defined movement or style, a number of U.S. artists in the 1960s reacted against the values that had been exalted by the previous generation of the Abstract Expressionists – self-expression, subjectivity, emotionalism and gestural brushstrokes. Those who became the leading practioners of ‘ABC’ or M. a. were Judd, Flavin, Andre, R. Morris and, in the early stages of his work, F. Stella. With the exception of Stella, they were concerned in constructing 3-dimensional objects. They shared with Mondrian the belief that a work of art should be completely conceived in the mind before its excecution. In M. a. the mind imposes a rational order, conceptual rigour, clarity, literalness and simplicity, indifferent to received moral, social and philosophical values, preoccupied with ideas comparable to those of mathematics. Like all strictly rational attempts, however, an unintended aura of calm beauty emanates from the purity of M. a. works. Rectangular, cubic and modular 3-dimensional forms are purged of all intended metaphor and meaning. Equality of component parts, repetition, often neutral surfaces, emphasize the modular state of M. a. objects with their serial potential as an extendable, open-ended grid. As Morris claimed, ‘the notion that work is an irreversible process ending in a static icon-object no longer has much relevance…’ In 1961 Andre began stacking and piling beams and soon after introduced a new element of horizontality in sculptures that hug the ground, e.g. Lever (1966) consisting of 137 unjoined commercial fire bricks that extend along the floor for 34.5 ft (10.5 m.), ‘…putting Brancusi’s Endless Column on the ground instead of in the air.’ M. a. aimed to achieve a new interpretation of the goals of sculpture and Judd and Morris were its main polemicists, publishing numerous articles defining the new aesthetic and dictating the terms on which they wished their work to be apprehended. They redefined the traditional conventions of painting and especially sculpture by removing spatial illusionism through the elimination of figure-ground relationships. Actual space thus became more powerful and specific than depicted space. Judd called the resulting works ‘specific objects’, originally Plexiglas boxes with metal sides. These were assembled, consisting of identical and interchangeable units laid out in a repetitive manner, the module always seving as the ordering principle. M. a. became one of the most uncompromising and pervasive aesthetics in the 1960s and ’70s, its influence extending to poetry, dance and music as in the compositions of Philip Glass and Steve Reich.

Minoan culture. Bronze age culture of Crete, conventionally divided into Early M., 3000–2000 BC, Middle M., 2000–1600 BC and Late M., 1600–1100 BC. The most famous sites are the Palace of Minos at Knossos and Phaestos. M. c. is also noted for exquisite jewellery, fine pottery, notably the vigorous and spontaneous marine style of c. 1500–c. 1450 BC, bronze, ivory and terracotta sculptures, seal engravings and Late M. wall paintings in an elegant and refined court style.

Minoan culture Priest King (reconstructed, from Knossos) 1600/1100 BC

Mino da Fiesole (1430/31–84). A leading Florentine sculptor of his period. His work shows an interest in classical models but also imagination and technical mastery, notably in his fine portrait bust of Niccolò Strozzi (1454).

Miralda Antoni (1942– ). Spanish artist renowned for his edible art – ornate, brilliantly coloured cake sculptures on a monumental scale which highlight the association of food with ritual and ceremony, e.g. L’anniversaire de l’amour (1969). Sometimes his food sculptures become part of an event, e.g. Diner en quatre couleurs (1970) where 400 participants in ceremonial costume were served red, blue, yellow and green food, and Moveable Feast (1974) in Manhattan.

Mir Iskusstva. The World of Art

Miró Joan (1893–1983). Spanish painter who trained (1907–15) in Barcelona at the School of Fine Art and the Academy Cali. As a student he had a great admiration for Catalan art, popular arts and the extreme Art Nouveau forms of Gaudí’s architecture. His early painting passed through Cézannesque and Fauve phases. He was in Portugal with Delaunay during World War I and in 1920 settled in Paris, where he met and was influenced by his compatriots Picasso and Gris. During the 1920s he became closely associated with the Surrealists and contributed to all their important exhibitions. His freely invented calligraphy of highly coloured forms earned from Breton the description ‘the most Surrealist of us all’; the decorative complexity of Harlequinade (1924–5) gave way in the 1930s to a simpler use of expressive colours and symbols which influenced Kandinsky and probably Picasso. Back in Barcelona from 1940, he continued to paint highly personal subjective images, e.g. Women, Bird by Moonlight (1949), but nevertheless remained a very influential figure, particularly for U.S. artists like Gorky and Calder. His public commissions include the 2 ceramic-tile walls, The Sun and The Moon (1955–8, UNESCO, Paris) which won the 1958 Guggenheim International Award. Later works include a mural for the Fondation Maeght, St Paul, France (1968).

Mississippi culture. Mound builders

Mitchell Joan (1926–1992). U.S. painter who was among the 2nd generation of Abstract Expressionists who developed under the influence of De Kooning.

mixed media. Term used to describe 20th-c. works of art which combine different types of materials, or different art forms (also called multimedia and intermedia).

Mixtec. Mexican Pre-Columbian culture which fl. from c. AD 900; apparently successors of the Zapotec. The M. produced brilliant metalwork, mosaic and ms. illumination. Other work includes fine pottery and stone and bone carvings. M. art influenced the Aztecs.

mobile. A form of sculpture invented in the early 1930s by Calder; m.s consist of a number of objects of various shapes suspended on wire rods in such a way that they move in continuously changing relationships when placed in a current of air. By creating movement in space m.s get away from the traditionally static nature of sculpture. Kinetic sculpture.

Mochi Francesco (1580–1654). Italian sculptor, strongly influenced by Florentine styles, who worked in Florence, Rome and Piacenza. Among numerous equestrian statues is that of Alessandro Farnese at Piacenza. His religious works include the Annunciation group and St Veronica.

Mochica. Pre-Columbian coastal empire of Peru (c. 1st c.–9th c. AD) followed by the Chimu. Its architectural monuments, built of adobe brick, include temples, e.g. Huaca del Sol, pyramid-type structures and aqueducts. M. ceramics include stirrup jars, painted with lifelike scenes of everyday life, and moulded portrait pots.

modelling. (1) In sculpture to build up form in clay or other plastic material; the opposite of carving. (2) In painting to give an appearance of 3-dimensional solidity on a 2-dimensional surface, used particularly with reference to the human figure. (3) Posing as a subject for an artist.

modello. Small version of a large painting executed by the artist for his patron’s approval. Unlike a sketch, a m. is often highly finished.

Modersohn-Becker Paula (1876–1907). German painter, and a friend of the poet Rilke. Her painting is Expressionist in the sense that she was primarily concerned with the expression of personal feeling; but the mood of her work is predominantly a gentle poetic Romanticism without strident colour or harsh distortion. Her Self-portrait (1907), the best known of several, shows simple form and restrained colour used to create a feminine tenderness of expression.

Modigliani Amedeo (1884–1920). Italian painter, sculptor and draughtsman; born in Leghorn, of Jewish descent. M. studied in Venice and Florence and arrived in Paris in 1906. Without associating himself with any particular group or movement, M. took what he wanted from the paintings of Toulouse-Lautrec, Cézanne, African sculpture, the Fauves, Cubism and other experimental work of Picasso and Braque. More decisive was his meeting with Brancusi; and between 1910 and 1913 it was sculpture that absorbed him. Forced to give this up because the dust thrown off by the chisel damaged his lungs, already weakened by disease, M. applied many sculptural effects in his portraits and nudes, particularly the characteristic elongation of the head, the long raised ridge of the nose and the long neck. The legend of his life as a Montparnasse eccentric – handsome, poor, proud, amorous and drugged or drunk – was cultivated by his literary friends, especially after his genuinely tragic death at 35. The legend ignores his intense concentration on his painting in his last years. Outstanding examples of his paintings are: Jacques Lipchitz and his Wife, Nude on a Cushion, Bride and Groom, The Little Peasant.

Modigliani Seated Girl c. 1917

Mogollon. Tradition of North American Indian art centred in S.E. Arizona and S.W. New Mexico. The principal cultures were the M. proper, dating from c. 300 BC and the Mimbres AD 1000–1300. Also called the Mimbreños, these were masters of ceramic decoration, polychrome and black-and-white.

Mogul art. Mughal art

Moholy-Nagy László (1895–1946). Hungarian sculptor, painter, designer and photographer. He trained in law but by 1920 was working in Berlin with Lissitzky; his originality was soon recognized by Gropius, who appointed him to run the metalworkshop at the Bauhaus. He was again in Berlin (1928–32), a member of the Abstraction-Création group in Paris (1932–6); in London (1935–7) and finally Chicago, where he directed a New Bauhaus (1938–46). His transparent Space Modulators are influenced by N. Gabo. Like him, M.-N. was concerned with the dynamic relationships of forms in space. His teaching at the Bauhaus (1922–8) also concentrated upon the use in art of 20th-c. materials and techniques (including photography – in which he experimented with the technical possibilities to produce the montage, double exposure and photogram – and the cinema and telephone). These are the themes of his Von Material zu Architektur (1929, as a Bauhaus Book; The New Vision, 1939).

Molenaer Jan Miense (c. 1610–68). Dutch painter of genre and historical subjects. Both he and his wife, Judith Leyster (married 1636) were probably pupils of Hals whose work theirs resembled closely in subject and style. M. had a particular fondness for genre pieces involving musical scenes.

Molvig Jon (1923–70). Australian painter. His work, notably the series Ballad of the Dead Stockman, holds a central position in contemporary Australian art.

Momoyama. A period in Japanese history (1573–1614) named after the castle-palace near Kyoto, of Toyotomi Hideyoshi (d. 1598), who with Tokugawa Ieyasu (d. 1616) dominated the period. Japanese art swung decisively from the restrained elegance of Muromachi art. The castle-palaces of the feudal lords (daimyo) had flaring roof lines of wooden stories on massive stone plinths. The interiors were luxuriously decorated with huge screens and sliding panels painted in strong, thick colours, against a ground of gold leaf, notably by Kano Eitoku and Kano Sanraku (1559–1635), his adopted son.

Momoyama Peonies (sliding screen) early 17th c.

Momper Joos de (1564–1635). Flemish painter. He painted Alpine landscapes (he travelled in Italy and Switzerland) and also scenes around Antwerp. The Miraculous Deliverance of the Emperor Maximilian is at Antwerp.

Monaco Lorenzo, i.e. ‘Lorenzo the Monk’, Piero di Giovanni called (c. 1370/72–c. 1425). Italian painter and illuminator of the Florentine school. He moved from Siena to Florence, where he entered the monastery of S. Maria degli Angeli, a famous centre of ms. illumination. His style of painting as seen in Coronation of the Virgin, derived from the tradition of Giotto and the Sienese school; however, a late painting, Adoration of the Magi, is one of the earliest examples of the International Gothic style in Florence.

Monamy Peter (1689–1749). Self-taught British marine painter, influenced by the work of Willem van der Velde. He painted an historical piece, The Embarkation of Charles II at Scheveningen, 1660 amongst others, and was also employed on the decorations at Vauxhall Gardens. M. found his subjects to a large extent in shipping on the Thames.

Mondrian Piet (1872–1944). Dutch painter; he studied at the Amsterdam Academy. His earliest works, sombre-coloured landscapes, are patently in the Dutch tradition. During the years 1907–10 the landscape became more heavily stylized and expressively brilliant in colour, with echoes of Munch as well as Matisse, e.g. the series of Church Tower paintings (c. 1909). In 1909 he moved to Paris and the experience of Cubism was the turning-point in his evolution. His colouristic Expressionist tendencies were suppressed and he submitted his formalizations to a rigorous linear discipline. In a series such as the Still-life with Ginger-pot paintings (1912) the motif is analysed in terms of linear and planear relationships which became, progressively, more important than the motif itself. The debt to Cubism is emphasized by the shallow space illusion and by the familiar blue/grey or ochre monochromatic palette. He returned to Holland in 1914 and by 1917 realized that the perfect expressive harmony that he sought was hindered by starting from a given motif – ‘The emotion of beauty is always obstructed by the appearance of the “object”; therefore the object must be eliminated from the picture.’ His Compositions (1914–17) comprise simple flat rectangles of colour, their austerity heightened (c. 1916) by the use of primary colours only. The final evolution of his mature style was in eliminating the depth-suggesting spaces between the rectangles: from c. 1917 on the coloured shapes are divided by a flat grid of black lines. His mature œuvre using only the primary colours and non-colours (black, white and sometimes grey), consists of a series of refined variations, e.g. Broadway Boogie-Woogie (1942–3).

M.’s importance lies in his development of ‘pure’ abstraction – he called his art Neo-plasticism – in which the shapes, lines and colours have their own absolute, autonomous values and relationships, divorced from any associative role whatsoever. He was a member of the Dutch Theosophical Society from 1909 and it is clear from his writings in the De Stijl journal (founded in 1917 with Van der Leck and Van Doesburg) and in his pamphlet Néo-Plasticisme (1920), that M., inspired by the Dutch philosopher Schoenmaekers, saw his art as an expression of a perfect universal harmony, to whose creation he was contributing.

Monet Claude (1840–1926). French painter. He was born in Paris but educated at Le Havre where, in 1858, he met Boudin who encouraged him to paint nature on the spot. At the Atelier Suisse in Paris in 1859 he met Pissarro and Cézanne and after military service in Algiers (1862) returned to Paris to study under Gleyre. A fellow-student of Renoir, Sisley and Bazille (1862–4), he painted with them at Chailly, near Fontainebleau. He was the least satisfied with Gleyre’s teaching and learnt more from Jongkind and Boudin; and working with them at Honfleur (1864), he began to paint the landscape in terms of its atmospheric appearance. His paintings of the Seine estuary – very well received at the 1865 Salon – already revealed the extraordinarily acute judgment of tonal values that prompted Cézanne to call him ‘only an eye, but my God what an eye’. Around 1865/6 he tried to rework the theme of Manet’s Le Déjeuner sur l’Herbe without its studio artificiality. The projected large painting was probably never completed; but the study, dated 1866, in Moscow, is a remarkably complete attempt to represent figures in a glade with the sunlight filtering on to them through the leaves. This was to become a recurrent Impressionist theme. In the late 1860s M. and Renoir worked in a partnership of mutual advantage and produced the 1st pure Impressionist paintings. In La Grenouillère (1869) he began to break up local colour into strokes of pure colour and in The Magpie (c. 1870) – an evenly toned snowscape – the pale blue of the shadow vibrantly complements the touches of yellow flecked across the snow’s surface. Impression Sunrise (1872) which earned the group their derisive name suggests a debt to Constable’s empirical directness and to Turner’s atmospheric generalizations (M. was in London in 1871). He contributed to 5 of the 8 Impressionist exhibitions and suffered as much as Pissarro and Sisley from hostility and lack of patronage. Working mainly at Argenteuil with Manet, Morisot, Renoir and Sisley during the 1870s, M. remained dedicated to the study of light and its changing effect on nature. In 1876 he began the first of his series of paintings on a single subject – the Gare St Lazare (1876–8) was followed by the Haystacks (1890–2), Poplars (1890–2), and Rouen Cathedral (1892–4). Their object was to observe the transformation of the motif under changing light and atmosphere, but they almost incidentally led to the surface richness of colour and paint of his late style which has earned comparison with Abstract Expressionism. The 1880s were prolific years, but years of continued poverty and depression until in 1889 he had his 1st big public success at an exhibition shared with Rodin. In 1883 he settled at Giverny where – apart from visits to London (1891, 1899, 1903) and Venice (1908–9) – he spent the rest of his life. There he created an astonishing garden elaborately arranged with plants and flowers of different colours. The late water-lily paintings (Nymphéas) painted in the water gardens (Outdoor studios’) which he built there, were still responses to his eye, but – increasingly subjective – they embody a larger, cosmic sense of nature. He presented the vast canvases in the Musée de l’Orangerie, Paris, to the state in 1921 as his contribution to the restoring of the spirit of peace. The canvases surround and submerge the spectator. M., who said he ‘feared the dark more than death’, died blind. Perhaps the most astonishing of the late paintings were given by M.’s son Michel as a bequest to the Musée Marmottan in 1966, including 12 of the Nymphéas and 7 Ponts japonais. These works anticipate in many ways Abstract Expressionism.

Monet Rouen Cathedral 1894

Monnier Henri Bonaventure (1805–77). French caricaturist who created the famous character of Joseph Prud’homme in his Scènes populaires (1830).

Monnoyer Jean-Baptiste (1634–99). The outstanding Flemish flower painter of the age; he worked mainly in France, at the Trianon and at Marly. In England in 1685 he painted decorative flower pieces for Montagu House, Hampton Court, Windsor Castle and Kensington Palace.

monotype. In art, the painting of a picture in oils on a metal plate from which one unique print is taken. Castiglione and Degas experirmented with the medium (which produces characteristic textures), as did several contemporary artists.

Monro Thomas (1759–1833). British amateur painter in watercolour, but known mainly as the enlightened patron of Cotman, Cozens, Girtin, Turner and De Wint. His London home became a meeting-place and unofficial academy for watercolour painters.

montage (Fr. mounting). A design, not necessarily intended as an art work, made by sticking one material over another, and the process of creating such designs. The term is used in filmmaking for cutting and piecing together images or sequences when a film is edited. collage, photomontage.

Montagna Bartolommeo (c. 1450–1523). Italian painter of frescoes and religious subjects, e.g. the frescoes in the oratory of S. Biagio, Verona (1493–6). His work is mainly confined to N. Italy. He was assisted by his son Benedetto.

Montanez Juan Martínez (1568–1649). Spanish sculptor whose work is best represented in Seville. His sculptures are chiefly religious works, and include crucifixes, statuary and altarpieces.

Monticelli Adolphe (1824–86). French painter of figures, portraits and still-lifes. Popular and patronized by Napoleon III, he moved to Marseilles on the fall of the Second Empire in 1871. His style changed and he continued to work in Marseilles and shunned the life of a fashionable painter.

Moore Albert Joseph (1841–92). British painter, son of William Moore, mural and decorative painter. M. exhibited at the R.A. but was never an Academician.

Moore Henry (1898–1986). British sculptor. M. studied at Leeds College of Art (1919–21) and at the Royal College of Art, London (1921–5), where he was a fellow-student of Barbara Hepworth. The 1st major contemporary British sculptor of international standing, M. exerted a considerable influence on succeeding generations, although this was to some extent superseded by the rise of British Constructivism in the 1950s. 3 main influences dominated his work from the beginning: first primitive and archaic arts (encouraged by reading Roger Fry’s Vision and Design, and by the precedent of Epstein, who admired and encouraged his early work); secondly the contemporary work of Brancusi and Picasso (M. made several visits to Paris from 1923); and thirdly his visit to Italy (1925) on a scholarship, where he discovered Giotto and Masaccio but was little interested in the ‘perfection’ of Renaissance art. In 1928 M. had his 1st one-man exhibition and his 1st public commission – the North Wind relief on the London Transport Executive Building, St James’s. Around 1927–9 he made his first reclining figure, the theme which was to be central to his whole œuvre. In treating the figure he was never concerned with its superficial appearance, but with creating an elemental living image. The hollows in Reclining Figure (1930), for example, reveal space contained within a volume and are at the same time womb-like fertility symbols. There are also subconscious analogies to landscape – hillsides, caverns, etc. – in many of his figures. Brancusi, he said, made him ‘shape-conscious’, but M.’s shapes at their most abstract retain a vital sense of organic growth, often in an ambiguous part-animal, part-vegetable metamorphosis. All of his prewar work was characterized by his truth to the nature of his materials (carving allowed him this closeness of contact), full 3-dimensionality and an unidealized urgent sense of energy and vitality. In 1933 M. was a founder-member of Unit One with Nash, Hepworth and Ben Nicholson. His work in the 1930s ranged from strange Surrealist metamorphoses influenced by Tanguy and Picasso, to his most abstract works – the String Figures of 1937–40, inspired by Gabo and Nicholson; the Helmet Head (1939–40) was the 1st of his ideas on a theme of forms-within-forms. The Shelter drawings of the London Underground which he made as a war artist (1940–3) pursue this interest with the small figures enclosed within the throat of the tunnel. There is also an expressive element of pathos in these wartime drawings, which in general abandon Surrealism for a naturalism full of feeling for humanity. Since the war he continued to work on the reclining figure theme – the figure often divided into 2 or 3 monumental pieces. The general development of his post-war sculpture, much of it in bronze, was towards an overpowering dominance of mood and a massive sense of scale. The domesticity of his Madonna and Child (1943–4) gave way to the primeval cult character of the King and Queen (1952–3) and the early Surrealist organisms to the pantheistic, totem-like Glenkiln Cross (1955–6).

Mor Antonio (c. 1519–c. 1575). Netherlandish portrait painter, also called ‘Moro or Anthonis Mor van Dashorst’; trained by Jan van Scorel in Utrecht and later court painter to Philip II of Spain, with whom he may have come to Britain in 1554. M. combines great skill in painting costume with a sharp if diplomatic eye for character in his sitter, e.g. Sir Thomas Gresham and the very fine Queen Mary I of England.

Morales Luis de (c. 1509–86). Spanish painter, devoted almost exclusively to religious subjects, especially of the head of Christ crowned with thorns. His style was based on a fusion of those of Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo. M. often painted on wood and copper.

Morandi Giorgio (1890–1964). Italian painter. In 1918 he joined the Metaphysical school of painters (Pittura Metafisica) and subsequently the Novecento group. He then followed a solitary path with the single-mindedness of a Chardin or Cézanne. He specialized in subtle, simplified groups of still-life objects – bottles, jugs, candlesticks, paper roses – which have great serenity. M. is one of the few major figures of 20th-c. representational art. He was also an accomplished engraver.

Moreau Gustave (1826–98). French painter who studied under F.-E. Picot. A painter in the academic tradition, he favoured large, involved biblical or classical subjects, painted in great detail. Most celebrated of M.’s works is the Salomé described by Huysmans in his novel À Rebours; it was admired by the novelist for its ‘decadence’ of mood. M.’s views on the use of colour and his valuable teaching at the École des Beaux-Arts, Paris, had some influence on Surrealism, and stimulated his outstanding pupils, Matisse and Rouault, and several of the lesser Fauve painters.

Gustave Moreau Salomé 1876

Moreau Louis (1740–1806). French painter of landscapes in the Île-de-France, in watercolour and oil. His work combines precise observation with a certain spontaneous freshness. His work found great official favour under the governments of the Revolution and Empire.

Morellet François (1926– ). French artist of influential early Op and Kinetic works combining scientific and aesthetic principles in terms of visual perception. Associated with the Groupe de Recherche d’Art Visuel, of which he was a founder-member, and with the Nouvelle Tendance. M. has said that his main aim in his work is to reduce arbitrariness and to limit his ‘artist’s’ sensibility.

Morelli Giovanni (1816–91). Italian art critic who formulated systematic criteria for making attributions of works of art to artists by codifying ‘minor’ details (hands, ears, noses, etc.), his theory being that, by the close study of such, attribution can be made beyond doubt. M.’s theory is now regarded with scepticism.

Moretto Alessandro Bonvicino (‘Moretto of Brescia’) (c. 1498–1554). Italian painter and pupil of Ferramola, with whom Moretto decorated the choir of Brescia cathedral (1518). Influenced by Titian and Raphael, he was one of the chief Renaissance painters of N. Italy, and is noted for his preference for silvery or yellowy greys. Moroni was his pupil. He is credited with introducing the full-length portrait into Italy.

Morisot Berthe (1841–95). French painter who studied at the École des Beaux-Arts, Paris (1856–9) and then from 1860 under Corot. She exhibited in 7 of the 8 Impressionist exhibitions and her sensitive Impressionism influenced Manet, her brother-in-law, during the 1870s. The Cradle (1873) was shown in the 1st Impressionist exhibition (1874).

Morisot The Cradle 1873

Morland George (1763–1804). British painter who rose quickly to fame, but was soon encumbered with debts and died in squalor. His rustic scenes, usually depicting idealized village life, were popularized by a Morland Gallery and by engravings; they created a new public for such pictures. His popular legacy was divided between those who took up his genre subjects, such as Sir D. Wilkie, and the generations of British sporting and animal painters who followed such works as Shooting Sea Fowl and Inside of a Stable.

Morley Malcolm (1931– ). British artist who lives in N.Y. Known after the mid-1960s as the leading Photo-Realist (Super Realism). Post-1970–1 he became a Neo-Expressionist with vivid, colourful and vivacious works which make frequent references to Delacroix, Van Gogh, Monet, De Kooning and other late 19th-c. and early 20th-c. masters, combining a variety of visual references, techniques and styles, e.g. Day Fishing at Heraklion (1983).

Morone Francesco (1471–1529). Italian fresco painter. He painted religious works and frescoes for the churches of Verona and also an altarpiece for S. Maria dell’Organa.

Moroni Giovanni Battista (c. 1525–78). Italian painter, pupil of Moretto and much influenced by Lotto. Apart from a number of uninteresting religious pictures, he painted astonishing portraits of ordinary people, combining German and Dutch Realism with the technical skill of the Venetian school. In his day he was the rival of Titian in reputation.

Moroni Portrait of a Tailor c. 1550

Morosov Ivan (1871–1921). One of the great Muscovite merchant patrons (who had an influence on the development of modern art in Russia) and among the 1st to buy Post-Impressionist French painting in Russia. His coll. of 135 works (acquired 1905–14) is now divided between the Pushkin Mus. (Moscow) and the Hermitage (Leningrad). Cézanne, Gauguin, Monet and Renoir predominate with specially commissioned panels by Bonnard, Denis and Vuillard.

Morrice James W(ilson) (1864–1924). Canadian painter. Most of M.’s life was spent in France, though on visits he painted Quebec landscapes. He was primarily a colourist and was heavily influenced by Matisse.

Morris Robert (1931– ). U.S. artist, working first in San Francisco and from 1961 in N.Y.; his work has ranged from mixed media works to Performance art. In the mid-1960s he was noted for large-scale Minimalist sculptures built from industrial materials. Among M.’s other projects were performances with Yvonne Rainer, permutation pieces, changed every few days during their exhibition, anti-form sculpture and Process art.

Morris William (1834–96). British writer, designer, craftsman and Socialist. At Oxford (1853–5) he met Burne-Jones; in 1859 M. married and commissioned the building of the famous Red House, Bexley Heath, from P. Webb. From 1876 M. became increasingly involved in political activities, although he continued to publ. poetry, lecture on politics, and take up and master new crafts until his death. M., like Ruskin, who strongly influenced his ideas, was appalled by the deadening effect of industrialism; he believed that art derived from the workman’s pleasure in his ‘daily necessary work’ and that decoration, the beginning of art, was the expression of this pleasure; the 1st move towards a rebirth of art must be to raise the condition of the workers. Thus M.’s political and artistic convictions were closely interwoven. This craft theory of art, which was coupled with an admiration for the Middle Ages, together with his contempt for 19th-c. English art, led M. to the founding of ‘The Firm’ to design and manufacture wallpapers and furniture for the Red House; besides M. the designers were Burne-Jones, Rossetti, Ford Madox Brown and Webb. Originally a private venture, ‘The Firm’ continued in production for the commercial market. The arts and crafts movement was the development of M.’s work. His concern that the artist-designer should understand craft processes and ‘honour’ his material is reflected in the principles of the Bauhaus.

Morrow George (1869–1955). Irish caricaturist and ill. who was one of the principal humorists in Punch between the World Wars.

Morse Samuel F. G. (1791–1872). U.S. painter who studied painting in London under Allston and West. After 1833 he abandoned painting, invented the telegraph and pursued mechanical inventions and politics.

Mortimer John Hamilton (1741–79). British painter of portraits, religious and historical subjects, and pupil of Reynolds. For an 18th-c. painter his choice of historical subjects, e.g. King John Granting Magna Carta, was unusual.

mosaic. A design composed of coloured squares of clay, glass, marble or wood embedded in walls, floors or ceilings, either inset in small squares or covering a large area. Both pictorial and abstract designs are found. The Romans were the most extensive users of m. and the early Christians continued the tradition, which survived into the early Middle Ages, and which under the Byzantine empire was raised to an unsurpassed level.

Mosaic Centre of Roman hunting mosaic (Lillebone)

Moser Lucas. German 15th-c. painter whose only known work is the Magdalen Altar (1431) at Tiefenbronn, near Pforzheim, in Swabia. Stylistically, this altarpiece is a German counterpart to the work of Van Eyck or Campin.

Moses Grandma (Anna Mary Robertson) (1860–1961). U.S. primitive painter (primitives). She took to painting in her old age and rapidly gained widespread attention.

Moskowitz Robert (1935– ). U.S. abstract artist whose work explores notions of absence and presence. This was most manifest in 1962 when he produced a series of window shades stretched and stuck on to monochrome canvases: through the concealment suggested by the ‘drawn’ shade, it points to the imagined space beyond. M. has spoken of the meditative process of making art, which he took to an extreme from the early ’60s until the mid-70s, in a series of paintings based on a diagram of a corner of a room which he had found in a D.I.Y. book. Although he has continued to work from the idea of a single, isolated image (he once said, ‘Most of the images I use have been so stamped on my brain that they are almost abstract’) in the ’70s he introduced more colour and figurative imagery into his increasingly iconic work. Cadillac/Chopsticks (1976) is a study of East/West divergences through the seemingly moving car and static chopsticks, Swimmer (1978) suggests ambiguously the possibility of ‘drowning’ in N.Y. and Flatiron (For Lilly) (1978), a black-on-black re-presentation of the N.Y. skyscraper, has been seen as a metaphor for death. The combination of a single image and a highly wrought surface emphasizes the relationship between meaning and process, e.g. Thinker (1982), based on Rodin’s sculpture.

Moss Marlow (1890–1958). British abstract painter and sculptor. She was a member of the Abstraction-Création group in Paris and was a close follower of Mondrian in the 1920s.

Mostaert Jan (c. 1475–c. 1555). Dutch painter from Haarlem probably identifiable with the Master of Oultremont; he probably worked for the Regent of the Netherlands. He travelled in Italy and painted court portraits and religious subjects. A large number of works by other hands have been attributed to him.

Motherwell Robert (1915–91). U.S. painter, the youngest of the artists originally associated with Abstract Expressionism. His early training was in art history and aesthetics. He studied painting with the Chilean Surrealist Matta Echaurren in Mexico in 1941, when he adopted Surrealist psychic automatism, 1st 1-man show was at Peggy Guggenheim’s gallery ‘The Art of this Century’ (1944). Soon after he became famous with his series known as Elegies to the Spanish Republic: horizontal paintings with black vertical Arp-like forms, alternately large and small, also reminiscent of late Matisse cutouts. He taught at Black Mountain College, North Carolina (from 1945) and Hunter College, N.Y. (1951–8). A leading art theorist, M. was the ed. of Documents of Modern Art, The Dada Painters and Poets and, with A. Reinhardt, Modern Artists in America (1951).

Motley Archibald Jr (1891–1980). Painter of African-American city life, best known for his use of bright, incandescent colours depicting vivacious ‘jazzy’ scenes. Like contemporary artists Hayden and Douglas, M. was in search of a consummate pictorial style representational of African culture without idealizing it and its people.

Mound Builders. Prehistoric North American cultures of the S.E. states. The name derives from a series of massive earth structures at sites in Ohio, Mississippi, Arkansas and Alabama; archaeologists distinguish between the Hope-well and Adena cultures of Ohio and the Mississippi culture. The structures are of various types: conical funerary mounds; flat topped, terraced or stepped mounds; and linear mounds outlining animal shapes. Archaeological finds include stone sculptures, among the finest in pre-Columbian North America, and carvings such as pipes in animal shapes.

Mount William Sidney (1807–68). U.S. painter of genre scenes of U.S. manners whose work was influenced by Dutch and Flemish genre painting. In 1830, with Rustic Dance, his career as a successful painter was established and his pictures of life on Long Island attained great popularity. M. experimented with painting methods, pigments and brushes, and his sensitivity of composition and lighting established him as an artist of influence on the younger generation of U.S. artists.

Moynihan Rodrigo (1910–91). British painter born in the Canary Islands of a Spanish mother. He studied in N.Y., Rome and London, at the Slade School together with, among others, Coldstream. A member of the London Group and the Objective Abstraction Group, and closely associated with the Euston Road school, he became professor of painting at the Royal College of Art (1948–57) and a Royal Academician (1954). He is a notable portrait painter, but has also done remarkable large portrait-groups, e.g. The Staff of the Royal College of Art (1949–50), and still-lifes, as well as abstract work.

Mozarabic. Term applied to the Christian communities and the mixed style produced by Christian artists working under and for the Moorish rulers of Spain (8th–15th cs).

Mucha Alphonse or Alphonso Mario (1860–1939). Czech-born Art Nouveau graphic artist and designer. He trained and worked in Munich, Vienna and Paris where (1894) he became associated with the actress Sarah Bernhardt. He designed jewellery, furniture, wallpaper panels and a series of now celebrated posters.

Mueller Otto (1874–1930). German painter and graphic artist, one of the members of Die Brücke from 1907 to 1913, and from 1919 a teacher at the Breslau Academy. He painted subjects mainly of women bathing or grazing horses; Expressionist in manner, he was influenced by Gauguin.

Mughal miniature painting. Art of the Muslim Mughal empire of India. Its first masterpieces (1549–c. 1564) are the 1400 large ms. ills for the fantastic narrative Hamza Mama by 2 Persian artists and Indian assistants. Their polished Indo-Persian style evolved a vigorous, detailed realism. This reached maturity in the atelier established by Emperor Akbar (1556–1605); here European techniques also were fluently adapted. M. m. p. includes ills for histories of the emperors and brilliant royal portraits, some in formalized profile with a nimbus, notably Jahangir (1605–27). Decline began under Shah Jahan (1627–58) accelerated under Aurangzeb (1658–1707), many artists moving to Rajput and Deccani courts. There was a brief revival under Muhammad Shah (1719–48). The M. artist painted on burnished paper and the finished picture, often embellished with gold leaf, was also burnished.

Mughal Escaping Elephant c. 1800

Müller Friedrich (1749–1825). German writer and painter. He wrote prose ‘idylls’ in the style of Gessner, a dramatized version of the Faust legend and the powerful Golo und Genoveva (1775–81; publ. 1811), indebted to Goethe’s Götz von Berlichingen.

Muller William James (1812–45). British watercolour painter noted for his fresh and direct style of work. M. travelled in Italy, Greece and the Near East. His subject matter was mainly landscapes or architecture. He was influenced by Constable and Cox.

Mulready William (1786–1863). Irish-born landscape and genre painter; with Morland he was the leading genre painter in Britain in the early 19th c., following the popular manner and subject matter of Wilkie. Later works show some technical anticipations of the Pre-Raphaelites.

multiples. Works of art – usually 3-dimensional – which are produced in limited editions.

Multscher Hans (c. 1400–before 1467). German sculptor and painter working mainly in Ulm, where he produced a number of carvings. The Wurzach Altar (1437), the only picture known to be by him, exhibits a realism nearer to contemporary Flemish than German painting.

Munch Edvard (1863–1944). Norwegian painter. He studied at Oslo (1880–2). His early work is influenced by the social realism of his friend Christian Krohg. His work became widely known through periodicals in Paris and Berlin (1895–1905, his most creative period) and was one of the main artistic sources of German Expressionism. He returned to Norway (1909) after a nervous breakdown and painted the mural decorations for Oslo Univ. (1909–10), several portraits, and reworked some earlier themes. He was condemned as ‘degenerate’ by the Nazis. The Sick Child (1885–6) was inspired by his sister’s death from tuberculosis and shows the neurotic Expressionism with which he intensified images from reality. His mature paintings and prints were concerned with the expression of his feelings in face of reality rather than representing the appearance of reality. In Paris (1889–92) he gained confidence in his developing ideas from Van Gogh’s art and from the current Symbolist movement (Gauguin, Mallarmé, Moreau, Redon) and was impressed by the brilliant colours of Neo-Impressionism. In his most characteristic work, The Scream (1893), he builds up rhythms of colour and swirling lines – as Van Gogh had done in his self-portraits – to a pitch of hysterical intensity.

Munkácsy Mihály von (1844–1909). Hungarian subject and portrait painter, strongly influenced by Courbet. In 1872 he settled in Paris, where he enjoyed a formidable reputation in his lifetime. His paintings include The Last Day in the Life of a Condemned Prisoner.

Munnings Sir Alfred (1878–1959). British painter of horses and country life and president of the R.A. (1944). M. was noted for his facile handling of paint, and also for his virulent attacks on most forms of modern art.

Münter Gabriele (1877–1962). German painter and engraver, at one time married to Kandinsky. Her style was initially influenced by the Impressionists, but after 1908 by the Expressionists; she contributed to the Blaue Reiter and Der Sturm Munich exhibitions.

Mural painting. Painting on a wall, either directly on to the surface, as a fresco, or on a panel which is mounted in a permanent position; a type of architectural decoration which can either exploit the flat character of a wall or create the effect of a new area of space.

Murillo Bartolomé Esteban (1618–82). Spanish painter. Highly esteemed in his own time, M. was the 1st president of the Seville Academy (1660). A lesser artist than his contemporary Velázquez, he perfected popular genre paintings and sentimental biblical themes painted in the prevailing bombastic and polished mode of the Spanish Counter-Reformation; his beggar boys, fruit-sellers, Madonnas and saints are presented with shallow feeling. The Beggar Boys Throwing Dice and Madonna are among his best and most sincere paintings.

Murillo Beggar Boys Throwing Dice c. 1670–5

Muromachi or Ashikaga. Period in Japanese history, mid-14th–16th c., presided over by the Ashikaga shoguns at their palace in the Muromachi quarter of Kyoto. The court’s mannered elegance was reflected in Noh drama and the tea ceremony imbued with the restrained cult of Zen Buddhism, which inspired a school of monochrome ink painters, notably Sesshu (1420–1506) and Sesson (1504–89), both influenced by Chinese S. Sung masters. Important court painters included Noami (1397–1494), Geiami (1431–85) and Soami (d. 1525).

Murphy Gerald (1888–1964). U.S. painter. He settled in France 1921–9 and formed close friendships with Picasso, Léger, Stravinsky, Scott Fitzgerald, Dos Passos, Hemingway and other U.S. expatriates and creative personalities. Taught painting by Goncharova, his few works (he stopped in 1929) are immaculately and flatly painted, geometrically organized abstract arrangements to which he accommodated precisely painted ordinary objects – a razor, a pen, the mechanism of a watch, e.g. Razor (1924) and Watch (1924–5). The layout of the pictures and the pictorial space, e.g. Wasp and Pear (1929), are related to Cubism, Purism and Precisionism, as well as to Léger’s work of the mid-20s and S. Davis; they anticipate Pop art.

Murray Elizabeth (1940–2007). U.S. painter and print maker who studied at the Art Institute of Chicago. Its renowned art collection had a great impact on her development as a painter. From the early 1970s M. started widely exhibiting large canvases which post-1980 were shaped in irregular, organic-looking and interlocking shapes, e.g. The Hunger Artist (1987). Her highly original work denies pat distinctions between the figurative and the abstract, making imaginative use of both, and combines shape, colour and representation to convey depth of feeling.

Music (Zoran) Antonio (1909–2005). Italian painter deeply influenced by the Venetian landscape (e.g. Barques de Palestrina, 1956) and Byzantine art.

Mycenaean culture. Greek culture named from its principal site of Mycenae. M. c. fl. c. 1600–c. 1200 BC; it was indebted to Minoan culture.

Myron (fl. 480–440 BC). Greek sculptor, a pupil of Hageladas of Argos. Working in the Athens of Pericles, he was noted for the exact proportions and the sense of movement in his figures, mainly of athletes and wrestlers. Among his works was the Discobolos. Many spurious works were subsequently attributed to him.

Mytens Daniel (c. 1590–before 1648). Dutch portrait painter, probably a pupil of Miereveld, who became court painter to James I of England (1614) and subsequently to Charles I. One of the best portrait painters of the time, he lost in rivalry to Van Dyck and returned to The Hague in 1635. His style was influenced by Rubens, then by Van Dyck.