The Renaissance Artists: Self-Portraits
Alvis Williams
Professor Michael Briere
HUM 111
12/02/12

Within the report of The Renaissance Artist I will explore the life of many artists who doing that period was known very well. I will attempt to convey the style of each artist as if I was the artist themselves by giving a first person view by depicting a self-portrait that will inform the readers of the composition that consist of color scheme, space , shapes and dimension of the piece. I will define in essence the self-portraits and what it means to me as an individual. So therefore from this point I am Don Julio and my style of painting is very similar to that of the renaissance era. Born in 1494 a young German artist living in Germany, I was trained originally by my father I was a natural born goldsmith after some years I migrated to Venice Where I improve my skills as a painter. My father while in Venice stayed eighteen months to enjoy the artistic delights of the city. He was impressed above all by the aged Bellini. A young man by the name of Albrecht Dürer, who later on became one of the most outstanding figures in Renaissance Germany during my time. However my achievements enhanced among the city and its originality in many differing fields of art.
I very early in my artistic career was introduced to his extraordinary self-portrait at the age of twenty-two, in Louvre. So I begin to work on one of myself, as young man with dishevel blond hair, wearing exotic red headgear and lavish robes, I stared moodily from the canvas at what I just painted. I never knew that it would be one the first example in history of an artist presenting himself as an eye-catching figure of dramatic interest. Renaissance painters in Italy have sometimes inserted themselves as bystanders in a crowded scene. But I however with the inspiration of Durer took center stage, beginning a long romantic tradition of the self-portrait
Five years later I painted himself in even more splendid clothes, with a view of the Alps through a window. Here I was one who has travelled - to Italy.

The trips to Italy resulted in other work of great originality I painted. As I traveled, the sketches in water color, the features of the landscape which take the fancy - trees by a lake, a castle on a hill, mountain valleys. These watercolors are not preparatory work for oil paintings. They are done it seems, purely for pleasure - beginning a rich tradition in the story of art. I was astonishing in the skill of the medium and how it reflected that of the Durer in his famous 1502 sketch of a hare. I now embark on fresh ground yet again, travelling to Antwerp in 1520; I kept the first example of a journal illustrated with sketches. Meanwhile I made myself the most prolific Renaissance master in the new printmaking techniques of woodcut, engraving and etching. I Don Julio now etching and woodcutting and painting of the life and work of Renaissance art in many ways that was modern in notion of an artist.
The shows an easy brilliance in three fields of art (oil painting, drawing, etching), yet my prolific output seems to be as much for my own pleasure - in capturing life in all its fascination - as to meet specific commissions or the demands of the market. I made a great deal of money but was hopeless at keeping it. I painted obsessively the people closest to me – my women, his son, myself - and thus allows, through my art, into my private world. Others have done this, but few so extensively. I have to day almost 100 self-portraits of Julio, at all stages of his life.
Like Dürer, who begins the theme of the artist as his own central character, I was incorrigibly histrionic. I depict myself in exotic hats, costumes and poses. My early works, while I was still in the home town of country of Italy, is their kind unfashionable in the practical Renaissance world. They are history paintings, for which a sense of drama is essential.

This is a field in which I in my maturity will produce powerfully dramatic masterpieces, such as the Blinding of Samson in Frankfurt or Belshazzar's Feast in the National Gallery in London. Both feature me and my wife Saskia in the only female role as did The Night Watch in the Rijksmuseum as well. Once again you are close to my own world.
My etchings however survived in numerous states, revealing the process of their creation, and they are treasured in their own time as much as today. The title of Don Julio best-known print reflects the value put on them. My etching of Christ surrounded by the sick, done in about 1649, acquires its popular name half a century later because of the extraordinary price paid for one impression - the Hundred Guilder Print. My work was a complete expression of was and who I represented. With the combination of Christianity and Gothic and a plethora of other expressions of masterpieces I’ve displayed to the world I can just hope that those who observed them would notice the time and experiences of my own life that I put into them as well. It is with all respect to my fellow artist of the Renaissance and myself may our work continue to spread throughout the world and leave a legacy with lasting impression on the life of human kind.

Reference
Sayre, H. M. (2012). The Humanities: Culture, continuity and change, Volume 1. (2ndEd.).(2011
Custom Edition). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Education.

http://www.historyworld.net/wrldhis/PlainTextHistories.asp?groupid=1333&HistoryID=ab20>rack=pthc#1333#ixzz2DqFDzGVy
http://userpages.umbc.edu/~ivy/selfportrait/study.html