- NameGuglielmo Cortese
- Activity/Titlepainter
- Sexmale
- Variant namesfransk namnform: Guillaume Courtois
- Nationality/DatesItalian, born 1628, dead 1679-06-14
- PlacesPlace of birth: Saint-Hippolyte, France
Place of death: Rom, Italien
BiographyBrother of (1) Giacomo Cortese. He is said to have come to Italy with Giacomo in the mid-1630s and travelled with him until they reached Rome in 1638, where Guglielmo, aged only 10, is reported to have joined the studio of Pietro da Cortona (Baldinucci; Pascoli). If this is correct, Guglielmo must have spent the 1640s in Florence, where Cortona was decorating the Palazzo Pitti, returning to Rome only late in 1647. Yet the stylistic evidence of his earliest documented work does not support this hypothesis; it suggests rather that he remained with his brother, sharing his peripatetic existence until the later 1640s, and only coming under Cortona’s influence when he worked under him in 1656. Part of this evidence consists of two book illustrations, based on his drawings, which were published in De Bello Belgico (see (1) above). They show battle scenes and thus imply a continuing close relationship with his elder brother. Early drawings (e.g. Rome, Gab. N. Stampe; Dusseldorf, Kstmus.) show that he trained himself by copying works by Giovanni Lanfranco and Andrea Sacchi, as well as by drawing from the nude model. His first documented paintings show that he was impressed by the dark, Venetian palette of Pier Francesco Mola and the muscular figures of Mattia Preti, as well as by Cortona, whose fluid compositional schemes and decorative idiom he also mastered. Läs mer http://www.oxfordartonline.com/subscriber/article/grove/art/T019653pg2?q=Guglielmo+Cortese&search=quick&pos=1&_start=1#firsthit