Gerard de Lairesse
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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Gerard or Gérard de Lairesse (Liège, 11 September 1640 or 1641 - Amsterdam, June 1711) was a Dutch Golden Age painter and art theorist. His broad range of talent included music, poetry, and the theatre. He was perhaps the most celebrated Dutch painter in the period following the death of Rembrandt. His treatises on painting and drawing, Grondlegginge der teekenkonst (1701) and Groot Schilderboek (1707), were highly influential on 18th-Century painters like Jacob de Wit. Students of De Lairesse included the painter Jan van Mieris.
Works
Well-known paintings by de Lairesse include his Allegory of the Five Senses (1668), Diana and Endymion (ca. 1680) and Cleopatra Landing at Tarsus. Some of his paintings show influence by the Iconologia of Cesare Ripa. A versatile artist, De Lairesse also made many prints for book illustrations and painted sets for theatre productions.
Among other things, De Lairesse produced:
- A set of illustrations for Govert Bidloo's anatomical atlas Anatomia Humani Corporis (1685).
- A set of illustrations for Gerard Reynst's collection Signorum Veterum Icones (1670), a series of prints based on the Italian statuary in Reynst's Amsterdam collection.
- Painted doors of the organ in the Westerkerk church in Amsterdam.
- Set designs for the Amsterdam theatre.
- A portrait of the Dutch stadholder and king of England, William III of England.