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In Greek mythology, Tyndareus or Tyndareos (Ancient Greek: Τυνδάρεως) was a Spartan king, son of Oebalus (or Perieres) and Gorgophone (or Bateia), husband of Leda (Λήδα) and father of Helen, Castor and Polydeuces, Clytemnestra, Timandra, Phoebe and Philonoe.

Tyndareus had a brother named Hippocoon (Ἱπποκόων), who seized power and exiled Tyndareus. He was reinstated by Heracles, who killed Hippocoon and his sons, including Lycon. Tyndareus's other brother was Icarius (Ἰκάριος), who became the father of Penelope (Πηνελόπη).

Tyndareus' wife, Leda, was seduced by Zeus, who disguised himself as a swan. She laid two eggs, each producing two children. According to the usual version, from one egg, Polydeuces (Pollux) and Helen were the children of Zeus; from the other, Castor and Clytemnestra were the children of Tyndareus.

When Thyestes seized control in Mycenae, two exiled princes, Agamemnon and Menelaus came to Sparta, where they were received as guests and lived for a number of years.

Helen and the Trojan War[link]

Helen was the most beautiful woman in the world, and when it was time for her to marry, many Greek kings and princes came to seek her hand or sent emissaries to do so on their behalf. Among the contenders were Odysseus, Ajax the great, Diomedes, Achilles, Patroclus, Idomeneus, and both Menelaus and Agamemnon. All but Odysseus brought many and rich gifts with them. Helen's favourite was Menelaus who, according to some sources, did not come in person but was represented by his brother Agamemnon, who chose to support his brother's case, and himself married Helen's sister Clytemnestra instead.

Tyndareus would accept none of the gifts, nor would he send any of the suitors away for fear of offending them and giving grounds for a quarrel. Odysseus promised to solve the problem in a satisfactory manner if Tyndareus would support him in his courting of Penelope, the daughter of Icarius. Tyndareus readily agreed and Odysseus proposed that, before the decision was made, all the suitors should swear a most solemn oath to defend the chosen husband against whoever should quarrel with the chosen one. This stratagem succeeded and Helen and Menelaus were married. Eventually, Tyndareus resigned in favor of his son-in-law and Menelaus became king of Sparta.

Some years later, Paris, a Trojan prince came to Sparta to marry Helen, whom he had been promised by Aphrodite. Helen left with him--either willingly because she had fallen in love with him, or because he kidnapped her, depending on the source--leaving behind Menelaus and Hermione, their nine-year-old daughter. Menelaus attempted to retrieve Helen by calling on all her former suitors to fulfil their oaths, leading to the Trojan War and her eventual return to Sparta.

Afterward[link]

According to Euripides's Orestes, Tyndareus was still alive at the time of Menelaus's return, and was trying to secure the death penalty for his grandson Orestes due to the latter's murder of Tyndareus's daughter, Clytemnestra, but according to other accounts he had died prior to the Trojan War. In either case Orestes eventually married Hermione, his first cousin on both sides. Also Serminian.

Castor and Pollux died, and in some versions were made into gods themselves. According to the Iliad Helen was still unaware of her brothers' deaths in the tenth year of the Trojan War, since during Book III she looks for them among the Greek host and is surprised not to see them. This suggests that Castor and Pollux died sometime after Helen's departure for Troy but before the war itself.

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Jacob de Backer, Memorial Triptych to Christopher Plantin, central panel of the Last Judgment, c. 1589. Cathedral of Our Lady, Antwerp

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Jacob de Backer

Jacob de Backer, also Jacques, (c. 1555 – c. 1585) was a Flemish Mannerist painter and draughtsman active in Antwerp between about 1571 and 1585.

Biography[link]

According to the RKD he was born in Antwerp in c.1540/45 and died there c.1591-1600.^[1] De Backer was abandoned by his father as a young boy. Carel van Mander reports that the artist studied with Antonio van Palermo and Hendrik van Steenwijk I, but that Palermo worked him so hard that the young de Backer died in the arms of his master's daughter at the age of thirty.[1]

Although the artist painted in the high mannerist style of Giorgio Vasari, he never appeared to travel to Italy.^[2] A series of the "Seven Deadly Sins", however, was bought in Antwerp by Alessandro Farnese's secretary Cosimo Masi in 1594 and taken to Italy.[2] These paintings are now in the Museo di Capodimonte in Naples. Other attributable works include a Last Judgment triptych by him or his studio for Christophe Plantin's tomb in the Antwerp Cathedral (c. 1589; illustrated right),^[2] and an Allegory of the Three Ages of Man in the Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg.[3]

He is not to be confused with the Dutch Golden Age painter Jacob Adriaensz Backer from Amsterdam.

References[link]

• Czobor, Agnes (1972). "The Five Senses' by the Antwerp Artist Jacob de Backer". Netherlands Kunsthistorisch Jaarboek (23): pp. 317–327. 
• Leuschner, Eckhard (2001). "Defining de Backer: New Evidence on the Last Phase of Antwerp Mannerism before Rubens". Gazette des Beaux-Arts (137): pp. 167–192. 
• The State Hermitage Museum [accessed 16 May, 2007].
• Carel van Mander, "Life of Jacob de Backer" in Het Schilder-boeck (older Dutch), [accessed 16 May, 2007].
• Museo di Capodimonte, Superbia (Italian), [accessed 16 May, 2007].
• Carl van de Velde: "Backer, Jacob de [Jacques]" Grove Art Online. Oxford University Press, [accessed 16 May, 2007].

Notes[link]

External links[link]

• The Seven Deadly Sins in Naples [4] (Italian)
• Web Gallery of Art: Paintings by Jacob de Backer

The Gathering of Manna.

Francesco d'Ubertino Verdi, called Bachiacca [also known as Francesco Ubertini, il Bacchiacca] (1494–1557) was an Italian painter of the Renaissance whose work is characteristic of the Florentine Mannerist style.

Bachiacca was born and baptized in Florence on March 1, 1494 [modern] and died there on October 5, 1557.^[1] He apprenticed in Perugino's Florentine studio, and by 1515 began to collaborate with Andrea del Sarto, Jacopo Pontormo and Francesco Granacci on the decoration of cassone (chest), spalliera (wainscot), and other painted furnishings for the bedroom of Pierfrancesco Borgherini and Margherita Acciauoli.^[2] In 1523, he again participated with Andrea del Sarto, Franciabigio and Pontormo in the decoration of the antechamber of Giovanni Benintendi.^[3] While he established a reputation as a painter of predellas and small cabinet pictures, he eventually expanded his output to include large altarpieces, such as the Beheading of St. John the Baptist, now in Berlin.

Madonna and Child with St John, 1525, Dallas Museum of Art

In 1540, Bachiacca became an artist at the court of Duke Cosimo I de' Medici (reg. 1537-1574) and Duchess Eleanor of Toledo. In this capacity, Bachiacca was a colleague and peer of the most important Florentine artists of the age, including Pontormo, Bronzino, Francesco Salviati, Tribolo, Benvenuto Cellini, Baccio Bandinelli, and his in-law Giovanni Battista del Tasso. Bachiacca's first major commission was to paint the walls and ceiling of the duke’s private study with plants, animals and a landscape, which remain an important testimony of Cosimo's interest in botany and the natural sciences.^[4] Bachiacca also made cartoons for two series of tapestries, the Grotesque Spalliere (1545–49) and the Months (1550–1553), which were woven by the newly-founded Medici tapestry works.^[5] Francesco signed only one known work, the decoration of a Terrace for the duchess and her children, with his abbreviated Christian name and nickname: "FRANC. BACHI. FACI."^[6] All of these works either contain carefully observed illustrations of nature or display the artist's trademark method and style, in which Bachiacca combines figures, exotic costumes and other motifs acquired from Italian artists and German and Netherlandish prints into entirely new compositions. These cosmopolitan assemblages exhibited the most praiseworthy elements of both northern and southern European Renaissance art, which appealed to their courtly clientele.

As a court painter, he created Saint Sebastian during the 1530's-1540's, illustrating the death of Saint Sebastian, a Christian nobleman condemned to death by the Roman emperor Diocletian. Originally it is theorized that the panel may have functioned as a section to an altarpiece.^[7]

Bachiacca belonged to a family of at least five, and possibly as many as eight artists. His father Ubertino di Bartolomeo (ca. 1446/7-1505) was a goldsmith, his older brother Bartolomeo d’Ubertino Verdi (aka Baccio 1484-c.1526/9) was a painter, and his younger brother Antonio d’Ubertino Verdi (1499–1572)—who also called himself Bachiacca—was both an embroiderer and painter. Francesco’s son Carlo di Francesco Verdi (-1569) painted and Antonio’s son Bartolomeo d’Antonio Verdi (aka Baccino -1600) worked as an embroiderer. This latter generation probably continued to produce paintings and embroideries after Bachiacca's death and until the Verdi family extinguished about the year 1600.^[8]

His works include:

• Predella with the Life of St. Achatius and the Ten Thousand Martyrs, 1521, Uffizi Gallery[1]
• Portrait of a Young Lute Player, 1520-25, New Orleans Museum of Art
• Ghismonda with Heart of Guiscardo, 1520s, Lowe Art Museum
• Saint Sebastian, c. 1530s-1540s, Birmingham Museum of Art
• The Gathering of Manna, c. 1540/1555, National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C.
• Deposition (Uffizi Gallery)

References[link]

1. ^ In the Renaissance, the Florentine New Year began on March 25, the Feast of the Annunciation. Thus, the birth date is recorded in documents as March 1, 1493 Florentine style, which is March 1, 1494 modern style. Archivio dell’Opera di Santa Maria del Fiore, Florence, Battesimi maschi 1492-1501, 33v.
2. ^ La France 2008, 141-150, cat. 8-13.
3. ^ La France 2008, 174-80, cat. 32-33
4. ^ La France 2008, 220-223, cat. 65; Francesco Vossilla, “Cosimo I, lo scrittoio del Bachiacca, una carcassa di capodoglio e la filosofia naturale,” and Maria Adele Signorini, “Sulle piante dipinte del Bachiacca nello scrittoio di Cosimo I a Palazzo Vecchio,” Mitteilungen des Kunsthistorischen Institutes in Florenz 37, no. 2/3 (1993): 381-407.
5. ^ La France 2008, 229-244, cat. 69-78 and 257-264, cat. 85-88; Lucia Meoni, Gli arazzi della collezione fiorentina: le manifatture medicee da Cosimo I a Cosimo II, 1545-1621 (Florence: Sillabe), 1998, 172-184 and 143-146.
6. ^ La France 2008, 364-267, cat. 89.
7. ^ Birmingham Museum of Art (2010). Birmingham Museum of Art : guide to the collection. [Birmingham, Ala]: Birmingham Museum of Art. pp. 159. ISBN 978-1-904832-77-5. http://artsbma.org. 
8. ^ La France 2008, 32-38.

Source[link]

• La France, Robert G. (2008). Bachiacca: Artist of the Medici Court. Leo S. Olschki.  [2]
• Freedberg, Sydney J. (1993). Pelican History of Art. ed. Painting in Italy, 1500-1600. Penguin Books. p. 240. 

External links[link]

Media related to Francesco Bacchiacca at Wikimedia Commons

Statue of Cesare da Sesto.

Salome, Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna.

Cesare da Sesto (1477–1523) was an Italian painter of the Renaissance active in Milan and elsewhere in Italy.

He was born in Sesto Calende, Lombardy. He is considered one of the Leonardeschi or artists influenced by Leonardo da Vinci, such as Bernardino Luini and Marco D'Oggione. He may have trained or worked with Baldassare Peruzzi in Rome in 1505. Of this period, a lunette in Sant'Onofrio and some paintings in Campagnano Romano are attributed to him.

From 1514 he soujourned in Naples for six years. In 1515 he finished a monumental polyptych for the Abbey of Santissima Trinità at Cava de' Tirreni. Back in Milan, he executed a Baptism of Christ, in collaboration with Bernardino Bernazzano (now lost) and a Salomè, acquired by Rudolf II and now at the Kunsthistorisches Museum of Vienna. In 1517 was again in southern Italy, in Messina, where he executed an Adoration of the Kings, which influenced numerous artists of southern Italy: it can be found in the Capodimonte Museum of Naples. He returned to Milan in 1520, where he painted the Madonna in Glory with Saints polyptych for the church of San Rocco (now in the Castello Sforzesco).

He died in Milan in 1523.

References[link]

• Freedberg, Sydney J. (1993). Pelican History of Art; Painting in Italy, 1500-1600. Penguin Books. pp. 383–4. 

Vertumnus and Pomona (1518–1522) by Francesco Melzi

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Francesco Melzi

Francesco Melzi (c. 1491 – 1570) was an Italian painter, favorite assistant and pupil of Leonardo da Vinci.^[1]

The son of a Milanese noble family, Melzi joined the household of Leonardo da Vinci in 1506. Melzi accompanied Leonardo on trips to Rome in 1513 and to France in 1517. As a painter, Melzi worked closely with and for Leonardo. Some works which, during the nineteenth century, were attributed to Leonardo are today ascribed to Melzi.^{[citation needed]}

Upon Leonardo's death, Melzi inherited the artistic and scientific works, manuscripts, and collections of Leonardo, and would henceforth faithfully administer the estate. Melzi wrote to Leonardo's brothers to notify them of his death, and in this letter he described Leonardo's love for his pupils as "sviscerato e ardentissimo amore"^[2] a selfless and incandescent love.

Returning to Italy, Melzi married, and fathered a son, Orazio. When Orazio died on his estate in Vaprio d'Adda, his heirs sold the collection of Leonardo's works.

References[link]

External links[link]

• Flora by Francesco Melzi at the State Hermitage Museum in Saint Petersburg, Russia.
• Description of Vertumnus and Pomona.^{[dead link]}

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