Portrait

History of Painting

After last publication

Moghul miniatures: 16th - 17th century AD

When Humayun wins his way back into India, in 1555, he brings with him two Persian artists from the school of Bihzad. Humayun and the young Akbar take lessons in drawing. Professional Indian artists learn too from these Persian masters.

From this blend of traditions there emerges the very distinctive Moghul school of painting. Full-bodied and realistic compared to the more fanciful and decorative Persian school, it develops in the workshops which Akbar establishes in the 1570s at Fatehpur Sikri.


Akbar puts his artists to work illustrating the manuscripts written out by scribes for his library. New work is brought to the emperor at the end of each week. He makes his criticisms, and distributes rewards to those who meet with his approval.

Detailed scenes are what Akbar likes, showing court celebrations, gardens being laid out, cheetahs released for the hunt, forts being stormed and endless battles. The resulting images are a treasure trove of historical detail. But as paintings they are slightly busy.


Akbar's son Jahangir takes a special interest in painting, and his requirements differ from his father's. He is more likely to want an accurate depiction of a bird which has caught his interest, or a political portrait showing himself with a rival potentate. In either case the image requires clarity and conviction as well as finely detailed realism.

The artists rise superbly to this challenge. In Jahangir's reign, and that of his son Shah Jahan, the Moghul imperial studio produces work of exceptional beauty. In Shah Jahan's time even the crowded narrative scenes, so popular with Akbar, are peopled by finely observed and convincing characters.


Velazquez: AD 1623-1660

Spain, in the first half of the 17th century, has an artist of exceptional interest. Because of his long career as court painter to a single king, and his utter confidence in his own individual style, Velazquez produces a body of work of unusual consistency and distinction.

In his early years, working from about 1617 in his home town of Seville, he is influenced by the dramatic chiarascuro and realism of Caravaggio. And he proves that he can match anyone for realistic detail in his paintings of street vendors, such as the woman with her dish of fried eggs (now in the National Gallery of Scotland) or the water seller in Apsley House in London.


The turning point in Velazquez's career is his appointment in 1623 as court painter to Philip IV in Madrid. Philip has become king just two years previously at the age of sixteen. He will outlive Velazquez by five years, dying in 1665.

So for nearly four decades the painter works, with complete security, in a context where his talents are enormously appreciated. He has a studio within the palace. The king frequently drops in ('nearly every day', according to Velazquez's father-in-law) to sit for a while and watch the genius at work.

Velazquez's main subject matter is one which suits him well - the members of the royal family and their court servants. And on the walls of the royal palaces there hang the paintings which from now on profoundly influence his style, in the collection of Titians made by Charles V and Philip II.

The result is a body of work which can be seen as a one-man climax to the Italian High Renaissance. With a fluency of brushwork to match Titian's, and a magic touch which can make a few flecks of paint look like detailed lace or the rich texture of fur, Velazquez records the king and his family posing in their best clothes in the studio, prancing on a favourite horse, or out in the landscape shooting - and inevitably, with the passage of time, growing older.


The Habsburgs are far from handsome. Philip IV has their notorious jutting jaw to an almost disfiguring extent. Velazquez does nothing to disguise this feature, except that he paints his employer with a warm and disarming honesty - a quality which he extends also to the court dwarfs and buffoons who sit for him.

Some artists might feel stifled by this environment, but clearly Velazquez finds it stimulating. He records it with affection in his masterpiece Las Meninas (The Maids of Honour), painted in 1656 and now in the Prado. It is an intimate glimpse of the private side of the Spanish court.


The viewer stands in the position of the unseen king and queen of Spain, who are being painted by Velazquez in his studio. On the left, behind a huge canvas, is the artist himself, about to dab on one of his subtle flicks of paint. In the foreground members of the court have gathered to watch. In the very centre, at the focal point of the picture, is a young princess. Fussing around her on either side are the ladies-in-waiting. On the right stand two dwarfs, one of them trying to stir a sleepy mastiff. In a mirror on the far wall we see a faint reflection of the sitters, Philip IV and his second wife, Maria Anna of Austria.

Here, in an inspired ensemble, is the world of Velazquez.

Rubens: AD 1600-1640

Rome is the cradle of the baroque, seen already in certain aspects of Caravaggio. But it is a northern artist who provides in this city the first fully realized paintings in the new style.

Leaving his home in Antwerp in 1600, at the age of twenty-three, Rubens finds employment at the court of Mantua and travels on to Rome towards the end of 1601. He begins an assiduous study of antique sculpture and of the masters of the Italian High Renaissance. His own talent is soon so evident that in 1606 he is given a most prestigious commission. In preference to all the artists of Rome, Rubens is invited to paint an altarpiece for Santa Maria in Vallicella, recently built for the Oratorians.

The painting, completed in 1608, can be seen as the first baroque masterpiece. St Gregory, wrapped in gorgeous swirling robes (and with a hand thrust out at the viewer as dramatically as in Caravaggio's Supper at Emmaus), stares ecstatically up towards a holy image of the Virgin and Child around which plump cherubs disport themselves. Sumptously robed saints to either side of Gregory share his pleasure. The entire painting, in its warm hues and harmonious lines, invites us to do the same.

This luxuriant ease of composition and of colour becomes Rubens' hallmark, whether he is dealing with biblical themes or classical mythology (Greek goddesses, in his hands, become the most comfortable of nudes).



Rubens returns to Antwerp in 1608 and rapidly establishes Europe's most successful studio. He works very fast, as is evident in the brilliantly free oil sketches which he produces in preparation for any major painting. With an army of assistants filling in the unimportant parts of a canvas, he is able to fulfil an unprecedented number of commissions.

Prominent among his patrons are some of the leading rulers of Europe, often known personally to Rubens from the diplomatic missions entrusted to him by the regents of the Spanish Netherlands.

In 1622 Rubens receives a major commission from Marie de Médicis, until recently the queen regent of France. He is to transform her somewhat controversial life into a triumphal sequence of narrative paintings. He achieves this task with magnificent skill, completing by 1625 the great series of twenty-one canvases now in the Louvre.

Three years later Rubens goes on a diplomatic mission to Madrid, where he becomes friends with Velazquez - and so impresses Philip IV that as many as 100 paintings from Rubens' studio subsequently enter the Spanish royal collection. In 1629, after helping to negotiate a peace between Spain and England, Rubens travels to London.


Charles I knights the painter for his diplomatic achievements and commissions him to paint the ceiling in the Banqueting House, recently built by Inigo Jones. The great canvas panels are designed to celebrate the achievements of the Stuart dynasty. They are shipped from Antwerp to London and are installed in 1636. (Just thirteen years later Charles I steps out, from beneath this triumphal ceiling, on to a scaffold in Whitehall for his execution).

By that time another painter from the Spanish Netherlands has made a stir in London - providing the superb portraits by which Charles and his queen, Henrietta Maria, are familiar to the world. Also from Antwerp, and also knighted by Charles I, he is Anthony van Dyck.

Portrait

History of Painting

After last publication

El Greco: AD 1570-1614

When Domenikos Theotokopoulos is born in Crete, in 1541, the island is a Venetian possession. It is therefore natural that the boy should be sent to Venice when he shows talent as a painter. There is evidence that he studies for a while under Titian before going to Rome, with letters of recommendation, in 1570. In Rome he becomes known as Il Greco (the Greek). When he moves in 1577 to Spain, his name becomes El Greco.

Arriving in Spain with a Venetian instinct for colour, and with mannerist tendencies picked up during his stay in Rome, El Greco begins to develop his own extraordinarily personal style without further influence from other artists. For nearly forty years Toledo is his home.


Spain is the fervent centre of the Catholic Reformation, and El Greco responds to the prevailing mood with a mystical intensity. The violently unmodulated colours, sinuous curves and swooning compositions of his religious scenes almost demand that the viewer join in a mood of spiritual ecstasy. Toledo, it seems, accepts the challenge - for El Greco has plenty of customers for paintings which, in purely artistic terms, can be seen as difficult.

Spain in the 17th century will have a powerful tradition of religious art, with painters such as Ribera, Zurbaran and Murillo. But none will match the vibrant eccentricity of El Greco.

Caravaggio: AD 1593-1610

One of the most startling and salutary shocks ever administered to fashionable art is the work of Caravaggio in the last few years of the 16th century. In about 1593 he arrives, at the age of twenty, in a Rome which is still attracted to the esoteric niceties of mannerism.

The young man soon introduces two invigorating new elements in his paintings: a use of composition and light which gives the viewer an immediate sense of drama; and an intense realism, endowing the characters in a scene with the believable attributes of ordinary people.

These qualities are evident in the Supper at Emmaus in London's National Gallery. A single raking light, characteristic of Caravaggio, causes a strong contrast between bright details and dark shadows - as in any interior lit by a lantern. The two disciples are very ordinary travellers sitting down to a meal. As one of them recognizes Jesus, he flings his arms wide in a gesture which almost bursts out of the canvas towards us.

This degree of ordinary reality is not to everyone's taste in a religious subject. When Caravaggio delivers a commissioned painting in 1602, showing St Matthew writing his gospel, it is rejected by the outraged priests in charge of the church of San Luigi in Rome.



The painting is a masterpiece (destroyed alas in Berlin in 1945), but it is easy to understand why the priests dislike it. St Matthew has bare feet (with a big toe jutting disturbingly towards us) and he is clearly a simple man, struggling with the difficult gospel words as a youthful angel stands beside him to guide his hand across the page.

It is a profoundly touching image, and one which brings a religious moment very close to us. But priests prefer something more respectful. Caravaggio duly obliges with the painting now to be seen in the church. The composition remains intensely dramatic, but the angel is now flying in the air as angels do (even if he does cheekily count off the generations of Christ's ancestors on his fingers).


In a turbulent life (he has to flee from Rome in 1606 after killing a man in a brawl after a tennis match), Caravaggio continues to bring religion close to home in this direct way. In more than one great painting the pilgrims kneeling to the Virgin thrust the dirty soles of their bare feet right in the viewer's face.

In the long run the church prefers the drama of Caravaggio's compositions, and his powerful use of light and dark, to the peasant realism of his detail. The preferred style of the 17th century becomes the baroque. This more full-blown exaltation of religious sentiment borrows much from Caravaggio - but not the gritty detail.

Rome and Bologna: AD 1595-1639

While Rome remains the centre of Italian art during the 17th century, there is a strong influence from the school of Bologna headed by the Carracci family of painters. In 1595 Annibale Carracci is invited to Rome by a cardinal in the powerful Farnese family. He is given the task of painting the ceiling of the banqueting hall in the Farnese palace. The magnificent result is completed by 1604. Carracci's theme is classical (the loves of the gods, from Ovid's Metamorphoses), and so is his style - with echoes of both Raphael and Michelangelo.

This link between Bologna and Rome introduces a creative balance between classical and baroque tendencies in 17th century Italian art.

The Bolognese artists (in particular Guido Reni, who inherits the mantle of Annibale Carracci as the leading painter of the school) tend to retain a classical purity of line and composition. The artists of Rome incline more towards the theatricality of a fully baroque style.

The most spectacular expression of Roman baroque is the great ceiling painted for the Barberini palace in 1633-9 by Pietro da Cortona. In earlier Roman ceilings, such as Michelangelo's for the Sistine chapel or Carracci's for the Farnese palace, the figures remain obediently within their allotted architectural compartments. In the Barberini ceiling they are less restrained.


Cortona's figures seem to soar upwards, from the trompe-l'oeil continuation of the walls, like a flock of startled birds. The sense of profusion and energy in this triumphal celebration is overwhelming. Officially the triumph is that of Divine Providence, but by a fortunate coincidence both divine providence and the Barberini family (one of whom is now pope as Urban VIII) have bees as their emblem. The design makes it evident that the real triumph is that of the Barberini.

But this is a private palace. In public this ecstatic Roman style is more appropriately put to the service of the Catholic Reformation - and nowhere more so than in the sculptures of Bernini.

Portrait

Olympus Digital SLR Cameras and Lenses-07

Olympus Digital SLR Cameras and Lenses-07

Accessories

All of the Olympus bodies accept CompactFlash cards, type I and II, and xD cards. CF cards have larger capacity for the price and are compatible with high-end Canon and Nikon bodies. We don't see any reason to recommend an xD card.

• SanDisk compact flash cards: 16 GB; 8 GB; 4 GB; 2 GB

For a camera body and one lens, keep the camera around your neck and ready to use. To hold a camera system, start by reading the photo.net article on camera bags.

Underwater

Compared to standard Canon and Nikon products, the Olympus E-system has several advantages for underwater photographers:

• Four Thirds sensor leads to more compact bodies and lenses, reducing the bulk build inherent in wrapping the system in a housing.
• All Olympus bodies incorporate "live view" on the rear LCD, making it easier to compose photos underwater.
• Olympus sells underwater housings for some of their bodies.

The best lenses for use underwater are wide-angle. Changing lenses underwater isn't too practical. Putting these two facts together, one concludes that the Olympus 7-14 mm f/4.0 ED, $1531 is probably the best starter lens for the serious underwater photographer. If you want to get started with a smaller investment, the Olympus Stylus 1030SW is waterproof down to 33' and includes a 28mm equivalent wide-angle lens.

Starter Olympus DSLR Systems

Cheapest/Lightest:

• Olympus Evolt E-410, 14-42mm and 40-150mm kit, $550
• image-stabilized alternative: Olympus Evolt E-510, 14-42mm and 40-150mm kit, $650 (review)
• 2 GB CF card

Light medium-quality travel kit:

• Olympus Evolt E-510, $495 (review)
• Olympus 12-60mm f/2.8-4.0 ED SWD, $849
• 16 GB CF card (good for the whole trip)

Serious photographer:

• Olympus Evolt E-3, $1699
• Olympus 7-14 mm f/4.0 ED, $1531
• Olympus 14-35mm f/2.0 ED, $2179
• Olympus 35-100mm f/2.0 ED, $2149 (review)
• Olympus FL-36R Wireless, $175
• 16 GB CF card

African safari:

• Olympus Evolt E-3, $1699
• Olympus 7-14 mm f/4.0 ED, $1531
• Olympus 14-35mm f/2.0 ED, $2179 or Sigma 30mm f/1.4 EX DC for Olympus and Panasonic, $397
• Olympus 90-250mm f/2.8 ED, $5299 (review)
• Olympus EC-14 1.4x Teleconverter, $350
• Olympus FL-36R Wireless, $175
• 16 GB CF card

Soccer Mom:

• Olympus Evolt E-510, $495 (review)
• Olympus 50-200mm f/2.8-3.5 ED SWD, $999
• 16 GB CF card

More

• Olympus discussion forum
• Lens chapter from the photo.net guide to Making Photographs
• Olympus America Digital SLR web site

Discontinued Cameras and Lenses

Digital Cameras • E-10 • E-20 • E-1
Film Cameras • OM System Overview • mju-II (Stylus Epic)

Portrait

Olympus Digital SLR Cameras and Lenses-06

Olympus Digital SLR Cameras and Lenses-06

Macro Lenses

Macro lenses let you photograph physically small objects, filling more of the frame with the object. The longer the focal length of the macro lens, the more space you can put between you and your subject. This is especially important when photographing insects. A macro lens that goes down to "1:1" can be used to take a frame-filling photo of something that is 13x17mm in size, the same dimensions as the sensor on a Four Thirds digital body. Most macro lenses can be used for ordinary photographic projects as well, i.e., they will focus out to infinity if desired.

• Olympus 50mm f/2.0 Macro ED, $380

Teleconverters

A teleconverter provides additional magnification, but the overall amount of light gathered by the lens remains the same. Thus, you lose one f-stop of light with a 1.4x converter. The viewfinder will be dimmer and the camera will have a tougher time autofocusing. For autofocus with a 1.4x teleconverter, you generally need an f/4 or faster lens.

• Olympus EC-14 1.4x Teleconverter, $350, allegedly compatible with "all Zuiko Digital Lenses", but presumably best matched to the telephoto primes and fast telephoto zooms.
• Olympus EC-20 2x Teleconverter, $445, further reduction in image quality and loss of two f-stops.

Flashes

An in-body pop-up flash can be useful outdoors for filling in harsh shadows. When flash is providing the primary light, you'll need at least one hotshoe TTL flash. A hotshoe flash can be used to bounce light off the ceiling or walls. Often it is best to place the flash at a distance from the camera, then point it at the subject. The Olympus FL-CB02 hot shoe cable may be used to preserve communication between the body and flash or use the built-in wireless flash control of some E-system bodies (currently the E-3 is an example). Unless you want images that look as though the photographer was wearing a headlamp, try to come up with something other than direct on-camera flash.

• Olympus FL-50R Wireless, $369. Big, powerful, wireless. Olympus FL-50, $359 is the same without the wireless capability.
• Olympus FL-36R Wireless, $175. Powerful enough for most people, wireless. Olympus FL-36, $164 is the same without the wireless capability.
• Olympus FL-20, $104. A simple flash without bounce capability; good for filling shadows.

Portrait

Olympus Digital SLR Cameras and Lenses-05

Olympus Digital SLR Cameras and Lenses-05

Telephoto Zoom Lenses

In considering the use of telephoto zoom lenses for portraits, keep in mind that the small sensor results in more depth of field for a given angle of view. Suppose that the blur at 100/2.8 on a full-frame camera is sufficient to render the background non-distracting. The equivalent angle of view focal length for an Olympus body would be 50mm. Depth of field relates to the physical size of the aperture and 50/2.8 is a much smaller aperture than 100/2.8, therefore yielding much more depth of field. The background in this case may well be rendered sharp enough to serve as a distraction. "Depth of Field and the Small-Sensor Digital Cameras" explains further.

• Olympus 35-100mm f/2.0 ED, $2149 (review). A bone-crushing 1650g without the tripod adapter (150g more!). As heavy as the standard full-frame 70-200/2.8 lenses whose function it fulfills, with the bonus of an extra f-stop of speed (required to generate a shallow depth of field for portraiture). This is the standard professional telephoto zoom, good for most portraits.
• Olympus 90-250mm f/2.8 ED, $5299 (review), (effective 180-500), 3270g. The equivalent in the full frame world is a 16kg Sigma 200-500/2.8 that requires its own Lith-ion battery pack. This would be the ultimate lens for an African safari.
• Olympus 50-200mm f/2.8-3.5 ED SWD, $999, (effective 100-400mm), an older non-SWD version of this lens is the source of about half of the photos on this page, including the one at right (at 180mm).
• Olympus 70-300mm f/4-5.6 ED, $379, (effective 140-600mm), 620g. On the "standard grade" roster and presumably no match for the 90-250/2.8, but an equivalent 600/5.6 long end is nothing to sneeze at.
• Olympus 40-150mm f/3.5-4.5 ED, $139, (effective 80-300mm). Cheap light kit zoom.

Wide-angle Prime Lenses

This is a simple section to write because Olympus has decided not to produce any rectilinear wide angle prime lenses. Fast primes in the 20-24mm range were favorites of photo journalists, but ever higher quality and faster wide angle zooms have reduced folks' interest in primes.

• Olympus 8mm f/3.5 Fisheye ED, $669, 485g. 180-degree field of view, dramatic curved distortion. Grow out your sideburns and party like it is 1974.

Telephoto Prime Lenses

For situations where you can't get close to the subject, or want some perspective compression, a telephoto prime lens offers the best image quality and largest maximum aperture.

• Olympus 50mm f/2.0 Macro ED, $380, (effective 100mm), good for available-light portraiture and also focuses down to 1:1, i.e., you can fill the frame with a subject only 13x17mm in size.
• Olympus 150mm f/2.0 ED, $2179 (review), (effective 300mm), 1610g. Coupled with a teleconverter, the basis for an ultimate quality large wildlife kit. Note the full f-stop speed advantage over the standard 300/2.8 lens from the film systems.

Olympus 300mm f/2.8 ED, $7000, (effective 600mm), 3290g. The basis of a bird photography kit. Also good for precipitating a divorce due the price and serious back problems due to the weight. Combine with Olympus EC-14 1.4x Teleconverter, $350. Note that this lens is a particularly poor demonstration of the cost and weight savings dividend from the smaller sensor. The standard Canon 300/2.8 lens casts a larger image circle, big enough to cover 24x36mm. The Canon lens costs $3900 and weighs 2550g, more than 1 lb. lighter than the Olympus despite the fact that the Canon lens also includes an image stabilizer. (Keep in mind that to take bird pictures with a full-frame Canon body, you'd be using the 600/4 lens, which is truly monstrous in size, weight, and price.)

Portrait

Olympus Digital SLR Cameras and Lenses-04

Olympus Digital SLR Cameras and Lenses-04

Wide-to-Telephoto Zoom Lenses

A wide-to-tele zoom is what Olympus includes as a standard "kit" lens with their SLR bodies. The range on most of the Olympus wide-to-tele zooms starts at a moderately wide 14mm (28mm equivalent) and goes up to moderately telephoto. An all-purpose lens is good for when you are too busy to change lenses, for traveling when less weight and less baggage is better, or when working in a dusty or wet environment. When buying, watch out for slow maximum aperture, e.g., f/5.6 at the long end, which results in a dim viewfinder and the requirement to use a tripod or flash.

• Olympus 14-35mm f/2.0 ED, $2179 (28-70 equivalent). At 900g (ouch!), the weight is about the same as the full-frame Canon EF 24-70mm f/2.8L USM, $1173 (review), the price is double, and you lose the range between 24mm and 28mm (note that 24mm is dramatically wider than 28mm). What do you gain? One f-stop of light gathering capability, which is huge. Add to that the sensor-based image stabilizer and you have some capabilities that would make a Canon EOS user drool.
• Olympus 12-60mm f/2.8-4.0 ED SWD, $849 (effective 24-120mm), 575g, a great travel lens. One or two f-stops slower than the 14-35, and lower optical quality, but lighter and much wider range.
• Olympus 14-54mm f/2.8-3.5, $410, (effective 28-110mm), one of the original E-system lenses, introduced with the E-1 back in 2003. Half of the images on this page were taken with this lens.
• Olympus 14-42mm f/3.5-5.6 ED, $250, (effective 28-84mm), 190g, one ED glass and two aspherical elements; the modulation transfer function shows a precipitous decline in resolution from the center to the edges.
• Olympus 14-45mm f/3.5-5.6, $225, (effective 28-90mm), 285g, an older design than the 14-42.
• Olympus 17.5-45mm/3.5-5.6, a kit lens for the E-500, mercifully not sold separately.
• Olympus 18-180mm f/3.5-6.3 ED, $400, (effective 36-360mm), an attempt at an "all in one" zoom with an unfortunate lack of wide angle perspective. A 14-120mm or 14-140mm would be a much more useful lens for most photographers. Note that the full-frame superzooms tend to start at 28mm and the crop sensor superzooms at 17mm.

Wide-angle Zoom Lenses

• Olympus 7-14 mm f/4.0 ED, $1531, (effective 14-28mm), 780g. The only thing similar in the full frame world is the Nikon 14-24/2.8. The Nikon lens covers a 24x36mm frame for about the same price and only slightly more weight.

Olympus 11-22mm f/2.8-3.5, $655, (effective 22-44mm), 485g. High quality but not very dramatically wide if you're accustomed to the standard full-frame 16-35 wide zooms.

Olympus Digital SLR Cameras and Lenses-03

Olympus Digital SLR Cameras and Lenses-03

Nomenclature

One of the nice things about Olympus is that they don't attempt to snow consumers with obscure acronyms. Nor does Olympus tack on fancy German brand names to lenses that they design and build. The Olympus America lens page refers to "super high grade", "high grade", and "standard" lenses.

"ED" is extra-low dispersion glass, a more expensive and higher-quality glass that reduces chromatic aberration or color fringing. All but the crummiest Olympus lenses include at least one ED element.

"Super ED" is, presumably, a newer more effective version of "ED", glass that reduces chromatic aberration or color fringing. Olympus does not explain what this means any more than Dean Wormer explained "double secret probation."

"SWD" is Supersonic Wave Drive, a piezoelectric motor that contributes to smooth and silent AF operation, similar to USM (ultrasonic motor) on Canon or AF-S (silent wave motor) on Nikon lenses.

"OM" are old Olympus film system lenses; they don't work on the modern bodies without Olympus MF-1 OM Adapter, $85. Even with the adapter, Olympus recommends for each lens a limited range of apertures, e.g., f/5.6 and f/8 for the old 85/2 lens.

All Olympus lenses incorporate modern multilayer anti-reflective coatings to improve contrast and light transmission. Mercifully Olympus does not have a brand name for their coating.

History

In the 1970s, Canon and Nikon were slugging it out with cameras that were progressively more capable, more rugged, and heavier. By the end of the decade, each company made SLRs that could be used to drive nails, capture the fastest sports cars, and weigh down the dead bodies of your enemies, dumped into the local river. Olympus took an alternative tack, introducing the light and compact Olympus OM-1 in 1972. Olympus delivered the fundamentals: bright viewfinder, through-the-lens metering, in-viewfinder displays, high quality lenses, and state-of-the-art electronics. These were delivered at roughly the same price as Canon and Nikon, but with a smaller size and lighter weight.

With a smaller market share and less capital than Canon or Nikon, Olympus came up with a feeble response to the demand for autofocus, gradually ceding market share to Canon EOS and Nikon AF. The OM-4 was the last camera of the line, introduced in 1983 and finally killed off in 2002.

(More: see the photo.net guide to the Olympus OM system.)

By the year 2000, the Olympus OM system was a collectors' item and had very few day-to-day or professional users. This gave Olympus the freedom to chuck the frame size, lens mount, and legacy users. At the time, the Canon and Nikon digital SLRs on the market were small sensor models, wasting much of the image circle cast by the big legacy designed-for-film lenses. The challenge of engineering a consumer-priced 24x36mm sensor seemed insuperable (see "The rationale for a new standard format" for an explanation). To an engineer, this was a ridiculous situation, as silly as a Nikon film photographer walking around with a bag of Hasselblad lenses designed to cover the 6x6cm medium format frame. The Olympus folks got together with a couple of partner companies and standardized a sensor size that would be reasonable to fabricate and a lens mount that would be correctly sized for the sensor size. The result was the Four Thirds system, with its 13x17mm sensor, which results in a 2X multiplier for effective lens perspective, e.g., a 25mm lens gives a normal perspective on an E-system camera, similar to a 50mm lens on a 35mm film camera.

(More: see www.four-thirds.org, quite possibly the world's worst-designed Web site.)

Normal Lenses

A normal lens is light in weight and approximates the perspective of the human eye. The focal length of a normal lens for the 13x17mm Four Thirds sensor should be between 22 and 25mm (compare to 43-50mm for a 35mm film camera). Normal lenses generally have large maximum apertures, indicated by small f-numbers such as f/1.4 or f/1.8, and therefore gather much more light than zoom lenses. It may be possible to take a photo with a normal lens in light only 1/8th or 1/16th as bright as would be required for the same photo with a consumer-priced zoom lens. Also, the viewfinder will be brighter and therefore easier to use in dim light, due to the fact that the large maximum aperture stays open for viewing and stops down to whatever aperture you have set just before taking the picture.

• Panasonic Leica 25/1.4, 525g, $800. Made in Japan by Panasonic from a design developed in collaboration with Leica, this is the only prime normal lens in the Four Thirds system. The subjective quality factor results in the Popular Photography review show that this lens does not perform significantly better than the $200 Pentax 50/1.4 or $300 Canon and Nikon 50/1.4 normal lenses. With a smaller image circle to generate, one would expect Four Thirds system lenses to be lighter, cheaper, and better quality than lenses that cover the 24x36mm frame. In fact, this lens is twice the weight and three or four times the price of an equivalent quality lens from the film world. When you've stopped moaning about the hole in your wallet, the lens is sure to be a great performer, though.

Sigma 30mm f/1.4 EX DC for Olympus and Panasonic, $397, (effective 60mm on the E-system, slightly long to be considered "normal"), 430g, ideal for low-light photography without a flash, has a hypersonic motor for quiet, high-speed auto focus.

Nature and Life

Olympus Digital SLR Cameras and Lenses-02

Olympus Digital SLR Cameras and Lenses-02

Olympus DSLR Bodies

At any one time, Olympus seems to make one body similar in capability to midrange Canon and Nikon bodies and a bewildering array of light inexpensive bodies with performance similar to the very cheapest bodies from Canon or Nikon. All Olympus bodies are compatible with Olympus Digital lenses and Four Thirds System lenses from Sigma and Panasonic/Leica. The Olympus MF-1 OM Adapter, $85 allows limited use of old Olympus OM-system film format lenses in mostly manual mode.

Olympus was a pioneer in automated dust removal. All of the E-system bodies include a dust removal system that operates as the camera is switched off.

• Olympus Evolt E-330, $475 (review), 7.5 megapixels, released February 2006. This was the world's first digital SLR with a "live view" feature, similar to point and shoot digicams, allowing photographers to evaluate a potential image in the rear LCD prior to exposure. The camera has an unusual folded mirror system for the optical viewfinder and an unusual shape. Obsolete in terms of technical performance.
• Olympus Evolt E-410, $380, 10 megapixels, introduced early 2007. A tremendous step up from point and shoot digicams in terms of handling and practical performance without much of a step up in price or size. Three frames per second motor drive. 2.5" LCD display. Flash sync at 1/180th.
• Olympus Evolt E-420, 14-42mm kit, $540, 10 megapixels, introduced March 2008, a step up from the E-410 as the name implies, plus in-body image stabilization, and a 2.7" LCD display.
• Olympus Evolt E-510, $495 (review). Same as the E-410 plus in-body image stabilization, a tremendously useful feature since one of the big advantages of a DSLR over a point and shoot digicam is performance in low light.
• Olympus Evolt E-500, 14-45mm and 40-150mm kit, $589 (review), 8 megapixels, introduced late 2005. It is a mystery as to why this camera is still being sold.
• Olympus Evolt E-3, $1699, 10 megapixels, 800g with batteries, introduced late 2007. This is the professional Olympus body, with a rugged weather-sealed frame and fast autofocus. It has sensor-based image stabilization, a built-in flash, and wireless control of accessory flashes. The rear LCD is 2.5" (smaller than the competition). Flash sync speed is 1/250th. This is a better camera for sports than the 510 due to the 5 frames per second continuous drive speed. The E-3 accepts the HLD-4 battery pack/vertical grip, which includes an additional shutter release and replicates some other nearby controls for portrait-format images.

In looking at the megapixel numbers, you might be tempted to wonder how the Olympus system is competitive. There are point and shoot cameras with similar claimed resolution while the top-end Canon and Nikon bodies offer higher resolution. The 10-megapixel E-3 produces images that are 3648x2736 pixels in size. As explained in the Digital Cameras chapter of Making Photographs, 200 pixels per inch is sufficient for maximum image quality and prints from the E-3 should enlarge to 13.5x18" before suffering any quality loss due to a lack of resolution.

History of Painting

After last publication

Bosch and Brueghel: AD 1480-1569

Hieronymus Bosch acquires his name from the town of 's Hertogenbosch, where he is born in about 1450 and spends his entire working life. Relatively little is known about him, but the teeming fantasy of his imagination, vividly realized in paint, makes him one of the most distinctive of artists.

In both subject matter (the torments and delights associated with hell and heaven) and style (the slender figures and clear colours characteristic of International Gothic), Bosch's art looks back towards late medieval models.


Bosch's most elaborate works abound in vivid and fantastic vignettes, little self-contained scenes of delight or horror which can keep a viewer browsing happily for hours as if wandering in some surreal adventure playground (much in his work directly prefigures surrealism).

The two largest and most characteristic paintings are the triptychs of The Haywain and The Garden of Earthly Delights. Now in the Prado, these are among twelve paintings by Bosch acquired by Philip II for the Escorial. All come from the collections of Spaniards posted to the Netherlands. One group of six, including The Haywain, is bought by a diplomat during Bosch's life, presumably from the artist himself.


The natural successor to Bosch in Netherlands art is Pieter Brueghel, born in about 1525. His works too are mainly gathered in a Habsburg collection, this time in Vienna. There are as many as fourteen of his paintings in the Kunsthistorisches Museum - mainly collected by the Austrian archduke Ernst, regent in the Spanish Netherlands in the 1590s.

Brueghel often depicts details as fantastic as those of Bosch (as for example in The Triumph of Death in the Prado), but he usually prefers to find a more realistic context. Thus the weird scenes in the battle between Carnival and Lent (now in Vienna) are presented as part of a village festival.


Brueghel's landscapes, filled with people going about their everyday business, are perhaps his most characteristic achievement. He adds a stimulating extra ingredient when he presents New Testament or mythological events in just such an everyday down-to-earth Netherlandish context.

The Massacre of the Innocents take place with chilling conviction in a snowy northern village. Jesus makes his way, almost unnoticed, through a crowded summer scene to Calvary. In the Fall of Icarus only the leg of the fallen aviator shows above the waves, unnoticed by the ploughman in the foreground. The Tower of Babel is as busy, and as fascinating, as any other large building site. Brueghel is the first great poet of everyday life.





Mannerism: 16th century AD

While the Venetians in the 16th century are developing the sturdy themes of the High Renaissance, the painters of Florence and Rome are reacting against the achievement of Leonardo da Vinci and Raphael. The idealized perfection achieved by these artists can hardly be improved upon. The next generation devotes itself to a different kind of brilliance, aiming for a self-conscious stylishness which has become known as mannerism.

The word, used in many different ways by art historians, derives from maniera, meaning stylishness. It is used by Vasari, the near-contemporary biographer of the great Renaissance artists, to describe the quality displayed by painters such as Leonardo, Michelangelo and Raphael.

But mannerism is commonly used now to mean a style of great affectation (but corresponding brilliance) which bridges the gap between the Renaissance and the baroque in central Italy.

The first glimpses of this style come in the work of Pontormo and Rosso Fiorentino, both born in Tuscany in 1494. An early masterpiece in the new style is Pontormo's Deposition (late 1520s) in the Capponi chapel in Florence. The composition is an awkward jumble of figures which miraculously achieves harmony. The colours are a mix of improbable pale blues and purples, both startling and pleasing. The tone of Michelangelo, in the Sistine chapel ceiling, is made in every way more mannered.


By this time a younger artist from Parma, known from his birthplace as Parmigianino, is developing a version of the style which makes much use of slender and elegant elongation. One of his best known works, the Madonna of the Long Neck in the Uffizi, admits as much in the title.

Another mannerist master is Bronzino, the adopted son of Pontormo. His special form of mannered elegance is an icy coolness, even in the depiction of naked flesh - as in the famous Allegory with Venus and Cupid in London's National Gallery, where the provocative poses of the figures combine with bewildering ambiguity of meaning to achieve a quintessential icon of mannerism.

Later in the 16th century the style spreads through Europe - to France in the school of Fontainebleau, to the Netherlands, to the court of the emperor Rudolf II in Prague. And the most individual of all 16th-century artists, El Greco working in isolation in Spain, is essentially mannerist in the eccentricities of his style.

But the exquisite and the unusual eventually pall. Religious painting is brought back to reality with a gloriously controversial jolt, in Rome in the early 17th century, by Caravaggio.

Portrait

Olympus Digital SLR Cameras and Lenses-01

The Olympus system of digital single-lens reflex (SLR) bodies and lenses was a clean sheet of paper design, introduced in 2003. Olympus and Kodak asked the following questions:

• Does it make sense to make digital camera sensors in the 24x36mm frame size from the 35mm film days?
• If one is going to use smaller sensors than the old film format, why lug around huge lenses designed to cast an image large enough to cover the old 24x36mm frame?

Their answers were "No, no, and here is the Four Thirds system of cameras and lenses designed around a 13x17mm sensor." The result is the world's most compact camera system capable of professional results. The Olympus system should be seriously considered by photographers specializing in travel or those whose shoulders are aching. Note that the aspect ratio is 4:3 rather than the 3:2 of 35mm film and most digital cameras. The 4:3 aspect ratio is closer to old standard paper sizes, such as 8x10, 11x14, and 16x20, and older film formats, such as the 4x5 view camera. It is probably a better aspect ratio for portraits and not as good for landscape.

The Four Thirds system included a design for a brand-new lens mount. Functionally this is very similar to the Canon EOS lens mount, introduced in 1987, with an all-electronic interface between camera and lens. The mount diameter, however, was reduced from Canon's 54mm to about 44mm, similar to the Nikon F-mount. A 44mm on a film camera is a bit tight, but the dimension is vast compared to the size of the image circle for a Four Thirds sensor and therefore provides lens designers with a lot of flexibility. When looking at Four Thirds lenses, multiply by 2 to determine the 35mm equivalent in angle of view, e.g., a 14-42mm zoom lens for an E-system body will work the same as a 28-84mm lens on a 35mm film camera.

If you are new to photography, start with the photo.net article "Building a Digital SLR System."

Contents

1. Olympus DSLR Bodies
2. Nomenclature
3. History
4. Normal Lenses
5. Wide-to-Telephoto Zoom Lenses
6. Wide-angle Zoom lenses
7. Telephoto Zoom Lenses
8. Wide-angle Prime Lenses
9. Telephoto Prime Lenses
10. Macro Lenses
11. Teleconverters
12. Flashes
13. Accessories
14. Underwater
15. Starter Olympus DSLR Systems
16. More
17. Discontinued Cameras and Lenses

History of Painting

After last publication…..



Dürer: AD 1494-1528

In 1494 a young German artist, trained originally by his father as a goldsmith, arrives in Venice to improve his skills as a painter. The following year he returns to Nuremberg to open a studio in his home town, but in 1505 he is back in Venice - staying eighteen months to savour the artistic delights of this city. He is impressed above all by the aged Bellini.

The young man is Albrecht Dürer, who becomes the outstanding figure in Renaissance Germany. His achievement is enhanced by his originality in many differing fields of art.


An early example is his extraordinary self-portrait at the age of twenty-two, now in the Louvre. A young man with dishevelled blond hair, wearing exotic red headgear and lavish robes, stares moodily from the canvas. It is 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 Dürer takes centre stage, beginning a long romantic tradition of the self-portrait (carried by Rembrandt to its greatest lengths).

Five years later Dürer paints himself in even more splendid clothes, with a view of the Alps through a window. Here, he says, is a man who has travelled - to Italy.

Dürer's two trips to Italy result in other work of great originality. As he travels, he sketches in watercolour the features of the landscape which take his fancy - trees by a lake, a castle on a hill, mountain valleys. These watercolours are not preparatory work for oil paintings. They are done, it seems, purely for pleasure - beginning a rich tradition in the story of art. Dürer's astonishing skill in the medium is evident in his famous 1502 sketch of a hare.

He breaks new ground yet again, travelling to Antwerp in 1520, when he keeps the first example of a journal illustrated with sketches. Meanwhile he makes himself the most prolific Renaissance master in the new printmaking techniques of woodcut, engraving and etching.


Cranac hand Holbein: AD 1505-1553

An almost exact contemporary of Dürer is Lucas Cranach, but his career follows a very different path. Whereas Dürer keeps his own independent studio, Cranach serves for almost half a century, from 1505, as court painter to the electors of Saxony in Wittenberg. As a result he produces endless portraits of the worthies of Saxony, resulting in a marked deterioration from the early style of his youth.

His good fortune, historically, is that from 1517 Wittenberg is at the heart of Germany's religious upheavals. Cranach finds himself, ex officio, the portrait painter of the Reformation. It is from his brush that we know the features of Luther, Melanchthon and other reformers.

Cranach and his studio also provide numerous other pictures which greatly appeal to the nobles of Saxony. These are paintings of impossibly elongated nudes, in provocative postures and often wearing just a large hat or necklace. They derive from the Venuses peinted in Italy at this time, but transform them into something much closer to high-class pornography.

A generation younger than Cranach, and altogether more solemn as a painter, is Hans Holbein. If Cranach is the portrait painter of the German Reformation, Holbein fulfils the same role for the leaders of the northern Renaissance.


In 1520 Holbein establishes a studio in Basel. In the following year Erasmus comes to live in the city. Holbein paints the great scholar twice in 1523 and is given letters of introduction to humanist colleagues in the Netherlands and in England.

As a result, in the winter of 1526, Holbein finds himself lodging in the house of Thomas More in Chelsea. He paints here the earliest domestic family portrait in the history of art, showing More and nine of his relations grouped in a room at home (the image survives only in copies and in Holbein's original drawing).


On this first occasion Holbein stays only two years in England, but he paints a great many portraits during his visit - including the large series of coloured drawings now in Windsor castle. In 1528 he returns to Basel, but he is back in England by 1532. On this second visit, lasting till his death in 1543, he is frequently employed by Henry VIII.

The most familiar image of the self-indulgent tyrant is Holbein's sturdy portrait of him. The future Edward VI is familiar too, as a child, from Holbein's brush. So are three of Henry's queens (Jane Seymour, Anne of Cleves, Catherine Howard) as well as high officials such as Thomas More. Holbein in early Tudor England opens a window on a tense society.

Portrait

History of Painting

After last publication




Venetian painting: AD 1475-1576

During the 15th century, the great formative period of the Italian Renaissance, Venice lags far behind Florence and Rome in responding to the spirit of the time. The reason is partly the long centuries of Byzantine influence; Venetian patrons still expect a painting to be an object of solemn formality, preferably against a gilded background in the tradition of icons.

It is also true to say that in architecture, at this same period, the Venetians are enjoying a magnificent late flowering of the earlier Gothic tradition. The mood of the Renaissance has less immediate appeal here. But in terms of painting this changes rapidly after 1475.


In 1475 a Sicilian painter, Antonello da Messina, arrives in Venice, where he spends about eighteen months. He is expert in the northern technique of oil painting, and the rich glowing quality of his work greatly impresses Venice's leading painter, Giovanni Bellini.

After Antonello's visit, the figures in Bellini's paintings evolve towards the rounded and richly human style of the Italian High Renaissance. The grouping of the figures in his altarpieces becomes solidly three-dimensional; his Virgins sit at ease with their infants in enchantingly natural landscapes; his portraits (such as the superb image of Venice's doge in 1501) are of flesh-and-blood people, even if in their Sunday best.



In the last years of Bellini's long life there are two young painters in Venice capable of more than equalling his genius. They add to the Venetian palette the richness of colour which becomes the outstanding characteristic of the school.

The first of the two is Giorgione. He dies young in 1510 (though only two or three years younger than Raphael), and his work is only known from a very small number of richly glowing masterpieces. The second is Titian, whose life is as long as Giorgione's is short. Titian establishes a dominant position in northern Italian painting equal to that of Leonardo, Michelangelo and Raphael in Florence and Rome.


Like any other good painter of the time, Titian receives commissions for church altarpieces (his Assumption of the Virgin for the church of the Frari in Venice, in 1518, is by far the largest yet seen in the city), but he also produces large secular paintings for delivery to an impressive clientele of princely customers.

The first such patron is Alfonso d'Este of Ferrara, for whom Titian paints three magnificent classical subjects between 1517 and 1523. One of them, Bacchus and Ariadne, is today one of the treasures of the National Gallery in London.


Titian's customers also include the two great rivals of the era, Francis I of France and the emperor Charles V. He has no need to enter their service abroad. He despatches works to them from his studio in Venice.

Charles V and his son, Philip II, become Titian's most persistent patrons. They particularly like his mythological subjects, or poesie. Mythology provides many opportunities to display the naked female form, and these paintings build upon a rich new tradition in western art. Botticelli has pioneered the theme of the nude, but Giorgione and then Titian develop it seductively in the art of Venice. (Cranach is doing so at much the same time, with less subtlety, in Germany.)



Titian also has an extremely busy career as a portrait painter, particularly in the 1530s and 1540s. During his long life (into his mid-80s) he paints in an increasingly free style, until his brush strokes become bold short cuts to the depiction of reality.

A similar freedom of execution is characteristic of Tintoretto, the next of Venice's great masters. Veronese, arriving from Verona in 1555, completes the trio who together give this Venetian school such distinction. Veronese paints his vast canvases in a more measured and controlled style than Titian or Tintoretto. But the richness and colour remain unmistakable, as with so many other painters in the studios of Venice at this time.

Portrait

History of Painting

After last publication

Michelangelo the painter: AD 1504-1550

Michelangelo's reputation as a painter derives, almost entirely, from his work in one building - the Sistine chapel. A few panel paintings possibly survive from his hand from the period 1495-1508, though only one of them is accepted by scholars beyond any doubt. This is the circular Virgin and Child commissioned by Angelo Doni in about 1504, now in the Uffizi. Two panel paintings in the National Gallery in London have long been attributed to Michelangelo by some and rejected by others.

At the end of his life there are frescoes for another Vatican building, the Pauline chapel, which Michelangelo completes in 1550. But all the rest of his painting is done in two creative bursts - on the ceiling of the Sistine chapel (1508-12) and on the wall above the altar (1536-41).

Michelangelo's concept for the ceiling of the chapel is as bold as his execution of the figures. An elaborate architectural perspective draws the eye up past alcoves, in which huge figures sit, to ever-receding panels which eventually display a series of narrative scenes.

These vast but distant-seeming panels along the centre of the ceiling (each about 10 by 18 feet) tell the story at the start of Genesis - from God's creation of the universe to the famous spark of life (from the Creator's finger to the languid Adam), and on through the expulsion from Eden to the more conventional form of human frailty in the drunkenness of Noah.



The attendant figures, many of them cramped in the available spaces, twist and turn with convincing flexibility. They seem to have a muscular certainty, even where distortion is involved, deriving from Michelangelo's skills as a sculptor. The colours, revealed afresh in a cleaning programme during the 1990s, are vibrantly bright, in often startling combinations. (With these surprises, of posture and colour, Michelangelo inspires a younger generation to develop the style known as mannerism).

The effect of the Sistine ceiling is exuberant, optimistic. It fits with the confident papacy of Julius II. The end wall of the chapel is very different. But it too reflects its times.



In 1527 Rome is sacked by an unruly army of German mercenaries, while Clement VII shelters helplessly in the Castel Sant'Angelo. In the aftermath of this appalling event, Clement commissions Michelangelo to paint the end wall of the Sistine chapel. The subject is to be the Last Judgement. Again Michelangelo captures the mood perfectly, giving this traditional cautionary tale a dark and dramatic violence (though the anguished nudity proves too much for some - twenty years later Daniele da Volterra is employed to paint in some loincloths).

From the Creation to the Last Judgement, the Sistine chapel forms a single masterpiece. Giotto's chapel in Padua is the only other building to express so thoroughly one painter's vision.

Raphael: AD 1504-1520

While Michelangelo is painting the ceiling of the Sistine chapel, Raphael - his junior by eight years - is working on another commission from Julius II just a few hundred yards away.

Raphael may be described as the boy wonder of the Italian Renaissance. Born in Urbino in 1483, the son of a minor painter (Giovanni Santi), Raphael makes his way in about 1504 to Florence. Over the next few years he paints the serenely beautiful Madonnas and Holy Families, set in luxuriant landscapes, which first reveal his genius. The style derives from Perugino, in whose studio Raphael probably learnt his craft, but in these paintings there is a new certainty of composition, modelling and colour.

News of his talent must have spread rapidly among the patrons of the day, because towards the end of 1508 he is summoned to Rome and is given a papal commission of great importance. Julius II wants frescoes for a series of rooms in the Vatican which he intends to use as his own apartment. This sensitive task is entrusted, in 1509, to the 26-year-old Raphael. It occupies him for the rest of his life.

Raphael's astonishing achievement in the Stanze (Italian for 'rooms', and the simple name by which they are still known) is a triumph over many different problems, all new to him when he begins.



The themes to be depicted for the pope are often intellectual and thematic, and thus much harder to bring to life than the intimacy of the Holy Family. They involve large numbers of characters, requiring compositional skills similar to those of a director presenting a scene on a stage. And the vaulted rooms, with walls interrupted by doors or alcoves, present irregular and difficult surfaces.

Raphael triumphs over these obstacles. In the very first room which he undertakes, the Stanza della Segnatura, he creates with great confidence two crowded and contrasted scenes - the School of Athens, featuring Plato, Aristotle and many others, and the Disputa in which biblical figures and saints discuss the Christian sacrament.

Raphael's work on the Stanze is interrupted from 1515 by another important papal commission. Pope Leo X, elected in 1513, wants a set of ten tapestries to hang around the lower walls of the Sistine chapel. He asks Raphael to design ten scenes from the New Testament, to be sent north to Europe's best weavers in Brussels.

Raphael, by now a master of large narrative compositions, paints the scenes as full-size cartoons in gouache on paper. In spite of hazardous journeys to Brussels and back to Rome, and then to England in 1623 (after being bought for Charles I's tapestry factory in Mortlake), seven of these cartoons survive in surprisingly good condition in the Victoria and Albert Museum.

During these same years Raphael has been developing formidable skills as a male portraitist, painting his subjects more informally than has been the tradition, with a soft play of light on fabric and flesh, usually against neutral backgrounds, to focus all attention on the man's character. His sitters include both his papal patrons, Julius II and Leo X, and his friend the writer Baldassare Castiglione.

The brilliant portrait of Castiglione, with its muted range of blacks and greys and browns, is the perfect example of this new style. It is a style which will be developed with great flair during the 16th century by the portrait painters of Venice, in particular Titian.



When Raphael is painting Castiglione's portrait, in 1515, Michelangelo has recently finished the Sistine ceiling and Leonardo da Vinci is also in Rome - not painting, but busy with scientific experiments. A mere six years after beginning the Stanze, Raphael is as much admired as the two older men. He has a thriving studio, with a great number of assistants. He has been appointed architect of St Peter's (in 1514) and is busy with other achitectural projects.

These three artists are already seen as the outstanding figures of the time - a period subsequently regarded as the High Renaissance in Florence and Rome. Five years later, after a brief illness in 1520, Raphael dies. He is thirty-seven. His career has spanned just sixteen years.