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1st Baron Leighton of Stretton (b Scarborough, 3 Dec 1830; d London, 25 Jan 1896). English painter and sculptor. He spent much of his youth travelling on the Continent with his family. This cosmopolitan background was of great importance to his development as an artist. After his father, a doctor, settled in Frankfurt am Main in 1846, Leighton enrolled at the Städelsches Kunstinstitut, where he studied under the Nazarene artist Edward von Steinle between 1850 and 1852. The style and subject-matter of such early works as the Death of Brunelleschi (1852; London, Leighton House A.G. & Mus.) show the influence of Nazarene art and suggest the growing importance of Italy as a source of inspiration. Leighton travelled to Rome in 1852 and became friendly with Giovanni Costa and George Heming Mason, who later emerged as leading figures in the group of English and Italian artists known as the Etruscans. His first Royal Academy success, Cimabue’s Celebrated Madonna Is Carried in Procession through the Streets of Florence (Brit. Royal Col.), was painted in Rome in 1855. This huge processional work, filled with incident and detail, takes its subject from Vasari’s Vite. It was bought by Queen Victoria from the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition of 1855 and its success marked Leighton as one of the most promising artists of his generation. |
