The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Art and Artists (321 page)

(1759–1833).
English collector, patron, and amateur painter, a physician by profession. He played an important role in encouraging some of the outstanding watercolour painters of his period, his protégés including
Turner
,
Girtin
,
Cotman
,
De Wint
, and many others. They used his houses in London and Bushey, Hertfordshire, as places to meet and work, and were given the run of his superb collection. Late in life Turner recalled how he and Girtin had often made ‘drawings for good Dr Monro at half a crown apiece and a supper’.

 
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(French: ‘mounting’). Term applied to a pictorial technique in which cut-out illustrations, or fragments of them, are arranged together and mounted, and to the picture so made. Ready-made images alone are used, and they are chosen for their subject and message; in both these respects montage is distinct from
collage
and
papier collé
.
Photomontage
is montage using photographs only. In cinematic usage, the term ‘montage’ refers to the assembling of separate pieces of film into a sequence or a superimposed image.

 
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(d. 1523).
Italian painter. He probably trained in Venice, but he worked mainly in Vicenza, where he was the leading painter of his day. His style has been well characterized by S. J. Freedberg (
Painting in Italy
: 1500–1600, 1971) as ‘gloomily impressive’.

 
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(1568–1649).
The greatest Spanish sculptor of the 17th cent., know as ‘el dios de la madera’ (the god of wood) on account of his mastery as a carver. He worked for most of his long and productive career in Seville (
Pacheco
often painted his figures), his most famous work being the
Christ of Clemency
(1603–6) in the cathedral there, which shows the new naturalism he brought to the
polychromed
wooden statue. In this he occupied a role comparable to Gregorio
Fernández
in Valladolid, but Montañes was more aristocratic in style, tempering
Baroque
emotionalism with a classical sense of dignity. In 1635–6 he was in Madrid to undertake his only recorded secular work, a portrait head (now lost) of Philip IV to serve as model for the equestrian statue of the king executed by Pietro
Tacca
in Florence, and it was on this occasion that
Velázquez
painted his well-known portrait of Montañes (Prado, Madrid). His work influenced painters such as Velázquez and
Zurbarán
as well as sculptors such as
Cano
(whom he taught), and his style was spread by his flourishing workshop.

 
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Montefeltro
.

Italian noble family that ruled Urbino from 1234 with short intervals until 1508, when the family became extinct. Under the guidance of
Federico da Montefeltro
(b. 1422, ruled 1444–82) the city became one of the most important centres of
Renaissance
culture. He was a brave
condottiere
and the implacable enemy of Sigismondo
Malatesta
, but is significant chiefly as an enlightened patron of literature and the arts. His library was the finest in Italy and his palace is one of the most beautiful buildings of the Renaissance. For us he chiefly survives—broken nose, warts, and all—in the famous portrait by
Piero della Francesca
(Uffizi, Florence), who was one of the leading lights of his court. Federico's ideals lived on his son
Guidobaldo
(1472–1508), whose court is commemorated in Castiglione's famous book
The Courtier
(1528). Guidobaldo was dispossessed by Cesare Borgia in 1502, but recovered Urbino in 1503. When he died childless in 1508 Urbino passed to the family of his nephew Francesco Maria della Rovere .

 
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