The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Art and Artists (475 page)

(1611–50)
. Italian engraver and painter active in Rome. He trained with
Domenichino
and was employed by Nicolas
Poussin's
patron Cassiano dal Pozzo to make antiquarian drawings, but his bizarre imagination brings him closer in spirit to his more Romantic contemporaries such as
Castiglione
and
Rosa
. His paintings are rare and he is better known as an etcher. Testa died by drowning, and it was rumoured that he killed himself.

 
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(1804–91).
English sculptor. He was the son of a painter and sculptor of the same name (1764–1817), best known for his pediment group
Hercules Taming the Thracian Horses
(Royal Mews, London,
c.
1816), one of the earliest works to show the influence of the
Elgin Marbles
. Theed the Younger trained under E. H.
Baily
and at the
Royal Academy
Schools, In 1826 he went to Rome and worked under
Thorvaldsen
and
Gibson
. He returned to London in 1848 and became one of the most distinguished and prolific of Victorian sculptors. His work includes numerous busts and statues and the colossal group of
Africa
for the Albert Memorial.

 
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Theophanes the Greek
(in Russian Feofan Grek
,

c.
1330–
c.
1405)
. Painter from Constantinople, active mainly in Russia. He is said to have been a prolific decorator of churches, but only one fresco cycle survives that is certainly from his own hand, in the church of the Transfiguration at Novgorod (1378). This is one of the outstanding monuments of Russian medieval art, showing the highly personal version of the
Byzantine
style that Theophanes brought to Russia; his figures are vigorous and strongly characterized, and his brushwork has an almost impressionistic freedom and dash. Theophanes is known to have carried out major commissions in Moscow between 1395 and 1405, but none of his work there survives except some
icons
for the Cathedral of the Annunciation, which were painted with the help of assistants and are poorly preserved. According to a contemporary source Theophanes was also famous as a book-
illuminator
. No signed or documented work in this field is known by him, but several examples have been attributed to him. Theophanes made a great impression on painting in Novgorod and Moscow in the 15th cent., notably on
Rublev
.

 
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Theophilus
.

The pseudonym adopted by the author of a medieval treatise on arts and crafts entitled
De Diversis Artibus
(The Various Arts). It has been variously dated from the 9th to the 13th cent. C. R. Dodwell , who made the standard English translation (1961), assigns it to a date between 1110 and 1140. It is the most important source of information on medieval arts and techniques and is unusual for its time in its references to the artist's attitude to his work. Various medieval manuscripts are extant, but the treatise did not become generally known until the late 18th cent.
Lessing
produced the first printed edition, posthumously published in 1781, and an English edition, made from another manuscript, appeared in the same year. Little or nothing is known with certainty about the writer, but internal evidence suggests that he was a German Benedictine monk and also a practising craftsman whose primary interest lay in metalwork. He has been plausibly identified with Roger of Helmarshausen, a goldsmith and monk at the abbey of Helmarshausen, who is documented as the maker of a portable altar (Paderborn Cathedral Treasury, 1100) for Bishop Henry of Werl. Other works have been attributed to him.

 
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(1839–1924).
German painter. His early landscapes—usually scenes from his native Black Forest—are his finest and freshest works, showing the influence of
Courbet
and the
Barbizon School
. Later, under the impact of
Böcklin
, he turned to more ponderous symbolic subjects. Thoma was immensely popular during his lifetime, but has fallen greatly in critical esteem. The largest collection of his works is in the Karlsruhe Kunsthalle, of which he was Director.

 
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