SEITER, Daniel

Daniel Seiter (Saiter; Seutter; Seyter; Syder), Austrian painter and draughtsman, active in Italy, where he was called Cavalier Daniele or Daniele Fiammingo). He brought an art combining the influences of Johann Carl Loth, Pietro da Cortona and Carlo Maratti to the Savoy court in Turin.

Cutting short his military career, he took refuge in Venice in 1670 and devoted himself to painting. He became a student of Johann Carl Loth (St Sebastian, 1670, Hessisches Landesmuseum, Darmstadt). After a stay in Rome (1682-88), where he painted numerous altarpieces that were affected mainly by Carlo Maratti, he settled in Turin, where he was engaged in the decoration of the royal palace. In 1696 he was named first painter to the court.

As a pupil of Loth he had developed a powerful style based on chiaroscuroGLOSSARYIn painting, the modelling of form (the creation of a sense of three-dimensionality in objects) through the use of light and shade. The introduction of oil paints in the 15th century, replacing tempera, encouraged the development of chiaroscuro, for oil paint allowed a far greater range and control of tone. The term chiaroscuro is used in particular for the dramatic contrasts of light and dark introduced by Caravaggio. When the contrast of light and dark is strong, chiaroscuro becomes an important element of composition. effects and balancing academic and naturalistic expressive elements. His strong palette and his distinctive draftsmanship clearly predestined him for a career as an easelGLOSSARYStand on which a painting is supported while the artist works on it. The oldest representation of an easel is on an Egyptian relief of the Old Kingdom (c. 2600-2150 BC). Renaissance illustrations of the artist at work show all kinds of contrivances, the commonest being the three-legged easel with pegs, such as we still use today. Light folding easels were not made until the 18th and 19th centuries, when painters took to working out of doors. The studio easel, a 19th-century invention, is a heavy piece of furniture, which runs on castors or wheels, and served to impress the c1ients of portrait painters. Oil painters need an easel which will support the canvas almost vertically or tip it slightly forward to prevent reflection from the wet paint, whereas the watercolourist must be able to lay his paper nearly flat so that the wet paint will not run down. The term 'easel-painting' is applied to any picture small enough to have been painted on a standard easel. painter, but he managed to translate these stylistic features into the medium of wall painting as well.