Adriaen de Vries

Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
Adriaen de Vries
Portrait by Hans von Aachen
BornCirca 1556
The Hague, Habsburg Netherlands
Died1626
Prague, Kingdom of Bohemia
Known forSculpting
StyleNorthern Mannerism

Adriaen de Vries (c.1556–1626) was a

Northern Mannerist sculptor born in the Netherlands but working in Central Europe, whose international style crossed the threshold to the Baroque; he excelled in refined modelling and bronze casting and in the manipulation of patina and became the most famous European sculptor of his generation. He also excelled in draughtsmanship
.

Partly as a result of the disturbances of the Thirty Years' War, and also changes in style, Adriaen de Vries had no direct follower.

Life

Born in The Hague to a patrician family,[1] his early training is obscure; a recent suggestion[2] suggests an apprenticeship with Willem Danielsz. van Tetrode, known in Italy as Guglielmo Fiammingo, a pupil of Benvenuto Cellini who had returned to the Netherlands. Another possibility is that he was apprenticed to a goldsmith, his brother-in-law Simon Adriaensz Rottermont. Both possibilities are suggestive in view of de Vries' virtuoso casting technique and refined finish.

Apprenticeship in Italy

He travelled to

Escorial
.

Commissions in Savoy and Germany

This led to his brief appointment as court sculptor to Philip II's son-in-law

Emperor Rudolf II. These sculptures are now housed in Vienna and at the Victoria and Albert Museum, which possesses a bust of Rudolf in bas-relief. He left Prague in 1594 for a visit to study in Rome. On his return through Germany he executed two fountains in 1596 for the city of Augsburg
, the Mercury and Hercules and the Hydra fountains, which may still be seen in Maximilianstraße.

Return to Bohemia (after 1601)

De Vries returned in 1601 to Prague, where Rudolf made him Kammerbildhauer ("chamber sculptor", i.e. privileged artist). During his hypothetical stay in Rome in 1604, he had cast a statue of Christ at the column, a centrepiece for Adam von Hannewaldt's tomb monument in the Holy Trinity Church in Rothsürben (

National Museum in Warsaw.[4] It was conceived as a part of a five figure group of the Flagellation of Christ.[4] He remained in Prague after Rudolf's death in 1612, though the Imperial court returned to Vienna, until his own death in Prague
in 1626.

During this late period he found a new patron in the Prince

Frederiksborg (one of the statues from this fountain is now displayed in the Rijksmuseum
).

Works

The Rijksmuseum owns the only two sculptures by de Vries found in his native Netherlands, a bronze relief of Bacchus and Ariadne, and the recently purchased (2014) Bacchant. The artist was scarcely known there until the exhibition mounted by the Rijksmuseum, the Nationalmuseum, Stockholm, and the J. Paul Getty Museum in 1999.

Dano-Swedish War (1658–60)
.

Gallery

Notes

  1. ^ His father, an apothecary, held several distinguished civic positions.
  2. ^ Frits Scholten, Adriaen de Vries 1556-1626: Imperial Sculptor (Zwolle: Waanders) 1999.
  3. ^ Though the chapel was dismantled by the Napoleonic government, the sculptures have been preserved at the University of Genoa; Michael Bury, "The Grimaldi Chapel of Giambologna in San Francesco di Castelletto, Genoa," MKIF 26 (1982) pp 85-127.
  4. ^ a b Łoś, Władysław (1981). "Christ at the Column" by Adrian de Vries: from the Hannewaldt Memorial at Żórawina. Bulletin du Musée National de Varsovie. pp. 27, 31.
  5. ^ Remarked by Manfred Leithe-Jasper in reviewing the exhibition in The Burlington Magazine 141 No. 1155 (June 1999), pp. 372-375.
  6. ^ "Museum de Vries - Sveriges Kungahus". Archived from the original on 2011-12-28. Retrieved 2012-03-09.

Further reading

  • Scholten, Frits. Adriaen de Vries 1556-1626: Imperial Sculptor (Zwolle: Waanders) 1999.

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Adriaen de Vries.
Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Adriaen_de_Vries&oldid=1207713678"