François Duquesnoy
François Duquesnoy | |
---|---|
Born | |
Died | 19 July 1643[1][2] | (aged 46)
Nationality | Flemish |
Known for | Sculpture |
Notable work | Saint Susanna, Saint Andrew, Tomb of Ferdinand van den Eynde |
Movement | Baroque |
François Duquesnoy or Frans Duquesnoy (12 January 1597 – 18 July 1643) was a Flemish Baroque sculptor who was active in Rome for most of his career, where he was known as Il Fiammingo ("the Fleming"). His idealized representations represented a quieter and more restrained version of Italian baroque sculpture, and are often contrasted with the more dramatic and emotional character of Bernini's works, while his style shows a great affinity to Algardi's sculptures.
Early years
Duquesnoy was born in
According to early biographers, when Duquesnoy arrived in Rome in 1618, he studied antique sculpture in detail, climbing over the equestrian Marcus Aurelius to determine how it was cast, or making a pilgrimage to the shrine of Diana at Lake Nemi. In 1624, Nicolas Poussin, who shared his classicly styled, emotionally detached manner of depiction, arrived in Rome, and the two foreign artists lodged together. Both moved in the circle of patronage of Cassiano dal Pozzo. They developed a canon of ideal expressive figures, counter to the theatrical baroque of Bernini. Contemporary critics, like Giovanni Bellori, in Lives of the Modern Painters, Sculptors and Architects from 1672, hailed Duquesnoy's art as restoring contemporary sculpture to quality of antique Roman sculpture. Bellori said that with his Santa Susanna, Duquesnoy "had left to modern sculptors the example for statues of clothed figures, making him more than the equal of the best ancient sculptors...".[3]
Among Duquesnoy's early works are
The statue of Santa Susanna
Duquesnoy's classicly styled
Critics have remarked on the refined surfaces and the softness and sweetness with which Duquesnoy invested this statue. There is a transcendence in her empty gaze. The sculpture was little known until the 18th century, when a marble copy by
The statue of Saint Andrew in the Transept of St Peter's
The more extroverted marble representation of Saint Andrew (1629–33) was begun a few months after his completion of the Santa Bibiana. It is one of the four larger-than-life statues which frame the baldacchino in the transept of St. Peter's Basilica; each statues is associated with the basilica's primary holy relics (the other three statues in St. Peter are Bernini's Saint Longinus, Mochi's Saint Veronica, and Bolgi's St Helena). It is useful to contrast the tone of Andrew with that of Longinus: in Andrew the draperies fall vertically or droop, while Longinus' clothes inflate in improbably starched ebullience. Andrew leans over the saltire cross of his martyrdom, while Longinus theatrically flings arms outward expostulating divine influence. Both statues accentuate the diagonals, but Duquesnoy's is more restrained than either Bernini's or Mochi's contribution.
Other works
Poussin recommended Duquesnoy to
Like other sculptors working in 17th century Rome, Duquesnoy was called upon to restore and complete antiquities, for headless torsos rarely found a market with contemporary connoisseurs. With the Rondanini Faun (1625–30; now in the British Museum) Duquesnoy amplified a torso into a characteristically Baroque expansive gesture that deeply satisfied contemporary taste but was bitterly criticised by Neoclassicists by the end of the 18th century. He completed a Roman torso as Adonis. It found its way into the collection of Cardinal Mazarin and is now in the Louvre.
There are bronze busts of the Susanna in Vienna, Berlin, and Copenhagen. Finely finished small-scale bronzes of antique subjects, suitable for collectors, occupied the sculptor and his studio assistants. A Mercury and Cupid is at the Louvre, a gracile Bacchus at the
Bas-reliefs of putti
His characteristic putti, plump, with carefully observed children's heads, helped to establish the conventional type, familiar in the paintings of Rubens: in fact Rubens wrote Duquesnoy in 1640 to thank him for sending him casts of the putti from the sculptor's Tomb of Ferdinand van den Eynde in Santa Maria dell'Anima in Rome.[6]
Flemish boxwood or ivory carvings, especially with scenes of putti, are often casually described as "in his manner", though he never left Rome.
Aside from his brother, who collaborated with him in his studio, his most prominent pupils were
References
- Britannica. Retrieved 19 September 2020.
- Sir John Wyndham Pope-Hennessy (1970). An Introduction to Italian Sculpture: Italian High Renaissance and Baroque scul-ture. Phaidon; University of Michigan(digitalized). p. 441.
- ^ quoted by Lingo, 2002
- ^ Bas reliefs now at Palazzo Spada, Rome.
- ^ Denis Coekelberghs, 'A propos de Jérôme Du Quesnoy le jeune', in: La Tribune de l'Art, 1 September 2006 (in French)
- ^ a b c Lingo
- RKD.
Further reading
- Francis Haskell and Nicholas Penny, 1981. Taste and the Antique: The Lure of Classical Sculpture, 1500–1900 (New Haven: Yale University Press)
External links
- This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Herbermann, Charles, ed. (1913). "François Duquesnoy". Catholic Encyclopedia. New York: Robert Appleton Company.
- Media related to François Duquesnoy at Wikimedia Commons
- Estelle Lingo "The Greek Manner and a Christian Canon: Francois Duquesnoy's Saint Susanna" from The Art Bulletin, March, 2002 by
- François Duquesnoy - "Sankt Andreas"
- "Putti", Rome
- Shearer West, Guide to Art (Bloomsbury 1996: "François Duquesnoy"