Friday, November 11, 2016

Flemish Sculpture

François Duquesnoy
Apollo and Cupid
1630s
bronze
height 63 cm
Liechtenstein Museum, Vienna

François Duquesnoy
Mercury
1630s
bronze
height 63 cm
Liechtenstein Museum, Vienna

"Duquesnoy's friend and pupil, the sculptor Orfeo Boselli, writing in Rome some time around 1657, observes that just as there are many who hate to admit that anything antique is marvelous, so there are others who study the remains of antiquity uncritically, failing to distinguish the good from the bad. There are those who can tell good from bad, he continues, but only Dusquesnoy could discriminate the good from the best. As we shall see, Boselli also stresses the importance of proportion and contour as criteria central to Duquesnoy's criticism. Passeri too, in the passage already quoted above, remarks upon the refinement of Duquesnoy's judgment (which undoubtedly was sharpened by his experience as a restorer of antique statues), reporting that Duquesnoy found in the Greek style three related abstract qualities, grandeur, nobility, and majesty, as well as a fourth, leggiadria, or a lively grace, which is not easily combined with the gravity and weightiness implied by the others."

 from Nicolas Poussin : Friendship and the Love of Painting by Elizabeth Cropper and Charles Dempsey (Princeton University Press, 1996)

François Duquesnoy
Bacchanal of Putti
1630
marble relief
Galleria Spada, Rome

François Duquesnoy
St Andrew
1629-33
marble
height 450 cm
St Peter's Basilica, Rome

Laurent Delvaux
Hercules and the Erymanthian Boar
1768
terracotta
height 68 cm
Musées Royaux des Beaux-Arts, Brussels

Michiel van der Voort the Elder
Bust portrait of Jacobus Franciscus van Caverson
ca. 1713
marble
height 85 cm
Musées Royaux des Beaux-Arts, Brussels

Giambologna
Bather
1565
bronze
height 25 cm
Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna

Giambologna
Self-portrait Bust
ca. 1660
bronze
height 9 cm
Rijksmuseum

Rombout Verhulst
Prudentia
ca. 1670-90
sandstone
height 137 cm
Rijksmuseum

Rombout Verhulst
Tomb of Johan Polyander van Kerchoven
1663
marble
Pieterskerk, Leiden

Artus Quellinus the Elder
Frenzy
ca. 1660
sandstone
height 295 cm
Rijksmuseum

Curator's notes at the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam help to account for the figure above, a monument to Flemish High Baroque conviction  "This curious, life-size sandstone sculpture portrays a woman pulling out her hair in a fit of madness, the personification of Frenzy. The statue originally stood in the garden of the Dolhuys (madhouse), the municipal institution for the mentally ill. A lunatic is peering out from his or her cell on all four sides of the pedestal." 

Pieter Xaveri
Two Madmen
1673
terracotta
height 50 cm
Rijksmuseum

Pieter Xaveri
Woman with Spaniel
1673
terracotta
height 33 cm
Rijksmuseum

Pieter Xaveri
Neptune
ca. 1670
terracotta
length 50 cm
Rijksmuseum

Luc Faydherbe
Jupiter casting a Thunderbolt
ca. 1645-55
terracotta
length 72 cm
Musées Royaux des Beaux-Arts, Brussels