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Portuguese family of wood-carvers. Manuel Abreu do Ó and his brother Sebastião Abreu do Ó (both fl Évora c. 1728–c. 1770) worked in collaboration, carving some of the finest and most influential Joanine and Rococo altarpieces in southern Portugal. They carved in delicate flat relief using patterns similar to those found in Spain, a style contrasting with the dramatic plastic effects seen in contemporary wood-carving in northern Portugal.

An example of the Abreu do Ó brothers’ early work is the main retable of the Cartuxa, the Charterhouse, Évora, gilded in 1729. It is composed on one level, and a sense of movement is suggested by the projection of the outer columns. They created one of the finest ensembles of 18th-century carving in southern Portugal in the chancel and transept of the Carmelite church of Nossa Senhora dos Remédios, Évora (c. 1760–70). On the main retable the areas between the column shafts are decorated with leaves and roses scattered asymmetrically, creating the impression of a lace covering. The votive tablet crowning the arch of the retable is carved with great delicacy. The lateral retables have curving double pediments whose undulating movement is echoed by large canopies above. The design of the pulpit was important in southern Portugal, because although it was in the Joanine style and inspired by developments in Lisbon it was also Rococo in spirit. The interior of the church emphasizes the importance of the role that gilt wood-carving played in the decoration of Portuguese churches during the 18th century....

(b Braga, c. 1690; d Braga, March 10, 1769).

Portuguese sculptor and carver. He was one of the most gifted of the wood-carvers who created Portuguese Baroque church interiors in the 18th century, lined with carved, gilt wood and glittering with gold. He used vigorous and imaginative ornament, in which plume-like displays of acanthus foliage, shells, dolphins and tritons mingle with angels, nude children, vases of flowers, bearded faces and masks with exotic coiffures, all framed and supported by distinctive carved brackets. Many of these motifs are enlarged versions of those in the engravings by Jean Berain I, known to have been in circulation at this time in Portugal.

This type of decoration is seen in Araújo’s first important work (1716–19) in the Benedictine monastery of S Bento da Vitória, Oporto, where the towering frames of the choir-stalls contain sculptured panels made of gilt chestnut wood representing scenes from the Life of St Benedict. Between 1719 and ...

(b Cunq, Tarn, 1655; d Toulouse, Oct 26, 1739).

French sculptor. He trained in Toulouse, where he received his first official commission in 1677. This was for 30 terracotta busts representing famous men of Toulouse, together with a bust of Louis XIV for the Galerie des Illustres of the Capitole (Hôtel de Ville; 21 still in situ). From 1678 to 1688 Arcis was employed by the Bâtiments du Roi, collaborating on the sculptural decorations for the château of Versailles. These included a stone statue personifying Reason of State on the south wing, as well as a marble vase and term figure of Flora for the gardens (all in situ). In 1684 he was received (reçu) by the Académie Royale on presentation of a marble low relief of St Mark (Versailles, Notre-Dame). The following year the city of Toulouse commissioned a bronze equestrian statue of Louis XIV, raised on a high base with four low reliefs and four seated statues of slaves; this did not progress beyond a terracotta model (Toulouse, Mus. Augustins). In ...

(b Heimingberg-Hopperg, Tyrol, 1645; d Grins, Tyrol, May 7, 1706).

Austrian sculptor. From 1666 to 1671 he was an apprentice in the workshop of Michael Lechleitner (c. 1611–69), whose daughter he married. From 1671 to 1673 he probably worked in Otztal, Tyrol: the high altar in the church at Zwieselstein may be an early work of his. In 1673 he took over Lechleitner’s workshop. The first certain work by Auer is an ivory relief of the Fall of Man (signed and dated 1677; Weimar, Schlossmus.). The almost transparent relief ground, the smooth, soft full figures and the highly detailed, naturalistic delineation of the accessories are typical of Auer’s small sculptural work. The ceremonial goblet of rhinoceros horn carved with mythological scenes (signed i.a., c. 1680–90; Munich, Residenz) is probably also by Auer, as the small, lively figures are common in his work.

It is not easy to trace a stylistic development in Auer’s art; thus, lacking documentation, it is not possible to establish the chronology of his small sculptural work, his work for the royal art collection or his devotional images. He may have travelled to Vienna ...

(b Valladolid; d 1739).

Spanish sculptor . He was the son of the sculptor Juan de Ávila (fl 1678–c. 1700) and a collaborator of Juan Antonio de la Peña (fl 1674–96), whose daughter he married in 1700. In his early works, such as Pietà (Valladolid, Colegio de los Ingleses), the folds are smoothly carved, like those of his father, but he subsequently developed towards a more Baroque style of great masses and sharply cut folds. In 1720 he undertook to make five sculptures for S Felipe Neri, Valladolid: in the Immaculate Conception the folds spread out from the centre of the figure; the contemplative Mary Magdalene continues the tradition of the 17th-century ascetic type. His St Michael (Palencia, Castil de Vela) is a heroic and courtly figure.

Ávila carved a series of statues for the high altar (the architecture of the retable probably being by Alonso de Manzano) of the parish church of Fuentes de Valdepero, Palencia (...

(b Pfronten-Ried, nr Füssen, June 25, 1716; d Einsiedeln, Feb 9, 1799).

Swiss sculptor of German birth. He was apprenticed to the sculptor Peter Heel (1696–1767), but in 1732, after his father died, Babel became an itinerant journeyman sculptor. He appears to have moved gradually southwards, possibly drawn by the chance to study at the Akademie der Bildenden Künste in Vienna and by the far greater number of commissions to be found there, from both secular and ecclesiastical patrons. In collaborating on large-scale decorative commissions, Babel would not only have acquired a solid training as a sculptor in stone and stucco but would also have learnt the stylistic vocabulary of international Baroque. A particularly strong early influence was the stuccowork of Francesco Carlone (1674–1750), with whom Babel probably collaborated.

In 1742 Babel settled in Mimmenhausen, residence of the leading Rococo sculptor Josef Anton Feuchtmayer. Here he made his first appearance as an independent master when he presented Abbot ...

(b Zamora, c. 1680; d Mexico City, 1748).

Spanish architect and sculptor, active in Mexico. Between 1702 and 1703 he worked in Madrid as a designer of stage machinery, later moving to Andalusia, where he produced the principal altar of the sacristy of Seville Cathedral in the Rococo style, completed in 1709 (destr. 1824). Ceán Bermúdez described it as having ‘four large estípites, pilasters, lots of angels prankishly tumbling about and a cornice broken and interrupted in a thousand places with tortuous projections and recessions, the whole topped by a huge arch’. In 1714 Balbás also carried out the plan for the choir-stalls of the church of S Juan in Marchena, carved by Juan de Valencia, equally playful in style and similarly using estípites. The same year he designed the lectern in the same church, though this was not constructed until 1735.

Around 1718 Balbás went to Mexico City to take charge of the ‘retablo del Perdón’ in the Chapel of the Kings at the Metropolitan Cathedral, using the ...

Term used to describe one of the first genuinely global styles of art and architecture in the Western canon, extending from its birthplace in Bologna and Rome to places as far-flung as France, Sweden, Russia, Latin America, colonial Asia (Goa, Macao), and Africa (Mozambique, Angola), even manifesting itself in hybrid forms in non-European cultures such as Qing China (the Yuanming yuan pleasure gardens of the Qianlong Emperor) or Ottoman Turkey (in a style often called Türk Barok). The Baroque also embraced a very wide variety of art forms, from the more traditional art historical media of painting, sculpture, and architecture to public spectacles, fireworks, gardens, and objects of everyday use, often combining multiple media into a single object or space in a way that blurred traditional disciplinary boundaries. More so than the Renaissance and Mannerist stylistic movements which preceded it, Baroque was a style of the people as well as one of élites, and scholars are only recently beginning to explore the rich material culture of the Baroque, from chapbooks (Italy) and votive paintings (central Europe and Latin America) to farm furniture (Sweden) and portable oratories (Brazil). Although its precise chronological boundaries will probably always be a matter of dispute, the Baroque era roughly covers the period from the 1580s to the early 18th century when, in places such as France and Portugal, the ...

(b Pfarrkirchen, Upper Bavaria, c. 1660; d Augsburg, Jan 31, 1738).

German sculptor. He was the son of the sculptor Johann Christian Bendl, with whom he trained. Having become a journeyman, he travelled for six years, probably to Bohemia and Venice. On his return he entered in 1684 the workshop in Augsburg of Johann Jakob Rill (fl c. 1686–99); on 26 November 1687 he was made a master and also became a citizen of Augsburg. He was the city’s leading sculptor during the late Baroque period; many important churches in and outside of Augsburg had sculptures by him. He worked mostly in wood, but also in stone, terracotta and stucco, and probably in ivory and metal as well. For jewellers and goldsmiths he produced models, such as a figure of St Sebastian (1714–15) and a crucifix (1716). His major work included two series of life-size statues: one, of the Apostles, for St Moritz and the other, of the ...

(b Brussels, May 14, 1696; d Brussels, Nov 16, 1756).

Flemish sculptor. In 1714 he entered the Guild of the Quatre Couronnés (the corporation of masons, stonecutters, sculptors and slate-quarrymen) in Brussels and served his apprenticeship with the sculptor François Delpier. In 1715 he entered the studio of Nicolas Coustou in Paris. This stay in the French capital and a subsequent period in Rome (1717–19) were to mark all of Bergé’s work, with its transitional character between late Baroque and Neo-classicism enlivened by Rococo grace. At the age of 26 he became a master in the Brussels guild and in 1737 he became the co-director of the Académie des Beaux-Arts in Brussels.

Bergé worked mainly for two abbeys of the Premonstratensian order. For that of Parc, Leuven, he executed, among other works, the high altar (wood, 1728); the monument to former prelates (wood and marble, 1729); the abbot’s throne (wood, 1730); the stalls and the confessionals, together with the pulpit (oak, ...

(b Cavallerleone [Cuneo], 1736; d Turin, Jan 7, 1796).

Italian sculptor. A royal subsidy provided by Charles-Emanuel III of Savoy, King of Sardinia, enabled him to attend the school of Claudio Francesco Beaumont in Turin. Bernero showed an early preference for papier-mâché as a medium, producing papier-mâché works for popular devotional dramas. In 1765 a second royal stipend supported a four-year continuation of his studies in Rome. There he trained with Ignazio Collino, acquiring skill in working more durable materials, such as marble and stone. Collino’s classicizing influence was not strong enough, however, to counteract Bernero’s apparent preference for Baroque effects, as is demonstrated in his dramatically swooning marble Magdalene (1770; Duomo di Casale), a typically highly charged composition. In 1770, a pivotal year, Bernero joined the Confraternity of the Company of St Luke in Turin and began to receive commissions from royal and religious patrons in Turin and other cities in Piedmont. From c. 1770 to 1772...

(b Mazan, Vaucluse, Dec 15, 1650; d Mazan, Mar 25, 1728).

French sculptor. He came of a Comtat Venaissin family of sculptors of varying degrees of talent and was trained by his father, Noël Bernus (d 1702), and later by Nicolas Levray, director of the sculpture workshop at the Arsenal, in Toulon. Refusing Levray’s offer to appoint him as his successor, Bernus preferred instead to settle in his native province. He likewise declined an offer from Laurent Buty, bishop of Carpentras from 1691 to 1710, to send him to Rome to perfect his art. The period from 1692 to 1708 was the most fruitful of his career. Buty commissioned him to decorate the choir and the sanctuary (mostly preserved in situ) of the cathedral of St Siffrein in Carpentras: this work included the high altar, the tabernacle with adoring angels, a Glory imitating that executed by Bernini for the high altar of St Peter’s in Rome, the panelling for the choir and Buty’s own tomb in marble. At the same time Bernus sculpted a considerable number of statues and ecclesiastical furnishings for neighbouring churches. Little is known about his activities between ...

(b Venice, fl 1693–1733).

Italian sculptor. Documents record him as working in Rome in 1693 and in Venice in 1710. Records of his activity cease after 1733, the year in which he received a commission for two candlesticks for the basilica of S Antonio (il Santo) in Padua. He produced distinctive, small-scale sculptural groups, usually in bronze, sometimes in marble. These decorative pieces, purchased avidly by 18th-century Italians and tourists to Italy, made their way into various collections in Europe and North America. Typical of his bronze groups are the Triumph of Chastity (London, V&A) and America (Baltimore, MA, Walters A. G.), both with several allegorical figures arranged in a boldly dynamic pyramid. The elongated, twisting figures are almost Manneristic in their proportions and assume difficult, seemingly weightless poses. Many of the works recall Giambologna’s sculptures; indeed Bertos made a small-scale marble copy (Turin, Pal. Reale) of Giambologna’s Rape of the Sabine Women (Florence, Loggia Lanzi). He signed some of the bronzes. All his pieces are virtuosic, no matter what the size or number of figures included, and display Bertos’s knowledge both of the bronze statuettes of Renaissance craftsmen and of 15th-century German goldsmith’s pieces....

(b Paris, bapt Nov 11, 1663; d Paris, Jan 30, 1724).

French sculptor. He was the son of the sculptor David Bertrand (d 1697), who is best known for a series of elaborate plaster overmantels, probably dating from the 1690s, of which two survive at the château of Dampierre, Seine-et-Oise. In 1694 Philippe Bertrand supplied four circular stone allegorical medallions for the Arc de Triomphe in the Place du Peyrou in Montpellier (in situ). The Baroque elaboration of their composition and drapery is also apparent, in more refined form, in the small bronze group of the Rape of Helen (e.g. Fontainebleau, Château) with which Bertrand was admitted to the Académie Royale in 1701. From 1705 he worked principally for the Bâtiments du Roi. His work under the direction of Jules Hardouin Mansart included a plaster statue of St Satyrus, one of 11 statues by various hands planned for the four circular chapels at the Invalides (c....

(b London, 1667; d London, Feb 1730–31).

English sculptor. He was born in the parish of St Martin-in-the-Fields and was sent to Flanders to the studio of a sculptor named Cozins (perhaps a member of the family of sculptors named Cosyns) and later to Rome. Back in England by c. 1689, he was employed by both Grinling Gibbons and Caius Gabriel Cibber, but he returned to Rome some years later, perhaps from 1695, and worked in the studio of Pierre Legros (ii). These journeys equipped him particularly with a knowledge of the Baroque in Rome and the works of Bernini. On his return to England, by 1700, after the death of Cibber, he was appointed by Sir Christopher Wren to undertake the major sculptural decoration of St Paul’s Cathedral, notably the pediment of the west front with its boldly dramatic representation of the Conversion of St Paul, for which he was paid £650 in 1706. He may have derived the pediment from Bernini or Legros but, since no drawings or models survive, this remains conjecture. He also carved the figures of the Evangelists and Apostles, over three and a half metres high, on the west and south fronts, receiving more than £2000, and the statue of ...

[Jean-François]

(b Mechelen, c. 1650; d Mechelen, 1734).

Flemish sculptor and architect. He was a pupil of Lucas Faydherbe, from whom he absorbed the influence of Rubens. Boeckstuyns became a master in the Mechelen Guild of St Luke in 1680 but may have continued to collaborate with Faydherbe. Among his commissions for Mechelen churches are three wooden confessionals with allegorical figures (1690) and the wooden gable (1712) for Faydherbe’s earlier high altar for the basilica of Onze-Lieve-Vrouw van Hanswijk and numerous works for the Begijnhof Church, including the north interior portal (c. 1700), the communion rails (1710) and the wooden confessionals (also attributed to Faydherbe). In 1690 he collaborated with the Mechelen sculptors Frans Langhemans and Adam Frans van der Meulen on the wooden high altar of Onze-Lieve-Vrouw-over-de-Dyle. Boeckstuyns was perhaps responsible for the wooden pulpit in St Rombouts (also attributed to Michiel van der Voort I) as well as the wooden tabernacle for the altar of the Holy Sacrament (...

(b Valls, 1730; d Valls, 1786).

Catalan sculptor. His great-grandfather and grandfather, respectively Luis Bonifás (fl 1676; d 1697) and Luis Bonifás y Sastre (1683–1765), settled in Valls and founded an academy of architecture and sculpture. His younger brother, Francisco Bonifás y Masó (1735–1806), was also a sculptor. Luis Bonifás y Masó himself worked in a Baroque style for both the architecture of his retables and for his sculptural compositions, as can be seen in the high altar at Cubells (1764), in which the figure of St Peter recalls the work of Bernini. In the previous year, however, he had successfully applied for full admission to the Real Academia de Bellas Artes de S Fernando, Madrid, and submitted a Neo-classical alabaster relief of St Sebastian Succoured by St Irene (in situ), clearly demonstrating that the extended Baroque strain in his work was due either to his own preference or to the demands of his clients. ...

(b San Mateo, Castellón,?early 18th century; d Madrid, Feb 2, 1754).

Spanish sculptor and architect. In 1733 he was appointed city and diocesan architect for Cuenca, where he designed the town hall in 1734. He was subsequently summoned by the chapter of Murcia Cathedral in 1736 and appointed surveyor to the fabric and city architect. He directed works on the new façade of the cathedral (1736–49), which is really a retable in stone and decorative marbles, albeit on a monumental scale, and is scenographically designed to complement the townscape. Jacopo Vignola’s two-storey scheme for the façade of Il Gesù, Rome (see Rome, §V, 16, and figs 49 and 50), is the ultimate model, but it was modified by Bort to form a complex rhythm of fluid curves and powerful columnar projections. The wealth of fine detail recalls French Rococo—in particular Juste-Aurèle Meissonier’s design (1726) for St Sulpice, Paris—while exploiting the existing Renaissance elements of the building. The curved cresting of the façade, like an ornamental Spanish comb used to hold a mantilla in place, has a deep concave surface. Bort’s pupils executed this work, which recalls the expedients in Andrea Pozzo’s ...

(b Paris, 1710; d Parma, June 6, 1768).

French sculptor, active in Italy. He won the Prix de Rome in 1732 but left for the Académie de France in Rome at his own expense, arriving c. 1733. There he executed, among other works, a model in wax of the royal arms for the façade of the Palazzo Mancini, home of the Académie de France, and a marble copy of the Spinario (untraced). He also contributed to the sculptural decoration of S Giovanni in Laterano (Lateran Basilica). In 1741 he was in Naples and in Venice, where he may have modelled the powerful bust of Father Lodolli (terracotta, 1744; St Petersburg, Hermitage).

During a brief period in France, in 1746–8, Boudard produced statues of Prayer and Contemplation (both destr.) for the convent of St Pierre, Lyon, but by 1748 he was in Chambéry, in the service of Philip of Bourbon, who was shortly to become Duke of Parma; in ...

(b Rome, June 16, 1700; d Rome, Feb 13, 1773).

Italian sculptor. He studied under Giuseppe Bartolomeo Chiari and from 1725 kept a diary in which he recorded the details of his commissions. The first one he mentioned was for the marble portrait busts of Cardinal Fabrizio Paolucci and Innocent XII (both Rome, SS Giovanni e Paolo), commissioned in 1725; these early busts show Bracci’s particular ability for carving individualized portraits. In 1726 he was commissioned to carve the wall memorial to Cardinal Fabrizio Paolucci (Rome, S Marcello al Corso). It shows a winged figure of Fame superimposed on a pyramid in relief; Fame holds a trumpet and supports a portrait medallion of the Cardinal. Bracci frequently repeated this design during his career. With the exception of that to Benedict XIV (completed after 1769; Rome, St Peter’s), he was responsible only for the sculpture of funerary monuments, the overall designs being entrusted to architects or painters. The figures were usually carved in white marble and the pyramids and bases in coloured marble. In ...