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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 Elvas, fl Elvas, 1753–9).

Portuguese architect and master builder. His earliest known works are the six side altars (black-veined marble, 1753) in the small 15th-century chapel of S Bento in Vila Viçosa, where all his work is to be found. They are carved in a characteristic Late Baroque manner. In 1754 he designed and directed the installation of the high choir at the church of S Agostinho, with a baluster and handrail in white, black and pink marble. Also in 1754 he took charge of the reconstruction of the Paços do Concelho, fending off plans to open the work to public tender and undertaking to adhere to approved designs. He resumed work at S Agostinho in 1758, replacing the old retable of the high altar, thought unworthy by Joseph I, with a new design of coloured marble. He may also have directed work on the façade of the Matriz de Portel (1741–59...

(b Regensburg, 1667; d Regensburg, 1719).

German painter. He travelled to England, the Netherlands, France and Italy, working for longer periods in Rome, Naples and Augsburg. He was strongly influenced by French landscape painters active in Italy, such as Gaspard Dughet and Claude Lorrain. In Agricola’s paintings the balanced arrangement of the picturesque landscape elements creates a lucid pictorial structure, and unusual light effects, such as twilight or the darkness before a storm, are used to convey a particular mood. The small scale of his figures expresses the contrast between human frailty and the forces of nature. He painted with lively local colours, especially ochres and deep greens for the rich tones of earth and vegetation. The multicoloured costumes of his figural staffage provide pictorial accents and reveal the romantic orientation of his paintings. Scenes of country people at work, for example Landscape with a Millstone (Dresden, Gemäldegal. Alte Meister), express his yearning for a return to nature. Paintings representing the life of nomadic Orientals, such as ...

(b Cairnie, Forfar, Tayside, Oct 24, 1682; d London, June 4, 1731).

Scottish painter. He came from a professional background, and his maternal uncle, Sir John Clerk of Penicuik, may have provided Aikman with an introduction to Sir John Baptist Medina, under whom he studied painting in London from 1704. In 1707 Aikman set out on travels to Italy, Constantinople (now Istanbul) and Smyrna, on the proceeds made from the sale of his estate at Cairnie. When he returned to Edinburgh in 1711, he adopted a heavy Baroque style for his portraits: Sir William Carstares (c. 1712–15; U. Edinburgh, Old Coll., Upper Lib.) shows bravura, although the handling is coarse. The three-quarter-length portraits of Patrick, 1st Earl of Marchmont (1720; Mellerstain, Borders) and Sir Hew Dalrymple, Lord North Berwick (1722; Edinburgh, Parliament House) show a greater sophistication, which he may have acquired during a further trip to London in 1720.

Aikman was widely patronized, especially by the Duke of Argyll and his circle; after the Act of Union in ...

(b Berg, nr Starnberg, Bavaria, Jan 3, 1687; d Munich, Aug 15, 1765).

German painter and administrator. He was the son of Augustin Albrecht, a carpenter, and he was probably taught in Munich by his uncle, the painter Benedikt Albrecht (d 1730), before he went to Italy, where he is thought to have stayed in Rome and Venice. Albrecht returned to Munich in 1719 and executed his first works (all 1723–4) for the former Hofmarkkirche (now Katholische Pfarrkirche; in situ) in Schönbrunn, near Dachau. These were a ceiling fresco, Celebration of the Cross, and three altar panels, Mourning Angel (high altar), Martyrdom of St Catherine (left altar) and St Anne (right altar). He also painted two altar panels, St John of Nepomuk and St Leonard (both 1724–5; untraced), for the Katholische Pfarrkirche Mariahilf in der Au in Munich. Unlike Cosmas Damian Asam, Matthäus Günther and Johann Baptist Bergmüller, he was influenced by 16th-century Venetian and Roman models, and both in these works and in later ones he continued to look to the past for inspiration. Between ...

(b Rome, 1699; d Turin, Dec 9, 1767).

Italian architect. Descended from an impoverished ducal family of Asti, Piedmont, Alfieri spent his first 16 years in Rome. A papal stipend enabled him to study law at the Collegio dei Nobili in Turin, after which he settled as a lawyer in Asti. Even as a successful architect in public office, he continued to make use of his legal knowledge, and in Asti and later Turin he served as mayor intermittently. Alfieri was extraordinarily versatile, with no single personal style. He worked simultaneously in three separate styles: Roman high and late Baroque; French Rococo (for decoration); and early classicism. His attitude to these styles was functional rather than historical, and his choice of which one to use usually depended on the nature of the project and the wishes of his client. Thus Alfieri built Catholic churches in Roman Baroque and Protestant churches in a puristic classicism. Piedmontese State commissions were executed in the severe manner of the Turin State style as practised by Amadeo di Castellamonte and Filippo Juvarra before him. For the royal court and the aristocracy French Rococo was appropriate. Façades of palaces were decorated in the idiom of a restrained Baroque classicism, like that which Gianlorenzo Bernini and Carlo Fontana had developed in Rome. Whatever the style, Alfieri worked with facility and elegance, blending disparate elements into ingenious, harmonious creations. He was not a great innovator, but his work anticipates in certain respects the purpose-built functional architecture of the 20th century. With his flexible use of existing architectural vocabulary, he was a first-class architect of the second rank....

(b ?Laino d’Intelvi, c. 1665; d Litomyšl, Bohemia, ?March 13, 1720).

Italian architect, active in Bohemia. The son of Lorenzo Alliprandi (d c. 1712), a stucco artist who worked in Vienna, he served his apprenticeship with the master builder Francesco Martinelli (1651–1708) in Vienna from 1685 to 1688 and is recorded as working in Bohemia in 1690 as a foreman. From 1696 to 1702 Alliprandi was in the service of Count Heřman Jakub Černín (1659–1710) as an architect. At the same time, and also later, he worked for the Counts Pachta, Přehořovský, Kaiserstein, Špork and others. In 1706 he was appointed military engineer in Prague, where he acquired citizenship of the Malá Strana quarter in 1709, from which year he was in the service of Count František Václav Trautmansdorf (1676–1753). In 1712 he also served as a military engineer in Cheb.

Alliprandi brought to Bohemia an interesting personal reinterpretation of the achievements and inspirations of such Viennese masters as Johann Bernhard Fischer von Erlach, Domenico Martinelli and Johann Lukas von Hildebrandt. His designs for such buildings as the country house at Liblice (...

(fl Lisbon, c. 1720–60).

Portuguese decorative artist. His apprenticeship was probably undertaken with Master PMP, the painter of glazed tiles. His most important commission between 1729 and 1731 was for the panels of blue and white tiles, made in Lisbon, that cover the lower storey of the cloister of Oporto Cathedral, which represent scenes from the Song of Solomon. These panels are characteristic of the High Baroque phase of tile-making and show an appreciation of theatre and stage design in the deepening landscape backgrounds of the figurative panels, in the bold outlines and in the enlarged ornamental framing. The spectacular arched frames of the Oporto panels were influenced by Roman Baroque architectural ornament.

The attractive blue and white panels (c. 1735–45) in the cloister of the monastery of S Vicente de Fora, Lisbon, are attributable to Almeida. They contain landscapes, buildings, gardens, Baroque fountains, hunting scenes and other secular subjects, some after the engravings of ...

(de )

(b Vacarisses, 1704; d Barcelona, Feb 14, 1782).

Spanish architect, engineer, and administrator, active in Peru. He was the second son of the Marquis de Castellbell and received military training at an early age. He served as Spanish governor in Chile (1755–61), acquiring a reputation there as a fortifications expert. In 1761 he was appointed Viceroy of Peru, where he launched a vast campaign of public works (see Peru, Republic of §III 1.). During his administrative term, which lasted until 1776, the city of Lima enjoyed a period of prosperity and splendour marked by the French Baroque taste favoured by the Spanish Court. The evidence strongly suggests that Amat was the designer of several monuments in Lima that were executed by the alarife (surveyor and inspector of works) Juan de la Roca, who may have also collaborated in the elaboration of some of the plans. Amat’s masterpiece was the church of Las Nazarenas (consecrated ...

(b Palermo, 1643; d Palermo, 1732).

Italian architect. He was called to Rome in the 1670s by his Order, the Padri Ministri degl’Infermi, to work first as an assistant to Carlo Bizzaccheri then as supervisor on the enlargement of the convent of the Crociferi. Returning to Palermo by 1685, he produced work that showed Roman influences. His studies for the façade of the monumental church of La Pietà (1678–1723), with which he became associated in the late 1680s, fuse elements from S Andrea della Valle and Girolamo Rainaldi’s S Maria in Campitelli, both in Rome. While subduing the horizontal plasticity of the Roman façades, however, Amato intensified the vertical stress of his own: his free-standing superimposed columns are placed at the sides like a partially drawn-back screen, an effect enhanced by his use of the contrasting colours of tufa and Billiemi limestone. The façade’s circular window, a clear medieval reference, is characteristically Sicilian and distinguishes the building from contemporary Roman design. The interior decoration (1690s) is striking for its use of vernacular forms and such gilded metalwork as the nun’s grille at the west end, which rises like an elaborate fan into the grand barrel vault. The discrepancy between the broad lower and narrow upper storeys of S Teresa alla Kalsa (...

(b Ciminna, Jan 24, 1634; d Palermo, July 3, 1714).

Italian architect, writer and painter. He trained as a priest in Palermo and entered the Padri Ministri degl’Infermi. Another member of this Order was Giacomo Amato, with whom he worked, although they were not related. While serving as a chaplain Amato studied geometry, architecture, optics and engraving. His earliest known artistic work is a painting on copper of the Miracle of S Rosalia (1663), the patron saint of Palermo. After 1686 he created many works of an ephemeral character. For the feasts of S Rosalia and for important political events he provided designs for lavish triumphal chariots, probably developed from those by Jacques Callot, triumphal arches and other ceremonial apparatus set up on principal roads and piazzas, and he painted hangings, papier-mâché models and massive altarpieces for the cathedral. These works influenced Amato’s permanent architecture. The spiral columns of the campanile of S Giuseppe dei Teatini, Palermo, recall the festival designs of ...

(Petrovich)

(b March 14, 1716; d St Petersburg, June 12, 1795).

Russian painter. He trained at the Construction Office in St Petersburg, where his teachers included Ivan Vishnyakov, in whose team of painters Antropov later worked. He participated in the decorative painting of the Winter Palace and other imperial residences in St Petersburg and its environs. In 1752 he embarked on painting Andreyevsky Cathedral in Kiev and produced icons for its iconostasis. He returned to St Petersburg in 1758 and then trained for two years with Pietro Antonio Rotari. Soon afterwards he was appointed principal supervisor of the artists and icon painters of the Synod.

Antropov is remembered primarily as a portrait painter who worked in a realistic style that retained many traditional elements. The most notable among his portraits is that of the lady-in-waiting Anastasiya Izmailova (1759; Moscow, Tret’yakov Gal.), which shows the best and most typical features of his work. He conveys the sitter’s authority, energy and intelligence, suggesting the force of character of a significant figure at the court of the Empress Elizabeth. Antropov’s style is typical of the Russian Baroque. His preference for vivid local colours and his careful reproduction of detail and texture link his work to the traditions of both Russian folk art and earlier Russian portrait painting. Also notable are the portraits of the Chieftain of the Don Cossacks, ...

(b Lisbon, 1688; d Lisbon, 1753).

Portuguese decorative artist. He was highly active in the second quarter of the 18th century, during the period when High Baroque glazed tiles were produced in the Lisbon factories. His output was enormous, and his work was distributed throughout Portugal and Brazil. In partnership with his son-in-law, the painter Nicolau de Freitas (c. 1703–65), he continued the tradition of António de Oliveira Bernardes (see Bernardes, António de Oliveira). Under the influence of Joanine wood-carving and silver, the decorative borders of their tiles became richer and more elegant, dominated by grimacing masks and cascading palm and acanthus foliage. The tile makers adapted the convention of using arched frames, which end in garlanded volutes often accompanied by cherubs, for their high dado panels.

Two chapels in the church of Vilar de Frades, Barcelos, dated 1736 and 1742 are decorated with scenes, signed by Antunes and Freitas, from the ...

(bapt Lisbon, Sept 30, 1643; d Lisbon, Nov 25, 1712).

Portuguese architect and master mason. He worked in the context of a national tradition marked by Mannerism and the Plain style (see Portugal, Republic of, §II, 2), but he also contributed to the progressive acceptance of new Baroque concepts of space in Portugal, as shown in the use of polygonal plans. He gave a festive and sumptuous treatment to the interiors of his buildings, using inlay of coloured jasper or marble, which is sometimes combined with carved and gilded woodwork (talha) and blue and white azulejos (glazed tiles). Antunes probably learnt these intarsia techniques from the examples of the decorations (c. 1665–92; destr. 1755) of the nave and chancel of the church of the convent of S Antão-o-Novo, Lisbon, and those (1668–c. 1707) of the sacristy of the convent church of S Vicente de Fora, Lisbon. In 1670 Antunes was admitted to the Irmandade de S José dos Carpinteiros e Pedreiros in Lisbon, which gave him professional status as master mason. In ...

(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 ?Umberslade, Warwicks, 1668; d London, 22/May 23, 1743).

English architect. He was the son of a Warwickshire country gentleman and was an accomplished amateur who did not depend on architectural practice for his living. He did not hold any architectural posts under the Crown but his appointment as Groom Porter to Queen Anne in 1705 gave him the lucrative responsibility for the licensing of gaming as well as providing him with the connections at court that enabled him to build up a substantial domestic practice.

The nature of Archer’s training is unknown, but it is clear that a period of European travel in 1691–5 instilled in him a taste for the continental Baroque that was to set his designs apart from those of his most important English contemporaries. Although his itinerary is not known, his presence is recorded in Padua in 1691, and it might be presumed on the evidence of his subsequent works that he visited Rome; it is likely that his passage to Italy took him through Austria. In the absence of solid documentation for a large number of buildings, Archer’s first-hand experience of the work of the architects of the mature Roman Baroque has led critics to attribute to him several works simply because they employ motifs beloved of Gianlorenzo Bernini and Francesco Borromini: the giant order, lugged architraves, broken and inverted pediments and curved surfaces. While these features are all present in Archer’s work, they were equally readily available to non-travelling Englishmen through the medium of Domenico de Rossi’s ...

(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 Madrid, 1664; d Madrid, Feb 15, 1726).

Spanish architect, painter and writer. He was trained in architecture by the Jesuits and in painting by Claudio Coello and worked mainly as an architect. Two overdoors showing multiple allegorical scenes of the Battle of Lepanto (1721; Madrid, Pal. Arzobisp.) and a St Barbara (1723; Madrid, Mus. Lázaro Galdiano) reveal Ardemans as a talented painter working in the tradition of Francisco Rizi, Juan Carreño de Miranda and Francisco de Herrera the younger, and partially influenced by Luca Giordano. His debt to Coello is apparent in a ceiling fresco attributed to him in the Capilla del Cristo de los Dolores of the Venerable Orden Tercera de San Francisco, Madrid, which shows St Francis riding in a chariot of fire with figures watching from a balcony. Also attributed to Ardemans is the portrait of Pedro Atanasio Bocanegra (c. 1689; Granada, Pal. Arzobisp.)

As an architect, Ardemans belongs to a period of transition, continuing into the 18th century the Baroque tradition of the Madrid school. He worked in Granada (...