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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 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 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 Mantua, Sept 23, 1690; d Mantua, Aug 18, 1769).

Italian painter. He was the son of the goldsmith Giovanni Bazzani and trained in the studio of Giovanni Canti (1653–1715). Giuseppe was a refined and cultivated artist (Tellini Perina, 1988) and as a young man profited from the rich collections of art in Mantua, studying the works of Andrea Mantegna, Giulio Romano, 16th-century Venetian painters, especially Paolo Veronese, and Flemish artists, above all Rubens. His earliest works, for example the Assumption (Milan, priv. col., see Caroli, pl. 20), reveal an affinity with contemporary Venetian painters such as Giovanni Battista Piazzetta, Federico Bencovich and Andrea Celesti, but Bazzani rapidly absorbed the influence of Antonio Balestra, Domenico Fetti and most of all Rubens and Veronese. The inspiration of the last two artists is apparent in a number of works that may be dated in the 1720s and early 1730s. These include the Miracles of Pius V, the Conversion of a Heretic...

(b Türkheim, bapt April 15, 1688; d Augsburg, April 2, 1762).

German painter, teacher, draughtsman and printmaker. His frescoes and altarpieces and his teaching established him as the dominant figure in the art life of Augsburg in the earlier 18th century. He came from a family of well-known Swabian sculptors, cabinetmakers and painters, with whom he probably initially trained. The Bavarian Duke Maximilian Philip paid for him to study (1702–8) with the Munich court painter Johann Andreas Wolff, after which he was summoned by the Elector of the Palatinate to decorate the court church of St Hubertus in Düsseldorf (1708–9; destr.). In 1710 or 1712 Bergmüller frescoed the church of Kreuzpullach, near Wolfratshausen. In his request for permission to marry and for mastership in Augsburg in 1712, he referred to an otherwise undocumented stay in the Netherlands. He settled permanently in the Imperial Free City in 1713 and attended its Reichstädtische Kunstakademie from 1715. From this time he rose to become the most influential painter and teacher in Augsburg, with apprentices coming from beyond the city, including ...

[Santiago]

(b Piacenza, 1705; d Madrid, 18 or Sept 20, 1759).

Italian architect, painter, urban planner and stage designer, active in Spain. He was a pupil in Piacenza of the painters Bartolomeo Rusca (1680–1745), Andrea Galluzzi (fl 1700–1743) and Giovanni Battista Galluzzi (fl c. 1730–40). In 1728 he was one of a number of artists summoned to Spain by the Marchese Annibale Scotti to assist with the construction of royal projects that were already under way and to introduce an Italian influence in place of the French style that had been introduced by the Bourbon kings. He worked at the Aranjuez Palace with the French engineer Léandre Brachelieu (fl c. 1733–9) and then in 1735 became Director of Royal Works of Decoration. He specialized in quadratura painting and, in addition to his work at Aranjuez, where his fresco vault decorations provided fictive trompe l’oeil architectural settings for mythological figures executed by Rusca and ...

(b Córdoba, 1716; d Córdoba, 1793).

Spanish gold- and silversmith. He qualified as master of the guild of goldsmiths in Córdoba in 1736, and his earliest-known pieces follow the Baroque tradition prevalent there in the early 18th century and in particular the work of his father-in-law, Bernabé García de los Reyes (1696–1750). By the end of the 1750s his curving outlines and decoration (e.g. fonts in Caracas Cathedral) were Rococo in form, and this was the style that was to predominate in his work from the 1760s. He was appointed Cathedral Goldsmith in 1761 and made a number of ecclesiastical pieces (e.g. pyx, 1761, Córdoba, Mezquita; monstrance, 1768, La Orotava, Tenerife, Concepción Church; several pieces for the Bishop of Segovia, Martín Descalzo, 1769). He made several monstrances, including one (1769; in situ) for S Nicolás de la Villa, Córdoba, and one (1779–80; untraced) for Sigüenza Cathedral, for Cardinal Delgado, his most important patron. Castro’s work is characterized by the use of extended and twisted shafts (e.g. chalice, ...

(b Paris, baptJune 10, 1646; d Paris, Dec 31, 1732).

French sculptor and bronze-caster. He came from a family of goldsmiths of Flemish origin who settled in Paris in the early 17th century. Early biographers state that he trained with Michel or François Anguier and at the Académie Royale. He spent six years at the Académie de France in Rome, where he is said to have studied above all the sculpture of Bernini. This was followed by four years in Venice. He applied for admission to the Académie in 1678, and he was received (reçu) in 1681 with a marble statuette of Polyphemus (Paris, Louvre), inspired by Annibale Carracci’s fresco in the Palazzo Farnese, Rome. From this time until 1720 he enjoyed a highly successful career in royal service and in the employ of the Church and of private clients. He devoted much energy to the affairs of the academy, eventually holding the office of Chancellor. He worked in every branch of sculpture, from monumental marble and bronze statues to small bronze statuettes and candlesticks....

(b S Payo de Ruilhe, Braga, 1710–20; d Oporto, Nov 11, 1784).

Portuguese silversmith. Nothing is known of his early career. He was established in Oporto as a member of the Confraria de S Eloi (Confraternity of St Eligius) by 1747, as his name appears in a list of signatories to the ‘Covenant and Statutes of the workers in silver of the city of Oporto’ and to later additions to the Covenant, which was of major importance for the regulation of the craft in the city. In 1755 he was a guarantor for another goldsmith, Domingos Sousa Coelho, and he worked on the silver altarpiece (in situ) of Oporto Cathedral. This altarpiece was designed by the architect Nicolau Nasoni, whose work greatly influenced Sampaio. He also worked for the church of Clérigos from 1756 and for the church of S Ildefonso between 1760 and 1781. He was considered one of the best silversmiths in Oporto, being elected a judge of the goldsmiths’ guild in ...

(b Bologna, 1688; d Naples, 1772).

Italian sculptor. He worked within the tradition of late Baroque classicism in Rome, moving, in his mature works, towards a Rococo style. He studied painting with Giovanni Maria Viani or Domenico Viani and sculpture perhaps with Giuseppe Mazza. Little of his early Bolognese work remains. He went to Rome in the 1730s and participated in numerous decorative schemes for major architectural projects. His contribution included several over life-size, marble statues: a St Jerome (1735), for the façade of S Giovanni in Laterano (balustrade: sixth from right); Abundance (1735), for the Trevi Fountain (attic: far left); Pope Gregory the Great (1742–3), for the façade of S Maria Maggiore (upper balustrade: second from left); and a St Luke (1744), for the façade of Santa Croce in Gerusalemme (second from left).

Corsini also sculpted a number of portrait busts depicting cardinals for memorial tomb monuments by ...

(b Paris, 1656–7; d Passy, Paris, July 15, 1735).

French architect and urban planner. The most influential French Baroque architect during the Régence, he was Premier Architecte du Roi between 1708 and 1734. Financial constraints limited his work for the Crown, but he built many hôtels for the nobility, involved himself in numerous urban planning schemes and was frequently consulted by patrons abroad, particularly in Germany.

By 1676 de Cotte was working for Jules Hardouin Mansart, whose brother-in-law he later became. In 1681 Hardouin Mansart was appointed Premier Architecte du Roi to Louis XIV, and during his absence from court in 1687 de Cotte first attracted the attention of the King with his own drawings for the colonnade of the Grand Trianon at Versailles. Destined to play an important role in the Service des Bâtiments du Roi, in 1689 de Cotte embarked on a trip to Italy lasting six months in order to complete his architectural education.

Although the King’s costly wars brought a temporary halt to royal projects in the 1690s, the Treaty of Ryswick of ...

(b Champigneule, Marne, Feb 24, 1661; d Paris, April 20, 1743).

French painter. He was an artist of the late Baroque who trained in the Flemish tradition of animal painting. After a slow start and a brief trip to Poland, where he painted royal portraits, he became in 1700 the official painter of hunting scenes and animals to Louis XIV. He continued in this role under Louis XV. He also painted a variety of still-lifes and tapestry cartoons for the Gobelins, and he is noted for his landscape studies made directly from nature. He is credited with helping to popularize Flemish art, one of the essential ingredients of the Rococo style in France.

Desportes’s father, a prosperous agricultural labourer, sent him at the age of 12 to live with an uncle in Paris. Shortly after his arrival he became ill, and to amuse him during his recovery his uncle gave him an engraving to copy, thus revealing his talent. Soon after this he became a student in Paris of the Flemish painter ...

(b Belluno, 1689; d Venice, Aug 17, 1767).

Italian painter and draughtsman. His earliest training was in Belluno with Antonio Lazzarini (1672–1732), the last exponent in the Veneto of Baroque tenebrism. Having moved to Venice, he joined the workshop of Gregorio Lazzarini and later that of Sebastiano Ricci, who was in Venice until 1715 and exerted the strongest influence on his development; presumably Diziani was familiar with Ricci’s many paintings in Belluno before becoming his pupil. Between 1710 and 1720 he painted a group of eight pictures that included the Mary Magdalene for S Stefano, Belluno, and the Entry into Jerusalem for S Teodoro, Venice. His speed of production and technical assurance are demonstrated especially in his preparatory oil sketches, with colour applied in rapid and spirited penlike strokes. He was also working as a scenery painter in many Venetian theatres, an employment that led to commissions first in Munich (1717) and later in Dresden, where he was highly acclaimed. According to Canal, Diziani was invited to Rome by Cardinal ...

(b Burglengenfeld, Oberpfalz, Feb 18, 1692; d Munich, May 6, 1766).

German architect. He was one of the most creative architects of the late Baroque and Rococo in southern Germany, known primarily for his churches. In these he explored two basic antithetical concepts of Western ecclesiastical design: the traditional longitudinal arrangement of the church for liturgical procession in contrast to the ideal centralized church, and the gradual revealing of sacred space in contrast to its presentation as a complete whole. In four decades of building, Fischer worked to resolve these antitheses by interconnecting large, single spaces immediately visible in their entirety to smaller, ancillary spaces experienced as fragments, by combining centralized and longitudinal axes and by integrating curvilinear with rectilinear form.

Trained as a mason by his father, Fischer’s journeyman years began in 1712 and took him through Bohemia, Moravia and Austria. In 1718 he settled in Munich, where he worked under the City Mason Johann Mayr (1677–1731) and ...

(b Roveredo, nr Bellinzona, 1671; d Eichstätt, March 21, 1747).

Italian master builder and architect. In the early 1690s he was a master builder at the court of Prince John Adam of Liechtenstein in Vienna, where he worked at the Liechtenstein town palace, firstly under Domenico Martinelli and later (1705–6) completing it to his own plans, the staircase showing his influence most strongly. Gabrieli was summoned to Ansbach in 1694 by Markgraf Georg Friedrich to submit plans for rebuilding the palace there, and while the Margrave deliberated, Gabrieli took on other commissions in Ansbach. He built a garden house (1697–9; now the Prinzenschlossen) for Privy Counsellor Georg Christian Seefried above the palace quarter. Less well preserved is his summer-house (1696–1701) for Lieutenant-Colonel Jahnus in Pfaffengreuth. Gabrieli began work on the Ansbach Palace in 1705, after the Margrave’s death. A fire in 1709 facilitated a complete remodelling, and Gabrieli, who was promoted to court architect and Director of Building in ...

(b Santiago de Compostela, Aug 9, 1709; d Salamanca, Nov 15, 1784).

Spanish architect. He was probably trained by Domingo A. de Andrade. In 1729 he moved to Salamanca, competing for work against the successful Churriguera family. He produced an excellent drawing of the north side of the incomplete Plaza Mayor, in an unsuccessful bid to be appointed overseer. In 1749, however, he achieved his aim and was made Master of Works for the town hall. With its low relief architectural articulation, it dominated the north side of the square, which, like the south side, was completed by 1755 under García’s supervision.

Between 1730 and 1745 García was appointed to build a wing for the Colegio Real de la Compañía de Jesús. He designed the exterior to blend in with the main building using the classical style of J. Gómez. The courtyard is considered a masterpiece in the Spanish Baroque style. He also designed the staircase, library and a hall with stuccoed vaults, in a style similar to that produced by French decorators such as Jean Bérain I. He also worked on the church façade, adding two slender towers with varied silhouettes, their belfries and cupolas stacked in decreasing size and decorated with stone reliefs in the Rococo style. While working at the Colegio Real de la Compañía de Jesús, García designed two altarpieces for the church and one for the sacristy. These, with their weighty volumes and undulating surfaces, are much more dynamic than those by the Churriguera family, who were known for their extravagant style. García’s more progressive, Rococo style was subsequently taken up by his son ...

(b Prague, bapt Dec 4, 1717; d Prague, June 17, 1767).

Bohemian painter. He was the son of the painter Kristián Grund (c. 1686–1751) and brother to the painters František Karel Grund (1721–43), Petr Pavel Christian Grund (1722–84)—also a violin virtuoso—and the harpist Jan Eustach Grund. He learnt painting with his father, who released him from his apprenticeship in 1737. Subsequently he lived in Vienna and then perhaps in Germany; he probably knew his great models, Watteau, Nicolas Lancret and Francesco Guardi, only from engravings.

Grund’s work consists of a rather confused range of small pictures, embodying almost all genres in which landscapes or dwellings include figures. He painted scenes from myths, the Bible, legends and battles; he depicted love scenes, the theatre, storms at sea, visits to ruins, studios etc. Although the human figures always endow his pictures with a light touch, often there is an implicitly deeper allegorical meaning. His paintings from the 1740s are marked by a heavy Late Baroque colour scheme, in the 1750s by fragile Rococo shades; later he accomplished a smooth transition to a classicist realism. The popularity of his works in aristocratic and bourgeois circles is underlined by reproductions by ...

(b Stockholm, 1700; d Stockholm, 1753).

Swedish architect. His father, Johan Hårleman (1662–1707), was a landscape gardener who collaborated with Nicodemus Tessin the younger at Steninge Manor and on the garden at Drottningholm, near Stockholm. Carl Hårleman first trained as a draughtsman and architect at the palace works in Stockholm under Tessin and G. J. Adelcrantz (1668–1739). On Tessin’s recommendation he was sent to study in Paris and Italy (1721–6); he also visited Britain. In 1727 he was recalled to Stockholm to direct work on the Royal Palace as Tessin’s successor, and in 1741 he was appointed Superintendent. He visited France in 1731–2 and 1744–5 to recruit artists and craftsmen to work on the interiors of the Royal Palace and Drottningholm in Stockholm. Such visits also enabled him to remain in touch with French stylistic developments.

There are close connections between Hårleman’s designs for town and country houses and those of such French architects as Charles-Etienne Briseux and Jean-Baptiste Bullet. Svartsjö (...