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[Abel, Alexandre-Denis]

(b Douai, Jan 30, 1785; d Paris, Sept 28, 1861).

French painter. He was the natural son of Alexandre de Pujol de Mortry, a nobleman and provost of Valenciennes, but did not use his father’s name until after 1814. He trained first at the Académie de Valenciennes (1799–1803), then at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts, Paris, and in the studio of Jacques-Louis David. At the end of 1805 it seemed he would have to end his apprenticeship for lack of money but David let him continue free of charge, so impressed had he been by Philopoemen… Splitting Wood (1806; ex-Delobel priv. col., Valenciennes). The astonishing Self-portrait (Valenciennes, Mus. B.-A.), showing the artist as the very image of a romantic hero, dates from this period.

From 1808 Abel exhibited history paintings at the Salon, making his living, however, by painting shop signs. In 1811 he won the prestigious Prix de Rome and his father subsequently permitted him to adopt his name. Thus from ...

(b Copenhagen, Sept 11, 1743; d Frederiksdal, Copenhagen, June 4, 1809).

Danish painter, designer and architect. His paintings reveal both Neo-classical and Romantic interests and include history paintings as well as literary and mythological works. The variety of his subject-matter reflects his wide learning, a feature further evidenced by the broad range of his creative output. In addition to painting, he produced decorative work, sculpture and furniture designs, as well as being engaged as an architect. Successfully combining both intellectual and imaginative powers, he came to be fully appreciated only in the 1980s.

He studied at the Kongelige Danske Kunstakademi in Copenhagen (1764–72), and in 1767 he assisted Johan Edvard Mandelberg (1730–86) in painting the domed hall of the Fredensborg Slot with scenes from the Homeric epic the Iliad. In 1772 he was granted a five-year travelling scholarship from the Kunstakademi to study in Rome. During his Roman sojourn he extensively copied works of art from the period of antiquity up to that of the Carracci family. His friendships with the Danish painter Jens Juel, the Swedish sculptor Johan Tobias Sergel and the Swiss painter Johann Heinrich Fuseli placed him among artists who were in the mainstream of a widespread upheaval in European art. In these years Abildgaard developed both Neo-classical and Romantic tastes; his masterpiece of the period is ...

(b Montrouge, Paris, April 4, 1806; d Paris, April 29, 1885).

French painter and writer. A student of Ingres, he first exhibited at the Salon in 1830 with a portrait of a child. He continued exhibiting portraits until 1868. Such entries as M. Geoffroy as Don Juan (1852; untraced), Rachel, or Tragedy (1855; Paris, Mus. Comédie-Fr.) and Emma Fleury (1861; untraced) from the Comédie-Française indicate an extended pattern of commissions from that institution. His travels in Greece and Italy encouraged the Néo-Grec style that his work exemplifies. Such words as refinement, delicacy, restraint, elegance and charm pepper critiques of both his painting and his sedate, respectable life as an artist, cultural figure and writer in Paris. In contrast to Ingres’s success with mature sitters, Amaury-Duval’s portraits of young women are his most compelling. In them, clear outlines and cool colours evoke innocence and purity. Though the portraits of both artists were influenced by classical norms, Amaury-Duval’s have control and civility in contrast to the mystery and sensuousness of Ingres’s....

(b Santa Giusta degli Abruzzi, Sept 22, 1760; d Naples, June 22, 1853).

Italian draughtsman and painter. He trained in Rome under Marco Caprinozzi and was a pupil of Domenico Corvi at the Accademia di San Luca. The greatest influence on his work, however, was the style of Jacques-Louis David. Angelini soon distinguished himself as a skilled draughtsman and collaborated with the engravers Giovanni Volpato and Raphael Morghen on Principi del disegno tratti delle più eccellenti statue antiche (Rome, 1786), a work that was of fundamental importance in disseminating the Neo-classical style, particularly through the teaching of the academies. About 1790 Angelini travelled to Naples at the request of William Hamilton (i), the British Consul, in order to draw the antique vases in his collection (published Naples, 1791–5). His work was admired by several other collectors in Naples and in 1799 he was commissioned to draw the antique vases of the Marchese Vivenzio (published c. 1900).

With the introduction of French Neo-classicism in Naples, Angelini became the artist best able to respond to the demands of the new taste. In ...

(b Alicante, 1770; d Madrid, 1838).

Spanish painter. He studied at the Real Academia de S Fernando in Madrid (1792–8) and then completed his training as a pensionnaire in Paris with David (until 1807) and in Rome until 1815. Though having didactic and moralizing pretensions, his paintings are, in fact, rhetorical, theatrical and sycophantic, factors that explain his constant success in official circles. His works include his scholarship submission, Godoy Presenting Peace to Charles IV (1796; Madrid, Real Acad. S Fernando); his triumph in the Paris Salon of 1804, Athaliah and Jonah; and his presentation piece to the Accademia di S Luca in Rome, Ransom of Prisoners in the Reign of Charles III (1815). His appointment in 1815 as Pintor de Cámara was marked by his painting of the Glories of Spain. He also achieved popular recognition through such patriotic and nationalistic works as Famine of Madrid (1818; Madrid, Mus. Mun.). His carefully drawn compositions were well suited to engraved reproductions, and this led to their wider circulation. ...

(b Milan, May 31, 1754; d Milan, Nov 8, 1817).

Italian painter and designer. He had been intended to follow his father’s career in medicine but instead entered the private academy of the painter Carlo Maria Giudici (1723–1804). He received instruction in drawing, copying mainly from sculpture and prints. He studied Raphael through the engravings of Marcantonio Raimondi, as well as the work of Giulio, Anton Raphael Mengs and, again from prints, the compositions in Trajan’s Column. He then joined the class of the fresco painter Antonio de’ Giorgi (1720–93), which was held at the Ambrosiana picture gallery in Milan, where he was able to study Raphael’s art directly from the cartoon of the School of Athens and the work of Leonardo’s followers, particularly Bernardino Luini. He also frequented the studio of Martin Knoller, where he deepened his knowledge of painting in oils; and he studied anatomy at the Ospedale Maggiore in Milan with the sculptor ...

(b Hamburg, Oct 2, 1757; d Pisa, Aug 18, 1806).

German architect, draughtsman, landscape designer and painter. He studied from 1778 to 1783 at the University of Göttingen and the Royal Danish Academy in Copenhagen, where he was awarded four prizes. His early designs included drawings for the hothouse of the botanic gardens in Copenhagen and a lecture room at Schloss Charlottenburg, Berlin. While visiting Paris in 1784–5 he devoted himself to the study of Revolutionary architecture, and in England and Italy (1786) he studied landscape design and ancient sites. In Rome in 1787 he met Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, who later summoned him to Weimar to rebuild the prince’s Schloss. In addition to a number of designs for the palace at Weimar he produced drawings for various summer-houses. In 1790 he moved to Hamburg, his plans for the Schloss at Weimar still largely unexecuted. By the end of his life he had designed numerous public buildings and private houses in Hamburg, including the house for Bürgermeister ...

(b Arezzo, Jan 8, 1769; d Florence, Feb 3, 1844).

Italian painter. In 1781 he began his studies at the Accademia di Belle Arti in Florence, where he was taught by such Neo-classical painters as Giuseppe Piattoli (c. 1743–1823) and Sante Pacini (fl 1762–90). He went to Rome in 1792 to continue his studies and while there painted the Martyrdom of St Donatus (1794; Arezzo Cathedral) for Bishop Marcacci of Arezzo. This work was one of his first commissions and shows the influence of Baroque religious art. By the time Marcacci commissioned him to paint Judith with the Head of Holofernes (1803–4; Arezzo Cathedral), his style had developed under the influence of Vincenzo Camuccini and Antonio Canova, artists who dominated the Neo-classical movement in Rome. However, his crisp, linear style of drawing shows a greater affinity to the work of the Danish–German painter Asmus Jakob Carstens than to that of any Italian. Canova was a close friend of Benvenuti’s and visited Arezzo expressly to see ...

(b Vienna, May 3, 1806; d Toronto, Jan 18, 1892).

Canadian painter of French origin. He was the son of René Théodore Berthon (1776–1859), court painter to Napoleon I, who was in Vienna at the time of George Theodore’s birth to paint a portrait of Francis I (Vienna, Hofburg-Schauräume). The elder Berthon had been a student of Jacques-Louis David, and he trained his son in the French Neo-classical style.

George Theodore Berthon moved to England in 1827 and was employed by Sir Robert Peel as a French and drawing tutor to his daughters. From 1835 to 1837 Berthon exhibited several portraits at the Royal Academy, London. He settled in Toronto late in 1844 with a letter of introduction from Peel, which he presented to John Strachan, Anglican Bishop of Toronto. Strachan proved to be an important early patron to Berthon; a portrait of the Bishop (1845; Toronto U., Trinity Coll.) painted by Berthon helped to establish his career in Toronto. Other early paintings include Berthon’s first large-scale portrait, ...

(b Carpentras, April 10, 1758; d Montmorency, Oct 20, 1846).

French painter. He was apprenticed in Lyon for six years with his brother Jean-Pierre-Xavier Bidauld (1745–1813), a landscape and still-life painter. Subsequently, they left Lyon to travel together in Switzerland and Provence. In 1783 he moved to Paris, where he met Joseph Vernet (from whom he received valuable advice), Joseph-Siffred Duplessis and Jean-Honoré Fragonard. In 1785 he went to Rome with the assistance of Cardinal de Bernis and his patron, the dealer and perfumer Dulac. He stayed there for five years, travelling through Tuscany, Umbria and Campania and painting such works as Roman Landscape (1788; Basle, Kstmus.). Bidauld was closely involved with the circle of French Neo-classical painters in Rome in the 1780s. He was friendly with Louis Gauffier, Nicolas-Antoine Taunay and especially with Guillaume Lethière, who became his brother-in-law and with whom he occasionally collaborated. On his return to Paris in 1790 he travelled extensively in France, visiting Brittany, the Dauphiné and in particular Montmorency, where he stayed in the Mont-Louis house that had been the home of Jean-Jacques Rousseau....

(b Chalon-sur-Saône, Aug 30, 1735; d Paris, Dec 9, 1814).

French sculptor, draughtsman and painter. He probably first trained in Chalon, under the sculptor Pierre Colasson (c. 1724–70); later he studied in Paris at the school of the Académie Royale, under Simon Challes. In 1766 he travelled to Italy, remaining there until 1770. The art of Raphael and his school and the Fontainebleau school influenced Boichet’s art (e.g. Agrippina Bearing Germanicus’s Ashes, Lille, Mus. B.-A.) from an early date by giving his work a Neo-classical character. Boichot next worked in Burgundy, where he was responsible for architecture, sculpture and paintings at the château of Verdun-sur-le-Doubs (destr.). He also produced decorative work for the salon of the Académie de Dijon, of which he was a member; for the refectory of the abbey of St Benigne, Dijon, he executed a painting of the Triumph of Temperance over Gluttony (Dijon, Mus. B.-A.). In Paris his studio was in the Passage Sandrier off the Chaussée d’Antin. Introduced by Augustin Pajou, he was approved (...

(b Busto Arsizio, Nov 11, 1777; d Milan, Dec 15, 1815).

Italian painter, collector and writer. He studied painting at the Accademia di Brera in Milan. Between 1785 and 1801 he lived in Rome, where he met such Neo-classical artists as Angelica Kauffman and Marianna Dionigi (1756–1826) as well as writers, scholars and archaeologists, notably Jean-Baptiste Séroux d’Agincourt, Giovanni Gherardo de Rossi (1754–1827) and Ennio Quirino Visconti. While in Rome he studied Antique and Renaissance works, making copies of the statues in the Museo Pio-Clementino and the frescoes by Raphael and Michelangelo in the Vatican, also furthering his studies of the nude in the Accademia di Domenico Conti and making anatomical drawings of corpses in the Ospedale della Consolazione. On his return to Milan in 1801 he became secretary to the Accademia di Brera, a post he held until 1807. During this period he devoted all his efforts to the restructuring of the Brera, providing it with new statutes and a major library and also founding the adjoining art gallery. He prevented numerous works from being smuggled abroad or dispersed and was responsible for their inclusion in the ...

(b Montignac, Dordogne, Dec 16, 1771; d Poland, 1850).

French painter and designer. He came from a family of shopkeepers and tailors and he served in the Republican army during the wars of the Vendée. By 1798 he was a student of Jacques-Louis David, who provided a small apartment in the Louvre where Broc often lived. With a group of David’s students and some writers, Broc formed a dissenting sect called Primitifs, Les, Barbus (bearded ones), Méditateurs or Penseurs. Broc was typical of the Primitifs in finding inspiration in Greek vase painting and Italian 15th-century art.

The School of Apelles (1800; Paris, Louvre) was Broc’s first Salon entry and the first exhibited work by a member of the Primitifs. The picture represents Apelles speaking to his students about his unfinished allegory of Calumny. The composition derives from Raphael’s School of Athens (Rome, Vatican, Stanza Segnatura), and the picture on the easel is based on a drawing of Calumny...

(Stanisław)

(bapt Warsaw, Dec 26, 1784; d Warsaw, March 31, 1832).

Polish painter and teacher. He studied for a short time under Jean-Baptiste Augustin in Paris between 1805 and 1808, returning later to Paris at the end of 1809 and remaining until the autumn of 1814 as a bursar of the Chamber of Public Education of the Duchy of Warsaw. He wished to study under Jacques-Louis David but was able to do so only on a part-time basis. After a brief period of study under Anne-Louis Girodet, he became a pupil of François Gérard in 1811. At this time Brodowski painted his first oil portraits, one of the best being his Self-portrait (1813; Warsaw, N. Mus.). He also started work on a large composition suggested by Gérard, Saul’s Anger at David (1812–19; Warsaw, N. Mus.), which was exhibited after his return to Warsaw at the first public fine arts exhibition in 1819, where it won first prize. The painting clearly shows the influence of David and Brodowski’s commitment to the strict canons of the French Empire style; it became a model for Neo-classical painting in Warsaw....

(b Milan, 1791; d Milan, March 28, 1872).

Italian painter and art historian. He was trained as a painter in the Neo-classical school of Giuseppe Bossi, and by Vincenzo Camuccini and Pietro Benvenuti. He was the author of Notizie sulla vita…e degli Sforza, the first great history of Milanese art of the 14th to the 16th century, which largely established the canon of early Milanese artists. Calvi’s book was founded on his perceptive connoisseurship of painting and sculpture, and a good understanding of secondary literature. He made a thorough, intelligent use of primary sources including lapidary inscriptions, documents from the archives of Milan and Pavia, and also the then unpublished manuscript (compiled c. 1775) of Antonio Francesco Albuzzi. This work consisted of a collection of notes on the lives of Milanese artists, its author being the first secretary of the Accademia Braidense, where Giuseppe Bossi taught. Both Bossi and Calvi possessed copies of Albuzzi’s manuscript.

(b Possagno, nr Treviso, Nov 1, 1757; d Venice, Oct 13, 1822).

Italian sculptor, painter, draughtsman, and architect. He became the most innovative and widely acclaimed Neo-classical sculptor. His development during the 1780s of a new style of revolutionary severity and idealistic purity led many of his contemporaries to prefer his ideal sculptures to such previously universally admired antique statues as the Medici Venus and the Farnese Hercules, thus greatly increasing the prestige of ‘modern’ sculpture. He was also much in demand as a portraitist, often combining a classicizing format with a naturalistic presentation of features.

Antonio Canova was the son of Pietro Canova (1735–61), a stonecutter of Possagno. He was brought up by his grandfather, Pasino Canova (1714–94), a mediocre sculptor who specialized in altars with statues and low reliefs in late Baroque style (e.g. Angels; Crespano, S Marco). In 1770 or 1771 Antonio was apprenticed to the sculptor Giuseppe Bernardi (d 1774) in Pagnano, near Asolo, later following him to Venice. After Bernardi’s death he worked for a few months in the studio of the sculptor ...

[Franc; Franz]

(b Görz [now Gorizia], Dec 4, 1755; d Vienna, Nov 17, 1828).

Slovenian painter. He was trained in Vienna (1775–9), at the Accademia in Bologna (1779–81) and in Rome (1781–7). Here he lived and worked with Josef Bergler and Felice Giani, among others, drawing nudes, motifs after antique, Etruscan and Egyptian sculptures, reliefs and objects after models including Raphael, Annibale Carracci, Domenichino, Guido Reni and Guercino. He also drew views in bistre of Rome and its outskirts (Ljubljana, N.G.; Vienna, Akad. Bild. Kst., Kupferstichkab.). He returned to Vienna and stayed there until 1791, when his patron Graf Philipp Cobenzl (1741–1810) sent him to Mantua to make plaster casts of antique sculptures and reliefs for the Akademie der Künste in Vienna. From 1791 to 1797 he was in Venice depicting Venetian views and antique motifs, in 1796 becoming both a member of the Accademia in Venice and an associate of the Akademie in Vienna, of which he was later a professor (...

(b Paris, 1767; d Paris, Aug 3, 1849).

French painter. She was a pupil of François Gérard and Jacques-Louis David, and in 1788 she received a Prix d’Encouragement. She exhibited at the Salon from 1795 until 1819, when she received a gold medal. Like other female painters of her period, she specialized in sentimental genre scenes and portraits of women and children. Although she was considered by contemporary critics to be one of the finest portrait painters of the age, few works by her have been traced. One of the first known works is Scene of Family Life (1796; exh. Paris, Gal. Pardo, 1980), a genre scene closer to Elisabeth Vigée Le Brun than to David. Among her portraits shown in the Salon of 1801 may have been that of Charlotte du Val d’Ognes (New York, Met.), previously attributed to David, showing a young girl drawing, posed against the sunlight. The painting reflects the influence of Gérard and is close in style to a portrait of ...

(b Paris, baptAug 28, 1721; d Auteuil, Jan 19, 1820).

French architect, archaeologist and painter. He was an important if controversial figure associated with the development of the Neo-classical style of architecture and interior design and its dissemination throughout Europe and the USA. He studied at the Académie Royale d’Architecture, Paris, under Germain Boffrand and won the Grand Prix in 1746. He spent the years 1749 to 1754 at the Académie Française in Rome but left after an argument with the director Charles-Joseph Natoire over his refusal to make his Easter Communion; this may have been due to his Jansenist sympathies. He nevertheless remained in Italy until 1767. During these years he became a close friend of Piranesi, Winckelmann, Cardinal Alessandro Albani and other members of the international circle interested in the Antique.

In his early student days in Rome, Clérisseau became acquainted in particular with English travellers and began to sell them his attractive topographical drawings of Roman architecture. Initially these were influenced by his studies with ...

(b Bergamo, July 12, 1804; d Rome, April 20, 1875).

Italian painter and teacher. From about 1816 to 1820 he studied with the Lombard Neo-classical painter Giuseppe Diotti at the Accademia Carrara di Belle Arti in Bergamo, and in 1821 he went to Rome to study under Vincenzo Camuccini. Like his fellow pupils Francesco Podesti and Luigi Cochetti (1802–84), Coghetti combined a formal Neo-classical training with the influence of Tommaso Minardi and the Puristi. He acquired a studio in Rome in 1825, although he returned to Bergamo for his first commissions: Presentation of Christ at the Temple (1825; S Bartolomeo) and St Michael (1828; S Michele dell’Arco). These static compositions are relieved only by a bold use of colour (as also practised by Diotti). In Bergamo he also executed a grandiose portrait of Cardinal Nembrini (1831; Pal. Comunale). He became a member of the Accademia Nazionale di San Luca in Rome in 1834. Between 1837...