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(fl 1882–97).

Spanish architect. His work is representative of the eclecticism of late 19th-century Spanish architecture, which is especially marked by classical values. His idiom was derived from Mannerist architecture and has a strong Baroque element. The influence of French art is also evident, especially the ostentatious style of Charles Garnier. Aladrén y Mendívil’s early works are more restrained in style and show a mastery of plan and façade design. This is apparent in the Diputación de Guipúzcoa (1885), San Sebastián, which he executed in collaboration with Adolfo Morales de los Ríos. With this same architect he designed his most renowned work, the Casino (now Ayuntamiento; 1882–7) at San Sebastián, which was promoted by the city council to take advantage of wealthy visitors, as San Sebastián was the court summer residence. The upper part of the building was set aside for gaming and the lower for relaxation and recreation, with banqueting-rooms, a café and restaurant. It is French in style and incorporates medieval, Renaissance and Baroque influences, combining these with the use of iron technology. These official works recommended him to industrial magnates in the Basque region, who made important commissions. These he executed with an academic respect for symmetry and following French models, as in the elegant country house (...

An antiquary (Lat. antiquarius) is a lover, collector and student of ancient learning, traditions and remains. Antiquarianism originated from the revived interest in Classical antiquity during the Renaissance and became a scientific and historical method in the 17th century. The difference between literary and non-literary sources distinguishes humanism from antiquarianism, the latter being based on those tangible remains of antiquity (inscriptions, coins and ruins) related to literary sources. From the 16th century new attitudes towards antiquity were discussed in antiquarian circles, later giving rise to antiquarian societies. Thereafter, antiquarianism was firmly linked to archaeological excavations and to the study and collecting of ancient art. It was also linked to the search for a national identity in the arts and for the origins of Western culture and was sustained by a curiosity about civilizations outside Europe. Antiquarianism, in fact, was associated with the Grand Tour and with travel more generally. Antiquaries and artist–antiquaries were responsible for producing numerous drawings, prints and illustrated volumes. High-quality illustrations of archaeological sites and ancient sculpture contributed to the growth of art history as an autonomous discipline. They also contributed to the popularization of the Antique and to the transformation of commercial dealing in objects associated with antiquarian interests (...

Italian family of patrons and collectors. They were one of the wealthiest and most celebrated patrician families of Milan. The earliest records of them date from 1228, when they made lavish donations to the monastery of Chiaravalle, near Milan. Giuseppe Archinto (i) (d 1476), Chancellor under Duke Galeazzo Maria Sforza (reg 1466–76), added to the family’s wealth. His grandson Francesco Archinto (d 1551), a jurist, was the favoured commissary of Louis XII in the area of Chiavenna; a portrait of him, preserved by the family, is attributed to Leonardo da Vinci. Francesco’s cousin Filippo Archinto (1500–58) was appointed Senator by Duke Francesco Maria Sforza and in 1530 represented Milan at the coronation of the Emperor Charles V in Bologna. Filippo held various Imperial posts, including that of Ambassador to Rome, where Pope Paul III ordained him Bishop. In 1566 the Pope appointed him Archbishop of Milan, in which capacity his portrait (...

[Edwardian Baroque; English Renaissance; Imperial Baroque]

Architectural style adopted widely in Great Britain and the British Empire from about 1885 until World War I, particularly for government, municipal and commercial buildings. Great Britain, with its nationalism, prosperity and extensive empire, was at this time boldly confident of its place in the world as a major power and adopted a style that reflected that confidence. Baroque Revival architecture is characterized by imposing classical façades, with much associated decorative sculpture, and it makes emphatic use of domes and towers, turrets and cupolas. Interiors are spacious and dignified and are also often decorated with sculpture and painting.

Known at the time as English Renaissance, Baroque Revival was a freely adapted version of the English Baroque architecture of the period 1700–20 by such architects as Christopher Wren, John Vanbrugh, Nicholas Hawksmoor and Thomas Archer. Its immediate source was perhaps Kinmel Park, Denbs, a country house designed by W. E. Nesfield (R. Norman Shaw’s partner) in ...

(b Milan, 1847; d Magreglio, 1927).

Italian silversmith. He was known for his complex designs of flatware, chalices and inkwells. His flatware designed c. 1885 was Renaissance Revival in style, while that designed c. 1887 (Milan, Castello Sforzesco) is more reminiscent of the Mannerist style of Benvenuto Cellini and Antonio Gentile, the handles being adorned with the forms of nymphs and satyrs. Bellosio is also well known for his work exhibited at the Turin Exhibition of ...

(b Rome, 1821; d Rome, Dec 1, 1884).

Italian architect. Trained in the conservative milieu of his native city, he reflected in his works the confined, Renaissance Revival taste of private and public patronage during the reign of Pope Pius IX (reg 1846–78), but at the same time he also used new engineering techniques that were developing internationally. He is best known as the designer of the railway station (1867–74; destr. c. 1930) that housed the terminus of the first railway line out of the Papal States. Its location, away from the centre of Rome, emphasized the ancient city’s rapid expansion, and it became an exemplary model of urban planning. Built near the Baths of Diocletian, the gigantic new structure offered a grand contemporary foil to the ancient monument, demonstrating that past and present could dwell comfortably side by side. The building itself restated this thesis: a sleek central train shed with a steel-supported, curved iron and glass roof was flanked by elaborately articulated twin palazzi. His other most notable works are the Camposanto (...

(b Hanau; fl Paris, second half of the 19th century).

French gem-engraver of German birth. He worked in cameo in the Renaissance Revival style. Many of his gems are copies of English and French royal portraits dating from the 16th century. The cutting is very sharp and refined, often more so than in the original, and his gems are characterized by the frequent use of a raised line cut from the pale layer of the stone to border the main subject in imitation of the 16th-century Italian engravers from whom he derived his models and style. Bissinger’s skill was demonstrated by a series of 112 gems, copied from examples in the Cabinet des Médailles in Paris, which he exhibited at the Exposition Universelle of 1878 in Paris. His work had already featured in the Exposition Universelle in Paris in 1867 and was noted in the London Art Journal (1868, p. 38). In 1873 he exhibited at the Weltausstellung in Vienna. After the ...

(Aleksandrovich)

(b St Petersburg, Nov 28, 1880; d Petrograd [now St Petersburg], Aug 7, 1921).

Russian poet and critic. Italian Renaissance painting and the work of contemporary Russian and foreign artists of the modern school greatly influenced Blok’s poetry, which in turn was exceptionally suggestive for masters of the fine arts as well as for many Symbolist poets. Blok belonged to the second generation of Russian Symbolist poets, who saw literature as a powerful theurgic force, capable of revealing the true, ideal world through temporal symbols. Symbolism in Russia was strongly influenced by the mystical philosophy of Vladimir Solovyov (1853–1900), who initiated the cult of the divine Sophia—the image of Eternal Woman as the soul of the universe and the link between the human and the divine. Blok reflected this cult in his Stikhi o prekrasnoy dame (‘Verses about the beautiful lady’). The beautiful lady whom Blok described is both a real woman and a transcendental figure, unattainable Beauty, the Ideal. She assumes an unearthly aspect, revealing herself to the poet in an atmosphere of dreams that are like fairy tales or medieval visions....

Italian family of patrons. Pietro Boncompagni (d 1404), a reader in civil law from 1378 to 1391, was buried in a tomb in S Martino, Bologna, where a Boncompagni family chapel, outstanding for its works of art, was completed in 1534. Its richly carved decoration is attributed to Amico Aspertini, and it features an Adoration of the Magi (1532) by Girolamo da Carpi on the wooden altar (attrib. Bartolomeo Ramenghi Bagnacavallo I). A great-grandson of Pietro Boncompagni, Cristoforo Boncompagni (1470–1546) was a draper and financier. He built a palazzo (1538–45) near the cathedral of S Pietro; its decorations were completed by his sons after his death. Giacomo Barozzi da Vignola may have contributed to this elegant and dignified structure. Restored in 1845, the palazzo, now called Palazzo Benelli, stands at Via del Monte 8. Interior restoration work began in 1980.

Cristoforo Boncompagni’s ten children included a son Ugo Boncompagni, who became ...

(Christoph)

(b Basle, May 25, 1818; d Basle, Aug 8, 1897).

Swiss historian and art historian. He was born into one of the leading families of Basle and was the son of the chief pastor. Raised on the neohumanist Humboldtian ideals adopted for the city’s schools by the ruling bourgeoisie in the aftermath of the French Revolution, he saw his world transformed by the rise of modern industrial society and the spread of social democracy and aggressive nationalism. His work reflects an intense experience of his own time by a citizen of one of the last city-republics in Europe.

Burckhardt first studied theology but lost his faith and switched to history and philosophy at the University of Berlin (1839–43). He took courses in art history, then a new discipline, from Franz Kugler, to whom he remained attached all his life. He also spent a term in Bonn, then a centre of German Romanticism. Later celebrated as the historian and admirer of the Italian Renaissance, he began his career as a German nationalist, a medievalist and an enthusiastic champion of the Gothic....

(b Lyon, April 22, 1827; d Florence, Sept 21, 1888).

French collector. His father Jean-Baptiste Carrand (1792–1871) was a collector of medieval and Renaissance decorative objects (Byzantine and Gothic ivories, Renaissance maiolica, enamelwork, arms, bronzes and coins) and a connoisseur of manuscripts and documents, first in Lyon and then in Paris, where Louis worked in partnership with him. Their most prestigious purchases were some early medieval and Gothic ivory pieces and the famous flabellum (9th century, court of Charles the Bald) from the Benedictine abbey of Tournus in Burgundy. In 1867 they exhibited ivories, bronzes, arms, wood-carvings and secular gold items in the Exposition Universelle, Paris. After his father’s death Louis continued to enlarge the collection. In particular he added early medieval and Renaissance textiles. In 1880 he moved to Nice and in 1881 to Pisa, where he remained until 1886, continuing to buy artefacts not only from French and Italian sales but also from England, Germany, Greece and Turkey. In ...

(b Edgcote, Northants, Nov 7, 1851; d Oxford, April 24, 1924).

English critic and historian. In her writing she combined the results of methodical scholarship with a passionate enthusiasm to give a vivid picture of her subjects. She respected the new ‘scientific’ approach to art led by Giovanni Morelli, and her favourable reviews of Bernard Berenson’s early publications were partly responsible for the warm reception some of the new ideas received in England. Among 19th-century artists, she wrote a monograph on Jules Bastien-Lepage (1894), a biography of Jean-François Millet (1896)—possibly under the influence of her one-time editor and friend W. E. Henley—and articles on other French painters. She was a fervent admirer of the Arts and Crafts Movement and her monographs on Sir Edward Burne-Jones (1894), G. F. Watts (1896) and Lawrence Alma-Tadema were greatly admired, not least by the artists themselves, who became her firm friends. She also championed the Italian landscape artist Giovanni Costa....

(b 1819; d 1903).

Italian metalworker, active in Vicenza. Some of his early work imitated Renaissance metalwork so adeptly that it was sold by dealers as Renaissance metalwork. His virtuoso display pieces in gold, silver, enamel and steel attracted wealthy buyers in Europe and America. He designed for Lady Layard an elaborate metal belt, decorated with onyx cameos and miniature glass mosaics (...

(b Paris, Feb 22, 1841; d Paris, June 26, 1896).

French art historian and collector. After studying at the Ecole des Chartes in Paris (1864–7), he worked at the Cabinet des Estampes of the Bibliothèque Nationale and then at the Louvre (1874), becoming curator of the newly formed department of medieval and modern sculpture in 1893. Courajod’s initial interests were in local history, but his work at the Bibliothèque Nationale kindled an enthusiasm for art history, and he became noted for his study of documents and precocious attention to the social context of art. Sculpture was his particular interest. He collected Italian plaquettes, and, as curator at the Louvre, he secured the acquisition of such prestigious Italian works as the Virgin and Child by Jacopo della Quercia. He bequeathed to the museum the Courajod Christ, one of the finest examples of Burgundian Romanesque wood sculpture, which the Louvre committee had refused to acquire.

Courajod was professor of the history of sculpture at the Ecole du Louvre (...

[Enrico, Antonio d’; il Tanzio]

(b Riale d’Alagna, 1575–80; d 1632–3).

Italian painter. He is best known for his dramatic oil paintings executed in a unique style of Caravaggesque realism modified by the elegance of Lombard Late Mannerism. He also adopted elements of a robust and unsophisticated realism from Piedmontese art, as is evident in his frescoes for the sacromonte at Varallo (see Varallo, Sacro Monte, §2). His drawings are in the highly refined and meticulously finished technique associated with Renaissance draughtsmanship.

Tanzio’s family had lived at Varallo since 1586, and he had two brothers who were also artists: the fresco painter Melchiorre d’Enrico, with whom he may have trained, and the sculptor and architect Giovanni d’Enrico (c. 1560–1644). On 12 February 1600 a safe conduct was issued to Melchiorre and Tanzio to leave Valsesia to visit Rome for the Holy Year. Tanzio’s first biographer, Cotta, wrote that the artist studied ‘in the Academies of Rome’ and that in ...

(b Karlsruhe, Feb 14, 1837; d Karlsruhe, April 3, 1919).

German architect and teacher. His preference for the Renaissance Revival style was apparent from his student days at the Karlsruhe Technische Hochschule and was influenced by the writings of Jacob Burckhardt and Gottfried Semper. Graduating in 1860, he was immediately given a post working for the Grand Duchy of Baden. In 1867 he argued in print in favour of a study of the Italian Renaissance as the basis for a proper architectural training, and the following year he was appointed professor at the Technische Hochschule. At about this time he designed the Vierordtbad (opened 1873) in the Italian Renaissance style in Karlsruhe. As a large, secular, public building, it typified Durm’s later commissions, which included about 30 buildings for the Grand Duchy. As the most senior officer in the building administration of Baden (1887–1902), architect of its most important buildings and a university professor (1868–1919), he was a dominant influence on the architecture of Baden. The style of monumental historicism that he originated, drawing on the idioms of the Italian, German, French and Netherlandish Renaissance, typifies late 19th-century German taste for display. His work includes the Städtische Festhalle (...

(b Odessa, Dec 24, 1849; d Paris, Sept 30, 1905).

Russian collector and writer. He studied in Odessa and Vienna before settling in Paris in 1871. The following year he visited Italy and started collecting Italian Renaissance work. His interest in drawings and engravings and his desire to provide information for an enthusiastic public led to his collaboration on a catalogue of a collection of drawings bequeathed to the Louvre by Horace His de La Salle in 1878. Between 1879 and 1881 he bought about 20 contemporary paintings, including Monet’s Bathers at La Grenouillère (1869; London, N.G.), and he was represented in Renoir’s Luncheon of the Boating Party (1881; Washington, DC, Phillips Col.). In 1881 he stopped buying and writing about contemporary work and returned to his Renaissance studies, helping the Louvre to acquire two frescoes by Botticelli from the Villa Lemmi, Florence, in 1882 (Lorenzo Tornabuoni Presented by Grammar to Prudentia and the Liberal Arts and ...

(b Löcse, Hungary [now Levoča, Slovakia], Sept 3, 1839; d Oct 5, 1910).

Hungarian engineer and art historian. He trained as an engineer and became a senior manager in the Hungarian railways. Following a two-year study trip to Italy (1876–8), he resigned his post and embarked upon a new career as an art historian. He visited Paris and London and in 1880 settled in Stuttgart.

Fabriczy devoted the greater part of his life to the study of Italian, and in particular Florentine, Renaissance art. In 1892 he published a major study of the life and work of the Florentine architect and engineer Filippo Brunelleschi. At the same time, after research in the Biblioteca Nazionale of Florence, most notably on 16th-century documents (the Codice Strozziano and Codice Petrei) containing notes on Florentine artists of considerable art historical value, he published the so-called Libro di Antonio Billi (1891; see Billi, Antonio) and the Codice dell’Anonimo Magliabechiano (1893). Fabriczy’s research had been undertaken in consultation with the Florentine art historian ...

(b 1779; d 1839).

French silversmith. He trained in the workshop of Jean Baptiste Claude Odiot and established his own workshop c. 1823. His silver inaugurated the Renaissance Revival style in that medium. His work includes the Lafayette Vase (1830–35; Somerset House, London), a silver-gilt two-handled vase with scenes from the life of Marquis de Lafayette....