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(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 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 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 ...

(b Florence, Sept 6, 1803; d Florence,?June 22, 1871).

Italian sculptor and painter. At the age of 12 he entered the Accademia di Belle Arti e Liceo Artistico in Florence to study painting under Giuseppe Bezzuoli, Pietro Benvenuti and Pietro Ermini (fl 1800–15) and sculpture under Stefano Ricci (1765–1837). A Self-portrait (1828; Florence, Pitti) in oil on canvas demonstrates a Romantic style learnt from Bezzuoli and anticipates Costoli’s abilities to render portraiture in sculpture. In 1828 he won a four-year stipendium, enabling him to travel to Rome. While there he produced the over life-size gesso Meneceus (1830; Florence, Pitti; marble version, 1853), which was praised for its classically rendered, idealized body when exhibited at the Esposizione di Roma in 1830. He returned to Florence and, his reputation increasing, was appointed Assistant Master of Sculpture under Lorenzo Bartolini at the Accademia in 1839. In 1842 he executed a statue of Galileo Galilei for the city’s Museo della Specola (now the ...

[Claude]

(b Paris, 1769; d Paris, July 1825).

French sculptor and painter. He studied sculpture with his father, Claude Gautherot (1729–1802); throughout his life he was known as both Pierre and Claude, signing his work with his surname only. He initially specialized in portrait busts of well-known figures such as Voltaire, Anne-Robert-Jacques Turgot and Jean-Sylvain Bailly (all untraced). In 1787 he entered the studio of Jacques-Louis David and became his close friend. Thereafter he devoted himself completely to painting, initially choosing his subjects from his sculptural practice, as in his copies of portraits of Voltaire (after Nicolas de Largillierre) and Turgot (after Joseph Ducreux) (both 1790; St Petersburg, Hermitage). Delécluze’s description of Gautherot in David’s studio in 1796 and 1797 mentions that he was an avid Republican and that he wore a blond, powdered wig to disguise a skin disease. At the Salon of 1799 he exhibited Pyramus and Thisbe (Melun, Mus. Melun) and a year later another version of that subject (Bagnères-de-Bigorre, Mus. A.). At the Salon of ...

(b Vésoul, Haute-Saône, May 11, 1824; d Paris, Jan 10, 1904).

French painter and sculptor.

Gérôme’s father, a goldsmith from Vésoul, discouraged his son from studying to become a painter but agreed, reluctantly, to allow him a trial period in the studio of Paul Delaroche in Paris. Gérôme proved his worth, remaining with Delaroche from 1840 to 1843. When Delaroche closed the studio in 1843, Gérôme followed his master to Italy. Pompeii meant more to him than Florence or the Vatican, but the world of nature, which he studied constantly in Italy, meant more to him than all three. An attack of fever brought him back to Paris in 1844. He then studied, briefly, with Charles Gleyre, who had taken over the pupils of Delaroche. Gérôme attended the Ecole des Beaux-Arts and entered the Prix de Rome competition as a way of going back to Italy. In 1846 he failed to qualify for the final stage because of his inadequate ability in figure drawing. To improve his chances in the following year’s competition, he painted an academic exercise of two large figures, a nude youth, crouching in the pose of Chaudet’s marble ...

(María)

(b Puebla, 1789; d Puebla, 1860).

Mexican architect, sculptor, painter, lithographer, and teacher. He was the leading figure in Puebla in the fields of architecture, sculpture, painting, and drawing during the early 19th century. He was director of the Academia de Dibujo in Puebla from its foundation in 1814 and the first recipient of a scholarship from the academy, which allowed him to go to Paris (1824–1827), where he studied architecture, drawing, and lithography. He also visited museums, factories, and prisons, intending to introduce French developments and systems into Puebla. On his return to Mexico he devoted himself to intense public activity, architectural reform, painting, lithography, and teaching, and experiments in industrialized production. Among his most important sculptural works is the completion (1819) of the ciprés (altarpiece with baldacchino) for Puebla Cathedral, which had been left unfinished on the death of Manuel Tolsá. It combines a high altar, a sepulchral monument, and a sanctuary of the Virgin, and it is one of the most spectacular examples of Mexican neoclassicism. From ...

[Jean-Jacques]

(b Geneva, May 23, 1790; d Bougival, June 4, 1852).

Swiss sculptor, painter and composer. Prompted by his early displays of artistic talent, Pradier’s parents placed him in the workshop of a jeweller, where he learnt engraving on metal. He attended drawing classes in Geneva, before leaving for Paris in 1807. By 1811 he was registered at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts and subsequently entered its sculpture competitions as a pupil of François-Frédéric, Baron Lemot. A more significant contribution to his artistic formation around this time was the guidance of the painter François Gérard. Pradier won the Prix de Rome in 1813 and was resident at the French Academy in Rome, from 1814 until 1819. On his return to France, he showed at the Salon of 1819 a group Centaur and Bacchante (untraced) and a reclining Bacchante (marble; Rouen, Mus. B.-A.). The latter, borrowing an erotically significant torsion from the Antique Callipygean Venus, opens the series of sensuous Classical female subjects that were to become Pradier’s forte. In ...

Term referring to the romantic character underlying the use of Roman and Greek forms in the art and architecture of the late 18th century and early 19th. First used by Sigfried Giedion in 1922 and later, in an important essay by Fiske Kimball in 1944, the term is most often applied to architecture. Henry-Russell Hitchcock used it extensively as a stylistic term that defined early Neo-classicism in his volume on 19th- and 20th-century architecture. But it also can be applied to painting, sculpture, and the decorative arts. The term recognizes the fundamental idea that the past evokes emotional associations. Even the seemingly rational and austere forms of Roman and Greek art could evoke sentiment.

One concept that helps explain Romantic Classicism is ‘associationism’, a principle that underlay much of the use of historical revival styles in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. When contemplating a building whose forms evoked a bygone era, the viewer made certain connections between the use of the style in the past and its appearance in the present. Thus when Thomas Jefferson chose the Roman temple, the Maison Carrée in Nîmes, as a model for the Virginia State House (...

Italian, 19th century, male.

Active in Milan and in Denmark.

Painter, sculptor. History painting.

Teglio Milla studied at the Accademia di Belle Arti di Brera in Milan. He is generally considered one of the most talented Neo-Classical sculptors of Denmark. His works include a piece representing an ...

(b Celaya, Oct 13, 1759; d Celaya, Aug 3, 1833).

Mexican architect, painter, engraver, and sculptor. He studied painting under Miguel Cabrera at the Real Academia de las Nobles Artes de S Carlos in Mexico City but did not graduate. He subsequently took up wood-carving and engraving. He learnt the elements of architecture from the Jesuits, who gave him a copy of the writings of Jacopo Vignola. His architecture exhibits a familiarity with the classic treatises, although he never visited Europe. Tresguerras’s first major work (1780s) was the reconstruction in Neo-classical style of the convent church of S Rosa, Querétaro, originally consecrated in 1752. The dome over the crossing is set on a drum articulated by rusticated columns, which flank a series of round-headed openings. He is also credited with remodelling the interior of the convent church of S Clara, Querétaro, and with constructing the Neptune Fountain (1802–7) in the plaza in front of it. The god stands under a triumphal arch, while water pours through the mouth of a fish at his feet. Tresguerras also completed (...

(b Karthaus Prüll, nr Regensburg, April 14, 1839; d Munich, Dec 26, 1881).

German sculptor and painter. He trained at the Munich Akademie der Bildenden Künste, where he soon turned against the basically Neo-classicist attitudes of his teacher Max von Widnmann and turned to naturalism, following the example of Reinhold Begas. After establishing a studio of his own in 1860, he received few commissions for sculpture and turned his hand to genre painting instead. Between 1868 and 1874 he exhibited paintings at the Royal Academy in London. However, he went on to achieve wide recognition through commissions from Ludwig II and from the Munich Akademie, which made him an honorary member in 1872.

Wagmüller is considered the most important Munich representative of naturalistic sculpture; he left a substantial body of work, which displays both a knowledge of antique sculpture and scrupulous attention to living models. Even in his most mature works Wagmüller emphasized the painterly values of light and shade and rich detail, as well as clear formal construction. This combination is exemplified by his own tomb at the cemetery in Old Schwabing, a sarcophagus decorated with sphinxes supporting a seated female figure holding a child. In contrast, the decorative figures in Baroque garb modelled for ...