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(b Paris, Nov 9, 1812; d Chatou, Aug 2, 1884).

French architect and restorer. He was the son of a Neo-classical architect of the same name (1783–1868), who was a pupil of Charles Percier and architect to the département of Charente. The younger Paul Abadie began studying architecture in 1832 by joining the atelier of Achille Leclère and then entered the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in 1835. While he was following this classical training, he participated in the rediscovery of the Middle Ages by going on archaeological trips and then, from 1844, in his capacity as attaché to the Commission des Monuments Historiques. He undertook his first restoration work at Notre-Dame de Paris, under the direction of Jean-Baptiste-Antoine Lassus and Viollet-le-Duc. Abadie was appointed deputy inspector at Notre-Dame in 1845, and in 1848, when the department responsible for diocesan buildings was created, he was appointed architect to the dioceses of Périgueux, Angoulême and Cahors. He subsequently completed about 40 restoration projects, mainly on Romanesque churches in Charente, in the Dordogne and the Gironde, and as a diocesan architect he was put in charge of two large cathedrals in his district: St Pierre d’Angoulême and St Front de Périgueux. In the former he undertook a huge programme of ‘completion’, returning to a stylistic unity that was in line with current episcopal policy (...

[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 Tarazona, 1741; d Madrid, 1816).

Spanish sculptor. He was trained in Saragossa with José Ramirez. In 1765 he went to Rome, where he won a scholarship from the Spanish Academia de Bellas Artes and was appointed Director of the Accademia di S Luca, Rome. Adán’s early work became known in Spain through the drawings and sculptures he sent from Rome, the finest being a Lamentation. He returned to Spain in 1776 and worked in Lérida, Granada and Jaen, finally settling in Madrid in 1786. In 1793 he was appointed court sculptor (Escultor de Cámara) by Charles IV (reg 1788–1808). He made many carvings in wood, such as a St Joseph and a Virgin of the Sorrows, for churches in Madrid. Other characteristic works are the portrait busts of leading contemporary figures such as Manuel Godoy, the Prince de la Paz, and José Monino, the Conde de Floridablanca. The busts of Charles IV and Queen Maria Luisa...

(b Logroño, Dec 26, 1759; d Madrid, 1842).

Spanish sculptor and ceramicist. He moved to Madrid at an early age and was apprenticed to the French sculptor Robert Michel (i), who was employed at the court. He won first prize in a competition at the Real Academia de Bellas Artes, and organized the royal workshop for the carving of precious stones, where he executed two magnificent cameo portraits of Charles IV and Queen Maria Luisa (c. 1796; Madrid, Pal. Real). He was a leading sculptor in the Buen Retiro porcelain factory, for which he produced a large amount of work. In 1797 he entered the Real Academia de Bellas Artes and was promoted until he was finally appointed Director-general in 1821. He was also appointed Honorary Chamber Sculptor to Charles IV. His successful career made him an influential figure in Spanish art. He was one of the leading exponents of Neo-classical sculpture, producing works that were technically accomplished although stylistically rather cold. He executed a large amount of work between ...

(b Belas, 1769; d Lisbon, 1841).

Portuguese sculptor. He was probably trained by his father, a stone mason employed at the Palacio Nacional de Queluz, near Lisbon. In 1784 João Aguiar went to the drawing school of the Casa Pia do Castelo, Lisbon, and in 1785 to Rome on a scholarship from the Intendência with the support of D. I. de Pina Manique (1735–1805). There he studied drawing with Tomaso Labruzzi, modelling with Giuseppe Angellini (1735–1811) and then moved to the workshop of Antonio Canova. Aguiar’s first recorded works made in Rome were Cippus, Aeneas and Creusa (1792–3; Lisbon, Pal. Belém Gdns) and a portrait medallion of Giovanni Antinori (1792; untraced), Professor of Architecture at the Academia de Portugal in Rome, which is known from an engraving (1792) by João Caetano Rivara (studying in Rome, 1788–99).

In 1794 Pina Manique was engaged on a project to erect a monument to Queen Mary I that would also celebrate the achievements of Portuguese artists who had received scholarships to study in Rome. After finding that Canova and the Genoese Nicolò Stefano Traverso would be too expensive, he turned to Aguiar for the statues and bas-reliefs and to ...

(b Puławy, June 1756; d Florence, Feb 8, 1841).

Polish architect and writer, also active in Italy. He probably studied in Rome in the late 1770s and returned to Italy in 1785–6 under the aegis of Stanisław Kostka Potocki, a collector and amateur architect with whom he collaborated throughout his life. In 1786 Aigner and Potocki refronted the church of St Anna, Warsaw, using a giant composite order on high pedestals. The political turmoil of the 1790s disrupted Aigner’s career, but during his second phase of creativity (1797–1816) he won fame through his work on the great estate of the Czartoryski family at Puławy, on the Vistula west of Lublin, the most important centre of cultural life in Poland during the Enlightenment. Aigner had already erected the Marynka Palace there in 1790, a variation on the Petit Trianon at Versailles, France, and from 1798 he began to add ornamental buildings to go with the new Picturesque layout of the Puławy gardens: a Chinese pavilion, a Gothick house and a peripheral Temple of the Sibyl with a shallow dome. In ...

(b Tarragona, 1832; d Barcelona, 1901).

Spanish sculptor. He entered the Escuela de Bellas Artes de la Lonja, Barcelona, when still very young and was a student of the Neo-classical artist Damián Campeny y Estrany, who was also influenced by Romanticism and naturalism. In 1855 Aleu y Teixidor applied for the Chair in Modelling at the Escuela, a position to which he was eventually appointed after the committee had been involved in intrigues and disputes. He taught Catalan sculptors for half a century and wielded an enormous, though not entirely positive, influence. He became Deputy Director of the Escuela de Bellas Artes, belonged to the Academia de Ciencias y Artes of Barcelona and won first prize at the Exposición Nacional de Madrid in 1871.

Almost all the work of Aleu y Teixidor is in Barcelona. The best is the over life-size stone sculpture of St George (1871) for the façade of the Palau de la ...

(b Braga, 1748; d Oporto, 1815).

Portuguese architect and military engineer. He was the most distinguished of the late 18th-century architects of northern Portugal, where he introduced the new spirit of Neo-classicism. He was the son of a musician at the episcopal court at Braga, whose protection and influence were valuable to him. Working in Braga during a period of transition, Amarante ended the architectural tradition inherited from André Ribeiro Soares da Silva, and, although he lacked Soares’s creativity, he made an important contribution to the city. Amarante’s later work in Oporto was in a more developed Neo-classical style and was an integral part of the new face of that city.

Though he trained as a military engineer, his first activity was designing rocaille ornament. His source for the new aesthetic forms may have been Jacques-François Blondel’s Cours d’architecture (Paris, 1773), lent to him by the royal archbishop, Dom Gaspar de Braganza (1716–89). His first contract, won in competition with João Bernardes de Silva, was for a design, submitted in ...

(b Monza, Aug 22, 1776; d Milan, May 23, 1852).

Italian architect and writer. He studied architecture at the Accademia di Brera, Milan, under Giuseppe Zanoia (1752–1817), the Accademia’s secretary, and later taught there himself. At the beginning of his career he was involved in the hurried completion (1806–13) of the façade of Milan Cathedral, which was carried out under the direction and with the collaboration of Zanoia. Napoleon’s order that the façade should be completed economically determined the execution of the work, which was carried out in a simple Gothic style derived from the cathedral’s aisles, and it was later judged to be deficient on a number of counts, including its workmanship. The church of S Carlo al Corso (1838–47) in Milan was Amati’s most significant building. Here he grafted 16th-century motifs on to a centralized Roman plan in such a way as to recall both the Pantheon in Rome and the circular Milanese church of S Sebastiano, as well as Bramantesque models and the buildings frequently seen in the backgrounds of Renaissance paintings. The design for the church was part of a proposal (largely unexecuted) to reorder the entire centre of the city. Amati proposed that a vast arcaded square be opened up around the cathedral and that the Corsia dei Servi (now Corso Vittorio Emanuele) should be straightened to lead up to S Carlo, where another piazza, relating architecturally to the church, was proposed. At the time when eclecticism was spreading in Italy and overturning accepted criteria of artistic quality, Amati advocated a return to Vitruvian principles. To this end he produced a series of publications devoted to Vignola, Vitruvius, Roman antiquities in Milan, and on archaeology. The completion of the church of S Carlo and Amati’s death, however, marked the end of the Neo-classical movement in Italy....

(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 Quebec, Qué., Aug 10, 1764; d Quebec, Qué., June 3, 1839).

Canadian metalworker. He studied at the Petit Seminaire du Québec from 1778 to 1780 and began his apprenticeship c. 1780 in the silversmith’s shop of his elder brother, Jean-Nicolas Amiot (1750–1821); the tradition that he was apprenticed to François Ranvoyzé is unfounded. In 1782 he travelled to Paris to complete his training and remained there for five years, supported by his family. He absorbed the Louis XVI style, then popular in France, and after his return to Quebec in 1787 he set up a workshop to introduce this into Canada.

Much of Amiot’s work was for the Church, reworking traditional forms in the Louis XVI style. In a sanctuary lamp of 1788 for the church at Repentigny he elongated the standard shape and decorated it with a balanced arrangement of Neo-classical designs. After 1800 his work became formulaic and less innovative, though there are such notable exceptions as the chalice (...

(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 Castel Bolognese, Ravenna, 1756; d Bologna, March 11, 1841).

Italian architect, engineer and theorist. He graduated from the University of Bologna in engineering and architecture. From 1775 to 1796 he was in Rome, where his design for the new sacristy of St Peter’s (1775) was admired by Pius VI, although the commission was awarded to Carlo Marchionni. Antolini took part in the scheme to drain the Pontine Marshes (1776–7), but caught malaria and resigned his appointment. Devoting himself to the study and practice of architecture, he became involved in the artistic controversies of the day, including the debate on the use of the Doric order (see Piranesi, Giovanni Battista) and the changing attitudes towards the restoration of ancient monuments, his own position becoming progressively more conservative. He published his first important archaeological work on the Temple of Hercules at Cori in 1785 and began his studies on the Temple of Minerva at Assisi. During this period he also produced schemes for palaces, chapels and other buildings for noble foreign clients, including a design for the façade of the palace and court chapel of the Duke of Courland at Mitau (now Jelgava, Latvia). During the French intervention in Italy (...

(b Ghemme, Novara, July 14, 1798; d Maggiora, Novara, Aug 18, 1888).

Italian architect and urban planner. He was the most prominent Neo-classical 19th-century architect in Piedmont, with a long and prolific career that included designs for houses, churches and major urban planning schemes. He trained at the Accademia di Brera, Milan, and the Politecnico, Turin, qualifying in 1824. Shortly afterwards he won a scholarship to Rome, where he remained until 1831. This long period of Classical studies profoundly influenced his career. One of his first commissions on his return to Piedmont was the completion of the church of S Agapito, Maggiora. Begun in 1817 by Giuseppe Zanoia (1752–1817), the church was completed in 1838; Antonelli’s work included the portico and the complex Neo-classical interior, with richly coffered, decorated vaults and a dome on pendentives. His next work was the Santuario del Crocefisso at Boca, near Maggiora. Begun in 1830, the design underwent many revisions and was not completed until ...

(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 Lobositz [now Lovosice], May 27, 1793; d Kremsier [now Kroměříž], Nov 7, 1851).

Bohemian architect, active in Moravia. He studied at the Royal Professional Polytechnical Institute in Prague under Georg Fischer (1768–1828), in whose office he subsequently worked. During the 1820s he worked on two Bohemian estates of the Chotek family, becoming involved in the final stages of building their country house at Kačina (1802–22), by Christian Friedrich Schuricht (1753–1832) and building some of the many follies in the park at Veltrusy. From 1832 until his death Arche worked in the office of works of the archdiocese of Olmütz (now Olomouc) at Kremsier, in Moravia, becoming director (1833) and later counsellor (1838). Arche worked in two styles, the Neo-classical, for which he derived his ideas from contemporary engravings and particularly the Leipzig Ideenmagazin, and the Gothic Revival, which he used in some of his remodellings. Soon after his arrival at Kremsier, he remodelled (...

(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 New Haven, CT, Feb 21, 1791; d New Haven, CT, Jan 10, 1858).

American sculptor. Although as a youth he showed talent for handling tools, his father, a joiner and carpenter, discouraged him from becoming a wood-carver. After opening a fruit shop in New Haven, he began carving musical instruments and furniture legs for a local cabinetmaker. With his invention of a lace-making machine, he was able to settle his business debts and devote himself entirely to sculpture.

About 1825 Samuel F. B. Morse encouraged Augur to try working in marble. Among his earliest attempts in this medium was a bust of Professor Alexander Metcalf Fisher (c. 1825–7; New Haven, CT, Yale U. A.G.), which was exhibited in 1827 at the National Academy of Design in New York. The impact of the Neo-classical style is clearly evident in his most ambitious work, Jephthah and his Daughter (c. 1828–30; New Haven, CT, Yale U. A.G.), a pair of free-standing half life-size marble figures. The treatment of the heads shows Roman influence, which Augur must have absorbed from engravings; this is borne out by the detailed work on Jephthah’s armour. The bold handling of the hair and drapery reveals his experience as a wood-carver. In ...