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French family of goldsmiths and bronze-founders. Members of the Ballin family were active in Paris from the 16th century to the 18th. Claude Ballin (i) (b Paris, 3 May 1615; d Paris, 22 May 1678) became a master goldsmith in 1637. He was granted lodgings in the Louvre, Paris, before 1671 and became Orfèvre Ordinaire du Roi. Nicknamed ‘the Great Ballin’, he was one of the most prominent French goldsmiths of the 17th century. He worked extensively for Louis XIV, providing an enormous quantity of silver and silver-gilt objects, including vases, bowls, display stands and incense-burners that formed part of the silver furnishings (destr. 1690) of the château of Versailles. Ballin’s work in the classical style also included ecclesiastical pieces (untraced) for the cathedrals of Paris and Reims that are known from numerous drawings (Berlin, Kstbib. & Mus.; Stockholm, N. Mus.; Beauvais, Archvs Dépt.), and which also feature in some wall-hangings, for example the ...

(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 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 Biberbach, Dec 26, 1664; d Dresden, March 6, 1731).

German goldsmith and jeweller. He was one of the most famous goldsmiths of his time, and almost all his works are in the Grünes Gewölbe, Dresden. After his training in Ulm he travelled as a journeyman to Augsburg, Nuremberg and Vienna. He is first recorded in Dresden in 1692. His two brothers, the enameller Georg Friedrich Dinglinger (1666–1720) and the jeweller Georg Christoph Dinglinger (1668–1728), are documented as active there in 1693; they remained his closest collaborators, particularly Georg Friedrich.

From the beginning of his career, Johann Melchior Dinglinger worked for Frederick-Augustus I of Saxony, even before the latter became Elector in 1694. The jewellery produced for Frederick-Augustus’s coronation as King Augustus II of Poland (also known as Augustus the Strong) in 1697 was Dinglinger’s first important commission. In 1698 he was appointed Court Jeweller, and all his projects were personally supervised by the King. In the late 17th century and early 18th Dinglinger probably produced most of the jewellery for the court: almost all the orders of chivalry and military decorations came from his workshop, including those in emeralds and diamonds for the revived Polish Order of the Knights of the White Eagle. Various designs for banquets for the King are also kept in the Grünes Gewölbe....

[Giovan Domenico; Giandomenico]

(b Florence, June 15, 1692; d Aug 18, 1768).

Italian painter. He was the son of the goldsmith Antonio di Giovanni da Imola and Margherita di Domenico Gori. His mother’s family, which included her brother, the antiquarian Antonio Francesco Gori, was extremely influential in Florence and proved very important for Ferretti. In the first years of his life he lived in Imola, where he was sent to study (1708) with the local painter Francesco Chiusuri. After the family moved to Florence, Ferretti was taught there by Tommaso Redi and Sebastiano Galeotti. Later he spent five years in Bologna, an important centre for the practice and teaching of academic painting, where, in the workshop of Felice Torelli, his work acquired its characteristic style.

On returning to Florence in 1715, Ferretti frescoed the ceiling of S Chiara, the scenes of which are practically illegible. Two years later he became a member of the Accademia del Disegno. Between 1718 and ...

(b Settignano, nr Florence, 1670; d Florence, 1736).

Italian sculptor, medallist, architect and festival designer. He was a leading figure in the generation of sculptors trained in Florence after the dissolution of the Accademia Fiorentina in Rome (1686). Taught by Carlo Marcellini and Giuseppe Piamontini, he worked under Giovanni Battista Foggini on sculpture for the Feroni Chapel in SS Annunziata, Florence (1691–3), and the nave of SS Michele e Gaetano (1694–6). His principal sculptures are marble works for the high altar of SS Annunziata (1704–6) and portraits. His statues of St Filippo Benizzi and St Giuliana Falconieri for the Annunziata altar, with their animated balance and restrained intensity, are among the best of their date in Florence. Several portrait busts and reliefs, with an unsparingly detailed realism tempered by coolly imperious expression, have been attributed to him. The basis for these attributions is the signed marble effigy of Baron Philipp Bertram Degenhard Joseph von Hochkirchen...

(b Tordesillas, c. 1698; d Salamanca, 1766).

Spanish goldsmith. He worked in Salamanca from 1713, where he produced mostly ecclesiastical pieces, although some secular works are also extant. About 50 pieces of various types by him survive. In 1728 he made the andas (processional litter) for Salamanca Cathedral after a design by Alberto Churriguera and in 1734 a Maundy Thursday coffer and a set of altar-cards for the Carmelite Convent of Peñaranda de Bracamonte, near Avila. He was commissioned by Bishop Osorio to make a collection of pieces (1738–48) for Nuestra Señora de la Encina, Ponferrada, León. His processional crosses were original on account of their high-relief supports to the arms (examples at Madrigal de las Altas Torres, 1745; Tordesdillas, 1747–8; Becerril de Campos). His monstrances, on which seraphim support the sun above the world, followed 17th-century French models already known in Salamanca but which he refined and standardized (examples at Astorga Cathedral, 1757; La Seca, ...

(b Forlì, 1646; d Rome, 1721).

Italian draughtsman, silversmith, bronze-caster and gem-carver. Between 1665 and 1668 he was apprenticed to the silversmith Marco Gamberucci (fl 1656–80) in Rome. In 1675 he qualified as a master silversmith and rapidly achieved a position of prestige in the silversmiths’ guild. He ran a productive workshop, in which he was joined in 1680 by his brother Alessandro Giardini (b 1655). In 1698 he was appointed bronze-founder for the Papacy. Only a few of his works in silver have survived, most of them church furnishings that escaped the depredations of the Napoleonic army. These show a strong sense of form and a technical mastery that earned him important commissions from the papal court, including an imposing papal mace in silver and parcel-gilt (c. 1696; London, V&A), a tabernacle in silver, gilt copper, porphyry and rock-crystal (1711; Vienna, Ksthist. Mus.) and a cross and two candlesticks in silver and malachite (...

Italian family of engravers and medallists, of Bavarian origin. They worked mainly in the Roman mint from the mid-17th century to the end of the 18th. The medals they made are notable above all for their documentary value relating to the history of Rome and the city’s monuments. They were technically skilled but somewhat unimaginative portrait artists. Johan Andreas Hamerani (b Adensburg, c. 1600; d Livorno, 1644) arrived in Rome in 1615 during the pontificate of Pope Paul V. Although he worked in the papal mint, he did not execute annual medals. His son Alberto Hamerani (b Rome, 10 Oct 1620; d Rome, 21 June 1677) worked for a short time at the mint of Massa Carrara, then, between 1657 and 1669, in Rome, as assistant first to Gaspare Morone Mola and later to Girolamo Lucenti. From 1667 he engraved papal seals. Noteworthy among his medals was one commemorating the entry into Rome of Queen Christina of Sweden (...

(b Lőcse, Upper Hungary [now Levoča, Slovak Republic], 1644; d Nagyszeben, Transylvania [now Sibiu, Romania], 1713).

Romanian silversmith of Hungarian birth. He worked in Sibiu from 1675 and made c. 100 works. His first commissions came from Saxon patricians in Transylvania: cups and chalices donated or offered as official gifts to different evangelical churches, and luxury objects, such as jugs, goblets and items of jewellery. The majority of the pieces combine figurative with decorative composition, and Hann based his ornamental repertory on Renaissance and Baroque styles. His preference for using historical and heroic themes on cups and goblets had as its source the engravings of Matthäus Merian (i). Another source was the engravings of Dürer, which inspired his design for the cup of rhinoceros horn (1694; Sibiu, Brukenthal Mus.). Hann’s virtuosity in the shaping of objects, together with his accomplished technique and his able use of the contrast of light and shadow, led to the creation of such remarkable objects as the chalice (1690–94...

(bapt Amsterdam, Sept 10, 1645; bur Haarlem, June 15, 1708).

Dutch etcher, draughtsman, painter, sculptor, medallist and writer. He is best known for his political caricatures of Louis XIV of France and for his prints glorifying William III, Stadholder of the Netherlands and King of England. De Hooghe is an important representative of the late Dutch Baroque. His style is characterized by strong contrasts of lights and darks and an expressive composition. In his prints he combined contemporary personalities with allegorical figures. His prints are numerous, but few of his drawings survive and his paintings are rarer still. De Hooghe’s first commission for an etching probably came from Constantijn Huygens the elder, secretary to William III; this was Zeestraet (1667; Hollstein, no. 287). In 1668 de Hooghe was in Paris, where he produced some book illustrations, but he returned to Amsterdam, where from 1670 to 1691 he illustrated the annual newsheet Hollandsche Mercurius. He regularly produced such political prints as ...

[Ludwig, Johann Friedrich]

(b Hohenhart, Swabia, 1670; d Lisbon 1752).

German goldsmith and architect, active in Portugal. The information on Ludovice is sometimes contradictory, but there is no doubt that his work contributed decisively to the creation of the courtly Joanine style, a style named in honour of the King, John V, who was a great patron of architecture and who had colossal wealth from the Portuguese colonies at his disposal. In Ludovice he had the services of an architect of distinction, one who to a large degree determined the character of southern Portuguese architecture into the third quarter of the 18th century.

By the age of 19 Ludovice was in Augsburg where he acquired the rudiments of architecture. He served in the Imperial Army against the French. In 1697 he left for Rome, where he worked for the Jesuits and frequented the studios of other architects, including perhaps that of Carlo Fontana. In Rome he was employed on Andrea Pozzo’s gilt-bronze and marble altarpiece of ...

(b Florence, c. 1644; d Florence, June 22, 1713).

Italian sculptor, stuccoist and architect. After training in Florence as a goldsmith, he studied with the painter Felice Ficherelli. In 1671 he went to Rome, having been chosen for the Tuscan Accademia Granducale. He studied sculpture under Ercole Ferrata and Ciro Ferri, showing a predilection for modelling rather than the marble carving expected by his patron, Cosimo III de’ Medici, Grand Duke of Tuscany. In 1672 he won first prize at the Accademia di S Luca for a terracotta relief of Decaulion and Pirra. He modelled the angels (1673–4) for the ciborium at the Chiesa Nuova (S Maria in Vallicella), which was designed by Ferri and cast by Stefano Benamati, and a terracotta relief of the Fall of the Giants (1674), pendant to a Niobid relief by Giovanni Battista Foggini (both Florence, Mus. Opificio Pietre Dure). When recalled to Florence in 1676, he was working on a more than life-size marble bust of ...

(fl Braga, 1692–1717; d Braga, 1720).

Portuguese cabinetmaker and metalworker. The most outstanding characteristic of his documented works—all commissioned by religious institutions—is his use of pau preto (Brazilian rose-wood), either solid or thickly veneered on to chestnut, worked em espinhado (in a herring-bone pattern) decorated with parallel grooves, mouldings and, more rarely, with almofadados (pillow panelling). In the contracts signed by Marques with the chapter of Braga Cathedral and various convents and Misericórdia churches in northern Portugal he is referred to as the enxamblador da Cónega (joiner) responsible for executing both the woodwork and decorative metalwork of the furniture commissioned. The application of pierced and gilded brass plaques in the form of borders, rosettes in relief, enormous escutcheons and impressive handles is a constant feature of his work. He played an important role in northern Portuguese furniture-making for the uniformity of his production. He specialized in balustrades, for example those for the pulpit of the Misericórdia church in Vila do Conde (...

(b Piano del Cilento, Salerno, Feb 9, 1662; d Naples, Jan 26, 1728).

Italian painter and silversmith. He was important to the history of painting in Naples in the transitional period between the 17th and 18th centuries. His elegant art encouraged the movement away from Baroque drama towards a more tender, rocaille style in harmony with the earliest manifestations in Naples of the Arcadian school of poetry and of the Enlightenment. He painted frescoes, altarpieces and allegorical and mythological pictures.

He arrived in Naples while still young and received his first artistic training in the workshop of Luca Giordano. He was in Rome before 1683, where he was the pupil of Giovanni Maria Morandi (1622–1717), a still-life painter, and here he became a protégé of the 7th Marqués del Carpio, Gaspar de Haro y Guzmán, the Spanish Ambassador, who had already begun to form an impressive art collection. In Rome the influence of Giordano was modified by the formal elegance of the painting of Carlo Maratti. De Matteis’s earliest known work, the ...

(b Florence, May 13, 1666; d Rome, after 1739).

Italian sculptor, medallist, miniaturist and architect. He came from a family of craftsmen (his brother Cosimo Merlini (fl 1692–1736) was a silversmith of some repute) and, like his father, trained in the grand ducal workshops in Florence. He then worked for the Medici court. His emergence as a sculptor dates to c. 1692, with his two marble Angels for the Ferroni Chapel (Florence, SS Annunziata). In November 1694 he moved to Rome, where for about a year he was active as a medallist and miniaturist. For the altar in the chapel of St Ignatius in the church of Il Gesù, Rome, Merlini executed a bronze relief of St Peter Appearing to St Ignatius (1695–6), based on a drawing by Andrea Pozzo, and Two Putti Flanking a Cartouche (1697). His monument to the Marchesa Riccardi (c. 1700; Rome, S Giovanni dei Fiorentini), which demonstrates his fine abilities as a portrait artist in the manner of Lorenzo Ottoni, is the most significant work of his first stay in Rome. Returning to Florence in ...

(b Florence, c. 1685; d Rome, after 1740).

Italian sculptor, medallist and possible architect. A pupil in Florence of Giuseppe Piamontini, he was first active as a medallist; one of his earliest and most exquisite medals celebrated the visit of King Frederick IV of Denmark and Norway to Florence in 1708. On the obverse is a portrait of the King; on the reverse, a view of the city with a reclining river god personifying the Arno (Florence, Bargello). A medal of Conte Lorenzo Magalotti, dated 1712 (version, London, BM), has Apollo on the reverse, whose exaggerated sway in the hips is reflected in two later small bronzes (Rome, Pal. Corsini). There are also two medals of the Grand Duke Gian Gastone de’ Medici (before 1723 and 1731; both Florence, Bargello). Montauti’s careful characterizations in the portrait medals are reflected in his marble portrait busts. One, of Gian Gastone de’ Medici (c. 1724; Florence, Arcisp. S Maria Nuo.), emphasizes the ugly features of large nose, pouting lips and jutting chin by using a schematic treatment for the wig....

(fl c. 1694–1716).

Italian sculptor, stuccoist and medallist. He worked in southern central Italy, where he is documented as both Pietro Papaleo and Francesco Papaleo, and then in Rome, where his presence is well documented from 1694, when he was elected a member of the Accademia di S Luca, until 1716. His marble work is influenced by Lorenzo Ottoni, who was an accomplished portrait artist in the manner of Bernini. He is presumed to have worked in Naples, where his Victory of St Paul (1688) is in the chapel of S Gennaro in the cathedral. In 1696, with Camillo Rusconi, he was commissioned to make four angels for the chapel of S Ignazio in the church of Il Gesù, Rome, but was replaced by Ottoni and Francesco Moratti because of conflicting contractual obligations (to Cardinal Pietro Ottoboni). His work as a stuccoist included collaborating with Ottoni to make five putti to accompany an ...