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(b Stockholm, Jan 3, 1716; d Stockholm, Feb 26, 1796).

Swedish architect. His father, Göran Josuae Adelcrantz (1668–1739), was a pupil and associate of Nicodemus Tessin (ii) and had studied in France and Italy before assisting in the building of the Kungliga Slott in Stockholm. He became City Architect of Stockholm and created the splendid Baroque cupola (1724–44) on Jean De la Vallée’s Katarinakyrka, but he had been pushed aside during the political crisis that followed the death of Charles XII in 1718. He advised his son not to become an architect but nevertheless let him attend the drawing school at the palace. After his father’s death, Adelcrantz went abroad for architectural study in Paris and Italy, returning in 1743 to assist Carl Hårleman in the interior work on the Kungliga Slott. In 1757 he became Superintendent and in 1767 President of the Royal Academy of Arts, which he reorganized by instituting schools of drawing and painting, sculpture and architecture. He was made a baron in ...

(b Aberdeen, 1740; d Philadelphia, PA, March 5, 1795).

American cabinetmaker of Scottish birth. He trained as a cabinetmaker in Edinburgh and London. In 1763 he arrived in Philadelphia on the same boat as John Penn, the new Governor of Pennsylvania and a future client, to join Quaker friends. He opened a shop on Union Street and eventually moved to Second Street in the Society Hill area. He made stylish mahogany furniture (sold 1788; e.g. Philadelphia, PA, Cliveden Mus.; armchair, Winterthur, DE, Mus. & Gdns) for the governor’s mansion at Lansdowne, PA, and many of the most prominent families in the city owned his work, including the Mifflins, the Whartons, and the Chew family at Cliveden. The parlour suite he made for John Cadwalader carved by James Reynolds and the firm of Bernard and Jugiez in 1770–71 was among the most elaborate ever produced in the colonies (pole screen, Philadelphia, PA, Mus. A.).

A Quaker and Loyalist, Affleck refused to participate in the Revolution (...

(d Paris, March 22, 1772).

French cabinetmaker of German birth. About 1749 he became Marchand Ebéniste Privilégié du Roy Suivant la Cour et Conseils de Sa Majesté. He was active during the reign of Louis XV and was the only French cabinetmaker who was equally competent in both the Louis XV and Neo-classical styles. His pieces were few but of an extremely high standard; he employed fine wood marquetry, Japanese lacquer and Boulle marquetry, as well as producing rigorous bronzes. Although he was little known to the general public of his own day, such leading dealers as Léger Bertin, Hébert, Charles Darnault, Lazare Duvaux, Poirier and Claude-François Julliot gave him commissions, and through them he was patronized by a fashionable élite. His extant works in the Louis XV style include desks fitted with porcelain plaques, a series of sumptuous marquetry commodes (e.g. c. 1755; Toledo, OH, Mus. A.) and an astonishing upright writing-table (1758...

(b Viggiù, nr Varese, 1704; d Viggiù, 1780).

Italian sculptor. He began his apprenticeship under Carlo Beretta (1716–64), and later worked with Carlo Francesco Mellone (d 1736), both of whom were protostatuari, or directors of sculpture, for the Fabbrica del Duomo in Milan. In 1728 Buzzi began working as a sculptor in the Camposanto sculpture yard, after producing a successful test-piece bozzetto in terracotta of Diana Awakened by Endymion (Milan, Mus. Duomo). The high professional quality of Buzzi’s work, and his marked sensitivity to the poetry of the Roman Baroque—introduced to Milan by Mellone—won him a series of commissions. At first Buzzi carried on his activity in the workshop of his brother Giuseppe Maria, who was also active in the cathedral as a marble mason. Elia Vincenzo did not open his own workshop until 1741, on the death of the sculptor F. Zarabatta. He was also active in other workshops, including those at the Milanese churches of S Maria alla Porta (...

(fl 1791–1835).

Italian sculptor, nephew of Elia Vincenzo Buzzi. His mature production was marked by his ‘provincial’ training in the family workshops and in particular by his uncle’s Rococo style, as well as by his own later activity in Milan Cathedral. In 1791 he designed and executed the marble main altar in the church of S Maria di Campagna at Piacenza. From 1792 he was active at the Fabbrica del Duomo in Milan. The statues that he produced there were particularly numerous after a decree issued by the Emperor Napoleon in 1805 forced the administration to complete the cathedral’s façade and its sculptural decoration in a very short time. The stylistic heterogeneity that characterizes Buzzi’s whole production reflects his uncertainty at a time when Milanese sculpture was dominated by the conflicting styles of the Rococo and Neo-classicism. At times Buzzi followed a Neo-classical aesthetic, as in the statues of St John the Evangelist...

(b Foligno, July 23, 1739; d Rome, March 18, 1816).

Italian painter and decorator. Active in Umbria and the Lazio region, he worked initially in a Rococo language that revealed his links with the art of Rome in the first half of the 18th century, especially with Sebastiano Conca. Later he moved closer to the Neo-classical taste, always tempered by an exquisitely decorative flair. During his initial period of activity in Umbria, he produced the Virgin and Child with SS Peter and Paul (signed and dated 1775) at S Pietro in Foligno and decorated some rooms in the Palazzo Benedetti di Montevecchio (signed) and in the Palazzo Morelli at Spoleto (signed and dated 1773–5). After moving to Rome, where he was highly esteemed by Pope Pius VI, he produced decorations with grotesques and landscapes as well as biblical and mythological scenes in some of the most notable palaces of the city: at the Palazzo Chigi (1780–86; in collaboration with ...

English family of silversmiths, industrialists, collectors, and patrons, of French origin. The family originated from the town of St Pierre on the Ile d’Oléron off La Rochelle. They arrived in London a few years after the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685, and between 1708 and 1780 three generations of Courtauld silversmiths were registered at the Goldsmiths’ Company. Augustine Courtauld (c.1686–c. 1751) was apprenticed to Simon Pantin in 1701 and, after becoming a freeman of the Goldsmiths’ Company in 1708, he started a business as a plateworker in Church Court, off St Martin’s Lane in London. The majority of his work is of high quality, for example a silver tea-table (1742; St Petersburg, Hermitage) and the state salt of the Corporation of the City of London (1730; London, Mansion House). Augustine’s brother Pierre Courtauld (1690–1729) registered a mark in 1721...

[Mathias; Matthew]

(fl c. 1740–early 1770s).

English engraver, draughtsman and drawing-master. In 1748 his premises faced Old Slaughter’s Coffee House in St Martin’s Lane, London, a favourite meeting-place for adherents of the new Rococo style. His earliest known satirical print, the Cricket Players of Europe, is dated 1741.

In 1751 he issued A New-book of Chinese, Gothic & Modern Chairs, a slight publication on eight leaves. Twelve examples with bizarre backs were described as ‘Hall Chairs’ in a reissue of 1766, but it is more likely they were intended for gardens and summer-houses. A shell-back chair (Stratford-on-Avon, Nash’s House) corresponding to one of the designs was made for the Chinese temple erected at Stratford for the Shakespeare jubilee organized by David Garrick in 1769. Five plates from a second book of chairs (c. 1751), of which no copy survives, were apparently reprinted in Robert Manwaring’s The Chair-maker’s Guide (1766). Described as ‘Parlour Chairs’, they incorporate extravagant C-scroll motifs in the backs....

(b Paris, c. 1715–20; d after 1783).

French cabinetmaker and dealer. He was the most famous member of a family of cabinetmakers; his father, François Faizelot Delorme (1691–1768), and his brothers Jean-Louis Faizelot Delorme and Alexis Faizelot Delorme were all maîtres-ébénistes. Adrien became a maître-ébéniste on 22 June 1748 and was a juror of his guild from 1768 to 1770. He stamped his work delorme. He made and sold luxury furniture in the Louis XV style, decorated with japanning either in imitation of Chinese lacquer (e.g. Amsterdam, Rijksmus.) or with European decoration (e.g. Waddesdon Manor, Bucks, NT). He also carried out sumptuous floral marquetry (e.g. Paris, Petit Pal.). His most distinguished work consisted of small pieces of furniture (e.g. Paris, Louvre; London, V&A; Washington, DC, Hillwood Mus.) embellished with floral marquetry or inlays of scrolls and foliation executed in end-grain wood on a dark-veined, light-wood ground forming a chevron pattern (e.g. Lyon, Mus. B.-A.). His work in the Neo-classical style, however, failed to impress connoisseurs....

[Du Plessis; Duplessy.]

French family of goldsmiths, bronze founders, sculptors and designers, of Italian descent. Due to the similarity in name, there has been some confusion between father and son and the attribution of their work; they are now generally distinguished as Duplessis père and Duplessis fils. Jean-Claude Chambellan Duplessis [Giovanni Claudio Chiamberlano] (b Turin, ?1690–95; d Paris, 1774) practised as a goldsmith in Turin before his marriage in 1720 and probably worked for Victor Amadeus II. He moved with his family to Paris c. 1740, perhaps encouraged there by Juste-Aurèle Meissonnier. In 1742 he was commissioned by Louis XV to design and make two large, bronze braziers, presented to the Turkish ambassador Saïd Mahmet Pasha (e.g. in Istanbul, Topkapi Pal. Mus.). From c. 1748 until his death he was employed at the porcelain factories of Vincennes and Sèvres as a designer of porcelain forms and supplier of bronze stands. He also supervised and advised craftsmen. In ...

(b Trapani, March 19, 1760; d Rome, Feb 16, 1821).

Italian painter. His father was a merchant in animal skins, and because of his habit of drawing on the hides Giuseppe was nicknamed ‘guastacuoi’. He had a period of apprenticeship with the sculptor Domenico Nolfo in Trapani and continued his studies in Palermo with the painter Padre Fedele da S Biagio (1717–1801) and later with Gioacchino Martorana. On returning to Trapani, he painted the picture the Virgin of Carmel Liberating the Souls in Purgatory. After a brief stay in Naples he moved to Rome, where, under the protection of Canova, he studied perspective and architectural drawing with the architect Giuseppe Barberi (1749–1809). Errante became moderately prosperous because he also executed miniatures, as well as making copies of—and restoring—Old Master paintings.

The first painting Errante completed in Rome is dated 1784: St Vincenzo, the altarpiece for SS Vincenzo e Anastasio alla Regola, which is characterized by its neat drawing and smooth tonal transitions. In the same period for the ...

(b Mannheim, Jan 13, 1731; d Breslau [now Wrocław, Poland], Sept 23, 1791).

German architect. He entered the court building office in Bayreuth as a clerk of works in 1749 and from 1750 to 1752 studied with Jacques-François Blondel in Paris. From 1754 he was a building inspector and head of the court building office, and in 1754–5 he accompanied Markgraf Friedrich of Bayreuth (reg 1735–63) on a trip to southern France and Italy. After the Markgraf’s death, Gontard was summoned by Frederick II, King of Prussia, to Potsdam. As head of the building office from 1764—first in Potsdam, then, after 1779, in Berlin—he was in charge of all royal building projects, and he was ennobled in 1767. Gontard’s modest early works in Bayreuth show the influence of Blondel. After his trip to Italy he built the south wing (1757–64) of the Neues Schloss and the Palais Reitzenstein (1761), both in Bayreuth, which already show Neo-classical tendencies in forms still bound to the Rococo. This trend is continued in the extension (...

(b Strass, nr Salzburg, June 14, 1732; d Vienna, Sept 11, 1810).

Austrian sculptor. He was apprenticed to Johann Georg Itzlfeldner (?1705–90) in Tittmoning. From 1754 to 1759 he studied at the Akademie der Bildenden Künste in Vienna, where he produced sculptures in the Bavarian Rococo style (e.g. Christ at the Martyr’s Pillar, gilded bronze, 1756; Cleveland, OH, Mus. A.). The Archbishop of Salzburg, Sigismund, Graf von Schrattenbach, enabled him to continue his studies in Bologna, Florence and Rome. He returned to Salzburg to become official sculptor to von Schrattenbach, and collaborated closely with his brother, the architect Wolfgang Hagenauer (1726–1801), who was also working for the Archbishop. In 1764 he married the Italian painter Rosa Barducci (1743–86). His most important commission in Salzburg was the Mariensäule on the Domplatz (lead, 1766–71; in situ). In 1773 he moved to Vienna and until 1779 worked with Christian Friedrich Wilhelm Beyer on the sculptural decoration of the park at ...

(b Kaltenbrunn, Tyrol, Jan 11, 1716; d Steinamanger [now Szombathely, Hungary], April 17, 1794).

Austrian architect. From 1734 he helped with the drawings for the famous ornamental railings (destr. 1821) erected by Johann Georg Oegg (1703–80) in front of the Residenz at Würzburg. He then studied at the Akademie der Bildenden Künste, Vienna, and later taught architecture in the city. In 1756 he was commissioned to erect an altarpiece and pulpit in the pilgrimage church at Sonntagberg, the design for which secured him election to the Akademie in 1757. In 1763 he began the reconstruction of the archbishop’s palace at Passau (completed 1771) in the Rococo style. His duties as drawing master to the Life Guard of Hungarian Nobles probably brought him into contact with the Captain General of the Guards, Prince Miklós Esterházy, who commissioned him in 1764 to carry out huge extensions to the family palace at Esterháza (now Fertőd) in Hungary. Only the central block, however, was completed to Hefele’s designs, the wings being added by the estate architect ...

[Mayhew and Ince]

English partnership of cabinetmakers formed in 1758 by William Ince (b ?London, c. 1738; d London, 6 Jan 1804) and John Mayhew (b 1736; d London, May 1811). Ince was apprenticed to John West (fl 1743–58) of Covent Garden, London, from 1752 until West’s death. As the usual age to begin an apprenticeship was 14, he was probably born towards the end of the 1730s. In 1758 Ince formed a partnership with Mayhew. They operated from Broad Street, Carnaby Market, an address formerly occupied by Charles Smith (fl 1746–59), whose premises they had purchased. In Mortimer’s Universal Director (1763) they were described as ‘cabinet-makers, carvers and upholders’, and by 1778 they were styling themselves ‘manufacturers of plate glass’ (Ince’s father and brother were glass-grinders).

In 1759 the partners began to issue in serial form The Universal System of Household Furniture...

(b Paris, 1732; d Paris, 1804).

French painter. A pupil of Jean-Baptiste Marie Pierre, he finished second in 1754 in the Prix de Rome competition with his Mattathias (untraced). He was approved (agréé) at the Académie Royale in 1765. He was a precocious and original artist, whose works range from historical, allegorical and religious pictures to decorative and genre pieces and portraits. His work frequently divided contemporary critical opinion. His Belisarius Begging Alms of 1767 (untraced), for example, was considered well composed by Louis Petit de Bachaumont, who admired the motif of the child begging with an upturned soldier’s helmet. Denis Diderot, on the other hand, dismissed the work as ‘a bad sketch’. Jollain’s particular aptitude was for religious subjects. At the Salon of 1769, for example, he exhibited The Refuge (untraced; oil sketch, British priv. col.), which depicts the founder of the Institute of Our Lady of Refuge in an attitude of devotional supplication; it was painted for the Order’s convent chapel at Besançon, and the chapel itself appears in the background. Jollain’s art was part of the mid-18th-century Baroque revival in French religious painting, and ...

(b Paris, 1689; d Paris, Oct 14, 1775).

French cabinetmaker. He was a member of a Parisian family of menuisiers and became a maître-ébéniste sometime between 1714 and 1722. After the death of Antoine-Robert Gaudreaus (1751) he became the main supplier to the Crown for 23 years and carried out commissions for 4000 pieces of furniture. Only a few, however, were masterpieces, produced either by Joubert or under his supervision. In 1758 he received the title of Ebéniste Ordinaire du Garde Meuble and in 1763, on the death of Jean-François Oeben, he became Ebéniste du Roi. Gradually, however, his position was taken over by Jean-Henri Riesener. Joubert acted to some extent as a main contractor, and when his workshop could not fulfil commissions he subcontracted to such cabinetmakers as Mathieu Criard, Marchand, Jacques Dubois, François Mondon (1694–1770), Boudin, Foullet, Louis Péridiez (1731–64), Daniel Deloose, Simon Oeben (d 1786) and particularly, during his final years of work, to ...

(b Saint-Paulien, Haute-Loire, June 20, 1731; d Paris, Dec 17, 1804).

French sculptor. He studied in Le Puy with the minor sculptor Gabriel Samuel (1689–1758) and in Lyon with Antoine-Michel Perrache (1726–79), who in 1758 recommended him to Guillaume Coustou (ii) in Paris. In 1765 Julien won the Prix de Rome with the relief Albinus Helping the Vestals to Flee the Gauls (untraced). After three years at the Ecole Royale des Elèves Protégés he went to the Académie de France in Rome (1768–72). Among his works from this time is a reduced copy (marble; Versailles, Château) of the antique statue Ariadne Abandoned, then known as Cleopatra. In 1773 he returned to Coustou’s studio and in 1776 suffered a humiliating check to his career when, on submission of his statue of Ganymede (marble; Paris, Louvre), he was refused admission to the Académie Royale (possibly at the instigation of his master). In 1779, however, he became a member of the Académie with the marble statue the ...

(b Venice, Oct 13, 1687; d Venice, Dec 20, 1766).

Italian architect. His father, Stefano Massari, was a joiner or carpenter, and Massari’s first patron was a friend of the family, Paolo Tamagnini, a rich Venetian merchant who commissioned him to build a villa (1712) at Istrana in the region of Treviso. The influence of Palladio, which characterized Massari’s work, was already apparent in this early building, particularly in the triple Palladian window in the central section. Massari went on to produce a large number of works for a variety of patrons, especially ecclesiastical ones, and he became one of the most important Venetian architects of the first half of the 18th century. Most of his buildings were executed in the Veneto region, but an early exception was the church of S Maria della Pace (1719), Brescia, for the Philippine Fathers. Built in two storeys, it has a five-bay façade with four large columns, and it served throughout the 18th century as a model for church architecture in the Veneto....

(b Rome, 1690; d Rome, Oct 19, 1768).

Italian painter and draughtsman. He was apprenticed in Rome, first to Andrea Procaccini and later to Maratti. His work is characterized by a classicism derived from Guido Reni and ultimately from Raphael. According to Pio, he was ‘nourished first by the perfect milk of Maratti, and then saturated with the divine nectar of Raphael’. One of the last artists of Maratti’s school, he was also a precursor of the movement known as Proto-Neo-classicism, which flourished in the Roman art world during the 1720s and 1730s, and the inventor of the new code of portraiture that evolved from the Maratti school.

Masucci entered the competitions held by the Accademia di S Luca, Rome, and won prizes in 1706, 1707 and 1708 with the Killing of Tarpeia, the Battle between the Horatii and the Curiatii, Ancus Marcius and Accius Nevius; on becoming an academician in 1724, he painted the Martyrdom of St Barbara...