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Alfonso Rodríguez Ceballos
(b Alava, c. 1480; d Salamanca, Sept 3, 1537).
Spanish architect. After an initial training in Burgos, an important centre of Gothic architecture towards the end of the 15th century, he moved to Salamanca, where his patrons included Alonso de Fonseca, Archbishop of Santiago de Compostela and Patriarch of Alexandria, and subsequently his son, Alonso de Fonseca y Acevedo, Archbishop of Santiago de Compostela and then of Toledo. Alava worked during a period of transition from the Gothic to the Renaissance style and made a synthesis of the two that was not entirely successful. Even his late churches have a Gothic structure, with rib vaults and buttresses terminating in pinnacles. His façades are embellished with early Renaissance motifs, such as friezes, grotesques and medallion busts. In his use of the orders, he was notably uninhibited by conventional forms and proportions. In 1505 Alava built the sacristy for the chapel of Salamanca University, and he may have contributed to the university façade (...
Article
Samo Štefanac
[Aleši, Andrija; Alexii, Andreas; Andrea di Niccolò da Durazzo]
(b Dürres, c. 1425; d Split, 1504).
Dalmatian sculptor and architect of Albanian birth. Although he is recorded in 1435 at Zadar as a pupil of Marco di Pietro da Troia, his most important artistic influence was the Late Gothic style of Giorgio da Sebenico, with whom he worked in 1445 on Šibenik Cathedral and in 1452 at Ancona on the Loggia dei Mercanti. Between 1448 and 1460 Alessi also controlled his own workshop at Split and Rab. In 1466 he began work on his masterpiece, the baptistery at Trogir, which was finished in 1467. The chapel is rectangular in plan, covered with a barrel vault with acute angled coffers; its richly decorated interior is an eclectic blend of Late Gothic and Renaissance elements. The sculpture shares these characteristics: the Baptism of Christ over the entrance, with its elongated figures and complex drapery patterns, derives from Giorgio da Sebenico’s mannered style, while St Jerome in the Desert...
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Emma Packer
(b ?London, c. 1470; d ?London, 1532).
English goldsmith. He was the son of a London goldsmith and was the most successful goldsmith working at the Tudor court; his work bridged the transition between the Gothic and the Renaissance styles. He was an official at the Mint from 1504 to almost the end of his life, his appointment possibly facilitated by his marriage to Elizabeth, granddaughter of Sir Hugh Bryce (d 1496), Court Goldsmith to Henry VIII. In 1524 Amadas became the first working goldsmith to become Master of the Jewel House to Henry VIII, an office he retained until 1532, supplying spangles, wire and ribbons to the court. In the 1520s his orders included a large amount of plate for gifts to foreign ambassadors; he also supplied a number of New Year’s gifts for the court. Cardinal Thomas Wolsey was one of Amadas’ most important clients, and Amadas supplied him with a number of lavish objects. Other clients included ...
Article
Alfonso Rodríguez Ceballos
Spanish family of architects. Juan de Badajoz (i) (b ?Badajoz; d León, 31 Aug 1522) probably came from the region of Extremadura. He worked in León virtually all his life, and his works are exclusively Late Gothic in style. In 1498 he was appointed master builder of León Cathedral, where his most individual work was the chapter library (1505; now St James’s Chapel), an extremely flamboyant example of the Gothic style. In 1508 he was called to Oviedo Cathedral to design the elegant tower (executed by local builders). In 1513 he replaced the semicircular presbytery of the Romanesque church of S Isidoro el Real, León, with a rectangular chapel of more ample proportions, and similar in style to his cathedral library. His son Juan de Badajoz (ii) [el Mozo] (b León, c. 1498; d León, c. 1560) assisted him at León Cathedral, and succeeded him as chief master builder in ...
Article
Rosamond Allwood
(fl London, 1865–82).
English furniture designer and manufacturer. He may have been trained by the Gothic Revival architect and furniture designer J. P. Seddon, whose work certainly influenced his first published design, a davenport in a geometric Reformed Gothic style, in the Building News of 1865. That year he also advertised a ‘New Registered Reclining Chair’, made by Marsh & Jones of Leeds, whose London showrooms were near his own premises off Cavendish Square. In 1865 Marsh & Jones supplied the Yorkshire mill-owner Sir Titus Salt with a large group of furniture, including a bedroom suite, and in 1867 with the case of an Erard grand piano (all Leeds, Temple Newsam House) designed by Bevan; described at the time as ‘medieval’, the pieces are decorated with geometric marquetry ornament. Bevan designed a bookcase for the Manchester firm James Lamb, which was shown in the Paris Exposition Universelle of 1867, and by the following year was also designing for ...
Article
Darryl Patrick
(fl 1820–50).
American architect. There is evidence that Bond was trained by Solomon Willard. Certain of Bond’s designs suggest the Greek Revival approach that Willard brought from Washington, DC. Bond’s style moved between Gothic Revival and a Neo-classical heaviness. In the Salem City Hall of 1836–37 the two-storey Greek Revival façade shows his carefully proportioned details. An example of Gothic Revival is St John’s Episcopal Church and Rectory (1841), Devens Street, Boston, which has a rather heavy granite façade dominated by a square tower with a battlemented roof-line; there are large quatrefoil windows in the walls below. In the same year Bond was called to Oberlin College in Ohio to design First Church, which had to be a Greek Revival design. He worked on Lewis Wharf (1836–40; later remodelled), Boston, where certain walls reflect his attraction to boldly massed granite surfaces. Bond’s best-known buildings during his life were at Harvard University, Cambridge, MA. These included Gore Hall (...
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P. Scarpellini
(b Perugia, c. 1420; d Perugia, July 8, 1496).
Italian painter. He was almost certainly trained in Perugia between 1430 and 1440, where a Late Gothic style was still dominant. Subsequently he was influenced by Fra Angelico, whose polyptych (Perugia, G.N. Umbria) for S Domenico, Perugia, was commissioned in 1437, and more importantly by Domenico Veneziano, who worked in that city c. 1438. The influence of Domenico Veneziano and of Gentile da Fabriano can be seen in Bonfigli’s earliest surviving work, a polyptych (now dismembered), which had a central panel of the Virgin and Child (El Paso, TX, Mus. A.), shown against a densely wooded background, and St Sebastian and a Bishop Saint (Monserrat, Mus.) on one wing. Another wing (untraced) shows St Bernardino of Siena and St Anthony Abbot. Bonfigli is first documented on 7 March 1445, when he undertook to paint a Virgin and Child with Two Angels (untraced) for a chapel near S Pietro, Perugia. A votive fresco of ...
Article
Stefan Muthesius
(b Hatford, Wantage, Berks, March 30, 1825; d London, Oct 7, 1901).
English architect and designer. Along with G. F. Bodley and J. L. Pearson he was the major designer of Gothic Revival churches in the later Victorian period. He began his training in London in 1847 and entered the Royal Academy Schools two years later, but his contacts in Oxfordshire with important High Church patrons such as John Butler, the vicar of Wantage, and key architect members of the Ecclesiological Society, including G. E. Street and William White, are of greater significance. As was the case with Street and White, secular commissions were to occupy only a minor part in Brooks’s career.
Brooks set up as an independent architect in London in 1852. Little happened, however, until 1860, when he began rapidly to gain prominence through a sequence of town churches. The issue of building large churches for the working-class poor in the unfashionable new districts of London was a major concern at this time among the Ecclesiologists, particularly A. J. B. Hope (ii), and even provoked debates in Parliament; a ‘model town church’ was then provided by ...
Article
Gordon Campbell
(b 1811; d 1887).
American furniture-maker based in New York. He was active from 1841, when he entered into a partnership, and was based in Brooklyn from the 1850s. The best-known examples of his furniture are a Gothic Revival armchair (c. 1847; New York, Met.) and an elaborately decorated cabinet (built to accommodate a set of Audubon’s ...
Article
Donna McGee
(b Belfast, Nov 5, 1811; d Montreal, Nov 19, 1885).
Canadian architect of Irish origin. The son of an architect of the same name, he arrived in Quebec City in 1830. He established a practice there in 1831 and designed houses, including a Gothic Revival villa for the provincial secretary Dominick Daly (1798–1868), who may have been responsible for Browne’s appointment as Chief Architect for the Board of Works. He designed many public buildings in Kingston and Montreal; the former became capital of the Province of Canada in 1841, and Browne was commissioned to modify, add to and erect various government buildings. His masterpiece in Kingston is the City Hall (1843–4; then known as the Town Hall and Market Building), the commission he won in a competition held in 1841. The City Hall shows his characteristic massing of volumes and contrasting textures, using a varied vocabulary and a strong sculptural sense. Facing the waterfront, the main entrance to the T-shaped City Hall has a pediment supported by four columns, surmounted by a tall dome capped by a cupola. He was also responsible for many commercial and domestic commissions in Kingston, notably the houses known as St Andrew’s Manse for St Andrew’s Presbyterian Church and Rockwood for ...
Article
Jack Lohman
[Heinrich; Henryk]
(b ?1360–65; d after 1428).
German architect. Brunsberg’s work represents an important decorative phase of brick Gothic architecture in western Pomerania. There is documentary evidence for his work at St Katharinen, Brandenburg, and a further three buildings are attributed to him on stylistic grounds. His name appears on a brick inscription on the north side of St Katharinen between the Lady chapel portals: Anno d[o]m[ini] MCCCCI co[n]structa e[st] h[aec] ecc[lesi]a in die assu[m]ptionis Mariae virginis per magistru[m] Hinricu[m] Brunsbergh d[e] Stet[t]in (Master Hinrich Brunsberg of Szczecin (Ger. Stettin) built St Katharinen in 1401). Brunsberg is also mentioned 28 times in the town records of Szczecin between 1400 and 1428; in each case he is referred to as master in the context of either owing or being owed money. All his architectural activity was concentrated in the area between Brandenburg and Szczecin.
Brunsberg rebuilt the nave of St Katharinen, a five-bay hall construction, after the old nave collapsed in ...
Article
David Prout
(b London, Dec 2, 1827; d London, April 20, 1881).
English architect and designer. His flamboyant and original High Victorian architectural style was influenced by French 13th-century Gothic, but he drew also on sources of many other periods. He is best known for his work at Cardiff Castle and Castell Coch for his patron, the Marquess of Bute. His designs for the decorative arts, particularly furniture and metalwork, are equally inventive and elaborate. He was friendly with the leaders of the Pre-Raphaelite movement, employing a number of Pre-Raphaelite artists and craftsmen in his decorative work.
He was the eldest son of Alfred Burges, a marine engineer and partner of James Walker (1781–1862). Walker & Burges were government engineers for many military and civil projects. Alfred Burges was immensely successful and the family wealth later enabled William to be selective in his commissions.
William Burges attended King’s College School, London, from 1839; here he was a contemporary of Dante Gabriel Rossetti and studied under ...
Article
Peter Kurmann
[incorrectly Stehaimer]
(b Burghausen, c. 1355–60; d Landshut, Aug 10, 1432).
German architect. He was the most important architect of the German-speaking area in the late 14th century and the early 15th, and the founder of the tradition of Late Gothic hall churches in south Germany that lasted over a century and a half. Documentary sources are scarce: the earliest possible reference is in 1389, when ‘Master Hans’ is mentioned as master builder of the church of St Martin at Landshut, in a context indicating that he had already held this office for several years. On the assumption that he was then a mature man, he was probably trained in the builders’ lodge of the large town church of St Jakob, Burghausen, which was built from 1360. Some features of his main work, St Martin at Landshut, suggest that he must have been familiar with the stylistic repertory of the cathedral lodge in Prague under Peter Parler (see Parler family, §3...
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Chris Brooks
(b London, Sept 7, 1814; d London, Feb 23, 1900).
English architect and designer. He committed his feelings and creative energies to the High Anglicanism of the Oxford Movement from the early 1840s and to its expression through the revival of Gothic architecture and design, then vociferously advocated by the Ecclesiological Society, of which he became an active member. Butterfield’s extensive output was almost exclusively confined to the building and restoration of churches and associated buildings, such as vicarages and schools.
He was the eldest son of a London chemist, and his parents were Nonconformists. From 1831 to 1833 Butterfield was articled to a Pimlico builder, Thomas Arber, from whom he must have derived the detailed understanding of practical building that was to be basic to his architectural practice. Between 1833 and 1836 he was the pupil of E. L. Blackburne, a London architect with strong antiquarian interests, and in 1838–9 he became assistant to a Worcester architect, probably Harvey Eginton, whose practice included church building and restoration. During this period Butterfield must have begun to acquire the profound knowledge of medieval architecture that was to underlie all his work. In ...
Article
Nancy Mowll Mathews
(Stevenson)
(b Allegheny City [now in Pittsburgh], May 22, 1844; d Le Mesnil-Théribus, France, Jun 14, 1926).
American painter and printmaker, active in France. One of the great American expatriates of the later 19th century (along with Sargent and Whistler), Cassatt was an active member of the Impressionist group in Paris and carved out a lasting international reputation for her famous “modern” representations of the mother and child (see fig.). Because of her success, her life and art have been closely examined to gain a better understanding of how gender affects artists during their lifetimes and afterwards in historical perspective.
Daughter of a Pittsburgh broker, Mary Stevenson Cassatt received a cultured upbringing and spent five years abroad as a child (1851–1855). In 1860, at the age of 16, she began classes at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia, and in 1865 sailed again for Europe. During the next four years she studied in and around Paris with such notables as Jean-Léon Gérôme...
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Adriano Ghisetti Giavarina
(di Marco)
(b Venice, fl ?1458–76).
Italian sculptor and architect. He was active in Romagna and the Marches, working in a transitional style between Gothic and Renaissance, influenced by Venetian taste. His first known work is the signed, but undated low stone relief depicting the Lion of St Mark (c. 1458–60) set into the brickwork over the entrance to the Rocca Brancaleone at Ravenna. In 1462 he was at Amandola, in the Marches, and was then called to the nearby town of Fermo to execute a commission (probably the Late Gothic mixtilinear arch that frames the entrance to the Euffreducci Chapel in the church of S Francesco). In 1465 he completed the door, in Istrian stone and Red Verona marble, of Forlì Cathedral (removed 1841; reconstructed with slight modifications in 1915 for the façade of the Carmelite church), the decorative style of which derives from Renaissance Tuscany. In 1468 he created a portal for the church of S Agostino, Amandola, which combines Romanesque and Late Gothic elements....
Article
Joe Holyoak
(b Leicester, 1831-06-21; d Birmingham, 1883-10-22).
English architect. He was a pupil of H. Goddard (1792–1868) in Leicester and moved to Birmingham in 1856 where he became the foremost late 19th-century Gothic Revival architect. He was closely associated with the ideas of Joseph Chamberlain (who was no relation) and the Liberal party. He was also an ardent disciple of Ruskin and became trustee of Ruskin’s Guild of St George. From 1865 to 1883 he was Secretary of the Birmingham and Midland Institute, for whom he designed an extension (1880; destr. 1966) to E. M. Barry’s original building. Chamberlain favoured a strong, geometric Gothic style, using industrially produced materials such as red brick, terracotta, encaustic tiles and cast iron in his buildings. His first works, a shop in Union Street (1857; destr.) and Eld House (c. 1858) in Edgbaston, were both for his uncle. The polychromatic Venetian style of the house was in sharp contrast to the classical stucco buildings of that area. From ...
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Luc Verpoest
(b Feluy, Jan 10, 1849; d Ghent, Jan 11, 1920).
Belgian architect and writer. He trained as a civil engineer under Adolphe Pauli at the Ecole Spéciale de Génie Civil of the State University of Ghent. As a student he came into contact with the Belgian Gothic Revival movement centred on Jean-Baptiste Bethune and the St Luke School in Ghent, founded by Bethune in 1862. From 1874 Cloquet worked with the publishers Desclée. His early architectural work was similar to that of Bethune, Joris Helleputte and the first generation of St Luke architects. His most important projects were built around the turn of the century: the University Institutes (1896–1905), Ghent, and the Central Post Office (1897–1908), Ghent, the latter with Etienne Mortier (1857–1934), a pupil of Helleputte. In them Cloquet adopted a more eclectic though still predominantly medieval style, also introducing Renaissance motifs. Between 1904 and 1911 he designed a redevelopment plan for the historic centre of Ghent, between the early 14th-century belfry and the 15th-century church of St Michael, known as the Kuip, which was realized before the Ghent World Fair of ...