Search Results

(b Savignano, nr Prato, Jan 7, 1777; d Florence, Jan 20, 1850).

Italian sculptor and draughtsman. He was one of the most independent-minded sculptors in Italy in the generation after Antonio Canova. His early work is in the Neo-classical style predominant throughout Europe around the turn of the century. While in the Paris studio of Jacques-Louis David he became interested in the art of the Quattrocento, an interest confirmed when he settled in Florence after 1815. His later works combine Neo-classical and neo-Renaissance elements with, particularly in his portraits, a strong taste for naturalism. In 1812 he held a series of classes at the Florentine Accademia di Belle Arti, astonishing his colleagues by instructing his model to take up a series of instantaneous and casual poses, instead of the customary carefully contrived stance taken from a famous work of art. In 1839 he was made a professor at the Accademia, and again overturned traditional academic notions, this time by presenting the pupils in the life class with a hunchbacked model. (For a detailed discussion of Bartolini’s unusual views on the imitation of nature see ...

(b London, April 1, 1794; d Ely, Oct 16, 1845).

English architect. He was born into a wealthy and cultured family related to the Disraelis and the Ricardos, and he trained in John Soane’s office (1810–16), receiving what was then probably the best architectural education available in England, as in his watercolour of the staircase of Gower House, London (1813; London, Soane Mus.; see Chambers, william, fig.). In 1816 he began a tour of Italy and Greece, which was recorded in letters to his family (untraced; typescript London, Soane Mus.) and in drawings and sketches (London, Soane Mus.; see Jordan). After travelling via Paris to Turin, Florence, Rome, Venice and Vicenza, a meeting with C. R. Cockerell in Rome (1817) persuaded him to visit Greece; during 1818 he went via Naples to Thessaly, Constantinople and Athens, returning to Rome via Sicily.

In June 1819 Basevi was back in London at a moment when building activity was expanding after the depressed years immediately following the end of the Napoleonic Wars. His earliest commissions were minor alteration works for family friends or business acquaintances. In ...

(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...

(bapt March 9, 1734; d Madrid, Aug 4, 1795).

Spanish painter and tapestry designer. In 1758 he won first prize in painting and a scholarship to study at the Real Academia de Bellas Artes de S Fernando, Madrid, with his picture the Tyranny of Geryon (1758; Madrid, Real Acad. S Fernando Mus.). There he studied under António González Velázquez. In 1759 he returned to Saragossa and married Sebastiana Merklein, the daughter of his former teacher. In 1763 Bayeu went back to Madrid where he was invited by Mengs to work under his direction in the Palacio Real, mainly as a painter of frescoes. There he began work on one of his most important early royal commissions, Olympus: The Fall of the Giants (1764), a ceiling fresco in one of the public chambers of the Prince of the Asturias (in situ). The quality of the highly finished sketch for this (Madrid, Prado), with its delicate impasto and loose brushwork, indicates Bayeu’s early talent. In ...

(b Saragossa, May 23, 1746; d Aranjuez, March 2, 1793).

Spanish painter, tapestry designer and printmaker, brother of Francisco Bayeu. He was neither as talented nor as eminent as Francisco Bayeu, but he held several minor posts and was an important figure on the artistic scene in Madrid. From 1764 he studied in Madrid at the Real Academia de Bellas Artes de S Fernando, where in 1766 he won first prize for painting. He alternated his studies with working for Anton Raphael Mengs and assisting Francisco with the frescoes at the Palacio Real. From 1765 he made cartoons for the Real Fábrica de Tapices de Santa Bárbara, first following Francisco’s sketches under his brother’s direction, later using his own compositions. These designs depict popular subjects in the Madrid tradition, but his figures reveal a pronounced academic quality and show a sense of gravity that sets them apart from the more mannered Rococo gestures of contemporary tapestry designers; this is apparent in 13 sketches for tapestry (after ...

(Ivanovich)

(b Dol’skoye, Kaluzhskaya Province, March 12, 1737; d St Petersburg, Aug 13, 1799).

Russian architect. From his earliest childhood he lived in Moscow, where his father was a minor cleric in one of the Kremlin churches. He studied painting in Moscow under the important architect Dmitry Ukhtomsky, who accepted him into his school of architecture in 1751 and had him enrolled for classes in fine arts and languages at Moscow University in 1754. As one of the most gifted students he was transferred in 1758 to the St Petersburg Academy of Arts. As its curriculum was not then complete, he studied for two years with Savva Ivanovich Chevakinsky (1713–74/80) during the latter’s construction of the naval church of St Nicholas, and with the Academy’s president, Aleksandr Filippovich Kokorinov (1726–72).

In 1760 Bazhenov was sent on a travelling scholarship to study under Charles de Wailly in Paris, where he became acquainted with a wide circle involved in the theoretical disciplines and the study of architecture. He created his own version of a plan for the Hôtel des Invalides and a model of the Louvre, grasping the distinctive character of the nascent French Neo-classicism. As a foreigner he was not entitled to the Prix de Rome upon graduation from the Académie Royale d’Architecture in ...

(b Le Havre, June 21, 1750; d Paris, April 15, 1818).

French sculptor, draughtsman and engraver. He arrived in Paris in 1765 to become a pupil of Augustin Pajou. Although he never won the Prix de Rome, he appears to have travelled to Rome in the early 1770s. About 1780 or 1781 he was involved in the decoration of Claude-Nicolas Ledoux’s Hôtel Thélusson, Paris. From 1784 to 1785 he carried out work at the château of Compiègne, including the decoration of the Salle des Gardes, where his bas-reliefs illustrating the Battles of Alexander (in situ) pleasantly combine a Neo-classical clarity of composition with a virtuosity and animation that are still Rococo in spirit.

Beauvallet was approved (agréé) by the Académie Royale in 1789. During the French Revolution he was a passionate republican and presented plaster busts of Marat and of Chalier (1793–4; both destr.) to the Convention. He was briefly imprisoned after the fall of Robespierre in ...

(b Paris, April 12, 1744; d Paris, May 1, 1818).

French architect and landscape designer. He had a distinguished career as a royal architect at the courts of Louis XV and Louis XVI. Although his fame rests on his accomplishments as a landscape architect, his mercurial talents are perhaps best characterized in his drawings for interior decoration and court festivals. After studying physics under the Abbé Nollet at the Collège de Navarre, Bélanger attended the Académie Royale d’Architecture in Paris between 1764 and 1766 where he worked under Julien-David Le Roy and Pierre Contant d’Ivry. He was not a successful student and left without achieving the illustrious Prix de Rome. Nevertheless, under Le Roy’s influence he was involved with the circle of Neo-classical artists, including Charles-Louis Clérisseau, who had recently returned from Italy. In 1767 Bélanger became a Dessinateur du Roi at the Hôtel des Menus Plaisirs under Charles Michel-Ange Challe. Since the Menus Plaisirs were responsible for the temporary decorations and stage scenery for court festivities, Bélanger was involved with preparations for the marriage celebrations in ...

(Iliev)

(b Sofia, Aug 11, 1891; d Poland, Oct 10, 1962).

Bulgarian architect, theorist and teacher. He graduated in architecture from the Technische Hochschule, Berlin, in 1920. On returning to Bulgaria he formed a practice with Ivan Danchov (1898–1972). Belkovski espoused the revival of Neo-classicism that was prevalent in much of Europe in the 1930s and actively resisted the modernist trends of Functionalism and Constructivism. Notable examples of his collaboration with Danchov in Sofia are the Bulgaria Hotel and Concert Hall (1934–7), originally with frescoes (destr. 1944), the Balkan Cinema and Hotel (1935–7; from 1944 Youth Theatre) and the Telephone Exchange (1942–7), with sculptures by Lyouben Dimitrov (b 1904). Belkovski and Danchov also designed Kuyumdzhiiski House (1931; now the French Embassy), Oborishte Street, Sofia. From 1943 Belkovski was a professor at the Higher Institute for Architecture and Building, Sofia, and Director of the Institute of Town Planning and Architecture of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, where he published papers in the field of standardized designs and the industrialization of construction....

(b Rome, Dec 3, 1752; d Rome, Oct 31, 1833).

Italian architect. He initially studied painting and drawing, but soon turned to architecture and in 1775 won second place in the first class of architecture at the Accademia di S Luca in Rome with an elaborate design for a villa. Belli’s teacher of architecture was Pietro Camporese I. He assisted Camporese on his last commissions, including the erection of an arch in honour of Pope Pius VI (completed 1789) at Subiaco and in the remodelling of the Palazzo di S Appolinare in Rome; he also taught Camporese’s sons and grandson. Belli was also an assistant to Giovanni Antinori (1734–92). Together they erected the colossal statues and obelisk (1783–6) in the Piazza del Quirinale and raised the obelisks (1789) at the Piazza Trinità dei Monti and Piazza Montecitorio (1789–92), all in Rome.

In 1821 Belli was chosen by Pope Pius VII to advise on the design of a ...

(b Madrid, Feb 23, 1845; d Madrid, Dec 20, 1924).

Spanish sculptor. He was the son of the sculptor Francisco Bellver (1812–89), with whom he undertook his first studies until attending the Madrid Escuela Superior de Pintura, Escultura y Grabado. Ricardo soon started to submit to the Exposiciones Nacionales de Bellas Artes works on historical subjects, such as Tucapel (1862), on mythology, such as Satyr Playing the Flute and a Young Faun Playing with a Goat (both 1864), and others that were religious, such as Piety (1866).

In 1874 Bellver y Ramón obtained a grant to study at the Academia Española de Bellas Artes in Rome; there his most significant works included a bust of Don Gonzalo Fernández de Córdoba, El Gran Capitán (1453–1515), executed in 1875, and a relief entitled the Burial of St Agnes, which shows traces of Neo-classicism (Madrid, S Francisco el Grande). During this period he sculpted his popular and dynamic ...

(b Hartland, CT, June 15, 1773; d Springfield, MA, July 26, 1845).

American architect and writer. Benjamin was one of the most influential architect–writers of the first half of the 19th century in the USA and was trained as a housewright in rural Connecticut between 1787 and 1794. Two of his earliest commissions, the carving of Ionic capitals (1794) for the Oliver Phelps House in Suffield, CT, and the construction of an elliptical staircase (1795) in Charles Bulfinch’s Connecticut State Capitol at Hartford, reveal an exceptional ability with architectural geometry that was to help to determine the direction of his career. Benjamin worked as a housewright in a succession of towns along the Connecticut River during the 1790s. In 1797, dissatisfied with the publications of William Pain, an English popularizer of the Neo-classical style of Robert Adam, Benjamin wrote The Country Builder’s Assistant, a modest handbook for carpenters that was the first such work by an American writer. In ...

(b Arezzo, Jan 8, 1769; d Florence, Feb 3, 1844).

Italian painter. In 1781 he began his studies at the Accademia di Belle Arti in Florence, where he was taught by such Neo-classical painters as Giuseppe Piattoli (c. 1743–1823) and Sante Pacini (fl 1762–90). He went to Rome in 1792 to continue his studies and while there painted the Martyrdom of St Donatus (1794; Arezzo Cathedral) for Bishop Marcacci of Arezzo. This work was one of his first commissions and shows the influence of Baroque religious art. By the time Marcacci commissioned him to paint Judith with the Head of Holofernes (1803–4; Arezzo Cathedral), his style had developed under the influence of Vincenzo Camuccini and Antonio Canova, artists who dominated the Neo-classical movement in Rome. However, his crisp, linear style of drawing shows a greater affinity to the work of the Danish–German painter Asmus Jakob Carstens than to that of any Italian. Canova was a close friend of Benvenuti’s and visited Arezzo expressly to see ...

(b Basle, Oct 20, 1801; d Basle, May 12, 1854).

Swiss architect. He studied in Karlsruhe (1819–23) under Friedrich Weinbrenner, then moved to Paris, where he worked in the studio of Jean Nicolas Huyot and took courses at the Académie. He studied in Italy (1825–8), concentrating on Classical buildings (in Rome, Paestum and Sicily) and Roman Renaissance architecture. On his return to Basle he founded a building firm and a school of architecture and drawing that was modelled on Weinbrenner’s. He built comparatively little but entered numerous competitions, and his designs reflect his training with Weinbrenner, his study of antiquity and above all his early enthusiasm for the Renaissance, which had some influence on the ideas of his brother-in-law Jacob Burckhardt. Germann gives a full list of Berri’s projects; buildings in Basle include the Stadtcasino (1821–4; destr.), houses at 5–7 St Albangraben (1825–7) and his own house at 16 Malzgasse (1828). His main work is the ...

(b Vienna, May 3, 1806; d Toronto, Jan 18, 1892).

Canadian painter of French origin. He was the son of René Théodore Berthon (1776–1859), court painter to Napoleon I, who was in Vienna at the time of George Theodore’s birth to paint a portrait of Francis I (Vienna, Hofburg-Schauräume). The elder Berthon had been a student of Jacques-Louis David, and he trained his son in the French Neo-classical style.

George Theodore Berthon moved to England in 1827 and was employed by Sir Robert Peel as a French and drawing tutor to his daughters. From 1835 to 1837 Berthon exhibited several portraits at the Royal Academy, London. He settled in Toronto late in 1844 with a letter of introduction from Peel, which he presented to John Strachan, Anglican Bishop of Toronto. Strachan proved to be an important early patron to Berthon; a portrait of the Bishop (1845; Toronto U., Trinity Coll.) painted by Berthon helped to establish his career in Toronto. Other early paintings include Berthon’s first large-scale portrait, ...

(b Besançon, Jan 10, 1734; d Besançon, Jan 16, 1797).

French architect. He first came to prominence in 1760 when he built the town house of the Marquis Terrier de Santans in Besançon in the Neo-classical style. A later work for the same client, the Château de Moncley (1778), was one of his most important works and a significant example of French Neo-classicism. It has a semicircular courtyard like that at the Château de Montmusard (1764–9; partially destr.), near Dijon, by Charles de Wailly, while the main building, set off by a bold portico, was inspired by the façade of the Intendance (1770–76) in Besançon by Victor Louis. Inside, the hall of the château is decorated with monolithic Corinthian columns, as is the elegant staircase, which divides into two after an intermediate landing. Bertrand remains particularly well known, however, for his work as municipal architect of Besançon after 1777, in which capacity he enlarged the Promenade de Chamars (...

[Nicolo]

(b Parma, Sept 3, 1780; d Parma, July 16, 1854).

Italian architect. He was the most prominent of a long line of architects in Parma named Bettoli and practised in an eclectic, Neo-classical style. He studied privately, probably with Domenico Artusi (1754–1830), and seems to have been influenced by Ennemond-Alexandre Petitot, an exponent of French ideas and architect to the Dukes of Parma. Bettoli’s early work, including designs for a triumphal arch (1811) honouring Napoleon and for the refacing of the Arco di S Lazzaro, Parma, indicates that he allied himself with the Establishment. Controversy over his designs for a new theatre in Parma (now the Teatro Regio) did not stop his appointment in 1816 as court architect to Marie Louise Bonaparte, Duchess of Parma (reg 1815–47), the second wife of Napoleon and former Empress of France. Under her patronage, he undertook the restoration of the Teatro Farnese, the Camera di S Paolo and the church of S Maria del Quartiere and designed major additions (...

(b Gotha, Dec 27, 1725; d Vienna, March 23, 1806).

German sculptor, painter and architect. He was the son of a court gardener who worked first in Gotha and then in Württemberg. He was originally intended to become an architect; in 1747 Duke Charles-Eugene of Württemberg sent him to train in Paris where, under the influence of painters such as Charles-Joseph Natoire and François Boucher, he turned to painting. The eight-year period of study in Rome that followed prompted Beyer to devote himself to sculpture, as he was impressed by antique works of sculpture and was also influenced by his close contacts with Johann Joachim Winckelmann and his circle. He also served an apprenticeship with Filippo della Valle, one of the main representatives of the Neo-classical tendency in sculpture. In 1759 Beyer returned to Germany, to take part in the decoration of Charles-Eugene’s Neues Schloss in Stuttgart.

In Stuttgart Beyer made an important contribution to the founding and improvement of facilities for the training of artists, notably at the Akademie, and to manufacture in the field of arts and crafts, particularly at the ...

(b Carpentras, April 10, 1758; d Montmorency, Oct 20, 1846).

French painter. He was apprenticed in Lyon for six years with his brother Jean-Pierre-Xavier Bidauld (1745–1813), a landscape and still-life painter. Subsequently, they left Lyon to travel together in Switzerland and Provence. In 1783 he moved to Paris, where he met Joseph Vernet (from whom he received valuable advice), Joseph-Siffred Duplessis and Jean-Honoré Fragonard. In 1785 he went to Rome with the assistance of Cardinal de Bernis and his patron, the dealer and perfumer Dulac. He stayed there for five years, travelling through Tuscany, Umbria and Campania and painting such works as Roman Landscape (1788; Basle, Kstmus.). Bidauld was closely involved with the circle of French Neo-classical painters in Rome in the 1780s. He was friendly with Louis Gauffier, Nicolas-Antoine Taunay and especially with Guillaume Lethière, who became his brother-in-law and with whom he occasionally collaborated. On his return to Paris in 1790 he travelled extensively in France, visiting Brittany, the Dauphiné and in particular Montmorency, where he stayed in the Mont-Louis house that had been the home of Jean-Jacques Rousseau....

(b Carrara, March 2, 1795; d Rome, April 17, 1878).

Italian sculptor. In 1818 he won the Rome Prize at the Accademia di Belle Arti e Liceo Artistico in Carrara and then went to Rome, where he entered Bertel Thorvaldsen’s studio, a centre for the production of sculpture and an important attraction for foreign visitors and clientele. He soon became a popular exponent of his master’s style and, in addition to taking his own commissions, he finished many of Thorvaldsen’s pieces and made authorized copies of his work, for example six copies of Tsar Alexander I (1822). By 1827 he was in charge of the studio. After Thorvaldsen’s death in 1844 he taught at the Accademia Nazionale di San Luca and continued to work in both Rome and Carrara, frequently collaborating with his brother Pietro Antonio Bienaimé (1781–1857). In 1839 Prince Alexander of Russia (later Tsar Alexander II) acquired from him his series of figures of ...