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(b Paris, Jan 5, 1801; d Paris, July 29, 1871).

French architect and teacher. He studied architecture at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts, Paris, and won the Prix de Rome in 1829. His student work at the Villa Medici in Rome reflected the controversial principles of romantic rationalism being developed at that time by his contemporaries there, Henri Labrouste (see Labrouste family, §2) and Félix-Jacques Duban. Constant-Dufeux’s 5th-year envoi from Rome, a Chambre des Députés, was criticized by the Académie because it lacked references to the Classical models he had been sent to Rome to study. It incorporated simple box forms decorated with brightly coloured emblems and other elements, similar to Labrouste’s Basilica project of 1828 and reflecting the controversy over the use of colour in ancient Greek architecture (see Greek Revival).

In 1836 Constant-Dufeux returned to Paris and established an atelier that attracted some outstanding students, including Victor-Marie-Charles Ruprich-Robert. It later became one of the three ‘official’ ateliers nominated in ...

(b Vicenza, ?Sept 18, 1730; d Vicenza, Oct 26, 1803).

Italian architect and writer. He was a pupil of Domenico Cerato, developing an extremely conservative trend of Neo-classicism based on Palladio but assimilating contemporary ideas of prismatic form and functional planning; he was heavily influenced by the contemporary publication of Ottavio Bertotti Scamozzi’s Le fabbriche e i disegni di Andrea Palladio raccolti e illustrati (1776–83). Bertotti Scamozzi regarded him as having ‘appropriated’ rather then ‘imitated’ Palladio; Antoine Quatremère de Quincy called him a ‘rejuvenated Palladio’. He was a prolific architect, building numerous palazzi, villas and churches in the Veneto, and was elected a member of the Institut de France.

Calderari’s unexecuted design (1756) for the façade of the church of Padri Scalzi, Vicenza, exemplifies his manner. The composition followed closely that by Palladio for S Giorgio Maggiore (begun 1566), Venice, but the flat planes and the decoration of the frieze were resolutely Neo-classical. The chapels of the Casa Monza (...

(b England, 1740; d Dublin, 1784).

English architect, active in Ireland. He was a pupil of Robert Mylne and came to prominence in 1769 on winning the competition for the Royal Exchange, Dublin. He moved to Dublin to supervise the building’s erection and remained there until his death. The Royal Exchange (see Dublin, §I, 2) is the most interesting building of his career and a significant monument of international Neo-classicism. Here Cooley synthesized aspects of the work of William Chambers, Robert Mylne and James Gandon into an assured design notable for the picturesque excitements of its interior, the lucidity and grandeur of its plan and the control, learning and finish of its decorative detail. For the Public Offices in Dublin Cooley produced pompous sketch designs (1776) for a group of buildings incorporating the Four Courts, King’s Inns and Public Offices, two ranges of which were erected and later included in Gandon’s more brilliant Four Courts building. Cooley’s patron was the powerful ...

[Antonio]

(b Livorno, Dec 16, 1792; d Florence, April 26, 1877).

Italian architect, active in Poland. He studied in Florence at the Accademia delle Belle Arti under Gaspero Maria Paoletti from 1810 to 1813 and from 1813 to 1818 with Giuseppe del Rosso (1760–1831), going to Poland in 1818 at the invitation of the government. With the support of the scholar and statesman Stanisław Staszic (later his patron), he became in 1817 a member of the Government Building Council and in 1820 was nominated General Government Builder. His first work in Warsaw was the reconstruction of the building of the charity society Res Sacra Miser (1819; destr. 1944; rebuilt 1947–50), a project that met with such approval that Corazzi immediately received further, more important, official commissions. He also designed the palace for the Society of the Friends of Science on Krakowskie Przedmieście, Warsaw (1820–23; destr. 1939–44, rebuilt 1947–50).

A leading representative of European Neo-classicism, Corazzi continued the traditions of late 18th- and early 19th-century monumental architecture. His work was particularly well suited to the political aims of the authorities in the Kingdom of Poland in the 1820s, in particular to their desire to give Warsaw the features of a modern metropolis and to use its major public buildings as symbols of governmental power....

(b Teziutlán, Puebla, June 10, 1822; d Mexico City, May 28, 1884).

Mexican painter. He studied painting at the Academia de San Carlos, Mexico City, and in 1844 went to the Accademia di S Luca, Rome, where he was taught by the Sicilian Neo-classical painter Natal di Carta. His earliest works were portraits, for example that of the Mexican sculptors Pérez and Valera (1847; Mexico City, Mus. N. A.). He exhibited Columbus before the Catholic Kings (1850; Mexico City, Mus. N. A.) in his studio in Florence, to critical acclaim, and the painting made a great impression in Mexico when he returned there in 1853, also taking with him his most ambitious, and highly academic, easel painting, Christ the Redeemer and the Woman Taken in Adultery (1853; Guadalupe, Mus. Reg.). In his Romantic portrait of Doña Dolores Tosta de Santa Anna (1855; Mexico City, Mus. S. Carlos), wife of the president of the Mexican Republic, Cordero modelled the sitter in a sculptural fashion; the work is remarkable in 19th-century Mexican art in its departure from mild academic aesthetics, notably through its use of strong colour contrasts. In his mural (...

(b Paris, Aug 20, 1787; d Paris, Aug 12, 1843).

French sculptor. A grocer’s son, from the age of 13 he studied sculpture under Charles-Antoine Bridan and Pierre-Charles Bridan. He subsequently assisted other sculptors, including François-Frédéric Lemot and Philippe-Laurent Roland. On winning the Prix de Rome in 1809 he travelled to Italy, remaining there until 1819, when he returned to Paris. From then until 1840 he regularly exhibited at the Salon. In 1825 he was elected to the Institut de France and to a professorship at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts, succeeding Louis-Marie-Charles Dupaty (1771–1825). In 1841 Cortot was appointed an officer of the Légion d’honneur. He received many prestigious state commissions, becoming one of the most successful official sculptors of the Restoration and the July Monarchy. The object of his first major work, Marie-Antoinette Succoured by Religion (marble, c. 1825; Paris, Chapelle Expiatoire), was to purge the French nation’s guilt for the execution of Louis XVI and his Queen. It was outstandingly successful; Cortot departed from his usual Neo-classical restraint by creating a swooning, neo-Baroque Marie-Antoinette. Other important works include the ...

(b Povos, nr Lisbon, July 25, 1747; d Rio de Janeiro, March 21, 1819).

Portuguese architect, active also in Brazil. He studied in Italy under royal patronage, a pattern of artistic education established in Portugal at the beginning of the 18th century. He went first to Bologna, in 1769, becoming a member of the Accademia in 1775. He subsequently went to Rome, making an extensive tour of Italy before returning to Lisbon in 1779. In 1781 he was invited to run the school of architecture at the new Academia do Nu in Lisbon, founded under Mary I. He also became an honorary member of the Accademia di S Luca, Rome. In 1785 he completed the sanctuary of the Italian church of Nossa Senhora do Loreto, Lisbon, the rebuilding of which was started by Manuel Caetano de Sousa.

Costa e Silva’s first major work was the opera house, the Teatro S Carlos (1792–3), Lisbon, which was built in six months for a group of wealthy citizens anxious to follow the latest fashions in Italian opera. The design was consciously Neo-classical: the three-bay arcaded ...

[Nino]

(b Rome, Oct 15, 1826; d Pisa, Jan 31, 1903).

Italian painter and critic. He was taught by one of the leading Neo-classical painters in Rome, Vincenzo Camuccini, from 1843 to 1847. He also studied under Francesco Podesti and Francesco Coghetti at the Accademia di S Luca, Rome. These painters instilled in Costa the basic academic techniques, in particular that of painting a scene or figure in mezza macchia, or half-tones, which he was to apply to great effect in his landscape paintings. In 1848 Costa joined Giuseppe Garibaldi’s Legione Romane; after the fall of the Roman Republic in 1849 he took refuge from the papal police in the Campagna, outside Rome. Between 1849 and 1859 Costa lived and worked in this region and met several foreign artists, including the Swiss painter Emile François David (1824–91) and the English painter Charles Coleman (1807–74), who encouraged his interest in landscape painting; the latter introduced him to Frederic Leighton and George Heming Mason, and they became lifelong friends. Costa recalled these years and described his working practices in his memoirs, ...

(b Florence, Sept 6, 1803; d Florence,?June 22, 1871).

Italian sculptor and painter. At the age of 12 he entered the Accademia di Belle Arti e Liceo Artistico in Florence to study painting under Giuseppe Bezzuoli, Pietro Benvenuti and Pietro Ermini (fl 1800–15) and sculpture under Stefano Ricci (1765–1837). A Self-portrait (1828; Florence, Pitti) in oil on canvas demonstrates a Romantic style learnt from Bezzuoli and anticipates Costoli’s abilities to render portraiture in sculpture. In 1828 he won a four-year stipendium, enabling him to travel to Rome. While there he produced the over life-size gesso Meneceus (1830; Florence, Pitti; marble version, 1853), which was praised for its classically rendered, idealized body when exhibited at the Esposizione di Roma in 1830. He returned to Florence and, his reputation increasing, was appointed Assistant Master of Sculpture under Lorenzo Bartolini at the Accademia in 1839. In 1842 he executed a statue of Galileo Galilei for the city’s Museo della Specola (now the ...

[Wenzel]

(b Ehrenbreitstein, Nov 23, 1775; d Weimar, Oct 4, 1845).

German architect. He worked under Christian Friedrich Schuricht in Dresden in the 1790s before studying in Paris at the Ecole Polytechnique (1800–04) under Jean-Nicolas-Louis Durand; he visited Rome in 1804–5. Most of his life was spent in Weimar, where he was appointed Oberbaudirektor (1816) to the Grand Duchy of Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach, one of the smaller and poorer of the German states, for which most of his work was undertaken. This included the Erfurter Tor (1822–4), the Bürgerschule (1822–5), the Wagenremise (1823) and the Hoftheater (1825–9; destr. 1905), plain buildings strongly influenced by Durand. Coudray also founded a school for building workers, the Freie Gewerkschule (1829). Weimar’s most eminent citizen, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, took a close interest in Coudray’s work, including his only major Greek Revival building, the Fürstengruft (1823–7). This mausoleum was commissioned by Grand Duke ...

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...

(Paris)

(b Paris, March 19, 1716; d Paris, July 13, 1777).

French sculptor, son of Guillaume Coustou (Lyons). Having studied with his father, he won the Prix de Rome in 1735 and was at the Académie de France in Rome in 1736–40. In 1742 he was received (reçu) as a member of the Académie Royale, presenting a seated statue of Vulcan (marble; Paris, Louvre), and he went on to pursue a successful official career. His eclectic style mirrored the evolution of French sculpture in the mid-18th century, ranging from the Baroque of the Apotheosis of St Francis Xavier (marble, c.1743; Bordeaux, St Paul) to the cold classicism of his statue of Apollo commissioned by Mme de Pompadour for the park at the château of Bellevue, Hautes-de-Seine (marble, 1753; Versailles, Château). He worked fluently but without great originality in various sculptural forms, producing portrait busts and religious and mythological works. Among his most important sculptures are the statues of ...

(b Lisbon, c. 1750; d Coimbra, Sept 5, 1829).

Portuguese architect. He was trained in Lisbon during the period of large-scale rebuilding that followed the 1755 earthquake. About 1780 he went to Coimbra, where he saw William Elsden’s Neo-classical university buildings and where he became involved with and accepted this new style and aesthetic. He was mainly active in Coimbra, where for about 20 years (1780–1800) he was architect and in charge of works (mestre de obras) at the monastery of Santa Cruz. The great triumphal arch (c.1800) in late Baroque style in front of the entrance of the church of Santa Cruz and the remodelling of part of the old monastery cellars can be attributed to him. In Coimbra in the first quarter of the 19th century he also made plans and studies for completing the Jardim Botânico, begun by Elsden in 1773; here he was responsible for the design of the main entrance gate (built ...

(b Senlis, Dec 21, 1815; d Villiers-le-Bel, March 3, 1879).

French painter and teacher. A student of Antoine-Jean Gros in 1830–38 and Paul Delaroche in 1838–9, he demonstrated precocious ability in drawing and was expected to win the Prix de Rome. He tried at least six times between 1834 and 1839, but achieved only second prize in 1837 (entry untraced). Disgusted with the politics of the academic system, Couture withdrew and took an independent path. He later attacked the stultified curriculum of the Ecole des Beaux-Arts and discouraged his own students from entering this institution. He first attained public notoriety at the Paris Salon with Young Venetians after an Orgy (1840; Montrouge, priv. col., see Boime, p. 85), the Prodigal Son (1841; Le Havre, Mus. B.-A.) and the Love of Gold (1844; Toulouse, Mus. Augustins). These early canvases are treated in a moralizing and anecdotal mode; the forms and compositional structures, like the debauched and corrupt protagonists, are sluggish and dull. Yet what made his work seem fresh to the Salon audience was his use of bright colour and surface texture derived from such painters as Alexandre-Gabriel Decamps and Eugène Delacroix, while his literary bent and methodical drawing demonstrated his mastery of academic tradition. The critics Théophile Gautier and Paul Mantz (...

(b New York, ?1813; d London, Oct 10, 1857).

American sculptor. One of the major American Neo-classical sculptors, Crawford learnt wood-carving in his youth. In 1832 he became a carver for New York’s leading marble shop, operated by John Frazee and Robert E. Launitz (1806–70). He cut mantelpieces and busts, and spent his evenings drawing from the cast collection at the National Academy of Design. In 1835 Crawford became the first American sculptor to settle permanently in Rome. Launitz provided Crawford with a letter of introduction to Bertel Thorvaldsen, who welcomed Crawford into his studio, gave him a corner in which to work and provided occasional criticism, including the advice to copy antique models and not Thorvaldsen’s own work. It is not known precisely how long Crawford remained under Thorvaldsen’s tutelage, but it was probably less than a year. Crawford always esteemed Thorvaldsen’s sculpture and continued friendship.

Once in his own studio, Crawford at first eked out a living by producing portraits, such as his bust of ...

(b Nantes, Feb 22, 1749; d Paris, Nov 7, 1826).

French architect. He was the son of a carpenter from Nantes, and he trained initially in Nantes under Jean-Baptiste Ceineray (1722–1811); he later studied at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts, Paris, under Etienne-Louis Boullée. In 1774 he won the Prix de Rome with a design for some public baths. In 1775 he left for Rome, where he spent three years studying the great monuments of antiquity and the Renaissance. The contact with Italian architecture, particularly the work of Andrea Palladio, was to have a decisive impact on his work. In 1778 Crucy returned to Nantes, where he remained for the greater part of his life. Innovative architecture was beginning to spread outside Paris to the major towns throughout France. In 1780 he replaced Ceineray as architect-surveyor of Nantes. Ceineray had overseen the considerable expansion of the city, which was continued by Crucy, who introduced a Neo-classicism that showed evidence of the Palladian revival....

(b Madrid, April 13, 1826; d Madrid, Jan 2, 1899).

Spanish architect and politician. He graduated in 1855 from the new Escuela de Arquitectura, Madrid, which though separate from the Academia de Bellas Artes continued the latter’s pursuit of Italianate classical ideals. His principal teacher was Narciso Pascual y Colomer, whose style is reflected in Cubas’s early works. Cubas travelled in Italy and Greece on a Spanish government scholarship and on a second tour visited various European countries, including a longer stay in Munich.

His first architectural period coincides with the latter years of the reign of Isabella II (reg 1833–68), during which he built a number of palatial Renaissance Revival houses in the Salamanca district of Madrid. Examples include those of the Duque de Sesto and the Duque de López-Dóriga. Typically they are terraced houses of three storeys and a semi-basement. A gallery of arches with Renaissance Revival decoration, usually on the first storey, forms the high point of the façade....

(b Lisbon, Dec 21, 1800; d Lisbon, Nov 6, 1872).

Portuguese architect, urban planner, teacher and writer, nephew of Domingos António de Sequeira. From the age of 15 he was employed in the design office for the Palácio da Ajuda, Lisbon, a major Neo-classical architectural project, where he received a predominantly empirical training. In 1824 he joined the Department of Public Works and worked on the building of barracks (1824–7) at Cascais and Alcântara; he subsequently worked on several urban planning projects in Lisbon that continued the rebuilding initiatives of the Marquês de Pombal after the earthquake of 1755. Sequeira was responsible for the developments (1835–7) linking the Chiado and the Rua do Arsenal, Lisbon, and planned the Avenida das Cortes between Avenida 24 de Julho and the S Bento district. He also outlined and directed work on the Jardim de S Pedro de Alcântara (1840), Lisbon, the finest example in the capital of a garden in the Romantic style after the Passeio Público in the Baixa district. In ...

(b Hudson, NY, Aug 24, 1806; d Baton Rouge, LA, May 10, 1852).

American architect. He spread eclectic historicism to the western states in the mid-19th century. Dakin was first trained as a carpenter but in 1829 entered the office of architects Ithiel Town and Alexander Jackson Davis in New York. Highly skilled as a draughtsman, in 1832 he became a full partner in the firm. He was responsible for the Rockaway Marine Pavilion (destr.), a large Grecian-style hotel on Long Island. Soon after starting his independent practice in 1833 he designed the Bank of Louisville (1834–6), KY, an excellent example of his adaptation of Greek elements for an American business building. The details recall similar motifs that appeared in Minard Lafever’s books, for which Dakin drew some of the plates. Though known principally for his Classical Greek designs, Dakin was also an early designer in the Gothic Revival style, as in his Washington Square Dutch Reformed Church, New York (...

(von)

(b Stuttgart, Oct 15, 1758; d Stuttgart, Dec 8, 1841).

German sculptor and collector. He received his initial artistic training (1771–80) at the Militärische Pflanzschule in Stuttgart, where he revealed a talent for drawing and sculpture. His most important tutors were the Belgian sculptor Pierre François Lejeune (1721–90) and the French painter Nicolas Guipal, an admirer of Mengs. Also of great importance to Dannecker were friendships with his fellow sculptor and rival Philipp Jakob Scheffauer (1756–1808), with the painter Philipp Friedrich Hetsch, and above all with the German writer Friedrich Schiller, who had a decisive influence on Dannecker’s intellectual development. In 1780 Dannecker was appointed court sculptor at Stuttgart and was thus obliged to decline later offers to work in Dresden, St Petersburg and Munich. His first undertaking was to complete sculptural sketches by others, for example Lejeune. From 1783 to 1785 Dannecker visited Paris to study with Augustin Pajou and there came to know the virtuoso portrait sculpture of artists working under Louis XVI. He then went on foot to Rome, where he remained for four years. Because of his enthusiasm for antique art, he was soon known as ‘il Greco’. He cultivated the acquaintance of the Swiss sculptor Alexander Trippel, the antiques restorer and dealer Capvaceppi, and, most important of all, the already well-established Italian sculptor Antonio Canova. The classical outlook favoured by Canova had a decisive effect on Dannecker’s subsequent work....