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(b Mataró, April 12, 1771; d Barcelona, July 7, 1855).

Spanish sculptor and teacher. He began studying at the Escuela de Bellas Artes de la Lonja in Barcelona at the age of 14, and he worked in the studio of Salvador Gurri (fl 1756–1819), a late Baroque sculptor with Neo-classical tendencies. Campeny left the studio after he was attacked by Gurri, who, as a teacher at the Escuela (1785), continued to persecute him and threw him out. Campeny then worked in Lérida, Cervera and Montserrat. He produced his first major work, St Bruno (1795; destr. 1831), in carved polychromed wood. He also trained with Nicolás Traver and José Cabañeras, both late Baroque artists. Stylistically, Campeny began with a moderate and personal naturalism, later assimilating some of the Baroque influences from his Catalan teachers. Readmitted to the Escuela, in 1795 he won a scholarship to complete his studies in Rome, where he went in 1796...

(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 Mechelen, Sept 18, 1756; d Antwerp, Jan 24, 1830).

Flemish sculptor. His work was essentially part of the late Flemish Baroque tradition; yet he was aware of the emerging Neo-classical movement, as is revealed by certain details in his religious works and, above all, by the spirit of his secular commissions. He was a pupil first of the painter Guillaume Herryns and then of the sculptor Pierre Valckx. In 1784 van Geel was appointed an assistant teacher at the academy of art in Mechelen and subsequently devoted himself consistently to teaching, first in Mechelen and then at the Académie in Antwerp. Among his pupils were Jean-Baptiste de Bay (1802–62), Guillaume Geefs, Lodewijk Royer, Joseph Tuerlinckx (1809–73) and his own son Jan Lodewijk van Geel (b Mechelen, 28 Sept 1787; d Brussels, 10 April 1852), also a sculptor. Jan Frans’s first important commission was for statues (1780–90) of St James, St Andrew...

[Pizzano; Pizzoni]

Swiss family of architects and artists. Paolo Antonio Pisoni (i) (b Ascona, 22 May 1658; d Ascona, 27 Feb 1711), son of Pier Paolo of Ascona, was a sculptor in wood; his surviving work includes several richly carved reliquaries, a bust associated with a relic in the parish church at Ascona and altars in the parish church at Quinto. Gaetano Matteo Pisoni (b Ascona, 13 July 1713; d Locarno, 4 March 1782) is presumed to be the nephew of Paolo Antonio Pisoni (i); he trained as a mason in Lechtal, Tirol (1729–32), and as an architect at the Accademia di San Luca in Rome (1735–40). He lived principally in Milan until 1750, when he was invited to practise in the Austrian Netherlands. There he designed Namur Cathedral (begun 1751), an Italian Baroque church on a Latin cross plan with apsidal-ended transepts and tribune, a high dome over the crossing and a convex projection to the façade; the interior, however, already displays a transition to Neo-classicism. From ...

(b Venice, c. 1698; d Zagreb, Jan 24, 1757).

Italian sculptor, active in Slovenia. He trained from 1711 to 1716 with Pietro Baratta (b 1668 or 1659), an exponent of Tuscan Neo-classicism in Venice who was also familiar with Roman Baroque sculpture. Through him Robba came into contact with Giuseppe Pozzo (brother of Andrea Pozzo) and his designs for altars, which influenced Robba’s early work, especially in Ljubljana (white marble monument to the Trinity, 1723; Ljubljana, Mun. Mus.; copy in front of the Ursuline church) and in Klagenfurt (white marble sculptures, 1725–6, in the chapels of St Ignatius and the Virgin Mary, Klagenfurt Cathedral). He was active in and around Ljubljana between 1721 and 1751, working in the studio of Luka Mislej (d 1722), whose daughter he married. After Mislej’s death he took over the studio and in 1730 became a citizen of Ljubljana. He was the most important Baroque sculptor in Ljubljana in the first half of the 18th century, creating marble altars (e.g. the high altar of the Ursuline church, ...

(b Enguera, Valencia, 1757; d Mexico City, Dec 24, 1816).

Spanish architect, sculptor, and teacher, active in Mexico. He studied at the Real Academia de Bellas Artes de S Carlos, Valencia, at a time when Baroque forms were being rejected in Spain and Neo-classicism was being promoted. He was apprenticed to the sculptor José Puchol Rubio (d 1797), who also taught him extensively about architecture. In 1780 Tolsá moved to Madrid, where he studied under Juan Pascual de Mena and at the Real Academia de Bellas-Artes de S Fernando, where his subjects included painting. There he also designed several reliefs, including the Entry of the Catholic Kings into Granada (1784; Madrid, Real Acad. S Fernando). He was selected as an academician in 1789.

Following the endorsement of Juan Adán and Manuel Francisco Alvarez de la Peña, in 1790 Tolsá succeeded José Arias (c. 1743–88) as director of sculpture at the Real Academia de S Carlos de la Nueva España in Mexico City. He took with him a collection of plaster casts for sculptures, many books, and 154 quintals (7 tonnes) of plaster for the Academia. He arrived in ...