Search Results

Portuguese family of wood-carvers. Manuel Abreu do Ó and his brother Sebastião Abreu do Ó (both fl Évora c. 1728–c. 1770) worked in collaboration, carving some of the finest and most influential Joanine and Rococo altarpieces in southern Portugal. They carved in delicate flat relief using patterns similar to those found in Spain, a style contrasting with the dramatic plastic effects seen in contemporary wood-carving in northern Portugal.

An example of the Abreu do Ó brothers’ early work is the main retable of the Cartuxa, the Charterhouse, Évora, gilded in 1729. It is composed on one level, and a sense of movement is suggested by the projection of the outer columns. They created one of the finest ensembles of 18th-century carving in southern Portugal in the chancel and transept of the Carmelite church of Nossa Senhora dos Remédios, Évora (c. 1760–70). On the main retable the areas between the column shafts are decorated with leaves and roses scattered asymmetrically, creating the impression of a lace covering. The votive tablet crowning the arch of the retable is carved with great delicacy. The lateral retables have curving double pediments whose undulating movement is echoed by large canopies above. The design of the pulpit was important in southern Portugal, because although it was in the Joanine style and inspired by developments in Lisbon it was also Rococo in spirit. The interior of the church emphasizes the importance of the role that gilt wood-carving played in the decoration of Portuguese churches during the 18th century....

(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 (...

(b Rome, 1699; d Turin, Dec 9, 1767).

Italian architect. Descended from an impoverished ducal family of Asti, Piedmont, Alfieri spent his first 16 years in Rome. A papal stipend enabled him to study law at the Collegio dei Nobili in Turin, after which he settled as a lawyer in Asti. Even as a successful architect in public office, he continued to make use of his legal knowledge, and in Asti and later Turin he served as mayor intermittently. Alfieri was extraordinarily versatile, with no single personal style. He worked simultaneously in three separate styles: Roman high and late Baroque; French Rococo (for decoration); and early classicism. His attitude to these styles was functional rather than historical, and his choice of which one to use usually depended on the nature of the project and the wishes of his client. Thus Alfieri built Catholic churches in Roman Baroque and Protestant churches in a puristic classicism. Piedmontese State commissions were executed in the severe manner of the Turin State style as practised by Amadeo di Castellamonte and Filippo Juvarra before him. For the royal court and the aristocracy French Rococo was appropriate. Façades of palaces were decorated in the idiom of a restrained Baroque classicism, like that which Gianlorenzo Bernini and Carlo Fontana had developed in Rome. Whatever the style, Alfieri worked with facility and elegance, blending disparate elements into ingenious, harmonious creations. He was not a great innovator, but his work anticipates in certain respects the purpose-built functional architecture of the 20th century. With his flexible use of existing architectural vocabulary, he was a first-class architect of the second rank....

(b Lisbon, 1700; d Lisbon, 1769).

Portuguese sculptor. He was the leading Portuguese sculptor of the mid-18th century, although only a small part of his work can be identified. He was sent to Rome by John V to study under Carlo Monaldi. Traces of his apprenticeship with Monaldi can be seen in his treatment of crumpled drapery. Almeida is known to have won a prize in a papal contest in competition with Italian sculptors. He returned to Lisbon about 1728 and formed a workshop that became very successful; it was renowned at the time, although almost all the production has been lost. He was the first Portuguese sculptor to carve well in stone at a time when most work in that medium was executed by foreigners and when other Portuguese sculptors generally preferred to work in clay or wood. Almeida’s work in marble includes the statue of St Paul on the façade of the chapel of the Palácio das Necessidades, Lisbon. His marble statues of ...

(bapt Copenhagen, May 16, 1726; d Copenhagen, July 8, 1776).

Danish painter. Although he was mentioned in the court account-books as early as 1743, his first known painting dates from 1750. From then until 1756 he was active as one of the most important portrait painters of the Danish Rococo. His colouristic style and impasto technique were strongly influenced by the Swedish painter Carl Gustaf Pilo. The double portrait of the Court Jeweller C. F. Fabritius and his Wife (1752; Copenhagen, Stat. Mus. Kst) and the full-length Frederik V (1756; priv. col., see A. Russell, ed.: Danske slotte og herregårde [Danish palaces and manor houses] (Copenhagen, 2/1963–8), iv, p. 385) are among his masterpieces. An important collection of portraits by Als from this period is housed in the Nationalhistoriske Museum på Frederiksborg, Hillerød.

In 1755 Als was the first major gold medal winner at the newly founded Kongelige Danske Kunstakademi in Copenhagen, and the next year he began a six-year study trip to Italy and France. In Rome (...

(b c. 1685; d Madrid, Aug 21, 1752).

Italian painter and etcher, active also in Germany, England and Spain. He was a pioneer of the Venetian Rococo, and his peripatetic career fostered the development of an international decorative style. His oeuvre includes decorative frescoes for churches and palaces, history and mythological paintings and a few etchings. Many of his works were reproduced in prints, and these served as models for tapestries and for the decoration of clocks, wardrobes and porcelain.

Neither the place nor date of Amigoni’s birth is known, although it is likely that his parents were Venetian. He was probably taught by Antonio Bellucci and is first recorded in the Venetian painters’ guild, the Fraglia, in 1711. Amigoni’s one documented work of this early Venetian period (Zanetti), SS Andrew and Catherine (Venice, S Stae), was probably painted shortly before this date. His international career began in southern Germany, where his presence is recorded from about 1715 to 1 July 1729...

(b Porto, nr Milan, 1701; d Triefenstein, Franconia, 1785–6).

Italian painter, active in Germany. As a youth he assimilated the decorative traditions of Lombard painting and was deeply influenced by Venetian artists, chiefly Giambattista Tiepolo. He probably left Italy as a young man, travelling to Bavaria, where he was attracted to the art of Carlo Innocenzo Carlone, and then, perhaps between 1720 and 1730, to that of Jacopo Amigoni. Appiani’s earliest confirmed works are four preparatory studies (three pairs of Classical figures and the Parnassus, all c. 1743; priv. col., see Zubeck, figs 1–4) for frescoes in the castle (destr. 1793) at Saarbrücken. From 1745 he lived in Mainz, where he became the foremost court painter, and between 1748 and 1751 he executed frescoes of sacred subjects in churches in Lindau and Oberdorf. His two most notable surviving early fresco cycles are that in the refectory of the former Premonstratensian monastery of SS Peter and Paul, Obermarchtal (including the ...

(d Braga, March 10, 1762).

Portuguese wood-carver and designer. He designed the carved altarpieces, pulpits and valances for the church of the Third Order of St Francis in Ponte de Lima. The carving was completed in 1756 by António da Cunha Correia Vale and Manuel da Cunha Correia Vale from Guimarães. It is a fine example of carving in the new Rococo style. In 1756 Araújo was contracted to carve the arch of the frame of the altarpiece of Nossa Senhora dos Prazeres in the church of the Colegio de S Paulo in Braga, after designs by André Ribeiro Soares da Silva. A comparison between Soares’s design and that by Araújo for the Third Order in Ponte de Lima shows the marked lack of plasticity in the latter, although Araújo used elements taken from the work of Soares and the designs of Nicolau Nasoni. Both these works, however, were completed before the redecoration carried out by Araújo in the church of S Martinho in the Benedictine monastery of Tibães. Araújo carved Soares’s designs for the main altarpiece here as well as retables for the transept and sacristy; he also worked on the pulpits and valances in the nave. This carved ensemble was the most distinguished of the period. Araújo completed the high altar ...

(b Parish of St Martin’s in the Field, Middx; fl c. 1710–1750; d 1759).

English goldsmith. He was the son of Peter Archambo, a Huguenot refugee who worked in London as a staymaker. In 1710 he was apprenticed to the goldsmith Jacob Margas (c. 1685–after 1730) and, like Margas, became a freeman of the Butchers’ Company (rather than the Goldsmiths’ Company) on 7 December 1720. He first registered his mark at Goldsmiths’ Hall, London, in 1721, when he gave his address as the Golden Cup in Green Street. One of his apprentices was Thomas Heming. He produced fine quality domestic silver, and a wide range of objects, including cups, candlesticks, cream jugs and cake baskets, bearing his mark survives. His work is French in influence, and he is often credited with helping to introduce the Rococo style into England. His approach to the Rococo was, however, more restrained than that of some of his contemporaries, for example Paul de Lamerie. His work also often incorporates marine motifs. His most important patron was ...

(Petrovich)

(b St Petersburg, 1729; d Moscow, 1802).

Russian painter and teacher. He came from a family of serfs, belonging to the Counts Sheremetev, that produced several painters and architects. In about 1746–7 he was a pupil of Georg Christoph Grooth (1716–49), who painted portraits of the Sheremetev family. With Grooth, Argunov worked on the decoration of the court church at Tsarskoye Selo (now Pushkin). A full-length icon of St John of Damascus (1749; Pushkin, Pal.–Mus.), in Rococo style, is distinguished by its secular, decorative character. The Dying Cleopatra (1750; Moscow, Tret’yakov Gal.) is typical of Rococo decorative painting of the mid-18th century, with its striking combination of light, soft tones. Argunov subsequently painted in a quite different style, mainly producing portraits, of which about 60 are known. Among the first of these are pendant portraits of Ivan Lobanov-Rostovsky and his wife (1750 and 1754; St Petersburg, Rus. Mus.), in which the sitters are idealized, as in ceremonial court portraits. The colour schemes of the two portraits are complementary, a device Argunov was to favour, and the feel of materials is admirably rendered. A certain flatness and stiffness in the figures recalls the old tradition of ...

(b Mariana, Minas Gerais, bapt Oct 18, 1762; d Mariana, Feb 2, 1830).

Brazilian painter. He was the most important painter active in the province of Minas Gerais during the Colonial period. He learnt his craft in the workshop with other artists and from such theoretical treatises as Andrea Pozzo’s Perspectivae pictorum atque architectorum (1693–1700) and such technical manuals as the Segredos necessarios para os officcios, artes e manufaturas (Lisbon, 1794), which was recorded in the inventory of his possessions. He was also strongly influenced by engravings of religious subjects in bibles and missals. He had a great influence on the development of religious painting in the region, especially through his numerous pupils and followers, who until the middle of the 19th century continued to make use of his compositional methods, particularly in the perspective ceilings of churches. Often referred to in documents as ‘professor de pintura’, in 1818 he unsuccessfully petitioned for official permission to found an art school in his native city. He left an extensive body of work, which includes decorative painting of architecture, single pictures, and the painting of religious statues (gilding and flesh-colouring). Especially famous are the vast perspective paintings such as the ...

(fl 1702; d Oct 13, 1741).

French architect and designer. The son of a master carpenter employed by the Service des Bâtiments du Roi at various French royal residences, from 1702 to 1708 Aubert worked as a draughtsman under Jules Hardouin Mansart. He became the favourite architect of the princely Bourbon-Condé family with the remodelling of the château of Saint-Maur-des-Fossés (1709–10), near Paris. For Louis-Henri de Bourbon, Prince de Condé (1692–1740), the grandson of Louis XIV, Aubert carried out several projects at the château of Chantilly (Oise). The magnificent stables (designed 1719, built 1721–35; show the influence of Hardouin Mansart in Aubert’s extensive use of arcades, the discreet presence of the classical orders, and the rich sculptural decoration, all elements drawn from the Grandes et Petites Ecuries of the Palace of Versailles. Aubert’s most distinctive stylistic trait, emphatic horizontal channelling of rusticated wall surfaces, made its first appearance on the one-storey elevation of the stable wing facing the meadow....

[Camelot]

(b Douai, Jan 12, 1702; d Paris, March 4, 1766).

French painter and collector. His father, Jean-Baptiste Havet, a doctor of Armenian origin, died when Aved was a child. He was brought up in Amsterdam by his step-father, a captain in the Dutch Guards. At 16 he is said to have become a pedlar or ‘camelot’ (hence the nickname given to him by his French acquaintances) travelling through the Netherlands, drawing portraits at fairs. In 1721, after spending short periods in the Amsterdam studios of the French engraver Bernard Picart and of the draughtsman François Boitard (1652–1722), he left the Netherlands to work in the Paris studio of the fashionable portrait painter Alexis-Simon Belle. At this time he met other notable painters including Carle Vanloo and the portrait painters Maurice-Quentin de La Tour, Jean-Baptiste Perroneau and Jean-Etienne Liotard. He also formed a deep and lasting friendship with Jean-Siméon Chardin, with whom he may have collaborated on occasion; they used similar techniques, and he may have encouraged Chardin to turn from still-life painting to figure painting in the 1730s....

(b Sigmaringen, Nov 28, 1712; d Jan 3, 1792).

German painter . He probably trained with his stepfather, the painter Johann Joseph Veseer, and later with Franz Joseph Spiegler. In 1735 he went to Vienna, where he matriculated from the Akademie der Bildenden Künste. He possibly studied under Paul Troger and then spent some time in Augsburg. After qualifying as a master painter, von Aw settled c. 1740 in Sigmaringen, where he also held public office, being twice elected burgomaster; later he ran an inn.

Von Aw’s early frescoes and altarpieces with their gentle, bright colours and their lively compositions belong to the tradition of south German Rococo painting. He often borrowed either single figures or even whole groups of figures from other artists; thus when he painted the interior of the castle church of the Holy Trinity at Haigerloch (1748–51) he used engravings after Carlo Carlone, Johann Georg Bergmüller and Matthäus Günther; for the ceiling frescoes (...

(b Pfronten-Ried, nr Füssen, June 25, 1716; d Einsiedeln, Feb 9, 1799).

Swiss sculptor of German birth. He was apprenticed to the sculptor Peter Heel (1696–1767), but in 1732, after his father died, Babel became an itinerant journeyman sculptor. He appears to have moved gradually southwards, possibly drawn by the chance to study at the Akademie der Bildenden Künste in Vienna and by the far greater number of commissions to be found there, from both secular and ecclesiastical patrons. In collaborating on large-scale decorative commissions, Babel would not only have acquired a solid training as a sculptor in stone and stucco but would also have learnt the stylistic vocabulary of international Baroque. A particularly strong early influence was the stuccowork of Francesco Carlone (1674–1750), with whom Babel probably collaborated.

In 1742 Babel settled in Mimmenhausen, residence of the leading Rococo sculptor Josef Anton Feuchtmayer. Here he made his first appearance as an independent master when he presented Abbot ...

(b Naples, 1728; d Naples, 1819).

Italian painter. His art derives from that of his teacher in Naples, Francesco de Mura, but he developed a freer and more decorative manner, influenced by Corrado Giaquinto and by the broken flickering touch of Giacomo del Pò. His early period, when he collaborated with de Mura, is represented by the ceiling painting Macro Caring for a Wounded Warrior (1750; Naples, Ospedale degli Incurabili), the Last Supper (1764; Bitonto Cathedral), derived from a prototype of de Mura’s Holy Family (version, 1775; Gravina Cathedral), and the Virgin Appearing to Pius V and Don Giovanni of Austria (1778; Naples, S Giacomo degli Spagnoli). This last work, however, is already lighter and freer than the earlier paintings, and these qualities are further developed in the ceiling painting of the Apotheosis of Ferdinand IV of Naples and Maria Carolina of Austria (1781; Naples, Pal. Regi Studi, Library). A bozzetto for this work (Cleveland, OH, Mus. A.) was formerly attributed to Giaquinto, not surprisingly, in view of the two artists’ stylistic affinity. The translucent colour and painterly refinement of the ...

(b Paris, Oct 17, 1723; d Paris, Dec 15, 1769).

French painter. A pupil of François Boucher, whose younger daughter he married in 1758, he specialized in miniatures painted in gouache, which he first exhibited at the Salon of 1761. He was received (reçu) as a member of the Académie Royale in 1763 with a small gouache of a historical subject, Phryne Accused of Impiety before the Areopagite (Paris, Louvre), and he later painted illustrations of biblical episodes. However, he made his name as a painter of libertine scenes in contemporary settings, which he exhibited regularly at the Salon from 1763 until 1769. Some of his work is directly inspired by Boucher’s scenes of pastoral love, but the ostensibly moral themes and careful attention to detail of such paintings as the Modest Model (exh. Salon 1769; Washington, DC, N.G.A.) demonstrate that he was also influenced by Jean-Baptiste Greuze. His pictures were condemned for their immorality, both by the Archbishop of Paris, who in ...

(b in or near Kufstein, Tyrol, ?June 16, 1712; d Augsburg, before Sept 7, 1761).

German draughtsman and painter. Kilian, his earliest biographer, stated that after training as a blacksmith with his father, he learnt the art of glass painting in Salzburg. Following travels through Austria, Hungary and Italy, Baumgartner was authorized in late 1733 to live in Augsburg, on condition that he only worked as a glass painter.

Only a few examples of Baumgartner’s own glass paintings have survived; however, he must have meanwhile worked intensively on drawings for copperplate engraving. There are hundreds of these drawings; they were made with extreme care, often on tinted paper and often on a very large scale, for publishers in Augsburg such as Klauber, Engelbrecht and Kilian. Designs in oil on canvas for engravings, such as Moses Ordering the Killing of the Midianite Women (1760; Augsburg, Schaezlerpal.), were a particular speciality of Baumgartner. By far the largest series numerically is for a calendar of saints, the ...