Baroque and Rococo
 


     

Baroque and Rococo Art Map
 

Francois Duquesnoy


Artus Quellinus the Elder


Lucas Fayd'herbe


Hendrick Frans Verbruggen


Franciscus Aguillon


Pieter Huyssens


Jesuit Willem van Hess


Guillaume de Bruyn



 

SCULPTURE IN FLANDERS

Many Flemish sculptors were extremely prolific, and some, like Francois Duquesnoy, met with success abroad. The most gifted and famous member of a family of artists, Duquesnoy worked in Rome from 1618 onwards and made his name as a brilliant interpreter of the classical style. Later in the century, the influence of Rubens extended to sculpture, as did that of Roman Baroque. This is evident in the work of Artus Quellinus the Elder (1609-68), a sculptor of note who was active in Amsterdam, where he was commissioned in 1650 to carve sculptures for the new town hall. Lucas Fayd'herbe (1617-97), a pupil of Rubens, was a gifted ivory carver, architect, and sculptor. Among his more famous works are ranked the statues of the Apostles in the church of Saints Michael and Gudula in Brussels, the funerary monument of Bishop Cruesen in Malines Cathedral and, in the same city, the reliefs in Notre-Dame de Hanswyck. The most outstanding of the Walloon sculptors was Jean Delcour (1627-1707), who studied with Bernini in Rome before returning to Liege in 1657. Many artists enriched the churches with elaborately decorated altars, choirstalls, screens, confessionals, and pulpits. One of the finest examples is the large wooden pulpit carved by Hendrick Frans Verbruggen for Brussels Cathedral in 1699.
 

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Francois Duquesnoy

Flemish sculptor, (b. 1597, Bruxelles, d. 1643, Livorno)
   

Francois Duquesnoy
St Andrew
1629-33
Marble, height: 450 cm
Basilica di San Pietro, Vatican
 

Francois Duquesnoy
Bacchanalia of Putti
1630
Marble
Galleria Spada, Rome
 

    
Francois Duquesnoy
Victory of Sacred over Profane Love
1630
Marble
Galleria Spada, Rome
 

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Artus Quellinus the Elder

(b Antwerp, bapt 30 Aug 1609; d Antwerp, 23 Aug 1668).

 Sculptor, son of Erasmus Quellinus. He is generally recognized as the greatest Flemish sculptor of the Baroque. After training with his father, in 1634 he travelled to Italy and worked in the studio of François du Quesnoy in Rome. By 1639 he had returned to Antwerp, where in 1640 he became a master in the Guild of St Luke and married Margaretha Verdussen; in the same year he took over his father’s studio. His pupils included Peeter Verbrugghen, his cousin Artus Quellinus, Gabriel Grupello, Guillielmus Kerricx and probably Louis Willemsens.

 

Artus Quellinus
Luis de Benavides
1664
Marble, height: 98 cm
Koninklijk Museum voor Schone Kunsten, Antwerp
 

Artus Quellinus
Pieta
1660s
Polychromed wood, height 147 cm
O.-L. Vrouwekathedraal, Antwerp
 

Artus Quellinus
St Peter
c. 1658
Terracotta, height 90 cm
Musees Royaux des Beaux-Arts, Brussels
 

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Lucas Faydherbe

(b Mechelen, 19 Jan 1617; d Mechelen, 31 Dec 1697).

Flemish sculptor and architect. His father, Hendrik Faydherbe (1574–1629), a painter and sculptor, died when Lucas Faydherbe was 12, so it was his stepfather, Maximiliaan Labbé (d 1675), who between 1631 and 1634 trained him as a sculptor. Faydherbe then travelled to Antwerp to continue his training in the studio of Peter Paul Rubens, under whose guidance he executed a number of ivory-carvings, such as Leda and the Swan (Paris, Louvre). Abandoning a planned trip to Italy, Faydherbe in 1640 married and settled in Mechelen.

 

Lucas Faydherbe Christ in Chains Marble Church, Hanswijk

Lucas Faydherbe Tomb of Archbishop Andre Cruesen 1660 Marble Saint Rombout Cathedral, Mechelen

Lucas Faydherbe Tomb of Archbishop Andre Cruesen (detail) 1660 Marble Saint Rombout Cathedral, Mechelen

Lucas Faydherbe Tomb of Archbishop Andre Cruesen (detail) 1660s Marble Saint Rombout Cathedral, Mechelen

Lucas Faydherbe The Fall of Christ under the Cross Marble Church, Hanswijk

Lucas Faydherbe Madonna and the Infant Jesus Carrara marble, 68 x 36 x 40 cm Rockox House, Antwerp

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Henricus-Franciscus Verbrugghen

(b Antwerp, bapt 30 April 1654; d Antwerp, bur 6 March 1724).

Sculptor, architect and book illustrator, son of  Peeter Verbrugghen. He began his career under the book illuminator Jan Ruyselinck but became a master sculptor in 1682, the year he married Susanna Verhulst. He became Dean of the Guild of St Luke in 1689. Most of his work was done for churches. In 1684 he created two limewood side altars (h. 5 m) for the chapel of Our Lady of Good Will at Duffel. Here he introduced into the Netherlands a new motif, derived from the work of Bernini and consisting of an oval painting supported by two flying angels. His communion rails (l. 20 m; 1695) for St Walburgis, Bruges, are a highpoint of Flemish Baroque sculpture; the virtuoso handling of the marble makes them look as if modelled from wax. His tactile sense is best shown in the figure of St Augustine (h. 7 m; 1697), placed under the pulpit of St Augustine’s, Antwerp, in which the grain of the wood is used to suggest the wrinkles of the saint’s face and the texture of his clothes. In the highly original oak pulpit he made for the Jesuits of Leuven (1696–9; Brussels Cathedral), a narrative scene is included under the body of the pulpit, which is united in a curvilinear movement with the supporting beams and the sound-board. In 1713 Henricus-Franciscus went bankrupt, but he continued his work on the marble high altar (1713–19) of St Bavo, Ghent.

 

Henricus-FranciscusVerbrugghen
Pulpit
1695-99
Gilded oak, height: 700 cm, width:350 cm
Cathedral of Ste Gudule, Brussels
 

Henricus-FranciscusVerbrugghen
Adam and Eve Banished from Paradise (detail of the pulpit)
1695-99
Gilded oak
Cathedral of Ste Gudule, Brussels
 

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Guillaume de Bruyn Grande Place, Brussel, fasade

ARCHITECTURE IN FLANDERS Following Antwerp's conversion from an outpost of Calvinism — the Christian doctrines as interpreted by the French protestant reformer and theologian John Calvin (1509-64) - into a bastion of the Counter-Reformation, two new churches were built: the church of St Augustine (begun 1615) by Wenzel Coebergher (c. 1560-1634) and the Jesuit Church, now St Charles Borromeo (c. 1615-25), by the architects Franciscus Aguillon (1567-1617) and Pieter Huyssens (1577-1637), possibly with the help of Rubens. He also provided the drawings for the statues on the facade as well as the entire decoration of the ceiling (destroyed in a fire in 1718) and various paintings. The espousal of an extravagant Baroque style by Flemish architects is evident in the church of St Michael in Louvain (1650-71), designed by the Jesuit Willem van Hess (1601-90). There, references to Italian churches (notably the Gesu in Rome) and rich decoration are combined with an emphasis on height and verticality which shows the continuing influence of Gothic taste. The houses in the Grande Place, Brussels, most of which were designed by Guillaume de Bruyn (1649-1719), have exuberant exterior decoration grafted onto a more traditional and deeply rooted Flemish style.   François d'Aguilon (also d'Aguillon or in Latin Franciscus Aguilonius) (4 January 1567, Brussels – 20 March 1617, Tournai), was a Belgian Jesuit mathematician, physicist and architect. He became a Jesuit in 1586. In 1611, he started a special school of mathematics, in Antwerp, which intended to perpetuate the mathematical research and study in the Jesuit society. This school produced geometers like André Tacquet and Jean Charles della Faille. Illustration by Rubens for "Opticorum libri sex philosophis juxta ac mathematicis utiles", by François d'Aiguillon. It demonstrates how the projection is computed.His book, Opticorum Libri Sex philosophis juxta ac mathematicis utiles (Six Books of Optics, useful for philosophers and mathematicians alike), published in Antwerp in 1613, was illustrated by famous painter Peter Paul Rubens. It was notable for containing the principles of the stereographic and the orthographic projections, and it inspired the works of Desargues and Christiaan Huygens.

Franciscus Aguillon and Pieter Huyssens
St Ignatius, now St Charles Borromeo,
interior, Antwerp