History of Art: Baroque and Rococo-Anatomy Art

Baroque and Rococo

Giacomo Serpotta

Francesco Maria Schiaffino

Andrea Brustolon

Ercole Lelli

Ecclesiastical Sculpture

The new aesthetic criteria produced particularly interesting results when applied to ecclesiastical sculpture. The workshop of Milan Cathedral was active in its production of marble statues, commissioned to complete the sequence of figures that adorned the exterior walls, and the roof between the pinnacles. In this lavish display of works, the statues of the Viggiu school are particularly significant, especially those by Elia Buzzi. The stucco decorations of the great Sicilian sculptor Giacomo Serpotta (1652-1732) differ in style from the typically Rococo archetypes. The fluid linearity of the simple, yet highly imaginative, reliefs, as seen in the Oratorio del Santissimo Rosario in Palermo, echo the sublimity of the classical style. The use of stucco in large-scale statuary was typical of certain artistic groups, as well as a speciality of specific schools. Diego Carlone (1674—1750), an outstanding sculptor of stucco figures, belonged to a dynasty of Lombard painters and sculptors, and produced work for various European courts until the middle of the 18th century. The predominance of family workshops among Italian sculptors and artisans, especially in northern Italy, was traditional practice, dating from medieval times. Among those active during this period were Bernardo and Francesco Maria Schiaffino from Genoa and Jacopo and Andrea Brustolon from Venice. The most industrious and versatile family team was led by Andrea Fantoni (1659-1734.) from Bergamo, whose skills in wood carving can be seen in the altar of the Sottocasa chapel, Clusone Cathedral. In central Europe, Austrian and German sculptors proved to be the most expressive interpreters of the spirit of High Baroque. Johann Michael Fischer (1691-1766) and his lavish decoration for the Benedictine Abbey of Ottobeuren attests to this. The Bohemian school played an important role, as many artists converged on Prague in a surge of activity. Among them was Mattia Bernardo Braun (1684-1738) who had learnt his craft in the Austrian Tyrol and specialized in religions figures. Braun adopted the High Baroque style that was in vogue, and brought to it his own expressive liveliness. A collection of his work in the National Gallery in Prague is proof that the Rococo flamboyant style could, when appropriate, take on a moving, highly dramatic tone. A more restrained style was evident in some of the work of Ferdinand Maximilian Brokof (1688-1731). but for the most part, his wood carvings remained extremely elaborate. In certain respects, Brokof's expressive work, such as the sculptures decorating the church of St Gall in Prague, go beyond Baroque rhetoric and illustrate the influence of 18th-centurv taste.

Giacomo Serpotta
Charity
Stucco, height 165 cm
Oratorio di San Lorenzo, Palermo

Giacomo Serpotta
(b Palermo, 10 March 1656; d Palermo, 27 Feb 1732).

Son of Gaspare Serpotta. He was the leading Sicilian sculptor of the late 17th century to the early 18th. Though occupying a central role in the intellectual and artistic life of his day, his real significance derives from the stuccos he produced for the oratories of Palermo, for which he was celebrated in his lifetime. A stay in Rome has been suggested, but this seems unlikely as the Roman elements in even his most mature work, such as the St Monica (c. 1720; Palermo, S Agostino), are derived from prints. His first commission, in 1677, was for the decoration of the small church of the Madonna dell’Istria in Monreale, in collaboration with Procopio de Ferari. The level of execution gives few hints of Giacomo’s outstanding future, but two years later he received a much more important commission for work at the oratory of the Compagna della Carità di S Bartolomeo degli Incurabili in Palermo (destr. 1780). From 1679 to 1680 Giacomo worked on the model for an equestrian statue of Charles II, King of Spain and Sicily; the statue was then cast in bronze by Andrea Romano and Gaspare Romano. This was destroyed in 1848, but a small bronze version survives (Trapani, Mus. Reg.).

Giacomo Serpotta
Interior decoration
1710-17
Stucco
Oratorio del Rosario di San Domenico, Palermo

Giacomo Serpotta
Fortitude
1710-17
White stucco and gilding, height 200 cm
Oratorio del Rosario di San Domenico, Palermo

Giacomo Serpotta
Oratorio del Rosario di San Domenico

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Francesco Maria Schiaffino
Immaculate Conception
1762
Marble
Palazzo Doria Lamba, Genoa

Francesco Maria Schiaffino
(b Genoa, 17 July 1688; d Genoa, 2 Jan 1763).

Brother of Bernardo Schiaffino. He was the pupil and then assistant of Bernardo, who in 1721 sent him to complete his training in Rome, where he entered the workshop of Camillo Rusconi. He remained there until 1724, enriching his technique and cultural education by studying the works of Bernini, Rusconi and other sculptors. Back in Genoa, he executed such works as St Dominic (Genoa, Teatro Carlo Felice), in which Rusconi’s influence is evident. The marble group of Pluto and Proserpine, sculpted for the Durazzo family and still in its original location (Genoa, Pal. Reale), is based on a bozzetto by Rusconi. In 1731 Schiaffino executed the grandiose Crucifix with Angels for King John V of Portugal (Mafra, Convent) and in 1738 began the theatrical funeral monument to Caterina Fieschi Adorno (Genoa, SS Annunziata di Portoria). The wax models of the Eight Apostles and Four Doctors of the Church that he modelled in 1739 (all untraced) were clearly inspired by the large Apostles by Rusconi and other sculptors in S Giovanni in Laterano, Rome. They were made for the stuccoist Diego Francesco Carlone so that he could, under Schiaffino’s directions, execute 12 monumental statues in stucco (Genoa, S Maria Assunta in Carignano). In these latter works the classicizing authority of Rusconi’s figures was transformed into a freer and more restless arrangement, the compact forms dissolving in the light, animated draperies. The statues reveal how Schiaffino had combined his knowledge of Roman sculpture with his study of Pierre Puget’s Genoese works and with the style of the Piola workshop. He emulated the free rhythms of the Rococo found in the painting of Gregorio de’ Ferrari, developing a decorative approach that is even more marked in the Assumption of the Virgin (1740; Varazze, S Ambrogio) and in the Rococo chapel of S Francesco da Paola (1755; Genoa, S Francesco da Paola), which he covered in polychrome marbles. His last works include the Virgin of Loreto (1762; Sestri Levante, Parish Church).

Francesco Maria Schiaffino
Le Duc de Richelieu
1748

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Andrea Brustolon
Verzuckung der hl. Therese von Avila
1700

Andrea Brustolon
(b Belluno, 20 July 1662; d Belluno, 25 Oct 1732).

Italian sculptor and draughtsman. He worked almost exclusively in wood. His first teacher was his father, Jacopo Brustolon (d 1709), also a sculptor, and he then trained with the painter Agostino Ridolfi (1646–1727). In 1677 Andrea was sent to Venice to the workshop of Filippo Parodi, to whose elegance, dynamism and technical virtuosity he was always indebted, although he soon established his own style. Brustolon came from an alpine area that had a long tradition of craftsmanship in wood. His achievement was to transpose techniques that had been associated with everyday craftsmanship on to the highest artistic level.

Andrea Brustolon
Jacob's Fight with the Angel
1700-10
Boxwood, height 46,5 cm
Liebieghaus, Frankfurt

Andrea Brustolon
Vase-stand with Hercules and Moors
c. 1700
Boxwood and ebony, height 200 cm
Museo del Settecento Veneziano, Ca' Rezzonico, Venice

Johann Baptist Straub (1704-84)
Church of the Augustinian Canons
1763

Andrea Fantoni
altarpiece, Church of Santa Maria Maggiore
c.1705
Bergamo, Italy

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Ercole Lelli
(b Bologna, 14 Sept 1702; d Bologna, 7 March 1766).

Italian painter, draughtsman, sculptor, architect and coin-maker. His reputation is shadowed by the doubts that his contemporaries Luigi Crespi and Marcello Oretti cast on the authorship of many works to which he laid claim, and his many-sided career is difficult to reconstruct. He studied engraving with Giovanni Gioseffo dal Sole and then architecture with Ferdinando Galli-Bibiena. In 1727, favoured by his friend Giovan Pietro Zanotti, who was one of the judges, he won the Marsili prize offered by the Accademia Clementina of Bologna with his modest drawing of Judith and Holofernes (Bologna, Liceo A. & Accad. Clementina). This success enabled him to begin a career as a painter and sculptor. His paintings, few of which can be traced, include a Self-portrait (U. Bologna); a portrait of Eustachio Manfredi (U. Bologna, Ist. Scienze) is an example of his work as a sculptor.

Ercole Lelli Anatomical wax statues
Adam and Eve 1742-51 Museum of the Department of Human Anatomy, Bologna University. These two anatomicai wax statues were created specifically for teaching purposes. They were typical of the age of the Encyclopedie, published in 1751-76.