François Duquesnoy was a Baroque

Baroque

The Baroque is a period and the style that used exaggerated motion and clear, easily interpreted detail to produce drama, tension, exuberance, and grandeur in sculpture, painting, literature, dance, and music...

 sculptor in Rome. His more idealized representations are often contrasted with the emotional character of Bernini

Gian Lorenzo Bernini

Gian Lorenzo Bernini was an Italian artist who worked principally in Rome. He was the leading sculptor of his age and also a prominent architect...

's works, while his style shows greater affinity to Algardi

Alessandro Algardi

Alessandro Algardi was an Italian high-Baroque sculptor active almost exclusively in Rome, where for the latter decades of his life, he was the major rival of Gian Lorenzo Bernini.-Early years:...

's sculptures.

Early years

Duquesnoy was born in Brussels

Brussels

Brussels , officially the Brussels Region or Brussels-Capital Region , is the capital of Belgium and the de facto capital of the European Union...

.

Having come from Flanders

Flanders

Flanders is the community of the Flemings but also one of the institutions in Belgium, and a geographical region located in parts of present-day Belgium, France and the Netherlands. "Flanders" can also refer to the northern part of Belgium that contains Brussels, Bruges, Ghent and Antwerp...

, Duquesnoy was called Il Fiammingo by the Italians and François Flamand by the French. His father, Jerome I Duquesnoy, was the court sculptor to Archduke Albert, governor of the Low Countries, and Archduchess Isabella and sculptor of the Manneken Pis

Manneken Pis

, is a famous Brussels landmark. It is a small bronze fountain sculpture depicting a naked little boy urinating into the fountain's basin. It was designed by Jerome Duquesnoy and put in place in 1618 or 1619...

 fountain in Brussels, of 1619. Some of Francois' early work in Brussels attracted the notice of the Archduke, who gave him the wherewithal to study in Rome, where he would spend his whole career.

According to early biographers, when Duquesnoy arrived in Rome in 1618, he studied antique sculpture in detail, climbing over the equestrian Marcus Aurelius

Equestrian Statue of Marcus Aurelius

The Equestrian Statue of Marcus Aurelius is an ancient Roman statue in the Campidoglio, Rome, Italy. It is made of bronze and stands 3.5 m tall. Although the emperor is mounted, it exhibits many similarities to standing statues of Augustus...

 to determine how it was cast, or making a pilgrimage to the shrine of Diana at Lake Nemi

Lake Nemi

Lake Nemi is a small circular volcanic lake in the Lazio region of Italy south of Rome, taking its name from Nemi, the largest town in the area, that overlooks it from a height.-Archaeology and history:The lake is most famous for its sunken Roman ships...

. In 1624, Nicolas Poussin

Nicolas Poussin

Nicolas Poussin was a French painter in the classical style. His work predominantly features clarity, logic, and order, and favors line over color. His work serves as an alternative to the dominant Baroque style of the 17th century...

, who shared his classicizing emotionally-detached manner of depiction, arrived in Rome, and the two foreign artists lodged together. Both moved in the circle of patronage of Cassiano dal Pozzo

Cassiano dal Pozzo

Cassiano dal Pozzo was an Italian scholar and patron of arts. The secretary of Cardinal Francesco Barberini, he was an antiquary in the classicizing circle of Rome, and a long-term friend and patron of Nicolas Poussin, whom he supported from his earliest arrival in Rome: Poussin in a letter...

. They developed a canon of ideal expressive figures, counter to the theatrical baroque of Bernini

Gian Lorenzo Bernini

Gian Lorenzo Bernini was an Italian artist who worked principally in Rome. He was the leading sculptor of his age and also a prominent architect...

. Contemporary critics, like Giovanni Bellori, in Lives of the Modern Painters, Sculptors and Architects from 1672, hailed Duquesnoy's art as restoring contemporary sculpture to quality of antique Roman sculpture. Bellori said that with his Santa Susanna, Duquesnoy "had left to modern sculptors the example for statues of clothed figures, making him more than the equal of the best ancient sculptors...".

Among Duquesnoy's early works are bas-relief putti for Villa Doria Pamphili

Villa Doria Pamphili

The Villa Doria Pamphili is a seventeenth century villa with what is today the largest landscaped public park in Rome, Italy. It is located in the quarter of Monteverde, on the Gianicolo , just outside the Porta San Pancrazio in the ancient walls of Rome where the ancient road of the Via Aurelia...

. In spite of the contrast perceived by contemporaries in their stylistic approaches, Duquesnoy collaborated with Bernini in the design, among others, of the angels offering garlands of the baldacchino for Saint Peter's

St. Peter's Basilica

The Papal Basilica of Saint Peter , officially known in Italian as ' and commonly known as Saint Peter's Basilica, is a Late Renaissance church located within the Vatican City. Saint Peter's Basilica has the largest interior of any Christian church in the world...

 (in process 1624–1633). The four angels are entirely Duquesnoy's work, and this work earned him future commissions.

The statue of Santa Susanna

Duquesnoy's classicized Saint Susanna (1629) depicts the saint as both modest and revealing under marble draperies —"so much so that the pure volume of the members is visible" (Bellori). This is one of four sculptures depicting virgin martyrs by various sculptors for the church of Santa Maria di Loreto

Santa Maria di Loreto (Rome)

Santa Maria di Loreto is a 16th century church in Rome, central Italy, located just across the street from the Trajan's Column, near the giant Monument of Vittorio Emanuele II....

 in front of the Roman Forum of Trajan (1630–33).

Critics have remarked on the refined surfaces and the softness and sweetness with which Duquesnoy invested this statue. There is a transcendence in her empty gaze. The sculpture was little known until the 18th century, when a marble copy by Guillaume Coustou was sent to Paris (1739) and Duquesnoy's Susanna entered the canon of most-admired modern sculptures.

The statue of Saint Andrew at the Crossing of St Peter's

The more extroverted marble representation of Saint Andrew (1629–33) was begun a few months after his completion of the Santa Bibiana. It is one of the four larger-than-life statues at the corners of the crossing of St. Peter's Basilica

St. Peter's Basilica

The Papal Basilica of Saint Peter , officially known in Italian as ' and commonly known as Saint Peter's Basilica, is a Late Renaissance church located within the Vatican City. Saint Peter's Basilica has the largest interior of any Christian church in the world...

; each depicts a venerated relic, which at the time, was the property of the Pope and St. Peters. (The other three statues are Bernini's

Gian Lorenzo Bernini

Gian Lorenzo Bernini was an Italian artist who worked principally in Rome. He was the leading sculptor of his age and also a prominent architect...

 Saint Longinus, Mochi's

Francesco Mochi

Francesco Mochi was an Italian early-Baroque sculptor active mostly in Rome and Orvieto.He was born in Montevarchi and died in Rome...

 Santa Veronica, and Bolgi's

Andrea Bolgi

Andrea Bolgi was an Italian sculptor responsible for several statues in St. Peter's Basilica, Rome. Towards the end of his life he moved to Naples, where he sculpted portrait busts.-Early life:...

 St Helena). Duquesnoy was angry, it is said, when Bernini intrigued to have his Longinus placed in the only corner that can receive direct rays of sunlight, enhancing the drama of that piece. The statue of Andrew was meant to honor the relic of the apostle's skull, supposedly presented to Pius II by the Byzantine leader Thomas Palaiologos

Thomas Palaiologos

Thomas Palaiologos was Despot in Morea from 1428 until the Ottoman conquest in 1460. After the desertion of his older brother to the Turks in 1460, Thomas Palaiologos became the legitimate claimant to the Byzantine throne...

 in 1461, but returned to Constantinople

Constantinople

Constantinople was the capital of the Roman, Eastern Roman, Byzantine, Latin, and Ottoman Empires. Throughout most of the Middle Ages, Constantinople was Europe's largest and wealthiest city.-Names:...

 by Pope Paul VI

Pope Paul VI

Paul VI , born Giovanni Battista Enrico Antonio Maria Montini , reigned as Pope of the Catholic Church from 21 June 1963 until his death on 6 August 1978. Succeeding Pope John XXIII, who had convened the Second Vatican Council, he decided to continue it...

 centuries later. It is useful to contrast the tone of Andrew with that of Longinus: in Andrew the draperies fall vertically or droop, while Longinus clothes inflate in improbably starched ebullience. Andrew leans over the saltire cross

Saltire

A saltire, or Saint Andrew's Cross, is a heraldic symbol in the form of a diagonal cross or letter ex . Saint Andrew is said to have been martyred on such a cross....

 of his martyrdom, while Longinus theatrically flings arms outward expostulating divine influence. Both statues accentuate the diagonals, but Duquesnoy's is more restrained than either Bernini's or Mochi's contribution.

Other works

Poussin recommended Duquesnoy to Cardinal Richelieu, who offered the position of royal sculptor to Louis XIII

Louis XIII of France

Louis XIII was a Bourbon monarch who ruled as King of France and of Navarre from 1610 to 1643.Louis was only eight years old when he succeeded his father. His mother, Marie de Medici, acted as regent during Louis' minority...

 and with the goal of founding a royal academy of sculpture in Paris. Duquesnoy was about to sail from Livorno, when he died; he had suffered for years from gout

Gout

Gout is a medical condition usually characterized by recurrent attacks of acute inflammatory arthritis—a red, tender, hot, swollen joint. The metatarsal-phalangeal joint at the base of the big toe is the most commonly affected . However, it may also present as tophi, kidney stones, or urate...

 and episodes of vertigo (he fell from the scaffolding while attaching the gilded palm branch to his Susanna) and bouts of depression. His brother, Jerome II Duquesnoy (1612– 24 October 1654, who was burned at the stake for his homosexual proclivities) inherited the work uncompleted in the studio, including the bust of Bishop Triest for the bishop's tomb by Duquesnoy at Brussels (signed by Jerome; now in the Louvre).

Like other sculptors working in 17th century Rome, Duquesnoy was called upon to restore and complete antiquities, for headless torsos rarely found a market with contemporary connoisseurs. With the Rondanini Faun (1625–30; now in the British Museum

British Museum

The British Museum is a museum of human history and culture in London. Its collections, which number more than seven million objects, are amongst the largest and most comprehensive in the world and originate from all continents, illustrating and documenting the story of human culture from its...

) Duquesnoy amplified a torso into a characteristically Baroque

Baroque

The Baroque is a period and the style that used exaggerated motion and clear, easily interpreted detail to produce drama, tension, exuberance, and grandeur in sculpture, painting, literature, dance, and music...

 expansive gesture that deeply satisfied contemporary taste but was bitterly criticised by Neoclassicists

Neoclassicism

Neoclassicism is the name given to Western movements in the decorative and visual arts, literature, theatre, music, and architecture that draw inspiration from the "classical" art and culture of Ancient Greece or Ancient Rome...

 by the end of the 18th century. He completed a Roman torso as Adonis

Adonis

Adonis , in Greek mythology, the god of beauty and desire, is a figure with Northwest Semitic antecedents, where he is a central figure in various mystery religions. The Greek , Adōnis is a variation of the Semitic word Adonai, "lord", which is also one of the names used to refer to God in the Old...

. It found its way into the collection of Cardinal Mazarin and is now in the Louvre.

There are bronze busts of the Susanna in Vienna, Berlin, and Copenhagen. Finely finished small-scale bronzes of antique subjects, suitable for collectors, occupied the sculptor and his studio assistants. A Mercury and Cupid is at the Louvre, a gracile Bacchus at the Hermitage Museum

Hermitage Museum

The State Hermitage is a museum of art and culture in Saint Petersburg, Russia. One of the largest and oldest museums of the world, it was founded in 1764 by Catherine the Great and has been opened to the public since 1852. Its collections, of which only a small part is on permanent display,...

. A bronze Mercury was commissioned by the collector of antiquities Vincenzo Giustiniani

Vincenzo Giustiniani

thumb|upright|Vincenzo Giustiniani in a portrait by [[Nicolas Régnier]] Marchese Vincenzo Giustiniani was an aristocratic Italian banker, art collector and intellectual of the late 16th and early 17th centuries, known today largely for the Giustiniani art collection, assembled at Palazzo...

 as a pendant to a Hellenistic bronze Hercules in his collection, a compliment to Duquesnoy and implicitly a statement of the parity of the Ancients and the Moderns. Giustiniani commissioned a life-size Virgin and Child from Duquesnoy in 1622, at a moment when the sculptor was hard pressed to finish his Andrew, due to interruption of payments instigated by a cabal (Joachim von Sandrart). His terracotta modelli were more likely to carry the immediacy of the sculptor's touch and were of especial value to other sculptors, if they could afford them. Louis XIV

Louis XIV of France

Louis XIV , known as Louis the Great or the Sun King , was a Bourbon monarch who ruled as King of France and Navarre. His reign, from 1643 to his death in 1715, began at the age of four and lasted seventy-two years, three months, and eighteen days...

's royal sculptor François Girardon

François Girardon

François Girardon was a French sculptor.He was born at Troyes. As a boy he had for master a joiner and wood-carver of his native town, named Baudesson, under whom he is said to have worked at the chateau of Liebault, where he attracted the notice of Chancellor Séguier...

 owned a great number of Duquesnoy's terra-cotta models, which are recorded in the inventory of Girardon's collection drawn up after his death in 1715.

His characteristic putti

Putto

A putto is a figure of an infant often depicted as a young male. Putti are defined as chubby, winged or wingless, male child figure in nude. Putti are distinct from cherubim, but some English-speakers confuse them with each other, except that in the plural, "the Cherubim" refers to the biblical...

, plump, with carefully observed children's heads, helped to establish the conventional type, familiar in the paintings of Rubens: in fact Rubens wrote Duquesnoy in 1640 to thank him for sending him casts of the putti from the sculptor's wall-monument to Ferdinand van den Eynden in Santa Maria dell'Anima

Santa Maria dell'Anima

Santa Maria dell'Anima is a Roman Catholic church in central Rome, Italy, just west of the Piazza Navona and near the Santa Maria della Pace church. It was the national church of the Holy Roman Empire in Rome...

 in Rome.

Flemish boxwood or ivory carvings, especially with scenes of putti, are often casually described as "in his manner", though he never left Rome.

Aside from his brother, who collaborated with him in his studio, his most prominent pupils were François Dieussart

François Dieussart

François Dieussart was a Flemish-Walloon sculptor who worked for court patrons in England and northern Europe, producing portrait busts in the Italianate manner....

 and the elder Artus Quellinus

Artus Quellinus

Artus Quellinus also known as Artus Quellijn, Artus I Quellinus or Artus Quellinus the Elder , was a Flemish sculptor.-Life:...

, who brought the classicizing Baroque style of what Duquesnoy's circle, an informal academy

Academy

An academy is an institution of higher learning, research, or honorary membership.The name traces back to Plato's school of philosophy, founded approximately 385 BC at Akademia, a sanctuary of Athena, the goddess of wisdom and skill, north of Athens, Greece. In the western world academia is the...

, called la gran maniera greca to Amsterdam

Amsterdam

Amsterdam is the largest city and the capital of the Netherlands. The current position of Amsterdam as capital city of the Kingdom of the Netherlands is governed by the constitution of August 24, 1815 and its successors. Amsterdam has a population of 783,364 within city limits, an urban population...

 on his return from Rome. In Rome, Duquesnoy's student Orfeo Boselli wrote Osservazioni della scoltura antica in the 1650s; his observations reflected connoisseurship of the subtle contours of superior Greek sculpture, considered superior to Roman work, which had been developed in Duquesnoy's circle and would inform the sensibility of Winckelmann

Johann Joachim Winckelmann

Johann Joachim Winckelmann was a German art historian and archaeologist. He was a pioneering Hellenist who first articulated the difference between Greek, Greco-Roman and Roman art...

 and Neoclassicism

Neoclassicism

Neoclassicism is the name given to Western movements in the decorative and visual arts, literature, theatre, music, and architecture that draw inspiration from the "classical" art and culture of Ancient Greece or Ancient Rome...

.

Sources

• Francis Haskell and Nicholas Penny, 1981. Taste and the Antique: The Lure of Classical Sculpture, 1500-1900 (New Haven: Yale University Press)

External links

• François Duquesnoy on-line
• François Duquesnoy: image gallery
• François Duquesnoy at the Louvre
• Estelle Lingo "The Greek Manner and a Christian Canon: Francois Duquesnoy's Saint Susanna" from The Art Bulletin, March, 2002 by
• François Duquesnoy - "Sankt Andreas"
• "Putti", Rome
• Shearer West, Guide to Art (Bloomsbury 1996: "François Duquesnoy"
• Christiaan Janssens "Frans Duquesnoy’s Heilige Susanna" (dutch)