Sculpture between the Renaissance and the Age of Baroque

Sculpture between the Renaissance and the Age of Baroque

During the Renaissance, sculptors had returned to classical antiquity for inspiration, but at the same time had developed concepts of form which asserted the modernity of their work. The ideal of the perfect human body, for instance, was associated more with a prevailing humanist ideology than with the classical canons which defined the architectural orders. Renaissance sculptors believed that antique sculpture had captured nature in such an exemplary manner that the study of such works of art should take precedence over the observation of nature itself. Michelangelo, for example, according to a remark attributed to him, considered that the Belvedere Torso was such an exemplary classical work of art that, the man who made it was wiser than nature. He also noted that it was a great misfortune that the piece had survived only as a torso.

The painter, architect, and art historian Giorgio Vasari was one of the theorists who introduced a new system of aesthetic values during this period, one that was based on a notion of individual genius. A great artist was distinguished by his maniera, an individual and unmistakable personal style in his work; it was a concept which changed the classical ideal of the Renaissance. During the course of the Cinquecento, it became the standard ambition of sculptors not merely to produce an accurate imitation of natural forms but to surpass nature in sheer inventiveness. This tendency anticipated in some respect the work of the mannerists, which was much derided until the art historians Max Dvorak and Hermann Voss rehabilitated the style in the twentieth century. Among its essential characteristics are elongated limbs and proportions, artificial poses, and a combination of different materials and surface treatments. Mannerist sculptural compositions might also deploy such oppositional elements as age and youth, beauty and ugliness, or male and female figures. Among the most striking inventions of mannerist sculpture is the figura serpentinata, a complex twisting movement of figures and groups that spirals upwards from the base, apparently defying gravity. Michelangelo's Victory and Dying Slave (see right), dated at various times between 1519 and 1530, established the motif, but retained the central perspective of a principal aspect turned towards the beholder. The depressed position of one figure and elevation of the other in the opposite direction is also inherent to the subject of victor and vanquished. When Giambologna took up the figura ser-pentinata motif and developed it into a new form, he created a group intended to be viewed from all sides; the complexity of the structure can only be appreciated as the viewer circulates around it. New views constantly open up, but they always accentuate the closed upward motion of the whole group. In further contrast to Michelangelo's Victory and Dying Slave group, the mannerist figura serpentinata reflected above all Vasari's notion of a maniera, which some argued ultimately degenerated into excessive virtuosity. This interim mannerist period of intense fascination with artistic perfection and elegance can be seen as anticipating the baroque style in art, which emerged after the Council of Trent called for religious renewal. Giambologna nonetheless remained the most influential Italian sculptor of the period, and his art set the tone for European sculpture of the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. His work can be seen as representing an artistic link between Michelangelo and Bernini. Art historians, especially during the first half of the twentieth century, were preoccupied with examining the true nature of the highly complex art of baroque, and their enquiries and discussions revolved mainly around matters of stylistic history. Reference is often made, for example, to the permeation of late decorative mannerism by naturalism and the picturesque, or to the importance of naturalism as a reaction to mannerism. It can be argued that the reduction of analysis to the straightforward history of form in this way allowed the broader cultural and historical context of art to be overlooked.

If Luther's Reformation had split Europe into two powerful ideological camps, it was in cinquecento Italy that forces emerged in opposition to it, even to the extent of producing a new unity between faith and the Church. Eventually the celebrated Council of Trent sat between 1545 and 1563; although it resulted in the internal consolidation of the Catholic church, at the same time the intellectual climate turned against the classically inspired arts of the Renaissance, and absolutely against the spirit of humanism. The extent to which the general cultural environment and the religious attitudes of the public and of artists in particular were affected by historical events can be well illustrated by the example of the sculptor Bartolomeo Ammannati.

Ammannati initially devoted himself to studying the sculpture of the Renaissance and antiquity, producing vast fountain figures in Florence in the mannerist spirit of the late Renaissance. Following a crisis in his personal life, however, he turned away from the style and subject matter of his early work. Condemning it wholly in the spirit of the Counter-Reformation and above all for its incorporation of the nude human figure, he bequeathed his inheritance to the Jesuit order.

In the early 1950s the Italian art historian Giulio Carlo Argan introduced the concept of rhetoric into our understanding of the baroque by describing the style as an 'art form of rhetoric' in which the main emphasis was on persuasio, persuasion. This puts the beholder into a wholly different relationship with the work of art. 'Previously, art was supposed to awaken an almost objective admiration of the beauty or perfection of the natural phenomenon being represented; thus the response of the beholder to the art work was the same as, or resembled, his response to the reality it illustrated. In the seventeenth century, a new relationship between the observer and work of art is understood by the artist. The work is no longer an objective fact, it is a means to action,' writes the Polish art historian Jan Bialostocki.

From Mannerism to Baroque Rhetoric in the Work of Alessandro Vittoria

Between 1563 and the end of the century, the Italian sculptor Alessandro Vittoria (? 1525-1608) produced several sculptures of St. Sebastian in Venice. The earliest major Venetian work by Vittoria is the altar of the Montefeltro family in the church of S. Francesco della Vigna. The altar was commissioned in November 1561 and was due to be completed by September 1562, but work seems to have dragged on until the end of the following year. In the right-hand niche of the altar, which is articulated by columns, can be seen the figure of St. Sebastian leaning against a tree-trunk (see left). A mannerist serpentinata is incorporated into this figure, as is evident from a comparison with its main source of inspiration, Michelangelo's Dying Slave in the Louvre (see p. 275). Whereas in Michelangelo's sculpture the whole figure is turned towards the onlooker in a classical presentation of form, Vittoria's St. Sebastian seems to be twisting away from the viewer's gaze. The stance of the lower body, turned towards the left and almost a step forwards, is offset by the extreme rightward rotation of the head, which is intensified by the position of the arms. This posture is the most powerful element of the sculpture. The fact that it is intended as a representation of St. Sebastian cannot be ascertained from the figure itself except for the telling detail of the arrow wound on the left chest. In fact, Vittoria later produced a small bronze replica of this figure which he entitled Marsyas or Sebastian.

Among Vittoria's major late works is another altar with a statue of St. Sebastian, in the church of S. Salvatore in Venice (see right). There it forms the right-hand flanking figure, the pair to a statue of St. Roch on the left-hand side of an altar of the Scuola dei Lugane-gheri where both statues are placed in front of the outer, slightly recessed column. The statues are dated between 1594 and 1600 to shortly before 1602. Standing somewhat under five feet, seven inches tall, more or less life-size, the figure of St. Sebastian is balanced on its right leg, which is at a slight angle and rests only on the ball of the foot. At the same time, the body leans against a thick tree stump, which is visible between the legs only up to thigh height. At calf height, the stump of a bough branches off to the left, and the bent lower left leg rests on it.

In this sculpture Vittoria abandons the classical posture of contrapposto in favor of a severe separation of the sides of the body. The elevated right arm follows the pivot of the right leg, while the left arm is dropped towards the lower left leg resting on the stump of the bough. A figure once shaped by the formal concepts of the Renaissance has been transformed into a baroque form in a manner which at once reinforces the element of suffering. The artist is no longer aiming to achieve a perfect natural realism in his sculpture. The artist's work is focused directly on moving the emotions rather than provoking admiration for a precise imitation of nature.

Gian Lorenzo Bernini (1598-1680)

Donatello's predominant influence in the development of quattrocento sculpture and Michelangelo's similarly powerful role during the following century prefigured the career of Bernini in baroque Rome. Like his two predecessors, Gian Lorenzo Bernini was an artistic personality who dominated the artistic world of the seventeenth century in Rome, but it can be argued that his influence on the art of his time far exceeded that of any artist before him.

Born on December 7, 1598 in Naples, he was trained in the workshop of his father, the painter and sculptor Pietro Bernini, who was summoned to Rome in 1605 by Pope Paul V to create a marble relief of the Assumption for the church of S. Maria Maggiore (see left). Inspired by the artistic legacy of Rome and of classical antiquity, the younger Bernini was also deeply impressed by the spirituality of St. Ignatius Loyola. His first artistic endeavors were in painting. Nonetheless, his biographer Filippo Baldinucci, whose life of the artist appeared in Florence in 1682, informs us that Bernini had already begun to make sculptures at the age of eight, and was taking on his own commissions when he was just sixteen. In early works such as Young Jupiter with the Goat Amalthea and a Satyr (see right) in the Villa Borghese, his virtuoso handling of the marble demonstrates a precocious genius, which is also suggested by the manner in which the artist integrates the sculpture into the existing space.

The four famous marble sculptures of the Villa Borghese designed by Bernini for his patron Cardinal Scipione Caffarelli Borghese between 1618 and 1625 marked a first sustained creative phase that established his fame as Italy's leading sculptor, the 'Michelangelo of his age.' Bernini also restored classical forms in his work with an evident enthusiasm, particularly those which were seen as having been degraded by the distortions of mannerism. The Aeneas and Anchises (see p. 280, left), in which Bernini translated into marble Virgil's account of Aeneas' flight from burning Troy, was already in place in 1619.

The work is intended to embody the imperial Roman foundation myth, according to which Aeneas' flight from Troy led to the foundation of Rome and Aeneas himself is therefore represented as the ancestor of Church and papacy. Literary models for the Rape of Proserpine (see p. 280, right), completed in 1622, include Ovid's account of the seizure of the future goddess of the underworld. In contrast to the mannerist the Rape of the Sabine Woman by Giambologna, Bernini reduces the sculptural perspectives to frontal and half-left, greatly intensifying the immediacy of the event. The perspective angles in David (1623) (see above) are differentiated even further, to the extent that the front view captures the full energy of the impending impact of the stone, creating a heightened expectation of victory in the profile. David's lyre lies on the ground before him, a reference to his youthful musicality, which he was able to combine with courage and strength. In this sense, David is set in specific opposition to his enemy, the lascivious Goliath, described in contemporary literature as a depraved monster and the son of a whore. Apollo and Daphne (1622-24) (see p. 281), the most famous of these Borghese sculptures, narrates the scene from Ovid's Metamorphoses where the youthful Apollo, burning with passionate love, thinks he has caught the nymph as she flees in fear of her life, only to find her transformed into a tree in his grasp. Enfolded in the bark and boughs of laurel, she becomes a natural element in the form of a laurel tree which is henceforth sacred to the grieving Apollo.

While work on the baldacchino of St. Peter's was still in progress, Urban VIII commissioned Bernini to provide sculptures for the four piers of the crossing, as an extension of the baldacchino structure. While the statues of St. Andrew (1629-39), St. Veronica (1631-40), and St. Helena (1631-39) were carried out by Duquesnoy, Mocchi, and Bolgi respectively, Bernini himself worked on the figure of St. Longinus (1631-38) (see p. 284), the Roman soldier who pierced the side of the crucified Christ. The result of more than twenty maquettes, Bernini's sculpture shows the Roman in the moment of his conversion. With arms outstretched in the shape of a crucifix, he looks up at the cross and acknowledges the son of God. In contrast to Michelangelo's stipulation that figures had to be as it were 'liberated' from a single block of marble, Bernini used no fewer than four blocks for the figure, which is nearly fifteen feet tall. Nonetheless, the extraordinary monumentality of this piece and the design of the other statues take into consideration the architectural setting designed by Michelangelo who had made the crossing the aesthetic and spiritual center of St. Peter's.

During the Borghese period Bernini embarked on a series of busts, which he released from the architectural niches that were the characteristic mannerist settings, bringing baroque portraits of popes and absolutist rulers to new artistic levels. Although usually only a partial portrait, Bernini's busts are always imbued with the whole personality of the person depicted, displaying particularly expressive and immediate qualities. Here his work moves beyond the formal concepts of the genre, and may have been influenced in this respect by the portrait paintings of Velazquez, Rubens, and Hals. His ability to create such singular likenesses enabled him to become the most sought-after portraitist of his time.

The inspiration for his portrait bust of Costanza Bonarelli, the wife of his colleague Matteo Bonarelli, was evidently a romantic attraction so violent on Bernini's part that in the end the pope himself was forced to intervene. The bust of Costanza (see below) is the only sculptural record of Bernini's private life, and is thus portrayed in an personal rather than a grand manner. With a slight turn of the sitter's head to the left, her parted lips, and watchful, interested gaze, Bernini represents her in a moment of intimate naturalism but also in an attitude of intimate closeness.

Shortly before work was finished on the bust of his patron Scipi-one Borghese (see right), Bernini discovered a flaw in the marble running across the forehead. He finished the work nonetheless, but immediately ordered a new block of marble in order to prepare a replica as quickly as possible, which he presented to the cardinal at the unveiling of the defective bust. Bernini's bust of Louis XIV (see above right) can be seen as representing the high-point of baroque

A major new period of creativity began for Bernini in 1623 when his amiable patron and powerful sponsor Cardinal Maffeo Barberini became Pope Urban VIII and he was entrusted with extensive works on the interior design of St. Peter's. The commission for the immense baldacchino over the tomb of St. Peter and the papal altar was preceded by his appointment as director of the papal casting workshop. Considering the colossal task ahead of him, this appears to have been an almost essential precondition.

The challenge to Bernini was to fill the huge, capacious crossing of St. Peter's with a liturgical structure that would stand out in the existing architecture. His solution was an inventive combination of architecture and sculpture: he raised four twisted bronze Salomonic columns on marble plinths (see left). These support a ciborium surmounted by a baldacchino formed of four volutes ornamented with sculpture. Unfortunately Bernini's first design for this scheme, which placed a bronze figure of the risen Christ on top of the baldacchino, proved impossible to implement due to the excessive weight of the figure. It was replaced by a globe and crucifix, symbolizing the triumph of Christianity over the world.

Bernini again cleverly combined architecture and sculpture to good effect in the tomb of Pope Alexander VII (see right), which he completed a few years before his own death. He designed it for a niche in the aisle of St. Peter's which contains the door to what was then a sacristy. The door is drawn into the sculptural composition, reinterpreted as the entrance to the tomb, or indeed as the door to death itself; from it emerges a skeleton with an hourglass in the manner of a memento mori.

whole personality of the person depicted, displaying particularly expressive and immediate qualities. Here his work moves beyond the formal concepts of the genre, and may have been influenced in this respect by the portrait paintings of Velazquez, Rubens, and Hals. His ability to create such singular likenesses enabled him to become the most sought-after portraitist of his time.

The inspiration for his portrait bust of Costanza Bonarelli, the wife of his colleague Matteo Bonarelli, was evidently a romantic attraction so violent on Bernini's part that in the end the pope himself was forced to intervene. The bust of Costanza (see below) is the only sculptural record of Bernini's private life, and is thus portrayed in an personal rather than a grand manner. With a slight turn of the sitter's head to the left, her parted lips, and watchful, interested gaze, Bernini represents her in a moment of intimate naturalism but also in an attitude of intimate closeness.

Shortly before work was finished on the bust of his patron Scipi-one Borghese, Bernini discovered a flaw in the marble running across the forehead. He finished the work nonetheless, but immediately ordered a new block of marble in order to prepare a replica as quickly as possible, which he presented to the cardinal at the unveiling of the defective bust. Bernini's bust of Louis XIV (see above right) can be seen as representing the high-point of baroque portrait sculpture. The history of the creation of this piece is documented, more fully than any other work by Bernini, in Chantelou's account of the journey to France. Bernini started work on the sculpture directly after his arrival in Paris in June 1665, finishing it shortly before his departure in October. The sculptor had prepared the design of the bust in numerous sketches and clay models before asking the king to actually sit for the portrait. Here Louis is shown in the imperious pose of the absolute monarch, as if he is about to issue instructions to his court officials. Bernini's later religious enthusiasm finds expression in the portrait of the doctor Gabriele Fonseca (see p. 287, below left), who was one of the first to use quinine as a medicine after its discovery by Jesuit missionaries. Bernini was commissioned to design his memorial chapel in S. Lorenzo in Lucina in Rome; he shows the doctor clasping his left hand to his breast in a moment of religious fervor as he gazes at the miracle of transubstantiation on the altar.

With the death of Urban VIII in 1644, twenty years in which baroque art dominated by Bernini had flourished in Rome finally came to an end. As the Barberini pope was replaced by the Pamphili Pope Innocent X, Bernini's influence waned and he was removed as chief architect of St. Peter's. The new pope favored the architect Bor-romini and the sculptor Algardi. In 1647 Bernini began work on his most admired but also most controversial sculpture, the Ecstasy of St. Teresa of Avila for the chapel of the Cornaro family in S. Maria della Vittoria. Separated from the nave of the church only by a low balustrade, the chapel resembles a theater set in several respects. The chapel itself forms a kind of stage, while the altar creates a secondary tier behind which the retable forms a third level set in an elliptical niche flanked by double columns where the mysterious angelic visitation is enacted. The figural group illustrated the moment of religious ecstasy described by St. Teresa of Avila herself: 'One day an angel appeared to me who was lovely beyond compare. I saw in his hand a long spear, the end of which looked like a point of fire. I felt it pierce my heart several times, pressing into my innermost being. So real was the pain to me that I moaned out loud several times, and yet it was so indescribably sweet that I could not wish to be released from it. No joy in life can give more satisfaction. When the angel withdrew his spear, I was left with a great love of God.' Borne aloft in a cloud, with her whole body except her left hand and foot enveloped in billowing drapery, the saint awaits the angel's dart, which he aims at her with his right hand. The combination of natural light streaming in through an invisible window with the supernatural light of the golden rays transports the saint into an unreal, visionary realm that defies gravity. Set in this divine ambience, St. Teresa communicates the force of religious faith to the beholder, who is drawn under her spell by Bernini's carefully contrived dramatic illusion and aesthetic rhetoric.

However, the observer is not a lone witness to the event; on closer inspection they become aware of other onlookers. The family of the patron is seated in a box in the side walls (see right); the viewer therefore becomes a participant in a mystery already watched by others and to which they can become a witness only by intruding on the intimacy of the family group. At the same time it is also obvious that the spectators in the box are more given to the distractions of a casual theatrical audience than to the higher drama of the mystical event before them; the observer thus finds himself focusing on his religious faith at a more serious level. The full spectacle represented by the chapel is defined by clearly designated formal relationships and symbolic references between the individual elements of the ensemble, as Matthias Kross has conclusively shown.

St. Teresa was greeted by rapt praise from contemporaries and Bernini himself considered it his most successful work. However, the sculpture was the subject of sustained criticism during the following centuries, a response which, it could be argued, is based on a trivialization of the saint's religious ecstasy in terms of a superficial eroticism.

Bernini's allegorical fountains appeared to fuse water and stone in a new way; the many mythological sea and river figures are no longer bound together in any kind of formal structural relationship.

The Triton fountain (see above) was commissioned as an object of self-glorification by Urban VIII, who survived its completion in 1643 by only one year. The fountain is characterized by its essentially sculptural quality which neglects the usual architectural elements. The fountain illustrates the narrative about the end of the Flood in Ovid's Metamorphoses (I, 330 ff): 'Nor does the rage of the seas continue; the ruler of the seas sets his trident aside, smoothes the billows, and summons the sea-blue Triton who towers up over the depths and commands him to blow into his sounding shell and by his signal recall the waters and the rivers. He takes the hollow horn that spirals like a snail from the lowest coil into the distance; as soon as this horn has taken air in mid-sea, its voice fills the coasts lying towards sunrise and sunset.' The scene is set at the moment when four dolphins rear out of the water supporting an open scallop shell on which the son of the sea god reaches up to blow into the triton's shell, a trumpet, and thus end the Great Flood.

On the axis of front and rear views the papal insignia of tiara and key are combined with the three bees of the Barberini arms, forming a heraldic reference to the donor. In addition to this display of grandeur, the design incorporates further allegorical motifs and relationships: the good-natured dolphins represent social conscience while the open shell from which water pours alludes to the powers of benediction; the three bees of the Barberini are associated with the concept of selfless activity in an orderly state, and the glory of the benign Barberini pontificate is proclaimed to the world by the triton blowing into the shell horn.

The commission for the Fountain of the Four Rivers (see right) was given to Bernini by Pope Innocent X. The widest variety of forms and elements are combined here to create a vast fountain monument that dominates Piazza Navona. In order to lend appropriate visual emphasis to the obelisk, which formed part of the original commission, Bernini was forced to raise it on a plinth. In bold contrast to the urban architecture of the square, he introduced into the heart of the city a grotto mound of the kind found in the gardens of villas, which, like the combination of obelisk and fountain, represented an entirely novel scheme. Bernini's design for the fountain can be associated with the early Christian concept which locates the source of the great rivers watering the four continents in a single mountain (analogous to the four rivers of paradise); the fountain comes to represent the center of the world. At the foot of the four cliffs lie the river gods representing the continents: the Ganges for Asia, the Nile for Africa, and the Plate for America. The fact that here the Danube rather than the Tiber represents Europe in paying homage to the papal insignia may be because the Tiber stands for the center of faith from where the missionary conquest of the continents originates, which for areas far north of the Danube meant above all reconquest during the Counter-Reformation. Imperial Roman symbols of this kind are usually complemented not by towering antique obelisks but by the cross, the symbol of Christ's victory over them, to which they are subordinated. In this case of course the monument is crowned by the personal emblem of the Pamphili pope, the 'innocent' dove bearing an olive branch in its beak and proclaiming divine peace. In the sense that the allegorical significance of this fountain extends across both territorial regions and historical periods, the pontificate of the reigning pope and his historic message dominate the scheme. To complete the layout of Piazza Navona, Bernini was commissioned to create the Moro Fountain (see p. 290, left).

After his return from the court of the Sun King in 1665, Bernini received a final commission from Pope Alexander VII. As with the Fountain of the Four Rivers for Innocent X, he was to design a sculptural base for an obelisk recently excavated in the cloisters of S. Maria sopra Minerva. The idea of the saddled elephant (see p. 290, right) derives from an earlier design for a sculpture that had never been executed. The Christian church dedicated to the Virgin stands on the site of a Roman temple of Minerva and an earlier Egyptian Although Bernini had enjoyed the highest reputation as a sculptor among his contemporaries, after his death in 1680 he was derided as a 'despoiler of art.' 'Bernini is the biggest ass among modern sculptors,' wrote the German critic Winckelmann from Rome in 1756. It was an assessment that would not be revised until the late nineteenth century.

Sculptors in Italy before and after Bernini

During the seventeenth century, Rome retained its position as the pre-eminent artistic capital. Numerous artists were attracted to it from all over Europe, wishing to school themselves in the famous works of antiquity and of the great masters, as well as finding commissions from wealthy patrons. Not one of the leading sculptors of the period was Roman, and to work in Rome as a sculptor meant either challenging the superior might of the famous Bernini, who dominated the field, or actually working for him.

Camillo Mariani (1556-1611) from Vicenza was one of the first to arrive and he soon become a member of the Congregazione dei Virtuosi. Although he was ranked among the most talented of sculptors, the difficulty of obtaining regular commissions meant that he was often reduced to making plasterwork for painters. With Pietro Bernini and others, he was involved in the work on the tomb of Clement VIII, and in 1603 he produced eight large niche figures made of plaster for S. Bernardo alle Terme (see above), presumably assisted by his pupil Mocchi.

Born in Montevarchi near Florence, Francesco Mocchi (1580 1654) began his training with the Florentine painter Santi di Tito (1536-1603) before doing his apprenticeship under Camillo Mariani in Rome. However, his more important early works are found not in Rome but in Piacenza, where he worked from 1612 to 1630 on equestrian statues for Ranuccio and Alessandro Farnese, creating a new baroque style in this sort of sculpture (see above right). His St. Veronica in the crossing of St. Peter's (see right) was so large that it had to be made from several blocks of marble; the figure appears to be striding violently out of the niche with her drapery billowing up in such a manner that she almost appears to be floating. Although he should really be seen as an early baroque predecessor of Bernini, Mocchi held his own alongside Bernini for a time before moving away from 'the history of sculpture unfolding in Bernini's work,' as Norbert Huse puts it, eventually turning the special character of his art into the 'capriciousness of an eccentric.' This process itself suggests how powerfully Bernini's art determined the prevailing baroque taste in Rome.

Stefano Maderno (1576-1636), who came from Lombardy or Ticino, like Mocchi was active artistically between two distinct stylistic periods. He worked initially as a restorer of antiquities while producing numerous small-scale copies of classical and contemporary sculptures, many of which were cast in bronze. His earliest large-scale sculpture is also his most important work. St. Cecilia lies in a red marble niche in the church of S. Cecilia in Trastevere in Rome as if displayed in an open coffin (see right). In this work, Maderno devises an impressive composition. For the first time, a moving moment from the legend of a religious martyr is captured not as a narrative scene of the kind found in a relief, but as sculpture. Here the artist can be seen as having anticipated the powerful expressiveness of Bernini's works in marble.

Alessandro Algardi (1598-1654) was born in Bologna and first trained in the academy there which was run by Lodovico Carracci (1555-1619). He then worked in Milan (for Vincenzo Gonzaga II) and Venice before moving to Rome, probably in 1625. Through his fellow-citizen Domenichino, he obtained commissions for plaster work and smaller sculptures, and spent a considerable period restoring antique statues. After creating a portrait of Cardinal Laudivio Zacchia in 1626, he received his first major commission for the tomb of Leo XI in St. Peter's. By the time the Pamphili pope Innocent X arrived on the papal throne, Algardi was in direct competition with Bernini. Although the pope had no particular interest in art and no special preference for Algardi's style, he evidently preferred his more relaxed character. A stronger motive for the promotion of Algardi at this point was most probably a general enmity for the Barberini and their favorites.

Among Algardi's most famous works is the great marble relief of Pope Leo the Great and Attila (see above). It shows Leo turning back Attila and the Huns. Pope Leo had gone to the banks of the Po to counter the invasion of Attila and his army by dissuading him from conquering and destroying Rome. A vision in which the apostles Peter and Paul appear in the sky with swords drawn against the cowed leader of the Huns finally persuades the invader to retreat. In this relief, Algardi's style appears to be cooler and more precisely detailed than Bernini's passionate manner. This clarity of observation, which occasionally slips into a monotonous inventory of detail, may explain why Algardi was also one of the most sought-after portraitists of his time.

Francois Duquesnoy (1597-1643), known in Italy also as II Fiammingo [the Fleming], came from Brussels, where he trained in the studio of his father Jerome Duquesnoy. After his arrival in Rome in 1618, he made ivory figure carvings and restored classical antiquities. This close contact with classical sculpture and an appreciation of the paintings of Raphael formed the basis for his own style, which was further developed by his studies with Nicolas Poussin (1594-1665) of Titian's Bacchanalia in the Villa Ludovisi. This was possibly the Flemish sculptor's source of inspiration for the characteristic putto type which appears in his subsequent work. In 1626, Duquesnoy was sharing a house with his friend Poussin. A summons from Paris to become court sculptor to Louis XIII remained unfulfilled as Duquesnoy fell ill on the way there and died on July 19 1643. He was probably the most prominent Low Countries sculptor working in Bernini's Rome.

Whereas Algardi's work had reflected the influence of Bernini, Dusquesnoy's St. Susanna (see above) suggests an abandonment of Bernini's influence, although to some degree it equals the quality of the master's religious sculptures. The saint does not look upward to heaven like most other Roman figures of the Seicento, but downwards at humanity. In this pose, which is very much based on a classical aesthetic, she contrasts with Bernini's mystification of naturalness and humanity. Further, through his use of an antique style of drapery in which the body is carefully enveloped, Duques-noy shows the saint as she essentially is: chaste, pure, virginal. As an outstanding masterpiece in Duquesnoy's ceuvre, even for contemporary commentators it represented a model of the progressive, classically oriented tendency in baroque sculpture. The other large figure by Duquesnoy, the St. Andrew in the crossing of St. Peter's, is therefore a source of some confusion. In complete contrast to St. Susanna, it is conceived wholly in the spirit of Bernini's baroque pathos. The mystery of how a sculptor of such ability could produce two such different works at the same time is at least partly resolved by current art historical suggestions that Bernini himself was heavily involved in the design of the figure.

Antonio Raggi (1624-86) was born in Vico Morcote near Como, and worked initially in Algardi's studio in Rome before gaining employment with Bernini. At this point he was mainly involved in simply executing Bernini's models, but also appears to have produced independent work which allowed him ultimately to establish his own professional reputation. His sculpture of the death of St. Cecilia on the left-hand side-altar of S. Agnese in Piazza Navona (see p. 296) shows a predilection for painterly relief, a characteristically baroque form of sculpture, which he filled with a scene with many figures. The opposing motions represented in the body and drapery of the figure standing on the right, the extension of the pictorial space by cutting across the frame, and the emotional abandon of the remaining figures have led to Raggi being known as 'the second-generation Bernini.'

Ercole Ferrata (1610-86) came like Raggi from the Val d'Intelvi near Como, an area with a rich artistic tradition. He studied first in Genoa, but in 1637 was recorded as a member of the sculptors' guild of Naples. In 1646, after a year working in L'Aquila, he finally came to Rome, where he studied first under Bernini and then under Algardi. After the latter's death he set up his own studio, where he nonetheless continued to carry out Bernini's commissions. At the same time he trained numerous young talented sculptors revealing himself as a good teacher of judgment and taste. His reputation as a teacher and the fact that he was thought to be the best connoisseur of antiquities in his day contrast with the rather modest and simple nature of his compositions.

His marble relief of the Stoning of St. Emerentiana (see right) was conceived as a counterpart to Raggi's relief for the right-hand side-altar of S. Agnese. Ferrata captures with profound sympathy the moment of martyrdom, which is mentioned in the Golden Legend only in two sentences: 'But when friends buried [St. Agnes's] body, they were scarcely able to escape the stones thrown by the heathen. Emerentiana, St. Agnes's foster-sister, who was very holy even though she had not yet been baptized, remained by the tomb; she punished the heathen with harsh words until she herself was stoned by them.'

Domenico Guidi (1628-1701) was apprenticed at first to his uncle Giuliano Finelli (1601-57) in Naples before joining Algardi's workshop in Rome in 1649, where he remained until the latter's death. Like Ferrata, he also set up his own workshop, although he seems to have been less interested in teaching than Ferrata and was more interested in establishing a commercial enterprise which supplied patrons throughout Italy as well as Germany, Spain, France, and even Malta. Apart from an exceptional design for the angel with the spear for the Ponte degli Angeli, he never worked for Bernini. As a self-assured artistic entrepreneur who considered himself of equal rank to his great rival, he apparently maintained a professional distance from the master. After the deaths of Bernini, Ferrata, and Raggi, Guidi at last achieved his ambition of becoming the leading sculptor in Rome. In addition, his intervention on behalf of Charles Lebrun reinforced the influence of French sculptors in Rome. His own reliefs, however, can be seen as lacking depth, and are ultimately superficial.

The Genoese sculptor Francesco Queirolo (1704-62) passed through Rome and on to Naples, where he worked on the furnishing of the Cappella Sansevero de' Sangri, the tomb of the Sangrio family. Large-scale representations of the deceased were increasingly being replaced during this period by allegorical figures or groups, with those buried in the tomb appearing only in medallion portraits. The Liberation from Error (see p. 299, below) alludes to the worldly life of Prince Antonio Sangrio who became a monk after the death of his wife. The sculptural representation of a net, the allegorical form of human and worldly error, is translated with impressive naturalism, achieving a three-dimensional illustration of a painterly subject that was characteristic of baroque sculpture.

The Milanese sculptor Camillo Rusconi (1654 or 1658-1728) came to Rome around 1680, where he was numbered among the many collaborators of Ercole Ferrata. Stylistically, his work remained at first within the Roman tradition of Bernini's baroque, distinguished mainly by a restless monumentality and massive weight of drapery. Later Rusconi simplified his style by paring down the movement in the surface of garments, removing excessive folds and formally stressing the monumental appearance of the apostles in S. Giovanni Laterano, for example (see p. 300, right).

One of the few important Roman sculptors was Pietro Bracci (1700-73). A pupil of Rusconi, along with Filippo della Valle, his work is characterized by a softer treatment of light. His aim was to reinforce the painterly qualities of the work, which were further emphasized by the use of colored marble as in the tomb of Pope Benedict XIII in S. Maria sopra Minerva (see right). In later works, his figures throw off the weight of heavy draperies, establishing a classically oriented rococo style.

Filippo della Valle (1697-1770) began his training under his uncle Giovanni Battista Foggini (1652-1737), but after Foggini's death worked for Camillo Rusconi in Rome, where he began to develop his own style. Shortly afterwards he won joint first prize with Pietro Bracci in the Concorso Clementino of the Accademia di San Luca but after Rusconi's death in 1728 he returned to Florence.

The accession of the Florentine-born Lorenzo Corsini as Pope Clement XII and in particular the nepotism of Cardinal Neri Corsini resulted in the award of numerous commissions to Filippo della Valle in Rome after 1730. He was one of ten sculptors to work on furnishing the Capella Orsini in S. Giovanni Laterano; in 1732 he produced Temperance (see p. 300, left), an allegory of moderation, in which he represses the overbearing pathos of Roman high and late baroque in favor of a soft mobility. A restrained classicism is evident in the depiction of the female statue figure.

The Trevi Fountain (see p. 301) is the last great collaborative work by Roman sculptors. Its present form is based on plans by Nicola Salvi (1697-1751). The grand ornamental facade in front of Palazzo Poli is in the style of a Roman triumphal arch with a massive semicircular niche in the center. A rectangular niche on the left side holds a figure intended as an allegory of abundance, while a niche on the right is the setting for a personification of healing; both were made by Filippo della Valle. Above, the relief on the left-hand side by Giovanni Grossi (dates unknown) shows Agrippa examining the design of the aqueduct, while in Andrea Bergondi's relief on the right (second half of eighteenth century) the Virgin points out the spring, the Acqua Vergine, to the Roman soldiers, as described in the ancient legend. In the central niche, Oceanus, ruler of the waters and its inhabitants, steps forth on a shell held up by sea creatures, assisted by horses held by tritons. This group is the work of Pietro Bracci, possibly according to designs by Giovanni Battista Maini (1690-1752), the third major pupil of Rusconi. The Trevi Fountain can be seen as representing the end of Roman baroque.

Baroque Sculpture in France

During the first half of the seventeenth century, French baroque sculpture seems to have had little of the aesthetic coherence that would come to characterize it after Louis XIV became king. Before this, French sculpture was dominated to a considerable degree by the various styles of other European sculptors or schools of sculpture. It is possible to discern here the influence of Roman baroque as well as Netherlandish sculpture, and sometimes elements of the work of the mannerist sculptor Giambologna. The prevailing tendency was towards monumentality, as developed in the transition to early French baroque in the work of such artists as Germain Pilon (c. 1525-90).

Pilon's influence permeated the training of the Parisian sculptor Simon Guillain (1581-1658) under his father Nicolas before he went to Italy sometime before 1621. In the 1630s, he worked for the royal chateau at Blois (among others) and is recorded in 1648 as a founding member of the royal academy of painting and sculpture, becoming its president a year before his death. The bronze figure of Louis XIII (see left) with Anne of Austria and their ten-year-old son Louis XIV in coronation robes is Guillain's masterpiece. Made in 1647 and now preserved in the Louvre, the group was originally set into a triumphal arch on the narrow side of a block of houses opposite the Pont-au-Change. The naturalism and monumentalism of these figures indicate their stylistic dependence on the Pilon school.

Jean Warin II (1604-72) was raised in the traditions of a Liege medal-making family. In 1625, he moved to Paris and became France's leading medal-maker. Almost twenty years before his election to the Academy in 1665, he was appointed Graveur General des Monnaies de France, and in 1648 Controlleur General des Effigies. In his role as director of the Mint, he undertook the reorganization of French coinage. While his portrait medals reflect the stylistic tradition of Germain Pilon, his portrait statues are imbued with a notable intimacy beneath formal exteriors. Thus the raised eyebrows of Cardinal Richelieu (see left) and other physiognomical details reveal something of the personality of the sitter. This sculpture was produced during Richelieu's lifetime and six casts were made of it after his death.

Active both as a sculptor and painter, Jacques Sarrazin (1592-1660) was trained by Nicolas Guillain until he left for Italy in 1610. In Rome, where he worked until 1628, he made the acquaintance of Bernini and Duquesnoy. He subsequently produced numerous garden figures as well as several statues for the high altar of S. Andrea della Valle. Sarrazin was an early practitioner of neo-classicism, a style which developed from his study of classical antiquity and the sculpture of Michelangelo. Once back in France, he produced sculpture for a wide range of ecclesiastical and secular buildings such as the Chateau de Maisons (1642-50) in Maisons-Laffitte and the park at Versailles (1660). He was a founding member of the Paris Academy in 1648 and became its president in 1655. His caryatids on the Pavilion de l'Horloge (see right) on the west wing of the Louvre in Paris were conceived as pilasters because of the cubic entablature (and in the case of the inner pairs, as offset pilasters) which removed problems of arrangement otherwise arising from the rules of the classical orders. Both the contrapposto arrangement of the statues and the treatment of the robes indicate the direct influence of classical models.

Whereas Sarrazin had an influence on the classical tendency of French baroque sculpture, the work of another artist, Pierre Puget (1620-94), similarly inspired by Michelangelo and in particular by Bernini, is imbued with baroque pathos and emotion rather than with academic concerns of form. Puget came from Marseilles, and gained his early training in the shipyard carving workshop. In 1638, he went to Italy and worked presumably as a stuccoist and painter under Pietro da Cortona. From 1643 he practised sculpture and painting at Toulon arsenal, the largest shipyard in France, where he worked mainly in the woodcarving workshop; the decoration of ships constituted his main activity from 1643 to 1679. His paintings were mainly of religious subjects in the manner of the Carracci and Rubens. Among his first significant architectural and sculptural commissions was the entrance to Toulon city hall (1656). A second tour of Italy took him not only to Rome but also to Genoa, where among other works he created two monumental figures, St. Sebastian and the Blessed Alessandro Sauli, for the dome piers of S. Maria Assunta di Carignano (1664-68). These works, commissioned by the Sauli family, show Puget working wholly in Bernini's Roman high baroque manner. Back in Toulon, he is known to have become director of shipbuilding in the shipyard around 1670, but evidently still found time to act as architecte de ville for Marseilles where he produced ambitious urban development plans including such buildings as the fish markets, and designs for large town houses in Aix-en-Provence

The beginning of Puget's late period is marked by the marble figure of Milon of Crotone for the park at Versailles (see p. 304, right). One of his principal works, this powerful design illustrating the moment when Milon is attacked by a lion combines naturalistic representation with extreme dramatic tension. A contemporary of Pythagoras. Milon was a famous wrestler from Croton who in Ovid's Metamorphoses (XV, 229 ff) complains of the infirmity of age. The face contorted by fear and the violent rotation of the athlete as the beast of prey sinks its paws into his thigh seem to court sculptor, and in 1678 was appointed to the Paris Academy as a teacher. He was to be elected director of the Academy in 1702. Coyzevox was the most successful of Louis XIV's sculptors: he received an annual stipend of four thousand livres and taught an entire generation of sculptors, including his nephew Nicolas (1659-1733) and Guillaume Coustou the Elder (1677-1746). He thus wielded a decisive influence on French sculpture of the eighteenth century.

A large number of portrait statues and busts demonstrate that Coyzevox was a close observer of nature; he by no means idealized his portraits but nonetheless was able to convey the required sense of display through showy dress, pathos of gesture, or classicizing elements. He clothes a sculpture of the Duchess of Burgundy, Marie-Adelaide of Savoy, in the late Roman costume of the goddess Diana, for example. The monumental plaster relief, The Triumph of Louis XIV (see p. 136), is among his most important works, executed as part of the wall decoration of the Salon de Guerre in Versailles. Riding over the battlefield in the manner of a late-Roman apotheosis, the king is here elevated to the role of divine ruler, the heir of the Caesars. With his gaze directed into the distance and the future, this subjugator of his enemies awaits the crown of victory that is preferred by the figure of Victory appearing above him.

Coyzevox's work for the court aristocracy consisted of a series of tombs. Among them those of minister Colbert and Cardinal Maz-arin (see left) are notable for their formal references to the artistic traditions of the sixteenth-century royal tombs in Saint-Denis. In splendid garments, the dead cardinal kneels on the raised sarcophagus, while a putto squats holding the lictor's bundle of fasces. Both marble figures and one of the bronze allegories of virtues derive from some of Coyzevox's own earlier works, while the other two virtues were produced by the sculptors Etienne Le Hongre (1628-90) andJean-BaptisteTuby (1635-1700).

Although his garden sculptures were often reduced to the level of mere copies of antique works, Coyzevox was nonetheless later able to shake off the lifeless and rigid constraints of the Academy. Beyond its art historical significance, his work (which today includes around two hundred known pieces) offers an informative view of the cult of divine rule surrounding Louis XIV.

Like his brother Nicolas Coustou, who was a nephew and pupil of Antoine Coyzevox, Guillaume Coustou the Elder was also a colleague of Coyzevox at one time. Between 1697 and 1703 he was in Rome on a scholarship and returned there in 1704 to become a member of the academy of fine arts, where eventually, in 1735, he became president. Among his outstanding works is the Horse-Tamer (see p. 313), originally commissioned for Chateau Marly but now at the beginning of the Champs-Elysees. The horse rears up in an elegant riding-school pose and is held on a bridle in an almost playful manner. What is supposedly an elemental force is in fact portrayed as nature firmly under human restraint. Mane and hair remain ornaments in the subdued illusion of rococo.

Edme Bouchardon (1698-1762), a pupil of Coustou, combined late French rococo with formal classical elements in an early version of neo-classicism. His principal work, the Fontaine de Grenelle in the Rue de Grenelle in Paris (see above), is incorporated into a classical columnar facade which relates to the monumentality of the fountain figures. The sculptural structure of the fountain was inspired by the Medici tombs by Michelangelo in Florence.

The work of Rene-Michel Slodtz (1705-64) is still largely influenced by the formal framework of Roman baroque; his sculpture is comparable in style to the pre-classical manner of Bouchardon. Born to a French artist family of Flemish descent, he was trained by his father Sebastien Slodtz (1655-1726) before obtaining a scholarship from the Academy. He finally established himself as an independent sculptor in Rome between 1736 and 1746. His principal works date from this period. They include the marble St. Bruno Rejecting the Rank of Bishop in St. Peter's (1740-44) and the tomb of Alessandro Gregorio Marchese Capponi in S. Giovanni dei Fiorentini (1745-46). In Paris he worked in collaboration with his brothers Sebastien Antoine (1695-1754) and Paul-Ambroise (1702-58), principally on decorative works for the court. The only monumental work of his later life was the tomb of Jean-Baptiste Languet de Gergy (1757) in the church of Saint-Sulpice in Paris (see left).

The work of the Parisian sculptor Jean-Baptiste Pigalle (1714-85) reflects the aesthetic transition from rococo to neo-classicism. His work embodies the contrast between an almost radical naturalism in translating anatomical details on the one hand and the polished, classically derived forms and clear straight lines of the Louis XVI style on the other. Trained under Robert Le Lorrain, in 1735 Pigalle was employed in the studio of Jean-Baptiste Lemoyne II; he left the following year for a prolonged stay in Italy. Three years after his return, in 1744, he became a member of the Academy. He was appointed professor there in 1752 and finally elected president in 1777. In his work Pigalle sought to represent the individual with idealization and in all his intimate humanity. This is particularly evident in his portrait bust of Diderot (1777), and in the seated figure of the unclothed Voltaire produced the year before. This is also how the deceased Henri-Claude d'Harcourt is presented on his tomb in Notre-Dame in Paris (see below). The gaunt corpse endeavors one last time to rise from the coffin, but shrouded Death holds up the hourglass which has run out, and the torch held by the dead man's guardian spirit standing at his feet has gone out. Even the widow who stands beside her husband's discarded military equipment no longer looks at the deceased but laments to herself in prayerful entreaty. Although features of the baroque memento mori, the reminder of human mortality, are suggested here, this composition is essentially very untypical for a baroque tomb. The figures stand in a very distant relationship to each other, and this is mirrored by the limited degree to which the beholder is drawn into the scene; the mourning figure takes on a posture that, almost memorial-like, conjures up the relics of the deceased.

Although Jean-Baptiste Lemoyne II (1704-8) was awarded the Grand Prix in 1725 and was later appointed president of the Royal Academy, his reputation as the pre-eminent French rococo sculptor was established only by art historians of the twentieth century. Influenced by Diderot and imbued with classicist fervor, contemporary art critics saw in his busts only a moderate talent for portrait likenesseswhich was, in any case, considered inferior to the abilities of his pupil Jean-Antoine Houdon (1741-1828). Lemoyne's bust of the Comte de la Tour d'Auvergne in Frankfurt (see right) is notable for the ambiguity it incorporates between the hardness of the representation of the eyes on the one hand and the almost picturesque, soft aspect of the drapery and fleshy facial features on the other. The way in which the sculpture catches the subject in the attitude of an instant is particularly characteristic of Lemoyne; further, in giving expression to the individual being, this bust is distinguished from the pretentious conventions of court portraiture. The portrait of the Comte de la Tour in the French rococo manner nonetheless appears to be entirely in accord with the highly educated and elegant lifestyle of French aristocratic life in the eighteenth century.

Also in the Liebighaus in Frankfurt is the portrait bust of Mademoiselle Servat (see right) by Lemoyne's most important pupil, Jean-Antoine Houdon. This work is even more ambiguously executed. The piece is in some respects meticulously detailed, as in the fine lace of the decolletage, for example, but elsewhere, such as in the drapery or face, the composition is overly finished and highly stylized. The hairstyle seems oddly enough to create a new expressive element, linking the disparate styles represented in the composition; without excessive elaboration each individual hair becomes visible. However much Houdon's work reflected the naturalistic and human tendencies of portraiture during his early artistic career, it appears that he was equally concerned to conform to the aesthetic canons of classicism. His career took him not only to Italy and Germany but also, in 1785, to North America, where he was involved in the execution of a memorial for George Washington. In the transition to a new age, his work was essentially more forward-looking than historicist, but was very much informed nonetheless by an understanding of the artistic language of the classical past.

Baroque Sculpture in Holland and Belgium

After the religious partition of the Netherlands during the seventeenth century, only one sculptor from the Protestant north achieved any kind of international artistic status. This was Hendrik de Keyser (1565-1621), the sculptor and architect who later became municipal architect of Amsterdam. His sculptural work, like his architecture, drew on Italian mannerist sources, but his work in this style hardly compares, it can be argued, with the outstanding sculptures of an artist like Adriaen de Vries, for example. It was not until the year of his death that Hendrik de Keyser's masterpiece, the tomb of William I of Orange, commissioned in 1614 for the Nieuwe Kerk in Delft, was completed by his son Peter (see above left). In a light and richly decorated pavilion of black and white marble, the reclining figure of the ruler is flanked by his portrait in bronze while at his feet is an allegory of Fame. In the puritan spirit, not one of the four bronze cardinal virtues in the corner niches is depicted either fully or partly nude. Hendrik de Keyser established no school, and few sculptors were trained by him; after his death artists from the southern part of the country moved to the north to fill the artistic void.

Even though many Netherlandish artists worked mainly abroad, including Jan van Nost and Pieter-Denis Plumier, Aegid Verhelst, Guillelmus de Grof, Gabriel Grupello, and Peter Verschaffelt, the Quellinus workshop under Artus Quellinus the Elder (1609-68), the principal master of Dutch sculpture in the seventeenth century, is representative of an important native school. Born in Antwerp and trained by his father Erasmus Quellinus (1584-1639), Artus went initially to work for Frangois Duquesnoy in Rome, returning to Antwerp in 1639, where he joined a wider circle around Rubens. In 1650, Quellinus went to Amsterdam, where he remained for fifteen years, producing allegorical reliefs and four female caryatids for the decoration of the town hall. His signed marble bust of Anton de Graeff (see above right) from this period shows this member of the ruling family in formal dress and pose. Quellinus' most important artistic contribution was his translation of the aesthetic philosophy of the painter Peter Paul Rubens into sculpture.

Born in Mechelen as the most important member of the artistic Fayd'herbe family, Lukas Fayd'herbe (1617-97) went at the age of nineteen to Rubens' house in Antwerp and worked with him for three years.  Like Quellinus, Fayd'herbe also followed Rubens' stylistic models in his small-scale ivory carvings as well as his other work. His eclectic manner undermines the coherence of handling in the design and arrangement of figures, and this is still more evident in his large-scale figures, where the influence of Bernini can also be seen. The tomb of Archbishop Andreas Cruesen in Mechelen cathedral (see left and above) shows the bishop in full vestments kneeling before the figure of the Risen Christ. His miter is placed before him on the ground, while behind him Chronos, symbolic of transience, is on the point of turning away. Fayd'herbe's principal work in his capacity as an architect is the church of Our Lady of Hanswijk in Mechelen.

Rombout Verhulst (1624-98) was also from Mechelen; in 1648 he collaborated with Artus Quellinus on the work on the town hall in Amsterdam. He soon developed a reputation with Quellinus as one of the leading Dutch portrait artists of the second half of the seventeenth century and was sought after to create tomb sculpture throughout the country. His numerous tomb monuments include the one for Johan Polyander van Kerchoven in Leyden (see p. 318, above) which is considered one of his best funerary works. The deceased is portrayed as if merely resting, with his head propped on his left hand. Verhulst's sensitive handling of the physiognomy and hands as well as the naturalistic treatment of clothing and hair define him as one of the finest Dutch sculptors of his time.

Among the extraordinary sculptural achievements of the southern Low Countries are pulpits, objects which have generally been ignored by art historians. The church decoration in the nave of St. Gudula in Brussels is outstanding in both size and design. Before Hendrik Frans Verbruggen (1654-1724) was commissioned by the Jesuits in Louvain to work on this project in 1695, he had worked on numerous decorative schemes for churches in Antwerp, like his father Pieter Verbruggen (1615-86). In his master work at St. Gudula, Verbruggen chose to combine scenes from the Old and New-Testaments in a representation of salvation and redemption. The platform is supported on a massive tree trunk, the boughs and branches of which extend beyond the tester. In front of it, Adam and Eve are seen being driven out of paradise by an angel brandishing a sword. In an iconographical deviation from the typological pattern, they are accompanied by the skeletal figure of Death. This scene is paired by that of the Virgin with the Christ Child on the tester, where the mother of God is represented as the new Eve and redeemer of humanity who kills the serpent. Whereas the naturalistic representation of flora and fauna refers to the earthly realm, the tester, borne up by angels, floats in the heavenly sphere. Between them is the platform, its shape hinting at the globe of the earth, suggesting not only a burden on the backs of our progenitors but also, as an attribute of the Virgin, an ideal link to the mother of God. 'The platform as the globe becomes a place where the Church involves its earthly representative in the visual unfolding of the Redemption and proclaims its message from there,' writes Susannc Geese. Erected in 1699 in the Jesuit church in Louvain, the pulpit was moved to its present position after the dissolution of the Society of Jesus in 1773.

Baroque Sculpture in Britain

While English art of the first half of the seventeenth century was largely dominated by the architectural achievements of the London painter and architect Inigo Jones (1573-1652), sculpture of this period was influenced particularly by trends brought over by refugees of the religious wars on the European continent, in particular Holland. One of the major English sculptors of the period is Nicholas Stone (1586-1647) from Woodbury, near Exeter. He spent the last two years of his apprenticeship in the London workshop of Isaac James, who may have recommended him to Hendrik de Keyser in 1606, during the latter's two-year stay in England. Stone returned to Holland with Hendrik as his associate, where he remained until 1613 and married his teacher's daughter before returning to London

In the Dutchman's workshop Stone came into contact with sculpture of an artistic quality that he had not encountered in his homeland and which was ultimately to play a considerable role in the revival of contemporary English sculpture, particularly in the important field of tomb monuments. It was Stone who introduced the reclining figure without hands raised in prayer into the canon of English sculpture. The tomb of Lady Elizabeth Carey, created during the subject's lifetime, shows the deceased lying on a raised tomb with her right hand on her breast. The black marble slab forms a simple but effective contrast to the carefully detailed figure. The splendid and minutely finished clothing is matched by a naturalism in the depiction of the dead woman's face that is carefully observed and reflects the general trend of the period for the replacement of the prestige tomb by a more intimate portrayal of death. In the tomb of Sir William Curie (see left), the deceased appears to be sleeping, with limbs relaxed on a tombstone that scarcely rises above ground level. The naked corpse is covered only by a thin cloth. Stone's many innovations had a notably enlivening effect on contemporary English sculpture. He was also active as an architect and site supervisor on some of Inigo Jones's projects. His son Nicholas the Younger (1618-47) was both pupil and assistant in his workshop. Two surviving notebooks provide a detailed insight into the life, work, and output of the Stones.

The leading English rococo sculptor was in fact a Frenchman born in Lyons. Louis-Francois Roubiliac (1702-62) probably trained under Balthasar Permoser in Dresden and then under Nicolas Coustou in Paris. In 1730, as a pupil at the Academie Royale de Peinture et Sculpture he was awarded second prize in the Prix de Rome competition. Around 1730 he went to England and in 1735 married a Huguenot, Catherine Helot. Even his first work, commissioned by Jonathan Tyers, the proprietor of Vauxhall Gardens, a seated figure of George Frideric Handel (1738), brought immediate success. Instead of Apollo or Orpheus, the traditional subjects of musical allegory, Roubiliac chose to portray the famous living composer on a pedestal playing his lyre. In composition and expression this piece may be seen as one of the principal works of English rococo; it is also one of the earliest memorials to a living artist.

Among Roubiliac's best known works is the tomb of Joseph and Lady Elizabeth Nightingale, (1758-61) (see above). Lady Elizabeth died in 1731 after a miscarriage brought about by shock caused by lightning. Her son commissioned the tomb after the death of his father in 1752. In this composition, Death steps forth from his black vault and aims his thunderbolt at the young swooning Lady Elizabeth, while her horrified husband attempts in vain to ward off the event. Like many tombs of this period, it illustrates a story, although this is not a conventional tale of Christian redemption but one representing the tragic triumph of death.

Roubiliac was known as a virtuoso portrait sculptor who was more interested in creating realistic likenesses than idealized, pretentious depictions (see left); his sitters are often shown in simple contemporary clothing.

Baroque Sculpture in Germany and Austria: Late Sixteenth to Mid-Seventeenth Centuries

After Protestant iconoclasm had been pushed back in parts of the Holy Roman Empire in favor of the aesthetic demands of the Counter-Reformation, towards the end of the sixteenth and during the seventeenth century, centers of art emerged in southern Germany. In particular, this led to a strong demand for contemporary large-scale sculptures. Dutch artists were prominent both in architecture and sculpture, which entered into a new relationship with each other during this period, partly on the basis of the artists' extensive training in Italy.

The Amsterdam sculptor Hubert Gerhard (c. 1550-1622/23), for example, had worked in the Florentine workshop of Giambologna until he was summoned to southern Germany by the banker Hans Fugger to produce what was to be the first monumental fountain in the Florentine style north of the Alps for his country house at Kirchheim. Gerhard was commissioned to produce a fountain to commemorate the Emperor Augustus, the legendary founder of Augsburg (see right); the scheme was commissioned by the city on its 1,600th anniversary in 1589. Four river gods set on the edge of the fountain basin symbolize the four rivers of Augsburg and their individual economic roles, while the figure of Augustus turns with raised arm towards the town hall, the seat of the citizens whose only allegiance is to the emperor. Gerhard's bronze figure of the Archangel Michael (see right) conquering the dragon adorns the facade of the church of St. Michael in Munich, built in 1583-90 by the architect Friedrich Sustris for the Jesuits. The figure is an allegory of the triumph over unbelief in the struggle of the Counter-Reformation against Protestantism.

Hans Krumper from Weilheim (1570-1634) worked in close collaboration with his teachers Gerhard and Sustris. On completing his training in 1590, Krumper went first to Italy, then two years later married Sustris's daughter and by 1594 was taken on as William V's court sculptor. It was probably due to his father-in-law's rank that in 1599 he was also appointed court architect. As architect and sculptor, Krumper combined two key roles in the large-scale rebuilding of the official electoral palace, decorating it with allegories of the cardinal virtues and the 'Patrona Bavariae' [patron of Bavaria] in the middle of the facade (see right). The mother of God appears as the queen of heaven with crown and scepter in her left hand. She rests her right foot on the crescent moon, while holding the child with the imperial orb with her right arm. Planned by Krumper from 1611, modeled in 1614, and cast by Bartholomeus Wenglein the following year, the figure provides the palace (and thereby the rule of Maximilian I) with an element of piety and legitimacy against a background of blossoming Counter-Reformation religiosity. Krumper's ducal figures from the tomb of Ludwig of Bavaria (see left) were originally intended for the tomb of William V. They were executed by Dionys Frey and are among the leading examples of bronze-casting in Munich

Adriaen de Vries (c. 1545-1626) was another Fleming who passed through the Florentine workshop of Giambologna. There he absorbed a formal mannerist repertoire, moving on in 1588 to the duchy of Savoy, where he was appointed court sculptor. Between 1596 and 1602, he executed the two other major fountains in Augsburg, a further expression of imperial ostentation. These were the Merkurbrunnen [Mercury Fountain] and the Herkulebrunne [Hercules Fountain] (see right); the bronze sculptures on these structures were produced in the bronze foundry of Wolfgang Neidhart the Younger.

Among the most impressive works by Adriaen de Vries is the Man of Sorrows (see p. 324, below) executed in 1607 at the commission of Prince Carl von Liechtenstein, when the artist was already established as the official sculptor to Rudolf II at the court in Prague. The typology of the man of sorrows sitting alone on the Via Dolorosa was introduced in the title page of the Large Passion (1511) by Albrecht Durer (1471-1528). Nonethelesss, this composition does not represent a straightforward adaptation of the image in a woodcut into a three-dimensional bronze sculpture. Whereas Diirer had intended to establish the concept of the passion and generalize it by showing Christ with the crown of thorns and wound marks, Adriaen de Vries shows the momentousness of human suffering on the edge of the Via Dolorosa, matching a Counter-Reformation need for empathetic piety. However the expression of suffering on Christ's face in the sculpture stands in stark contrast to the athletic body modeled on the Belevedere torso, suggesting an art in transition from late mannerism to baroque.

Shortly after Adriaen de Vries, Hans Reichle (c. 1570-1624) from Schongau found himself in Augsburg; his principal works are a series of outstanding monumental bronzes. Reichle, another pupil of Giambologna who is recorded as being employed in his workshop in Florence from 1588, came to Augsburg in 1602 and in the following year began work on the Archangel Michael for the Arsenal (see above), completing it by 1606. Over-life-size, the archangel stands with flaming sword (lost) raised triumphantly over the body of the fallen Lucifer, whose horror is expressed in a grisly naturalistic grimace. Clearly owing much to a work illustrating the same subject produced by the Flemish sculptor Hubert Gerhard, Reichle's group is nonetheless more spatially expansive, and as the sculpture is not confined to a niche here, the ensemble is widened to make room for the flanking putti; the entire facade in fact serves as a stage for the event. Reichle's mastery of the medium is still more evident in the bronze figures of the altar of the crucifix in St. Ulrich and St. Afra (see right and p. 327, top left). With wide gestures, the voluminous figures lay claim to the broad space of the crossing, in which they are clearly defined by sharp lines. The group, which consists of Christ on the cross and the grieving Virgin, with St. Mary Magdalene and St. John standing by, may be considered as the joint work of the sculptor and the Augsburg bronze foundry run by Wolfgang Neidhart the Younger, a member of an old brass-founding family. Neidhart's skills were clearly equal to those demonstrated by the foundry in Nuremberg.

The light late-gothic church interior of St. Ulrich and Afra is distinguished by the three multi-storey monumental carved altars (see right) by the Weilheim sculptor Hans Degler (1564-1634/35); their structure derives from the type of the now lost tabernacle in the Dominican church of Augsburg which was built in 1518 in the renaissance style. On a plinth running the breadth of the altar table rests a distinct tabernacle area. Above this rises a massive main storey in the style of a classical triumphal arch. It takes up the principal theme in its central arch, while saints in the pierced side arcades witness the event. Through the broken pediment of the attic storey rises another system of niches, which again supports the extension.

On numerous projections, capitals, and volutes, putti and saints populate the altar structure. As on the stage of the spiritual drama of the Counter-Reformation, the main themes of the altars appear in the central arches of the main storey, specifically the high feasts of the church year, Christmas, Easter, and Pentecost.

In other areas of Germany great altars were produced even before the Thirty Years War; these can be partly considered successors to Hans Degler's altar in Augsburg. The splendid altar of Our Lady in the church of St. Nicholas in Uberlingen (see p. 326) was created by a pupil of Degler, the woodcarver Jorg Ziirn from Waldsee (c. 1583-1635), between 1609 and 1613. Over the Annunciation in the predella, a central arch opens with the adoration of the shepherds. Above this is a depiction of the coronation of the Virgin and the patron saint is seen in the extension. Even though this enormous assembly of sculpture still bears many of the features of late gothic winged altars, it does contain novel lighting effects and naturalistic, stage-like, three-dimensional set pieces in a complex spatial relationship. Further, the unpainted figures continue the German tradition of woodcarving. This work represents a transition from the German altarpiece of the late gothic period to the high baroque altar. By contrast, the passion altar created around 1610 for the palace chapel at Aschaffenburg by the leading Franconian sculptor of the early seventeenth century, Johannes Juncker (c. 1582-post 1623) suggests a strong adherence to a late renaissance formalism, with a strict structure formed of red and black marble; the many alabaster figures and scenes filling the intervening areas point to an almost mannerist horror vacui [horror of emptiness].

During the early seventeenth century countless grand houses and churches were built, and even in the Protestant areas, where the princes took over ecclesiastical possessions almost entirely, new palaces provided sculptors with a numerous opportunities. The court in Biickeburg, for example, developed into a center of independent artistic activity as a result of the cultural renaissance along the Weser. Three members of the Wolff family, Eckbert the Elder and his sons Eckbert the Younger (died c. 1608) and Jonas all worked on the furnishing of the palace at Biickeburg. In the palace chapel, life-size kneeling angels support the altar table (see p. 327), each carrying a burning torch. This composition was produced between 1601 and 1604, like the Venus on the Door of the Gods in the Golden Hall; with this design the younger Eckbert seems to have translated German mannerism into the forms of an early native baroque style.

As in many other places, developments of this sort were impeded by the Thirty Years War. However, Georg Petel of Weilheim (1601/2-34), probably the most outstanding and best-known German sculptor of the early seventeenth century, seems initially to have avoided the decline. Presumably trained by his guardian, the sculptor Barthol-oma Steinle, his travels as a journeyman took him from Munich (c. 1620) to the Netherlands and then to Paris before he went to Italy for an extended period. In Rome, he was in close contact with the Flemish sculptor Francois Duquesnoy and the painter Anthony van Dyck. He produced numerous sculptures in wood and bronze which display a monumentality sustained by the expressive richness of baroque rhetoric but which at the same time can demonstrate restraint in movement in the manner illustrated by the Ecce Homo (see above). Petel also produced small-scale works in wood and ivory, creating innovative designs that are in some respects even more interesting than the large-scale works. In 1633 Petel set off on another trip to the Low Countries, where he made a terracotta bust of Rubens, an artist who had shown a paternal interest in him. When Augsburg was besieged the following year by the imperial army, the thirty-three-year-old Petel was among the twelve thousand victims of who died of starvation and plague.

The Second Half of the Seventeenth Century

During the Thirty Years War, the production of large-scale sculptures virtually came to a halt in many areas. The Frankfurt sculptor Justus Glesker (born between 1610 and 1623, died 1678) was fortunate in obtaining the first important large-scale commission in Franconia in 1648, the year of the peace treaty (presumably on the recommendation of the younger Matthias Merian) for the refurbishing of Bamberg cathedral in the baroque style. Glesker was a native of Hamelin but his early life is shrouded in mystery. Even the year of his birth can only be loosely established, and the information that he traveled first to the Netherlands and then Italy is known only from Sandrart. The sudden emergence of this sculptor during a period when continuous artistic activity in the field was almost impossible was considered until recently a source of irritation to art historians more than anything else. This evident annoyance appears to be compounded by the fact that little of what is believed to have been an extensive oeuvre exists today, but the surviving works are of astonishingly high quality. Taking into account the inevitable gaps in our current knowledge of Glesker's work, his Crucifixion (see left) from Bamberg should nonetheless be seen as one of his principal works. Even from an art historical perspective, however, his work is difficult to categorize on the basis of conventional stylistic criteria. His knowledge of Roman art as translated by the mannerism of the 1630s and 1640s is most evident in the Mater Dolorosa from the Crucifixion. Not only is the shape of the body recognizable beneath the drapery, but the pose of the Virgin herself adopts the figura ser-pentinata motif. The concentrated inner tension in which the grieving figure is frozen suggests a direct derivation of the classical contrap-posto concept of movement. In such naturalistic anatomically detailed representations of the naked body, as seen in the Florence ivory figure of St. Sebastian (see p. 352, below right), Glesker reveals his exceptional artistic talents as well as his thorough training in the sculptural art of antiquity and the Italian Renaissance. These aspects of his work also made Glesker an isolated phenomenon in the stylistic development of contemporary sculpture.

The monumental Holy Knights carved by Martin Ziirn (1585/1590-after 1665) for the high altar of the parish church at Wasserburg am Inn are, by contrast, entirely in the mainstream tradition of German gothic. These figures were removed from the church in the nineteenth century and were long believed to be lost until they turned up in the mid-1950s in a Californian hotel, from where they were acquired in 1958 by the Staatliche Museen in Berlin. The figures were produced as a result of an oath by the citizens of Wasserburg in the plague year 1634 to renovate the parish church from top to bottom and install new altars. The job was awarded to the Swabian immigrant brothers Martin and Michael Ziirn who were based in nearby Seeon.

In marked contrast to Glesker's figures, for example, the Ziirn brothers' Holy Knights owe little to an understanding of the ideal of beauty absorbed from classical sculpture in the depiction of the human body. The translation of facial features and limbs to wood bears little relation to anatomical reality and does not constitute an imitation of nature. In fact, they are representative of a surviving medieval tradition in sculpture where the main focus was on the illustration of the saint and aspects of his life in three dimensions. These works (which are characteristic in this respect of much contemporary sculpture in southern Germany) indicate how closely the sculptural activity of the time was associated with the artistically confining guild system run by the burghers. 'That the Ziirns and others never had any association with more international artistic trends, and probably never tried to, was based primarily on socio-economic factors. The basis of their economic existence lay precisely in the fact that they were first-class guild craftsmen who were known and recommended as such in burgher circles,' writes Claus Zoege von Manteuffel. Thus, training in the workshops focused far less on academic canons and more on traditional craft skills. As a result, patrons of major standing (the nobility or wealthy bourgeoisie) would give preference to foreign artists from Italy or the Netherlands. Sculptures of this kind could be of high artistic quality nonetheless, and this is demonstrated by the intelligent manner in which the content is of these figures is related to the context of the altar.

In October 1633 a sculptor is mentioned in the wedding register of the parish of Ried in the district of the river Inn who, as it turned out, was to be the ancestor of a family of sculptors active over five generations or more than two hundred and fifty years. Hans Schwa-benthaler (c. 1600-56) worked in the style of the Munich court sculptors, mainly Krumper and Degler; he brought their style to Ried and passed it on to his son Thomas. Although Thomas Schwanthaler (1634-1707; he had changed his name by 1679) was originally intended for the priesthood, at the age of twenty-two he was obliged to take over his father's business. However, it was not until he married the daughter of a member of the bourgeoisie that he gained extensive commissions and established a reputation in the face of his competitors. Commissions in Zell am Pettenfirst, Atzbach, Ungenach, and Haag were followed by work in Salzburg, Kremsmunster, and Lambach, and, finally, Mondsee monastery, St. Wolfgang am Abersee, and the collegiate church of the Augustinian canons in Reichersberg am Inn. His Madonna of the Misericordia in Andorf near Scharding displays softly handled heavy drapery, its billowing folds, held up by angels, providing shelter for the faithful. The iconography is derived from the medieval law which permitted aristocractic women to grant refuge under their veils or cloak to victims of persecution who called on them as advocates, a legal practice that was later frequently symbolically applied to female saints and to the mother of God in particular.

Johann Meinrad Guggenbichler (1649-1723) continued the Alpine carving tradition of Schwantaler and from 1675 was employed in the monastery at Mondsee. From the workshop he established there in 1679, he turned out numerous painted wooden figures in which he developed the heavy representation of drapery and body gestures used by older masters as a means of expressing spiritual introspection. Around 1690, the expressions of his figures, in the restlessness of drapery and intensfied pathos of gesture, become almost transfigured; the sculptor's empathy for the martyrdom of the passion is linked by an evident feeling for beauty (see left). At the same time, Guggenbichler uses forms which, with their fleshy physiognomies and their fluttering draperies, serve to reinforce somewhat the widely held prejudice that baroque sculpture is essentially about 'plump little angels.' Nonetheless, Guggenbichler's work is entirely representative of Alpine baroque sculpture.

Before Matthias Rauchmiller (1645-86) from Radolfzell on Lake Constance went to work in the Rhineland around 1670, he went on his journeyman travels to Holland and Antwerp where he came into contact with Rubens and his circle. Shortly before he settled in Austria, he designed the tomb of Karl von Metternich (see above and right) in Trier in 1675. This powerfully expressive work suggests a completely new approach to memorial sculpture under the German high baroque. The figure of the deceased reclines with his sightless eyes apparently having just read a book, in a composition which seems to enhance the sense of immediacy in the scene. The forehead is wrinkled in a frown, the hair falls casually about the head. The veins stand out on his hands, and the pages of the book seem to have been flicked over. Even the splendid regalia has slipped and is crumpled. All courtly pretensions are rejected here in favor of a memorial to the man himself. Just a year later, when already in Vienna, Rauchmiller produced the famous signed ivory tankard featuring the Rape of the Sabine Woman, now in the Liechtenstein collection in Vaduz. In Prague in 1681 he made a terracotta maquette of the figure of St. John Nepomuk, destined for the end of the Charles Bridge. This was a devotional image that would serve as a model for countless imitations.

Among his late works was a design for the Trinity Column in Vienna. Like the Holy Knights of Wasserburg, the Trinity Column or Plague Column (see above) is a highly important monument. Situated in the Graben in Vienna, it was built as a result of Emperor Leopold I's vow in 1679 to erect such a memorial in honor of the holy trinity in order to hasten the end of the plague. A design was first sought from Matthias Rauchmiller to replace an early temporary wooden column by Johann Fruhwirth (1640-1710) with a marble structure, but the Turkish siege and the death of the sculptor in 1686 meant that this scheme was never carried out. Eventually an amended design by Johann Fischer von Erlach (1656-1723) and Ludovico Burnacini (1636-1707) was erected. The plinth is triangular, symbolizing the Trinity, and each face is devoted to one of the three divine aspects. Six reliefs showing 'histories,' principally referring to representations of biblical history, were executed by Johann Ignaz Bendl, based on instructions by Fischer.

Burnacini gave the column the shape of an obelisk shrouded in cloud, while Paul Strudel (1648-1708) executed the prominent sculptures on the plinth. On the main face is the Allegory of Faith (see above), in which the plague is pushed into the depths by a woman, while above, the kneeling emperor calls for divine assistance. Building the column consumed the enormous sum of seventy thousand florins in 1692; the dedication took place in 1693.

A bold design by the Viennese court sculptor Matthias Steinl (1643-1727) for the Madonna of the Immaculate Conception is a fine example of Austrian high baroque (see left, now in Frankfurt); it was executed as a study. Standing with her right foot on the crescent moon, balanced on the globe, the figure is shown defying gravity in a violently contorted pose, as prescribed by the Italian mannerists. Like the apocalyptic woman in Revelations (12, 1), she is ringed by twelve stars. Following the perspective around, the beholder's gaze is led by the spiral line of the drapery in a perpetual transformation of physical substance to the point of complete dematerialization. In the rear view, the figure appears merely as the shape of a cloud floating on the sky. Within the framework of Counter-Reformation iconography, the image of the Immaculate Conception represents the central religious symbol of the Catholic church, which in the imperial house of Habsburg forms part of a further tradition of war-related veneration of the Virgin. A monumental version in bronze, which was not executed, was probably based on the formerly gilt Frankfurt figure, and would have been conceived as part of a spatially expansive ensemble, whose religious protection was intended to encompass the whole of Vienna in the face of the Turkish siege.

Ehrgott Bernhard Bendl (1660-1738) came from Pfarrkirchen in Lower Bavaria and was trained initially by his father. He spent six years on the road as a journeyman before settling in Augsburg where in 1687 he acquired master status in the guild. His work in all the major sculptural media was of such notable quality that even in the eighteenth century he was compared with Georg Petel. His St. John the Evangelist (see left) belongs to a group of six massive statues comprising the four evangelists, St. Paul, and a figure of the Savior, which were erected in St. George's in Augsburg in 1697. With his head raised in visionary pose, the evangelist is portrayed at the moment of divine inspiration, which is transmitted to his writing of the gospel. In his left hand he holds the open book with the opening words: 'In principo erat verbum' [In the beginning was the Word]; his right hand once held a quill which is now lost. The weighty, scrolled folds of drapery enhance the pathos of the composition, a style which would gradually be toned down as Bendl modified his style in the eighteenth century.

The Eighteenth Century and Rococo Sculpture

Among the outstanding European sculptors and architects of the turn of the century was Andreas Schliiter (c. 1660-1714) who came from Gdansk (Danzig). As a sculptor, he trained under Christoph Sapovius; as an architect, he was self-taught. Between 1681 and 1694 he was involved in numerous projects in Warsaw, but in 1694 came to Berlin as official court sculptor to the Brandenburg Elector. His principal sculptural and architectural works were produced in Berlin. In 1707, he was suspended from office as palace architect and left Berlin for St. Petersburg on the invitation of the Czar. He died there in 1714.

Schlter's most important sculptural work is the monumental equestrian statues of the Great Elector, Frederick William I, in Berlin (see p. 337). It is not only one of the most important equestrian statues in the baroque style but also the first monument of its kind in Germany to be displayed outside. The imperial posture of the Elector, whose strength alone is capable of reining in the elemental energy of the horse, gives expression to the fame of the ruler who founded the power and political influence of Brandenburg. Accordingly, the monument was originally set up in a dominant urban position on the Long Bridge on the lines of perspective leading towards the King's Gate of the palace in Berlin. The figures on the plinth are four slaves symbolizing the temperaments and were designed in the tradition of the late Renaissance; they were executed by other sculptors.

Balthasar Permoser (1651-1732) from the Chiemgau region, spent fourteen years (from 1675 to 1689) living and working in Italy before he was summoned to Dresden as court sculptor. He worked during his early career in Venice, Rome, and Florence. Bernini had the greatest impact on his work, but Permoser's many sculptures also demonstrated elements of renaissance restraint. In Dresden, where he had been summoned by the Elector John George III, he produced numerous garden figures in addition to high-quality ivory sculpture. Among his principal duties as a sculptor was the ornamentation of the Zwinger, where he was able to import Italian concepts of form into Germany. His main late work was the Apotheosis of Prince Eugene (see right), showing the prince who had put an end to the Turkish threat to Europe in 1697. Clad in dress armor and wearing a full wig, the figure of the military leader rests his right foot on the cowering figure of a defeated Turk. Prince Eugene, bearing a lion's pelt and cudgel, is further idealized as Hercules. A genius holds up the sun of fame before him, while Fama, blowing a trumpet, proclaims his glory. Beneath the grandeur of a baroque apotheosis, Permoser nonetheless succeeds in capturing some of the individual human characteristics of Eugene of Savoy. In this sense, Permoser's baroque gesture can be clearly distinguished from the imperial repose evident in the works of Schliiter for example.

In Miinster (Westphalia) there was another family of sculptors which was active over several generations. In the works of both the father Johann Mauritz Groninger (1650-1707), who was trained by Artus Quellinus in Antwerp and worked as court sculptor in Munich, and the son Johann Wilhelm Groninger, the flamboyance of Italian baroque is considerably reduced, possibly because of the father's training in Flanders (see left).

The brothers Cosmas Damian Asam (1686-1739) and Egid Quirin Asam (1692-1750) received their early training from their father, the painter Hans Georg Asam, before setting out together for a study trip to Rome (1712-14). Whereas Cosmas worked principally as a ceiling painter, Egid worked mainly as a sculptor and stuc-coist, but both were active as architects. In this as in their other skills they complemented each other splendidly and collaborated on many projects. As a sculptor, Egid was strongly influenced by Bernini; in his own works he unites Roman influences with native elements to produce a style of sculpture which was to provide the basis for southern German rococo. Their first major commission was the decoration of the Benedictine church of St. George and St. Martin in Weltenburg, for which Egid executed St. George Fighting the Dragon in plaster coated with silver and gold (see p. 340). In the Assumption of the Virgin over the altar of the monastery church at Rohr (see p. 341), the late baroque altar arrangement becomes a totally theatrical set piece linking architecture and 'floating' sculpture; the wildly gesticulating disciples participating in the event below form only one part of the illusion (see frontispiece). The church of St. John Nepo-muk in Munich's Sendlinger Strasse, known as the Asam Church, is a unique structure. It was erected at the architects' own cost, which meant that they were not required to consider the views of a client in the architecture or the internal decoration (see p. 234).

Johann Franz Schwanthaler (1683-1762) was the youngest son of Thomas Schwantaler (cf. p. 332); in his work Johann sought to continue his father's artistic legacy. Taking over his father's workshop in 1710, he found himself overwhelmed by debt, which his ensuing marriage did nothing to reduce. Under huge pressure to economize, Schwanthaler slowly worked his way up and eventually earned an outstanding artistic reputation. He left an extensive body of work. He gradually adapted to the style of the time, producing more lyrical, introverted pieces than his father had done (see below).

Johann Paul Egell was trained by Balthasar Permoser (1691-1752) and returned to his native city of Mannheim around 1720 to become official sculptor to the electoral court; in this capacity he was involved in furnishing Schloss Schwetzing and the park. The small Deposition relief (see above) reveals his particular skill in sensitively uniting the various aspects of his artistic work as a sculptor, plasterworker, ivory-carver, and graphic artist. This is one of a whole series of small-scale reliefs conceived as devotional images which point to the apparently organic connection in his work between graphic and painterly elements of form and sculptural ones, a feature which prompted Klaus Lankheit to describe them as 'paintings in limewood.' The artistic charm of these pieces lies in a delicious tension between the flat surfaces, which serve as a plain ground for drawing, and the male heads, sculpted in high relief or even three dimensions, around which the dynamics of the scene revolve both formally and in terms of subject matter.

Georg Raphael Donner (1693-1741) belongs among the leading sculptors of Austrian late baroque. His development as a sculptor involved numerous phases, including travels to Dresden and Italy. His favored material was lead or terne metal. His best-known work was the Mehlmarktbrunnen [Flour Market Fountain] (see right), erected between 1737 and 1739 as a commission by the city of Vienna, a project which established him as a sculptor of European importance. The lead figure of Providentia sits on a plinth surrounded by putti, here represented as an allegory of the human virtues of prudence and shrewdness rather than divine providence. On the original edge of the fountain, four figures in the shape of youth and age, girl and woman symbolize the four most important tributaries of the Danube, the Traun and Enns, March and Ybbs. The Danube is represented not in the sculpture but in the water of the fountain itself. Among Donner's late works is the Pieta in the cathedral at Gurk (see left), which shows the inner distress of the mother of God as she sits grieving by the corpse of Christ, supported by an angel. Donner's style is difficult to characterize. His art moves into a rococo realm far from removed from heavy baroque pathos, revealing classical elements that are forward-looking for their time.

Two sculptors who settled in Upper Swabia in the mid-eighteenth century used plaster as their main sculptural medium. One, Joseph Anton Feuchtmayr (1696-1770), came from a family of stuccoists from Wessobrunn, and is considered one of the principal masters of southern German rococo. His life-size figures in the pilgrimage church at Birnau (see above) are notable for their intense physical agitation, which is intended to suggest inner spiritual torment; their symbolic representation was evidently more important to Feuchtmayr than their specific anatomical attributes. The Riedling-based sculptor Johann Joseph Christian (1706-77), who occasionally collaborated with Johann Michael Feuchtmayr, owed his considerable reputation among Upper Swabian rococo artists to his work at the abbey church of Zwiefalten (see above) and Ottobeuren.

Johann Baptist Straub (1705-84) from Wiesensteig in Wiirttem-berg had a great influence on the rococo sculpture of southern Germany. He trained initially under Gabriel Luidl in Munich but then spent almost ten years at the academy in Vienna, where the work of Georg Raphael Donner provided a strong influence. Although he was court sculptor in Munich from 1737, Straub often undertook commissions for ecclesiastical and monastic clients. He became the leading sculptor of southern German rococo with Egid Quirin Asam, and his reputation was surpassed only by that of his most important pupil, Ignaz Giinther. His figures, which are mainly carved in wood, are notable for their graceful elegance which, like the figure of St. Barbara in Ettal (see above) seem eloquently to express a sort of courtly refinement.

A pupil of Christian, of Straub, and of his own father Wenzeslaus was Christian Jorhan the Elder (1727-1804), who was based in Landshut. Among his works, which are found principally in Lower Bavaria and around Erding, are several series of half-figures of the apostles on rocaille bases.

Libraries in aristocratic houses and in monasteries were among the great variety of interiors that artists were asked to furnish. The principal work of Josef Thaddaus Stammel (1695-1765), born in Graz, was produced in Admont in Austria. After an Italian sojourn from 1718 to 1725, Stammel remained in Admont until his death, working as collegiate sculptor. In addition to such structures as the high altar in St. Martin near Graz, which was constructed between 1738 and 1740, he carried out the sculptural work for the ornate collegiate library (see left below) from the late 1740s to around 1760. His extraordinarily expressive figures, in which local stylistic traditions are combined with formal concepts of the Italian baroque, are based on allegories of transitoriness and motifs of Vanity. The allegorical figures representing the 'Four Last Things,' including the sculptures Hell and Death (see left below) seriously admonished the visitor to the library to be mindful of the earthly power of death and to put the books at the service of future spiritual salvation.

With commissions from the Viennese court and well-placed citizens, the German sculptor Franz Xaver Messerschmidt (1736-83) spanned the transition from Austrian rococo to neo-classicism. Trained by his uncles Johann Baptist Straub in Munich and Philipp Jacob Straub (1706-74) in Graz, he enrolled as a student at the Vienna Academy in 1775. He became a teacher there in 1769, hoping eventually to be appointed director. As this promotion was denied him, in 1774 he turned against the Academy and retired to Bratislava, where he devoted the rest of his life to his character heads, works as mysterious as they are spectacular, and which were to establish his modern reputation (see right). In a short but impressive study, Herbert Beck reveals how much this series of what amounted to sixty-nine sculptures owes to an existential tension between the physical nature of the sculpture and its intellectual and historical mastery on the threshold of the Enlightenment. Physical movements stand in proportional relationship to the head; its mimed response depicts what is happening to the body: this might sum up the sculptor's rather simplistic idea here. As the body feels itself plagued by bestial sensuality, however, it tries to protect itself from evil by physically manifesting its unhappy fate in a grimace. The frequent recurrence of portrait features in these character heads, 'which due to their intimate nature are curiously styleless,' may have had an negative impact on the success of the intended apotro-paic effect. Messerschmidt's intention was to get close to the idea of a 'true proportion,' that of 'the ideal, beautiful body purged of sensuality.' This however he did not undertake or dare to represent sculpturally. Cut off as it were from the grimacing head, the body was supposed to be realized in the imagination from the facial expression alone. Beneath every character portrait there was always an immaterial body, one which only a classical sculptor would be able to reproduce in its imagined ideal proportions.

Messerschmidt's sculptures set him apart from the courtly spirit of absolutism, and he made use of the most personal and private motifs for his late art, although not without incorporating some elements of a more generalized ideal.

After his trip to Italy in 1731, Johann Christian Wenzinger (1710-97) spent the period between 1735 and 1737 at the Paris Academie des Beaux-Arts before setting up in business as an artist in the Breisgau area. Influenced partly by Italian terracotta work, he used the amorphous material of clay to achieve a more direct realization of his sculptural ideas. At the same time, this led him to produce models or maquettes. The figures from the Mount of Olives (see below) which Wenzinger made in 1745 for the church at Stau-fen seem, as large-scale free-standing models, like preliminary versions of a composition, while at the same time displaying the sure touch of the virtuoso sculptor in the handling of the material. Not only are the inner emotions vividly represented in the figures, but the coloring creates an almost crude naturalism. Further, the conditions of contemporary life are suggested by the figure of the vagrant, in whom the consequences of the War of the Austrian Succession are personified only too graphically. Ragged and tattered, maimed and dull-witted, the discharged mercenary stumbles around like a marauder.

As court sculptor in Wiirzburg, Bamberg, and Trier, the Bohemian artist Adam Ferdinand Dietz (1708-77) was occupied mainly in producing garden figures of sandstone. At Seehof Palace near Bamberg, Dietz and his workshop had turned out four hundred statues by the time they finished work on the project.

The subject of these pieces was that of classical mythology, which outside the ecclesiastical realm enjoyed a considerable freedom of expression. Dietz' numerous figures of Mercury (see right), for example, illustrate the almost sunny lightness and sense of movement which typify his figures in the taste of the time. As the classical home of Apollo and the Muses, the Parnassus in the Great Lake of the prince-bishop's summer residence at Veitshochheim is incorporated into the garden as nature enhanced by architecture (see right). The ensemble is divided into three areas intended to be read icono-graphically: the 'shady forest' area symbolizes the state of nature while the half-shady foliage area suggests the state of culture, and the lake area, totally open to the light, represents the state of absolute higher aspiration. The formerly gilt sandstone group at the lake embodies the force of inspiration in art as much as in princely rule. Both acquire a higher cosmological status in the statues of the gods of Olympus which surround the lake with the allegories of the seasons. There was also a musical device built into the body of the winged Pegasus that sounded in time with the water arts of Parnassus.

Ignaz Gnther and the End of Rococo

The more difficulty there is in defining historical periods, the more questionable they seem to become. Three sculptures on a single theme by the hand of a single artist span the divide between the fading rococo style and the flourishing taste for neo-classicism. The sculptures in question are by Franz Ignaz Giinther (1725-75) and represent the Pieta, the mother of God mourning her son's death on the cross. Taught by Straub in Munich and Egell in Mannheim, Giinther is considered the outstanding master of southern German rococo.

The first of the three Pieta sculptures by Giinther was made, according to the signature, in 1758 (see above). The dead Christ lies on a rocky plinth on which Mary also sits, clasping his torso to her bosom. Even in death the body appears strained, with the mouth closed and the right hand clenched. Mary bends right over him, reinforcing the sense of the intensity of her maternal pain. Although this sort of suffering and loving mother of God can be traced back to Byzantine models, and appears strangely old-fashioned in this respect, the sculpture would certainly have had an emotional impact on the contemporary viewer. Mourning and pain are here concentrated in an extremely confined space, and the believer is intended to share profoundly in the suffering of each figure.

Only a few years later (1764) the Pieta in Weyarn was created (see right). Here too Christ lies on a rock beside Mary, his upper body, apparently relaxed in death, resting on her lap. She supports his left arm, while the head and right hand fall slackly, as do the legs which slip from her lap. The sword in Mary's breast relates to local folk traditions. The anatomically naturalistic style of the naked male body is clearly contrasted with the more abstract treatment of the drapery, the geometrically carved ornamental folds, and the modeling of the drapery of Mary's lower left leg and of the loincloth, for example. As well as the contrasts illustrated within the sculpture, this piece contrasts emotionally with the earlier Pieta. Here the intensity of mourning is reduced. Mary sits upright, gazing at her dead son with inclined head, while his body presents itself in the direction of the onlooker rather than towards her. This sculpture is not designed to draw the believer directly into Mary's grief, which here seems to be remote from the actual figure of the corpse. In fact, this composition creates a perceptible distancing effect, allowing the viewer a less manipulated response to the subject.

The third of Giinther's Pieta (see right) goes much further still. This piece was made for the cemetery chapel of the Virgin in Nen-ningen in 1774. Once again Christ rests on the rock beside Mary, his upper body resting in her lap. But here he appears to be neither alive nor quite dead. The right knee seems to rest on the rock as if supported by it. And his head, held up by Mary's right hand, is strangely wakeful for a dying man. While the half-closed eyes apparently watch the viewer, the mouth, half opened as if to speak, is taut with pain. Mary's head is likewise not inclined, and she is seated altogether upright. Her sorrowing gaze is no longer directed at her son, but slips over him into the distance.

The effect that must have deeply moved the beholder in earlier such images, the intense fusion of death on the cross and mourning, would have derived from the rhetorical force of baroque sculpture. In the Nenningen Pieta, this fusion is broken. The mourning is generalized, and ultimately releases the beholder from an empathetic response. The formal transformation is matched by the change in content. The unmistakable person of the sorrowing Virgin, one of the central figures of Christian iconography, is transformed on the threshold of a new age into an intimate and human grieving figure. The sorrowing mother of God takes on the image of any sorrowing female, whether mother, daughter, or sister. This generalization process at the same time incorporates an elevation of meaning, marking a fundamental change in the specific significance of Christ's sacrificial death and Christian mourning. When Ellen Spickernagel observes of the historical pictures of Jacques-Louis David (1748-1825) that they were intended 'to awake an attitude of sacrifice through the aesthetic sta-geing of the new bourgeois order of the sexes and anchor it in the mentalities of the sexes,' it is clear that this is a process that had already been introduced in the Nenningen Pieta. In the same way that Mary becomes a symbol of the almost heroically sorrowing woman, Giinther's Christ seems to symbolize what is expected of men in their future roles. The noticeably large gaping wound in Christ's side, right in the center of the sculpture, sets him in the role of victim, which after the French Revolution will be defined as a hero's role in the warlike struggle for the ideals of the new bourgeois society. Giinther's artistic greatness lies in his evident awareness of this change long before it was verbalized in manifestoes. It is not by chance that he graphically renders this concept precisely in a place where the encounter with death is everyday and individual, and has a rather private character, specifically in a cemetery chapel. The Nenningen Pieta is Giinther's last work of importance. A year after it was completed he died, at the age of just fifty. With his work, German rococo comes to an end.

Small Sculptures and Collections

Small sculptures, because of their intimacy of scale, tended to appeal to ordinary people for use in the domestic interior. This was particularly true of religious subjects which could be used for private devotions. Countless crucifixes, statuettes of saints, and indeed entire miniature altars were in fact created expressly for this purpose. Not only was it easy to set them in particular positions in the house, but they were also very portable and could therefore be taken on journeys. The little altar by Leonhard Sattler (1744), for example, could be used exactly in this way (see below, left). Lavishly decorated in early eighteenth-century style, this piece can nonetheless be taken apart, which reinforces the idea that it was originally intended for travelers. This factor does not absolutely establish its actual use, however, since its portability would also have made it suitable for processional use as well as private devotion. However, this diminutive altar could only have been a model for a larger portable version.

Piecing together the history of small sculptures in this way is inevitably riddled with complications. This is because artists were no longer working just on specific commissions but were also supplying a collectors' market that had developed since the Renaissance. With small-scale copies of classical sculptures in bronze, known as 'autonomous small bronzes,' a virtually new category of art had emerged at the end of the fifteenth century. They were principally intended to supply the new collections of Italian princes of the Renaissance with collectable art objects. Thus a market arose which steadily expanded with the demand from new collectors. From the first half of the sixteenth century, increasingly well-to-do burghers had also started to build up private collections, if on a much smaller scale than those of the rich princely houses.

The papal nepotism of early seventeenth-century Rome encouraged the establishment of the great specialized private collections. The popes and their families, the Barberini, Borghese, and Pamphili, were the main figures with both the means and taste to provide the patronage that was the ideal basis for the development of Roman baroque art. Collectors were, of course, inspired by a variety of motives. In the first place there was a concern to demonstrate buon gusto, good taste, of the kind which a collector reveals in the choice of art works. In this respect, autonomous small bronzes began to lose their original value as collectibles, as they were increasingly reduced to the quality of mere scale reproductions of contemporary large-scale sculptures by artists such as Bernini or Algardi. Their function as an independent genre began to be superseded by small sculptures in other materials, with ivory becoming pre-eminent. Ivory is an exotic luxury medium with the possibility of being formed with the most sophisticated artistic and conceptual skill.

The Frankfurt-based sculptor Justus Glesker created a small statuette which Alfred Schadler numbers among the most outstanding ivory sculptures in the Palazzo Pitti's Museo degli Argenti [Silver Museum], in Florence. It shows St. Sebastian, his suffering represented with striking baroque pathos (see below). On closer inspection, the statuette proves to be a work of the highest aesthetic quality. As if hung up on the branches of a tree, the body is extraordinarily rich in anatomical detail, developing an ingenious rhythm as the flow of movement is interrupted several times. Vittoria's St. Sebastian in S. Salvatore in Venice (see p. 277) must have served as the model for Glesker's ivory statuette. However, the greatest skill in concept and execution was required in carving ivory sculptures from a single piece, as seen in Glesker's St. Sebastian. One almost expects to be able to trace the outline of the tusk in the contour of the statuette. But Glesker goes further: ivory figures are usually carved to follow the direction of the natural shape of the tusk and this is the case here, except that the bent knee of Sebastian acts like a barb in the flow of the material. This is a bold stroke that indicates an utterly sure touch in the sculptural handling of the ivory and at the same time an ability to translate an extraordinary artistic concept into material form. Unforunately, nothing is known of the provenance of this piece. All that is certain  is that it must have been made during Glesker's stay in Italy around

Probably the most innovative German sculptor of the early seventeenth century was Georg Petel, whose small sculptures are of such high quality that Joachim von Sandrart, the 'German Vasari,' commissioned a silver cast of one of his ivory crucifixes. Petel never fully abandoned the stylistic tricks of Italian mannerism, and many of his works contain unmistakable echoes of the last phases of the previous period. His Hercules with the Nemean Lion (see left), a typological substratum of a lost classical and not infrequently imitated scene, nonetheless displays many characteristic features of his personal personal style. Thes figures of the naked hero and the animal he is attempting to subdue are both softly modeled with anatomical accuracy but are imbued with a powerful physicality.

Almost every important collection of his time includes works by Leonhard Kern (1588-1662), one of the main designers of small sculpture in the early German baroque period. The richly diverse output of his workshop includes objects of soapstone, alabaster, wood, and ivory. Among them is the Imago pietatis, an alabaster relief (see above) now in the Liebighaus in Frankfurt. The unusual iconography shows two flanking angels presenting the wounds of Christ, suggesting the influence of Protestant imagery which Kern was confronted with both in his birthplace of Forchtenberg in Wiirttemberg and in the Protestant district of Schwabisch-Hall. The balanced asymmetry of the figures, the athletic, physical presence of the Christ figure and the only slightly offset pose in which the upper body is parallel to the frame, convey a static feeling which can be related to the sculptural compositions of the late Italian Renaissance. In this sense, Kern's sculpture tends towards a fairly conservative style.

The figure scenes of the Sacrifice of Abraham and Jacob's Struggle with the Angel (see above) are attributed to the sculptor Andrea Brustolon (1662-1732), who came from Belluno and worked in Venice; they were conceived as a pair. The Jacob piece shows the scene from the Old Testament in which the future progenitor of Israel struggles with God, embodied in the figure of the angel. It is a masterpiece of sculptural drama. The idea of a physical struggle with God and the depiction of superhuman power is dramatically sharpened by the intersecting of contrasting axes of motion in the encounter of the heads, which manifest extremes of tension.

The close attention paid by baroque collectors to the development of artistic theory also gave rise to a whole new genre of collectable objects, that of the artistic study or maquette, made of clay, wood, wax, or other materials, which collectors sought to acquire direct from the artist. As the earliest vehicle of the concept or artistic idea produced in material form, maquettes were not seen just as a basis for the negotiations of commissions, but came to represent tangible evidence of the artist's inspired genius. They were often therefore considered more significant than the finished sculpture itself, especially when the latter was carried out by pupils or workshop associates.

The small limewood maquette of St. Elizabeth (see below) is a study by Joseph Gotsch (1728-93) for a life-size figure in the former Benedictine abbey of Rott am Inn. In solicitous familiarity, the saint turns towards a figure on her right who is only suggested. Her inner emotions are realized as an artistic idea in which features of the stylistic translation to the sculpture itself are already present. However, elements which appear compact on a small scale and richly detailed merely represent the distortions of scale that are corrected in the large-scale work, the effect of which is in fact cool and distancing.

By the end of the baroque period, a new material became popular with collectors. Whereas ivory had owed its exotic charm to biological and geographical strangeness, porcelain reflected a human talent for invention. Invention during this period was closely associated with the vainglorious ambition of alchemists to make gold, and porcelain was at first prized mainly for its status as a miraculous modern material rather than for its possibilities as an artistic medium.

BAROQUE SCULPTURE IN SPAIN

Over the last two centuries, art historians have demonstrated a certain degree of prejudice against Spanish baroque sculpture, generally   rejecting the idea that it has any aesthetic merit whatsoever. Such   views have only recently been modified, and it is now widely recognized that sculpture represents one of Spain's most brilliant and original contributions to European art. Curiously enough, the quality of Spanish sculpture during the seventeenth century can be attributed to some extent both to the economic decline and to the political and ideological isolation of the country during this period.

Sculptors were inevitably affected by these conditions. Important Spanish artists rarely seem to have travelled abroad during the seventeenth centuryin contrast to the practice of the preceding century. The number and status of foreign artists in Spain during this period was in no way comparable to those who were active there during the sixteenth century, with the notable exceptions of the Flemish artist Jose de Arce and Manuel Pereira, an artist from Portugal

The tendency to associate a new epoch in art with the beginning of a new century is a more or less conventional custom, but inevitably neither ever represents a complete break with the past. Nonetheless, a change does seem to have occurred in Spanish sculpture around 1600 and it continued to gather momentum. As will be seen, this change involved a transition from Roman mannerism to baroque naturalism, a process that can be seen as having been completed by around 1630.

The accession of the Bourbon dynasty in 1700 signaled the emergence of a new political and cultural milieu. In spite of this turning-point, the period from around 1600 up to 1770 will be treated here as different chapters of the same movement. It was only later that new academic theories brought about a profound alteration in the themes and materials of sculptural art, effecting a change which genuinely represented the beginning of a new era.

The Seventeenth Century

The Spanish church, which clung obstinately to its role as defender of the Catholicism of the Counter-Reformation, and stood in open opposition to Protestantism, found in the combined power of painting and the rhetoric of the pulpit the basic tools necessary to ensure the accessibility of its doctrines and thereby encourage popular devotion. The sheer quantity of devotional sculptures produced in Spain during this period far outnumbers that of secular sculptures. This was the expression of a deeply religious society, where the quest for the salvation of the soul was the abiding concern, and in which even secular festivals became appendages of sacred ceremonials.

Numerous examples reinforce this idea. The nobility dedicated most of their artistic initiatives to the construction of funerary monuments and chapels. Relics were collected and displayed or stored in a wide variety of decorative containers such as arm reliquaries, busts, and vessels in settings of wood or precious metals. Sometimes these reliquaries were shown in confined, overcrowded spaces, as in the church of S. Miguel, Valladolid (see right, above), which housed a veritable treasure trove of religious art. Cathedrals, parish churches, and monasteries endowed substantial sums for the creation of sculpture; in addition, town councils might donate funds for large altarpieces. The clearest expression of the role of sculpture in the religious life of the period is indicated by the considerable increase in the number of Holy Week processions, ceremonies which survive to this day. On such occasions, whole towns are transformed into huge sacred spaces in which floats with sculptural groups representing the Stations of the Cross draw vast crowds.

In this context, the demand for works of art was largely restricted to altar sculpture and three-dimensional devotional works. Other forms of religious art certainly did not disappear during the seventeenth century, but a distinct decline in their production can be perceived, especially in comparison to the levels of the sixteenth century.

Praying figures in Spanish funerary monuments of this period are characterized by an austerity of composition that is far removed from the allegorical complexity and decorative richness of similar subjects of the Renaissance. This austerity can also be seen in the choir-stalls of the first third of the century, which are modeled on the example of the Escorial; the lack of sculptural ornament reduces them to the level of joiner's work executed to the design of an architect. This tendency toward stylistic sobriety lasted only a short time, however; during the course of the century elaborate relief carving regained its predominance, as can be seen in the choir-stalls of Malaga cathedral, mostly decorated by craftsmen from the workshop of Pedro de Mena (see right below).

Many scholars of the baroque have accepted the central thesis of Emile Male's L'Art Religieux apres le Concile de Trente [Religious Art after the Council of Trent] since its publication in 1932, which contends that the most significant feature of this Counter-Reformation art lies in the creation of a new iconography. If one examines the themes which appear most frequently in baroque art, it becomes apparent that it was used by the Catholic church as a defence against the attacks of the Reformation upon established doctrine. This accounts for the increasing popularity of the cult of the Virgin Mary whose role in the salvation of humanity was even compared to that of Christ, as suggested by the juxtaposition of the Ecce Homo and the Mater Dolorosa. Efforts to force the recognition of the Immaculate Conception as an essential tenet of church dogma became a passionate preoccupation of Spanish society; the iconography model of the Virgin of the Immaculate Conception became an endlessly repeated theme in churches, monasteries, and even private chapels. To the same end, the authority of the papacy was reinforced with sculptures showing St. Peter as Prince of the Apostles, the value of the sacraments was emphasized by images of penitent saints, and the merit of good works was extolled through further saintly examples. Particular attention was given to those saints who had been canonized relatively recently, such as St. Teresa of Avila, St. Ignatius Loyola, and St. Francis Xavier.

Considering the major role that images were to play in promoting ecclesiastical doctrine, it made sense that sculptors began to move stylistically toward popular realism in their work. Wood, which could be painted in attractive colors, emerged as the ideal medium for emphasizing the life-like qualities of the sculpture. While the tradition of Spanish sculptural art was preserved, at the same time a range of technical innovations was introduced which allowed the desired degree of realism to be achieved. Among various efforts in this direction, perhaps the most bizarre is illustrated by the use of postizos or additions, a practice which would have seemed unthinkable in the sixteenth century. From about 1610 sculptures were often elaborated with wigs of real hair, crystal eyes or tears, ivory teeth, horn fingernails, and cork or leather representing wounds. Such accessories, combined with the realistic coloring of skin and fabrics, are characteristic of Spanish baroque sculpture (although some bishops forbade the use of additions of this kind). The somewhat curious nature of these sculptures probably accounts for their subsequent neglect by art historians. Nonetheless, these pieces reflect the same skill of handling that is evident in works by major sculptors of the period executed in more highly valued materials, such as stone or alabaster.

Scholarship in the field of seventeenth-century sculpture generally relies on an analysis of the characteristic traits of particular schools, an approach that will also be employed here. While acknowledging that works of the highest artistic quality were produced in Castile and Andalusia, the impact of the court in Madrid on contemporary artists must also be addressed, since it was the meeting point of several artistic trends. These remarks are not intended, however, to imply that the other regions of Spain were in any way artistically impoverished; on the contrary, the range of artistic production was evidently so widespread that every town of any size possessed active workshops. Although the pre-eminence of the schools named above can be clearly established, areas of artistic production like Catalonia and the east have sunk into relative obscurity, largely as a result of the disturbances created by the Civil War.

A survey of the main centers of Spanish baroque sculpture, Castile, and Andalusia, should avoid dealing in generalizations. Nonetheless, it is probably fair to say that Andalusian sculpture tempered the dramatic qualities of Castilian works with a stylistic language that tends towards elegance, emphasizes detail, and avoids the portrayal of cruelty, or at least softens its impact. As a result, in Andalusia a greater richness can be seen both in the draperies of the figures and in the use of decorative silver, as well as an emphasis on such pleasing or engaging themes as the childhood of Jesus and of Mary; by contrast there are very few representations of Corpus Christi (the body of the dead Christ), a theme characteristic of Castilian sculpture.

The following section will consider the specific contributions of major Spanish sculptors of the period.

Castile

Valladolid is always regarded as the most important center of baroque sculpture in Castile, and this reputation had already begun to develop during the sixteenth century. By the end of the century, the sculptor Juan de Juni was still vividly remembered; his work had anticipated in many respects the baroque aesthetic. At the same time the sculptural work of Esteban Jordan served as a crystallization point for some of the elements of Roman mannerism. The residence of Philip IFs court in Valladolid between 1601 and 1605 further enlivened the creative life of the town; this was mainly due to the presence of the king's sculptor, Pompeo Leoni, and his circle. Opportunities for work at the court attracted a large number of sculptors, the most prominent among whom was Gregorio Fernandez. The master's distinctive style (characterized by a remarkable naturalism) was disseminated after his death throughout Castile and the regions of northern Spain by a vast number of his imitators, pupils, and followers.

The sculptor Francisco de Rincon, born around 1567, played a fundamental role in the development of the new style. The sober manner of his early work had evolved within the context of Roman mannerism. However, his later work is very much in keeping with contemporary trends. Although it is constantly stressed that the young Gregorio Fernandez was active in Rincon's workshop, the innovations and creative powers of the older master, which extended to composition and iconography, should not be ignored. Rincon's early death at the age of forty certainly represented a great loss to Spanish art. His Raising of the Cross, now housed in the Museo Nacional de Escultura in Valladolid (see left), is testimony to his singular talent. Mentioned in documents of 1604, this piece is the earliest of a series of paso or life-size processional groups of polychromed wood. Previously only the figures of Christ and the Virgin had been executed in wood in such groups, while the other scenes were constructed with ephemeral figures made of cardboard which was, of course, much lighter. The composition of the Raising of the Cross must be seen as one of the finest examples of the baroque depiction of movement: the artist attempts to capture the moment when the men are straining to raise the cross and the head of Christ falls dramatically to one side in an abrupt turn.

The work of Gregorio Fernandez can be seen as representing the high point of Castilian baroque sculpture. He can in fact be considered as the founder of the Castilian school, since his work established the iconographic models which reflect the religious nature of the Spanish heartland and characterize the style of the area.

Born in 1576 in Sarria, Galicia, Fernandez, like many other sculptors, adopted his father's profession and had certainly been used to the environment of the artist's workshop from his earliest childhood. On arrival in Valladolid at the beginning of the seventeenth century he had already completed his apprenticeship and began working for Rincon as a qualified assistant.

The presence of sculptors at court and the opportunities to study imported works of art created the aesthetic context for the emergence of his own early style, notable for its mannerist elegance, as typified by his Gabriel (see right), now in the diocesan museum in Valladolid, a piece almost certainly inspired by the work of Giambologna. The number of commissions for monumental altar-pieces that he took on at the beginning of the 1620s suggests that his reputation was already well established at this stage; we can also assume that he was already employing a number of assistants in his workshop, which in due course came to produce the largest output of sculpture in Spain. Other smaller but still remarkable works were created around 1614, such as the delightful relief The Adoration of the Shepherds in the monastery of Las Huelgas at Valladolid (see p. 358, left) and the Reclining Christ, commissioned by Philip III and donated to the Capuchin convent of El Pardo in Madrid.

It has always been thought that the processional group of the vespers paintings with the two thieves (1616) (most of which is preserved in the Museo Nacional de Escultura in Valladolid) opened up a new naturalistic phase in Spanish sculpture which gradually began to supersede idealized forms. At the same time, a broken, angular style became apparent in the depiction of folds in clothing, with a stark contrast between light and shade. Two further devotional paintings (both owned by the brothers of atonement of Vera Cruz in Valladolid), designed for the Holy Week processions, demonstrate the mature style of the master. The Flagellation of Christ is a development of one of the iconographic peculiarities of Castilian baroque. In contrast to the earlier representations of the sixteenth century, this shows a low column which allows a graphic perspective on the tortures inflicted on the naked body. If the merit of a work of art can be measured by its long-term impact, then this figure is certainly successful: it continues to enjoy huge popularity in the streets of Valladolid even today.

One of the most extraordinary examples of processional art, however, is Fernandez' monumental Descent from the Cross (1623) (see p. 359), an exceptional example of the expressive skills of the artist. The remarkable portrayal of two men standing on the ladder holding the corpse which appears to float freely in the air represents a sophisticated solution to the complex problem of balance, and of situating the figures in space.

In 1626 the work of Gregorio Fernandez entered an intensely creative phase which was to last until his death. The workshop employed a great number of assistants, who were needed to work on large altarpieces. The altarpiece (see left) produced for Palencia cathedral (1625-32) is recognized as the sculptor's masterpiece. Although in poor health and overworked, the master retained his extraordinary skills during his last years, as demonstrated by the Christ of the Light in the collection of the Museo Nacional de Escultura in Valladolid (currently housed in the chapel of the Colegio Santa Cruz). The importance of Fernandez' role in the development of Castilian sculpture can ultimately be measured by the fact that his works were faithfully copied for years after his death.

The seated figure of St. Anne in the church of Villaveliz near Valladolid (see above), a piece from a workshop at Toro (Zamora), should be briefly mentioned here. The figure, made as a collaborative effort by Sebastian Ducete and Esteban de Rueda, contemporaries of Fernandez, marks the transition point in sculpture from the style of Juan de Juni to the baroque, a change which is reached here without the intermediate stage of courtly mannerism.

Andalusia

The second major school of seventeenth-century Spanish sculptors was in Andalusia where two important centers emerged: the western region, of which Seville was the capital, with minor centers in what are now the provinces of Huelva, Cordoba, and Cadiz, and the eastern region, centered on Granada as well as the provinces of Malaga, Jaen, and Almeria. The style of sculpture in the two regions is particularly distinctive in spite of the vibrant and longstanding tradition of artistic exchange between them. With some exceptions, Sevillian sculptors tended toward large-scale works imbued with a certain mystical quality and elegance of manner, while the sculpture of Granada was more frequently typified by smaller-scale virtuoso work. Their smaller size naturally made these pieces more portable and they were thus disseminated as prototypes throughout Spain.

Seville

In Seville, which had been expanding since the discovery of America, groups of artists came together and gradually, from the last third of the sixteenth century, began to be defined as a distinct school. The consolidation of their style and the growing fame of these artists can be attributed to the important Seville master Martinez Montanes (1568-1649). His successful career, established from an early age, will be explored only briefly here; as a sculptor his works illustrate the transition in sculpture from the late mannerist style to baroque. His work characteristically aspires to a balanced beauty, an ideal expressed in powerful gestures of great serenity, as suggested by one of his masterpieces, the Crucifix of the Chalices in Seville cathedral (see above left). The conditions of his contract for this piece are often referred to in the literature as they reveal a great deal about the original specifications given to Montanes by his patron for this sculpture. They state that 'He [Christ] must still be alive, at the point of Hislast breath, His head bent towards His right arm, His gaze directed at some other person who is standing at His feet in prayer, as if He would speak to him and complain that His suffering is due to him' Unlike the drama of Castilian sculpture, the delicate and naturalistic modelling of the body contrasts with the deeply carved folds of the loincloth. Polychrome was applied to the wood by the painter Francisco Pacheco in mat tones in order to make it appear more life-like.

The period from 1605 to 1620 is generally regarded as the most important in Montanes' career; it was during this time that he produced, among other works, the St. Jerome for the central niche of the high altar of the convent of St. Isidoro del Campo at Santiponce in Seville (see above right), a work which would normally have been seen only from the front. However, the figure is carefully modelled in the round as it was intended to be removed for processions. The anatomical accuracy of the piece is again of unusually high quality: the tensed arm with its realistic musculature and the veins showing beneath the skin are scrupulously detailed.

After recovering from a long illness in 1629, Montanes began to develop a later style in the high baroque manner. Well into old age he continued to produce masterpieces such as the Virgin of the Immaculate Conception for the chapel of the Alabastros in Seville cathedral. In 1635-36 he was summoned to the court of Philip IV to produce a bust in clay of the king, which may have been intended to serve as a model for the equestrian statue of the same subject by the Italian sculptor Pietro Tacca.

Like Gregorio Fernandez in Castile, Montanes was to exert a considerable influence on the sculpture of Seville both during and after his lifetime. The short-lived Juan de Mesa (1583-1627) of Cordoba became his pupil and most important assistant. In his works, predominantly processional sculpture, the authenticity of anatomy and the emotional force anticipate the realism of the Seville school. This is exemplified by Mesa's most celebrated devotional image, that of Christ the Almighty (1620) in the Basilica del Gran Poder in Seville (see above left). This piece may have been inspired by Montanes' Jesus of the Passion; the observer is drawn into the humanity of the subject by such details as the crown of thorns piercing the forehead, the face aged by pain, and the corpse-like pallor of the skin.

Two artists figure prominently in the development of Sevillian sculpture during the second third of the century. One was Alonso Cano, to whom we will return in the context of Granada; the other was Jose de Arce, the Flemish sculptor who arrived in Seville in 1636, bringing with him the dynamic compositional style that effectively introduced European baroque into the city. Examples of his work can be found in the church of S. Miguel in Jerez de la Frontera, a commission which Montanes had passed onto him shortly before his death.

During the last third of the century the baroque style became fully established in Seville. The outstanding figure of this era is Pedro Roldan (1624-99). Although originally from Seville, he was trained in the workshop of Alonso de Mena in Granada between 1638 and 1646. After returning to his native city in 1647, he came under the influence of Jose de Arce and adopted elements from his compositions, with their distinctive hairstyles. The sense of dramatic pathos embodied in the sculpture of this period finds its strongest expression in monumental ensembles illustrating scenes of the Passion, the subject of numerous altarpieces. One of the most impressive examples of this is the retable in the church of the Hospital de la Caridad in Seville (see left), which features an over-life-size Entombment (1670-72) by Pedro Roldan.

Luisa Roldan (1650-1704), daughter of Pedro Roldan, was the most important female artist at the end of the century. The quality of her work was of a very high standard and she was, in fact, the only famous woman sculptor of seventeenth-century Spain. She achieved full royal recognition, obtaining the title of court sculptor. Her most distinctive works are small colored terracotta figure groups. Her contemporary, Francisco Ruiz Gijon, the last great master of the seventeenth century in Seville, created the Dying Christ popularly called El Cacborro (see p. 363, right). As in the Crucifix of the Chalices created by Montanes at the beginning of the century, Christ is shown still alive in this piece. But he turns his gaze beseechingly upwards, while his loincloth appears to move in the wind. A comparison of these two works underlines the changes that had occurred in the work of Sevillian sculptors in the course of the seventeenth century.

Granada

If one can argue that an artistic school exists wherever common elements consistently feature in the artistic output of a town or region, then it is a concept which can certainly be applied to Granada. The city was the source of small-scale wooden sculptures, intimate and exquisite pieces designed to delight the connoisseur. These objects enjoyed widespread popularity throughout the seventeenth century, as evidenced by the numerous examples which have survived in other regions of Spain.

While Alonso Cano (1601-67) is generally considered to have been the actual founder of the school of Granada, outstanding contributions were made at an early stage by Pablo de Rojas, the Garcia brothers, and, most significantly, Alonso de Mena (1587-1646), a key figure of the early baroque. Mena's workshop produced a number of important artists, including his own son Pedro de Mena, and Pedro Roldan. When Alonso de Mena died in 1646, his son was still very young and Roldan had moved to Seville. This change might well have led to an impoverishment of the artistic life of Granada if it had not been for the well-timed return of the versatile Alonso Cano to his native city, where he soon became active as an architect, painter, and sculptor. As a young man Cano had followed in the footsteps of his father, Miguel Cano, moving with him to Seville. He had obtained an excellent training in the workshop of Francisco Pacheco, where he also made friends with Velazquez; he remained in Seville until 1693, when the powerful count of Olivares, first minister of Philip IV, summoned him to Madrid. During his time in Seville Cano had mainly been influenced by the work of Montanes, as indicated by his Virgin de la Oliva and St. John the Baptist, now in the Museo Nacional de Escultura (see above), very much representative of the idealized naturalism that was to become an essential characteristic of his work.

During the subsequent period in Madrid, Cano devoted himself primarily to painting. In 1652 he decided to return to Granada to take up a position as a prebendary in the cathedral, a privilege which not only required him to be ordained as a priest within the year but also to take on the unfinished decoration of the church. He renewed his activity as a sculptor, achieving the high aesthetic standards evident in such finely executed small pieces as the famous polychrome cedarwood Virgin of the Immaculate Conception in the sacristy of the cathedral (see above right). The wooden sculpture, based on an oval form, has a harmonious and fluid quality which invites the observer to survey it by walking around the object. The composition is perfect complemented by the simple coloring in blue and greenish tones, set off by lavish gilding. Only an artist practiced in both media could achieve such a perfect symbiosis of sculpture and painting.

Cano's work was a decisive influence on his colleague Pedro de Mena (1628-88), the most outstanding personality of the school of Seville. Pedro de Mena was active in Granada but settled in Malaga in 1658 in order to create the choir-stalls of the cathedral (see above, left and p. 355, below). Carl Justi claimed that these are 'the most original and perfect works of Spanish art, even of the whole of modern sculpture. They are probably the last and definitive word in Spanish sculptural art.'

During a trip to Madrid and Toledo, Pedro developed a knowledge of Castilian sculpture, appropriating a series of iconographic models hitherto unknown in Andalusia. Above all, however, he was influenced by its profoundly emotional character, a feature which was to distinguish all his subsequent work. Rarely has the mysticism of Spanish baroque sculpture been more powerfully conveyed than in his Penitent Magdalene (1664; see right). This work was given on long-term loan to the Museo Nacional de Escultura in Vallodolid in 1933 by the Prado; a few years ago it was brought back to Madrid for conservation and is currently on display there. It is to be hoped that this piece will in due course be returned to Vallodolid where it can be restored to its position as the centerpiece of Spain's most important collection of sculpture. In the meantime Pedro de Mena is well represented there by St. Peter of Alcantara (see far right). The structure of the head and hands of the saint displays an impressive, almost tangible realism. St. Teresa of Avila observed of this sculpture that it seemed to be made out of roots, and that the patchy nature of the monk's habit, constructed from various pieces of wood, further emphasized the humility of the saint's demeanor.

Madrid

The final part of this general survey of the sculpture of the seventeenth century will concentrate on the court in Madrid, which became an important center for sculpture. Commissions from the royal court and from noble families led to the importation of foreign works of art and transformed Madrid into a meeting-point for the two great Spanish schools. What might be considered some of the greatest sculptures of the century were produced here. While the Castilian influence very much predominated during the first third of the century, the impact of the Andalusian style, and particularly that of Granada, is clearer later in the century. This was due to the visits to Madrid of Alonso Cano, Pedro de Mena, and Jose de Mora.

The most important sculptor active in Madrid during the seventeenth century was Manuel Pereira (1588-1683) of Portugal. His St. Bruno (1652), created for the portal of the hospice of the charterhouse of El Paular in Madrid (and now in the collections of the Royal Academy of Fine Arts of San Fernando, Madrid), is one of the most remarkable stone sculptures of its time (see above). This figurea meditation on deathis unpainted, and its subject matter bears eloquent witness to the more ascetic side of Spanish art. According to Palomino, every time Philip IV drove past the statue, he ordered the state coach to stop so that he could gaze on it in peace.

Other sculptors such as Domingo de la Rioja and Juan Sanchez Barba maintained Pereria's high aesthetic standards in Madrid into the following century.

The Eighteenth Century

Spanish sculpture of the eighteenth century has been unfairly neglected by art historians. It was to some extent overshadowed by the work of the previous century and was also heavily criticized during the reign of neo-classicism. These rather biased views have only recently been revised. The period will be examined here briefly for two main reasons. First, there are a few great names which cannot reasonably be ignored in an account of Spanish baroque sculpture. Second, during the first third of the eighteenth century some late baroque works were produced which are of considerable significance for their role in the development of the style, representing the continuation and perfection of some of the artistic tendencies introduced in the last decades of the preceding century.

The structure of contemporary altarpieces illustrates this development particularly effectively. Churches were filled with arrangements of columns, entablatures, reliefs, and sculpture in an attempt to create a sense of the Gesamtkunstwerk, or total work of art. This concept, was, as we have seen, characteristically baroque. The large and richly decorated altarpiece of the Santiago church at Medina de Rioseco (see right) is an example of this tendency; it was the product of a collaboration between two of the best known artists of the day, having been designed by Joaqum de Churriguera (1674-1724) and constructed in the workshop of the sculptor Tomas de Sierra.

The Tome family, another important group of artists, is closely associated with the Transparente in Toledo cathedral (see right and p. 103), one of the masterpieces of Spanish sculpture. This is a trasal-tar or a sacramental chapel in the ambulatory behind the chancel and high altar, intended to display the sacrament in both directions, hence the link with 'transparent.' The use here of bronze and marble was not typical for Spain and suggests the influence of other European countries. Narciso Tome (1690-1742) completed the piece after twelve years' work with the help of his brothers Diego and Andres. It is an impressive architectural and technical statement, a monumental altarpiece lit by a window in the vault above and combining architecture, sculpture, and painting in the service of a eucharistic scheme which vibrantly asserts the mysticism of Catholicism.

During the course of the century, Madrid became a center of Spanish sculpture. The accession of the Bourbon dynasty brought an end to the isolation of Spanish art and architecture; many foreign sculptors, at first mostly French and later Italian, were put under contract to decorate the new royal palaces. By contrast, decorative pieces in the churches of Madrid, much in demand, were characterized by a reliance on traditional forms of representation, demonstrated, for example, by the famous Head of St Paul by Juan Alonso Villabrille y Ron (see p. 370), now in the Museo Nacional de Escultura in Valladolid. This is another explicit illustration of the cruelty of martyrdom: the head of the tortured saint with its staring eyes and furrowed brow set into a carved ground is depicted with exaggerated realism.

The next generation of sculptors, born in the eighteenth century, formulated the characteristic elements of the final stage of Spanish baroque sculpture. Traditionally crafted, and retaining some of the realistic tendencies of the past, what might be seen as a substantially more 'pleasing' art based on rococo was established from the second third of the century. Luis Salvador Carmona (1708-67) was the chief representative of the Madrid school whose influence gradually spread into other provinces. The Holy Shepherdess, a bust preserved in the convent of the Capuchin nuns of Nava del Rey, (Carmona's birthplace), conveys a new image of the Virgin as co-redeemer: the Virgin is a much gentler and more earthly figure than previously depicted, and this is suggested both by her facial expression and by the aristocratic silver accessorieshat, staff, earrings, and ringwith which she is adorned (see above left).

The work of Francisco Salzillo (1707-83) of Murcia exemplifies the impact of the rococo idiom on Spanish sculpture of the period. Economic and cultural exchange with other Mediterranean countries was a feature of this region, which attracted such artists as the Frenchman Antonio Dupar and the Neapolitan Nicolas Salzillo, Francisco's father; they prepared the way for a sculptural idiom that reflected a wider European influence. Francisco Salzillo perfected his style in processional groups like the Last Supper of 1762 (see above right). In this ambitious composition, the twelve apostles seated around the table are distinguished by a precisely rendered psychological characterization. It is worth noting that from its beginnings in Castile until its final flowering in Murcia the outstanding examples of Spanish baroque sculpture were represented in the same guise, namely that of processional art, although they often incorporated radically different compositional solutions.

An interest in neo-classicism was established during the reign of Charles III (1760-88). After his accession the king demanded a more severe and functional art, a requirement that was actually enforced by decree. The new regulations determined that the use of wood in sculpture should be avoided, since marble or other appropriate types of stone could be found in the vicinity of every town in the kingdom. To justify this ruling, reference was made to the danger of fire posed by wooden sculpture and to the high cost of producing colored versions.

The real reason, however, was quite different and appears to have been based solely on aesthetic considerations. This is suggested by the fact that wood was still used for religious sculpture on altar-pieces; this was not only permitted but was also cheaper to produce; However, figures were often painted white in order to simulate marble. Plaster and ceramic sculpture also gained in popularity during this time. It was these drastic measures that effectively brought the production of baroque sculpture to an end; one of the most authentic expressions of Spanish art was thus brought to a close.