17th Century French Sculpture

1. Overview of the development of French sculpture

Like architecture, French sculpture in this period was shaped by the trends of Italian (primarily Florentine) renaissance, Roman antiquity, and also Dutch art. Under Louis XIII, national (Gallo-Frankish) features began to appear more vividly in statues and monuments.

French sculpture and French architecture developed in the 17th century in general in the same ways. Roman antiquity and the Florentine high renaissance were the guiding stars of French sculpture in this period. Along with them are also felt the influence of the Netherlands. However, still here and there, and especially in the sculptural portrait art, a strong national-French impulse manifested itself, expressed in part in the direct perception of nature, partly in the pursuit of rational clarity, and partly in the national-French grace. The Italian and Dutch influence developed in France at the beginning of the century, hand in hand under the influence of Giovanni da Bologna from Douai and his pupil Pierre Franschville (Francavilla) from Cambrai. Henry IV called Franchville in 1601 to Paris. The equestrian monument to Henry IV Giovanni da Bologna, completed by him and others, destroyed during the revolution, was only opened in 1614 on the New Bridge in Paris. Four copper slaves Franshvil from the base of the monument and David his work is stored in the Louvre. These works are captured with cool, calculated on the external effect of panache. The first representatives of the "return to nature under Louis XIII" Gonz (his works deserve attention after the works of Lemonier, Zhale, Dussieu and articles in the Archives de l'art francais) call Bartolome (Barthelemy) Prière and the elder Pierre Biard, known to us in a number of masters of the XVI century. But as early as the 17th century, Michel Bourdin (circa 1579 to 1640) unfolded the full force of his activity, whose coarse, natural, somewhat old-fashioned art is in his gravestone portraits, for example, Diana de Poitiers on her tomb in Ana in Versailles and the great prior Amador de la Port in the Louvre.

The other row of French sculptors of the first half of the century, who studied in Italy, could not, of course, turn away from the Italian designs in their ideal works of the generally accepted style, but he did begin the beginnings of healthy native art in tombstones and portrait busts. Among them belonged to Simon Gillen (about 1581-1658 gg.), On his return from Italy, as if he remembered his nationality; He enjoyed considerable influence as the head of the school, and in 1648 was one of the founders of the Academy of Painting and Sculpture. From his main work, the monument to Louis XIII and Anna of Austria, erected in Paris in 1647 on Pont-au-Change, full of life force remained in the Louvre, conceived bronze statues to the height of the king, queen and their son, Louis XIV. presented in large jackboots, as well as a mannered stone relief depicting a captive in shackles. They include the rival Gillen, Jacques Sarrazin (1588–1660), one of the twelve founders of the academy and the famous head of the school, although he (and perhaps precisely because he was even stronger than Gillen) expressed the external and theatrical aspects of French nature. True, his group of children with a goat (1640) in the Natural History Museum in Paris is extremely simple and natural, but his caryatids in the Lemercier Watch Pavilion in the Louvre are outwardly decorative. Exaggerated and empty in its newfangled pomp seems to be his Condé monument (1646), now in Chantilly, as a transition to the great tombstones of the century of Louis XIV. He turned out to be, however, a good portrait painter in his own in motion, sharply resembling the marble tomb of Cardinal de Bérulles, kneeling in front of the lectern, now stored in the Chapel of the Collège de Jules.

Fig. 118. Bronze statue of Anna of Austria by Simon Gillen in Paris. According to the photo of A. Girodon in Paris

In the age of Louis XIV, the brothers Francois and Michel Angier from É (Eu) in Normandy lead us perfectly. Both were students of Gillen Francois Anguier (1604–1669) served mainly tombstones. His monument to Jacques Auguste de Thou is partially restored in the Louvre. On the construction supported by the caryatids, inside of which stands a marble coffin decorated with bronze reliefs, there are kneeling marble figures of de Tu and both his wives, and Maria de Barbansson is attributed to Priur. More bright and noble works than the figures of de Tu and his other wife, Francois Anguet did not create. Of the rest of his gravestone monuments collected at the Louvre, the best is the monument to the dukes of Longueville. The relief with the battle on the basement is striking in its simple classicism.

Michel Angier (1612–1686) was versatile, more prolific and more skillful than his brother. His decorative works in the castle of Vaux-le-Vicomte and in the chambers of Anna of Austria in the Louvre became famous. Soft and pleasant as a whole, his individual female allegories are pale in individual figures in the domed segments and above the arcades of the longitudinal hull of the Val de Grasse church (1662–1667), where the altar canopy competes with the canopy of St. Peter in Rome. The most famous of his sculptures on the Blondele gate of Saint-Denis. Magnificent images of trophies with allegorical figures of the four pyramids near the walls of this gate are distinguished by their power and beauty of execution; Both large, broad reliefs above the main arch, representing the crossing of the Rhine and the conquest of Maastricht, are composed expressively and freely. More relaxed is Michel Angier in his marble statue of Amphitrite in the Louvre, reminiscent of Venus, in whose graceful charm the French genius so perfectly expresses.

Gilles Guérin (1606–1678) was also more or less captured by the realistic undercurrent of the century of Louis XIII. The most famous is his naive and together pathetic group, ordered by the city of Paris, now in Chantilly, young Louis XIV, placing his right foot on the neck of the downcast figure personifying the front. Louis XIV is here, as in almost all later images, in the strange, ridiculous costume of the Roman emperor and in a wig with long curls.

The Gallo-Frankish streak of the century is most clearly seen, of course, among sculptors, known mainly as medalists. They are led by Guillaume Dupre of Sisson (1574–1647). As a sculptor of statues, he probably performed the beautiful bronze sitting statue of Henry IV in the Turin castle, and the bust of Dominique de Vic in 1610 in the Louvre, full of life, probably belongs to him. As a medalist, he performed many medals, of which more than 60 are known. The portrait profiles on their front sides are sharp, definite and expressive, the allegories on the back sides are in solid, clear and together tender drawing. The Dupre medal with Heinrich IV on the front and Gabrielli d'Estré on the reverse side carries the date of 1597. Pierre Jeannein 1618 and Marie de Medici in the Vienna Münzcabinet, his Brulare de Sillery in the Louvre are known. As Dupre leads from Henry IV to Louis XIII, so the greatest of his successors, Jean Waren of Lutthich (circa 1604–1672; Kurazho wrote about him), leads from Louis XIII to Louis XIV. His great sculptural works, the extremely natural bronze bust of Louis XIII in the Louvre, the marble sitting statue and the marble bust of Louis XIV at Versailles, show off their powerful true life and careful execution of the Flemish origin of the master. His medals, however, show him a real Frenchman. His Richelieu, 1630, Mazarin, 1640, Anna of Austria with little Louis XIV worthy of Dupre. Since then medal art has remained the special glory of France.

2. Major sculptors of the era of Louis XIV

Strengthening and centralization of the state under Louis XIV led to increased patronage of art from the court. During this period, sculpture is rapidly developing, stands a number of major sculptors, who left many famous works. Some Dutch craftsmen, who settled and worked in France, also contribute.

Under Louis XIV, all French art even more than under its predecessor, revolved around the king, the court and their undertakings. In Versailles it was necessary not only to decorate the palace with numerous decorative sculptures, but also to populate the vast spaces of the gigantic park with hordes of statues and groups, and Charles Lebrun, with whom we will get to know closer only among the artists, was the soul of all these enterprises. Often, even the most projects of the sculptures belonged to him. The most independent artistic tasks were presented in the performance of royal monuments in city squares, in portrait busts for the interior decoration of palaces and in lush gravestones of nobility in churches. The Gallo-Frankish undercurrent now entirely goes deep into the mainstream Gallo-Roman current, not only in the field of sculptural portrait, but also in the field of plastics in general, and we would like to emphasize the Gallic in Gallo-Roman and this area. The entire stock of magnificence and pathos was now expressed in French sculpture only in the details of luxuriant attire, or, as it were, in the wind-blown clothes of pompous baroque; but nevertheless, through the most prim and cold classicism of the French sculptors, the well-known calm clarity, sharp characteristic and charm of bending are constantly breaking through, as authentic French properties. In those days, the sculptor who had not been to Rome was not considered a complete artist in the same way in France.

The oldest of the foremost masters of the century was Louis XIV - Francois Girardon of Troyes (1628–1715), pupil of Francois Anguier; He returned from Rome in 1652, and from 1657 became a member of the Academy. His equestrian statue of Louis XIV on Louis the Great Square (Vendome) has not been preserved. The Louvre-based project shows that she sought to convey an important bearing of the king. The marble busts of the work of Girardon Louis XIV and his wife in the Troyes Museum are majestic and inaccessible. Of the Versailles works, the most famous is the pathetic but cold group “The Abduction of Proserpina” (1699) in a grove of colonnades and a lovely, lively, gilded lead relief with bathing nymphs at the fountain of the pyramids. On the projects of Lebrun, Girardon worked in the Apollo Gallery in the Louvre and in the Mirror Gallery of Versailles. Even the design of his illustrious magnificent monument of Richelieu at the Sorbonne (1694) was probably compiled by Lebrun. An elderly statesman, a nature-loyal figure, dying with rhetorical gestures, leans on his bed to the arms of the Religion that supports him, while Science is grieving at his feet, on the base of the monument. Conceived rather picturesquely than plastically, this group is made with the greatest technical perfection.

Fig. 119. The monument to Richelieu at the Sorbonne by Francois Girardon. According to the photo of A. Girodon in Paris

Of the other masters who adorned the Versailles Park, among the most skilled belong the Roman Jean Baptiste Tyube (1630–1706), the Parisians Jean Raén (1624–1707) and Étienne Le Hongre (1626–1690). The elder Pierre Legros of Chartres (1629–1714) also participated in the decorative works in Paris and Versailles, while his son, the Younger Pierre Legros (1666–1717), was one of those French craftsmen who remained in Rome and under the influence of Bernini Italians

Of the Dutch sculptors who became French, besides the Belgian Gerard van Opstal (1595–1668), the rector of the Paris Academy (1659), the employee of Sarrazin according to the Pavilion of the Louvre, a rival to Girardon in Versailles gardens, in the first place should be called the Dutchman Martin Van Wiert. 1640-1694), admitted to the Academy in 1671 under the name of Martin Dejardin. From his statue of Louis XIV on Victory Square in Paris, only graceful sculptures of the socle have survived in the Louvre, where his strongest work is also located: the breathing life of the artist Minyar. In this way and here we meet the mutual relations of French art with Dutch and Italian.

The most gifted of the students of Girardon was the Parisian Robert le Lorrain (1666–1747), who in 1737 became the head of the academy. He assisted Girardon in his work on the monument to Richelieu; worked in Marley, in Saverne and Versailles: as an independent master, full of inspiration and fire, he is mainly in a magnificent marble relief depicting four horses of the sun god at a watering place, above the entrance to the stables of the Hotel de Rogan (now the National Printing House) in Paris. One horse drinks from a large shell, which the sun god himself gives him, and the three others get very hot, hardly kept by the driver. Everything splashes with life, everything is full of the most powerful and fascinating movement in this masterpiece of Lorrain, belonging, however, to the XVIII century.

The best Parisian master, along with Girardon, was Antoine Kuazevo (1640–1720), even more versatile and prolific than the first, who managed to combine an independent sense of nature and French chic with a common false classic. His biographer Jouin has three hundred works of this master. The most beautiful decorative works in Versailles include 23 molded children's groups and magnificent wreaths with trophies in the Mirror Gallery, as well as stucco relief in the Military Hall, with Louis XIV on horseback, galloping on enemies. His winged horses, in a bold movement, set up in the Tuileries Garden, are taken from Marley: one carries the goddess of glory, the other Mercury, the messenger of the gods. The Louvre stores his excellent works, a nymph with a sink and a shepherd with a flute, in which the common language of forms is still imbued with personal life, and then the mighty god Rona, who also breathes a kind of life, and a statue of Mary Adelaide of Savoy, depicted as lightly dressed Diana walking with her dog. Of the portrait busts, executed strongly and clearly, with all the pomp of the long-wigs, in the Louvre are the bronze bust of the great Conde, the marble busts of Lebrun, Bossuet, the painter Minyar and his own, and the marble busts of the said Maria-Adelaide, Finance Minister Colbert and architect Robert de Cott stand in Versailles. His proud, sharp statue in the height of Louis XIV, erected in 1689 in the courtyard of the Paris City Hall, now adorns the main courtyard of the Carnival Museum. A more relaxed marble statue of the kneeling Louis XIV, taken from the monument to Louis XIII erected by him, is adorned with the choirs of Parisian Notre Dame.

Fig. 120. Bust of the painter Minyar by Antoine Kuazevo, in the Louvre. According to the photo of A. Girodon in Paris

One of the oldest large tombstones representing the century of Louis XIV and Louis XV is the Mazarini monument in Louvre, made in 1692 of Kuazevo from black and white marble with bronze additions. On the sarcophagus (empty) there is a marble figure of Mazarin kneeling with benevolent and expressive features. Behind her, an angel holds a Roman announcer's rosette - a symbol of his power. On the base sit cold allegorical figures of virtues. The originally designed Kuazevo monument of Colbert with the main figure of this state man is on his knees in the church of Saint-Eustache in Paris. But his marble monument to the Marquis Vobren and his wife (1705) in the palace chapel in Serran (Men-e-Loire) is especially pathetic. The dying commander leans backwards, and his spouse anxiously looks into his eyes, wiping away tears with his right hand. The relief on the basement, with the crossing of the Rhine at Altenheim, is made of gilded lead.

Fig. 121. A monument to Mazarin by Antoine Kuazevo, in the Louvre. According to the photo of A. Girodon in Paris

Within the limits of the style of his era, which never reached complete simplicity, Kuazevo left in any case something significant, penetrated by the French spirit.

The main students of Kuazevo, his nephews Nicola and Guillaume Bush from Lyon, translate his style, like Lorren Girardon, into an easier, more pleasant manner of the XVIII century.

Nicola Cousteau (1658–1733), who spent three years in Rome, worked in the Louvre, Versailles and Marly along with Kuazevo. His adorable frieze is known with a group of children playing in the Versailles hall with a round window. At Voeux de Louis XIII in the church of Notre Dame, he performed the Crucifixion group. The magnificent, large group of the Rhone and Sona from Versailles, now standing in the Tuileries garden, and the elongated, lean and somewhat dull marble statue of Julius Caesar in the Louvre are his best works.

Fig. 122. The horse tamer on the Place de la Concorde in Paris is the work of Guillaume Bush senior. From a photo of Levi in ​​Paris

Brother Nicolas, Guillaume Couste the Elder (1677–1748), was generally an even more significant master. True, his large tombstones, such as Cardinal Dubois in Saint-Roche in Paris, only imitate the similar works of his teacher. But his horse tamers from Marly, now standing at the entrance to the Champs Elysees, surpass all old and new designs with noble shape and freedom of movement, and his relief image of the passage across the Rhine in the vestibule of the palace chapel of Versailles already reveals style XVIII in its soft, smooth refinement century to which it belongs. However, Gonz considers these artists to be among the artists of the “Great Century”.

17th century French painting

3. Creativity Pierre Puget

Pierre Puget was a prominent representative of the art of the South of France, where in the XVII century there was the country's cultural center, comparable in value to Paris. The proximity to Italy and a few years of life in Florence, Rome and Genoa had a strong influence on Puget’s work. Nevertheless, his works are a separate, original trend within the framework of the Italian high baroque.

Outside this Paris school is Pierre Puget (1622–1694), a powerful Marseille master, without whom 17th century French sculpture would have been deprived of its most powerful works. Lagrange dedicated a thorough book to him. They come from the family of a ship's carpenter; as a child he tested himself as a painter and sculptor in rich carving and coloring, which decorated the bow and stern of the ships. Exhaustive research about his ship art belongs to Okje. Twenty years he went to Florence, where he studied painting. But the second trip to Italy in 1646 led him to Rome, where, under the influence of Bernini and antiques, he developed into a sculptor. As a French southerner, he was already leaning towards Italy by nature. In the field of French sculpture, he could be called a representative of the Italian high Baroque in the spirit of Bernini, if the ardent temperament did not induce him, being averse to any imitation, to go his own ways parallel to Berninian. Possessing an indomitable, strong desire for nature, he, with his powerful, vital language of forms, strove independently to plasticize the power of passion. As a sculptor, he became famous for his athletic sports, full of passionate movement, with a mine of suffering, heavily arched Atlantes supporting the balcony of the portal of the Toulon Town Hall. The richly decorated shells of the herm, from which these belt-shaped figures emerge, are entirely baroque. But these statues can not be compared with the slaves of Michelangelo. For this, they lack the sense of style with which the great Florentine so subjectively endowed them. Such orders as Hercules in the struggle with the hydra, performed for the Palace of Vodreil, and now located in the Rouen museum and characterized by the brute force "Gallic Hercules" in the Louvre, attest to the orders delivered by Puget thanks to the Toulon Atlantes.

Around 1660 Puget settled in Genoa, where, in addition to a few soft, picturesque, religious purposes, the marble groups of the Immaculate Conception of Mary in Albergo de'Poveri and Madonna in the oratorio San Filippo Neri performed their characteristic workshops in Santa Maria da Carignano (1661– 1667): naturally executed by sv. Sebastian, tied to a tree and dropping a dying man, and dreamily turned his gaze to the sky of St. Ambrose, in heavy fermenting clothes, but with a turn of the body in the spirit of baroque. Pyuzhe discovers in these works such an ability to process marble with a chisel, which only Bernini had at that time.

After 1670, we again find Puget a ship sculptor in the Toulon Arsenal, but in 1671 Colbert ordered him two marble sculptures for Versailles, on which his world fame rests. Both belong now to the Louvre. One huge image of the athlete Milon of Croton, torn to pieces by a wild beast at the time, as he tried to split a tree stump with his hands and was clamped by a crack of a stump. Right, he tries in vain to fend off the lion, who, having attacked from behind, has already clung to him. The wrestler’s powerful body flexes and strains all muscles from double torture. Head, with a distorted pain in the face, under a pair of Laoocon's head. Spiritualization in the statue, however, there is no, but only a futile struggle with a huge, condemned by evil fate to the helplessness of bodily strength, expressed in such a way that causes horror and compassion.

Fig. 123. Milon of Croton. Marble group of Pierre Puget in the Louvre. According to the photo of A. Girodon in Paris

The second statue - the famous high relief with a classic episode. Diogenes in front of his barrel asks Alexander, who rode up to him on a horse with a large retinue, to steer clear of the sun. Vigorous, picturesquely expressed life fills this relief. The overflow of relief with side figures and the king's swelling cloak remind of the neighboring Italian Baroque, which the French so weakly succumbed to. But the abundance of individual artistic motifs, the power of the image of popular types and the power of transmission of the entire episode make this sculpture a masterpiece of high dignity.

Not as true as Milon, the Puget marble group in the Louvre, entirely in the baroque style, representing the liberated Andromeda in the arms of Perseus. Even more realistic than the relief with Alexander, Puget is a large relief depicting the plague of Milan (1694), located in the meeting room of the Marseille Sanitary Council. The museum of this city keeps its large marble relief with a portrait of Louis XIV in profile, in which the impression of the king's eagle-like features almost drowns in a virtuoso performance of a lace tie and a huge wig.

The great Puget French Michelangelo, go too far. However, because he, following only the flow of the epoch and his own nature, stands outside the academic development of French sculpture of the 17th century, it captures and charms us like none of the rest of the French masters of his time. In any case, it belongs to the most original phenomena in the history of French art.