Historic Ornament, Vol. 2 (of 2): Treatise on decorative art and architectural ornamentWard, James
History
Historic Ornament, Vol. 2 (of 2): Treatise on decorative art and architectural ornament
Ward, James
Architecture -- History; Decoration and ornament -- History; Decorative arts -- History
Many celebrated artists have doubtless worked in ivory, but there is
nothing to prove this except the supposed hand-work of the artists.
Michelangelo is credited with working in ivory; Cellini, Donatello,
Agostino, Carracci, and other famous names in Italian art have been
mentioned as ivory carvers; and in the seventeenth century a celebrated
ivory carver named Copé, but better known as Fiamingo, who was Flemish
by birth. He made many basins, ewers, tankards, and carved figures of
children in bas-relief. Fiamingo worked and lived in Rome at the end of
the sixteenth and during the first ten years of the seventeenth
centuries. He died in 1610. His work, like that of many other artists of
this period, was greatly influenced by the style of Rubens, and a
strongly marked realism in the manner of treating allegorical subjects
was the prevailing taste in painting and carving. Very fine tankards in
ivory, and basins, were carved by Fiamingo with bacchanalian scenes in a
realistic manner. The tankard from the Jones Collection (Fig. 124) is
believed to be the work of Fiamingo. It is a Flemish ivory mounted in
silver-gilt work of good design. The body of the tankard is spiritedly
carved with the figures of a nymph and satyr dancing, Silenus, and some
children carrying grapes.
Another Flemish artist in ivory was Francis von Bossuit, who spent a
great part of his life in Rome, and whose figure carvings are of great
value. Alessandro Algardi was an Italian artist of the seventeenth
century, who carved the ivory bas-relief of St. Leo going out to meet
Attila, now in St. Peter’s at Rome, and also a very fine bust of Cosimo
II. de’ Medici. One of the best ivory carvers that ever lived was
François Duquesnoy, known better as François Flamand (1594-1644); he was
a native of Brussels, and went to Rome when a young man for the purpose
of study. He supported himself in his _wanderjahr_ period by carving
little figures in ivory and wood. In the Cluny Museum and in the Louvre
some groups, and bas-reliefs of females and children, may be seen,
executed by Flamand, that are full of roundness and life, boldly
conceived and extremely graceful.
[Illustration: Fig. 124.—Ivory Tankard, Silver-gilt Mounted; Flemish;
Seventeenth Century. (S.K.M.)]
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