Sébastien Slodtz
Sebastiaen Slodtz, in France called Sébastien Slodtz (1655–1726) was a Flemish sculptor who after training in his native Antwerp, moved to France where he became a court sculptor to the King. He was the father of three sons who helped shape official French sculpture between the Baroque and the Rococo.[1]
Life
He was born in Antwerp as the son of a master carpenter and Jacqueline de Lannoy.[2] He moved to Paris in 1685. Here he joined the Paris workshop of François Girardon. Under Girardon's direction he worked for the sculptural decor of Versailles and its gardens and for the Tuileries. Sébastien Slodtz was the outstanding sculptor to come out of Girardon's atelier.
He married in 1892 Magdelaine de Guichy (or Cucci), the daughter of Domenico Cucci, the gold- and silversmith to king Louis XIV.[2] He was appointed to the post of Dessinateur de la Chambre et du Cabinet de Sa Majesté, a post that two of his sons filled after him. He also became rector of the Académie de Saint-Luc in Paris.[1]
His sons, notably René-Michel Slodtz (1705–64) called Michelange, is regarded as the only great sculptor in the Slodtz. Two other sons worked in partnership largely for the ephemeral royal and princely occasions overseen by the department of the Menus Plaisirs: the designer-decorator Sébastien-Antoine (1695–1754) and the sculptor Paul-Ambroise (1702–58), who was the only one of the three sons to be accepted in the Académie royale de peinture et de sculpture. Their lively, dashing drawings cannot be told apart, even by specialists.[1] His daughter Maria Francisca (Marie-Françoise) Slodtz, got married to the Flemish painter Carel van Falens on 16 July 1716.[3]
Among the pupils of Sébastien Slodtz was Pierre de L’Estache.
He died on 9 May 1726 in his lodgings in the Louvre in Paris.[4]
Work
Sébastien Slodtz is best known for his Aristaeus fettering Proteus, begun in 1688, installed in 1714 in the Bassin d'Apollon on the grand terrace at Versailles, where it remains. His other chief works were the Hannibal Barca counting the rings of the Roman knights killed at the Battle of Cannae (illustration) for the Allée du Roi, which was designed as a pendant for Nicolas Coustou's Julius Caesar and for which Girardon provided a terracotta maquette[5] a statue of St Ambrose in the Dôme des Invalides, and a bas-relief Saint Louis sending missionaries to India. Other works were provided for the Château de Marly, such as the marble Vertumnus for the Cascade and sculptures for the Val-de-Grâce.
Notes
- ^ a b c Souchal, François 1968. Les Slodtz sculpteurs et decorateurs du Roi (1685-1764) Reviewed by Terence Hodgkinson, The Burlington Magazine 111 (March 1969), pp. 156, 159-160
- ^ a b Sébastien Slodtz, Aristaeus and Proteus at the Victoria and Albert Museum
- ^ Ph. Rombouts and Th. van Lerius, De Liggeren en andere Historische Archieven der Antwerpsche Sint Lucasgilde, onder Zinkspreuk: "Wy Jonsten Versaemt" afgeschreven en bemerkt door Ph. Rombouts en Th. Van Lerius, Advokaet, onder de bescherming van den raed van bestuer der koninklyke Akademie van beeldende Kunsten, van gezegde Stad, Volume 2, Antwerp, 1872, pp. 590, 596, 590 (in Dutch)
- ^ Eugene Piot, Etat civil de quelques artistes francais. Extrait des registres des paroisses des anciennes archives de la ville de Paris, publie avec une introduction, Pagnerre, 1873, p. 115-116 (in French)
- ^ The pair of sculptures were removed to the Jardin des Tuileries in 1722; in 1872 they were removed to the Musée du Louvre.
External links
Media related to Sébastien Slodtz at Wikimedia Commons
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