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François Duquesnoy (Brussels, January 12, 1597 – July 12, 1643 in Livorno) was a prominent Baroque sculptor in Rome. His more idealized representations are often contrasted with the emotional character of Bernini's works, while his style shows greater affinity to Algardi's sculptures. more...

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Early years

Although Duquesnoy was Walloon, in Rome, he was called Il Fiammingo by the Italians, and François Flamand by the French. His father, Jerome I Duquesnoy, was the court sculptor to Archduke Albert, governor of the Low Countries, and Archduchess Isabella and sculptor of the Manneken Pis fountain in Brussels, of 1619. Some of Francois' early work in Brussels attracted the notice of the Archduke, who gave him the wherewithal to study in Rome, where he would spend his whole career.

According to early biographers, when Algardi arrived in Rome in 1618, he studied antique sculpture in detail, climbing over the equestrian Marcus Aurelius to determine how it was cast, or making a pilgrimage to the shrine of Diana at Lake Nemi. In 1624, Nicolas Poussin, who shared his classicizing emotionally-detached manner of depiction, arrived in Rome, and the two foreign artists lodged together. Both moved in the circle of patronage of Cassiano dal Pozzo. They developed a canon of ideal expressive figures, counter to the theatrical baroque of Bernini. Contemporary critics, like Giovanni Bellori, in Lives of the Modern Painters, Sculptors and Architects from 1672, hailed Duquesnoy's art as restoring contemporary sculpture to quality of antique Roman sculpture. Bellori said that with his Santa Susanna, Algardi \"had left to modern sculptors the example for statues of clothed figures, making him more than the equal of the best ancient sculptors....\".

Among Duquesnoy's early works are bas-relief putti for Villa Doria Pamphili. In spite of the polarities perceived by contemporaries in their stylistic approach, Duquesnoy collaborated with Bernini, in the design, among others, of the angels offering garlands of the Baldacchino for Saint Peter's (in process 1624–1633). The four angels are entirely Duquesnoy's work, and this work advanced him future commissions.

The statue of Santa Susanna

Duquesnoy's classicized Saint Susanna (1629) depicts the saint as both modest and revealing under marble draperies —\"so much so that the pure volume of the members is visible\" (Bellori). This is one of four sculpture depicting virgin martyrs by various sculptors for the church of Santa Maria di Loreto in front of the Roman Forum of Trajan (1630–33).

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

Read more at Wikipedia.org