The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Art and Artists (18 page)

(
c.
1499–after 1556).
Netherlandish painter, etcher, and designer of woodcuts. He was active in Amsterdam and in 1544 made a large map of that city, now in the Weigh House there. He worked as a cartographer in the service of the emperor Charles V and also painted group portraits, most notably
The Civic Guard
(Historical Mus., Amsterdam, 1533), an early example of a type for which
Hals
later became renowned.

 
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(
c.
1460–1528).
Italian sculptor, goldsmith, and medallist. His nickname derived from his classically inspired statuettes, which won him great popularity (he also restored ancient sculpture). He visited Rome in the 1490s, but worked mainly in and around his native Mantua, particularly for members of the
Gonzaga
family and Isabella d'
Este
.

 
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Antinous
.

A representation in sculpture of the beautiful youth of this name who was a favourite of the emperor Hadrian. After Antinous was drowned while accompanying Hadrian up the
Nile
in AD 130 his name became surrounded by romantic legend, and the grief-stricken emperor commemorated him in lavish fashion. He founded a city called Antinoöpolis in Egypt, erected temples in his memory, and had him honoured in festivals. Antinous was frequently represented in sculpture, sometimes as Apollo or Dionysus, and several examples survive; typically he is shown with curly hair and a sad-sweet expression, although the identification is not always certain, and the title
‘Antinous’
has sometimes been given loosely to similar figures of beautiful and graceful youths. Particularly famous were the
Belvedere Antinous
(Vatican Museums), which was regarded as one of the standards of male beauty (for
Bernini's
views on it, see
ANTIQUE
), and a relief (Villa Albani, Rome) excavated at Hadrian's Villa at Tivoli in 1735. It was one of the greatest treasures of Cardinal
Albani
and was regarded by his librarian
Winckelmann
as one of the peaks of ancient art.

 
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Antipodeans
.

The name adopted by a group of Australian painters (Arthur
Boyd
was the best known) who held an exhibition in Melbourne in 1959; the catalogue contained a manifesto of their aims and ideas, attacking abstraction and championing figurative art.

 
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antique, the
.

The physical remains of the Greek and Roman world, or more particularly the remains of antique sculpture, which have been for later artists an inspiration, a challenge, and a canon of perfection. Such remains have never been totally absent and seldom totally disregarded. Memories of classical ornament or drapery forms recur throughout the Middle Ages, but it was in Renaissance Italy that the recovery of the classical antique as a Golden Age in the past became a deliberate ideal.
Ghiberti's
writings, for example, testify to his admiration for antique statues and
cameos
, and much of
Donatello's
work would be unthinkable without a close study of the antique.
Vasari
attributed the attainment of perfection by the generation of
Leonardo
,
Michelangelo
, and
Raphael
in no small measure to the discovery of the famous antiques of the Vatican collection, notably the
Apollo Belvedere
and the
Laocöon
(found 1506), though it was mainly the next generation, particularly visitors from northern Europe (
Heemskerck
for example), who systematically drew after the antique. Towards the middle of the 16th cent. the role of the antique in the curriculum of artists became firmly established. Giovanni Armenini in his
De' Veri Precetti della Pittura
(1587) already gives a list of ‘canonic’ antiques, including the famous
Belvedere Torso
, and such works were carried by means of engravings, casts, and copies into every artist's studio. The philosophical justification for this dependence on antique models was given in
Bellori's
famous oration,
Idea
(1664), where he claimed in the ancient statuary a revelation of an absolute beauty that had been discovered once and for all (see
IDEAL
). To the followers of the academic doctrine each of the great antiques, to which now had to be added the
Farnese Hercules
, the
Borghese Warrior
, the
Medici Venus
, and the
Barberini Faun
, represented a type of physique that could serve as a permanent standard for the artist. Nor was antique influence confined to those artists whose work was most obviously classical (such as
Poussin
).
Bernini
, for example, when he addressed the Academy in Paris in 1666, said ‘In my early youth I drew a great deal from classical figures, and when I was in difficulties with my first statue I turned to the
Antinous
as to the oracle.’ Reverence for the antique was given a new lease of life when the
Neoclassical
movement reacted against the frivolities of
Rococo
fashions. In opposition to earlier ideas,
Winckelmann
preached the belief that classical artists had deliberately avoided representing extreme passions, and he regarded the antique less as a source of expressive formulas than as a model of noble restraint. The authority of the antique declined with the onset of
Romanticism
, with its stress on self-expression, but its influence has still continued. Drawing from casts of antique sculpture remained a part of most official art training into the 20th cent., and
Picasso
, for example, often used classical art as a source of inspiration; in particular, his ‘Neoclassical’ paintings of the 1920s owed much to visits to the Archaeological Museum in Naples.