The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Art and Artists (271 page)

 
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(1509–90).
Italian
Mannerist
sculptor who worked in many parts of Italy and in the service of the emperor Charles V in Germany and the Netherlands. He was trained as a goldsmith, but none of his works in that medium survives. From 1538 to 1540 he was coin engraver to Pope Paul III (Alessandro
Farnese
), but he was then condemned to the galleys for conspiring to murder the papal jeweller. He was released in 1541 and for most of the rest of his life was master of the imperial mint in Milan. His sculpture consists mainly of portraits—both medals and busts. Many of his works for the emperor were sent to Spain, where his son
Pompeo
(
c.
1533–1608), who moved there in about 1556, gave them the finishing touches. The most important was a group of twenty-seven bronze statues (finished 1582) for the high altar of the
Escorial
. Pompeo executed several tombs in Spain on his own account, and was, like his father, a goldsmith and medallist. Again like his father, he had a dangerous brush with authority, being briefly imprisoned by the Inquisition.

 
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(1928– ).
Argentinian painter, sculptor, and experimental artist, regarded as one of the leading exponents of
Kinetic art
. In 1958 he went to Paris and after working for a while with Victor
Vasarely
became a founder member of the
Groupe de Recherche d'Art Visuel
(GRAV) in 1959. Le Parc professes to adopt a rational and objective attitude to his work, repudiating the ideas of artistic creativity or symbolic meaning and working according to scientific principles. He often uses the idea of spectator participation, but tries to eliminate subjective response on the part of the spectator, looking for an objective and predictable perceptual response to a planned stimulus. Much of his work consists of devices for disorienting the spectator (distorting glasses and so on), but he has also made some outstanding
mobiles
, using perspex or metallic elements to scatter or reflect the light.

 
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(1735–84).
French painter of portraits, domestic
genre
scenes, and historical subjects. His best works, although not entirely free from the sentimentality of the period, have something of the tranquil beauty associated with
Chardin
(
The Reading Lesson
, Wallace Coll., London). His father
François-Bernard
(1698–1755) was an engraver and writer on art.

 
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(1794–1859).
British painter and writer on art, of American parentage. In his day he was well known for his paintings of literary themes, but he is now remembered mainly as a writer, above all for his
Memoirs of the Life of John Constable
(1843), which is regarded as one of the classics of artistic biography (Constable was a close friend).

 
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(1729–81).
German writer. He was a man of formidable intellect and great versatility who played a leading role in the development of German theatre, but he is known mainly for his treatise on aesthetics,
Laokoon
(1766). This takes as its starting-point a passage in
Winckelmann's
writings in which he discussed the celebrated antique statue
Laocoön
. Winckelmann contrasted what he considered the stoical beauty of Laocoon in the sculpture with the loud cries that Virgil causes him to utter in the
Aeneid
, interpreting the alleged difference (to most people he appears to be howling with pain in the sculpture too) as a superior serenity in Greek art. Lessing dissented, and argued that each art achieves its effects by the means appropriate to its medium and that the artist must exploit the potentialities of his medium to the full, whilst respecting its limitations. The impact of Lessing's book stemmed from its emphasis on the aesthetic functions of art in contrast with the traditional view of art as the handmaid of religion and philosophy, whose duty was primarily to instruct.