The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Art and Artists (66 page)

 
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(
c.
1446–97).
Florentine painter. His style consists almost entirely of elements drawn from his more illustrious contemporaries—Sandro
Botticelli
, Domenico
Ghirlandaio
, Filippino
Lippi
, Andrea del
Verrocchio
. He painted one remarkable work, however, the
Assumption of the Virgin
(NG, London,
c.
1474), which has the distinction of being the only picture from the
quattrocento
known to have been painted to illustrate a heresy. The
donor
, Matteo Palmieri , believed that human souls are the angels who stayed neutral when Satan rebelled against God.

 
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(1698–1762).
French sculptor whose work marks the beginning of the
Neoclassical
reaction against the
Rococo
style. From 1723 to 1732 he worked in Rome, where he made a marble bust of the antiquarian Philippe Stosch (Staatliche Museen, Berlin, 1727) that is very consciously in the
antique
manner. Although his style later softened somewhat, notably in the famous
Cupid Making a Bow from Hercules' Club
(Louvre, Paris,
c.
1750), it remained too severe for court taste. Bouchardon had many supporters, however, and his contemporary reputation stood high—indeed he was generally regarded as the greatest French sculptor of his time (subsequent taste has inclined more towards artists with greater warmth, such as
Falconet
and
Pigalle
). His most important work was an equestrian statue of Louis XV, commissioned by the City of Paris in 1748. It was cast in 1758 but not erected until 1763, a year after Bouchardon's death. It stood in the Place Louis XV (later the Place de la Concorde) and was destroyed during the Revolution. Several small copies exist, as well as engravings, showing that it was based on the famous antique statue of Marcus Aurelius in Rome. Bouchardon's father,
Jean-Baptiste
(1667–1742), and his brother,
Jacques-Philippe
(1711–53), were also sculptors.

 
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(1703–70).
French
Rococo
painter, engraver, and designer, who best embodies the frivolity and elegant superficiality of French court life at the middle of the 18th cent. He was for a short time a pupil of François
Lemoyne
and in his early years was closely connected with
Watteau
, many of whose pictures he engraved. In 1727–31 he was in Italy, and on his return was soon busy as a versatile fashionable artist. His career was hugely successful and he received many honours, becoming Director of the
Gobelins
factory in 1755 and Director of the Academy and King's Painter in 1765. He was also the favourite artist of Louis XV's most famous mistress, Mme de Pompadour, to whom he gave lessons and whose portrait he painted several times (Wallace Coll., London; NG, Edinburgh). Boucher mastered every branch of decorative and illustrative painting, from colossal schemes of decoration for the royal châteaux of Versailles, Fontainebleau, Marly, and Bellevue, to designs for fans and slippers. In his typical paintings he turned the traditional mythological themes into wittily indecorous
scènes galantes
, and he painted female flesh with a delightfully healthy sensuality, notably in the celebrated
Reclining Girl
(Alte Pinakothek, Munich, 1751), which probably represents Louis XV's mistress Louisa O'Murphy. Towards the end of his career, as French taste changed in the direction of
Neoclassicism
, Boucher was attacked, notably by
Diderot
, for his stereotyped colouring and artificiality; he relied on his own repertory of motifs instead of painting from the life and objected to nature on the grounds that it was ‘too green and badly lit’. Certainly his work often shows the effects of superficiality and overproduction, but at its best it has irresistible charm and great brilliance of execution, qualities he passed on to his most important pupil,
Fragonard
.

 
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Boucicaut
(or Boucicault)
Master

(active early 15th cent.). Franco-Flemish manuscript
illuminator
, named after a
Book of Hours
(Musée Jacquemart-André, Paris) done for Jean II le Meingre Boucicaut (1365–1421). This manuscript, which was presumably commissioned before 1415, when Boucicaut was captured at the Battle of Agincourt, is a magnificent example of the
International Gothic
style, but in its accomplished handling of space and
aerial perspective
and its delightful
genre
detail it heralds the achievements of the 15th cent. Netherlandish School. Many other manuscripts are attributed to the workshop of the Boucicaut Master.

 
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