page_title: Pierre Le Gros the Younger
section_title: Importance
hierarchical_section_title: Pierre Le Gros the Younger / Importance
caption_attribution_description: Cappella Antamori, San Girolamo della Carità, Rome. Architecture by Filippo Juvarra, sculpture by Pierre Le Gros the Younger, 1708-1710.
context_page_description: Pierre Le Gros was a French sculptor, active almost exclusively in Baroque Rome where he was the pre-eminent sculptor for nearly two decades.
  He created monumental works of sculpture for the Jesuits and the Dominicans and found himself centre stage of the two most prestigious artistic campaigns of his era, the Altar of Saint Ignatius of Loyola in the Gesù and the cycle of the twelve huge Apostle statues in the nave of the Lateran basilica. Le Gros' handling of the marble attracted powerful patrons like the papal treasurer Lorenzo Corsini and Cardinal de Bouillon, as Dean of the Sacred College the highest ranking cardinal.
  He also played a prominent role in more intimate settings like the chapel of the Monte di Pietà and the Cappella Antamori in San Girolamo della Carità, both little treasures of the Roman late baroque not known to many because they are difficult to access.
  Le Gros was the most exuberant baroque sculptor of all his contemporaries but eventually lost his long battle for artistic dominance to a prevailing classicist tendency against which he fought in vain.
context_section_description: Today, Le Gros is largely forgotten but shares this fate with almost all the artists working in Rome in his time. After a blanket condemnation of the Baroque period by critics from the 18th to well into the 20th century, Gianlorenzo Bernini, Francesco Borromini and a few other 17th century artists have now been given their rightful place in the pantheon of artistic geniuses. But even the great Alessandro Algardi, while certainly given his dues by art historians, is not anchored in the public consciousness, much less so the following generations of Maratti or Fontana, and then Le Gros and Rusconi. During their lifetime however, they were regarded throughout Europe as outstanding figures, valued as exemplary by generations of young artists.
  An impartial look shows Le Gros as a driving force in an international environment. While family life was very French, close friends included painters such as the Dutch Gaspar van Wittel, the Frenchmen Vleughels and Louis de Silvestre as well as the Italian Sebastiano Conca, architects such as the Italian Juvarra and the Frenchman Oppenordt, and the sculptors Angelo de' Rossi as well his loyal students and right hand men Campi and Gaetano Pace. In addition, the need for assistants brought a bevy of young sculptors and painters from all over Europe to his studio over the years like the Englishman Francis Bird and the Frenchman Guillaume Coustou who frequented his workshop before 1700, both eventually becoming significant artists in their home countries. In the 1710s we find in his workshop the German painter Franz Georg Hermann and the still very young Carle van Loo who studied drawing with Le Gros. In addition to passing on his style through students, copies and versions of important statues such as his St. Dominic, St. Ignatius or the Apostle Bartholomew can be found all over Europe and engravings were disseminated of his Luigi Gonzaga and Stanislas Kostka. Le Gros' influence didn't end with his death as his works were also studied much later as evidenced in sketches by Edme Bouchardon. Even in the second half of the 18th century connoisseurs in Paris described his Vetturie as an exemplary masterpiece, the quality of which far exceeds the ancient model. The importance of Le Gros for European art in the 18th century is, therefore, beyond question.
  That said, because of his nearly exclusive presence in Rome, he must be seen within the context of Italian art history and made virtually no direct impact on the development of French art of his own time. His French contemporaries would have heard about him but wouldn't have seen his works. His Vetturie, a student work, arrived in France 20 years overdue and the Bouillon Monument was not even unpacked until the end of the 18th century and, therefore, not known to anybody. Moreover, the exuberance of Le Gros' work would have met with reserve or even disapproval in Versailles just as Bernini's did in the 1660s. 
  At the same time, it is impossible to characterise his art as purely Italian. His artistic training at the Académie royale and the experience in the workshops of his father and uncles gave him a very different starting point. He built on this experience and mixed it with an admiration for Bernini's high baroque. His love for fine detail is something he shared with older French sculptors like François Girardon and Antoine Coysevox. Imbued with the French academic practice of searching for exemplary prototypes, Le Gros looked very closely at all the art around him and found solutions by today less well known sculptors like Melchiorre Cafà and Domenico Guidi but also painters like Giovanni Battista Gaulli helpful, and he adapted them for his own work, often transformed to such a degree that the prototype is hard to pinpoint. There were only very few artists who worked successfully in a similarly playful style as Le Gros in early 18th century Rome, namely Angelo de' Rossi, Bernardino Cametti and Agostino Cornacchini. But the mood of the time drifted more and more towards classicism and made them a dying breed.
caption: Cappella Antamori with San Filippo Neri in Gloria, 1708–1710, San Girolamo della Carità, Rome
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