page_title: Michiel van der Voort the Elder
section_title: Works
hierarchical_section_title: Michiel van der Voort the Elder / Works
caption_attribution_description: Statue in Brussels Park, Brussels, Belgium.
context_page_description: Michiel van der Voort the Elder, Michiel van der Voort (I) or Michiel Vervoort the Elder, nickname Welgemaeckt was a Flemish sculptor and draftsman, who is best known for the Baroque church furniture which he made for the principal churches in Flanders. He also produced secular works, particularly of mythological and allegorical subjects. His work expresses both late Baroque exuberance and the quest for the simplicity of Classicism. His oeuvre shows the influence of Michelangelo, François Duquesnoy and Rubens. He trained many members of the next generation of Flemish sculptors.
context_section_description: Van der Voort was a versatile sculptor who worked in many materials including marble, wood and stucco.  He created mainly church furniture and funeral monuments. He also made some works with secular subject matter mainly derived from mythology or with allegorical figures.  He further worked as a designer for the local silversmiths.
  Van der Voort is well known for his funerary monuments.  The style of his memorial statues was classical and simple as they were inspired by the classical sculpture he studied in Rome. Additional influences were Michelangelo and Rubens. In 1701 he created the epitaph for Michiel Peeters in the St. James Church in Antwerp.  In the monument a personification of Eternity rises up like a body resurrected from the grave. The monument is carved in white marble against a black marble ground which is made to look like funerary cloth. The central figure is a personification of Eternity who is resting her right hand on a closed circle representing Eternity while her left arm is resting on a globe. The globe is a symbol of the sorrows and brevity of life on earth, which Eternity is leaving behind for the eternal joys of heaven. The style evokes the early 17th century classicizing sculptures of the Flemish sculptor François Duquesnoy in its clear outlines, Classical beauty type and smooth modeling.
  He created in 1702 in the St. Rumbold's Cathedral in Mechelen two funeral monuments for the brothers de Precipiano. The memorial to Humbertus Guilielmus de Precipiano, Bishop of Mechelen is traditional in design, but the artist sculpted a lively portrait in full-length marble figure of the Bishop. The tomb of the Bishop's brother Count Prosper Ambrosius de Precipiano has as its base a vast stele combined with an allegorical figure holding a shield on which a portrait bust of de Precipiano is carved. The use of the stele was subsequently adopted by other Flemish sculptors.  His interest in portrait sculpture is also visible in the Bust portrait of Jacobus Franciscus van Caverson (marble, 1713, Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium), which is the sole surviving piece of a funeral monument that was originally in the former Dominican church in Brussels.
  In his pulpits van der Voort achieved the most exuberant expression of the late Baroque in Flemish sculpture.  At the end of the 17th century a new design for pulpits had emerged in Flanders.  Antwerp sculptor Hendrik Frans Verbruggen was the principal creator behind this new type of naturalist pulpit. In 1696–1699, Verbruggen created a pulpit for the Jesuit church in Leuven, which is now located in the Cathedral of St. Michael and St. Gudula in Brussels. He turned the pulpit into a complex theatrical stage in which at the bottom Adam and Eve are shown driven out of the Earthly Paradise, while the victorious Virgin on top of the pulpit's soundboard crushes the snake slithering from the tree of Good and Evil.  In a similar vein van der Voort created a pulpit for the Church of the Abbey of St Bernard near Antwerp in 1713, which is now located in the Antwerp Cathedral. It is decorated with a myriad of plants and animals sculpted in a realistic manner. The supporting column of the pulpit consist of four figures who are representations of the Four Continents. His most exuberant pulpit is located in the St. Rumbold's Cathedral in Mechelen.  He created it in 1721 for the abbey of Leliendael.  He transformed the structure of a traditional pulpit into a stage for a 'tableau vivant'.  The pulpit appears like a free-standing landscape in which a dramatic representation of the conversion of St Norbert takes central place.  The saint is shown being thrown from his horse underneath a small mountain.  The mountain is brimming with trees, animals and figures that emerge from the background of rough-hewn rocks. The Calvary and the temptation of Adam and Eve are also depicted in the pulpit. The crown of the tree of Good and Evil forms its sounding board. It is no longer possible to distinguish the architectural parts from each other which have become a single whole.
  In 1720 he execut
caption: Charity
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