French Baroque Era Sculptor, 1620-1694 French sculptor, painter, draughtsman and architect. Puget was one of the outstanding artists of his century, but his style, formed by the Italian Baroque, did not however always find favour in the classicizing atmosphere of the French court, where Jean-Baptiste Colbert would describe him in 1670 as 'a man who goes a little too fast, and whose imagination is a little too heated'. Although the son of a master mason, Simon Puget (d 1623), Puget was largely self-taught, as were his brother Gaspard Puget (1615-after 1683), an architect, and his son Fran?ois Puget (1651-1707), a painter. Apprenticed in 1634 to a wood-carver, Jean Roman, in Marseille, he left in 1638 for Italy, spending some years in Florence and Rome close to Pietro da Cortona, presumably as a stuccoist and painter, although his part in the decoration of the Palazzo Pitti, Florence, Cortona's main project of these years, is not clear. From 1643 he practised sculpture and painting at the Toulon Arsenal, France's largest naval shipyard, where he was appointed to the wood-carving workshop: around 1645, for instance, he designed and supervised the decoration of the ship Le Magnifique (in 1646 renamed La Reine; destr.). According to some sources, in 1646 he made a second journey to Italy,   Related Paintings of PUGET, Pierre :. | Great Vessel of War | St Peter Holding the Key of the Paradise sg | Portrait of the Artist's Mother af | Self portrait | Virgin Giving the Scapular to St Simon Stock sg |
Related Artists:
Jean-Baptiste Huysmans
Flemish 1654-1716
Thomas Brower
British 1830-1896
BRAY, Salomon de
Dutch Baroque Era Painter, 1597-1664 De Bray established himself in Haarlem before 1617, where he is supposed to have been taught by Hendrick Goltzius and Cornelis van Haarlem, and where he married in 1625. He painted history paintings, portraits and landscapes. As a Catholic he probably also made altar pieces for clandestine churches. He cooperated in the decoration of Huis ten Bosch in The Hague. His works draw on the spirit of the Dutch classicism beginning at that time, and are comparable with those of Pieter de Grebber. De Bray was also active as a designer of silverwork, as a poet, as an architect and as a town planner. As an architect, he was involved in the construction or expansion of Haarlem's City Hall, Zijlpoort, and St. Annakerk (Church of St. Anne), and Nijmegen's city orphanage. One of his poems was set to music by his friend the composer Cornelis Padbru??. Salomon de Bray was the father of ten children, of whom three (including Jan de Bray) became artists. He probably died of the plague, as some of his children and was buried in the Sint-Bavokerk in Haarlem.