Crouching Boy
Sculpture by Michelangelo
Crouching Boy is a sculpture of the Renaissance Italian painter and sculptor Michelangelo, preserved today at the Hermitage Museum in Saint Petersburg. It is the only work by Michelangelo in the Hermitage. Sculpted between 1530 and 1533, it was originally intended for the tomb of the Medici family in Florence. Consistent with Michelangelo's use of the human figure in his memorials, scholars have speculated that the crouched boy might have served as an allegory of mourning or eternal youth.
Description.
The "Crouching Boy" is a 54 cm marble sculpture and shows a boy, naked and turned in on himself, perhaps pulling a thorn from his foot. Even though the statue is not well finished, facial features, hair and body shapes are easily recognizable.
References.
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Michelangelo
Italian artist and architect (1475–1564)
Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni (6March 1475 – 18February 1564), known mononymously as Michelangelo, was an Italian sculptor, painter, architect, and poet of the High Renaissance. Born in the Republic of Florence, his work was inspired by models from classical antiquity and had a lasting influence on Western art. Michelangelo's creative abilities and mastery in a range of artistic arenas define him as an archetypal Renaissance man, along with his rival and elder contemporary, Leonardo da Vinci. Given the sheer volume of surviving correspondence, sketches, and reminiscences, Michelangelo is one of the best-documented artists of the 16th century. He was lauded by contemporary biographers as the most accomplished artist of his era.
Michelangelo achieved fame early. Two of his best-known works, the "Pietà" and "David", were sculpted before the age of 30. Although he did not consider himself a painter, Michelangelo created two of the most influential frescoes in the history of Western art: the scenes from Genesis on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel in Rome, and "The Last Judgment" on its altar wall. His design of the Laurentian Library pioneered Mannerist architecture. At the age of 71, he succeeded Antonio da Sangallo the Younger as the architect of St. Peter's Basilica. Michelangelo transformed the plan so that the Western end was finished to his design, as was the dome, with some modification, after his death.
Michelangelo was the first Western artist whose biography was published while he was alive. Three biographies were published during his lifetime. One of them, by Giorgio Vasari, proposed that Michelangelo's work transcended that of any artist living or dead, and was "supreme in not one art alone but in all three".
In his lifetime, Michelangelo was often called ("the divine one"). His contemporaries admired his "terribilità"—his ability to instill a sense of awe in viewers of his art. Attempts by subsequent artists to imitate the expressive physicality of Michelangelo's style contributed to the rise of Mannerism, a short-lived movement in Western art between the High Renaissance and the Baroque.
Life.
Early life, 1475–1488.
Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni was born on 6 March 1475 in Caprese, known today as Caprese Michelangelo, a small town situated in Valtiberina, near Arezzo, Tuscany. For several generations, his family had been small-scale bankers in Florence; but the bank failed, and his father Ludovico briefly took a government post in Caprese. At the time of Michelangelo's birth, his father was the town's judicial administrator and "podestà" (local administrator) of Chiusi della Verna. Michelangelo's mother was Francesca di Neri del Miniato di Siena. The Buonarrotis claimed to descend from the Countess Matilde di Canossa—a claim that remains unproven, but which Michelangelo believed.
Several months after Michelangelo's birth, the family returned to Florence, where he was raised. During his mother's later prolonged illness, and after her death in 1481 (when he was six years old), Michelangelo lived with a nanny and her husband, a stonecutter, in the town of Settignano, where his father owned a marble quarry and a small farm. There the young boy gained his love for marble. As his biographer Giorgio Vasari quotes him:
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Apprenticeships, 1488–1492.
As a young boy, Michelangelo was sent to the city of Florence to study grammar under the Humanist Francesco da Urbino. Michelangelo showed no interest in his schooling, preferring to copy paintings from churches and seek the company of other painters. Florence was at that time Italy's greatest centre of the arts and learning. Art was sponsored by the (the town council), the merchant guilds, and wealthy patrons such as the Medici and their banking associates. The Renaissance, a renewal of Classical scholarship and the arts, had its first flowering in Florence. In the early 15th century, the architect Filippo Brunelleschi, having studied the remains of Classical buildings in Rome, had created two churches, San Lorenzo's and Santo Spirito, which embodied the Classical precepts. The sculptor Lorenzo Ghiberti had laboured for 50 years to create the north and east bronze doors of the Baptistry, which Michelangelo was to describe as "The Gates of Paradise". The exterior niches of the Church of Orsanmichele contained a gallery of works by the most acclaimed sculptors of Florence: Donatello, Ghiberti, Andrea del Verrocchio, and Nanni di Banco. The interiors of the older churches were covered with frescos (mostly in Late Medieval, but also in the Early Renaissance style), begun by Giotto and continued by Masaccio in the Brancacci Chapel, both of whose works Michelangelo studied and copied in drawings.
During Michelangelo's childhood, a team of painters had been called from Florence to the Vatican to decorate the walls of the Sistine Chapel. Among them was Domenico Ghirlandaio, a master in fresco painting, perspective, figure drawing and portraiture who had the largest workshop in Florence. In 1488, at the age of 13, Michelangelo was apprenticed to Ghirlandaio. The next year, his father persuaded Ghirlandaio to pay Michelangelo as an artist, which was rare for someone that young. When in 1489, Lorenzo de' Medici, "de facto" ruler of Florence, asked Ghirlandaio for his two best pupils, Ghirlandaio sent Michelangelo and Francesco Granacci.
From 1490 to 1492, Michelangelo attended the Platonic Academy, a Humanist academy founded by the Medicis. There, his work and outlook were influenced by many of the most prominent philosophers and writers of the day, including Marsilio Ficino, Pico della Mirandola and Poliziano. At this time, Michelangelo sculpted the reliefs "Madonna of the Stairs" and "Battle of the Centaurs", the latter based on a theme suggested by Poliziano and commissioned by Lorenzo de' Medici. Michelangelo worked for a time with the sculptor Bertoldo di Giovanni. When he was 17, another pupil, Pietro Torrigiano, struck him on the nose, causing the disfigurement that is conspicuous in the portraits of Michelangelo.
Bologna, Florence, and Rome, 1492–1499.
Lorenzo de' Medici's death on 8 April 1492 changed Michelangelo's circumstances. He left the security of the Medici court and returned to his father's house. In the following months he carved a polychrome wooden "Crucifix" (1493), as a gift to the prior of the Florentine church of Santo Spirito, which had allowed him to do some anatomical studies of the corpses from the church's hospital. This was the first of several instances during his career that Michelangelo studied anatomy by dissecting cadavers.
Between 1493 and 1494, Michelangelo bought a block of marble, and carved a larger-than-life statue of Hercules. On 20 January 1494, after heavy snowfalls, Lorenzo's heir, Piero de Medici, commissioned a statue made of snow, and Michelangelo again entered the court of the Medici. In the same year, the Medici were expelled from Florence as the result of the rise of Savonarola. Michelangelo left the city before the end of the political upheaval, moving to Venice and then to Bologna. In Bologna, he was commissioned to carve several of the last small figures for the completion of the Shrine of St. Dominic, in the church dedicated to that saint. At this time Michelangelo studied the robust reliefs carved by Jacopo della Quercia around the main portal of the Basilica of St Petronius, including the panel of "The Creation of Eve", the composition of which was to reappear on the Sistine Chapel ceiling. Towards the end of 1495, the political situation in Florence was calmer; the city, previously under threat from the French, was no longer in danger as Charles VIII had suffered defeats. Michelangelo returned to Florence but received no commissions from the new city government under Savonarola. He returned to the employment of the Medici. During the half-year he spent in Florence, he worked on two small statues, a child "St. John the Baptist" and a sleeping "Cupid". According to Condivi, Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco de' Medici, for whom Michelangelo had sculpted "St. John the Baptist", asked that Michelangelo "fix it so that it looked as if it had been buried" so he could "send it to Rome ... pass [it off as] an ancient work and ... sell it much better." Both Lorenzo and Michelangelo were unwittingly cheated out of the real value of the piece by a middleman. Cardinal Raffaele Riario, to whom Lorenzo had sold it, discovered that it was a fraud, but was so impressed by the quality of the sculpture that he invited the artist to Rome. This apparent success in selling his sculpture abroad as well as the conservative Florentine situation may have encouraged Michelangelo to accept the prelate's invitation.
Michelangelo arrived in Rome on 25 June 1496 at the age of 21. On 4 July of the same year, he began work on a commission for Cardinal Riario, an over-life-size statue of the Roman wine god "Bacchus". Upon completion, the work was rejected by the cardinal, and subsequently entered the collection of the banker Jacopo Galli, for his garden. In November 1497, the French ambassador to the Holy See, Cardinal Jean de Bilhères-Lagraulas, commissioned him to carve a "Pietà", a sculpture showing the Virgin Mary grieving over the body of Jesus. The subject, which is not part of the Biblical narrative of the Crucifixion, was common in religious sculpture of medieval northern Europe and would have been very familiar to the Cardinal. The contract was agreed upon in August of the following year. Michelangelo was 24 at the time of its completion. It was soon to be regarded as one of the world's great masterpieces of sculpture, "a revelation of all the potentialities and force of the art of sculpture". Contemporary opinion was summarised by Vasari: "It is certainly a miracle that a formless block of stone could ever have been reduced to a perfection that nature is scarcely able to create in the flesh." Michelangelo's only work known to have been signed, his name on Mary's sash, it is now located in St Peter's Basilica.
Florence, 1499–1505.
Michelangelo returned to Florence in 1499. The Republic was changing after the fall of its leader, anti-Renaissance priest Girolamo Savonarola, who was executed in 1498, and the rise of the "gonfaloniere" Piero Soderini. Michelangelo was asked by the consuls of the Guild of Wool to complete an unfinished project begun 40 years earlier by Agostino di Duccio: a colossal statue of Carrara marble portraying David as a symbol of Florentine freedom to be placed on the gable of Florence Cathedral. Michelangelo responded by completing his most famous work, the statue of "David", in 1504. The masterwork definitively established his prominence as a sculptor of extraordinary technical skill and strength of symbolic imagination. A team of consultants, including Botticelli, Leonardo da Vinci, Filippino Lippi, Pietro Perugino, Lorenzo di Credi, Antonio and Giuliano da Sangallo, Andrea della Robbia, Cosimo Rosselli, Davide Ghirlandaio, Piero di Cosimo, Andrea Sansovino and Michelangelo's dear friend Granacci, was called together to decide upon its placement, ultimately the Piazza della Signoria, in front of the Palazzo Vecchio. It now stands in the Academia while a replica occupies its place in the square. In the same period of placing the "David", Michelangelo may have been involved in creating the sculptural profile on Palazzo Vecchio's façade known as the Importuno di Michelangelo. The hypothesis of Michelangelo's possible involvement in the creation of the profile is based on the strong resemblance of the latter to a profile drawn by the artist, datable to the beginning of the 16th century, now preserved in the Louvre.
With the completion of the "David" came another commission. In early 1504 Leonardo da Vinci had been commissioned to paint "The Battle of Anghiari" in the council chamber of the Palazzo Vecchio, depicting the battle between Florence and Milan in 1440. Michelangelo was then commissioned to paint the "Battle of Cascina". The two paintings are very different: Leonardo depicts soldiers fighting on horseback, while Michelangelo has soldiers being ambushed as they bathe in the river. Neither work was completed and both were lost forever when the chamber was refurbished. Both works were much admired, and copies remain of them, Leonardo's work having been copied by Rubens and Michelangelo's by Bastiano da Sangallo.
Also during this period, Michelangelo was commissioned by Angelo Doni to paint a "Holy Family" as a present for his wife, Maddalena Strozzi. It is known as the "Doni Tondo" and hangs in the Uffizi Gallery in its original magnificent frame, which Michelangelo may have designed. He also may have painted the Madonna and Child with John the Baptist, known as the "Manchester Madonna" and now in the National Gallery, London.
Tomb of Julius II, 1505–1545.
In 1505 Michelangelo was invited back to Rome by the newly elected Pope Julius II and commissioned to build the Pope's tomb, which was to include forty statues and be finished in five years. Under the patronage of the pope, Michelangelo experienced constant interruptions to his work on the tomb in order to accomplish numerous other tasks.
The commission for the tomb forced the artist to leave Florence with his planned "Battle of Cascina" painting unfinished. By this time, Michelangelo was established as an artist; both he and Julius II had hot tempers and soon argued. On 17 April 1506, Michelangelo left Rome in secret for Florence, remaining there until the Florentine government pressed him to return to the pope.
Although Michelangelo worked on the tomb for 40 years, it was never finished to his satisfaction. It is located in the Church of San Pietro in Vincoli in Rome and is most famous for the central figure of Moses, completed in 1516. Of the other statues intended for the tomb, two, known as the "Rebellious Slave" and the "Dying Slave", are now in the Louvre.
Sistine Chapel ceiling, 1508 –1512.
During the same period, Michelangelo painted the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, which took approximately four years to complete (1508–1512). According to Condivi's account, Bramante, who was working on the building of St. Peter's Basilica, resented Michelangelo's commission for the pope's tomb and convinced the pope to commission him in a medium with which he was unfamiliar, in order that he might fail at the task. Michelangelo was originally commissioned to paint the Twelve Apostles on the triangular pendentives that supported the ceiling, and to cover the central part of the ceiling with ornament. Michelangelo persuaded Pope Julius II to give him a free hand and proposed a different and more complex scheme, representing the Creation, the Fall of Man, the Promise of Salvation through the prophets, and the genealogy of Christ. The work is part of a larger scheme of decoration within the chapel that represents much of the doctrine of the Catholic Church.
The composition stretches over 500 square metres of ceiling and contains over 300 figures. At its centre are nine episodes from the Book of Genesis, divided into three groups: God's creation of the earth; God's creation of humankind and their fall from God's grace; and lastly, the state of humanity as represented by Noah and his family. On the pendentives supporting the ceiling are painted twelve men and women who prophesied the coming of Jesus, seven prophets of Israel, and five Sibyls, prophetic women of the Classical world. Among the most famous paintings on the ceiling are The Creation of Adam, Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, the Deluge, the Prophet Jeremiah, and the Cumaean Sibyl.
Florence under Medici popes, 1513 – early 1534.
In 1513, Pope Julius II died and was succeeded by Pope Leo X, the second son of Lorenzo de' Medici. From 1513 to 1516, Pope Leo was on good terms with Pope Julius's surviving relatives, so encouraged Michelangelo to continue work on Julius's tomb, but the families became enemies again in 1516 when Pope Leo tried to seize the Duchy of Urbino from Julius's nephew Francesco Maria I della Rovere. Pope Leo then had Michelangelo stop working on the tomb, and commissioned him to reconstruct the façade of the Basilica of San Lorenzo in Florence and to adorn it with sculptures. He spent three years creating drawings and models for the façade, as well as attempting to open a new marble quarry at Pietrasanta specifically for the project. In 1520, the work was abruptly cancelled by his financially strapped patrons before any real progress had been made. The basilica lacks a façade to this day.
In 1520, the Medici came back to Michelangelo with another grand proposal, this time for a family funerary chapel in the Basilica of San Lorenzo. For posterity, this project, occupying the artist for much of the 1520s and 1530s, was more fully realised. Michelangelo used his own discretion to create the composition of the Medici Chapel, which houses the large tombs of two of the younger members of the Medici family, Giuliano, Duke of Nemours, and Lorenzo, his nephew. It also serves to commemorate their more famous predecessors, Lorenzo the Magnificent and his brother Giuliano, who are buried nearby. The tombs display statues of the two Medici and allegorical figures representing "Night" and "Day", and "Dusk" and "Dawn". The chapel also contains Michelangelo's "Medici Madonna". In 1976, a concealed corridor was discovered with drawings on the walls that related to the chapel itself.
Pope Leo X died in 1521 and was succeeded briefly by the austere Adrian VI, and then by his cousin Giulio Medici as Pope Clement VII. In 1524, Michelangelo received an architectural commission from the Medici pope for the Laurentian Library at San Lorenzo's Church. He designed both the interior of the library itself and its vestibule, a building utilising architectural forms with such dynamic effect that it is seen as the forerunner of Baroque architecture. It was left to assistants to interpret his plans and carry out construction. The library was not opened until 1571, and the vestibule remained incomplete until 1904.
In 1527, Florentine citizens, encouraged by the sack of Rome, threw out the Medici and restored the republic. A siege of the city ensued, and Michelangelo went to the aid of his beloved Florence by working on the city's fortifications from 1528 to 1529. The city fell in 1530, and the Medici were restored to power, with the young Alessandro Medici as the first Duke of Florence. Pope Clement, a Medici, sentenced Michelangelo to death. It is thought that Michelangelo hid for two months in a small chamber under the Medici chapels in the Basilica of San Lorenzo with light from just a tiny window, making many charcoal and chalk drawings which remained hidden until the room was rediscovered in 1975, and opened to small numbers of visitors in 2023. Michelangelo was eventually pardoned by the Medicis and the death sentence lifted, so that he could complete work on the Sistine Chapel and the Medici family tomb. He left Florence for Rome in 1534. Despite Michelangelo's support of the republic and resistance to the Medici rule, Pope Clement reinstated an allowance that he had previously granted the artist and made a new contract with him over the tomb of Pope Julius.
Rome, 1534–1546.
In Rome, Michelangelo lived near the church of Santa Maria di Loreto. It was at this time that he met the poet Vittoria Colonna, marchioness of Pescara, who was to become one of his closest friends until her death in 1547.
Shortly before his death in 1534, Pope Clement VII commissioned Michelangelo to paint a fresco of "The Last Judgment" on the altar wall of the Sistine Chapel. His successor, Pope Paul III, was instrumental in seeing that Michelangelo began and completed the project, which he laboured on from 1534 to October 1541. The fresco depicts the Second Coming of Christ and his Judgement of the souls. Michelangelo ignored the usual artistic conventions in portraying Jesus, showing him as a massive, muscular figure, youthful, beardless and naked. He is surrounded by saints, among whom Saint Bartholomew holds a drooping flayed skin, bearing the likeness of Michelangelo. The dead rise from their graves, to be consigned either to Heaven or to Hell.
Once completed, the depiction of Christ and the Virgin Mary naked was considered sacrilegious, and Cardinal Carafa and Monsignor Sernini (Mantua's ambassador) campaigned to have the fresco removed or censored, but the Pope resisted. At the Council of Trent, shortly before Michelangelo's death in 1564, it was decided to obscure the genitals and Daniele da Volterra, an apprentice of Michelangelo, was commissioned to make the alterations. An uncensored copy of the original, by Marcello Venusti, is in the Capodimonte Museum of Naples.
Michelangelo worked on a number of architectural projects at this time. They included a design for the Capitoline Hill with its trapezoid piazza displaying the ancient bronze statue of Marcus Aurelius. He designed the upper floor of the Palazzo Farnese and the interior of the Church of Santa Maria degli Angeli, in which he transformed the vaulted interior of an Ancient Roman bathhouse. Other architectural works include San Giovanni dei Fiorentini, the Sforza Chapel (Capella Sforza) in the Basilica di Santa Maria Maggiore and the Porta Pia.
St Peter's Basilica, 1546–1564.
While still working on the "Last Judgment", Michelangelo received yet another commission for the Vatican. This was for the painting of two large frescos in the Cappella Paolina depicting significant events in the lives of the two most important saints of Rome, the "Conversion of Saint Paul" and the "Crucifixion of Saint Peter". Like the "Last Judgment", these two works are complex compositions containing a great number of figures. They were completed in 1550. In the same year, Giorgio Vasari published his "Vita", including a biography of Michelangelo.
In 1546, Michelangelo was appointed architect of St. Peter's Basilica, Rome. The process of replacing the Constantinian basilica of the 4th century had been underway for fifty years and in 1506 foundations had been laid to the plans of Bramante. Successive architects had worked on it, but little progress had been made. Michelangelo was persuaded to take over the project. He returned to the concepts of Bramante, and developed his ideas for a centrally planned church, strengthening the structure both physically and visually. The dome, not completed until after his death, has been called by Banister Fletcher, "the greatest creation of the Renaissance".
As construction was progressing on St Peter's, there was concern that Michelangelo would die before the dome was finished. However, once building commenced on the lower part of the dome, the supporting ring, the completion of the design was inevitable.
Personal life.
Faith.
Michelangelo was a devout Catholic whose faith deepened at the end of his life. Along with Raphael, he was enrolled in the Secular Franciscan Order.
His poetry includes the following closing lines from what is known as poem 285 (written in 1554): "Neither painting nor sculpture will be able any longer to calm my soul, now turned toward that divine love that opened his arms on the cross to take us in."
Personal habits.
Michelangelo was moderate in his personal life, and once told his apprentice, Ascanio Condivi: "However rich I may have been, I have always lived like a poor man." Michelangelo's bank accounts and numerous deeds of purchase show that his net worth was about 50,000 gold ducats, more than many princes and dukes of his time. Condivi said he was indifferent to food and drink, eating "more out of necessity than of pleasure" and that he "often slept in his clothes and ... boots." His biographer Paolo Giovio says, "His nature was so rough and uncouth that his domestic habits were incredibly squalid, and deprived posterity of any pupils who might have followed him." This, however, may not have affected him, as he was by nature a solitary and melancholy person, , a man who "withdrew himself from the company of men."
Relationships and poetry.
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It is impossible to know whether Michelangelo had any physical relationships. Understanding about his sexuality is rooted in his art, especially his poetry. He wrote more than three hundred sonnets and madrigals. About sixty are addressed to men – "the first significant modern corpus of love poetry from one man to another".
The longest sequence, displaying deep loving feeling, was written to the young Roman patrician Tommaso dei Cavalieri (c. 1509–1587), who was 23 years old when Michelangelo first met him in 1532, at the age of 57. In his "Lives of the Artists", Vasari observed: "But infinitely more than any of the others he loved M. Tommaso de' Cavalieri, a Roman gentleman, for whom, being a young man and much inclined to these arts, [Michelangelo] made, to the end that he might learn to draw, many most superb drawings of divinely beautiful heads, designed in black and red chalk; and then he drew for him a Ganymede rapt to Heaven by Jove's Eagle, a Tityus with the Vulture devouring his heart, the Chariot of the Sun falling with Phaëthon into the Po, and a Bacchanal of children, which are all in themselves most rare things, and drawings the like of which have never been seen." Some scholars downplay the relationship between Michelangelo and Cavalieri as one of platonic friendship. The poems to Cavalieri make up the first large sequence of poems in any modern tongue addressed by one man to another; they predate by 50 years Shakespeare's sonnets to the fair youth:
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Cavalieri replied: "I swear to return your love. Never have I loved a man more than I love you, never have I wished for a friendship more than I wish for yours." Cavalieri remained devoted to Michelangelo until his death.
In 1542, Michelangelo met Cecchino dei Bracci who died only a year later, inspiring Michelangelo to write 48 funeral epigrams. Some of the objects of Michelangelo's affections, and subjects of his poetry, took advantage of him: the model Febo di Poggio asked for money in response to a love-poem, and a second model, Gherardo Perini, shamelessly stole from him.
The nature of the poetry has been a source of discomfort to later generations. Michelangelo's grandnephew, Michelangelo Buonarroti the Younger, published the poems in 1623 with the gender of pronouns changed; he also removed words or in other instances insisted that Michelangelo's poems be read allegorically and philosophically, a judgment some modern scholars still repeat today. It was not until John Addington Symonds translated the poems into English in 1893 that the original genders were restored. Since then it has become more accepted that his poems should be understood at face value, that is, as indicating his personal feelings and a preference by him for young men over women. The Elizabeth Jennings translation, "The Sonnets of Michelangelo", is considered the standard version.
Late in life, Michelangelo nurtured a friendship with the poet and noble widow Vittoria Colonna, whom he met in Rome in 1536 or 1538 and who was in her late forties at the time. They wrote sonnets for each other and were in regular contact until she died. These sonnets mostly deal with the spiritual issues that occupied them. Condivi, who in his biography was preoccupied with downplaying Michelangelo's attraction to men, alleged Michelangelo said his sole regret in life was that he did not kiss the widow's face in the same manner that he had her hand.
Feuds with other artists.
In a letter from late 1542, Michelangelo blamed the tensions between Julius II and him on the envy of Bramante and Raphael, saying of the latter, "all he had in art, he got from me". According to Gian Paolo Lomazzo, Michelangelo and Raphael met once: the former was alone, while the latter was accompanied by several others. Michelangelo commented that he thought he had encountered the chief of police with such an assemblage, and Raphael replied that he thought he had met an executioner, as they are wont to walk alone.
Works.
Madonna and Child.
The "Madonna of the Stairs" is Michelangelo's earliest known work in marble. It is carved in shallow relief, a technique often employed by the master-sculptor of the early 15th century, Donatello, and others such as Desiderio da Settignano. While the Madonna is in profile, the easiest aspect for a shallow relief, the child displays a twisting motion that was to become characteristic of Michelangelo's work. The "Taddei Tondo" of 1502 shows the Christ Child frightened by a Bullfinch, a symbol of the Crucifixion. The lively form of the child was later adapted by Raphael in the "Bridgewater Madonna". The "Madonna of Bruges" was, at the time of its creation, unlike other such statues depicting the Virgin proudly presenting her son. Here, the Christ Child, restrained by his mother's clasping hand, is about to step off into the world. The "Doni Tondo", depicting the Holy Family, has elements of all three previous works: the frieze of figures in the background has the appearance of a low-relief, while the circular shape and dynamic forms echo the Taddeo Tondo. The twisting motion present in the "Madonna of Bruges" is accentuated in the painting. The painting heralds the forms, movement and colour that Michelangelo was to employ on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel.
Male figure.
The kneeling "Angel" is an early work, one of several that Michelangelo created as part of a large decorative scheme for the Arca di San Domenico in the church dedicated to that saint in Bologna. Several other artists had worked on the scheme, beginning with Nicola Pisano in the 13th century. In the late 15th century, the project was managed by Niccolò dell'Arca. An angel holding a candlestick, by Niccolò, was already in place. Although the two angels form a pair, there is a great contrast between the two works, the one depicting a delicate child with flowing hair clothed in Gothic robes with deep folds, and Michelangelo's depicting a robust and muscular youth with eagle's wings, clad in a garment of Classical style. Everything about Michelangelo's "Angel" is dynamic. Michelangelo's "Bacchus" was a commission with a specified subject, the youthful God of Wine. The sculpture has all the traditional attributes, a vine wreath, a cup of wine and a fawn, but Michelangelo ingested an air of reality into the subject, depicting him with bleary eyes, a swollen bladder and a stance that suggests he is unsteady on his feet. While the work is plainly inspired by Classical sculpture, it is innovative for its rotating movement and strongly three-dimensional quality, which encourages the viewer to look at it from every angle.
In the so-called "Dying Slave", Michelangelo again utilised the figure with marked contrapposto to suggest a particular human state, in this case waking from sleep. With the "Rebellious Slave", it is one of two such earlier figures for the Tomb of Pope Julius II, now in the Louvre, that the sculptor brought to an almost finished state. These two works were to have a profound influence on later sculpture, through Rodin who studied them at the Louvre. The "Atlas Slave" is one of the later figures for Pope Julius' tomb. The works, known collectively as "The Captives", each show the figure struggling to free itself, as if from the bonds of the rock in which it is lodged. The works give a unique insight into the sculptural methods that Michelangelo employed and his way of revealing what he perceived within the rock.
Sistine Chapel ceiling.
The Sistine Chapel ceiling was painted between 1508 and 1512. The ceiling is a flattened barrel vault supported on twelve triangular pendentives that rise from between the windows of the chapel. The commission, as envisaged by Julius II, was to adorn the pendentives with figures of the twelve apostles. Michelangelo, who was reluctant to take the job, persuaded the Pope to give him a free hand in the composition. The resultant scheme of decoration awed his contemporaries and has inspired other artists ever since. The scheme is of nine panels illustrating episodes from the Book of Genesis, set in an architectonic frame. On the pendentives, Michelangelo replaced the proposed Apostles with Prophets and Sibyls who heralded the coming of the Messiah.
Michelangelo began painting with the later episodes in the narrative, the pictures including locational details and groups of figures, the "Drunkenness of Noah" being the first of this group. In the later compositions, painted after the initial scaffolding had been removed, Michelangelo made the figures larger. One of the central images, "The Creation of Adam" is one of the best known and most reproduced works in the history of art. The final panel, showing the "Separation of Light from Darkness" is the broadest in style and was painted in a single day. As the model for the Creator, Michelangelo has depicted himself in the action of painting the ceiling.
As supporters to the smaller scenes, Michelangelo painted twenty youths who have variously been interpreted as angels, as muses, or simply as decoration. Michelangelo referred to them as "ignudi". The figure reproduced may be seen in context in the above image of the "Separation of Light from Darkness".
In the process of painting the ceiling, Michelangelo made studies for different figures, of which some, such as that for "The Libyan Sibyl" have survived, demonstrating the care taken by Michelangelo in details such as the hands and feet. The prophet Jeremiah, contemplating the downfall of Jerusalem, is a self-portrait.
Figure compositions.
Michelangelo's relief of the "Battle of the Centaurs", created while he was still a youth associated with the Medici Academy, is an unusually complex relief in that it shows a great number of figures involved in a vigorous struggle. Such a complex disarray of figures was rare in Florentine art, where it would usually only be found in images showing either the Massacre of the Innocents or the Torments of Hell. The relief treatment, in which some of the figures are boldly projecting, may indicate Michelangelo's familiarity with Roman sarcophagus reliefs from the collection of Lorenzo Medici, and similar marble panels created by Nicola and Giovanni Pisano, and with the figurative compositions on Ghiberti's Baptistry Doors.
The composition of the "Battle of Cascina" is known in its entirety only from copies, as the original cartoon, according to Vasari, was so admired that it deteriorated and was eventually in pieces. It reflects the earlier relief in the energy and diversity of the figures, with many different postures, and many being viewed from the back, as they turn towards the approaching enemy and prepare for battle.
In "The Last Judgment" it is said that Michelangelo drew inspiration from a fresco by Melozzo da Forlì in Rome's Santi Apostoli. Melozzo had depicted figures from different angles, as if they were floating in the Heaven and seen from below. Melozzo's majestic figure of Christ, with windblown cloak, demonstrates a degree of foreshortening of the figure that had also been employed by Andrea Mantegna, but was not usual in the frescos of Florentine painters. In "The Last Judgment" Michelangelo had the opportunity to depict, on an unprecedented scale, figures in the action of either rising heavenward or falling and being dragged down.
In the two frescos of the Pauline Chapel, "The Crucifixion of St. Peter" and "The Conversion of Saul", Michelangelo has used the various groups of figures to convey a complex narrative. In the "Crucifixion of Peter" soldiers busy themselves about their assigned duty of digging a post hole and raising the cross while various people look on and discuss the events. A group of horrified women cluster in the foreground, while another group of Christians is led by a tall man to witness the events. In the right foreground, Michelangelo walks out of the painting with an expression of disillusionment.
Architecture.
Michelangelo's architectural commissions included a number that were not realised, notably the façade for Brunelleschi's Church of San Lorenzo in Florence, for which Michelangelo had a wooden model constructed, but which remains to this day unfinished rough brick. At the same church, Giulio de' Medici (later Pope Clement VII) commissioned him to design the Medici Chapel and the tombs of Giuliano and Lorenzo Medici. Pope Clement also commissioned the Laurentian Library, for which Michelangelo also designed the extraordinary vestibule with columns recessed into niches, and a staircase that appears to spill out of the library like a flow of lava, according to Nikolaus Pevsner, "... revealing Mannerism in its most sublime architectural form".
In 1546 Michelangelo produced the highly complex ovoid design for the pavement of the Campidoglio and began designing an upper storey for the Farnese Palace. In 1547 he took on the job of completing St Peter's Basilica, begun to a design by Bramante, and with several intermediate designs by several architects. Michelangelo returned to Bramante's design, retaining the basic form and concepts by simplifying and strengthening the design to create a more dynamic and unified whole. Although the late 16th-century engraving depicts the dome as having a hemispherical profile, the dome of Michelangelo's model is somewhat ovoid and the final product, as completed by Giacomo della Porta, is more so.
Final years.
In his old age, Michelangelo created a number of "Pietàs" in which he apparently reflects upon mortality. They are heralded by the "Victory", perhaps created for the tomb of Pope Julius II but left unfinished. In this group, the youthful victor overcomes an older hooded figure, with the features of Michelangelo. The "Pietà of Vittoria Colonna" is a chalk drawing of a type described as "presentation drawings", as they might be given as a gift by an artist, and were not necessarily studies towards a painted work. In this image, Mary's upraised arms and hands are indicative of her prophetic role. The frontal aspect is reminiscent of Masaccio's fresco of the Holy Trinity in the Basilica of Santa Maria Novella, Florence. In the "Florentine Pietà", Michelangelo again depicts himself, this time as the aged Nicodemus lowering the body of Jesus from the cross into the arms of Mary his mother and Mary Magdalene. Michelangelo smashed the left arm and leg of the figure of Jesus. His pupil Tiberio Calcagni repaired the arm and drilled a hole in which to fix a replacement leg which was not subsequently attached. He also worked on the figure of Mary Magdalene.
The last sculpture that Michelangelo worked on (six days before his death), the "Rondanini Pietà," could never be completed because Michelangelo carved it away until there was insufficient stone. The legs and a detached arm remain from a previous stage of the work. As it remains, the sculpture has an abstract quality, in keeping with 20th-century concepts of sculpture.
Michelangelo died in Rome on 18 February 1564, at the age of 88. His body was taken from Rome for interment at the Basilica of Santa Croce, fulfilling the maestro's last request to be buried in his beloved Florence. His heir Lionardo Buonarroti commissioned Vasari to design and build the "Tomb of Michelangelo", a monumental project that cost 770 scudi, and took over 14 years to complete. Marble for the tomb was supplied by Cosimo I de' Medici, Duke of Tuscany, who had also organized a state funeral to honour Michelangelo in Florence.
Legacy.
Michelangelo, with Leonardo da Vinci and Raphael, is one of the three giants of the Florentine High Renaissance. Although their names are often cited together, Michelangelo was younger than Leonardo by 23 years, and eight years older than Raphael. Because of his reclusive nature, he had little to do with either artist and outlived both of them by more than 40 years. Michelangelo took few sculpture students. He employed Granacci, who was his fellow pupil at the Medici Academy, and became one of several assistants on the Sistine Chapel ceiling. Michelangelo appears to have used assistants mainly for the more manual tasks of preparing surfaces and grinding colours. Despite this, his works were to have a great influence on painters, sculptors and architects for many generations to come.
While Michelangelo's "David" is the most famous male nude of all time, some of his other works have had perhaps even greater impact on the course of art. The twisting forms and tensions of the "Victory", the "Bruges Madonna" and the "Medici Madonna" make them the heralds of the Mannerist art. The unfinished giants for the tomb of Pope Julius II had profound effect on sculptors such as Rodin and Henry Moore.
Michelangelo's vestibule of the Laurentian Library was one of the earliest buildings to use classical forms in a plastic and expressive manner. This dynamic quality was later to find its major expression in his centrally planned St. Peter's, with its giant order, its rippling cornice and its upward-launching pointed dome. The dome of St. Peter's was to influence the building of churches for many centuries, including Sant'Andrea della Valle in Rome and St Paul's Cathedral, London, as well as the civic domes of public buildings and state capitals across the United States.
Artists who were directly influenced by Michelangelo include Raphael, whose monumental treatment of the figure in the "School of Athens" and "The Expulsion of Heliodorus from the Temple" owes much to Michelangelo, and whose fresco of "Isaiah" in Sant'Agostino closely imitates the older master's prophets. Other artists, such as Pontormo, drew on the writhing forms of the "Last Judgment" and the frescoes of the Cappella Paolina.
The Sistine Chapel ceiling was a work of unprecedented grandeur, both for its architectonic forms, to be imitated by many Baroque ceiling painters, and also for the wealth of its inventiveness in the study of figures. Vasari wrote:
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Crouching Woman
Sculpture by Auguste Rodin
Crouching Woman is a bronze sculpture by Auguste Rodin.
Versions.
Originally modeled in 1880–1882, and enlarged in 1907–1911, it was cast in 1962.
It is in the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden. The Portland Art Museum has a copy in its Evan H. Roberts Memorial Sculpture Collection.
References.
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Boethus of Chalcedon
Greek sculptor
Boëthus () was a Greek sculptor of the Hellenistic age. His life dates cannot be accurately fixed, but he probably flourished in the 2nd century BCE. One source gives his birthplace as Chalcedon.
He was noted for his representations of children, especially for a group representing a boy struggling with a goose, of which several copies survive in museums. Other works represent a girl playing with dice, and a boy extracting a thorn. According to Pliny, he also worked with silver. Because Boethus was a common name in ancient Greece, specific details of his life are difficult to ascertain.
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Russell Gerry Crook
American sculptor
Russell Gerry Crook (1869–1955) was an American sculptor and craftsman active in the Boston area.
Crook was born in San Francisco, and studied under John Henry Twachtman and Augustus Saint-Gaudens. He had his studio in Lincoln, Massachusetts. He created the Kona Fountain in Center Harbor, New Hampshire (1907), as well as figureheads for Dodge Watercars and a pair of terracotta polar bears.

Kritios Boy
Ancient Greek sculpture from the Acropolis of Athens
The marble Kritios Boy or Kritian Boy belongs to the Early Classical period of ancient Greek sculpture. It is the first statue from classical antiquity known to use contrapposto; Kenneth Clark called it "the first beautiful nude in art" The "Kritios Boy" is thus named because it is attributed, on slender evidence, to Kritios, who worked together with Nesiotes (sculptors of "Harmodius and Aristogeiton") or their school, from around 480 BC. As currently mounted, the statue is considerably smaller than life-size at 117 cm (3 ft 10 ins), including the supports that replace the missing feet.
Discovery.
The statue was excavated on the Acropolis of Athens, among the "Perserschutt", the ceremonial dump in which the Athenians buried the debris of sacred artefacts destroyed by the in 480 BC. It is on display in the Acropolis Museum, Athens, near the site where it was excavated. The torso was found in 1865 while excavating the foundation of the old museum at the Athenian Acropolis. The head of this statue was found twenty-three years later between the museum and the Acropolis south wall, in the latest stage of the rubble of destruction undergone in the Persian Wars. This fact, in conjunction with the analysis of its style, is essential to the dating of the statue.
Significance.
Whether or not Kritios was the innovator, with the "Kritios Boy" ("ephebos") the Greek artist has mastered a complete understanding of how the different parts of the body act as a system. The statue moves away from the rigid and stiff pose of the Archaic style. "Kritios Boy" presents a more relaxed and naturalistic pose known as contrapposto. This stance forces a chain of anatomical events: as the pelvis is pushed diagonally upwards on the left side, the right buttock relaxes, the spine acquires an "S" curve, and the shoulder line dips on the left to counteract the action of the pelvis.
Among classic Greek sculptures, the Kritios Boy expresses a set of proportions known as the "Canon of Polyclitus"
It set the rule for later sculptors like Praxiteles and Lysippos, whose contrapposto, or ponderation, is more emphasised than the "subtle equilibrium of outline and axis which is to be the basis of classical art" exhibited by the Kritios Boy's "delicate balance of movement"
It is possible that earlier bronze statues had used contraposty, but have not survived. Susan Woodford has speculated that the statue is a copy of a bronze original.
The "Kritios Boy" exhibits a number of other critical innovations that distinguish it from the Archaic "Kouroi" from the seventh and sixth century BC that paved its way. The Archaic style relied more on geometrical shapes to define the contours of the human body. The muscular and skeletal structure of "Kritios Boy" are depicted with unforced lifelike accuracy of flesh and bone, with the rib cage naturally expanded as if in the act of breathing, with a relaxed attitude and hips which are distinctly narrower. Sculptors had begun to break away from the rules of the Archaic style and follow representation that was closer to nature. As a final forebear of the classical period, the archaic smile has been completely replaced by the accurate rendering of the lips and the austere expression that characterized the transitional Severe style. It was created in same era as the "Blond Kouros's Head of the Acropolis" and the group of the "Tyrannicides" Harmodius and Aristogeiton. A good example for comparison is the marble statue of an "ephebos" in the museum in Agrigento.
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Gustave Crauck
French sculptor (1827–1905)
Gustave Adolphe Désiré Crauck (or Crauk; 16 July 1827 – 17 November 1905) was a French sculptor with a long distinguished career.
He was born and died at Valenciennes, where a special museum for his works was erected in his honor. Educated at the École des Beaux-Arts, Crauck took the Prix de Rome in 1851.
Little known to the world at large during his long life, he ranks among the best modern sculptors of France. At Paris his Coligny monument is in the rue de Rivoli; his "Victory" in the Place des Arts et Métiers; and "Twilight" in the Avenue de l'Observatoire. Among his finest works is his "Combat du Centaure", on which he was engaged for thirty years, the figure of the Lapith having been modelled after the strongman, Eugen Sandow.
He also sculpted the monuments of Jules-Auguste Béclard and Edmond About among several of his works at Père Lachaise Cemetery in Paris. He contributed the figures of "Douai" and "Dunkirk" to the façade of the Gare du Nord, and contributed the figure of Vauban for the façade of the Palais du Louvre.
In 1907 an exhibition of his works was held in the École des Beaux-Arts.
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John Crookshanks King
American sculptor
John Crookshanks King (1806–1882) was a Scotland-born sculptor in Boston, Massachusetts, in the 19th century. He created portraits of John Quincy Adams, Louis Agassiz, Robert Burns, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Horace Greeley, Walter Scott, Daniel Webster, Samuel B. Woodward and others. Around 1852 he kept a studio in Boston's Tremont Temple.
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Leonard Crunelle
American sculptor
Leonard Crunelle (8 July 1872 in Lens, Pas-de-Calais – 10 September 1944 in Chicago) was a French-born American sculptor especially known for his sculptures of children. Crunelle immigrated with his family to the United States and worked as a coal miner in Decatur, Illinois.
Lorado Taft discovered him as a youth and brought him to Chicago where he was an apprentice to the sculptors decorating the 1893 World's Fair Horticultural Exhibit. He studied at the Art Institute of Chicago with Taft.
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Churyo Sato
Japanese sculptor (1912–2011)
 was a Japanese sculptor and painter. He was born in Miyagi Prefecture and grew up in Hokkaido. In 1932 he moved to Tokyo to become a painter. Becoming influenced by Aristide Maillol and Charles Despiau, Sato decided to specialize in sculpture. He graduated from the Tokyo School of Fine Arts.
From 1934 on, Sato spent the next seventy years making art works primarily from bronze to much acclaim. He was a dedicated artist working from 8 am until 8 pm every day and died on 30 March 2011 at the age of 98.
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Edward Cronshaw
English sculptor
Edward Cronshaw is an English sculptor. Cronshaw works exclusively in natural materials—wood, stone, fruit, bone—and casts them in bronze. His work is usually representative, but attempts to maintain the innate characteristics of the original material.
Beginnings.
Cronshaw was born near Blackburn, Lancashire, but brought up in the rural Pendle district, near a hill named Cronshaw's Seat. The farm was sold in 1997 although Cronshaw no longer lived there at that time. At present he lives in the West Riding town of Todmorden, in the Calderdale metropolitan district. His career as a sculptor began while he was living at Hebden Bridge.
Blackburn was Cronshaw's childhood home; he did a foundation course at Blackburn College. From there he went on to the Leeds School of Art and finished his BA at Saint Martin's School of Art in 1984.
In the years 1985 to 1986, Cronshaw studied for an MA in fine art at the Royal College of Art.
Exhibitions and major works.
Cronshaw's work has been displayed at galleries and exhibitions including the Rebecca Hossack gallery (London), the Caz gallery (Los Angeles), the Henry Moore Gallery (Leeds), the Royal Academy Summer Show, the Los Angeles International Contemporary Art Fair, the Liverpool Garden Festival and the Third World and Beyond International Art Fair in Sicily.
Cronshaw was commissioned to create sculptures for Liverpool City Council and for the Boots PLC head office in Nottingham. The latter was a statue of the earth goddess Gaia, Gaia's body clothed in 3,000 succulent plants intended to suggest the transitory nature of life. The statue was cast by means of the lost wax method at Cronshaw's studio/foundry at the Dean Clough complex in Halifax, Calderdale.
The sculpture created for Liverpool City Council was named 'The Great Escape' by Cronshaw. It is a bronze horse, high and 4 tons in weight, formed entirely from rope in a spaghetti fashion. At the tail a piece of rope extends to the ground where a life-size sculpture of a man steps on it, forcing the horse to rear and apparently unravel itself.
Currently Cronshaw is continuing to work on his popular Midas Project of bronze succulent plants, as well as initiating a campaign to improve the environment of his adopted home of Todmorden by placing sculptures in and around the town centre.

Boy and His Dog Sculpture
Boy and His Dog Sculpture or Storrow Memorial is a 1923 statue by Cyrus Dallin, located in a prominent location in Lincoln Cemetery. It portrays a young man bending down to pick a flower with a dog gazing up into his visage. It was created at the request of Helen Osborne Storrow as a memorial to her husband James Jackson Storrow. The Storrows are interred 30 feet north of the monument across a small road in a grave overlooking a picturesque pond.
There also is a Storrow Memorial located within the eponymous park they helped create along the Charles River in Boston.
Description and history.
The bronze sculpture was commissioned by Mrs. Storrow, who had resided with her husband in Lincoln. She had requested a sculpture that would capture the spirit of the outdoors and be acceptable to those who were religious.
The 46 1/2-inch sculpture portrays a young man with his left knee on the ground, bent over to pick a flower with his right hand. His left-hand rests over the far side of a seated dog encircling it. The dog is gazing attentively at the young man.
The base of the bronze sculpture contains a quote by the English poet Alfred Lord Tennyson from his poem "Flower in the Crannied Wall". The quote reads "“Little flower - if I could understand what you are root and all, and all in all, I should know what God and man is.”"
The sculpture rests on a rough granite stone that is six feet high.
There are similarities between this work and a 1903 sculpture of Tennyson executed by George Frederic Watts located on the grounds of England's Lincoln Cathedral. Watts’ sculpture contains the full text of the poem. It also has a person with an attentive dog, but in this case the person is a standing Tennyson.
The posture of the boy is similar to that of another Cyrus Dallin statue, the Menotomy Hunter in Arlington, Massachusetts. The Menotomy Hunter is reaching down with his hand to capture water to drink as refreshment on his homeward journey after a successful hunt.
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Adolph Robert Kraus
American sculptor
Adolph Robert Kraus (August 5, 1850 - November 6, 1901), known professionally as Robert Kraus, was an American sculptor, born in Zeulenroda, Germany, and active in Boston.
Biography.
Adolph Robert Kraus was born in Zeulenroda on August 5, 1850. He began sculpting at age 14 and grew his business such that he could own his own studio. At 23 he left for Rome where he studied under Emilio Wolf. After a year of study he won the grand prize at the Italian Royal Institute for Fine Arts for his sculpture "The Puritan." For this honor, he was awarded a pension by the Prussian government by the order of Emperor William.
He immigrated to the United States in 1881, and is best known for his sculpture of the "Boston Massacre Monument" in Boston Common, the winged Victory figures that crowned the towers of Machinery Hall in the Columbian Exposition of 1893, and the Randidge monument in Forest Hills Cemetery. The Randidge Monument features a seated figure of Grief leaning on an inverted torch resting on a sizable plinth by architect Carl Fehmer and Samuel Page.
Forest Hills Cemetery also hosts Kraus' bust of Karl Heinzen and his bronze Fame memorial on the tomb of famed restauranteur Jacob Wirth who ran his eponymous restaurant and ale house on Stuart Street in Boston.
Kraus' work also graced the 1893 Chicago World's Fair and the Massachusetts State House in the form of a marble bust of Oliver Ames.
He was hospitalized in Danvers, Massachusetts, after showing signs of mental illness while attempting to create a sculpture of Belshazzar at the moment of seeing the handwriting on the wall. He died there on November 6, 1901. At his death, he left behind a wife and six children at his house at 90 Hyde Park Avenue in Clarendon Hills.
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Boy with a Dragon
Sculpture by Pietro Bernini and Gian Lorenzo Bernini
Boy with a Dragon is a c. 1617 white marble sculpture, now in the Getty Museum, which has owned it since 1987. It draws on the myth of the infant Hercules strangling serpents sent to kill him.
It was carved by Pietro Bernini and his son Gian Lorenzo Bernini for Maffeo Barberini (later Pope Urban VIII). In 1702 Urban's grand-nephew Carlo Barberini presented the work to Philip V of Spain on the latter's entry into Naples.

Robert Cronbach
American sculptor, teacher (1908–2001)
Robert M. Cronbach (1908 – 2001) was an American sculptor, medalist, and teacher. He is best remembered for his medals, architectural sculpture, public fountains, and other works. He taught for many years at Adelphi University and at the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture.
Early life, family, and education.
Robert Cronbach was born on February 10, 1908, in St. Louis, Missouri.
In St. Louis is where he began his art studies at the St. Louis School of Fine Arts. His art studies continued at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts where he won two Cresson Traveling Scholarships and travelled to Europe in 1929 and 1930.
In 1934, Cronbach married Maxine Judd Silver; and together they had three children. His first wife died in 1983, after an illness. His second wife was Anne Heathers.
Career.
During 1930s, he worked as an assistant to sculptor Paul Manship in his studio in New York City.
In 1938, he was one of the 57 founding members of the Sculptors Guild. He also created sculpture under the auspices of the Works Progress Administration's Federal Art Project.
Cronbach taught sculpture at Adelphi College in Garden City, New York, from 1947 to 1961.
He was one of 250 sculptors who exhibited in the 3rd Sculpture International held at the Philadelphia Museum of Art in the summer of 1949. Cronbach was represented by the Bertha Schaefer Gallery, New York, NY.
Cronbach died in December 2001 in the city of San Miguel de Allende in Guanajuato, Mexico.
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Cain and His Race Cursed By God
Sculpture by Antoine Étex
Cain and His Race Cursed By God (French:) is an 1833-1839 marble sculpture by Antoine Étex. It was produced after an initial version in plaster which was made in Rome between 1831 and 1832, now in the Saint-Louis Chapel at the Pitié-Salpêtrière Hospital. It was inspired by the Biblical story of Cain's murder of Abel. It was first exhibited as a plaster version at the Paris Salon of 1833, where it proved very successful and put him at the forefront of the 1830s generation of Romantic sculptors. The marble version was finished in 1839 and is now in the Museum of Fine Arts of Lyon.

Ludwig Krug
German goldsmith, engraver, and sculptor
Ludwig Krug (1488 – 1532) was a German goldsmith, engraver, and sculptor. Together with Wenzel Jamnitzer, he is considered among the most important goldsmiths of the 16th century in what is now Germany.
Biography.
There is little information about Krug's life and artistic training. Son of the engraver Hans Krug the Elder, Ludwig Krug mainly worked in the Free Imperial City of Nuremberg, obtaining the title of master goldsmith in 1522. While attribution of his work as a metalworker are controversial due to a lack of signature, there is more certainty about his career as an engraver thanks to the preservation of two woodcuts and sixteen copper engravings on religious subjects.
Krug's prints were developed in a style that, starting from a youthful phase inspired by the models of Albrecht Durer, Martin Schongauer, and Lucas van Leyden, gradually distanced itself from these artists. In a later creative period, he gravitated towards the decorative models of Augsburg represented by Hans Schwarz, which were characterized by a certain originality and liveliness. Krug's works were characterized by naturalistic design and a mixture of Italian decorative elements of late Gothic art.
In the last years of his career, Krug dedicated himself to goldsmithing, evidenced by a preserved illustration of a ciborium from Aschaffenburg depicting Mary and Joseph dated to 1526, as well as an illustration of the lid of a cup depicting the Labours of Hercules.
Among his works are mugs at the Germanisches Nationalmuseum, the lid of a cup preserved in the Museum of Fine Arts in Budapest, a golden cup in the treasury of the Basilica of Saint Anthony of Padua, and numerous medals from his time as an engraver at the Nuremberg mint. Krug's Solnhofen Limestone relief depicting Adam and Eve in the fall of man resides at the Bode Museum in Berlin. Krug's version of the fall of man features an ape mimicking Adam eating the apple, which symbolizes the yearning of flesh as the cause of the fall.
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Kritios
Kritios (, ) was an Athenian sculptor, probably a pupil of Antenor, working in the early 5th century BCE, whose manner is on the cusp of the Late Archaic and the Severe style of Early Classicism in Attica. He was the teacher of Myron. With Nesiotes (Νησιώτης,) Kritios made the replacement of the Tyrannicides ("Tyrant-killers") group by Antenor, which had been carried off by the Persians in the first stage of the Greco-Persian Wars. The new group stood in the Agora of Athens and its composition is known from Roman copies.
With Nesiotes Kritios made other statues, of bronze, dedicated on the Acropolis, of which only their inscribed bases remain to give testament. The head of a marble statue found on the Acropolis so much resembles the copies of one of the Tyrannicides – Harmodius – that it has been called the "Kritios Boy" (now in the Acropolis Museum). Its easy naturalism and relaxed "contrapposto" set it apart from the Late Archaic conventional "kouroi" that preceded it. It was re-discovered too late (1865) to have had an effect on Neoclassical sculpture, as it would have done if it had been known a century earlier.
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The "Tyrant-killers" (Τυραννοκτόνοι), Harmodius and Aristogeiton, the heroic lovers who slew the tyrant Hipparchus

The Ideal Scout
Sculpture by R. Tait McKenzie
The Ideal Scout, also known as The Boy Scout, is a work by Canadian sculptor R. Tait McKenzie (1867–1938). The original statue stood in front of the Cradle of Liberty Council at 22nd and Winter Streets in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, from 1937 to 2013. Replicas can be found at Boy Scouts of America councils across the United States, as well as at Gilwell Park in London, England, and at Scouts Canada's national office in Ottawa. The Smithsonian American Art Museum's database lists 18 copies.
History.
McKenzie sat on the executive board of the Boy Scouts organization in Philadelphia for more than 20 years. Asked to produce a figure of "an ideal scout," the sculptor chose several young scouts to model in uniform. In 1915, he gave the executive board an 18-inch bronze figure, together with rights to the royalties resulting from sales of copies. He said that the boy's uncovered head denoted reverence, obedience to authority, and discipline. The hatchet held by the scout is a symbol of truthfulness and the hope it would never be unsheathed for wanton destruction, but "applied unceasingly to the neck of treachery, treason, cowardice, discourtesy, dishonesty, and dirt."
McKenzie's life-sized version of the work was unveiled at the Philadelphia Council's office at 22nd and Winter Streets on June 12, 1937. "The Ideal Scout" was removed in 2013 after the successor Cradle of Liberty Council vacated the building.
A replica in Ottawa, Illinois, adorns the grave of William D. Boyce (1858–1929), founder of the Boy Scouts of America, who modeled the organization on Great Britain's Boy Scouts Association.
Partial list of locations.
Statue.
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Crucified Christ (Třeboň)
14th-century Bohemian sculpture
The Crucified Christ (around 1380) from the Augustinian monastery church of Saint Giles in Třeboň is one of the most important sculptural monuments from the end of the reign of Charles IV. It was part of a set of sculptures attributed to the Prague workshop of the Master of the Madonna of Žebrák. The statue of the Crucified Christ is on display in the permanent exhibition of the Aleš South Bohemian Gallery in Hluboká nad Vltavou.
History.
The Crucifix was originally placed probably on the triumphal arch between the main double nave and the chancel of the Church of St. Jiljí (Saint Giles) in Třeboň, together with the statues of St John the Evangelist (now in the National Gallery Prague) and the Virgin Mary (not preserved). Before 1947 the statue was loaned to the Regional Museum of Local History in České Budějovice and from there in 1953 it was transferred to the Aleš South Bohemian Gallery in Hluboká nad Vltavou.
Description and classification.
Fully plastic sculpture made of spruce wood, with preserved original polychromy, height 161 cm. The right leg bears traces of charring and it is therefore likely that for some time the statue was installed on the altar or separately in the church space within reach of the candles. Restored by Bohuslav Slánský (1948, 1958).
The figure of Christ is characterized by formal refinement and a fully sculptural design that respects the body volume and anatomical details. The head of Christ differs from the expressive mystical crucifixes of the first half of the 14th century in the calm expression of quiet pain and the lyricism of the idealised face. The beard is parted in the middle and, like the long curled strands of hair and the crown of thorns, ornamentally stylized. The scalloped loincloth is folded at the right side and knotted at the left. The folds of the drapery of the Christ and St. John statues indicate the sculptor's familiarity with the paintings of the Master of the Třeboň Altarpiece. They represent one of the precursors, or rather the carving counterpart, of the marlstone statues of the beautiful style.
The statue has preserved its original polychromy. Christ's wound on the side from which long strands of blood flow out to the drapery and right leg is widely open and accentuated by the bloodstains that surround it. Drops of blood also run down onto Christ