Adriaen de Vries

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Adriaen de Vries

Adriaen de Vries (* around 1545 or 1556 in The Hague , † before 15. December 1626 in Prague ) was a Dutch sculptor of Mannerism , who specialized in bronze sculptures.

Life and works

Grave and resurrection monument in the Stadthagen mausoleum , today the only work by de Vries that can still be seen in its original context , alongside the baptismal font of the Bückeburg town church

After a possible training with the Dutch sculptor Willem van Tetrode (around 1525 - after 1588), he worked in the workshop of the Florentine sculptor Giovanni da Bologna called Giambologna in the early 1580s . His sculptures correspond to the ideal of the mannerist "figura serpentinata", which de Vries imitated especially in the first years.

After a short stay in Rome and with the sculptor Pompeo Leoni (1533-1608) in Milan, de Vries worked for Duke Charles Emanuel I of Savoy in Turin from 1588 . In 1593 he made his first work for Emperor Rudolf II (Mercury and Psyche; Psyche carried by putti). His most famous works were created for the city of Augsburg in 1599 and 1602 in collaboration with the foundryman Wolfgang Neidhardt : the Merkurbrunnen and the Herkulesbrunnen .

In 1601 de Vries was finally appointed imperial chamber sculptor to Rudolf's court in Prague , where he a. a. a portrait bust of the emperor (1603) and z. Sometimes rather small-format works for the Kunstkammer on the Hradschin . After the emperor's death he stayed in Prague, where he carried out orders for Emperor Matthias , Prince Ernst von Schaumburg-Holstein , King Christian IV of Denmark and Albrecht von Wallenstein , among others .

Loggia of the Waldstein Palace in Prague with replicas of the figures

The late works created on behalf of Wallenstein for the garden of his Palais Waldstein in Prague were originally planned as a fountain, but were then installed along an axis in front of the loggia. The bronze figures are self-confident interpretations of classic models from the Belvedere Gardens in the Vatican. All of de Vries' figures were brought to Stockholm as spoils of war during the sack of Prague by Swedish troops towards the end of the Thirty Years War in 1648 and are now in the garden of the royal Drottningholm Palace (and some of them in the Adriaen-de-Vries Museum set up there ). Only Venus returned to Prague in 1889 and has been in the Prague Castle Gallery ever since. At the beginning of the 20th century, casts of the original sculptures were placed in the garden of the Waldstein Palace. A large group of fountains for the Neptune Fountain in front of the royal Danish Frederiksborg Palace , commissioned by Christian IV , had a similar experience . During a Swedish occupation, the well was torn down by Swedish troops in 1659, and parts of it ended up in Stockholm. In 1888 an imaginative, but historically inaccurate reconstruction of the fountain took place in Frederiksborg.

Stylistic development

In his early work Adriaen de Vries was still strongly influenced by Giovanni da Bologna, but soon tried to surpass him in the form of " imitatio and aemulatio " and finally emancipated himself more and more from his teacher. This was expressed in his preferred technique of direct bronze casting (or casting with lost form), in contrast to Giovanni da Bologna , especially his surface modeling of the wax used for the model, which became more and more free in the course of his life, and subsequent chasings that were used more sparingly . During his activity as a court sculptor (shortly after 1600) he was influenced by his Prague artist colleagues (especially Hans von Aachen , Bartholomäus Spranger and Paulus van Vianen ), so that he temporarily adopted a figure type that was common in this area and characterized by slimness and elegance. In his expressively designed late works, z. Some of them were also completed by his assistants after his death, as he had expressly requested in his will, he reached the threshold of the early baroque . It is noteworthy that he himself used to cast large-format, complex bronze groups consisting of several figures in a direct process and also in one piece.

Works

Hercules' fight with the dragon (1590–93) in front of Drottningholm Palace

literature

  • Hermann Arthur Lier:  Vries, Adrian de . In: Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie (ADB). Volume 40, Duncker & Humblot, Leipzig 1896, p. 407 f.
  • Bassett, Jane: The Craftsman Revealed. Adriaen de Vries. Sculptor in bronze. Los Angeles 2008.
  • Diemer, Dorothea: Adriaen de Vries: New research and an important exhibition. In: Kunstchronik 52 (1999), pp. 242-259.
  • Schaumburger Landschaft (ed.): New contributions to Adriaen de Vries . Lectures at the Adriaen de Vries Symposium from April 16 to 18, 2008 in Stadthagen and Bückeburg [= Kulturlandschaft Schaumburg 14], Bielefeld 2008. ISBN 978-3-89534-714-6
  • Kommer, Björn R. [Ed.]: Adriaen de Vries: 1556-1626; Augsburg's glamor - Europe's glory. Catalog for the exhibition of the same name by the municipal art collections Augsburg, March 11 - June 12, 2000, City of Augsburg, 2000 ISBN 3-8295-7024-4
  • Larsson, Lars Olof: Adrian de Vries. Adrianus Fries Hagiensis Batavus 1545–1626 , Vienna / Munich / Frankfurt a. M. 1967

swell

  • Filippo Baldinucci: Note dei professori del Disegno da Cimabue in qua 2, Firenze 1846.

Web links

Commons : Adriaen de Vries  - Album with pictures, videos and audio files

Remarks

  1. ↑ on the discussion about the year of birth cf. Diemer, p. 245
  2. ↑ Baldinucci, p. 580: "Multi furon i discepoli di Gio. Bologna [...] di questi il ​​primo e principale fu Pietro Frankavilla fiammingo, Anzirevelle tedesco, Adriano fiammingo [...]"
  3. ↑ Bassett offers a very detailed and clearly illustrated description of this technique.
personal data
SURNAME Vries, Adriaen de
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Frieze, Adriaen de; Frys, Adriaen de
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Dutch sculptor
DATE OF BIRTH around 1545 or around 1556
PLACE OF BIRTH The hague
DATE OF DEATH before December 15, 1626
Place of death Prague