Guillaume Hulot

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Zeughaus Berlin, Unter den Linden (2009)
Inscription, coat of arms and portrait medallion of the king on the portal risalit of the Berlin armory (2005)

Guillaume Hulot (* around 1652 in Paris , † after 1722) was a French sculptor in the Baroque era . His main work is the architectural sculpture of the Berlin armory .

Life

Guillaume Hulot came from a Parisian family of sculptors. Much of the life data has only been passed on indirectly. His father Jacques was a member of the Académie de Saint-Luc , the Paris sculptors ' guild , in 1655 . His older brother Philip was named as their ancien recteur in 1680 and was a court sculptor in the service of Duke Philip of Orleans , a brother of King Louis XIV .

Guillaume's path in life was predetermined by the guild-like environment. His training apparently took place in the Académie royale in Paris, which awarded him the 2nd Grand Prix in 1676 and 1677 . The famous Antoine Coysevox taught there since 1677 and Hulot is considered one of his students. On February 26, 1685, Hulot married Élisabeth Coustou, a niece of Coysevox '. The bride's brothers, Nicolas and Guillaume , had also made a name for themselves as sculptors. Like them, Hulot was a sculptor du roy Louis XIV. He created decorative works in wood and stone for the royal parks of Versailles and Marly , the statue of a consort of Diana and a relief for the Dome of the Invalids until 1700 .

In the summer of 1700, Hulot followed a call from the Brandenburg Elector Friedrich III. to Berlin . He pursued the plan to rise to the rank of King of Prussia and to give his residence Berlin the appropriate gloss. Friedrich is considered one of the great patrons of German art history. He called numerous renowned European artists to his court and employed them in the expansion of the Berlin and Potsdam palaces, the redesign of the Monbijou , Schönhausen and Lietzenburg palaces , later known as Charlottenburg, and the construction of the armory and other representative buildings in Berlin.

Employed as a court sculptor with the quite impressive annual salary of 700 Reichstalers , Hulot was mainly employed at the Berlin armory alongside Andreas Schlüter . The construction management was with Jean de Bodt , who presumably went back to Hulot's appointment by the elector. As his main work, which has survived to this day, Hulot created the plastic ornamentation of the portal risalit on the linden side of the building with the gilded oval portrait relief of the king including inscription and coat of arms and the crowning gable relief on the subject of Minerva , instructing young people in the craft of war, as well as the Bellona group above the western one and the Mars group above the eastern secondary portal axis . Its four larger-than-life female figures to the right and left of the main portal allegorically represent arithmetic , geometry , mechanics and pyrotechnics .

Berlin Gate of the Wesel Fortress (2010)

The bundles of trophies erected all around on the balustrade also go back to Hulot, the relief fields carved in oak on the outer doors probably mainly to Schlüter.

In the Castle King Wusterhausen , the impression was of a larger stucco medallions six-part cycle of Hulot festival of Flora obtained which was located to the war destruction in the Charlottenburg Palace, as well as duplicated items in the castles of Berlin and Monbijou, as a Toilet of Venus . It is unclear whether the statuette and a head of Friedrich I. Hulot stored in Berlin museums can be attributed.

The king's planned monumental buildings should also include a royal gate in Berlin. De Bodt had already laid the foundations and Hulot had completed the model and the mold for the crowning bronze colossal statue of the ruler when the death of Frederick I in February 1713 brought an abrupt end to royal art policy. The new King Friedrich Wilhelm I rearranged the state expenditures in demonstrative ruthlessness according to his Calvinist principles , whereby he brought the glamorous court life together with the artistic work to a standstill in a short period of time. The artists were also affected by the radical cuts in court spending. They left Berlin and dispersed in search of new clients. The triumphal gate was not built and the statue could no longer be cast. It is not known what Hulot did in the first few years after his release. De Bodt, his mentor, remained in service as a fortress builder. In the years 1718 to 1722, the Berliner Tor and other buildings of the Wesel Fortress were built under his direction , where Hulot carried out the extensive building sculpture of the Berlin Gate, which today is only partially preserved in replicas . Thereafter, no works by Hulot are attested and his trace is lost.

As a representative of the strictly academic French school of sculpture, Hulot had developed an individual style that was difficult to read . Whether dramatic like the Bellona and Mars group of the arsenal or coolly solemn like in the middle of the portico , his works were always carefully calculated to subordinate themselves to the overall representative effect of the royal buildings.

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ^ So Goerd Peschken in: Goerd Peschken, Hans-Werner Klünner: The Berlin Palace. Ullstein-Propylaen Verlag, Frankfurt am Main, Vienna, Zurich 1982, p. 54.
  2. ↑ Hulot's position was independent towards Schlüter, see: Heinz Ladendorf: The sculptor and master builder Andreas Schlüter. Contributions to his biography and the Berlin art history of his time , Deutscher Verein für Kunstwissenschaft, Berlin 1935 (cited below as "Ladendorf"), p. 78
  3. ↑ Regina Müller: Das Berliner Zeughaus. The building history. Brandenburgisches Verlagshaus, Berlin 1994 (cited below as Müller ), pp. 82/83.
  4. ^ Regina Müller: The Berlin Armory. The building history. Pp. 98/99, with illustrations.
  5. ^ Edith Fründt: Baroque in Berlin. Schlüter and the art of his time. 1694-1713. In: Günter Schade (overall management): Art in Berlin 1648–1987. State museums in Berlin. Exhibition in the Altes Museum from June 10 to October 25, 1987 (exhibition catalog), Henschelverlag, Berlin 1987 (cited below as Art in Berlin ), p. 85.
  6. ↑ According to a statement by de Bodt, cf. Ladendorf p. 35, with proof.
  7. ↑ Attribution of art history, also for the following, cf. Art in Berlin , pp. 97/98, with illustrations. The 1987 medallions in the depot of the Berlin Institute for Monument Preservation (O.)
  8. ↑ See Art in Berlin , the statuette 1987 in the possession of the Kunstgewerbemuseum , the head in the sculpture collection of the State Museums in Berlin, p. 87, with illustrations.
  9. ↑ For the planned Königstor, see Ladendorf, pp. 47/48.
  10. ↑ Christopher Clark: Prussia. Rise and fall 1600–1947. Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt², Munich 2007, p. 106 f.
  11. ^ Regina Müller: The Berlin Armory. The building history. Footnote 195, p. 301.
  12. ^ Regina Müller: The Berlin Armory. The building history. P. 62.
personal data
SURNAME Hulot, Guillaume
BRIEF DESCRIPTION French sculptor
DATE OF BIRTH around 1652
PLACE OF BIRTH Paris
DATE OF DEATH after 1722