François Duquesnoy

François Duquesnoy (baptized January 12, 1597, Brussels [Belgium]—died July 18, 1643, Livorno, Tuscany [Italy]) was a Flemish-born Roman sculptor whose relatively restrained works reveal the influence of his close friend, the painter Nicolas Poussin, and helped to counter the influence of the more extravagantly emotional art prevailing in 17th-century Rome.

Duquesnoy was one of a family of sculptors and must have learned something of the art of Peter Paul Rubens while still in the family’s Flemish workshop. He went to Rome in 1618 and during 10 years of obscurity was engaged in the restoration of classical sculpture. At the same time he also produced original small-scale works in bronze, ivory, and wood.

In 1627–28 he worked with the dominant sculptor of the century, Gian Lorenzo Bernini, on the baldachin (altar canopy) for St. Peter’s and in 1629 received commissions for his two outstanding monumental figures in marble. St. Andrew, one of four colossal statues beneath the dome of St. Peter’s, is in a restrained style still close to that of Bernini, but St. Susanna, which was not completed until 1633 for the choir of Santa Maria di Loreto, Rome, shows a characteristic synthesis of the classical ideal and a sensitive study of nature.

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Much of Duquesnoy’s output was in the form of small relief sculptures. His rendering of putti on the altar (1642) in the Cappella Filomarina in Sant’Apostoli, Naples, was particularly renowned.

Duquesnoy died in 1643, but sources traditionally differed on the day: either July 12 or 19. A researcher’s discovery of Duquesnoy’s burial certificate in 2019, however, determined that he died and was buried on July 18, 1643, in Livorno. A plaque was erected in Livorno in 2021 commemorating Duquesnoy and noting the location and date of his burial.