The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Art and Artists (35 page)

 
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Barberini Faun
(Sleeping Satyr)
.

Hellenistic
marble statue of a satyr sprawled in drunken sleep (Glyptothek, Munich). It has been several times restored, sometimes with substantial changes to its posture. It is first recorded in the possession of Cardinal Franceso
Barberini
in 1628, and in the 17th and particularly the 18th cent. it was generally regarded as one of the greatest works of antiquity. It is still an admired work (unlike most once celebrated antique statues) and is considered by some authorities to be an original work of around 200 BC, although others believe it to be merely a good copy.

 
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Barbizon School
.

Group of French landscape painters who took their name from a small village on the outskirts of the Forest of Fontainebleau, where their leader, Théodore
Rousseau
, and several of his followers settled in the latter half of the 1840s. The other main members of the group included Charles-François
Daubigny
, Narcisse-Virgile
Diaz
, and Constant
Troyon
. They were united in their attitude of opposition to classical conventions and by their interest in landscape painting for its own sake, a fairly new development in French art. The inspiration came partly from England (particularly
Constable
and
Bonington
) and partly from the 17th-cent. Dutch painters on whom the English tradition was founded. They were advocates of painting direct from nature, but unlike the
Impressionists
, they usually painted only studies in the open air; their finished pictures were almost always done in the studio. Their feeling for nature, amounting almost to a cult, may be regarded as a form of
Romantic
revolt from the drabness of urban life and coincided with a longing among the urban population in expanding cities to renew the contact with nature.
Corot
is often associated with the group, but his work has a poetic and literary quality which sets him somewhat apart.
Millet
is also often linked with the School, as he settled in Barbizon in 1849 and during his last period painted pure landscape.

 
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Bargello
.

Museum in Florence housing an unrivalled collection of Italian
Renaissance
sculpture. The building was originally the Palazzo del Podestà, begun in 1255 as the residence of the chief magistrate of the city. In 1574 it was converted into a prison and assigned to the head of the Police, the ‘Bargello’. In 1857–65 it was restored and remodelled as a museum. The collection contains works by virtually all the leading Italian Renaissance sculptors (including the celebrated statues of David by
Donatello
and
Verrocchio
) and also has an extensive collection of minor arts, including armour, enamels, ivories, medals, and tapestries.

 
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(1769–1847).
English landscape and
genre
painter, called ‘Barker of Bath’ from his main place of work, where he enjoyed a successful career. He was entirely self-taught, but was clearly influenced by the landscapes and
fancy pictures
of
Gainsborough
, and made his name mainly as a painter of rustic scenes. His brother
Benjamin
(1776–1838) and his son
Thomas Jones Barker
(1815–82) were also painters.

 
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(1870–1938).
German sculptor, graphic artist, and writer. Until he reached his thirties Barlach was as much involved in ceramics as he was in sculpture, but he found his personal style during a visit to southern Russia in 1906, when the sturdy peasant type led him to an interest in medieval German carving, with which he recognized both a spiritual and a technical affinity—even when they are modelled and cast in bronze his figures have the broad planes and sharp edges typical of wood-carving. In 1910 he settled at Güstrow and passed the rest of his life there. Barlach exemplified the sense of man's alienation which was typical of German
Expressionism
, believing that, through the creation of visible artistic forms from the ‘unknown darkness’ within, man can rediscover himself and his lost God. He executed a number of war memorials under the Weimar Republic, including one at the cathedral of Güstrow which was dismantled when his art was condemned as
degenerate
in 1938 by the Nazi regime; it was subsequently restored and a replica made for the Antoniterkirche in Cologne. After his death his studio at Güstrow was made a permanent museum; there is another museum devoted to his work in Hamburg. Barlach also wrote Expressionist plays, which he illustrated with woodcuts and lithographs, and published an autobiography in 1928.