The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Art and Artists (466 page)

 
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(1699–1749).
French painter who settled permanently in Rome after winning the
Prix de Rome
in 1727. He painted a variety of subjects, including portraits and still lifes, but he is most highly regarded for his religious paintings, which are much more serious in spirit than most French works of the
Rococo
period. His most famous work is the
Mass of St Basil
, painted for St Peter's, but now in Sta Maria degli Angeli. This huge picture was highly acclaimed when it was unveiled in 1748, but Subleyras died before he could follow up his success. He has subsequently been something of an underrated figure, but a major exhibition of his work in Paris and Rome in 1987 did much to establish his reputation as one of the outstanding French painters of his period.

 
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Sublime
.

Term that came into general use in the 18th cent. to denote a new
aesthetic
concept that was held to be distinct from the beautiful and the
Picturesque
and was associated with ideas of awe and vastness. The outstanding work on the concept of the Sublime in English was Edmund Burke's
A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful
(1757). This book was one of the first to realize (in contrast with the emphasis on clarity and precision during the Age of Enlightenment) the power of suggestiveness to stimulate imagination. Speaking of painting Burke says that ‘a judicious obscurity in some things contributes to the effect of the picture’, because in art as in nature ‘dark, confused, uncertain images have a greater power on the fancy to form the grander passions than those which are more clear and determinate.’ The cult of the Sublime had varied expressions in the visual arts, notably the taste for the ‘savage’ landscapes of Salvator
Rosa
and the popularity among painters of subjects from Homer , John Milton , and Ossian (the legendary Gaelic warrior and bard, whose verses—actually fabrications—were published in the 1760s to great acclaim). In literature, the ‘Gothic novel’, in which mystery and horror were the essential ingredients, appealed to the same sentiments. The first Gothic novel was Horace
Walpole's
The Castle of Otranto
(1764), and when crossing the Alps in 1739 Walpole expressed the essence of the imaginative appeal of the Sublime in his memorable exclamation: ‘Precipices, mountains, torrents, wolves, rumblings—Salvator Rosa .’ The vogue for the Sublime, with that for the Picturesque, helped shape the attitudes that led to
Romanticism
.

 
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(
c.
1081–1151).
French churchman and statesman, one of the greatest patrons of the Middle Ages. He was adviser to Louis VI and Louis VII, acting as regent in 1147–9 during the latter's absence on the Second Crusade, but he is remembered mainly for the rebuilding of the abbey of Saint-Denis, near Paris, of which he was abbot from 1122 until his death. Suger's reconstruction and redecoration of the abbey was the most important landmark in the emergence of the
Gothic
style in architecture and sculpture. He wrote an autobiographical account of the work between 1144 and 1147—a unique document of the time. It was edited and translated (1946) by Erwin
Panofsky
, who wrote that Suger was ‘frankly in love with splendour and beauty in every conceivable form: it might be said that his reponse to ecclesiastical ceremonial was largely aesthetic’. He thought that through the splendour and brilliance of material treasure men were led to an appreciation of spiritual glories. Suger commissioned several items of furnishing and sacred vessels for the abbey, some of which survive, notably an antique porphyry vase he had converted into the shape of an eagle (Louvre, Paris).

 
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Suisse , Académie
.

See
ACADÉMIE
.

 
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