Word: bustelli
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Stingy Wages. Of all the rococo porcelain artists, none achieved finer art with his difficult and limited medium than Franz Anton Bustelli. His life story is obscure. It is not even known for sure whether he was German, Italian or Swiss by birth. One of the few firmly established details of biography is the date of his death: April 18, 1763. In observance of the bicentennial of his death, Munich's Bavarian National Museum is displaying a complete collection of his work-102 figurines...
...Bustelli created all of his known works in the employ of the Elector of Bavaria, owner of a renowned porcelain factory at Nymphenburg. Although the factory got high prices for Bustelli figurines, the artist never received more than stingy wages. At his death, his worldly possessions consisted of a few articles of furniture, 228 engravings, some of his own figurines, and 31 books on chemistry...
Enduring Trace. Unlike the unnatural sugar-dolls of lesser rococo porcelain artists, Bustelli's figurines show a keen eye for the actual. Especially prized in his own time was his 16-piece series of figures from the commedia dell' arte, the endless, semi-improvised popular comedy in which stock characters mimicked Europe's manners and morals, and lack of them (see color). There was Il Dottore, the gulled pedant; Mezzetino, the capering servant; Octavio, the youthful courtier; Scaramouche, the blustering rogue. Bustelli placed them in theatrical stances on curvilinear pedestals that swept up in rococo curlicues...
Besides comedy characters, Bustelli molded Turks and Chinese, cherubs and beggars, a mushroom venderess and a mousetrap vendor. Together, his figurines make up a cross section of the rococo age. Shortly after Bustelli's death, rococo faded away, leaving an enduring trace in the spirited forms and vibrant colors preserved beneath the glaze of an obscure artist's figurines...
...svelte Bronze Youth by the Belgian sculptor Georges Minne contrasts with the emotionally powerful terra cotta Head of a Woman by Wilhelm Lehmbruck and makes the essentially German qualities of the latter all the more apparent. Dainty modern Nymphenburg porcelains made from the eighteenth century molds by Franz Bustelli are placed near the delicate bronze antelope by the contemporary sculptress, Renee Sintenis and show her to be part of an old German tradition of technical excellence. Violently abstract paintings and prints along with sharply realistic ones suggest something of the chaos of postwar Germany...
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