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| François Duquesnoy Apollo and Cupid 1630s bronze height 63 cm Liechtenstein Museum, Vienna |
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| François Duquesnoy Mercury 1630s bronze height 63 cm Liechtenstein Museum, Vienna |
"Duquesnoy's friend and pupil, the sculptor Orfeo Boselli, writing in Rome some time around 1657, observes that just as there are many who hate to admit that anything antique is marvelous, so there are others who study the remains of antiquity uncritically, failing to distinguish the good from the bad. There are those who can tell good from bad, he continues, but only Dusquesnoy could discriminate the good from the best. As we shall see, Boselli also stresses the importance of proportion and contour as criteria central to Duquesnoy's criticism. Passeri too, in the passage already quoted above, remarks upon the refinement of Duquesnoy's judgment (which undoubtedly was sharpened by his experience as a restorer of antique statues), reporting that Duquesnoy found in the Greek style three related abstract qualities, grandeur, nobility, and majesty, as well as a fourth, leggiadria, or a lively grace, which is not easily combined with the gravity and weightiness implied by the others."
– from Nicolas Poussin : Friendship and the Love of Painting by Elizabeth Cropper and Charles Dempsey (Princeton University Press, 1996)
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| François Duquesnoy Bacchanal of Putti 1630 marble relief Galleria Spada, Rome |
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| François Duquesnoy St Andrew 1629-33 marble height 450 cm St Peter's Basilica, Rome |
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| Laurent Delvaux Hercules and the Erymanthian Boar 1768 terracotta height 68 cm Musées Royaux des Beaux-Arts, Brussels |
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| Michiel van der Voort the Elder Bust portrait of Jacobus Franciscus van Caverson ca. 1713 marble height 85 cm Musées Royaux des Beaux-Arts, Brussels |
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| Giambologna Bather 1565 bronze height 25 cm Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna |
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| Giambologna Self-portrait Bust ca. 1660 bronze height 9 cm Rijksmuseum |
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| Rombout Verhulst Prudentia ca. 1670-90 sandstone height 137 cm Rijksmuseum |
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| Rombout Verhulst Tomb of Johan Polyander van Kerchoven 1663 marble Pieterskerk, Leiden |
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| Artus Quellinus the Elder Frenzy ca. 1660 sandstone height 295 cm Rijksmuseum |
Curator's notes at the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam help to account for the figure above, a monument to Flemish High Baroque conviction – "This curious, life-size sandstone sculpture portrays a woman pulling out her hair in a fit of madness, the personification of Frenzy. The statue originally stood in the garden of the Dolhuys (madhouse), the municipal institution for the mentally ill. A lunatic is peering out from his or her cell on all four sides of the pedestal."
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| Pieter Xaveri Two Madmen 1673 terracotta height 50 cm Rijksmuseum |
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| Pieter Xaveri Woman with Spaniel 1673 terracotta height 33 cm Rijksmuseum |
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| Pieter Xaveri Neptune ca. 1670 terracotta length 50 cm Rijksmuseum |
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| Luc Faydherbe Jupiter casting a Thunderbolt ca. 1645-55 terracotta length 72 cm Musées Royaux des Beaux-Arts, Brussels |