68 IVORY AND THE ELEPHANT
factors
in the formation of his style. In his own time he received most credit
for his productions in the field of religious art, but as none of
these are now to be seen, we are unable to judge of their quality
according to our standards of to-day ; the most noted of these carvings
was a crucifix given to Urban VIII, and looked upon as II Fiammingo's
masterpiece.
As
an ivory carver, Gerhard van Opstal, a native of Antwerp, ranked in
celebrity second to none of his contemporaries. The greater part of
his life was spent in Paris, where he enjoyed the patronage of Louis
XIV, who purchased a number of his works. His art was eminently
naturalistic in the best sense, and while he was strongly influenced by
Rubens, his compositions are as a rule conceived and executed in a
much purer style than are those of his contemporary Faid'herbe.
Several of his carvings in relief are in the collection of the Louvre
and of the Musée Cluny in Paris. The essential purity of his art, even
though he favoured the representation of bacchanalian scenes, is well
shown in a little relief in the Musée Cluny, depicting a group of
children —one a child satyr—playing with a goat.
Of
the four leading Flemish exponents of the art of ivory carving in the
seventeenth century, Francis van Bossuit was unquestionably the one
least under the potent spell exercised by the great Rubens. In
Bossuit's work, much more than in that of Duquesnoy even, we can trace
the influence of classic art. Two fine examples of his art may be seen
in the Herzogliches Museum in Brunswick; these are two reliefs, one
showing an Apollo and Daphne and the other a Mercury and Psyche. They
exhibit the successful blending of classic and Flemish art
characteristic of the best of Bossuit's carvings. The influence of
contemporary French art has also been noticed in his compositions,
lending to them a certain harmony and poise, even though this be
attained at the expense of a slight loss of originality and vigour.
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