Lucas Faydherbe (also spelled Lucas Faijdherbe; he signed as Lucas Fayd'herbe; 19 January 1617 – 31 December 1697) was a Flemish architect and sculptor who played a major role in the development of the High Baroque in the Southern Netherlands.
Born in Mechelen, Lucas Faydherbe was the first son of Hendrik Faydherbe and his second wife Cornelia Franchoys. His mother came from an artist family: her father was the successful painter Lucas Franchoys the Elder and her brothers Lucas and Peter were also accomplished painters. His father's sister Maria Faydherbe was recognised as a talented sculptor. Faydherbe's father ran a workshop for decorative sculpture and alabaster carving. Here Lucas learned the basics of sculpture. His father died when Lucas was twelve years old. His mother remarried with the sculptor Maximilian Labbé a year later. Lucas continued his training under Labbé.
When he was nineteen years old he was accepted as an apprentice in the workshop of Peter Paul Rubens in Antwerp, an enormous privilege given the hundreds of applicants for a limited number of places. After three years, he unexpectedly left Rubens' workshop to marry Maria Snyers who was expecting his child. He was also forced to abandon his plans to travel to Italy. Faydherbe returned to his hometown Mechelen where, thanks to the intercession of Rubens, he was quickly accepted as a master in the local Guild of St. Luke. Based in Mechelen, he also worked in Brussels, Antwerp and Oudenaarde.
His family expanded to twelve children. His son Jan-Lucas became a sculptor like his father and assisted him on various commissions. His daughther Anna Barbara married on 24 June 1666 the Brussels sculptor Jan van Delen. Problems with the local Guild of St. Luke turned him into one of the most ardent advocates of the establishment of an art academy in Mechelen, following the example of Brussels and Antwerp. His attempts were, however, not successful.
Faydherbe often collaborated with other sculptors in the execution of large-scale religious projects. For instance on the various projects he undertook in the St Rumbold's Cathedral in Mechelen, Rombaut Pauwels assisted him on the funeral monument of Archbishop Andreas Creusen (1660) and an altar (1660–1665) and Mattheus van Beveren assisted him with the painted wood and stone main altar.
Faydherbe's wife died in 1693, and he himself three years after that.
His pupils included Frans Langhemans, Jan Frans Boeckstuyns and Nicolas van der Veken.
Faydherbe started his career at a crucial moment in the history of Flemish sculpture. In the first place, there was the religious context. The churches in Flanders had been emptied of their decorations by the iconoclasts in the 16th century and the Roman Catholic Contrareformation demanded that artists created paintings and sculptures in church contexts that would speak to the illiterate rather than to the well-informed. The Contrareformation stressed certain points of religious doctrine, as a result of which certain church furniture, such as the confessional gained an increased importance. These developments caused a sharp increase in the demand for religious sculpture. Secondly, the sculptors Jérôme Duquesnoy the Younger and Artus Quellinus the Elder who had worked in Rome in the workshop of François Duquesnoy had returned to work in Flanders in the 1640s and realized many projects that introduced the classicizing Baroque style developed by François Duquesnoy. They revolutionized the role of the sculptor from that of an ornamentalist to that of an independent creator of art works that replaced the individual architectural elements by an artwork that united sculpture and painting into an harmonic ensemble. Rubens, the leading Baroque painter in Flanders, also subscribed to the idea of the unity of the arts of sculpture and painting and this is the reason of his association with sculptors such as Johannes van Mildert, Georg Petel and Faydherbe.
Thanks to his training under Rubens, Faydherbe had learned to assimilate and translate Rubens' style into sculpture.
Faydherbe's early work following his return to Mechelen in 1640 showed a strong influence from Rubens. During this early period he created some large sculptures for churches in Mechelen and Brussels. The statues are characterized by a somewhat solemn monumentality: heavy draperies with a few but large folds that completely hide the body, with little detail and almost no differentiation in the representation of the different substances. A typical example is the statue of St. Andrew in Brussels Cathedral.
Faydherbe quickly became an artist in demand and he worked on many commissions. During his second style period (roughly between 1645 and 1655) he developed a more personal expression. His work became more plastic and was characterized by a richer and more refined design and an increased expressiveness. His work during this period succeeded in portraying persons in a more humane and psychologically sensitive manner. During this period he made mainly sculptures of men and he created a representational type, which is characterized by its broad and powerful conception without, however, becoming very monumental.
During Faydherbe's final stylistic phase, which started around 1655, his talents reached their peak. This expressed itself, among other things, in his creation of two new types of statues and in the soulful depiction of the male figure. In the St. Rumbold's Cathedral in Mechelen each type is demonstrated in the tomb monument of Archbishop Cruesen. On the right is Christ, a beautiful statue that still literally refers to Rubens while on the left there is the statue of Chronos, or Time (referring to Death), which is a very personal creation of Faydherbe. Chronos is depicted as an old man with his clothes tightly draped around his body which emphasizes the verticality of the statue. The head is slightly turned and creates a particularly expressive tension without the artist having to rely on grand gestures or facial expressions. This statue of Chronos shows a characteristic aspect of Faydherbe's style which relied more on verticality in contrast to the broad and voluminous forms related to Rubens' style. This type of the old man was used by Faydherbe repeatedly.
The second type of statue that Faydherbe created in his final period is exemplified by the statue of the Madonna with the infant Jesus of c. 1675, in the Rockoxhuis in Antwerp. The statue has a flowing movement and the expressions of the faces are very natural and human as if representing a real life mother enjoying the company of her child. This statue shares many similarities with the statue of Maria and the infant Jesus before Saint Ignatius in the St. Rumbold's Cathedral in Mechelen.
Between 1648 and 1654 Faydherbe was commissioned to build eight baroque altars and in the 1660s and 1680s he received five more commissions. The altars show an evolution that is fully in line with the development of his sculpture: an increasing austerity, simpler verticality, a clearer and more geometric language and a reduced use of capricious, spiral decorative elements.
Faydherbe created a number of reliefs. He made two reliefs on the Adoration of the Shepherds and the Carrying of the Cross for the dome of the Basilica of Our Lady of Hanswijk in Mechelen. They visualize in a narrative manner an important religious event by integrating them into the concrete world of the believer. Another relief is placed on the facade of the Church of the Beguinage in Mechelen.
Faydherbe made several tomb monuments, including the already mentioned tomb of Archbishop Cruesen, the tomb of Jehan de Marchin and his first wife Jeanne de la Vaulx-Renard in the St. Martin Church of Modave and the tomb of Gilles Othon and his second wife Jacqueline de Lalang in the St. Martin Church in Trazegnies. The tombs demonstrate the ability of Faydherbe to create realistic and precise portraits.
Faydherbe's oeuvre includes a number of terracotta pieces comprising eight busts of mythological figures, one portrait bust of Gaspar de Crayer (now in the