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 relig- 

 ious art, but as none of these are now to be seen, we are un- 

 able 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 Ant- 

 werp, ranked in celebrity second to none of his contempo- 

 raries. 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 exe- 

 cuted in a much purer style than are those of his contem- 

 porary Faid'herbe. Several of his carvings in relief are in 

 the collection of the Louvre and of the Musee 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 Musee 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 carv- 

 ings. 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. 



