Franz Anton Bustelli

The Sleeper Disturbed, Nymphenburg, 24 cm high; the integration of decorative scroll-work into the composition is characteristic.
Another Bustelli group, The Tempestuous Lovers, 1760, 14.4 cm high. See note for the same group in plain white, from another view.[1]

Franz Anton Bustelli (12 April 1723 – 18 April 1763) was a Swiss-born German modeller for the Bavarian Nymphenburg Porcelain Manufactory from 1754 to his death in 1763. He is widely regarded as the finest modeller of porcelain in the Rococo style: "if the art of European porcelain finds its most perfect expression in the rococo style, so the style finds its most perfect expression in the work of Bustelli".[2]

Bustelli was born in Locarno in Italian-speaking Switzerland, and died in Munich, Bavaria, just after his 40th birthday. Few details of his life are known, but he trained as a sculptor, probably mostly in wood,[3] in Italy. He spoke and wrote German fluently, and may have grown up in Bavaria.

  1. ^ Example in white Archived 7 March 2012 at the Wayback Machine from Swansea, and a different colour scheme Archived 26 May 2011 at the Wayback Machine from Christie's
  2. ^ "Rococo Retrospective". Time. 30 August 1963. Archived from the original on 22 December 2008.
  3. ^ Campbell, Grove