Georg Petel

Petel was born in 1601 or 1602 in Weilheim, Bavaria, about forty kilometres south-west of Munich, the son of Clement Petle (or Betle -alternative spellings), a cabinetmaker.

Here he also met Anthony van Dyck and François Duquesnoy, the leading Flemish representatives of the Baroque in respectively painting and sculpture in Rome.

He subsequently travelled to Livorno, where he made studies after Pietro Tacca’s bronze Slaves, which is part of the monument to Ferdinand I de’ Medici on the Piazza della Darsena.

[2] In late 1624 Petel returned to Germany as a free master and first took commissions from various electors and princes who tried to engage him as their court sculptor.

He created numerous works including the second labour of Hercules, a salt barrel showing the Triumph of Venus, statues of Saint Sebastian and also St. Christopher in St. Moritz Church, Augsburg (1628).

Rubens' type of the crucified Christ with arms raised very high were translated by Petel to his ivory statuettes.

[2] He carved the ivory crucifix, discovered recently at the Carmelite convent in Pontoise, when he was in Paris in 1621 at the age of just nineteen.

Its concise composition and soft, sensual modelling make it a supreme achievement in Petel's ivory work.

[2] His statue of a Saint Christopher for the St Moritz Church in Augsburg also references an altarpiece of the 'Deposition' by Rubens of 1611 (in the Antwerp Cathedral).