Michiel van der Voort the Elder
[7] Michiel van der Voort is believed to have been initially an apprentice of possibly Jan Cosijn and later certainly of Pieter Scheemaeckers.
They had a son called Jacob or Jacques Verbeckt who became a prominent wood sculptor in France.
[9] In 1701 he created one of his first masterpieces with the epitaph of Michiel Peeters on the eastern wall of the St. James' Church.
[10] His fame was such that the First Duke of Marlborough ordered from him two life-size marble statues of Bacchus and Flora for the main hall at Blenheim Palace.
They included his son Michiel, Laurys Gillis, Jan Josef Horemans the Elder, Vincent Mattheyssens, Michiel van Balen, Francois Braeckmans, Rumoldus Juret, Ludovicus van der Linden, Carel Bieret and Anthoni Gillis.
[1] Van der Voort was a versatile sculptor who worked in many materials including marble, wood and stucco.
He also made some works with secular subject matter mainly derived from mythology or with allegorical figures.
[2] His interest in portrait sculpture is also visible in the Bust portrait of Jacobus Franciscus van Caverson (marble, 1713, Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium), which is the sole surviving piece of a funeral monument that was originally in the former Dominican church in Brussels.
In his pulpits van der Voort achieved the most exuberant expression of the late Baroque in Flemish sculpture.
Antwerp sculptor Hendrik Frans Verbruggen was the principal creator behind this new type of naturalist pulpit.
In 1696–1699, Verbruggen created a pulpit for the Jesuit church in Leuven, which is now located in the Cathedral of St. Michael and St. Gudula in Brussels.
He turned the pulpit into a complex theatrical stage in which at the bottom Adam and Eve are shown driven out of the Earthly Paradise, while the victorious Virgin on top of the pulpit's soundboard crushes the snake slithering from the tree of Good and Evil.
[4] The pulpit appears like a free-standing landscape in which a dramatic representation of the conversion of St Norbert takes central place.
Van der Voort achieves depth by letting figures overlap each other and lean out of the relief.
It is built as a courtyard and leans on one side against the south aisle of the church and the Chapel of the Holy Sacrament.
[15] The statues are arranged into four groups: the angel path, which ascends to the Holy Sepulchre, the garden of the prophets on the left, the garden of the evangelists on the right and the Calvary itself, which consists of an elevated artificial rock, divided into three terraces, on which statues are placed with Christ on the cross at the top.
In the century of the Counter Reformation, full of Christian symbolism, this work shows the force of Greek antiquity as an inspiration.
These include 12 preparatory sketches for the apostles in the nave of the St. Paul's Church in Antwerp (circa 1710) and a study for the portal of a Chapel of St.
The design shows a kneeling angel to the left and a standing figure with an anchor that symbolizes Hope to the right.
