Georg Petel

Georg Petel (1601-2, Weilheim, Bavaria – January 1635, Augsburg) was a German sculptor and a virtuoso ivory carver. His work marks the beginning of Baroque sculpture in Germany.

Petel was born in Weilheim, Bavaria, about forty kilometres south-west of Munich, the son of Clement Petle (or Betle -alternative spellings), a cabinetmaker. He grew up an orphan as both his parents died when he was a small child. Bartholomäus Steinle, a local carver, became his guardian and was his first master. Petel learned ivory carving in the court cabinet-making studio of Christoph Angermair in Munich. At the beginning of the Thirty Years' War, he left Germany and became an itinerant craftsman. In 1620/21 he met Peter Paul Rubens in Antwerp who was an important influence.

He later travelled via Paris to Rome. In Rome he copied both antique and modern works. 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 resided in Genoa from 1622 to 1624 where he received many commissions from local noble families. He was regarded by his patrons as the greatest ivory carver of his time. 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. He returned to Antwerp in 1624 where he visited Rubens again.

In late 1624 Petel returned to Germany where he settled in Augsburg. Here he would reside for the remainder of his life apart from occasional trips to the Southern Netherlands. During one of these trips he made a bust of Rubens which, in its spontaneity, recalls the work of Gianlorenzo Bernini. Van Dyck also painted his portrait on one of these visits to Antwerp although the portrait may also have been painted earlier in Rome (around 1622-23). Georg Petel probably died of the plague in Augsburg at the age of only thirty four.

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