A Memento of a Grand Tour? Barthélémy Namur (1729–1779) and the Human Body

What do the statues of Saints Augustine and Pierre Fourier in St Michael’s Church in Luxembourg have in common with a Kappauer-style wall clock ¹ held at the National Museum of Archaeology, History and Art (MNAHA)? All three are works by Barthélémy Namur (*1729, †1779) ², son of Henri Namur and Catherine Kribs. This wood and stone sculptor, a member of the Confraternity of St Thiebaut, is far from unknown in Luxembourg. He created numerous statues, furniture and architectural elements that adorn churches and civic buildings in Luxembourg and Belgium.

Notable examples include the churches of Reckange, Sandweiler and Attert, as well as the Hôtel St Maximin and the former Jesuit College in Luxembourg. Auguste Neyen (*1809, †1882) observed that his works “display, in their proportions, posture and expression, many marks of talent”. In a 1933 article ³, Barthélémy Namur was even hailed as the greatest Luxembourgish sculptor of his time.

Less widely known, however, is that Namur left behind a paper manuscript (Luxembourg, BnL, Ms 283) which appears to document a Grand Tour, i.e. a lengthy educational journey through the Italian peninsula, undertaken between 1758 and 1759. To our knowledge, this manuscript has only been briefly mentioned in the bibliography by Martin Blum/Carlo Hury (1981), Marc Schoellen (1988), in Charles Marie Ternes’ book on the territory of Luxembourg in Roman times (1991), and in Jean-Luc Mousset’s work on Luxembourgish furniture (1995). The historian of antiquity Ternes (*1939, †2004) consulted it in 1989 and considered publishing it, underscoring its scholarly significance. Namur’s Italian voyage would have taken place a decade after completing his six-year apprenticeship with the distinguished Nobressart sculptor Martin Jacques (*1703, †1773), who was based in Longwy.

This manuscript, comprising 54 numbered folios (34 x 22 cm) and bound in 1979, is titled Recueil Deren besten Antiquitäten zu finden in verschiedenen Orteren besonders in Rom. Alle Mit ihren Proportionen bezeignet Auf Academische Art. It is the only known artistic-literary manuscript by Namur known to this day. On the title page, he identifies himself as a sculptor (“Bildhauer”) and citizen of the city of Luxembourg. Unfortunately, neither the date of its acquisition by the BnL nor its provenance is known.

The manuscript’s first section (ff. 5–32 = plates 1–28) features meticulous drawings of sculptures once held in Rome, while the second (ff. 33–52) contains a series of 20 pasted engravings depicting human and equine anatomical details. It serves as a veritable reference manual for draughtsmen and sculptors. Though the drawings appear to have been made from the statues themselves, they are in fact hand-copied from Gérard Audran’s Des Menschlichen Leibes Proportionen ⁴.

It should be noted that the statues in Audran’s book do not always correspond precisely to reality. The engraver Audran (*1640, †1703) occasionally added or omitted details (e.g. the second hand of the Medici Venus) to better indicate the proportions of the statue. In other cases, he reversed left and right: the club of Hercules and the rock beneath it appear on the demi-god’s right in the reproduction, though they are on the left in the actual statue. The genital area is also replaced by a simple curve.

The engraved plates (nos. 1–13, 15–17, 20–22 and 24), rearranged in the manuscript’s second section, are taken from Philipp Esengren’s Li primi elementi della simmetria (c. 1650) ⁵. They include various examples of eyes (ff. 33–34) and hands (f. 38, 40) for inspiration or imitation.

Thus, the two parts of the manuscript are not, in fact, a memento of a Grand Tour undertaken by Barthélémy Namur in Italy. There is a measure of disappointment in realising that the manuscript is not an original work in the strictest sense, since Namur did not travel to Italy himself to execute the drawings on site. Nevertheless, it attests to his skill as a copyist and underscores his ambition to refine his own sculptural work by learning from the undisputed masters of Greco-Roman sculpture. Despite the corrections made, the volume retains an undeniable charm. The question remains: how did Namur acquire these two rare, specialised works in Luxembourg? Neither of them appears in Luxembourg’s union catalogue.

Owing to the creation of this manuscript, the sculptor Barthélémy Namur has been selected for inclusion in the third volume of the Verfasserlexikon der Luxemburger Autoren. This entry will enrich our understanding of this renowned Luxembourgish artist and introduce him to an international audience.

This article was originally published in French. The English version was translated using AI and reviewed by the author.