NOLE, Robert de

Dutch sculptor, scion of a family of sculptors from Cambrai and Utrecht,, brother of Jean de Nole (d. 1624); not to be confused with his supposed uncle Robert Nole from Cambrai (active 1546-1566). He is also known as Robert (Robrecht) Colijns de Nole.

Robert de Nole finally settled in Antwerp in 1591. With his brother Johan Colijns de Nole (died 1624), but above all with his nephew Andries de Nole, he was to set up a very productive studio which he managed and which supplied mainly liturgical sculpture and funerary monuments to many churches in Antwerp and elsewhere in the Southern Netherlands. From 1604 he also became sculptor to the archducal court.

Members of the De Nole studio were innovative in the field of ornamentation, and their treatment of decorative motifs, such as garlands, cherubs' heads, shows a greater feeling for plasticity and realismGLOSSARYRealism (with an upper case "R"), also known as the Realist school, denotes a mid-nineteenth century art movement and style in which artists discarded the formulas of Neoclassicism and the theatrical drama of Romanticism to paint familiar scenes and events as they actually looked. Typically it involved some sort of sociopolitical or moral message, in the depiction of ugly or commonplace subjects. One of the main representatives and spokesmen was the painter Gustave Courbet. In the dispute about ways to represent reality, Realism rebelled against the idealistic and classicist tendencies in painting..