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Blasset, Nicolas
(b Amiens, 8 May 1600; d Amiens, 2 March 1659). French sculptor. He was the son of the sculptor Philippe Blasset (b 1565/70; d 1624). He became a master sculptor in 1625 and was appointed Architecte et Sculpteur Ordinaire du Roi in 1637. As well as an architect, he was a mason. He became famous when, as a result of losing a lawsuit, he was obliged to execute a statue of a Weeping Angel (marble, 1636; Amiens, Cathedral) for the funerary monument of Canon Lucas. Blasset’s altars, retables and statues of the Virgin, such as Notre-Dame de Bon Secours (marble, c. 1632) and the Assumption (marble, 1637; both Amiens, Cathedral), manifest the spirit of the Counter-Reformation. His favourite theme, childhood, is treated with astonishing mastery and unusual sensitivity, as in the funerary monument of his eight-year-old son Jean-Baptiste Blasset (polychromed stone, c. 1647–8; Amiens, Mus. Picardie). His funerary sculpture also displays his readiness for innovation. He was among the first in France to introduce the allegory of death, in the tomb of Jacques Mouret (stone, 1641; destr.; drawing, Berlin, Kstbib. & Mus.). The allegory of death is also seen in the tomb of Jean de Sachy (marble, c. 1643; Amiens, Cathedral). Blasset’s successful career in Picardy, his considerable productivity and his style characterize his workshop as one of the most prosperous and, from the point of view of art history, one of the most interesting of the provincial workshops of the first half of the 17th century. He was a man of original personality, whose work reflected both the centralizing force of Paris (e.g. funerary monument of Nicolas de Lannoy, marble, c. 1631; Amiens, St Remi) and that of the provincial workshops, which looked for inspiration to Rubens and Northern Baroque art; as in the monument to Claude Pierre (marble, 1651; Amiens, Cathedral). A series of seven Epitaphs Devised by N. Blasset of Amiens were engraved by Jean Lenfant c. 1645 after a set of drawings (untraced) by Nicolas Blasset (see EPITAPH, fig. 2).
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