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Widman, Lazar
(b Plzen, 13 Dec 1697; d Jan 1769). Bohemian sculptor. His father, Kristián Widman (d 1725), was the sculptor of the Marian column (1681) in Plzen and another (1713–14) in Písek. The sculptures of the latter, which is the more refined of the two, were probably the work of Lazar Widman, who was his father’s apprentice but considerably surpassed him as an artist. In the 1730s he probably worked on statues for the bridge in Plzen, and certainly on the Marian column (1740) in Stríbro. His oeuvre is extensive: in 1727 he made decorations for the palace chapel in Dolní Lukavice and worked for the counts of Vrtba. In 1735–8 he decorated their church in Zinkovy; around 1740, the palace chapel in Krimice; and in 1745, the cour d’honneur, the park and village green. The statues there represent the highest point of his early work: their form is clear, the movement graceful and the drapery cut into dramatic folds. Their subjects—Amazons and exotic slaves—are as unusual as the materials: alabaster, bone and marble. Of these there remain some small carvings of Bacchanalian scenes, the figures of Cronos and Niobe, nude wrestlers and large groups of Antique subjects with a background of ruins: the movement is mostly skilfully rendered. At the same location is Widman’s remarkable large sculptural group of St George and the Dragon (1746). Around the same time he decorated the church in nearby Vejprnice: the statues there are more emphatic in their movement, while their drapery is more classicizing. His most interesting work is that for yet another church of the Vrtba counts, the Romanesque St Gall in Porící nad Sázavou (1745–51), where he worked jointly with the cabinetmaker Daniel Pilát on its furnishings, made in the historical mode of the Baroque Gothic. The statues from this church have flowing gestures, simple drapery and well-defined facial expressions. Even more classicizing are his statues (c. 1747) for the altar in the Konopiste palace chapel, the statue of St Joseph (after 1750) situated at the corner of the Servite priory in the Old Town Square in Prague and the garden statues in Smilkov. In his last works, the side altars (1762) for Vejprnice and the statues (1768) on the wall surrounding the church in Zinkovy, Widman anticipated the changes to come and explored to the utmost limits the potential of his style.
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