(b Brussels, 1594, or Antwerp, 1604; d Paris, 1668). Flemish sculptor. A pupil of Niklaas Diodone ( fl 1616) in Brussels, van Opstal was an associate and the son-in-law of the Antwerp sculptor Hans van Mildert. He was established in Antwerp by 1642, when the city magistrates commissioned him to complete van Mildert’s figure of Christ for the Calvary (dismantled 1782) group on the Falconplein. Shortly afterwards he moved to Paris, purportedly at the invitation of Cardinal de Richelieu. There he was active as a decorative sculptor, providing stone and marble carvings for the Palais du Louvre and the Palais des Tuileries from models supplied by Jacques Sarazin, with whom he also worked at René de Longueil’s Château de Maisons, near Paris. Van Opstal worked at the Hôtel Lambert (1649; destr.), the Hôtel Carnavalet (1655–61; stone reliefs on first storey in situ), the Palais-Royal and elsewhere. His best-known sculptural decoration in Paris was for the Porte Saint-Antoine (c. 1660; destr.). He also executed at least one tomb, that of Jean-Baptiste Lambert (marble; destr.) in the church of the Incurables, Paris. These works showed the combined influence of the ponderous Baroque style of François Du Quesnoy and the increasingly dominant French classical style being evolved in the 1650s and 1660s at Vaux-le-Vicomte and Versailles, where van Opstal also worked in a subordinate capacity.

• Opstal, Gérard van
  • Belgium, §IV, 3: Sculpture, c 1550–1830
  • France, §VI, 2(i): Furniture, 1589–1715: Louis XIII style
  • collaboration
    • Le Brun, Charles, §1(ii)(a): Rise to prominence: Work in Paris, 1645–58
    • Sarazin, Jacques, §3: Secular work
  • patrons and collectors
    • Hesselin, Louis
    • Lambert: (2) Nicolas Lambert
  • pupils
    • Marsy
  • works
    • Belgium, §X, 1: Ivory
    • Longueil, René de
    • Stucco and plasterwork, §III, 10(i)(b): Western world, 1400–1850: France