Biography

Jérome Duquesnoy the Elder (or Hieronymous Duquesnoy I) was a Flemish sculptor who played a large part in the artistic revival in the Southern Netherlands following the religious and iconoclastic disturbances of the 16th century. Documentary sources show that he was busily engaged and charged with sculptural commissions for all the major churches as well as for government buildings. None of this has survived. His style has to be judged mainly by the work he did outside Brussels, notably the marble tabernacle in Sint-Martinuskerk in Aalst.

He is famous for his Manneken pis fountain (1619) behind the town hall in Brussels. He also carved a Mary Magdalen for the park of the Coudenberg Palace which later was replaced by a copy. (The original is now part of the collections of the Municipal Museum of the House of the Bakers' Corporation on the Grand Place of Brussels.

He was the father of the sculptor François Duquesnoy and the sculptor and architect Jérôme Duquesnoy the Younger.