Borghese Gladiator
Diderot begins this section by humorously scolding Winckelmann for setting the study of ancient sculpture above the study of nature:
Anyone who scorns nature in favor of the antique risks never producing anything that's not trivial, weak, and paltry in its drawing, character, drapery, and expression. Anyone who's neglected nature in favor of the antique will risk being cold, lifeless, devoid of the hidden, secret truths which can only be perceived in nature itself. It seems to me one must study the antique to learn how to look at nature.
A reasonable argument - but since we are speaking about producing art not just viewing nature, I would replace "look at" with "imitate" in the last sentence - so that it then would read:
" It seems to me one must study the antique to learn how to imitate nature."
Then we might ask:
Which antique pieces are most suitable for study?
Pictured here are the four that Diderot mentions:
The Borghese Gladiator, the Dying Gaul, the Laocoon, the Torso of Heracles.
All of them in a style called Hellenistic.
Naturalism trumps any civic or religious idealism.
Fitting prototypes for an academy of illustrators
though the Belvedere Torso.
has too much inner dynamic
not to be called spiritual.
Dying Gaul, Roman copy of Attalid Dynasty, Pergamon, 2nd, 3rd century B.C.
I see before me the gladiator lie
He leans upon his hand—his manly brow
Consents to death, but conquers agony,
And his drooped head sinks gradually low—
And through his side the last drops, ebbing slow
From the red gash, fall heavy, one by one... Lord Byron
I prefer the poem to the sculpture.
Laocoon and His Sons
Belvedere torso, 200 BC - 100 AD
This exquisite and noble form of a nature thus perfect is, as it were, wrapped round in immortality,
and the form is but as a vessel to contain it; a loftier spirit seems to have taken the place of the mortal parts, and to have expanded in their stead. It is no longer a body which has still to fight with monsters and destroyers of peace, it is that which has been purified upon Mount Etna from the dross of humanity now smelted away from the original source of likeness to the father of the gods. Neither the loved Hyllus nor the tender Iole ever saw Hercules so perfect. Thus he lay in the arms of Hebe, of everlasting youth, and inhaled an undying influence. His body is nourished by no mortal food or coarse particles; he lives on the food of the gods, and he seems only to taste, not to eat, and altogether without being filled. .... Winckelmann
This piece came to Chicago
with the Vatican exhibition
back in 1983.
It does dominate a room
Roman, Running Boy, Herculaneum, First century
Notably absent from Diderot's list
are Hellenistic sculptures in bronze,
of which this pair is a fine example.
The more fluid medium
allows for a greater sense of immediacy.
Dancing Faun, House of the Faun, Pompeii, 100 BC
The inner, wild, spirit of nature
Frederick Macmonnies, 1894
Not so much inner power in this variant
from more recent times
Tom Tsuchiya, Pete Rose Sliding into First Base
Rottblatt-Amrany Studio: Michael Jordan
Even more recent is the revival of
the Hellenistic theme of athleticism.
Most of it is cartoonish illustration,
but ferocious intensity sets these two apart
and also distinguishes them from the less triumphant
Hellenistic athletes.
Americans savor effort
leading to triumph.
Barberini Faun
A bit too explicit to be endorsed by Diderot.
and a bit too wooden for my taste.
Something of a monster.
Edme Bouchardon
copy of the Barberini Faun
Vastly improved in the 18th Century rendition.
Jean Baptise Lemoyne, Bust of Comtesse de Brionne
Elegant? ..Definitely
Great Sculpture?.. Not so much.
More like a pleasing floral display.
Diderot wrote that the hair was unfinished, the bosom resembled knitting,
the eyes were cold and dry,
and the mouth should have been open if the nostrils were left solid.
Lemoyne, maquette for Louis XV
I know this piece quite well,
I've been seeing it for decades at the Art Institute of Chicago.
Also elegant - but unintentionally silly.
Mock-heroic.
Lemoyne, Fear of Love
This piece is also at the Art Institute of Chicago
but it's currently off view
and I don't recall ever seeing it.
Lemoyne: Bernard le Bouvier de Fontenelle
A good portrait of an intellectual
who approaches a question
from many angles.
Falconet, The Bronze Horseman, 1766-1782
Diderot liked Falconet ... a lot:
"He has finesse, taste, intelligence, delicacy, kindness, and grace in full measure; because he's awkward and polite; friendly and brusque, kind and harsh.. amiable and caustic, serious and mocking; because he's a philosophe, believing in nothing and knowing perfectly well why not."
He recommended Falconet to Catherine for the statue of Peter the Great
at about the same time that he wrote his Salon of 1765
to which Catherine had subscribed.
In that same year, Catherine purchased Diderot's library,
and he began receiving a large annual stipend from the Russian treasury.
The piece has a few nice views,
but mostly it belongs in an amusement park.
The story of the gigantic "thunder stone" beneath it
is more interesting than the statue
Falconet's insipid designs for the Royal Sevres porcelain factory
were not any better - and I fear to glance at
his essay on sculpture, written for Diderot's Encyclopedia.
Falconet, Alexander Surrendering Compaspe
to the painter Apelles
Here is Diderot's review
of the only Falconet piece I could find online:
It was intelligent to have Campaspe lower her eyes. If pleased, her willingness to leave Alexander would have wounded his vanity; if sad, she'd have mortified Apelles. But there's so much innocence and simplicity in the characterization of this head that if you were to place a veil under her chin that fell to her feet, obscuring all the attractions of her nudity such that you could see only her head, ou'd take this Campaspe to be a young girl of exemplary education who's totally ignorant of what it means to be a man and who readily submits to the will of her father who's decided the artist here is to be her husband. This characterization of the head is false; it, too, is a paraphrase of the Pygmalion, but here it's inappropriate. Falconet, my friend, you've forgotten the social station of this woman, you've neglected the fact that she's a concubine, that she's slept with Alexander, that she's known pleasure with him and perhaps with others before him. If you'd given your Campaspe somewhat larger features, she'd have been a woman and all would have been well. But tell me, please, what are those two legionnaires doing at the back? Did Alexander, wb.o--was apparently aware that his concubine as exposing her body to the painter's gaze, bring companions with him to her house? Come now, my friend, get rid of these two soldiers so totally out of place; I insist to you they weren't there, and that the scene transpired between three persons, Alexander, Apelles, and Campaspe. -And the laws of low relief? you ask me ... And the laws of common sense? I answer you ... -And what will my Campaspe, in full relief, have behind her? ... -Why, my friend, two women you'll put in the place of these sorry Macedonians; these two women, Campaspe's attendants, will be more decent and more interesting; they were in Campaspe's apartments before the arrival of Alexander, for I'll never convince myself that a woman would expose her nude body to the gaze of an artist all alone. And just think of the delightful character you could give these attendants! They'd withdraw a bit at the appearance of the sovereign; witnessing his generosity, how do you think they'd react? This would make a charming group in relief.
Your Apelles is rather coarsely dressed; a painter isn't a workman like a sculptor. He is thin, and I like that; those in whom the fire of Prometheus burns are consumed by it. But why make his head so woolly? It seems to me genius should be depicted differently. And this Campaspe, who knew since the previous day that she was to be painted, surely she'd have thought to dress her hair differently; its arrangement is far too lackadaisicaL As for her flesh, it's certainly beautiful, but it's not as soft as in the statue of Pygmalion; when Vien remarked that, this once, you'd demonstrated sculpture's superiority to painting, he wasn't far off the mark.
Falconet has formulated a rule for relief work which strikes me as reasonable, but which encumbers the artist. He says: The marble background is the sky, so shadows should never fall onto it. But how to avoid throwing shadows onto a sky that's contiguous with the figures? Here's how. If you include in your composition a figure in full relief, place an object immediately behind it that can receive its shadow. But what will become of the shadow of this object? Nothing. It won't case a shadow if you treat it in low relief; then it will stand out against your marble background like distant objects against the sky. One doesn't look for the shadow of a body that's some distance away or that's only half visible. -Does Falconet follow his rule? -Quite scrupulously. -And what does he think he gains by it? -Resolution of the low relief passages into a truth resembling that of painting, to which he can then link the other parts. This is what made him introduce the two low-relief soldiers here; he needed objects in the background to receive the shadow of his Campaspe, who's in full relief, but two female attendants would have done just as well and would have been more appropriate.
This is typical of Diderot's approach:
he shares his own ideas of what kind of details
are most appropriate for the story as he would tell it.
Apparently he could not accept this as the sculptor's personal fantasy
of being rewarded with both recognition and sexual fulfillment
from the hand of the world's most powerful man.
Falconet presented himself dressed like a workman
because that was his status as a sculptor.
(the theme is Alexander awarding his sex slave to Apelles
for doing such a good job of painting her portrait)
"Scraggly drapery, modeled after a little mannequin with pinned-on clothes, graceless. Otherwise, gay sprightly ; with a forced smile when what's needed is a refined one"
This is made out of sugar, isn't it?
I'd like to break off an arm and drop it into a cup of coffee.
Vasse, Sleeping Shepherd
More like "sleeping model",
but still I like this soporific symphony.
Vasse, 1745
As with most sculptors from this time,
his work in terra cotta is livelier than in marble,
Augustin Pajou, portrait of Marechal de Clermont-Tonnerre
"I remember another portrait of this marechal. Do you recall it ? It was hung over the staircase. There the general was in his leather vest, his demeanor noble and proud. Pajou has made him innocent and idiotic.
Joseph Aved, portrait of Marechal de Clermont-Tonnerre
Pajou, River God
Pajou, Ariadne Abandoned
Pajou's portraits are pleasant,
but his terracotta figures are musical.
Pajou, Saint Francis de Sales
maquette for the above
This maquette is heavy-handed and limp. You can tell from the sketch what the finished version will be like, for I tell you again, my friend, a marble is never anything more than a copy. The artist put his fire into the clay, then when he goes at the stone boredom and indifference set in, the boredom and indifference adhere to the chisel and penetrate the marble, unless the sculptor is possessed of an inextinguishable zeal like that the old poet attributed to
his gods.
Nicolas Sebastien Adam, Prometheus
Abominable, execrable Adam! I don't mean the oldest of idiot husbands, but a sculptor of the same name who gives us a desert hermit praying on an outcrop of rock for Polyphemus, I know not what little animal, slight and frizzy, for one of the Cyclops' thickwooled sheep, and a bag of walnuts for Ulysses.
Regretfully, Adam's Polyphemus is not to be found on the internet - but his Prometheus will suffice to mark him down as "abominable" and "execrable". Quite virtuosic - yet also overblown and silly.
(a combination that serve to define "rococo")
Jean-Jacques Caffieri, portrait of Rameau
"What the devil do you want me to say about Caffieri? That he made busts of Lully and Rameau which attracted attention because of the celebrity of their subjects ?
I would call this a fine head - regardless of the fame of the sitter
Caffieri
Another fine head,
though the subject is somewhat less attractive
Caffieri
Caffieri
Caffieri represents people you would like to meet,
whether or not they actually were.
He's down on one knee; his arms are raised towards heaven; he prays without fear, without emotion; he offers up his suffering and his life ungrudgingly. The executioner's back is turned. He has grasped the saint's left arm, he has tied a rope around it, and he secures this rope to the top of a wooden frame . His air is very much that of his profession; the knife in his mouth makes one shudder. It's an idea worthy of Carracci. With that exception the group is very beautiful; the forms are ample, the drawing correct, the muscles properly articulated, and all the details carefully observed.
I've told you the knife in the executioner's mouth makes one shudder, and that's true. But I know of one painter who had an even more forceful, more atrocious idea: he had an old priest sharpen his knife against the stone of an alter while waiting for the victim to be delivered to him. I'm not sure the artist isn't Deshays.
Bridan, Assumption of the Virgin
in Chartres Cathedral, 1773
Central Tympanum , Chartres, 12th Century
This 12th Century work is a bit severe,
but if Hell still existed in 1733
it should have warmly welcomed
whoever brought Bridan's contribution into Chartres cathedral.
**********
**********
**********
So much for the Salon of 1765,
here are some other French sculptors from that century
whose work caught my eye:
Pierre Philippe Mignot
Isn't this art deco ?
Pierre Berruer
The Muses
Grand Théâtre de Bordeaux
Here is the theatre where Berruer's sculpture is installed.
Ernst Herter, Achillion Muses, Corfu
Here is an another set of Muses,
these are from the late 19th Century.
They have here become Nordic ice queens.
The inner life is gone.
Claude Michel (Clodion) , River God Separating the Waters, 1765
Clodion was in Rome in 1765
so he did not enter anything in that year's Salon.
Apparently he was looking at local sculpture,
especially by Michelangelo.
Clodion
Clodion
Just as silly as it is wonderful.
Clodion
So much uplift,
with plenty of help
from the architectural ornament behind it.
Clodion, 1799
Here's the piece from the Cincinnati Art Museum,
I saw it many times when growing up.
The Art Institute of Chicago lacks a good example.
Clodion is my favorite sculptor of that period,
though that is partially the result of my familiarity with him.
His popularity among
American collectors in the 19th Century ,
stocked the museums that I have visited. It does appear, however, that the inner energy of his figures
dissipated over the decades
as he was locked into being a decorator.
for the ancien regime.
Here's another great sculptor who just missed the 1765 salon.
He made the masterpiece shown above in the following year
\and he joined the Royal Academy in 1771.
Rene-Michel Slodtz, St Bruno, 1744
Here's an earlier St. Bruno
done by one of Houdon's teachers
who died the year before this Salon.
Everything is spinning out,
while Houdon's figure is pulling in
to a secret mystery
which is much more compelling.
Houdon, Voltaire, 1778
As evident above,
Houdon was a great portraitist.
Houdon, Diana the Huntress
This might be Houdon's only standing nude
and it is hardly Rococo.
She may be unclothed
but sex with her is not an option.
A man risks his life to even see her bathing.
She is the Casta Diva.
I'm not sure that recreational sex is an option with the bather either.
She's a lady, not a forest nymph.
*************
Two beautiful, and well lit, portraits.
Coustou was royal sculptor for
Louis XIV and XV,
and became director of the Royal Academy in 1735.
This piece is a fabulous confection
suitable for a royal palace.
But is it sculpture?
Antoine Coysevox, c. 1700
This piece, however, ripples with energy
with a bit more connective tissue.
Coysevox was the uncle and teacher of Coustou.
Defernex never joined the Royal Academy
so maybe you could call him an outsider artist.
He was not allowed to do public commissions.
But hey -- he was pretty good
Defernex
This piece almost feels like its a Chinese Buddha
Jean-Pierre Defrance, Fire (from the Four Elements at the Met)
1750-60
Jean-Pierre Defrance, Great Clock Fountain in Rouen
The Met attributes their four elements to DeFrance
based on style -
but the examples I've found would not confirm that.
Rene Fremin, Flore
Rene Fremin, Diana, 1717
Barthélemy Guibal. Fountain of Amphitrite, 1750's
Pierre Julien, Dying Gladiator, 1779
Le Gros (1666-1719) was a few generations earlier
than the those who exhibited in the Salon of 1765,
but I included him here anyway because he did work into the 18th Century,
and he was so good. His pieces seem to crackle with electricity
Pierre Le Gros the Younger,
Religion Overthrowing Heresy and Hatred
1695-1699
Jean-Baptiste Theodon,
Triumph of Faith Over Idolotry
The piece by Le Gros looks especially good in comparison
with a contemporary piece on a similar theme by Theodon.
Joseph-Charles Marin
Born in 1759, Marin was too young for the Salon of 1765.
A student of Clodion,
I first saw his work in the Smart Museum.
It's one of the best pieces in their collection
of small sculptures.
Joseph Charles Marin
The marble is quite differernt from the terra cotta
that was evidently studied from a model.
Both have their virtues
Philippe-Laurent Roland, 1796
reminds me of the smiling angel
at Rheims
Philippe-Laurent Roland, 1774
Alexander Charles Renaud
Prometheus, 1787
Quite a design.
Jean-Pierre-Antoine Tassaert
Jean-Baptiste Stouf
Abel Dying, 1785
Stouf, Hercules Fighting Two Centaurs
I love this piece!
Stouf, Hercules, Nessus, and Deianira
Stouf, Hercules and the Hydra
Pierre Nicolas Beauvallet
Suzanne Surprised, 1813
Francois Joseph Bosio, Hercules. 1824
I was trying to restrict this post to the French sculpture of the 18th Century,
but this piece was too good to pass up.
The artistwas born in 1768.
Edme Bouchardon, Fountain of the. four Seasons, 1738
Bouchardon, Pope Clement XII
Compelling as sculpture,
but not very positive -
it appears that the Pope had just received some very bad news.
Bouchardon
The Getty tells us that Bouchardon was better known
for his drawings than his sculptures.
This academy reception piece looks more like
a handsome model posing in the studio,
but still it is quite pleasant
Nicolas Coustou, 1723, Altar of Notre Dame, Paris
You don't really need Michelangelo's version
to make the Coustou piece appear boring,
but here it is anyway.
Antoine Coysevox,
Portrait of the mother of Hyacinthe Rigaud, 1709
Possibly a gift from one virtuoso to another.
We're told that the likeness was taken
from a portrait Rigaud had painted.
Claude-André Deseine, Robespierre
"True religion consists in punishing for the happiness of all those who disturb society"
Such an angelic face for such a monster.
Even the sculpture
reveals this man as a blustering fraud.
Louis Pierre Deseine
Francois DuPont, Titan struck by Lightning, 1712
This Royal Academy reception piece
is more lively than anything else I could find from this artist.
Possibly, none of the more conventional themes
inspired him as much.
Francois Dumont
Espercieux, Jean-Joseph, 1835
Not quite into the 18th Century yet,
but this piece cannot be ignored.
As a young man, the Girardon met Bernini,
and now, more than thirty years later,
he competes with the young Bernini's
masterpiece.
Bernini, Rape of Proserpina,
1621-22
a wonderful effect of fingers poking flesh
but note how the man's arm
is more like a twisted party balloon
than the dynamic machine of bone and muscle
constructed by Girardon.
Pierre Julien
Dying Gladiator, 1779
******
Robert le Lorraine
Horses of the Sun, 1736
Jean-Baptiste D'Huez
St. Andre, 1763
1629-33
I'm afraid that the D'Huez version
is smaller in every way.
Jean-Sntoine Chaptal ,
Portrait of Philippe-Laurent Roland, 1802
A great depiction of a man of science.
Louis-Francois Roubiliac
Portrait of Francesco Bernardi
Another wonderful portrait bust,
this time of a renowned castratto singer.
Jean-Baptiste Tuby, 1660’s-1690’s
Not yet in the 18th Century,
but I like this piece too much not to show it.
It is echoed by Maillol.
The Versailles sculpture garden was quite a project.
Possibly the setting inspired much of the delightful work made for it.
Charles LeBrun may have been the villain of French painting,
but he liked the Italian born Tuby enough to have him marry into his family.
*********
At some point,
I'll have to do a post about
French figure sculpture of the 19th Century.
Here is my survey of
