European Furniture & Decorative Arts

Exhibited:

Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, The Romantics to Rodin: French Nineteenth-Century Sculpture from North American Collections, 1980

Literature:

Peter Fusco and Horst Woldemar Janson, eds., The Romantics to Rodin: French Nineteenth-Century Sculpture from North American Collections, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 1980, no. 64, p. 182 (illustrated)

Note:

This sculpture is a model of a colossal figure that Cortot initially intended to replace the cross on the dome of the Panthéon in Paris. Designed in 1835, only a plaster model of the sculpture, completed in 1836, was ever created. Originally installed in front of the Chamber of Deputies in 1840 and later in the apse of the Panthéon after Napolean's state funeral, the plaster model was purportedly destroyed during the June Days uprising in 1848. Jacques-Édouard Gatteaux (French, 1788-1881) commissioned a reduced-scale replica in 1859 based on Cortot's original 1835 sketch. Both Gatteaux's commission, as well as a maquette dated 1835 and attributed to Cortot, reside in the Louvre's permanent collection, the latter of which is nearly identical to the present lot in form, size, and markings.