Antoine Laurent Lavoisier 1743-1794. Fondateur de la chimie moderne
Comment:
Lavoisier standing and pointing the way. On his left side he is holding a glass jar from his pneumatic apparatus coupled with an assay balance. Two bas-reliefs decorated the side of pedestal. From the very beginning the artistic quality of Barrias’ sculpture was criticized and it often inspired more irony than consideration. A contemporary commentator in fact remarked “qu’on le représente [Lavoisier] portant sa tête sous le bras”. Others thought that Barrias simply took Condorcet as a model (the statue in Quai de Conti). The statue was erected in Place de la Madeleine (Paris) in 1900 and it was destroyed by the Nazi in 1943