 From object |
| Shelfmark: |
 Houdon - Lavoisier? |
| Type: |
sculpture |
| Dimension: |
71,5 x 49 x (depth) 31 |
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 Component's data |
| Type: |
portrait |
| Abstract: |
bust of Lavoisier or of Condorcet. With Houdon's inscription "Houdon/ fecit / 1785/" |
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| From object |
| Shelfmark: |
RF 1090 |
| Type: |
sculpture |
| Dimension: |
71,5 x 49 x (depth) 31 |
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|
| Component's data |
| Type: |
portrait |
| Abstract: |
Bust of Lavoisier or of Condorcet with insription: "Academ/Royale/de Peinture et Sculpt/ Houdon sc" |
| Comment: |
A terracotta bust, long considered by historians as portraying Lavoisier . It is a model of the version in marble kept at the American Philosophical Society in Philadelphia. It portrays a man wearing a perruque of about forty with an almost disdainful expression and with the head turned to his left. It is the work of the famous sculptor Jean Antoine Houdon (1741-1828), who had already made busts of Voltaire, Rousseau, Diderot, Necker, Franklin, Buffon, Daubenton and Trudaine de Montigny. As regards the bust of Lavoisier, it has been maintains that it was in fact a bust of Condorcet. This conclusion was reached on the basis of the results of a survey published in 1914 concerning the diffusion of the works of Houdon in America, which indicated that: 1. there is an almost identical copy in marble of the bust kept at the Louvre, dated 1785 and signed by Houdon, which is now with the American Philosophical Society in Philadelphia; 2. that the “American” bust had been purchased in France at the beginning of the nineteenth century by William Short as a bust of Condorcet; 3. that a letter from Short himself to Thomas Jefferson written in 1819 clarified the circumstances of this attribution, claiming that the personage in question was Condorcet and not, as had been believed, Lavoisier.
Short’s evidence would have seem to have settled the question once and for all, but in 1919, Georges Giacometti, the author of an extensive monograph on Houdon and one of the major experts on this sculptor, pointed out that the bust in question bore no resemblance to any of Condorcet’s portraits and that since the provenance and attribution of the Louvre terracotta was reliable and authoritative there was no sensible reason to accept the alternative theory as sufficiently probatory. Indeed the engraved portrait of Condorcet made in 1786 by Augustin de Saint-Ubin [Fig. 1.10] bears little resemblance with Houdon’s bust and the subsequent iconography of the French philosopher always emphasises his coarse features. By contrast, Lavoisier’s features, as they had been portrayed by the Brossards and David show are refined and matching those presented by Houdon in his bust. Against Giacometti but without the support of any new documentary evidence the art historian Arnason claims that “there can be no doubt that the marble in the American Philosophical Society, Philadelphia, and the plaster in the Louvre represent the same man and that the man is Condorcet.” |
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Digital version:
1
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