.jpg?w=1)
.jpg?w=1)
.jpg?w=1)
.jpg?w=1)
Lot Essay
Inticingly perched upon her capital, the figure of Corinth instantly attracts in, but reveals little of herself, staring out with an enigmatic sphynx-like gaze, inviting yet defiant. She is the embodiment of the ancient city of Corinth, a tychai for the prosperous city, a deity overseeing its fortune and destiny, which was one of both great riches and ultimately of impending doom. One may therefore find symmetry in the fact that this incarnation of the Ancient fallen city of Corinth, was the last sculpture by Jean-Léon Gérôme, one the most celebrated and influential academic artists of the 19th century.
JEAN-LÉON GÉRÔME
While today Gérôme is most recognized for his Orientalist work, his devotion and fascination with the classical world and ancient Greece was as strong as his interest in the East. The son of a prosperous goldsmith, he received a classical education with a strong emphasis on Greek, Latin and history at the local college of his native city of Vesoul in eastern France. Greece itself, newly independent from the Ottoman Empire still carried the aura of the orient, hence, at the time classically inspired subjects did not seem remotely incompatible with the lure of the East. After a trip to the Balkans in 1853, he began his distinguished career as an ethnographical painter and from 1856 he sent Orientalist pictures to the Salon as well as historical paintings, society portraits and genre scenes. His later neo-Grecian and neo-Pompeian work was informed by sojourns in Italy, Turkey and Egypt, and fuelled by his relentless desire to rival the exacting precision of another emerging media of the era: photography. Such attention to detail is evident in the present model where the jewellery adorning the figure is directly inspired by Greek and Etruscan pieces from the Compana collection, which entered the Louvre in 1861 (see L. des Cars, D. de Font-Réaulx and É. Papet, The Spectacular Art of Jean-Léon Gérôme (1824-1904), exh. cat., p. 328, figs. 163-164). As Édourd Papet notes, this level of exactitude grounded his works of fantasy with a true sense of reality (op. cit., p. 328).
Having taken up sculpture quite late in his career, Gérôme was quick to gain success with his new endeavour. As soon as 1878, less than a decade after his first sculpture piece, he would experience his first great success at the Exposition Universelle in Paris. Gérôme was encouraged by the sculptor Frémiet and described himself as his pupil in the catalogue of the 1901 Salon. The original plaster model, tinted to mimic the recently developed theory that the ancient marbles were originally brightly painted, was completed circa 1903 (now in the collection of the musée d’Orsay, inv. S RF 2008.2). The final marble was executed by his studio assistant Louis-Émile Décorchemont and exhibited under Gérôme’s name posthumously at the 1904 Salon (Collection J. Nicholson, Beverly Hills). The bronze castings, which are only slightly smaller in scale than the original model, were cast by the fonderie Siot-Decauville and inset with semi-precious stones including opal and turquoise and, as on in the present lot, applied with traces of polychrome decoration to the accessories. There is one known silvered-bronze cast and six known gilt-bronzes cast, of which the present lot is one.
'NOT EVERYBODY CAN GO TO CORINTH'
Inscribed to the base of the capital upon which the present figure sits is the phrase ‘NON LICET OMNIBUS / ADIRE CORINTHUM.’ An ancient Greek and Latin proverb which translates as ‘not everybody can go to Corinth’, the phrase implies that not everyone can afford the city’s pleasure and is almost certainly a reference to Roman author and grammarian Aulus Gellius’s noted belief that the maxim refers to one of the city’s famed courtesans, or hetairai, from the 4th century B.C. known for both her charms and her prices (see G. Ackerman, ‘Corinth’, in P. Fusco and H.W. Janson, The Romantics to Rodin: French Nineteenth-Century Sculpture from North American Collections, pp. 291-292). Such notorious femme fatales were common place in the Peloponnesian city. West of Athens and at the base of the Acrocorinthus, the citadel’s favourable geographic location led to great military and commercial gains, as well an influx of sailors and traders who took advantage of the city’s offerings. A key site was the Temple of Aphrodite where the hetairai were dedicated to the service of the temple as ‘sacred prostitutes’ (a now controversial point of continuing research) and known to have drawn many worshippers. Like all great ancient cities, with soaring highs came tragic downfalls. In 146 BC Ancient Corinth was brutally sacked by the Romans, a subject matter which centuries later captured the romantic imagination of 19th century history painters. Correspondingly, in 1892 the Antique city was excavated for the first time. Discovered among many of its hidden treasures was the Temple of Apollo, which almost certainly served as inspiration to Gérôme and the composition of the present model where the enigmatic hetairai figure appears to guard the secrets of the city she represents.
JEAN-LÉON GÉRÔME
While today Gérôme is most recognized for his Orientalist work, his devotion and fascination with the classical world and ancient Greece was as strong as his interest in the East. The son of a prosperous goldsmith, he received a classical education with a strong emphasis on Greek, Latin and history at the local college of his native city of Vesoul in eastern France. Greece itself, newly independent from the Ottoman Empire still carried the aura of the orient, hence, at the time classically inspired subjects did not seem remotely incompatible with the lure of the East. After a trip to the Balkans in 1853, he began his distinguished career as an ethnographical painter and from 1856 he sent Orientalist pictures to the Salon as well as historical paintings, society portraits and genre scenes. His later neo-Grecian and neo-Pompeian work was informed by sojourns in Italy, Turkey and Egypt, and fuelled by his relentless desire to rival the exacting precision of another emerging media of the era: photography. Such attention to detail is evident in the present model where the jewellery adorning the figure is directly inspired by Greek and Etruscan pieces from the Compana collection, which entered the Louvre in 1861 (see L. des Cars, D. de Font-Réaulx and É. Papet, The Spectacular Art of Jean-Léon Gérôme (1824-1904), exh. cat., p. 328, figs. 163-164). As Édourd Papet notes, this level of exactitude grounded his works of fantasy with a true sense of reality (op. cit., p. 328).
Having taken up sculpture quite late in his career, Gérôme was quick to gain success with his new endeavour. As soon as 1878, less than a decade after his first sculpture piece, he would experience his first great success at the Exposition Universelle in Paris. Gérôme was encouraged by the sculptor Frémiet and described himself as his pupil in the catalogue of the 1901 Salon. The original plaster model, tinted to mimic the recently developed theory that the ancient marbles were originally brightly painted, was completed circa 1903 (now in the collection of the musée d’Orsay, inv. S RF 2008.2). The final marble was executed by his studio assistant Louis-Émile Décorchemont and exhibited under Gérôme’s name posthumously at the 1904 Salon (Collection J. Nicholson, Beverly Hills). The bronze castings, which are only slightly smaller in scale than the original model, were cast by the fonderie Siot-Decauville and inset with semi-precious stones including opal and turquoise and, as on in the present lot, applied with traces of polychrome decoration to the accessories. There is one known silvered-bronze cast and six known gilt-bronzes cast, of which the present lot is one.
'NOT EVERYBODY CAN GO TO CORINTH'
Inscribed to the base of the capital upon which the present figure sits is the phrase ‘NON LICET OMNIBUS / ADIRE CORINTHUM.’ An ancient Greek and Latin proverb which translates as ‘not everybody can go to Corinth’, the phrase implies that not everyone can afford the city’s pleasure and is almost certainly a reference to Roman author and grammarian Aulus Gellius’s noted belief that the maxim refers to one of the city’s famed courtesans, or hetairai, from the 4th century B.C. known for both her charms and her prices (see G. Ackerman, ‘Corinth’, in P. Fusco and H.W. Janson, The Romantics to Rodin: French Nineteenth-Century Sculpture from North American Collections, pp. 291-292). Such notorious femme fatales were common place in the Peloponnesian city. West of Athens and at the base of the Acrocorinthus, the citadel’s favourable geographic location led to great military and commercial gains, as well an influx of sailors and traders who took advantage of the city’s offerings. A key site was the Temple of Aphrodite where the hetairai were dedicated to the service of the temple as ‘sacred prostitutes’ (a now controversial point of continuing research) and known to have drawn many worshippers. Like all great ancient cities, with soaring highs came tragic downfalls. In 146 BC Ancient Corinth was brutally sacked by the Romans, a subject matter which centuries later captured the romantic imagination of 19th century history painters. Correspondingly, in 1892 the Antique city was excavated for the first time. Discovered among many of its hidden treasures was the Temple of Apollo, which almost certainly served as inspiration to Gérôme and the composition of the present model where the enigmatic hetairai figure appears to guard the secrets of the city she represents.