GLORIA VICTIS
Marius-Jean-Antonin Mercié was a student at the French Academy of Rome when the Prussians invaded France in 1870. Shortly after the war had begun, he executed a group with a figure of Fame supporting a victorious soldier. When news reached Mercié in Rome that the French had surrendered, he decided to alter his group, replacing the victorious soldier with a defeated one and thus transforming an allegory of Glory to the Victors into one of Glory to the Vainquished. The figure of the fallen soldier was thought to represent Henri Regnault, a fellow sculptor of Mercié who was killed on the last day of the war.
The full size plaster model of Gloria Victis was exhibited at the Salon of 1874, winning the Medaille d'Honneur and critical acclaim. It was then purchased by the City of Paris for the sum of twelve thousand francs, and then cast in bronze by Victor Thiébaut for eight thousand francs. The original bronze is now placed in a central courtyard at the Hôtel de Ville. The plaster version was re-exhibited at the Exposition Universelle of 1878, alongside it bronze reductions of the group by Barbedienne. Mercié's modern sculpture had become an instant classic, even receiving an entry in the Nouveau Larousse Illustré. The group's success undoubtedly lay in the fact that it was admired not just on an aesthetic level, but on a patriotic level also, particularly in it's commemoration of heroism in defeat. Critics also marvelled at the compositional daring of the group, balancing as it did two figures on the minimal support of one foot and in doing so drawing on the antique Dancing Faun and on Giambologna's Mercury. In it's turn Gloria Victis was to be influential upon numerous later works, the most interesting of which being Rodin's Call to Arms.
A FRENCH PARCEL-GILT BRONZE GROUP ENTITLED 'GLORIA VICTIS', cast from the model by Marius-Jean-Antonin Mercié, the winged Victory wearing a gilt breastplate and balancing on one foot, carrying the nude wounded warrior with his broken sword, on a naturalistic base cast with a laurel branch and signed A.MERCIE and with the founders inscription F.BARBEDIENNE, Fondeur, Paris and REDUCTION MECANIQUE A.COLLAS BREVETE stamped in a roundel, the base with the title GLORIA VICTIS, on a black marble square plinth with canted angles and fluted frieze with the numbers to the underside 58860 (the gilding refreshed), late 19th Century
Details
A FRENCH PARCEL-GILT BRONZE GROUP ENTITLED 'GLORIA VICTIS', cast from the model by Marius-Jean-Antonin Mercié, the winged Victory wearing a gilt breastplate and balancing on one foot, carrying the nude wounded warrior with his broken sword, on a naturalistic base cast with a laurel branch and signed A.MERCIE and with the founders inscription F.BARBEDIENNE, Fondeur, Paris and REDUCTION MECANIQUE A.COLLAS BREVETE stamped in a roundel, the base with the title GLORIA VICTIS, on a black marble square plinth with canted angles and fluted frieze with the numbers to the underside 58860 (the gilding refreshed), late 19th Century
the bronze: 42½in. (108cm.) high
the plinth: 10½in. (26.7cm.) square; 5½in. (14cm.) high
47¾in. (121.3cm.) high overall
the bronze: 42½in. (108cm.) high
the plinth: 10½in. (26.7cm.) square; 5½in. (14cm.) high
47¾in. (121.3cm.) high overall