A FRENCH BRONZE FIGURE ENTITLED 'DAVID VAINQUEUR', cast from a model by Marius Jean Antonin Mercié, wearing a headdress and loin cloth, replacing his sword in its scabbard, his right foot resting on the severed head of Goliath, on a naturalistic circular base signed A.MERCIE and on an ornately cast plinth with the founders inscription F. BARBEDIENNE. Fondeur Paris and stamped with the number 274 and with the REDUCTION MECANIQUE seal, the underside impressed twice UU and with the ink inscription 98216 gvu

細節

A FRENCH BRONZE FIGURE ENTITLED 'DAVID VAINQUEUR', cast from a model by Marius Jean Antonin Mercié, wearing a headdress and loin cloth, replacing his sword in its scabbard, his right foot resting on the severed head of Goliath, on a naturalistic circular base signed A.MERCIE and on an ornately cast plinth with the founders inscription F. BARBEDIENNE. Fondeur Paris and stamped with the number 274 and with the REDUCTION MECANIQUE seal, the underside impressed twice UU and with the ink inscription 98216 gvu

17¼in. (43.8cm.) high; 4½in. (11.4cm.) diameter at base

出版

COMPARATIVE LITERATURE:
Susan Beattie, The New Sculpture, 1983, p.138, fig 128

拍品專文

Jean-Antonin Mercié (1845-1916) produced his composition of David with the head of Goliath in plaster while in Rome in the 1870s. In the Paris Salon of 1872 it won him a first class medal. It was one of his most successful compositions and along with his later Gloria Victis bronze reductions of it were much in demand. In this figure he achieves a tremendous physical and emotional energy that fully exhibits his compositional skill and masterly handling of bronze. Mercié's reverence for the Italian Renaissance shines through this work reflective as it is of Donatello's David, Cellini's Perseus and the ignudi and Sybyls of the sistine Chapel.