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Lot Essay
Mark Matveievich Antokolskii was born in Vilna, the son of a Jewish inn-keeper. Initially trained as an engraver, he studied sculpture at the Academy of Arts in St. Petersburg under Pimenov.
In the capital, Antokolskii mixed with the leading representatives of Russian culture: Shishkin, Vasnetsov, Kramskoi, Stasov and became a friend of Repin's.
In 1871, after graduating from the Academy, Antokolskii's ill health forced him to go abroad, to Rome and Paris, and from then he only occasionally returned home.
He took the model of Mephistopheles from Goethe's poem "Faust".
For all their differences in character, most of Antokolskii's heroes share a common striving for truth, sometimes at a cost of their own lives, Christ judged by the People (1874), Socrates Death (1875), Spinoza (1882). As an antithesis to this, as early as 1874 the sculptor conceived the idea for a statue of Mephistopheles. His Mephistopheles is not so much the embodiment of all evil as the personification of tormenting doubt and scepticism; the sharp, angular forms and sarcastic face lend the image great expressiveness.
The present work is a replica of the marble statue completed in 1882 and exhibited in the Russian Museum in St. Petersburg. Both marble and bronze example were exhibited in St. Petersburg in 1888. An example in marble is currently at the Ermitage in St. Petersburg and in bronze at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London
Another example of this model in bronze was sold at Sotheby's London, 5th April 1990, lot 269, for $27,710
In the capital, Antokolskii mixed with the leading representatives of Russian culture: Shishkin, Vasnetsov, Kramskoi, Stasov and became a friend of Repin's.
In 1871, after graduating from the Academy, Antokolskii's ill health forced him to go abroad, to Rome and Paris, and from then he only occasionally returned home.
He took the model of Mephistopheles from Goethe's poem "Faust".
For all their differences in character, most of Antokolskii's heroes share a common striving for truth, sometimes at a cost of their own lives, Christ judged by the People (1874), Socrates Death (1875), Spinoza (1882). As an antithesis to this, as early as 1874 the sculptor conceived the idea for a statue of Mephistopheles. His Mephistopheles is not so much the embodiment of all evil as the personification of tormenting doubt and scepticism; the sharp, angular forms and sarcastic face lend the image great expressiveness.
The present work is a replica of the marble statue completed in 1882 and exhibited in the Russian Museum in St. Petersburg. Both marble and bronze example were exhibited in St. Petersburg in 1888. An example in marble is currently at the Ermitage in St. Petersburg and in bronze at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London
Another example of this model in bronze was sold at Sotheby's London, 5th April 1990, lot 269, for $27,710