Satan

Details

Jean-Jacques Feuchère (French, 1807-1852)
Satan
bronze, dark-brown patina; on variegated green marble plinth
8¼ in. (21 cm.) high, the bronze

Provenance

with Joanna Barnes Fine Arts, London, 1996.

Literature

Exhibition catalogue, Un Age d'Or des Arts Décoratifs 1814-1848, Galeries nationales du Grand Palais, Paris, 1991, pp.305-6 (another cast).
P. Fusco, H. W. Janson ed., Exhibition catalogue, The Romantics to Rodin, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, 1980, cat. no. 137 (a larger cast).

Special notice

VAT rate of 5% is payable on hammer price plus buyer's premium

Lot Essay

As with many of the Romantic sculptors, Feuchère drew inspiration from literary works such as Dante's Inferno, Milton's Paradise Lost and Goethe's Faust. He also owned a copy of Dürer's famous engraving of Melancolia. Satan was first exhibited in plaster at the Salon in 1833 (no. 2037), and then in bronze in 1835 (no. 2243; now in the Musée de Douai). The image of the seated melancholic creature, biting his nails and with dejected stare, was singled out for special praise by critics, and may have even influenced later artists and work such as Carpeaux's Ugolin and Rodin's Thinker.

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