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Lot Essay
Gilles-Lambert Godecharle was the most gifted of Laurent Delvaux's students who went on to work with the finest French sculptors of the 18th century including Jean-Antoine Houdon, Jean-Baptiste Pigalle and Jean-Pierre-Antoine Tassaert. His style was an eclectic melange of baroque, rococo and neo-classicism that he mixed in varying quantities depending on the type of commission he was working on.
In looking, for example, at his 1787 terracotta group of Pan Chasing Syrinx in the Louvre, Paris, (Draper and Scherf, loc. cit.) one sees the rich vocabulary of none other than Claude Michel (universally known as Clodion). This group is laden with the rococo taste for melodrama, representing the buxom nymph pursued by the rapacious satyr in an unquestionably Clodionesque tribute to physical abandonment. However, in reading over the composition a second time, it becomes apparent that the figure of Syrinx is also a homage to Bernini via his own monument to baroque drama: the Apollo and Daphne, in the Villa Borghese, Rome.
The influence the great masters had on Godecharle can be seen in many of his works, such as his reinterpretation of Jean-Antoine Houdon's La Frileuse (Winter) and his bust of Voltaire, both in the Musées royaux des Beaux arts, Brussels, and also in his two portrait busts of Laurent Delvaux (Jacobs, op. cit. pp. 14 and 53) also in the Brussels museum. In these examples, he seems less interested in idealised portrayals or grandiose statements of authority. And this is particularly the case in the bust of Laurent Delvaux, which was modelled from his master's death mask. In this instance, the onlooker is reminded of the sitter's mortality. One can imagine that in using the death mask as the model for the bust, Godecharle was striving to reduce the amount of his artistic interpretation in an effort to maintain the purity of the original image.
In looking at the bust of an unknown sitter offered here, Godecharle has again reached within his block of marble to uncover the human spirit of his sitter. Like Bernini and Houdon, he abandoned his right to artistic license, which merely interpreted what he saw, and instead adopted his role as a medium that captured the humanity and purity of his sitter. With her rounded cheeks, almond-shaped eyes and pursed lips, our bust is a living, breathing, entity. As with the similarly dated portrait of his wife, in the Musées royaux des Beaux arts, Brussels, Godecharle searches for the true nature of his sitter; the full cheeks and half-open eyes are quintessentially human features that have not been distorted by a stylising stroke of a chisel. Godecharle took great pride in carving the present bust and judging by the overall quality, it would appear that he did not intend for it to be viewed only from the front. The refined finish and lively carving to the hair to the reverse - beautifully gathered at the top by a comb - suggests that the artist wanted his onlooker to move the bust by turning it on its socle, in other words, to engage with it on a physical and emotional level.
Godecharle came from humble beginnings, and through the honest representation of his sitters he went on to enjoy extraordinary renown and died as a well-respected man.
In looking, for example, at his 1787 terracotta group of Pan Chasing Syrinx in the Louvre, Paris, (Draper and Scherf, loc. cit.) one sees the rich vocabulary of none other than Claude Michel (universally known as Clodion). This group is laden with the rococo taste for melodrama, representing the buxom nymph pursued by the rapacious satyr in an unquestionably Clodionesque tribute to physical abandonment. However, in reading over the composition a second time, it becomes apparent that the figure of Syrinx is also a homage to Bernini via his own monument to baroque drama: the Apollo and Daphne, in the Villa Borghese, Rome.
The influence the great masters had on Godecharle can be seen in many of his works, such as his reinterpretation of Jean-Antoine Houdon's La Frileuse (Winter) and his bust of Voltaire, both in the Musées royaux des Beaux arts, Brussels, and also in his two portrait busts of Laurent Delvaux (Jacobs, op. cit. pp. 14 and 53) also in the Brussels museum. In these examples, he seems less interested in idealised portrayals or grandiose statements of authority. And this is particularly the case in the bust of Laurent Delvaux, which was modelled from his master's death mask. In this instance, the onlooker is reminded of the sitter's mortality. One can imagine that in using the death mask as the model for the bust, Godecharle was striving to reduce the amount of his artistic interpretation in an effort to maintain the purity of the original image.
In looking at the bust of an unknown sitter offered here, Godecharle has again reached within his block of marble to uncover the human spirit of his sitter. Like Bernini and Houdon, he abandoned his right to artistic license, which merely interpreted what he saw, and instead adopted his role as a medium that captured the humanity and purity of his sitter. With her rounded cheeks, almond-shaped eyes and pursed lips, our bust is a living, breathing, entity. As with the similarly dated portrait of his wife, in the Musées royaux des Beaux arts, Brussels, Godecharle searches for the true nature of his sitter; the full cheeks and half-open eyes are quintessentially human features that have not been distorted by a stylising stroke of a chisel. Godecharle took great pride in carving the present bust and judging by the overall quality, it would appear that he did not intend for it to be viewed only from the front. The refined finish and lively carving to the hair to the reverse - beautifully gathered at the top by a comb - suggests that the artist wanted his onlooker to move the bust by turning it on its socle, in other words, to engage with it on a physical and emotional level.
Godecharle came from humble beginnings, and through the honest representation of his sitters he went on to enjoy extraordinary renown and died as a well-respected man.