Lot Essay
The former owner Mme. Ginain perhaps inherited this and other works by Dumont, for she lent a good number to the famous exhibition of 1900 (see Lami). Otherwise, she may have purchased them en bloc from one of his heirs.
The tiny figurine is immaculately modelled and is a miracle of precision on so small a scale. The subject of a recumbent female nude had long been a favorite with sculptors and collectors, most being influenced by that celebrated antiquity in the Belvedere Courtyard of the Vatican Palace, the so-called Ariadne (or Cleopatra). This had been varied upon on the scale of a statuette, aimed at collectors, by Giambologna (terracotta model of Architecture and Geometry, Victoria and Albert Museum, London) and his associate Antonio Susini (Sleeping Nymph, in bronze sometimes shown with an admiring satyr crouching at her feet, e.g. Louvre, Paris). An antique statue of Hermaphrodite, lying on its stomach, (now in the Louvre), belonged to the Borghese family in Rome, and Bernini provided a mount for it in 1620 in the shape of a buttoned mattress (R. Wittkower, Bernini, London, 1981, p. 178, no. 11, 1). The theme had been revived and varied upon yet again by members of the Versailles school of sculptors. Christie's London (11 December 1984, lot 106) included a reclining nude woman by Franois Girardon, after a terracotta model by Thibault Poissant of circa 1647.
Canova gave a new impetus to the time-honored theme in 1804/8 with his celebrated statue of Napoleon's sister, Paulina Borghese, resting on a chaise longue (Borghese Gallery, Rome). This was sufficient to enthuse other sculptors of the Neoclassical school internationally, such as Dumont, to treat it seriously.
The present miniature is too small and too highly finished to be a maquette, and it must have been intended as a tour de force for a private patron.
The tiny figurine is immaculately modelled and is a miracle of precision on so small a scale. The subject of a recumbent female nude had long been a favorite with sculptors and collectors, most being influenced by that celebrated antiquity in the Belvedere Courtyard of the Vatican Palace, the so-called Ariadne (or Cleopatra). This had been varied upon on the scale of a statuette, aimed at collectors, by Giambologna (terracotta model of Architecture and Geometry, Victoria and Albert Museum, London) and his associate Antonio Susini (Sleeping Nymph, in bronze sometimes shown with an admiring satyr crouching at her feet, e.g. Louvre, Paris). An antique statue of Hermaphrodite, lying on its stomach, (now in the Louvre), belonged to the Borghese family in Rome, and Bernini provided a mount for it in 1620 in the shape of a buttoned mattress (R. Wittkower, Bernini, London, 1981, p. 178, no. 11, 1). The theme had been revived and varied upon yet again by members of the Versailles school of sculptors. Christie's London (11 December 1984, lot 106) included a reclining nude woman by Franois Girardon, after a terracotta model by Thibault Poissant of circa 1647.
Canova gave a new impetus to the time-honored theme in 1804/8 with his celebrated statue of Napoleon's sister, Paulina Borghese, resting on a chaise longue (Borghese Gallery, Rome). This was sufficient to enthuse other sculptors of the Neoclassical school internationally, such as Dumont, to treat it seriously.
The present miniature is too small and too highly finished to be a maquette, and it must have been intended as a tour de force for a private patron.