Lot Essay
The reemergence of this lovely relief from the obscurity of a private collection is a major event. It has enabled its study afresh after being known for over a century only from the reproduction of Mme. d'Yvon's sale catalogue: on that basis, Poulet and Scherf (op.cit. accepted it, without reservation, as autograph and dated it circa 1780s. Furthermore, they identified a key classical source, the Neo-Attic marble relief of Dancers or Hours, then in the Borghese Collection in Rome, but now in the Louvre (op.cit. fig. 179). This had long been a favorite in France, being cast in bronze in 1641 for King Louis XIII, on the advice of Poussin. (See F. Haskell and N. Penny, Taste and the Antique, New Haven/London, 1982, pp. 195-6, no. 29. fig. 101.)
This large relief - nearly three feet wide and with figures about one foot high - seems to have followed on from a similar design for friezes to go round the cylindrical bases of columns for a surtout de table for the Olympian Service to be produced by the Manufacture de Svres in 1803, for which Clodion received payment (Clodion, p. 337f, no. 71). These figures were however modelled almost in the round, like their classical prototype, but unlike the present ones, which are in low relief, with only their heads and foremost arms and legs projecting significantly from the flat background. The theme for the columns was the Hours of the Day, six allocated to each column, for day and night, but they were never put into production in ceramic. The Borghese relief shows five dancers with linked hands and turning in various directions, before a colonnade of pilasters. Clodion would have studied this relief in Rome, as well as from the great books of engravings of antiquities by Perrier and Montfaucon, while a plaster cast was shown in Paris in 1800.
Another possible source of inspiration for the Bacchic elements and open air setting is a French engraving of a Dance of Fauns and Bacchantes dating from the 1540s by the anonymous engraver 'L.D.,' after a print by Agostino Veneziano (Fig 2: H. Zerner, The School of Fontainebleau, Etchings and Engravings, London, 1969, p. 21f, and plate 'L.D. 83'). Clodion may have known, or been shown, an example by a patron.
The relief conveys an impression of innocent joie-de-vivre in the ecstatic dance of these young women, pulling one another in fits and starts from left to right, away from a static figure and accompanying putto standing by an altar at the right, who remain sober enough to play their flutes. Had the frieze been wrapped around a cylinder, this closing, vertical figure and architectural element would have provided a caesura in the rapid motion, with the foremost bacchante now approaching the altar from behind. The heads were modelled separately and pressed on to the background, from which (with the drying-out of the clay over the years) some have become slightly detached. The fluttering, diaphanous draperies are a masterly demonstration of relief sculpture, melding the more projecting parts smoothly with the background, on which some details are inscribed with a stylus, a veritable tour de force on Clodion's part.
This large relief - nearly three feet wide and with figures about one foot high - seems to have followed on from a similar design for friezes to go round the cylindrical bases of columns for a surtout de table for the Olympian Service to be produced by the Manufacture de Svres in 1803, for which Clodion received payment (Clodion, p. 337f, no. 71). These figures were however modelled almost in the round, like their classical prototype, but unlike the present ones, which are in low relief, with only their heads and foremost arms and legs projecting significantly from the flat background. The theme for the columns was the Hours of the Day, six allocated to each column, for day and night, but they were never put into production in ceramic. The Borghese relief shows five dancers with linked hands and turning in various directions, before a colonnade of pilasters. Clodion would have studied this relief in Rome, as well as from the great books of engravings of antiquities by Perrier and Montfaucon, while a plaster cast was shown in Paris in 1800.
Another possible source of inspiration for the Bacchic elements and open air setting is a French engraving of a Dance of Fauns and Bacchantes dating from the 1540s by the anonymous engraver 'L.D.,' after a print by Agostino Veneziano (Fig 2: H. Zerner, The School of Fontainebleau, Etchings and Engravings, London, 1969, p. 21f, and plate 'L.D. 83'). Clodion may have known, or been shown, an example by a patron.
The relief conveys an impression of innocent joie-de-vivre in the ecstatic dance of these young women, pulling one another in fits and starts from left to right, away from a static figure and accompanying putto standing by an altar at the right, who remain sober enough to play their flutes. Had the frieze been wrapped around a cylinder, this closing, vertical figure and architectural element would have provided a caesura in the rapid motion, with the foremost bacchante now approaching the altar from behind. The heads were modelled separately and pressed on to the background, from which (with the drying-out of the clay over the years) some have become slightly detached. The fluttering, diaphanous draperies are a masterly demonstration of relief sculpture, melding the more projecting parts smoothly with the background, on which some details are inscribed with a stylus, a veritable tour de force on Clodion's part.