Angélique (Angelica)

Representing Angelica chained to a rock in the seconds before being rescued from the perils of the sea-monster by Ruggiero as recounted in Aristo’s Orlando Furioso, the present terracotta is a reduction of a marble figure Albert-Ernest Carrier Belleuse showed at the Salon of 1866. The figure’s complex, writhing pose demonstrate Carrier-Belleuse’s debt to his artistic predecessors – especially the Baroque Flemish painter, Peter Paul Rubens (1577-1640) and French sculptor Pierre Puget (1620-1694) – while the intricate composition and carefully pronounced details fully evoke the sculptor’s finest work, some of the most celebrated of the Second Empire (J. Hargrove, The Life and Work of Albert Carrier-Belleuse, New York, 1977, p. 49). Though the Salon marble’s whereabouts are currently unknown, a number of terracotta examples are documented including one in a private French collection dated to 1866 and illustrated in J. Hargrove and G. Grandjean, Carrier-Belleuse Le Maître de Rodin, exhibition catalogue, 22 May – 27 October 2014, Compiègne, 2014, p. 41, cat. 18.