Lot Essay
This bronze is, quite simply, Prieur, at his very best. The smooth, almost molten, surface glistens, the patina a gorgeous blend of milk-chocolate brown and copper and this is contrasted with the sharp, almost photographic, detail of the woman’s braids. The extended braid is also the great bravura moment of the sculpture as this thin thread of bronze is almost miraculous – both because of the technical difficulties when it was originally cast and the fact it has survived intact for well over 400 years. This bronze is also northern Mannerism at its most sophisticated: quiet, contemplative and exquisite without any theatricality or exaggeration.
Compositionally based on the ancient marble Nymph 'alla Spina’, Prieur’s Seated Nude Braiding Her Hair is one of a small number of elegant bronze statuettes of simple ‘genre’ subjects that have been successfully placed in the oeuvre of Henri IV’s court sculptor.
The model is known in other examples including the Walters Art Museum, Baltimore, the Huntington Collection, San Marino, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, the Louvre and the Wallace Collection, London. Of these, the latter is considered the finest cast, and the present version is closely aligned in the detailed folds of the drapery, delicately rendered braided hair and facial features, contrasting with the expanses of smooth skin. However, present figure is more upright and less languid than the Wallace version, in which a slight tilt of the neck exaggerates the arch of the nude figure’s back.
Prieur first came to the attention of Henri IV when the King visited Sedan, in northern France, where Prieur was working in the autumn of 1591. After witnessing his talents, Henri IV soon entrusted Prieur with creating works intended to glorify him across Europe. The group of genre subjects Prieur created, virtually unique at that time, were first associated with each other by Bode and then Weihrauch, and later accredited to Prieur after comparison to his documented bronze allegories on the monument to Anne, duc de Montmorency, which was in the Parisian church of the Celestines. In particular the oval facial of Nude Woman Braiding Her Hair, with her high rounded forehead and long nose, is typical of Prieur.
André Le Nôtre, who created the gardens and park of both Vaux Le Vicomte and Versailles, owned a version of the bronze, and it appears in the 1693 inventory of his collection as ‘une femme assize quy trais ses cheveux’. Prieur’s great reputation as a small-scale bronze modeler and caster is based on the meticulous attention given to individual details which bring his simple, elegant compositions to life. In the present bronze the elongated individual fingers curl around the flowing locks of unbraiding hair and the little toe of her right foot gently lifts upwards, suggesting that the figure is sitting still, but that her hands and feet are in unconscious motion as she pauses, lost in thought.
Compositionally based on the ancient marble Nymph 'alla Spina’, Prieur’s Seated Nude Braiding Her Hair is one of a small number of elegant bronze statuettes of simple ‘genre’ subjects that have been successfully placed in the oeuvre of Henri IV’s court sculptor.
The model is known in other examples including the Walters Art Museum, Baltimore, the Huntington Collection, San Marino, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, the Louvre and the Wallace Collection, London. Of these, the latter is considered the finest cast, and the present version is closely aligned in the detailed folds of the drapery, delicately rendered braided hair and facial features, contrasting with the expanses of smooth skin. However, present figure is more upright and less languid than the Wallace version, in which a slight tilt of the neck exaggerates the arch of the nude figure’s back.
Prieur first came to the attention of Henri IV when the King visited Sedan, in northern France, where Prieur was working in the autumn of 1591. After witnessing his talents, Henri IV soon entrusted Prieur with creating works intended to glorify him across Europe. The group of genre subjects Prieur created, virtually unique at that time, were first associated with each other by Bode and then Weihrauch, and later accredited to Prieur after comparison to his documented bronze allegories on the monument to Anne, duc de Montmorency, which was in the Parisian church of the Celestines. In particular the oval facial of Nude Woman Braiding Her Hair, with her high rounded forehead and long nose, is typical of Prieur.
André Le Nôtre, who created the gardens and park of both Vaux Le Vicomte and Versailles, owned a version of the bronze, and it appears in the 1693 inventory of his collection as ‘une femme assize quy trais ses cheveux’. Prieur’s great reputation as a small-scale bronze modeler and caster is based on the meticulous attention given to individual details which bring his simple, elegant compositions to life. In the present bronze the elongated individual fingers curl around the flowing locks of unbraiding hair and the little toe of her right foot gently lifts upwards, suggesting that the figure is sitting still, but that her hands and feet are in unconscious motion as she pauses, lost in thought.