A WHITE CARVED MARBLE RECLINING FIGURE OF DIANA
A WHITE CARVED MARBLE RECLINING FIGURE OF DIANA

ATTRIBUTED TO REN CHAUVEAU (1663-1722), LATE 17TH OR EARLY 18TH CENTURY

Details
A WHITE CARVED MARBLE RECLINING FIGURE OF DIANA
ATTRIBUTED TO REN CHAUVEAU (1663-1722), LATE 17TH OR EARLY 18TH CENTURY
With her dog at her side; on an integrally carved naturalistic base and a rectangular scagliola base.
Some surface dirt.
13.5/8 in. (34.7 cm.) high
Provenance
Private Collection, Sweden
Literature
F. Souchal, French Sculptors of the 17th and 18th Centuries - the Reign of Louis XIV, II, Oxford, 1981, appendix 1, pp. 426-7, no. 40.
Exhibited
London, Heim Gallery, Aspects of French Academic Art 1680-1780, Jun. 10 - Aug. 26 1977, no. 26.

Lot Essay

Born in 1663, Ren Chauveau came from an artistic family. His father Franois was an engraver, while his elder brother Evrard was a painter. Although he was trained in Paris under Franois Girardon and Philippe Caffieri, he emigrated to Sweden in 1693 as First Sculptor to the King. He remained at Charles XI's court in Stockholm until 1700, and produced numerous decorations for the Royal Palace, with which the present marble may be compared, before returning to France via Berlin. His other documented works include various tombs, and decorations for the Htel of Baron Tessin, the Surintendant des Btiments, who was the supreme advocate of French taste in Sweden. It is easy to imagine that a polished mythological piece on a domestic scale such as the present marble was made for a fashionable Swede at the time, although the subject of Diana the Huntress had a venerable pedigree in France, stretching back to the 16th century.

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