Terms and conditions of use
SÈVRES PORCELAIN FACTORY, Sèvres (manufacturer), Josse-François-Joseph LE RICHE (modeller), Augustin PAJOU (after)
René Descartes
(1783-1800)
Medium
porcelain (biscuit)
Measurements
46.0 × 21.8 × 17.3 cm
Credit Line
National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne
Everard Studley Miller Bequest, 1962
Gallery location
17th & 18th Century Decorative Arts & Paintings Gallery
Level 2, NGV International
About this work
In 1776 the comte d’Angiviller, Director General of the King’s Buildings to Louis XVI, commissioned from leading French sculptors a series of marble sculptures of great figures from French history, intended to adorn the Grand Gallery of the Louvre Palace. The Sèvres factory produced biscuit porcelain versions of twenty-three of the twenty-seven portrait sculptures eventually completed. These included Augustin Pajou’s portrait of the great seventeenth-century French philosopher René Descartes. The first set of twenty-three figures produced was acquired by Louis XVI for his personal library at Versailles. The unglazed biscuit-porcelain emulates the surface appearance of marble, lending the portrait figures a monumental, Classical quality.
Artwork Details
Place/s of Execution
Sèvres, Seine-et-Oise, France
Inscription
incised in top of base l.r.: LR / ^ / 21
Accession Number
448-D5
Department
International Decorative Arts
This digital record has been made available on NGV Collection Online through the generous support of Digitisation Champion Ms Carol Grigor through Metal Manufactures Limited